“Hard to imagine that Dad knows my size,” Jane said.
“He doesn’t, Jane, but I do.”
“That figures.” Jane suppressed a laugh but not a smile.
Evelyn continued. “He did know you’d like all these outfits, though. You can thank him after you bust him out of the joint.”
Jane turned, threw all her old clothing into the locker, and touched the door. It glided closed as easily as it had opened. Marching toward the door to the locker room, Jane stopped again at the bar and grabbed another apple, another drink, and several of the energy bars, then proceeded through the door.
“Alright, Evelyn, what do you suggest I bring?” Jane asked, walking toward her gear box in the partition.
The glass partition lifted into the ceiling above, and the compartment with Jane’s name on it opened. “Grab everything, Jane. We’ll discuss what you need on the way down to the surface.”
Jane lifted out the surprisingly heavy pack, and behind it, anchored to the wall, were two pistols, each a little different than the other. It had been years since her dad had taken her out to shoot. It was never her thing, but her dad was serious about making sure Jane and her mom could both fire a pistol in self-defense.
She heard the latches release, which she assumed were holding the pistols firm. “The guns too?”
“Yes, the guns too, Jane, and they’re loaded, so be careful with them. Like I said, we’ll discuss it all on the way down.”
Jane slung the pack over her shoulders. Reaching in, she grabbed the pistols and tucked each into its own holster, which had also been resting on the floor of the compartment. Carrying one in each hand, Jane headed toward the door.
“Am I okay to go to the shuttle, Evelyn?”
“You’re clear, but hurry. One of the guards has left the command center and is heading in your direction.”
Jane started to jog with her gear toward the door and quickly ran through and out into the corridor, down the remaining hundred feet to the airlock. Ducking inside, she closed the airlock behind her and stepped on board her shuttle, quickly making her way to the cockpit.
Dumping her pack on the floor, she sat in the captain’s chair.
Jane pulled each pistol out of its holster and held one in each hand. The one in her right hand had a rust-colored grip, and the one in her left had a black-and-gray grip. Other than the grips, a few other almost indiscernible differences, and the fact that the black-gripped pistol seemed a little heavier, they looked similar. “Okay, Evelyn, tell me about these guns.”
“They are both slide action pistols, Jane,” Evelyn replied. “The bullets for each are in clips in the grips, and you have more bullets in your pack. The one with the black grip is a standard-issue pistol with bullets that will deliver lethal force. Assume that whatever you aim at will be dead.”
“Yeah, I get that. What about the one with the red grips?”
“That one’s a little different—it’s called a pulse pistol. It shoots a non-lethal chemical-based bullet. Upon impact, it delivers an electrical charge that will render all but the biggest assailants unconscious. Unless you shoot someone in the face or the neck, it isn’t likely to kill them—but it’s still a gun. You still should assume whatever you aim at will be dead.”
Jane heard the airlock door at the far end of the shuttle slide open and immediately stood and turned toward the sound.
“What’s that, Evelyn?” she said quickly.
“It’s one of the guards, Jane—and he’s armed!” Evelyn shouted through Jane’s earbud. “I don’t know how he did it, but he hacked the door. He’s running toward the cockpit!”
Jane heard the footsteps thundering louder in the corridor beyond the cockpit.
“Which gun won’t kill?” Jane asked to be sure, her heart pounding.
“The one with the red grips.”
A second later, an enormous beast of a man in all-black battle gear came flying around the corner, through the open doorway, and into the cockpit.
Jane raised the pistol and pointed it directly at the guard. “Stop!”
The guard locked his steely black eyes with hers. Racing at her, he took two more steps, crossing half the room. Grimacing through his sweaty, unshaven face, he raised the butt end of his enormous rifle, as if to smash it down on top of her head.
Jane took a step back. “Stop!” she yelled again, and with the beast bearing down on top of her, now just a few feet away, Jane heard the deafening crack of the pistol and felt the recoil in her hands as she fired at him.
Not a second later, the guard vanished.
Jane stumbled backward another step, bracing herself on the console, and let the pistol hang heavy in her arm.
“Oh my God! What just happened? Where did he go?”
Jane’s ears were ringing. She quickly stood straight and moved toward where his body should have been on the floor, pointing her pistol in front of her. He wasn’t there.
“Evelyn, answer me!” she yelled. “What just happened?”
“I’m sorry, Jane. Really, I am. It was a hologram. He was a hologram. It was a simulation.”
Jane couldn’t form the words to speak and couldn’t see, she was so angry. She was pretty sure if Evelyn had been standing there beside her, she may have trained her pistol on her next.
“Dammit, Evelyn, why would you do that? You nearly gave me a heart attack, and now I can’t hear anything. Are you crazy?”
“Jane, I really am sorry, but I had to find out how you were going to react. I had to know if you were going to defend yourself.”
“You couldn’t find another way to do that which didn’t involve me being attacked?” Jane asked, now jittery and trying to walk off the adrenaline roaring through her veins.
“Can you think of a better way?”
