I grin and shout back, “I made the system think the fire’s in the stairwell. Everyone’s going to head for the opposite end of the building.”
She pauses, giving me a moment to revel in her grudging admiration. Then, with a jerk of her head, she bids me follow, and ducks out into the corridor to take a right, then a quick right again at the next intersection.
But at the next crossroads she skids to a halt when a scream rises briefly over the wail of the sirens. It’s coming from the direction of the holosuite we were in before, as far as I can tell. But it’s not an outraged shout or a demand for freedom from some protester who remembered why they were there. It’s a scream, and it’s cut off with the high-pitched squeal of a laser weapon.
The girl meets my eyes, her own wide with a sudden fear that mirrors the way my own pulse is quickening. Whatever’s happening in there, it’s not what either of us prepared for, even in worst-case-scenario planning. “Did you see…” She raises her voice to be heard, but I can hear the higher note in there, the edge of her nerve. “When we were leaving…”
I saw the people standing there like statues, all turned in like worshippers toward that huge metal ring in the middle of the room as it filled with blue fire. I think I know what the ring was, but…
“Those people,” I shout back. “I don’t know what the hell was happening.”
“I do.” I almost miss her reply, but there’s no mistaking the look on her face. Just for a moment, Dimples has shed her mask, and whatever it is that she knows, it’s shaking her to the core. I draw breath, lips moving to form a question, but she doesn’t give me the chance. Instead, she’s suddenly moving again, grabbing at my arm to turn me around and take off down a different corridor.
The walls are all the same, a creamy white color, all the doors identical, creating the unsettling illusion that we’re going in circles, but she doesn’t hesitate, taking the twists and turns one after another. My screaming fire alarm worked; the halls are empty, save for the occasional guard, who we dodge without much trouble. It’s at least a quarter hour before she halts, holding up a hand and closing her eyes, consulting some internal map. I keep myself nice and busy checking for any unwelcome visitors, and after half a minute she nods and leads me on again.
I want to know more—a lot more—about this girl who has a pass to the fire escape stairs, a killer smile, and a memorized map of the employees-only hallways.
Eventually our luck runs out, and a peek around a corner reveals a security guard standing by a door with a neon EXIT sign—the way through to the fire escape. The guard’s a little pudgy, his shirt so new it still has creases ironed into it. I’m guessing a fresh hire. Eyes wide, he clearly didn’t bargain on encountering whatever’s happening here so early in his career. I don’t know what my companion sees, but whatever it is, it causes her to smile as she pulls back around the corner.
She lifts one hand to press it against my chest, and for an instant all I’m focused on is that one point of contact, the warmth of her skin coming through my shirt. Then she’s shoving me back against the wall. This is becoming a habit. She’s clearly not used to working with a partner. “Stay here,” she says, using that same hand to fish down the front of her bra, an activity I can only imagine I’m supposed to admire, so I do. She pulls out a little blue capsule and squishes it in one hand. When she runs her fingers through her platinum blond hair I see the capsule was full of dye, and in that one movement her hair’s streaked a brilliant blue. “I said I’d show you mine,” she continues, crouching to wipe her hand on the carpeting.
“Oh yeah?” I’m grinning, and she’s aiming a coy smile back—just the one dimple, this time. I think I like that even better. I like that, at least for now, her fear’s receding, though I can still see traces of it in the depths of her gaze.
“Watch and learn.” She pinches her cheeks with her clean fingers so they start to flush, and huffs a few quick breaths, then whirls around the corner. She runs straight for the guard, already crying as she throws herself at him. I’ve seen plenty of artists on the lower levels, but this girl is good.
The guard’s clearly bewildered to find his arms full of semi-hysterical, blue-haired teenager, and tries variations on are you hurt and the evacuation point’s back that way, miss. I keep an eye on them as I peel off my shirt, quickly turning it inside out and pulling it back on again, so the LaRoux Industries badge I doctored up is showing on the outside once more.
Meanwhile, Dimples sucks in a few quick breaths and tries again, this time a little clearer despite her “fear.” “Back that way,” she gasps, pointing to the hallway opposite the one I’m hiding in. “He tried to take me hostage, he’s got a gun! Please, you have to help.” She lets herself subside into whimpery distress noises after that, though I can’t hear much more of it over the alarms still screaming above us. I can tell from the guy’s body language what he’s saying as he manages to get her pried loose from his arm. Stay right here and I’ll take care of it. Though when he jogs off the way she pointed, he’s not moving too fast. Probably doesn’t want to be the one to find this armed hostage-taker, and fair enough, really.
I stay hidden until he’s turned a corner, then hurry out to find my friend fishing in her purse—who even carries one of those?—and producing a swipe card. She manages to look only a tiny bit relieved when the pad lights up green, and a moment later we’re in the stark emergency stairwell. The alarms are dimmed in here, and our footsteps echo as we start down.
“What the hell did you do back there?” she calls back over her shoulder after a while. “I saw you doing something with your lapscreen and that data port in the tree, right before the holo-projections cut out, but this is a whole other level of security.”
I’m tempted to tell her I have no idea. I was inside the LaRoux servers, and I’d just spotted some weird energy spikes I wanted to know more about, but I’d barely gotten started. Nothing I tripped should have brought out the bloodhounds like this. Some of my old hacks, when I was starting out, might have caused this kind of mayhem. But these days, unless you’re on my wrong side…Point is, nothing I did would’ve warranted the weapons fire we heard up there.
We started twenty stories up—though that’s a relative figure, since the ground floor is certainly nowhere near the actual surface of Corinth—and by now we’ve got about three to go, so I save my breath for running.
Then the door at ground level bursts open, and three security guards come hurrying in. We’ve both got too much momentum to stop right away, but I lunge in toward the wall to try and stay out of sight, and she grabs hold of my shirt to slow herself. She slams in beside me as we hold perfectly still, waiting to see if they’ve spotted us—waiting to see if they’re coming up the stairs.
Of course they are. Has a single damn thing gone right for me today? There’s no way to get anywhere near an exit without being seen, so I shove the satchel holding my lapscreen behind my back, put my faith in my fake LaRoux Industries uniform, and step out into their view. My partner in crime stays behind me, no doubt hoping as hard as I am that they won’t be able to tell she’s not wearing a uniform.
“Careful you don’t shoot me, guys,” I call, forcing myself to sound like I think that prospect’s actually funny. “I’m awful hard to replace.”