While We Run

by Karen Healey

  I was beginning to wonder if my mother had known exactly what her training would do to me.

  Tegan was rubbing the dressing at the back of her neck. “This hurts,” she said.

  “I can change it when we stop,” Marie told her.

  “Yes, please,” Tegan said, which meant that her neck really did hurt. Tegan loved Marie, but she wasn’t a big fan of medicine or health care in general—considering all the interest doctors had taken in her revived body and brain, it made perfect sense to me. She took one of the pills Joph gave her and washed it down with a whole bottle of water. She was sweating again, even in the temperature-controlled car. The world had been so much cooler in her time; it was odd to think how hot this mild autumn must be to her.

  I looked away from her and toward the windshield. Zaneisha was watching me in her mirror, her dark eyes as expressionless as ever. I couldn’t tell if she was sympathetic to our situation or planning my imminent demise.

  “I must swap the battery,” she said, a sentence so removed from my state of mind that it took a moment to work out that it wasn’t some elaborate code. The car battery needed to be swapped for one that was fully charged. Normally a battery would go all day, to be recharged all night, but this one had been at the rugby grounds—not plugged into a home electricity supply.

  “There’s a swap station about two kilometers up the road, just before the entrance to the promontory proper,” Bethari said, busy with her computer. “It accepts credit, eco-credits, cash—must be old—and direct transfer. How many hidden accounts do you have left, Joph?”

  “Oh, all the real ones,” Joph said. “I think we can assume SADU froze all the decoys, but that leaves forty-six million dollars, all up.”

  Tegan startled, and then shook her head at my glance. “I always forget about inflation,” she explained. “That’s about… three million, in my day. Which is still… wow, Joph.”

  “You knew I was rich.”

  “I didn’t know you were a millionaire!”

  “Wise investments,” Joph said, unruffled. “A trust from my grandmother. My parents limited my allowance when they found out about the drug smuggling, but I’d already put most of my savings in a hidden account. I just moved it out and around before they could find that one. I’m not as good as Bethi when it comes to covering up my online activities, but I’m not a complete slouch.”

  “I thought you had to sell more recreational drugs to get money for the equipment you needed,” I said.

  She frowned. “Yes, Tegan said that in her ’cast. But I didn’t. I sold the breathers so people would believe my ditzy act.”

  I’d just assumed otherwise. In her own quiet way, Joph tended to show you how stupid assumptions could be.

  “Problem,” Zaneisha said, and the car slowed down as the recharge station came into view. It wasn’t the automated one I’d been expecting, but a real station, with food and drink and a counter attendant.

  A witness.

  “Do we keep driving?” I asked.

  “No.” Zaneisha’s head jerked decisively. Still two hundred meters or so from the station, she parked on the shoulder of the road, long grass scraping the belly of the car. Trees with black, deeply furrowed trunks provided cover, a few spindly red flowers still holding on among the olive green leaves.

  “Stay here,” Zaneisha said, and checked her weapons belt before she got out of the car and pried the battery free. She kept to the trees as she went, the battery balanced awkwardly on one hip. It would have been easier to carry it in both arms, but her free hand held a bolt-gun, hidden by her side. We watched as the strong figure became smaller. A few cars passed, but none stopped.

  In the late evening light, the station looked less welcoming, more menacing. Without speaking, we exchanged glances as Zaneisha vanished inside.

  “Um,” Marie said. “I don’t want to sound alarmist, but just in case, maybe we should get out of the car?”

  “More cover in here,” Tegan said, but her face was intent. “Abdi, the weapons bag is under the backseat.”

  I bent, careful not to brush against Marie’s feet, and pulled out the long black bag. It looked innocuous enough, but when I unfolded it I had to clamp down hard on my reaction to all the weapons carefully strapped into place. Auto-rifles, bolt-guns, something in complicated pieces that might have been an antiflier shooter—the sonic pistols in their braces at the top looked harmless in that array.

  “Do you want something now?” I asked Tegan, trying to make it a polite inquiry.