“No, I suppose not,” Jane replied, still pacing. Glancing over at the seat of the captain’s chair, she paused momentarily and noticed the red-gripped pistol resting there. She looked at the pistol still in her hand, with the black grips, and then let it hang back down at her side. “So that was a simulation, huh?”
“It was. You passed. Actually, you did better on it that your dad did.”
“Really? How’s that?” Jane asked, now slowing down to a standstill, a little grin forming in the corners of her mouth.
“He chose the red-gripped pistol. He chose to defend himself, but with non-lethal force. You chose the pistol that gave you the best chance of survival, and you used it, though you waited a little longer than you should have. Had they been real bullets you were firing, you would have put three rounds through the center of his chest.”
Jane looked at the pistol inquisitively, not realizing she had pulled the trigger three times.
“What if I hadn’t fired?” Jane mused.
“Well, I’m not sure I would have let you go down to the surface again, Jane, despite what I told you, and I couldn’t have let you go with the real pistol. If you weren’t prepared to use it, you would be a danger to yourself and anyone you were with if you carried it.”
Jane stood still for a second and felt her heartbeat slow to normal. She felt acutely aware of everything around her, and more awake than she had been—maybe ever.
“Do that again, Evelyn, and I’ll unplug you,” Jane said, smiling a little more.
“Okay, Jane. No more tests. Unfortunately, the real thing may be ahead, but at least I know you’ll take care of yourself.” Evelyn paused for a second. “Now, release the clips from the grips, in both pistols. They’re full of blanks, and you’ll need real bullets where you’re headed. They’re in your pack.”
Jane picked up the red-gripped pistol in her left hand and flipped the levers on both guns to release the clips, letting them slide gently onto the seat cushion. Rummaging through her pack, she found the extra clips in an outer pocket and slid them into place in each pistol. Securing the pistols in their holsters and then onto her pack, she strapped it to the wall behind the captain’s chair and buckled herself i
n.
“Okay, Evelyn, let’s go.”
“Just one more thing before we leave, now that you’re sitting down …”
“What?” Jane said, wondering what else Evelyn could possibly tell her at this point.
The shuttle released from the airlock, and Jane felt it drift slowly away from the space station, rotating just slightly to face Earth.
“Your dad didn’t want me to say anything, because he wasn’t sure if he was going to be right about this, but under the circumstances, I feel you ought to know.”
“What?” Jane asked again.
“Your dad planned on getting arrested. He wanted to make sure that he did.”
Jane’s initial surprise didn’t last long, as she realized that that sounded exactly like something her dad might do.
“I’m not surprised, Evelyn, but why?”
Earth was getting bigger in the window, and she could see the telltale glow of the edges of the shuttle as they penetrated the edge of the atmosphere. Jane knew they were letting gravity do the work on the way down to help prevent them from being detected. She knew it would be a rough ride too, and she gripped the armrests.
“Just like you, your dad felt like he had some unfinished business to attend to. He was never sure what had happened that night your mom died in the shuttle crash, and he wanted to try to find out.”
The shuttle jumped around from the turbulence, and Jane’s stomach knotted. The coolant kicked in to reduce the temperature in the cockpit, which had risen considerably. She focused on the window in front of her and tried to take deep, even breaths.
“All that? Just to find out how Mom really died?” Jane asked, still thinking more about the rapidly approaching Earth in front of her.
“Not how, Jane—if. Your dad wanted to know if your mom was actually alive.”
Jane’s head swiveled toward nothing as flames licked the top of the shuttle as they burned through the thin air at altitude.
“What?” Jane yelled over the roar of the shuttle. “My mom is alive?”
“That’s what your dad needed to find out.”
Jane returned her gaze to the window, speechless. Her mind froze. She didn’t know whether she should scream in anger, shout for joy, or burst into tears. All she could do was sit motionless, and helpless, as the shuttle rocketed toward Earth.
LIVING
Jane’s mind raced faster than the shuttle she was in across the barren countryside. They were sailing supersonic across the high desert, and while she might normally feel exhilarated at watching the landscape pass by in a blur, her attention was elsewhere. It wasn’t the thought of her mom still being alive that tortured her, but more the thoughts about what level of hell she must be enduring, being imprisoned alone in some government facility.
Jane had been quiet for a long time. The shuttle had come down somewhere in Nevada, almost colliding with the earth before it leveled off and jetted across the surface. Jane nearly passed out again at the g-forces of going from supersonic vertical to supersonic horizontal, but it was necessary to get to ground level quickly. The government certainly would have tracked the inbound shuttle, but given there weren’t any military outposts within five hundred miles of where they almost landed, the government wouldn’t be able to get there in time to intercept them. The landing site was also far enough from DF-23 and close enough to other major cities that they had a good chance of not being detected. And here Jane was, rocketing over the surface of Earth, on a mission to save her dad and brother. Instead of being focused, however, her thoughts were cluttered with images of her mom holed away, alone, in some cold, bleak cell, starving to death and wearing nothing but rags.
“So the only reason Dad thinks she may be alive is that he’s suspicious of the crash?”
“Yes, Jane.”
