by Anne Harris

In a near-future Detroit, the living polymer industry has the city in its grip. While vat-divers struggle to organize, the GeneSys Corporation works on making human workers obsolete. An escaped mutant, a con-artist and a techno-geek team up to unravel corporate blackmail, deceit and murder. One thing is certain: the city and the world will never be the same once the latest R&D development is unleashed.

Chapter 16 — I Can Take You There

“I didn’t believe, still don’t believe, that you should be diving, but what happened down there today, that wasn’t what I wanted either. I wanted a real strike, with real demands, not just your dismissal but other, more important things like safety standards and better wages. Those fucking assholes, turning themselves into a mob. Don’t they realize that they’ve destroyed any chance for their demands to be taken seriously? Why? Why must this movement always be dogged by shame?” Vonda put her head in her hands and shook it. She was sitting on Orielle’s couch.

At the far end of the room, Chango crossed and uncrossed her arms. Bitter words were collecting in her mouth. Sooner or later she was going to open it and they’d come out. “If you hadn’t all decided that Ada was blasted when she dove, there wouldn’t be any shame,” she finally blurted.

Vonda looked at her wearily. “Oh God, Chango. You’re like a dog with a bone. Ada’s dead, it doesn’t matter why.”

“Doesn’t matter? You don’t think so? You just said it yourself, the shame. It doesn’t belong to her, it-”

“It doesn’t belong to me either!” Vonda suddenly stood upright and shouted. “I swear to you on the friendship we once had, I did not doctor her lab results. I did not! Except for you there probably wasn’t anyone more upset about those results than I was. How do you think I felt, being the messenger of that kind of news? Fucking-a, Chango, I knew Ada too...” Vonda paced the floor. “And to tell you the truth,” she said, “I’ve never been able to believe it myself.”

Chango stared at her, “Really? Then who-”

“Nobody! I took the samples from her and ran the tests. No one else touched them. Chango, she was gassed when she dove, but-”

“Management would have done anything to get her out of their hair. Maybe someone tampered with her tanks.”

“That’s impossible. Benny filled and checked them, just like he always did. All I know is this ancient history shit isn’t going to get us anywhere now. You ought to be thinking about your friend,” she nodded at Helix, who was sitting in a chair, holding a bag of ice to the side of her face. “What are you going to do about her?”

“She needs a vat,” said Chango.

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I,” said Helix, “but there it is. If I don’t find a vat soon, one I can stay in, I’m going to die.”

There was a long pause in the conversation, and then Vonda spoke, her voice a pitch higher, “You’re not human at all, are you?”

Helix shook her head, “I guess not.”

Vonda stood by the television set, a reefer cigarette in her mouth and a thoughtful expression on her face. “Word was your father worked for GeneSys, a researcher. Never did get his name,” she said.

“H-Hector Martin,” said Helix.

“Hector Martin. Dr. Hector Martin. The inventor of the multi-processor brains. I always knew there was something weird about you.”

Helix stood up and walked towards her, her arms spread wide, “Oh really?”

Vonda squinted and exhaled a plume of smoke. “It makes sense now. That’s why they didn’t fire you. The test was a success.”

“Stop,” said Chango.

Vonda shook her head, still staring as Helix slowly approached her. “I was so busy hating you because you were Chango’s squeeze, I neglected the obvious. The rest of them out there today, they knew. Or at least as a mob they knew. They didn’t want you dead for being a sport, or even for taking your suit off in the vat and surviving. They wanted you dead because your very existence is a threat to them. To all of us.”

Helix stood inches from Vonda. She reached forward and braced her arms against the wall so that they surrounded Vonda like fleshly prison bars. “What then, are you going to do about it?” she asked in a low tone.

Vonda’s eyes were wide, and she shook a little. “Remember,” she muttered, “you’re dealing with an individual here, not the species.”

“Yeah? Well it sounds to me like you’re speaking for your species.”

Vonda stepped away from the wall, forcing Helix back with her body. “Human beings need those jobs, Helix. And if GeneSys is trying to create some kind of fabricated slave labor force, then is that really what you want?”

“I just want a vat.” Helix’s arms hung at her sides now, useless.

“Well you’re not going to get one in Vattown. You can forget it. Why don’t you go back to your maker? Maybe he can help you.”

“Why don’t you go to hell?” Helix stepped towards Vonda again, baring her teeth.

“Fine, fuck you.” Vonda pushed Helix away from her with both hands. “I’m just trying to help.”