  She grimaced. “Not yet. I’m probably just being paranoid. Zaneisha wouldn’t have gone if she thought we were actually in danger.”

  I’d forgotten that Tegan hated guns. But she’d pick one up if she had to.

  “Nothing on the channels,” Bethari said, and then yelped. “Oh no. Oh no!”

  “What is it?” Joph asked, but I didn’t need clarification.

  Rising from the trees like a huge gray wasp, the flier swooped over the station.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Tutte le corde

  “God protect us,” Tegan said, and grabbed for the weapons bag.

  “It’s a flier,” I said, clutching the bag against my chest. “You can’t get a flier with hand weapons! You’d be dead before you took a step.”

  “They won’t kill me!” Tegan said. “I’m the Living Dead Girl, the only successful revival! They won’t—”

  “No,” Marie said.

  “Marie, I have to; we can’t leave Zaneisha to face them alone!”

  “I mean no, you’re not the only successful revival.” Marie’s face was pale, far too pale. “There are two others, now. At least two. The process works.”

  The silence in the car lasted an infinite moment. “Why didn’t you tell us!” Tegan said.

  “I couldn’t,” Marie said. “I don’t know if we can trust Zaneisha.”

  “Can’t trust—”

  “Why do you think that?” I asked over Tegan’s half-articulated protest. “Do you have any evidence?”

  “Just a feeling. She’s been army all her life. Maybe she’s still with the government. Or maybe she’s reporting on us back to Hurfest.” Marie’s eyes were haunted. I couldn’t tell if it was paranoia or justified suspicion—we’d both been betrayed too often to trust easily anymore.

  “She’s in danger right now,” Tegan said, and grabbed for the bag again. “Abdi, we can talk about this later! Let me go!”

  “If they have other revivals, they don’t need you!” I shouted back. “Just think for a second!”

  “The flier can’t kill us if it’s not working,” Bethari said, in a voice that was far too calm. She’d dropped her computer and picked up the EMP control unit. “We need to bring it down.”

  There were cars on the road, all traveling at speeds that might kill when their internal computers cut out. Bethari’s hands were shaking, but she was opening the red box and reaching inside, and my lunge forward wasn’t going to be fast enough to stop her flipping the switch—

  The flier exploded.

  It was so loud that I thought my eardrums had exploded, so bright that white spots hung in front of my eyes. I closed my eyes and ignored the enormous shudder of something heavy hitting the ground, counting three silent seconds, before I opened them again. The flier body had fallen among the scrubby trees, where it was spitting and roaring, the burning fuel stench strong.

  “I didn’t think the EMP could do that,” Joph said.

  “It didn’t,” Bethari said, sounding equally stunned. “I mean, I didn’t. I didn’t turn it on.”

  “That wasn’t you?” I asked—foolishly, since cars were already pulling to a halt, bystanders already getting out to gather uselessly round the flier’s funeral pyre. “Then it was someone else. Lat’s people, maybe, or a third party. We have to leave right now.” My head was already spinning through likely scenarios and plans for the next minute, hour, week.

  Tegan opened her car door and ran toward the station.
/>   “Oh no,” Bethari said, and scrambled out after her, the EMP box still in her hand.

  “Tegan, wait!” Marie cried.

  I was already moving, but Tegan with a head start could be hard to catch. I passed Bethari but got to the station just in time to see Tegan drop low and crawl through the front entrance. Joph had the sense to stay with Marie in the car, and Bethari panted up behind me.

  “Teeg!” Bethari whisper-shouted, but Tegan gave no sign of hearing her. “Shoot! We can go round the back. Give me something.”

  The weapons bag was still in my hand. I pulled out sonic pistols for Bethari and myself and hesitated a moment before I stuffed a bolt-gun into the back of my pants. Safety on.

  My hands were shaking. I was furious—with Tegan’s recklessness, with my own cowardice. I was gripped in a bone-deep terror I couldn’t even put words around. There was a kind of wailing at the back of my head, a low, drawn-out cry of nonononono. I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t let Diane take me.

