Grip (The Slip Trilogy Book 2) (20 page)

T
he snowstorm hits in the pale yellow light of dawn. They all knew it was coming, but Simon still curses under his breath when the first snowflakes swirl down from above.

Although the snow looks pretty, like fallen angels fluttering from the heavens, Benson says, “This bot-lickin’ sucks.”

“Oooooh. Nice,” Janice says, sticking her tongue out and catching one.

“At least we won’t run out of water,” Minda says. “We can just melt the snow.” Her limp has gotten progressively worse in the hour they’ve been hiking. Benson estimates they’ve got at least another ten hours to go before they reach civilization. He doesn’t know how she’s going to make it.

“Let’s stop a minute and rest,” Benson suggests.

“No,” Minda says. “The longer the snow falls, the slower we’re going to be. We need to get as far as we can while the ground it still dry.”

Benson knows she’s right, but having her collapse after another couple of hours without rest will slow them down a lot more. “My mother needs to rest,” Benson says, flashing what he hopes his mother will realize is an apologetic smile in her direction. She doesn’t seem to notice, turning in circles with her tongue stuck out.

“She seems fine to me,” Minda says.

Simon seems to catch on to Benson’s thinking, because he says, “I could use a quick breather, too.” The big man doesn’t even look tired. Benson offers him a surreptitious nod in thanks, which Simon returns when Minda’s not looking.

“Fine,” Minda says, gingerly lowering herself onto a mossy log. “But just five minutes. We can’t spare any more time. Harrison had his hoverboard. He could already be in Saint Louis by now.”

The thought of Harrison in the same city as Corrigan Mars, the man who killed their father, makes Benson shiver despite the thick layers of clothing he’s wearing.

Janice continues running back and forth catching snowflakes on her tongue, while Simon checks the ammo in his gun and Benson paces.

After what feels like less than a minute, Minda pushes to her feet and says, “Ha ha. Nice one. Simon needed a break. Yeah, right.”

She strides off, not limping even the slightest bit, which must hurt like hell.

Simon shrugs as if to say “It was worth a shot,” and follows her. Benson sighs and grabs his mother’s arm in the crook of her elbow. “C’mon. Let’s go find Harrison.”

As his mother lets him lead her through the woods, she says, “Harrison is catching snowflakes, too.”

The random comment makes Benson laugh. A real laugh. He almost feels bad about it. Luce is dead. How can he laugh? But picturing his athletic, confident brother running around with his tongue out is too much for him to contain. The laughter spills from his mouth in droves, until his mother starts to giggle, too.

“Catching snowflakes on his tongue,” Benson says, still chuckling.

Janice stops laughing. “His tongue?” she says, frowning. “No. On his head. I meant on his head.”

Which, of course, sends Benson into another fit of laughter.

After that, things mostly go quiet, save for the occasional grunt from Minda as she steps wrongly on one of her feet. Once, she stumbles, and Simon grabs her to keep her from falling. Instead of a thank you, she says, “I’m fine. I’m fine,” muttering it under her breath as if she’s trying to convince herself.

With every passing minute, the snow seems to fall harder and harder, until the trees are painted in white. Eventually, visibility declines to near zero, and it’s only by sticking close behind each other that they’re able to form a human chain and not get lost. Centimeters of snow on the ground turn to a third of a meter, maybe more. Each step is harder than the last, as the snow seems to suck at their soles. Their
souls
, too, Benson thinks grimly.

But still they trudge onward, the only sound coming from Janice, who mutters incessantly. “Snow, flow, blow, crow, dough, foe, low, know, mow…”

Hours later, they emerge from the trees. Overhead, the sky is a blank sheet of white. On the unbroken plains, the wind is like a battering ram, buffeting their faces with stinging crystals of ice.

“We have to find shelter,” Simon says, using his gargantuan arms to gather them in a circle, their faces turned inward so they can talk. “How much farther can you go, Minda?”

Minda’s eyes are brown steel. “As far as you can,” she says.

“Minda. Seriously. How much farther?”

“Simon. Seriously. As far as you can,” she says. From the look in her eyes and the taut line of her jaw, Benson doesn’t doubt a single word. Hopefully her body is in agreement with her mind.

Janice says, “Igloo.”

Benson’s breath catches as that single word conjures up a long lost childhood memory. A memory as good as any of them. The day his father stayed home from work.

The snow had fallen while they slept, and Benson had woken up to a magical world of white. It was the biggest snowstorm in twenty years, his father had said. So big the entire world was closed for the day, or so his father had told him. Janice wasn’t coming.

And his dad wasn’t going to work. “Today we’re going to build an igloo,” his father had said.

“What’s that?” Benson asked, as his father stuffed his hands into mittens and his head into a wool cap.

“A snow house,” his father had said.

It took them all day, taking breaks for hot cocoa and marshmallows, but they did it. They built an entire house out of snow. It wasn’t as big as their real house, but they could both fit inside, and when they huddled together, Benson had been delighted to find that
the house made of snow was warm.

Janice had come over the next day and they’d spent hours in it together, playing games and telling stories.

“Mom?” Benson says now. “You want to build an igloo?”

“Snow is warm,” is all she says in response.

“Umm,” Simon says.

“I can go on,” Minda reconfirms.

“No,” Benson says. “She’s right. Trust me. If we burrow in the snow, we’ll be warmer. It doesn’t have to be a normal igloo, just a small cave should do the trick.”

“This is craz—” Simon starts to say, but Benson warns him off with his eyes.

“I make the rules,” Benson says. “You’re tagging along on my expedition. You’re welcome to go back or go forward, but we’re building an igloo.”

“But not with glue,” Janice says. “Just with snow.”

Simon shakes his head, but doesn’t argue. “Alright. It’s your show. Where do we start?”

“There!” Janice says, pointing to a large drift partway out into the field. Something caused the snow to collect in greater abundance there, perhaps a natural rise in the landscape or a trick of the wind.

Their feet sinking almost up to their knees with each step, they make their way to the drift, buffeted by the howling wind. Benson clings to Janice and Janice clings to Simon. Even Minda manages to swallow her pride, and clings to the opposite side of Simon, who’s like an immovable force of nature.

His thighs and calves aching and his lungs on fire, Benson lets out a heaving sigh when they finally reach the small mountain of snow, which is at least two meters high. “Now what?” Simon says.

“Now we dig,” Benson says, dropping to all fours.

For a moment it’s just him, scraping away the snow with his hands, burrowing into the base of the mound, but then Janice drops beside him. She spreads her legs out wide and starts shoveling the snow through the gap like a dog searching for a bone.

After a few minutes, Simon and Minda join them. Minda practically punches through the snowbank, using sharp jabs to cut deep, like a pick. Simon uses his shovel-like hands to scoop the resulting chopped up snow away from the growing hole.

Their progress is slow but steady. Benson’s hands are numb and he thinks it’s possible his nose has fallen off, because he can’t feel it, but still he digs, the promise of future warmth as his only motivation. His and Janice’s tunnel gets so long that only his feet are sticking out. Already, he feels warmer out of the wind. He reverse-crawls and taps each of the other’s feet. Soon three heads pop out of their respective holes. “We need to combine our two tunnels to make one big wide one,” he says.

“Allow me,” Simon says. On his back, he coils his legs like a spring, and then rockets them forward into the wall between his and Minda’s tunnel, and Benson and Janice’s tunnel. The snow shatters like a pane of glass. With two giant scoops he removes the excess powder.

“Yeah,” Benson says. “That’ll work.” He feels a sudden swell of appreciation that he’s not on this journey alone. He only hopes his comrades won’t get hurt along the way.

As Simon continues to destroy the wall between their tunnels, the others begin chipping away at the ceiling. Ideally, they’d be able to sit up in their igloo.

By the time they finish, they all look exhausted. Even Janice has stopped muttering her rhymes about snow and ice and melting and igloos. Their backs to the wall of snow, they just breathe, smiling tired smiles.

Simon says, “Good idea,” to Janice, and she beams.

“It feels so…warm,” Minda says. “Like we’ve got a fire in here.”

“Body heat and insulation,” Benson says, satisfied with their little snow hut. They won’t want to stay here for long, but at least it will keep them warm enough to ride out the storm. At the same time, he feels anxious, like they’re wasting too much time. There’s a very strong possibility that Harrison and Destiny reached the city before the storm, which means they’ll be able to keep moving, using the Tunnels and Tubes. With all the maintenance bots and holo-ads and Crows patrolling the city, they won’t make it very far.

Even as they sit in their igloo, Benson knows it might already be too late for his brother.

Benson replays his last words to Harrison in his mind:

You’ll never be my family.

Leave me the hell alone.

He should’ve seen through his brother’s façade—should’ve seen he was goading him into a fight. Harrison, for all his pomp and swagger, had never been mean to Benson. He knew very well that Luce wasn’t just “some chick” to Benson. Yet he knew the exact button to press on Benson’s temper, almost like they’d been brothers for years.

And Benson fell for it.

Harrison wanted Benson to be so angry at him that he wouldn’t try to follow him. In that mission, he failed, Benson thinks.
I’m coming, Harrison, whether you like it or not.

“Warm up and get some rest,” Benson says. “We’ll leave in a couple of hours, regardless of the storm.”

No one answers and Benson realizes they’re already asleep.

He drifts away, images of his brother and Luce taking turns in his mind.

~~~

Rough hands wake Benson from a deep sleep, and he slaps at them, trying to free himself. But they’re too strong, unbelievably strong. “It’s me,” Simon says gruffly.

As Benson’s mind catches up to reality, he hears it. The whir of an incoming Hawk drone, flying much lower than usual.

Benson’s eyes go wide and a jolt of fear rushes through him. Somehow, some way, Pop Con has found them.
Shhh
, Simon says with a single finger to his lips. For all they know, the Hawk might have a listening device pinpointed on their exact location, hearing every word they say.

Janice and Minda stare at the ceiling, as if the drone might crash land right on top of them.

Wait here
, Benson mouths.

Simon shakes his head, throwing an arm in front of Benson.
Me first
, he mouths back.

Quietly, Simon crawls through the tunnel, just ahead of Benson. At the entrance, Simon allows half an eye to peek out. Benson cranes his neck to see past the huge man. The wind whips around Simon, swirling with snow that never seems to reach the ground. Although it doesn’t seem possible, visibility is even worse than before.

As Simon squirms out into the storm, Benson crowds behind him.

He can hear the drone whirring away somewhere above, but can’t see its sleek black undercarriage.

In this storm, not even the high-powered cameras and detection devices of a Hawk could’ve spotted their igloo, which looks just like every other mound of snow from here to Saint Louis. Which means one of two things: They were randomly probing around the city and got really lucky, or…

Simon or Minda or both of them are filthy traitors.

A
midst swirling snow, the Saint Louis Prep guys’ team win their first playoff game 4-1, even without Harrison as goalie. His replacement, a talented freshman named Bobby Williams, nearly deflected the lone goal scored on him, but the shot was too hard and slipped through his fingers.

Harrison knows he would’ve made the save, but still, he’s proud of his former team.

The team he will never play for again.

The thought makes him feel just a little bit hollow inside, like when he’d search the stands for his father and come up empty.

Destiny says, “Now what?”

Through the slats in the bleachers, all they can see are shoes. White shoes, black shoes, blue shoes—slapping the metal bleachers as the crowd makes their way out of the stadium. The heated metal continuously melts the snow, leaving puddles for patrons to splash through. Water cascades down around them, like hundreds of tiny waterfalls.

His people. His fans. If he were to step out from the shadows under the stands, would they cheer for him like they used to? Would they chant his name—
Harrison, Harrison, Harrison!
—like they would after he made yet another highlight-reel save?

His ego screams
Hell yeah!
but the truth whispers bitterly in his ear:

No. They’d condemn you like they did your brother. Like they did your father. “Slip lover!” they’d scream. “Traitor! Kill him! Kill him!”

With the torrents of feet pounding down the bleachers and the laughs and cheers of happy STL Prep Flyers fans, Harrison’s head starts to spin. He’s dimly aware of Destiny grabbing his arm, whispering something to him, but he can’t hear or see anything, his entire world swallowed up in a moment of realization:

His old life is over.

Over.

Gone like an express train through the Tunnels. Gone like his father. Gone like Florida when the oceans rose and the tsunamis hit. There’s no going back. No rewind button. No do-overs.

Everything stops spinning, clarifying with the kind of intensity Harrison has only ever experienced while on the hoverball field. Destiny is saying, “Harrison, Harrison, are you okay?” clutching his arm to hold herself up. No…wait…that’s backwards. She’s clutching his arm to hold
him
up. His legs are like rubber, unable to sustain his weight.

“I’m okay,” he says, panting. “I’m…okay.”

“What happened?” Destiny asks, still gripping him tightly, her fingers burning lines into his arm.

“Nothing,” he says. “Doesn’t matter.”

The footsteps are becoming less frequent as the final stragglers exit the stands.

“You know, you don’t always have to be the strong one,” Destiny says.

Harrison stares at her. “You tried to kill yourself,” he says.

Her head drops in shame, and he says, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…” Didn’t mean to what? Remind her? Beat her over the head with the truth?

“No, you’re right,” she says. “I haven’t proven anything to you. I don’t even know who I’m going to be from minute to minute. One moment I think I’m okay, that I’m the survivor who’s made it this far, and the next I feel like a puddle of tears, broken past the point of repair.”

“You’re wrong,” Harrison says, shaking his head. “You
have
proven yourself to me. Shown me your strength. Just by coming with me, you’ve shown me exactly who you are.”

“And who is that?” she asks. Destiny raises her chin, revealing a hollow in her brown, slender neck. Harrison has the sudden urge to kiss the crevice, but he knows if he does he won’t stop there. And this is not the time or the place. Once upon a time, in another lifetime, it might’ve been exactly the time and the place, but not anymore.

Instead he leans in close enough that she’ll be able to hear his whisper, her lips tantalizingly close to his, slightly parted, and says, “A person is worthy of life, no matter what the world tells her.”

She pulls away so sharply she takes his breath with her. “You don’t know anything about my worth. The mistakes I’ve made…”

“We’re just that,” Harrison says. “Mistakes. Not intentional. Screwing up takes a lot of practice, and we’ve both had more than our fair share.”

She opens her mouth to speak, but Harrison cuts her off. “No more negativity. No more excuses. From now on everything we do is to save Benson. He’s a good guy. We might’ve been friends in another world. One way or another we’re meant to be together in this place, doing crazy things to save Benson Kelly, the infamous Saint Louis Slip.”

Destiny’s eyebrows crease together. “I thought you didn’t believe in fate,” she says.

“I don’t,” Harrison says, “but it sounded pretty good, didn’t it?”

She laughs, and it sounds so good he wishes everything he says would make her laugh. “It sounded pretty good,” she admits.

“Let’s go,” Harrison says, grabbing her hand. “We’ve got to be ready when the players exit the locker rooms. My friend will be last. He’s always last.”

They sneak from beneath the stands and along the sleek metal building with the doors that say “Players only.” Harrison still has his LifeCard, but he’s pretty sure his access has been terminated. Swiping his card and letting the scanner pass over his eyes will only lead his enemies right to him. Through the snowstorm, Harrison hopes they’ll look like just another couple of hoverball fans.

They cling to the corner of the building, watching as players begin to exit the locker room. A few hardy members of the press linger, snapping shots for the holo-news or the Saint Louis Times, seemingly oblivious to the cold weather. Each player gets into one of the aut-cars waiting in a line against the curb. Some players share, slapping each other’s backs and congratulating one another on a good game.

Harrison’s best friend, Chuck Boggs, is nowhere to be seen, just as he expected. Unlike Harrison, Chuck isn’t as fond of crowds or posing for photos. Whereas Harrison always wanted to be first to leave the locker room, Chuck was always last. Some things never change, which Harrison is glad for. It’s a moment of stability in a wholly unstable world, and it makes Harrison’s feet feel more firmly planted on the ground.

Long after the cameras and media are gone, only one aut-car remains. The side of the vehicle opens, the door rising automatically at the same time as the locker room exit cracks open one final time.

Harrison inadvertently gasps, not because he sees Chuck Boggs, who exits the building, but because of who he spies waiting in the aut-car, beckoning to Chuck with a smile and a wave and a come-hither ferocity in her eyes that Harrison is all too familiar with:

Nadine. Harrison’s ex-girlfriend. Well, technically she’s still his girlfriend, as they never formally broke up, but it’s clear from the way she’s looking at Chuck that she’s already moved on from Harrison.
Like wayyy on
, Harrison thinks as she steps from the vehicle to kiss Chuck. Chuck Boggs is sturdy, built like a tank, and Nadine has to bend down slightly to find his lips. He can almost feel them on his own, so soft and tender but with the potential for fierce passion. It’s the same passion he used to love to watch on the hoverball field, where she was the star player on the STL Flyer’s girls’ team. Her dark skin contrasts the falling snow beautifully, like a shadow in a white room.

He’d never thought of her as a serious girlfriend, so it shouldn’t bother him to see her kissing Chuck, but for some reason it does, burning like a fire in his chest.

He’s so stunned by the scene that he almost forgets why they’re here. Rather, he does forget, until Destiny hisses, “That them?” and douses the fire between his lungs.

“Yeah,” he grunts, striding from hiding. “C’mon.”

Nadine seems to notice the movement, because she pulls away from Chuck too early, twisting her neck to look at them. Her eyes instantly become the size of hoverballs. “Harr—Harrison?” she says.

Chuck turns in surprise, a flash of anger crossing his face, but then disappearing when he sees Harrison. “You’re—you’re here!” he says. “You’re alive!”

Harrison smiles, feeling a certain thrill at seeing his two friends again, even if they were just making out like he’d never even existed. “Why wouldn’t I be?” Harrison says, shaking Chuck’s hand and pulling him into a back-slapping man-hug. He turns to Nadine and kisses her lightly on the cheek, hugging her more gently, breathing in the familiar scent of her jasmine perfume.

“Harrison, we—we thought you were…” she says, trailing off.

“Gone?” Harrison says. “I was gone. Technically, I still am gone. I was never here, you understand?”

Chuck nods. “Yeah, man, your secret’s safe with us. But what happened to you? My father refuses to tell me anything, and the papers are saying you broke your mother out of the asylum and helped your brother, Benson Kelly”—he spits out the name like a curse—“escape from Pop Con. None of that is true, right?”

Harrison says, “It’s all true.”

His friends stare at him.

“But it’s not the whole truth,” Destiny says from behind him.

“Who the hell is this?” Nadine says. Harrison’s surprised by the sharpness in her tone.

“A friend of Harrison’s,” Destiny says. “Like you.”

Nadine looks her up and down, inspecting her torn, wet clothing and hoverskates. “You’re nothing like me,” she says.

“She’s helping me,” Harrison says. “This is Destiny.”

“Chuck,” Chuck says, extending a hand. Destiny accepts it firmly, pumping it up and down.

Nadine extends her hand, too, although not as quickly or as exuberantly as Chuck. “Nadine.”

Destiny takes her hand but withdraws quickly when Nadine squeezes tighter than she must’ve expected. Harrison cringes. This isn’t going exactly as planned. “Listen,” he says. “We need your help.”

“Anything,” Chuck says. “Share an aut-car?”

Harrison grins. He knew his friend would come through for him. He didn’t intend to get Nadine involved, but it shouldn’t affect the result. He helps Destiny into the car and follows closely behind her. Once they’re all settled and the door is closed, Chuck says, “Where to?”

“We’ll all be safer just driving around for a while,” Harrison says.

As Chuck lets the car scan his retinas, Harrison and Destiny face away, just in case. His friend instructs the car to take a convoluted route around the city that will require at least an hour of driving time, more than enough for Harrison to get his friends up to speed.

“Okay,” Chuck says. “Now tell us what the hell happened to you and what facts we’re missing.”

Harrison clears his throat and begins his tale, holding nothing back from the friend he’s known since he was three years old when they played on the same midget hoverball team.

~~~

Whump! Whump! Whump! Whump!

Benson knows the sound he’s just heard can’t be good, especially since it’s accompanied by a burst of blue light that seems to pierce the blizzard. Sharp lines of blue crisscross each other to form myriad of Xs, creating a makeshift fence. A laser fence, designed to trap them inside.

It’s hard to tell through the storm, but Benson estimates the perimeter has created an area of at least five hundred square meters. However they tracked them to this point, their pursuers are obviously unable to pinpoint their location exactly, perhaps because of the storm’s interference in the signal. But it doesn’t matter. They’re trapped, and it’s only a matter of time before the Hunters find them.

And when they do, they’ll kill them, no questions asked.

They’ll kill his mother, whose only crime is loving her children too much.

He can’t let that happen.

A dark shadow descends from above, landing silently inside the laser fence, perhaps two hundred meters away. The Hawk. Although his visibility is atrocious, Benson can almost picture a squad of Hunters leaping from the aircraft, garbed in all back, hefting guns set to “terminate,” spreading out and searching the area. He has not a second to lose. Simon must be thinking the same thing, because he shoves Benson from behind, forcing him into the tunnel.

Slithering back inside, Benson says, “Hunters. They’ve made a fence around us but don’t yet know exactly where we are.”

“How?” Minda says, her mind following the same fact pattern as his own.
How did they find us?
One of her eyebrows lifts slowly, as if coming to the same conclusion. A traitor. Her gaze goes straight to Simon, who immediately frowns.

“Don’t look at me,” he says. “I’ve been a Lifer longer than you have. I would never betray the cause.”

“Well it certainly wasn’t me,” Minda says.

Benson looks back and forth between them, not sure what to believe. The truth is he wants to believe them both. Heck, he
likes
them both. But the facts don’t lie. “You both pushed yourself into coming with me,” Benson says. “It could be both of you, working together.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Minda says. “We both have guns. We both could’ve shot you in your sleep.”

Benson chews his lip, his eyes darting to the snow wall when he hears a shout from one of the Hunters. Have they spotted their igloo? “Okay, maybe they tracked us another way.” He has to hope that the second they exit the igloo that none of them alerts the Hunters to their presence. But if they do… “Mother, stay here,” he instructs Janice. If you hear shooting when we go outside, bury yourself in the snow. Maybe they’ll miss you. Maybe they don’t even know you’re here. They’re after me. Hide as long as you can. Do everything you can to survive.”