“You just want to make me disappear. Like the rest of them.”

“Oh you are so full of shit.”

“Oh yeah?” Helix pushed Vonda back into the wall again. “Then why are you afraid of me?”

Vonda stared at her stonily. “Back off, miss thing, I’m warning you.”

“No! What if I don’t want to back off?”

Helix reeled suddenly as Vonda’s right fist connected with her jaw. She shook her head, flexed her knees, and sprang on Vonda, knocking her to the floor. The two of them rolled over one another, kicking and scrabbling for handholds. Helix got hold of Vonda’s arms, pinning her to the floor.

“Stop it!” Chango hauled on Helix’s shoulder, tearing her away from Vonda by sheer force of will. “What’s the matter with you?” she yelled. “Aren’t you in enough trouble already? She saved your life today! And what she says is true. You’ll never get back into the vats. They’ll never let you. All you’ll do is get killed like you almost were today.”

Helix turned her back and walked to the window. She looked out of it, out across the Eastern Market with its colorful stalls to the tower that stood in the distance. It was a faded green in the haze of the sky, like a towering ghost. She stared at it, and tried very hard not to think about anything Vonda had said. A wave of itching crept over her, her skin crawling at the thought of not having a vat.

They thought they could stop her; the mob and Vonda, even Chango in her own way. They thought she could just get over it, or just go away, or just be beaten. They didn’t know. They didn’t know about the hand that pushed her, they didn’t know it was a thing greater than herself. They thought they knew what she was.

The time she had wasted, trying to be a human being, trying to get along with human beings. Madness. Madness born of memory, the terror of the playground and her determination to avoid it at any cost. But she could not. The community of humans was the playground. That was all it could ever be, not because of human nature, but because of her own.

Helix looked down at the street fronting Orielle’s loft. Someone was approaching. It was Benny.

“I believe we have a visitor,” said a silken voice behind her. Helix turned to see Orielle making an entrance from her gauze shrouded bed chamber at the back of the loft. “The security holo tells me your esteemed colleague, Benjamin, has chosen to grace us with his presence. I believe he’ll be ringing the bell right about-” She was interrupted by a soft chime. “Now.” She smiled.

One of Orielle’s body guards emerged from the bed chamber and went downstairs to answer the door.

Benny came up, looking like someone had smashed him in the face with a rock. “Thank God you’re alright,” he said, looking at Helix.

“What happened to you?” Chango asked.

He waved off her concern, shaking his head. “Pauly didn’t take kindly to my heading him off. After that, it turned into a police brawl.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t get arrested,” said Vonda, sitting stiffly on the couch. Her eyes kept flickering over to Helix, making sure she kept her distance.

Benny nodded, thoughtfully holding a hand to his bleeding lip. “I know.”

“However did you guess that your friends were here?” asked Orielle.

“I knew once they broke free of the mob they’d get out of Vattown. You like Helix, and you have the power to defend her.”

“Yes,” Orielle inclined her chin, and spread her arms. “But she cannot stay here forever.”

“I was just trying to tell her she should go back to GeneSys, but she jumped all over my case,” said Vonda. “Orielle’s right, sooner or later the divers will figure out that she’s here.”

“Nonsense,” said Orielle, “As long as she stays out of the picture, they’ll quickly forget about her. That’s not what I meant. That girl needs to be surrounded by a large quantity of growth medium. She needs a vat.”

Chango stared at her. “We can bring it here,” she said. We can make a tank for her.”

“What do you think this is, Sea World? No. Escorting her to safety at the bar was one thing, taking her in today was another, but installing her as a permanent member of my household, that’s one too many.”

Benny sank onto the couch. “There may be another way.” He looked at Chango. “Remember those courses Ada took? Over at Mercy College?”

“In the biopoly department. They had a research center there.”

“Yeah. The project was underwritten by GeneSys, and when the college folded, they kept it running for awhile.”

“Until they could hire everyone they wanted into their own research department,” said Chango. “They closed it a few years ago.”

“True. But the vats will still be there.”

oOo

Hector strode through the glass doors of Anna’s office and brushed past her secretary. “Excuse me! Sir!” she cried in his wake, “Do you have an appointment?”

He glanced over his shoulder as he opened the door to Anna’s private office. “Now I do.”

