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  Feng tossed the can onto a pile of other crushed cans along the back wall. “Speak for yourself. I just want ‘em dead—all of them. Every…last…one.” He spoke this last bit through gritted teeth.

  Rylee decided to drop the subject. They’d had this argument before. Feng had his reasons for despising the Elects. His own sister, a few years older than he was, had been taken on a night like tonight by a few sex-crazed Elect adolescents. Feng had tried to fend them off, but was too young and weak to do anything to save her.

  “Any word from Preston?” she asked, knowing there hadn’t been.

  “Probably out being a hero, like always,” Feng said.

  Serghei came over to her then with a metal box in his hands—his first-aid kit, as he called it. Whatever that meant. Setting the kit down on the concrete floor beside her, he began inspecting her leg.

  Rylee did the same. It was the first time she’d really gotten a look at it since her crash. Though she was not surprised, she still moaned within when she saw the gash in her pants. Not because of the torn and bloodied skin it exposed. No, that would heal—she hoped. The pants wouldn’t. She only owned two pairs of pants. These were her nicest. Tough and warm. It was difficult to come by new clothes in the Post Desolation Reconstruction Alliance. Well, nothing was truly new anymore. Not like her grandfather remembered.

  Maybe they could be mended.

  “Did you leave any asphalt on the road?” Serghei said. “I can’t tell if I’m looking at your leg or a chunk of the street.”

  Rylee didn’t respond. She was in too much pain to feel like dealing with Serghei’s humor. Not with Preston still out there and that cycle nagging at her thoughts.

  “I’ll need to clean this,” Serghei added.

  “Can’t you just wrap a bandage around it?” she said, feeling a surge of pain just thinking about scrubbing the wound clean.

  “Oh, sure. Not a problem. Dirt and asphalt, they accelerate the healing process. How could I have forgotten that?”

  Rylee sighed. “Fine, do what you have to do.”

  “I’m going to have to cut away this pant leg. Unless…you’d prefer to take them—”

  “Just cut them,” she snapped, knowing exactly the alternative Serghei was about to suggest.

  Serghei opened his first-aid kit and began riffling through it. He produced a pair of blunted scissors and began snipping away at the leg of her pants.

  Rylee sucked in through clenched teeth as he pulled the fabric away from the wound bit by bit. For all his joking, Serghei really was a decent medic—considering his lack of training. And she trusted him. That was something hard to come by. Trust.

  “Tripes, Ry!” Feng said suddenly. “What happened to your rifle?”

  Rylee grabbed the weapon leaning against her right leg. With her own injuries, and everything else on her mind, she’d forgotten about her rifle. Feeling more afraid to look at its damage than her own, she slowly lifted it. She turned it over in her hands, letting the light shine fully on its side. Deep grooves marred the chassis, stock, and barrel. Much of the black anodized finished had been scraped away, leaving behind raw steel. The synthetic stock showed the most damage. By some miracle, the scope had not broken free. Later, she would have to realign it.

  Rylee groaned. “How am I going to hide this from my grandfather?”

  The old Winchester bolt-action rifle had belonged to her grandfather before he gave it to her. Part of his extensive gun collection that he managed to save from before Desolation came. In fact, all of their guns, including her own Glock had come from her grandfather’s collection. Most people had lost everything but the clothes on their bodies. But her grandfather had been more prepared than most.

  “Just tell him the truth,” Feng said. “Most of it, anyway. You crashed your Harley. Got hurt, and damaged your rifle.”

  “And when he sees that my Harley is undamaged?”

  “Please!” Feng said, leaning back and placing his hands on the back of his head. “That old bike of yours doesn’t even look like it should still run.”

  Rylee shot him a cold glare but didn’t respond.

  Static filled her earpiece suddenly, then Preston’s voice broke in. “Ry, what did you do with that other cycle?”

  Both Serghei and Feng looked at Rylee. Rylee put her hand to her earpiece. “I stashed it behind a dumpster, near the hideout. Why?”