  But I couldn’t let her take Tegan, either.

  Bethari’s computer made short work of the back door’s electronic lock, and we snuck through the employee’s break room, which was suspiciously empty of bags, computers, and other things you’d expect from someone who’d actually turned up to work that day. It had been a trap, and we’d sprung it—perhaps all the swap stations were being monitored by fliers? No, too many resources needed, even with Cox’s approval. But they hadn’t pinpointed us exactly, or we’d already be in custody. They’d narrowed down the area and planted people at various stations we might use and then had fliers on standby to…

  Bethari put the EMP control box down by the door and went to her stomach, wriggling through the open door into the main shop. I joined her, trying to keep my sonic pistol clear of the floor. I wasn’t good at instant action. I liked to plan things out, assess the circumstances, and this was clearly a moment with no time for that. I’d do better to follow the girls’ leads.

  There was a man behind the counter, wearing a black SADU uniform. His chest had been blown out. Bethari visibly steeled herself before she crawled through the pool of congealing blood and very carefully poked her head around the edge of the counter. She stiffened, ducked back, and beckoned me to join her.

  Zaneisha was on her knees, hands locked behind her head. Her back was toward me, but I could read her tension in its stiffness—and little wonder. She was surrounded by three silent men, all big and well armed, and two of them were holding weapons on her. They weren’t wearing Australian uniforms, but worn jeans and heavy jackets. And they all looked African—unusual for Australia, where things tended to be both more white and more mixed up. The whole tableau was completely incongruous to the surroundings, where brightly colored stands of food and drink fought with one another for your attention and a video loop of a popular sportswoman promised that the energy pills that sponsored her would improve your performance and make you more attractive to whoever your preferred partners were.

  I couldn’t see Tegan anywhere.

  The front door opened and another man came in, cradling a bolt-rifle and shaking his heavy bald head. “The car is empty,” he reported. “Marks in the brush.”

  Joph must have gotten Marie out, I thought, and only then realized that the man hadn’t been speaking English.

  He’d said it in Somali.

  The man he’d reported to made a gesture of impatience so familiar that it tugged directly at my heart. That was how my father and uncles talked among one another, with their hands saying almost as much as their voices. “Who are you?” he asked Zaneisha, in accented English. It was a stronger version of my accent.

  She didn’t speak.

  “Where is Abdi Taalib?” he asked. “Are you Australian military? Why did he shoot at you, if so?” He gestured negligently toward the counter and presumably the dead man there.

  No reply.

  The big man shook his head. “You are brave,” he said in English, and then, in Somali, “We have no time. Shoot her.”

  “No!” I shouted, and moved forward. I got three steps into the room before the stupidity of my action caught up with me. Four of the five men had swung their weapons around, and my own bolt-gun was stuck in my waistband. A sonic pistol wasn’t going to do anything. But the leader’s gun stayed down. He was smiling at me, closed lips curving warmly. “Abdi. Good. Your mother sent us. We’ve come to take you home.”

  He said it in Somali, and Zaneisha clearly didn’t understand. But she saw an opportunity and moved, hands swift and precise as she elbowed one of the men in the face, relieved him of his gun, and aimed it at the leader’s face. He stood calm and assured, but the other men were reacting, and the man on the ground was getting to his feet with an expression that promised revenge.

  “Don’t hurt her,” I said in English, hoping that they all understood. One of the men looked puzzled, but another muttered a translation—in what I thought was Portuguese. This was going to get confusing fast.

  “She is with you?” the leader asked, this time in English.

  “Yes,” I said, in lieu of the complicated explanation that actually encompassed the complex relationship between Zaneisha Washington and me. “He says they’re from my mother, Zaneisha.”

  Zaneisha—and her gun—didn’t waver. “I assume you have some credentials to support that,” she said.