Anna didn’t have a desk. She reclined on a black vat leather chaise, gazing up at a holographic stock analysis graph. She glanced over and sat up as he came in the door. “Dr. Martin!” Her fingers strayed to a small keypad on her wrist and the graph dissolved. She looked at him quizzically.

This was it, time for his performance. “I can’t work under these conditions! You have no idea what it’s like. That — that man! He’s out of control. Look!” Hector pointed at his cheek, “He hit me!” his voice went up an octave in an appropriately whiny squeal.

Still staring at him, Anna crossed fluidly to a low matte black table covered with magazines and toys. “Sit down, Dr. Martin.” she gestured to a boxy black couch beside it. “Can I get you a glass of water?”

“Yes, that would be wonderful. Thank you.” Hector sank onto the couch and relished the moment, as the CEO of GeneSys fetched him a glass of water. He should have done this a long time ago, he thought.

Anna returned, holding out the glass of water in a perfectly manicured hand. She folded herself into a chair to his right and watched him drink. “Feel better?” she asked when he drained the glass and set it between his feet.

He nodded, and she smiled, a sweet smile so perfectly reassuring, so innocently happy at his well being, that he responded emotionally with trust before his brain ever had the chance to tell him that it couldn’t be real. “Tell me what happened,” she said.

“I was in Nathan Graham’s office. We were having an argument about the tetra project. He seems bound and determined to interfere with my work on it, and lately his distractions have ruined my concentration. I was trying to explain to him that I needed space for my work, mental space, when suddenly he started screaming at me and pushed me to the floor. I think it’s only fair to inform you that I thoroughly intend to press charges on the matter. The kind of support or resistance I receive from the company in the course of this legal proceeding will determine whether or not I remain an employee of GeneSys.”

Anna held up one hand. “Please understand that while I am forbidden by company charter to take a position in any litigation concerning a present employee, I will make it my personal responsibility to get to the bottom of this incident.”

That was what he was afraid of. Hector nodded mutely.

“I don’t have to tell you that you are a deeply valued member of my company. I very much appreciate your coming to me with this problem. Unfortunately my various responsibilities prevent me from keeping abreast with all the exciting developments in the research department. What is this tetra project that Graham’s been giving you so much trouble with?”

Hector licked his lips. “Its goal is to replace the paid labor force in vat maintenance and decanting with an engineered organism capable of performing those duties. It’s a difficult problem and Graham has been increasingly impatient with my progress. A month ago he called a meeting with me to ask when I would be ready with a prototype. In all honesty I couldn’t give him a definite answer, and that’s when he started questioning everything; demanding explanations for expenditures, dropping by the lab at all hours, and recruiting my assistants as spies.”

“I see. And what precipitated the confrontation between the two of you today?”

He didn’t dare mention anything of Helix’s plight, or the situation with the other tetras. It was probably only a matter of time before Anna learned what was really going on, but he had to use his momentary leverage to get Graham out of the picture. Even now he was probably laying a trap for Helix, down in Vattown. “I went to his office to tell him to back off. That I couldn’t get any work done under such constant scrutiny. That’s when he became abusive and struck me.”

Anna stood up suddenly, and paced the room in quick, black silk clad strides. “I can understand why you’re upset. Believe me when I tell you that I take this matter very seriously. Any employee striking another is intolerable, and in this case,” she looked at him, “In this case I stand to lose a very valuable mind because of it.” She fingered the keypad on her wrist. “I’m going to call security, and have them escort Mr. Graham here. You can be assured he won’t try any rough stuff. I’d like to talk to the two of you together.”

Hector stood up, toppling the empty water glass at his feet. “You have to stop him,” he blurted.

Anna eyed him coolly. “Stop him from what?”

Hector’s jaw worked. “From interfering in my project,” he managed to say.

“Oh I will. I will.”

Moments later Graham arrived, escorted by two GeneSys security feet in yellow and green uniforms. He eyed Hector with cold hostility, his face pale.

“Have a seat, Mr. Graham,” said Anna, indicating a space on the couch next to Hector.

The security feet stayed by the door, watching as Graham seated himself stiffly on the couch, as far from Hector as he could manage. Anna glanced at the guards. “Are you going to behave yourself?” she asked Graham.

He nodded, and she turned to the guards. “Wait outside.”

“Anna. Whatever this is about-” Graham stole a glance at Hector. “I’m sure we don’t need to get security involved.”

“Well, I’m afraid I do. Dr. Martin here says you struck him. Is that true?”