  “Tell me you’re joking,” Preston said, frustration edging his tone.

  “No. Why? What’s going on?”

  Rylee started to feel panicked. What had she done?

  When Preston’s voice returned, he sounded calmer. But there was a definite gravity there. “The Regulators. They’ve found it. And…they’ve made an arrest.”

  FOUR

  “Look, everyone just go home for the night,” Preston said, now sitting on the faded green vinyl couch in the Elect Hunter’s hideout. “There’s just a few more hours until daylight. We all need rest. We have a full day of work ahead of us.” He took a long gulp of Mountain Dew.

  “Sleep?” Serghei said, looking up from feeding his pet rat. “Who needs sleep? Work will always be there. Movie, anyone?”

  “Speak for yourself,” Feng said. “Some of us have real jobs. I’m out of here.”

  “Lathering yourself with halibut doesn’t count as a job,” Serghei retorted.

  Feng only muttered something about hating fish, as he continued to walk away. It was true that Feng always smelt of fish. Some kind of fish. Salmon, lingcod, halibut. He worked on a fishing boat.

  Rylee didn’t move from her place in the old love seat. Her leg and arm were now dressed and bandaged. Serghei had even stitched the leg of her pants back on. Though, even to her untrained eye, the stitching looked questionable. She doubted the repair would survive the next time she sat down. But neither her pain nor her pants kept her anchored where she was.

  She just sat there, scratching at the tattoo on the back of her hand. The tattoo didn’t itch. Not anymore. When she first got it, back when she was seven, it had itched for weeks. Some kind of allergic reaction to the tattoo ink.

  She never liked having the tattoo on the back of her hand. Without it though, the Alliance would refuse to recognize her as a legal member. No barcode, no rations.

  Serghei loved to talk about the barcoded tattoos. A science-fiction cliché, according to him, right out of one of his old movies.

  Whatever that meant.

  “We can’t do anything about it now,” Preston said, reading the miserable look in her eyes. “It wasn’t your fault. The blame is mine. I knew you were injured. I shouldn’t have left you like that.”

  Rylee shook her head. “There wasn’t room on that cycle. You know there wasn’t.”

  “I could have sent Feng to intercept you. He could have disposed of the cycle properly.”

  She felt a modicum of consolation at Preston’s attempt to place the blame on himself. It didn’t surprise her that he would try to. He always took responsibility for the group’s failures. This time, though, she wouldn’t allow him to take the blame away from her. Nothing he said changed the fact that her actions had led to the arrest of one of their own people. She didn’t argue further, though. What good would it do?

  “You’re sure you didn’t see who it was?” she asked him for the second time that night.

  Preston hesitated for only a fraction of a second. Someone who hadn’t know him his whole life probably wouldn’t have noticed it.

  “It was too dark, Ry,” he said, his voice heavy with weariness from the long night. “We can’t know anything for certain right now.”

  His green and hazel-twined eyes met hers. He offered her a smile that didn’t quite brighten those eyes. Not one of his smiles that drew people in, that made you forget that this was Preston Hyde. The boy—man really—who had plenty of reasons to never smile.

  She sighed. What were they doing? They were just kids. She, just turned eighteen. Preston a year older. Feng, seventeen, and Serghei, si
xteen. Maybe they were stupid to think they could fight back against the Elects.

  “My offer still stands,” Serghei said, beaming sincerely at both of them. “Stay and watch a movie. I think something light is in order. Perhaps, Citizen Kane?”

  Rylee wrinkled her nose at the idea. “You call Citizen Kane light?” She had only seen the black-and-white film once. And that was enough for her. Nothing particular from the movie stood out to her. Only how depressing it was. She preferred the movies Serghei found with happy endings. Not that such things existed anymore.

  “Come on, it’s a classic.”

  “Serg,” said Preston, sounding lighthearted for the first time all night, “that movie was made over a hundred years ago. It’s a fossil.”

  “Fossil! No, no, my friend. One day you and I will have a serious talk about this matter.”

