Continuance (10 page)

“The building won’t be finished for
another two years, though,” he said. “Makes me jealous of all the freshmen.”

“Think of it as your tuition
money going toward the enlightenment of UCE’s future elite. So that covers the
inanimate side of the update. What’s new at Everton these days, people-wise?”

Patrick shrugged. “A lot of the
same faces. A lot of new ones. Keith’s engaged. Some girl who transferred in
this semester.” He shook his head. “I think they barely dated two months. I’m
supposed to be a groomsman sometime in July.”

“Wow.” It was all she could think
of to say. Her time with Keith seemed so long ago. Nothing to do with her now.

“Not that you really want all the
gory details. I just thought you might like to know.” Patrick hurried on. “I
see your old friend Rachael around sometimes. We say ‘Hi,’ and then we talk a
little about you behind your back. You guys keeping in touch?”

“A little, but not much since
graduation. I spent the whole summer with you, remember?” And a memorable
summer it had been. She and Patrick spent their days out at movies, at the
beach, hiking, seeing museums. And when they hadn’t been out together, they’d
stayed in together, listening to music, making food, playing games. Or just
talking. Sometimes it seemed like they’d already packed an entire lifetime into
that summer. Then she’d had to leave.

“I wasn’t really asking about
Rachael,” she said. “I definitely wasn’t asking about Keith. When I said
people-wise, I meant, ‘What’s new with
you
?’” Sometimes Patrick could
rival Rachael for being slow to catch on.

“Cancer.”

Michelle stared, feeling dizzy. The
way he said it, so casual and matter of fact, he could have been talking about
a cold. She shook her head, refusing to believe she’d heard him right. “What
did you just say?”

To her horror, he gave her a sad
smile. “Melanoma. I found out a few weeks ago. I didn’t want to tell you over
the phone.”

A bus girl chose that moment to
appear. “You guys need a refill or anything?” Neither of them looked at her,
keeping their eyes on each other. Patrick’s were full of concern, not for
himself, she could tell, but for her.

 “That would be great,” Patrick
said. The girl spared a nervous glance in Michelle’s direction. “For her, too,”
he added when she didn’t say anything. The girl scurried off seeming anxious to
be elsewhere.

Patrick put a hand over
Michelle’s. “Hey, no need to panic. The docs say my prognosis is good.”

She stared down at his hand, fighting
the urge to recoil. Not because of the sickness. Not because she felt anger and
helplessness mixing inside herself like a toxin. Because she couldn’t shut out
the memory of another hand – her father’s – holding hers much the same way. She’d
spent weeks, months by his bedside – her hand in his – as he’d fought his own
agonizing battle. The doctors had told him the prognosis was good too.

Not again. I
don’t know if I can go through it again.
But this was Patrick. She’d known from the
moment they met on that bus he’d be a part of her life – a part she didn’t want
to be without.

“When do you start treatment?”
she asked, surprised her voice held steady.

“Next week. It should only last a
few months. I’ll be good as new by the time you see me again in the spring.”

I can go through
this with him, can’t I? He needs me
. “I’ll take a leave of absence and come
back here. You need somebody with you.”

He shook his head. “You worked
too hard to get into that program to throw it away.” He pushed a lock of hair
behind her ear, his calm eyes enveloping her. “I’ll be fine. I can do this.”

She nodded, feeling relief – and
hating herself for feeling it. He must have seen it in her eyes, because something
flashed across his face for just a heartbeat before he buried it under a smile.
Hurt? Betrayal?

She closed her hand, meaning to squeeze
his reassuringly, but realized she’d already pulled it away.

2033

Michelle felt something pressing
against her face, and the taste of plastic filled her mouth. She was falling.
Slowly falling toward the sound of a deafening roar. She forced her eyes open,
feeling disoriented as she took in the pair of faces hovering in front of her.
Something soft vibrated and bumped against her back and head, and every few
seconds the faces looked away in the direction of her feet, in the direction of
the roar.

A gurney. I’m on
a gurney.
Starless night stretched out above her. Using only her eyes, she glanced
downward. A plastic oxygen mask covered her mouth. She could see over it well
enough to make out the looming shape of an orange and white aircraft as they
drew closer. Two pairs of turbine engines pointed at the ground, framing the rectangle
of an open clamshell door, its transparent panels tucked into the side of the
fuselage. The two attendants slid her gurney through, following her in. The
roar of the engines swelled even louder before being muted by the closing door,
and Michelle instinctively sought something to hold onto. Her left hand might
as well not have existed; she felt nothing from it. But her right hand found
the frame of the gurney, squeezing it tightly as she fought the sensation of
the ground falling away beneath her.

From somewhere in the cockpit, she
heard a voice. “Dispatch, this is Angel Three. We are inbound to EMC Trauma.
ETA, four minutes.”

Michelle rolled her head to the
side. Through the transparent door, she saw the round shape of one of the
engines pivot forward as the craft accelerated, and for a moment, the city flew
by in a blur of lights against the blackness. And then there was only the
blackness as the craft rose higher into sky.

2089

The baked desert terrain flew by
in a blur of weeds and sand. Jason listened to the engine whine as the RPMs
approached the red line, and he tapped the shifter, going into sixth. Anza
Borrego’s track had a nanosurface to repel sand and debris, giving the car
maximum traction. As the BMW shot down the pristine blacktop of a straightaway,
every muscle in his body tensed, willing even more speed. But the shadowy car
in front of him maintained its distance, refusing to give any ground.

He scanned the virtual gauges and
displays packing the HUD, over a dozen in translucent neon colors. Most drivers
opted for a minimal setup – simple, to limit distractions. Jason preferred
having as much information as possible at his disposal. Through the visor of
his helmet, he could see the basics – speed, RPMs, fuel. A real-time track
diagram with his location plotted as a small red dot. But he also kept tabs on
weight distribution, effective down force, degrees of incline, lateral g-force,
boost pressure, and half a dozen others. The numbers fluctuated and blended
together in his peripheral awareness like a sixth sense.

One element of the display held
his attention above all others – the shadowy, superimposed image of the car
five lengths in front of him. The HUD represented it with a stock icon as one
of the supercharged electric models popular with racers these days. A more
accurate representation would have shown a duplicate of Jason’s own M3. Today,
it was all he could do to keep from falling further behind the simulated
playback of his own best lap time.

After the cops had taken Alex,
Jason hadn’t known what to do. He sat inside the Thai place staring out at the
rain, not caring he was missing class. Eventually, the proprietor started to
give him curious looks, and he headed back home in a daze. During the drive, he
checked the newsfeeds for any mention of Alex’s arrest, but there was nothing.
Back at the apartment, he drew the curtains, crawled into bed and pulled the
pillow over his head. The rest had been nice, as long as it lasted.

Early the next morning, while it
was still dark out, he woke in a cold sweat, paranoid with the sudden
realization that Alex could lead the DIA to him, willingly or not. Afraid of a knock
at the door at any moment, he bolted out of bed, threw some things in a bag,
and made for the desert. Anza Borrego was well outside the autonav network and
virtually free of SLIDes, so he’d opted to blow off some steam at the track,
hoping to buy himself some time to think things through.

Without Alex, he couldn’t track
down the location of the SLIDe hit he’d gotten on Michelle. So now that he had confirmation
she was out there, alive, he couldn’t follow up on it. Even worse, since he
couldn’t be sure the DIA hadn’t gotten compromising information from Alex, he
couldn’t go back to the school for fear the place would be crawling with
spiders waiting to cart him away.

It’s over.
The thought
intruded on his concentration, followed by a young voice over his helmet’s
comlink.

“Turn off your hot lap, man. Got
another driver rolling out.” Ty was the track tech on duty. Barely old enough
to have a manual license of his own, he’d never seen a gasoline car before
Jason’s. Not outside a museum or car show, anyway. After a few races, Ty had seen
what the M3 could do, and he’d been something of a fan ever since. “He’ll come
on after you pass. Keep it casual out there, huh?”

The straightaway dwindled fast.
As he flew by the pit area, Jason had to swerve as a white car shot onto the
track beside him, accelerating hard. Jason had momentum, though, and the other
driver fell in on his bumper. Checking his mirror, Jason saw the car was a
Tesla, one of the faster electrics. And modified by the look of it. This close,
Jason could make out the custom silver trim and the emblem of a knight’s shield
painted across the hood.

“Plug-in jockey,” Jason muttered.
So much for waiting till after I passed.
Either this guy was so green he
hadn’t run the tits off his tires, or he thought he was some kind of hot shot. Either
way, Jason decided he deserved a lesson.

He switched off the hot lap sim,
checking behind again. The guy was tight on his bumper, already posting up to pass.
Coming into the next turn, Jason kept his foot buried on the pedal.
Wait.
Now.
He slammed the brakes hard for split second, then right back on the gas
through an aggressive line around the apex. The move was extreme, and his
pursuer had to overcompensate to keep from rear-ending the M3. The Tesla
understeered, threatening to skid toward the retaining wall. Jason smiled as
the other driver let off the accelerator to regain traction, downshifting
before coming out of the curve. Jason was already rounding the next turn by the
time the other guy got up to speed again.

Later, hot shot.
Jason decided
to finish out the lap strong and call it a day.

The momentary distraction of the
other driver gone, his thoughts shifted back to reality.
It’s over. I can’t
find her now.
He came up on turn fourteen, a corkscrew S with a wicked down
slope that caused a car to weigh less through the exit. The reduced traction
caught inexperienced drivers by surprise, but Jason had mastered the turn long
since, how fast to go in, the right line to keep traction without losing too
much speed.
You’re lucky the spiders didn’t get you too.
Frustrated, he
tightened his grip on the wheel, pushing hard.

As the car blasted into the turn
and over the approaching rise, Jason knew he’d gone in too fast and out of
position. He felt weightless as the track dropped away beneath him, veering to
the right while the car continued straight. The wheels made contact again on
the far edge of the pavement, and the squeal of rubber filled the air as he skidded
sideways. The car slowed, but not enough, and the shriek of the tires turned to
a gravelly rumble as the car left the track, sliding through sand and rocks. Finally,
the car lurched to a stop in a mushrooming cloud of dirt. The engine died
during the slide, and silence fell long enough to hear the crescendo of an
electric motor. As the Tesla flew past, Jason caught sight of a gloved hand out
the window, middle finger extended. Then it was gone, leaving him, quite
literally, in the dust.

Jason tore his helmet off and
flung it against the passenger door, where it bounced and landed in the seat
beside him. With a sigh he leaned his head forward to rest between his hands on
the wheel.

Damn it!

But the curse wasn’t for the hot
shot in the Tesla, or his own careless driving. It was for the worst part of
the situation. The DIA had arrested Alex. Because of him. Because of a selfish
obsession. Jason had always accepted that his actions might one day make him a
fugitive. But someone else? The rest of the fallout was abstract – the SLIDe
hit, the prospect of losing Michelle. Just the destruction of something that
had never really been.

But with Alex, the damage was
real. Realizing that, Jason also realized he considered the man a friend, and
had since the day they first met.

2087

Sunset over the Los Angeles
skyline looked much the same as he remembered it. To the north, he could make
out the Hollywood Hills and Griffith Park. To the south, the pale,
thousand-foot column of the Library Tower rose above the streets of downtown,
the pad on its roof awash in the glow of landing lights. And in the distance to
the west lay the vista of the Pacific’s glinting blue arc as it slowly devoured
the orange ball of the sun.