Graham spread his hands and looked at Hector again, taking in the rug burn on the side of his face. “We had an argument, and I’m afraid it became heated. I asked Dr. Martin to leave and he refused. I put a hand on his shoulder to escort him to the door and he fell.”

“That’s a lie, Graham. You pushed me. You pushed me and I’m going to file charges,” said Hector.

“What were you two arguing about?” asked Anna.

Hector and Graham stared at each other. “We were-”

“I was objecting to Graham’s interference,” Hector interrupted.

“Thank you, Dr. Martin. I’d like to hear what Mr. Graham has to say.” Anna stared at Graham expectantly, her hands folded in her lap.

“Apparently Dr. Martin objects to me doing my job.”

“If you consider pushing people to the floor as part of your job, then I don’t blame him.”

Graham shook his head. “That was an accident.”

“Why have you chosen to concentrate on Dr. Martin’s project?”

“It’s overdue and over budget,” he said slowly.

“And have you taken into account the difficulty of what Dr. Martin is attempting to do?”

“Maybe not at first, but now I do.”

“I hope you realize the seriousness of the situation. You’re likely to face assault charges.”

“I think a full investigation would reveal facets of the incident that Dr. Martin would prefer remained unnoticed.”

Anna glanced between them. At last she turned her attention to Hector once more. “Are you absolutely sure he pushed you?” she asked gently.

Graham raised one eyebrow, waiting for his response. “No, not really. I — I might have tripped.”

“Then you aren’t pressing charges.”

“No, but I want him away from my project.”

“It’s his job to monitor research.”

“Not like this it isn’t. I can’t get anything done with him breathing down my neck all the time.”

Anna looked at Graham. “Hear that? Back off.”

Graham looked suitably chastened. “Yes. I will,” he barely suppressed a smirk. “I’ll give Dr. Martin all the space he needs.”

“All right, gentlemen,” Anna stood, clapping her hands together. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have real work to do. I hope you both can stay out of the principal’s office in the future. She’s not accustomed to dealing with brawling schoolboys.”

They were shown out of the office together. When the door shut behind them Graham glanced sidelong at Hector. “Well, that could have been worse,” he said.

Hector stared at him and began laughing hysterically.

oOo

Colin Slatermeyer licked sweat off of his upper lip and shifted his position in the hard metal chair. He was in a small office on the second floor of the vat room. Outside the door was a balcony that ringed the inside of the room, on a level with the rims of the two vats which took up most of the floor space.

They’d kept this room closed, and cut off from the rest of the vat room's environmental systems. It was crammed with telecommunications equipment; transceivers and voice printers and faxes. Apparently they’d taken every moisture sensitive piece of equipment and stuck it in here, and the really amazing part of it was that most of it was hooked up.

Actually, he was glad to be put in here at first. The temperature was in the high nineties. With the divesuit on he’d collapse from heat prostration before long. It was hot as an oven in here, but at least he could breathe without a respirator on his face.

A transceiver module on a bench near the window suddenly bleated a repeating sequence of tones. Somebody was calling. He looked at the tetra, who was bored and irksome at having to be here, in this dry air. “Should I get that?” he asked.

She shook her head, and held two hands out in warning as she got up and opened the door a crack, and called something out onto the balcony. The bleating continued, evidently whoever was calling knew enough to let it ring a long time. Colin glanced from the tetra, still halfway out the door, to the transceiver, just behind him and to the right. What the hell, what would ever be worth the risk again, if not this? In a sudden, single movement he stood up and swung around to the transceiver. It wasn’t a very big room, he didn’t have far to go. The live receive button was helpfully colored red, and he pushed it while the tetra was turning around.

“Hello?” It was Dr. Martin, his face ghostly, floating in the air in front of the panelled wall, the wood grain visible behind him.

Colin stared at him a moment, expecting a reaction, but Dr. Martin’s eyes where unfocused, his gaze wandering. Glancing down he just had time to notice that the transceiver was set to blackout before hands came around him and clamped over his mouth and around his chest, pinning his arms. He was dragged back to the chair and held there. “Hello?” came Dr. Martin’s voice again, “is anybody there?”

Colin screamed against the muffling hands, but then there was another tetra there, and small, delicate fingers around his neck, smart little fingers that knew just where to press to cut off his air. He choked, and subsided, but the hands stayed there, along with the ones over his mouth, and he was tied up with ropes woven from agules. The draft of mist wafting in from the balcony abruptly stopped as Lilith came in and shut the door behind her. She gave him an annoyed glance and went over to Hector’s hologram. “What do you want?” she said, “this is not convenient.”

