The Nexus (2 page)

She stayed at the first level of skytraffic.  Ground traffic roared thirty feet beneath her.  The second level of skytraffic hummed thirty feet above her.

She took a right turn, and she was soaring along the wide and showy Avenue of Towers.  Here the leisure traffic was mixed with an equal population of business traffic.  Like the rest of downtown the offices along the Avenue were no less busy this time of night than they were at any other time.

Jill dropped her bike to ground level.  She parked in a side lot next to the TSC building and grabbed the briefcase and the box.  She went into a restroom off the TSC entryway, took off her rain gear and stuffed it in a garbage can.  Then she opened the briefcase and took out a small but elaborate bathroom kit.  By the time she’d done her hair and makeup, she couldn’t help smiling slyly at herself in the mirror.  She was eighteen; but with this outfit and makeover she could easily pass for early twenties, and there were plenty of aspiring businesswomen of that age working here in the TSC building.

She left the restroom and passed from the entryway into the huge lobby.  Her shoes clicked importantly on the polished floor.  Other formally-dressed men and women ambled about the lobby, hardly giving her a second glance.  She blended right in.

At the end of the lobby was a wide reception desk where visitors were supposed to sign in.  But Jill wasn’t playing the part of a visitor.  She walked confidently toward the elevators, hoping the desk attendants would assume she belonged here.  Apparently they did because they didn’t stop her.

She passed a large decorative fountain with an abstract statue, and reached the elevators.  There were ten of them in a row, each with gleaming metallic doors.

This was the tricky part.

Jill stood off to the side for a moment, waiting for a break in traffic.  Finally she was able to step onto an empty elevator without anyone following her.  She was alone with the uniformed attendant who stood by the buttons.  She set the box down next to her.

“What floor?” the attendant asked as the doors closed.  He seemed cheerful.  His shift must just be starting.  Who could stay cheerful riding up and down elevators all day?

“Ninety-ninth, please.”

“Sure.  Just need to see your identification.”

She knew he’d be asking for that.  Any floor above the fiftieth required identification.

“Right,” she said.

Then she darted a hand to the button that held the elevator doors closed.

The attendant blinked.  “What the...?”

Her briefcase fell open and he was looking down the barrel of her gun.  “Ninety-ninth, please,” she said again.

He nodded slowly, and reached for his key as if he was going to comply.  Then he lunged for the alarm button.

As if she wouldn’t have anticipated this.  A swift kick sent his arm away from the button.  Another to the gut had him doubled over.

“I’m kind of in a hurry,” she said, eyeing him over her gun.

“Do it yourself,” the man moaned.

“Fine.”  She pulled the trigger and loosed a stunner at his neck.  He slumped unconsciously against the reflective elevator wall.  Jill grabbed his key and slid it into the slot for the ninety-ninth floor.  Then she grabbed his limp hand and pressed it against the print-reader for the required confirmation.

The elevator started moving up.

She looked up at the tiny security camera that had caught the whole thing.  She smiled at whoever would be watching the recording later.  By the time they found the unconscious attendant and reviewed the security footage to see what had happened, she would be long gone.

THE elevator doors opened.  Jill stepped out into the ninety-ninth floor lounge.  It was empty.  She put a potted plant in the elevator doorway to keep it from closing. 
Take the corridor to your right
, the man on the phone had said. 
At the dead end, take the corridor on the left to Suite 9999-B
.

She carried her briefcase with one hand, and the plain, unmarked box under her arm.  She didn’t pass anyone in the halls.  The lights were dim, as if these offices had closed down for the night.

She found the door that said 9999-B, and reached for the doorknob.

Then she froze.

Something wasn’t right.

When you lived on the streets—when you made a living as an errander—you developed certain instincts.  You got a sixth sense for when things weren’t quite as they should be.  And right now, at Suite 9999-B of the Trans-Spatial Communications building, things were not as they should be.

Jill wasn’t sure what was wrong, exactly.  Maybe the drop point was compromised.  Maybe this whole errand was a setup.  Maybe something else.  It didn’t matter, really.

All the mattered was getting out of there.

She turned and ran, grabbing her gun out of the briefcase as she went.  She heard the door to Suite 9999-B burst open behind her.  Someone was yelling.

She dropped, spun around on the floor.

Two people came after her.  They wore armored suits and helmets with dark mirrored eyes.  Cops.

A setup.

THE man in the long coat and brimmed hat stood with his back to the window.

“We’re blown,” a voice crackled in his earpiece.

“She didn’t come?”

“She showed, but now she’s running away.”

Two shots sounded from the hallway outside the empty office.

The man frowned.  “You’re not killing her, are you?”

“We’re not the one’s doing the shooting, sir.”

JILL’S stun slugs couldn’t pierce the armored uniforms.  But for all they knew she was sending real bullets at them.  They took cover and raised weapons of their own.  Maybe they were only armed with stun slugs too.  Or maybe not.

Jill didn’t stick around to find out.  She was back on her feet running down the hall.  One hand still gripped her weapon; the other hand took out the electronic key to her skybike—a very special key.

It wasn’t until several steps later that she realized she’d dropped the package.

She ducked into another dark suite, hurried through the reception area into the office in back, and locked the door behind her.  She went to the window, and looked down at the side parking lot ninety-nine stories below.

There was her skybike, a dot near the corner of the lot.

She pushed a button on her electronic key.

There was a thump and a yell at the office door.  Another thump, and the doorknob shook.  They’d be inside in a minute.

She found a short metal file cabinet next to the desk.  It was too heavy to lift.

“Put down the weapon, girl!” a voice came from outside the door.  “We’re coming in, and we don’t want to shoot you.  Just come quietly, why don’t you?”

She yanked files out of the cabinet until she could lift it.  Then she hoisted it on her shoulder and heaved it at the window.  The glass cracked but didn’t break.

She threw the cabinet again.  The glass wouldn’t last long.

Neither would the door.  The frame was about to give way.  Another thump...

On her third throw a spider-web of cracks spread across the window.  She grabbed a floor lamp, using the pole and base to whack the glass out of the frame.

The door burst open.  The two cops dashed inside just in time to see Jill throwing herself out the window.  Then they heard the roar of her skybike, ninety-nine stories above the ground, booking it away from the TSC building.

A voice crackled in the man’s earpiece again.  “She, uh...”

“Got away,” he finished.

“Yeah.”

“How?”

“Out the window onto a skybike.”

“Alright, backup, you heard.  Get after her.”  He didn’t sound angry in the least.  “She’s good, eh?”

“Hope plan B works,” one of his men muttered.

The boss shook his head.  “Nothing unexpected has happened yet.  This is still plan A, believe me.”

JILL dropped to the legal sixty foot elevation and headed away from the Avenue of Towers.  Seamlessly she slipped into the flow of traffic on Twentieth, heading north through the rain.

Two other skybikes started following her from a block behind.  They hadn’t had any trouble finding her; she hadn’t had time to put on her helmet.  In her rear-view mirror she saw them weaving closer to her.

Forget trying to seem unsuspicious.  Jill came to an alley, gunned her engine, whipped around into the narrow space between two office buildings.  She killed her lights as she descended suddenly.  Her stomach lurched.

Overhead the lights of her pursuers showed in the alley.  By the time they saw her she’d spun around and darted back out into traffic—this time at the thirty-foot level.  She flicked her lights on again, edged into the passing lane, flew past a stream of skycars.  She sneaked into a side street a few blocks later.

Had she lost them?

No.  There they were.

At least she was getting some separation.  She gunned it again, angled upward.  She raced toward the gap of night sky showing above her between the buildings.

Her bike shot over the edge of the top of a building to one side.  She glided along the rooftop and checked her mirrors again.

They were still tailing her.

She cursed and dipped down behind the building.  The long alley stretched away from downtown and emptied into the street right in front of the cathedral.

She knew what she had to do—didn’t want to, but had to.  She unbuckled her security harness and swooped the bike down near ground level.

Across the street at the far end of the alley the massive round stained-glass window over the cathedral doors grew closer and closer—a giant bull’s-eye, and she was the dart.

There was a dumpster coming up on one side of the alley, overflowing with swelled garbage bags.

She gunned the engine one last time.

And kicked herself off...

She winced as she plummeted into a sea of garbage.

It was a long moment before she swam up through the trash and peeked over the edge of the dumpster.

The two skybikes that had been after her were now parked next to the cathedral, and the drivers were running up the stone steps to the front door.  Above them the round window had exploded inward.  Smoke rose from somewhere inside the building.  People were shouting and talking excitedly in the street.  A siren sounded from somewhere in the distance, getting closer with each second.

Jill pushed herself out of the dumpster, and walked quickly along the alley away from the cathedral.

“DIRECTOR?”  The voice that crackled in the man’s earpiece was not happy.

“Let me guess:  She got away again.”

“Well, yeah.”

“It’s all right.  You did what you could, I’m sure.”  He looked at his other two associates, now standing in the office with him.  “Don’t worry,” he told them.  “Still Plan A.”

IT was almost dawn when Jill reached the cheap motel.  The Avenue was now far behind her.  She was in a rundown part of town where it wasn’t unusual for suspicious characters to need a room in a hurry any time of day or night.  Around here motels would take cash and not your name—not that Jill’s ID had her real name anyway.

Still, the sleepy-eyed clerk did stare a little at the young woman in a rain-soaked and garbage-smeared business suit.  She carried a plastic shopping bag with some clothes and toiletries she’d bought at a 24-hour convenience store on the same block.

Her room smelled like stale cigarettes.  She sat on the edge of the bed and looked out the grimy window.  The sun was a bright red jewel, rising over the dark orb of Earth on the horizon.  The artificial sky over Anterra was a nice sunrise orange.  She watched it turn to gold, to gray, to blue.

She couldn’t go home.  The people after her would be able to find where she lived.  She wondered why they hadn’t found her there in the first place...wondered why they wanted her at all, whoever they were.

She’d have to start over—get a new alias, a new false ID to match, a new place, a new contact to get jobs.  It wasn’t the first time.  Erranders had to start over all the time.  That was the way it was in this business.  It didn’t stop her from being one of the best at what she did.

She sighed, took off the filthy suit jacket, and flopped backwards onto the bed.  Thoughts turned into dreams.

SHE’D slept maybe an hour before her rude awakening.

Her first conscious thought was,
How did they find me?

They were at the door and the window, wearing those same armored suits and visored helmets.  She had no chance, but she fought anyway.  She always fought when she didn’t have a chance...and sometimes she won.

Not this time.  She’d landed one good kick or two

before they took her down.  Her flailing and screaming didn’t stop until a stunstick was pressed into her neck.