“But they found her DNA, and we have her remains.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“So what’s he confused about? She’s gone.”
Jane was getting frustrated thinking about it. She had already lost her mom once, and she didn’t want to get her hopes up that she might still be alive.
“I told him the same thing—differently, of course. He said he couldn’t put his finger on why he felt like something wasn’t right about it, but he couldn’t accept it.”
Jane’s dad had been devastated, just as Jane was, when they got the news about the crash. It had been a miserable time, and they all went through moments where they were inconsolable. But her dad, true to form, eventually put on a brave face, and Jane figured he was going to be okay. Now she wasn’t so sure. To her, this seemed more like he had a break from reality. Maybe he was delusional. Maybe the loss of the love of his life had been too much for him, and he had done the only thing he could—concoct an absurd scenario where she miraculously survived a fiery crash that had incinerated the shuttle and everything within it.
“So he figured he would get himself arrested and hoped that if Mom was still alive, he would be taken to the same prison where they had taken her?”
“That was his hope, yes,” Evelyn replied. “In a way, it makes sense that they would take him to her, if she is still alive. After all, what better way to get your dad to give up me, his artificial intelligence program, than to put him in front of his wife, whom he had presumed to be dead?”
“I guess if I were trying to extract information from someone, and had that kind of leverage, I’d probably use it too,” Jane agreed, and her skin immediately crawled at the callousness of her remark.
Evelyn continued. “He didn’t say as much, but I suspect he also figured that at the very least, he’d be able to find out more about what really happened with the shuttle crash.”
“But what was his plan for escape? Was he just going to wrestle a gun from a guard, shoot his way out, and then whistle for a shuttle to pick him up?”
“Not exactly. The plan was for me to hack into the surveillance system of the detention facility once we knew which one he was going to. I was supposed to signal him that I was in by causing the lights in the facility to flicker, and then he was going to let me know when he was ready to escape by signaling me through the prison video feed. He anticipated that I would be able to lock and unlock doors for him, doing the same for the guards and keeping them at bay long enough for him to get outside, and then I would pick him up in a shuttle I hid close by.”
“This is starting to sound like a suicide mission. If not for my dad, then for me.”
“Well, it’s dangerous. That’s for sure. And your dad’s plan is already not working out the way he had planned.”
“Right. Dad didn’t intend on having Tate arrested.”
“Oh, and that’s not the half of it, Jane. I’ve had to be very careful about hacking into the surveillance system because I can’t draw attention to myself. So I have been working slower than normal, and the encryption on this system is like nothing I have encountered on any of the government’s systems before. It is very advanced.”
“Okay, but you can get in, can’t you?”
“Well, I have—or almost have—but the problem is that I have detected a sentry on their system. Once I breach their security, the sentry will work to shut me out. If it’s successful, I may not have control of their system for long before I’m locked out. It may not be enough time for your dad to signal his escape, especially if he thinks he has more time than he actually has.”
The scrubby landscape whipped past under the shuttle, though they had slowed considerably, and they had started to climb up the western slope of the Rockies. Flying through gorges and along rivers and valleys, the shuttle stayed low, and Jane could now see that the landscape had changed from the browns of the high desert to the greens of the evergreens as they whistled past.
“So the new plan,” Jane began, “is for you to hack in, help me get inside through a service entrance on one side of the facility, lead me to Dad, and then get us out, all before you get locked out of the system?”
“Yes.”
“My sentiments exactly. I should be able to locate your dad quickly once I hack their systems, but I already know where your brother is. The agents pulled the earbud out of your dad’s ear when they brought him in, but they can’t get to the tech in Tate’s head so easily. It is still sending out a signal, and I have been able to map a part of the facility based on where they have taken him since he arrived.”
Jane watched as the shuttle sailed past soaring mountains and steep cliffs. They had slowed their airspeed even more, and Jane could really see the beautiful clusters of pine and spruce trees clinging to steps in the cliffs, and the aspen trees making a yellow-green blanket below. Even in the waning light of the day, and through the almost black shadows cast by the mountaintops above, she admired the untouched beauty around her.
Ahead, Jane could see the back side of the ridge, on the other side of which was the plateau she had visited just the day before. Jane shook her head at the memory of watching the storm roll over the ridge—it seemed longer ago than a day, given everything that had occurred since.
Jane hadn’t realized that their flight to DF-23 would take them past this area again, and she couldn’t help but gawk at how high the ridge rose from the floor of aspens below. It wasn’t vertical, but steep enough that the mountainside could be seen through the trees, and then it struck her. The pack of wolves she saw slinking around the northern edge of the plateau while she was there would have had to climb up that incline. Jane looked closely as they went past, to see if she could see any wolves, but couldn’t make out anything through the trees.
The shuttle coasted along the valley floor below the great ridge above, not far above the tops of the aspens. If Jane’s stomach wasn’t in knots at the thought of attempting the unimaginable—breaking into a government prison—she may have enjoyed the sightseeing. As it was, she was satisfied to take in the scenery as a momentary distraction from more serious concerns.
Jane and the Exodus Page 13