“Listen, I know Graham’s been there. He told me you’d taken Slatermeyer hostage. Let him go. He’s of no use to you anyway, and things are starting to... happen. Graham’s already trying to kill Helix. He thinks I should have terminated the project a long time ago. Now he’s going to do it himself. If we don’t do something he’s going to kill you all off.”

“He won’t find that so easy to do.”

“Bullshit. He could send fifty guys in there with machine guns. Hell, if it came down to it he’d probably just flood the place with poisonous gas. Believe me, there’s nothing he isn’t capable of.”

She glanced over her shoulder at Colin, who stared at her with wide, wide eyes. “But there’s a human being in here now.”

“So? You think that’s going to stop him? I know this guy, he used to work in production. He wouldn’t bat an eye over a lab assistant.”

Fresh sweat sprang out all over Colin’s body, and he mumbled again against the hands pressed against his lips, and the thumbs came down again on his windpipe.

“What’s that?” said Dr. Martin, “Is that him? Is he there now?”

Colin would have answered him, but he was choking, and there were tears in his eyes. “Let me talk to him,” he heard Hector say over the roaring in his ears.

There was a pause, during which Colin’s vision began to fade, and then Lilith must have agreed, because the pressure on his throat was released, and he leaned forward, coughing and breathing.

They held him, four hands to an arm, in front of the hologram. He was still breathing in convulsive gulps. He heard the door click shut. Lilith had left. “Dr. Martin,” he gasped.

“Slatermeyer, what’s happened to you?”

Colin shook his head, “I was right here. They were trying to keep me quiet, that’s all.” He took a long deep breath, “I’m alright.”

“Then you heard what I said about Graham,” Martin said quietly.

“Yeah.”

“Look, I was trying to put a scare into her, that’s all, I don’t really think he’d-”

“Yes you do.”

“Well, alright, I do, but- there must be some way we can get you out, there must be some way we can stop him. Colin, I’m sorry this happened to you, but maybe it’s a blessing in disguise. With you on the inside, it might help us prepare for whatever Graham is going to do.”

Colin grinned badly, “In the first place, I can’t do shit in here, Dr. Martin. They’ve got me locked up under guard in this room along with everything else that can be damaged by the vapor, all their electronics and communications equipment, and in the second place, I want to go home!” Hot tears sprang from his eyes, “They make me sit in that fucking chair, day and night. I can’t get any sleep.”

One of the tetras who was holding him leaned forward towards the pickup camera. “We keep him here because of the vapor,” she said, her voice was husky from disuse.

“But the man needs to sleep, Immelene, at least let him lay on the floor.”

“Hey, thanks,” said Colin sarcastically.

Immelene and her sister looked at each other. “We could do that,” they said.

“Why don’t you try asking them to let me go, Dr. Martin,” said Colin, “I think you gave up a little early on that one.”

“Alright. Will you let him go?”

“No.”

“We’ll keep him.”

“Why? What possible use could you have for him?”

“Hey,” said Colin, indignant.

“I’m sorry, but really, what do they, or I should say, does she, intend to do with you? They haven’t been taking any... samples of anything, have they?”

Colin stared at him wide eyed, “What do you mean?” he asked, horrified.

“Anything, skin, hair, whatever.”

“No.”

“Okay, so she’s just keeping you there. Oh, I could never get her to tell me why. She never tells me anything. Now you know, Colin. Now you know what I’ve had to put up with all this time. The stress is unbearable, isn’t it? She’s... impenetrable. Here she is, this thing I’ve created, but now that she’s here, I’m irrelevant to her.”

“Graham knows about the egg,” said Colin.

“I know.” Hector’s face, animated a moment ago with angst, became suddenly still.

“I didn’t know what to tell him,” Colin said carefully, “we never did find out what happened to it.”

Dr. Martin’s face seemed to shift to a different facet of his personality. He looked very hard at Colin, even as a hologram, it was a little tough to take. “I can tell you what happened to it. It hatched. Her name’s Helix, and Graham tried to get her killed this morning.”

“Look, I didn’t want to help him but he had goods on me. I’m sorry, Dr. Martin, but even this is better than going back to Alive!”

Martin’s jaw was stiff. He nodded ever so slightly. “Then you understand, now, that your survival lies with the tetras. Try to get through to Lilith, convince her that Graham is a real threat, if you can.”