  “Right,” replied Preston, downing the rest of his Mountain Dew in one gulp, then rising from the couch. He stretched, letting out an exaggerated yawn. “Well, I can’t stick around either. Come on, Ry. I’ll help you get home.”

  Rylee laughed. “Are you going to carry me over the puddles too? My hero.” She pretended to swoon, like the women often did in Serghei’s ridiculous movies.

  Preston laughed—a real laugh. “No. But if you keep acting like that, I might shove you into one.”

  “Just because I’m injured, doesn’t mean I can’t break your nose…again.”

  Unconsciously, Preston grabbed his nose. It was still slightly crooked. She hadn’t actually meant to break it the first time. A sparring accident. At least, that’s what she had told herself—after she had calmed down. At any rate, a crooked nose complemented his rugged appearance. His tangled russet hair, his square jawline, his stubbled chin and calloused hands. His eyes were the only physical part of him that wasn’t rough. No, his eyes were soft. Warm. Familiar.

  Preston and Rylee left Serghei at the hideout. Whether he actually intended to spend the rest of the night watching one of his movies, they didn’t know. The hideout doubled as Serghei’s home, after all. He had no family. No parental unit. Nothing.

  Despite their relative confidence that the Regulators had withdrawn from the area, they moved cautiously through the streets, silent. And Rylee’s leg forced them to go at a snail’s pace. It pained her to walk far more she would admit to Preston. Several times, she felt tempted to drop to the street and sleep there for the night. If she didn’t fear what would happen to her, she might have done it.

  When they finally reached Rylee’s housing unit, Preston ventured to speak, though softly. “You sure you’ll be alright to work tomorrow?”

  “What choice do I have?” she said. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Besides,” she added, her voice growing serious, “I’m more worried about what Regulation will do tomorrow with…whoever it was.”

  “Forget about that. There’s nothing you can do. Besides, it’ll probably all blow over. They don’t have any evidence against anyone.”

  “You and I both know Regulation doesn’t need evidence.”

  “I know. I know,” he said, nodding his head. “But listen. You saved that girl tonight. Think about that. Now, try to get some rest. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  He reached out and took her hand in his. It engulfed her own, warming it like an oven. A different sensation, making her whole body come alive, accompanied that touch. If she weren’t marked with bruises all over her body, he probably would have hugged her.

  “Everything will be fine,” he whispered.

  Then he turned and slipped away into the waning night.

  Rylee snuck back into her apartment through the door. Though riskier, she didn’t know if she could have managed climbing back in through her bedroom window. She had plenty of practice sneaking in and out. And even with an injured leg, she moved as quietly as a cat stalking a mouse. Her grandfather’s bedroom door was closed, as always when he slept. She crept passed it and carefully opened her own bedroom door. Once inside, she stowed her things, making sure to hide her scarred rifled. Then she laid onto her cot and attempted to sleep, knowing full well nothing good would come in the morning.

  FIVE

  William Grayson Steele rubbed his eyes, yawning. He swiveled in his chair, turning to face the floor-to-ceiling windows that covered most of the southern wall of his office. Standing and stretching his lower back, he walked up to it and looked out. The windows commanded a respectable view of the city, perched on the fifteenth floor of his father’s building. Not as high as his father’s office on the eighty-ninth floor, which was almost as high as the clouds that perpetually plagued the region.

  William didn’t mind the clouds. Not usually. Often, they reflected his own mood. Gray. Brooding. Shrouding something from the rest of the world.

  Those clouds seldom released the rain they obviously carried. An odd phenomenon that even his father’s climate experts couldn’t explain. Once one of the rainiest places on the planet, in the days before Desolation, the Alliance now thirsted for moisture of any sort. Ironically, he could look out the west-facing windows of his father’s building and see no end of water. The Puget Sound. A vast inlet of saltwater, fed by the Pacific Ocean. If only that water would deign to evaporate, form clouds, and dump its payload over the entire region…

  But Will had other matters to occupy his thoughts. The weather he could not control.

  Turning his back to the city, he yawned again. A sure signal of an overheated brain. He knew he should take more frequent breaks. That was one thing he’d never been good at. Especially when he was so close to a breakthrough like this. There was just one more hurdle standing in his way.

  He connected wirelessly to the neuro-synaptic simulator—the NSS—through his PNU-enhanced brain and halted the simulation of his most recent code changes. The NSS was a physical piece of hardware—one of the few in the building. It was slower than a real brain. But it was much safer than testing prototype code on a live subject. Not that such hadn’t been done before. Rookie programmers always believe their code to be bug-free. Such a thing didn’t exist. Not from rookies or from seasoned veterans. Not even from prodigies, like himself, who had been coding before they could read. Even with the massive simulators, static code analyzers, and automated threat modelers, bugs—vulnerabilities—always lurked somewhere in the code, waiting to be exploited. He excelled at that—exploiting vulnerabilities. And of all William’s skills and virtues, it was the one his father valued most.

  PNU. Programmable Neurotronic Unit. The name never failed to grate his sense of linguistic aesthetics.

  He took off his white lab coat. A pointless article. No one in the labs needed physical symbols to identify scientists or engineers or security personnel. Everyone’s profile was embedded into their assigned security certificate. The Central Molecular Nanotechnology Engineering Laboratories issued the certificates to everyone authorized to access any part of the building. Without it, doors wouldn’t open. Walking into one of the clean rooms, William could instantly scan the workers’ certificates using the microscopic transmitter/receivers embedded within his skin. The data from the certificates would then be routed via his nervous system to his brain, and picked up by his PNU. The names, job titles, security access level, etc. would all be presented to him.

  He tossed the lab coat onto his chair. No one needed a lab coat here. His father liked order, though. If you asked William, the man was obsessed with it. But then, one had to be a little obsessive to do what his father did.

  William walked over to the door, turned the metal handle, and stepped out into the hall. The thought of the archaic door handle often made him smile in amusement. His father loved to philosophize about trivial objects like doors and door knobs.

  People used to believe the future meant doors that slid open automatically, computers and touchscreens on every accursed gadget, and flying cars. At this point, his father would shake his head. Those people lacked vision. They didn’t understand that the future was right h
ere. Then he’d tap on his right temple. You put technology in the right place. Where it can change the world. There’s nothing futuristic about doors that slide open. Any idiot can build that. But who really wants it? Imagine if every door in this building were an automatic sliding door. That’s nearly a thousand doors. A maintenance nightmare. Mechanical things break. Increase the complexity of that mechanism, and you increase the risk of it breaking.

  Put your technology where it matters.

  Of course, his father wouldn’t stop there. He’d go one for another twenty minutes about the future. About how everyone got it wrong but him.

  Despite the fact that William had heard his father’s speech so many times he could quote it verbatim—hand gestures and facial expressions included—he happened to believe his father was correct. For all he didn’t agree with his father, this was one of the few he did agree with him.

  William stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the sixty-fifth floor. A moment later, the doors—sliding, automatic doors—opened to his studio apartment. He stepped inside onto the polished walnut floors, a full wall of windows greeting him with the same somber gray light from outside.

  Lander was there, reposed on the sofa mounded with enough feather pillows to soften a jump off the top of the building. Though his eyes were open, he didn’t respond to William’s presence as he walked into the room. For several moments, William just stood there, looking at his friend. At nineteen, Lander was two years William’s minor. But sometimes that age gap felt like two decades. Especially at moments like these, when Lander’s mouth hung open slightly, his eyes focused on objects only he could see, occasionally muttering something William tried not to hear. At least, Lander had his clothes on.

  William said Lander’s name. No response. He shook his head and sent an interrupt message directly to Lander’s PNU. William knew how to send messages that would bypass any blocks Lander might have enabled while he was busy. Of course, Lander could beef-up his message blockers with his own code, if he wasn’t so lazy.