  “Yes.” He slid one hand toward the breast pocket of his dusty coat, moving with a sort of slow fluidity that echoed Zaneisha’s own motions. They made a matching pair, really, both tall and broad and dark-skinned, with short military-style haircuts and that deadly efficiency in every gesture. But Zaneisha was Australian and incomprehensible to me in some fundamental ways. Every word out of this man’s mouth sounded like home. Hope was pounding at my limbs like a hammer.

  He pulled out a necklace.

  It was a red-enameled pendant on a gaudy, fake gold chain, mimicking the shape of a flame. Poorly made and cheap looking, utterly worthless on grounds of aesthetics or value.

  But it was infinitely precious to me, and as I involuntarily reached for it, Zaneisha must have seen something in my face that made her own features relax and her gun arm lower.

  “It’s my mother’s necklace,” I said, my voice struggling. “I gave it to her, Zaneisha. No thief would take it; only she would remember that.”

  “She said you were nine years old,” the man said, smiling wryly. “That you gave it to her as an apology gift.”

  I’d said something hurtful. I didn’t remember what, but I could remember my mother’s face closing up like a flower at night before she turned away, deliberately putting her back to me. I’d been sorry, so sorry that I’d run to the old souk to find something to make it up to her. At the time, the pendant had looked perfect.

  My mother had sent these men to rescue me. I was finally going home.

  Behind me, Bethari stood up, very slowly, hands raised above her head. She’d left the sonic pistol behind, but the men still swiveled to inspect her before their leader signaled them to stand down.

  “How did you find us?” she asked.

  The leader shrugged at the wreckage outside. “We followed them.”

  “You hacked military communications?”

  “Not me personally, but yes.” He looked at me. “This isn’t the girl.”

  “What?”

  “The one who got you kidnapped, and imprisoned after.”

  “No. Tegan did that. I mean, she didn’t exactly…”

  “I saw her story. All very well to tell the truth, but not so smart to do it with no thought for the consequences.” He shook his head. “That medicine-smuggling operation did good work. It had to be shut down when that girl spoke, governments suddenly having to notice things they had managed not to see before. A shame.”

  Bethari looked indignant, but I knew he was right. I’d told Tegan she could talk about the operation as a way to underline the unfair first-world practices that made it necessary. But the practices conti
nued, and in the meantime, people were dying. Consequences.

  “I’m Tegan Oglietti,” Tegan said, coming into view from around a shelf.

  “Our perimeter observation needs work,” the leader said in Somali. His voice was calm, but two of the men flinched—not the bald one, who looked amused.

  “Were you with one of the medicine smuggling teams?” I asked.

  He laughed. “Me? No. I am a retrieval specialist.”

  “A mercenary,” I said, trying not to sound judgmental.

  I don’t think I entirely succeeded, but he took no apparent offence. “Yes, if you like. I am paid to do this work, to find people and bring them places.”

  He didn’t need to tell me that he didn’t always bring people places they wanted to go. But my mother had hired him; I had to have faith in her choices, faith in her. Or maybe just faith in her desperation.

  It was almost nice to be the important target, the one people were after. These men saw Tegan as the extraneous one, not me.

  “How did my family pay for you?” I asked.

  It was a rude question, and the men around us looked askance at me. The leader’s eyes narrowed. “We haven’t been properly introduced.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I’d been raised to respect my elders, but eighteen months in Melbourne had eroded my manners. “Please forgive me. May I know your names?”

  He nodded. “I’m Hanad. This is Ashenafi and Thulani. Eduardo is over there.” The bald man.

  That was an interesting mix. Hanad was a Somali name, and Ashenafi was Amharic—both names from my part of the world. I wasn’t sure about Thulani, but it might be Xhosa, which meant the south, and the Portuguese probably meant Eduardo was from Angola or Mozambique. They were different shades and builds, too, from Hanad’s dark muscularity to Thulani’s light wiriness. An odd group, maybe, but they all had that air of physical competency that I associated with Lat and Zaneisha. And Diane.

  And Tegan, too. She was standing with her hip cocked, but there was a tension in her arms that I didn’t trust.