“Oh sure, you bet. Anything else?”

“I’ll call again later.”

“I’ll hold my breath.”

oOo

Chango parked her car on the street across from the U of D Mercy College campus and took a backpack out of the trunk. They walked to the now defunct biopoly research building. An old maple tree grew next to the wall on one side. Chango, Helix and Benny stole across the grass to the shelter of its shadows. Benny pointed up, and Helix saw that one of the tree’s branches brushed against a window on the second floor. Without a word Chango scaled the trunk and climbed out onto the arching branch. It swayed slightly under her weight. Helix wondered if it would support her. Chango was a few minutes with a small, silver instrument, its whir a counterpoint to the chirring of crickets. “Sst. Come on.”

Helix gripped the trunk of the tree with her upper arms. Her lower arms were useless as far as pulling herself up was concerned, but at least she could use them for clinging. Her feet scraped against the bark and she hauled herself up into the leaves. Below her she heard Benny grunting as he climbed the tree.

Chango had the window open, and she pushed her backpack in before climbing through. Helix followed her and found herself standing on a second floor balcony overlooking two large, empty vats. “They’re empty,” said Helix.

“Yeah,” whispered Benny, climbing through the window. “This place has been closed up for years. But look.” He pointed to a stack of barrels in the far corner, “maybe some of it is still good.”

“Do you have any idea how many of those barrels it would take to fill one of these? Besides, how do we get them down?” They were stacked ten high.

“There must be a ladder around here somewhere,” said Chango.

“And you call me crazy,” said Helix. “What if some of that spills on you?”

“That’s why I brought this.” Chango opened the flap of her backpack and showed her the sleeve of a divesuit. “It was Ada’s.”

Helix glanced about the building again. “What kind of security do you think they’ve got in here?”

Chango shrugged, “Judging from the window, not much, ‘course you never can tell.”

“I’ll stay up here and keep lookout,” said Benny.

There was a ladder at the far end of the building, down a long aisle past the dingy flanks of the vats. They carried it back to the tanks and stood at its base, looking up.

“Christ, I don’t know about this,” said Chango.

“They look heavy.”

“I don’t know if the ladder will hold, they’ve got to weigh fifty pounds apiece.”

“I might be able to do it. At least I can try to see if they’re any good. Put your suit on.”

Helix climbed the ladder, alternately grasping the rungs with her upper and lower hands. As she went she glanced at the wall of stacked barrels beside her. Some of them were corroded, possibly leaking. She reached the top of the ladder. The last row of barrels was just above her head. With her upper fingers she grasped one of them by its bottom rim.

She wedged her fingers underneath the barrel and inched it out until she was able to lift it free. She grasped the barrel with her lower arms. The ladder wobbled precariously as she reached for the rungs with her upper hands. She clung there a few moments, until the swaying stopped.

She was just about to start down when the first floor doors burst inward and ten or more GeneSys security guards ran in, brandishing tranq guns. “Run!” she yelled at Chango, and heaved the barrel towards the approaching guards.

oOo

Chango scrambled for the stairs as the barrel crashed to the floor behind her. She heard yelling as the guards scattered to avoid the splashing growth medium. Where in the hell was Benny? she wondered as she pounded up the steps to the balcony. He was gone from his post by the window and he certainly hadn’t done much of a job of warning them. Chango paused at the window, looked back and saw Helix, still on the ladder but surrounded by guards. There was nothing she could do now but get away and get help.

Outside, the building was bathed in flashing green and yellow lights. Chango dropped to the ground and crouched in the shadow of the tree. She heard the squawking of a transceiver from a levvan parked in the street. She scanned the broad spread of mowed grass before her. She didn’t see anyone there, didn’t see anyone around the levvan either, though that didn’t mean no one was there.

She ran, bent at the waist, over the grass, the night air cool against her skin, her breath and the pounding of her heart roaring in her ears, drowning out the transceiver and the chirring of crickets. She thought she heard shouts, but she kept running.

She’d gone four blocks before she noticed the levcar following her, gliding silently along the magnetic roadway. She never would have known it was there, except she caught a glimpse of it as she turned one corner, and then saw it again, a block further on. She cut through an alley, narrow and paved only with cloncrete, but when she got to the street on the other side, there it was again, closing in on her. Her heart pounded in her chest like it would burst. To her left was the university medical center, a cluster of buildings with a large driveway in front, leading to an underground parking structure.

She’d been here before. