“This is my friend,” he said. “This is Jerry. He was arrested at the same time I was back in West Texas.”
Dawn lowered her hands and rolled her eyes. She exhaled deeply, pursed her lips and shook her head before stepping past both Jed and Jerry to sneak a look back down the concourse to see if anyone was coming or had seen them.
“You guys were never in West Texas,” she said. “Are you ready?”
Dawn spoke matter-of-factly, with no hesitation or indication that she might have second thoughts. “Okay, from here on in we walk. Do not run. Walk quickly and act like you belong here.” As she talked, Dawn examined the flat muscled area above her elbow that she’d used to hit Jerry in the face. Seeing that there were no lacerations, she rubbed it before looking back up. Jerry watched her do this and snarled as he checked his own nose to see if it was broken.
“Sorry about that,” Dawn said.
“Sure,” Jerry replied.
“Okay, pay attention,” she continued. “If anyone says anything to you or asks you to stop, you keep walking. Mutter something like you don’t understand them, but keep walking. We’re looking for a man named Donavan. Do not stop until we run into Donavan. Any other name on the tag, I don’t care who it is, you do not stop! Got it?”
“Donavan,” Jerry said. “Got it.”
Before Jed could say “Got it,” which he dearly wanted to say, Dawn had already turned the corner and was gone. Jerry and Jed had to walk hurriedly to catch up with her.
“We’re going to turn left up here,” she said, “then another quick left through a doorway. Someone will probably say something to us there, but keep walking.”
“How do you know all of this?” Jed asked.
“I’ve been here before.”
They turned to the left, and then Dawn headed immediately toward a door marked Staff Only. The door had a push bar release, and just as Dawn punched open the door, Jed heard a voice to his right say “Wait a minute!” Jed scampered through the door and saw that Dawn and Jerry had turned right after entering the hallway, and were walking at a fast clip toward another distant door.
Jed heard the door swing open behind him, then footsteps. Voices, one male and one female, shouted, “Sir! Sir! I need you to stop!” Jed didn’t stop. He caught up with Jerry and Dawn and he could hear the footfalls behind him speeding up and they were catching him just as the trio of travelers reached the far door.
“Sir! All of you! All three of you! We’re going to need you to stop and come back to the desk!”
A hand reached up and grabbed Jed by the shoulder just as the door swung open and a uniformed man stepped through. Donavan was on the man’s nametag.
Donavan recognized Dawn and looked past Jed toward the two staff members who had just reached him.
“Okay, you two. Back to work. I’ll take care of this. Thank you for your diligence,” Donavan said with authority.
“But sir!”
“Back to work. I’ll take care of this.”
Before Jed could fully process what was going on, the three had been shuffled past the second door and they were walking through a heavily fortified parking lot toward a waiting Transport Authority minivan.
“You barely made it, Dawn,” Donavan said. He guided the vehicle through a maze of heavy concrete barricades, and Jed could hear distant explosions. Fantastic beams of light sped by overhead like ethereal shots fired from nearby cannon, and when the explosions were close, the ground would shake, and night turned into day all around them. “And I was expecting two of you, not three. This’ll cost you more.”
“How much more?” Dawn asked.
“I don’t know. Seven total.”
“Seven hundred thousand unilets? Have you lost your mind?”
“I could take you back and you can work it out with Transport… if that’s what you want.”
Dawn was quiet for a few beats. “We’ll make it work… somehow,” she replied.
An explosion off to the right, on the other side of the concrete barricade, shook the van violently. Jed looked at Jerry, and with their eyes they asked one another, What have we gotten into?
“How many unilets do you have left?” Dawn asked Jed under her breath.
“Let me see,” he said. “Five hundred ninety-eight thousand… minus the one hundred thousand from the flight… Four hundred ninety eight thousand. And that will make me completely broke.”
“We’re all broke,” Dawn whispered to him. Then she gestured toward Donavan. “He just doesn’t know that unis will be worthless real soon.”
“I have just a bit over one hundred thousand unis,” Jerry added.
Dawn reached forward and tapped Donavan on the shoulder. “Six!” she said loudly. “We have six. You’ll have to take that, Donavan. It’s all we can get.”
“Six? You’re kidding me, right? The price was three for one person, and you want me to move three people for six? What do you think this is, some cut-rate BICE shop?”
“They’ll only have to cut two of us, Donavan. The Plain kid doesn’t have an implant.”
“I only have a TRID, not a BICE,” Jerry added. He looked at Jed and shrugged. He didn’t know if it would help in the negotiations, but it couldn’t hurt.
Donavan shook his head and pounded the console with his hand.
“Unbelievable. So now you have me doing discount hack work! Okay. Okay. Listen, lady. I’m going to do it, but you owe me, do you hear me, Dawn? You owe me big!”
“Okay! Sheesh. Settle down, Donavan. You’re making six for driving us a few blocks. Think of it that way.”
This little response inflamed Donavan all the more. “Driving you a few blocks? Driving you a few blocks? Is that what you think this is? I just secured three criminals from a secure facility in the middle of a major enemy offensive… all at the risk of my own neck, don’t you know!” He exhaled loudly and struck the console again with the flat of his hand. “Driving you a few blocks! Wow!” He turned to Dawn and pointed at her. “You owe me big, Dawn. Big!”
Dawn rolled her eyes and shook her head.
“Yes, Donavan. I owe you big. Are we there yet?”
(7
NEW PENNSYLVANIA
Indeed, Dawn did owe Donavan. She owed him even more after they arrived at the underground BICE chop shop, and Dawn discovered that Jed had hidden the gold coin in his pod. This little fact triggered another loud argument between Dawn and Donavan. In the end, after Dawn admitted that this time, she really, really, really owed him big-time, Donavan agreed to go back to the station for the coin. Jed told him precisely where it was, and Donavan wrote down the pod number on a piece of paper so he could remember it.
There was one last argument when Dawn told Donavan that she wasn’t going to pay him the six hundred thousand unis until he returned with the coin, but this time the hostility storm blew in fast and didn’t last long. Jed heard Donavan curse under his breath as he left.
Dawn went under the knife first. Removing a BICE was a complicated but minor operation, and they only used some form of local anesthetic. Jed and Jerry sat against a far wall, and the operation took place in the middle of an expansive room and not in any kind of specialty operating theater. A slice was made along the hairline at the rear of the neck, and the BICE unit was removed with practiced precision. They’ve done this before, Jed noted.
Jed and Jerry talked during Dawn’s operation, but there wasn’t too much they could say. All they had were questions, and there weren’t many answers to those questions available to them. They were both just glad to be alive, and no matter how bad it was here, they both agreed that it had to be better than if they’d been sent to Oklahoma. At least now they had a lifeline, however tentative it might be.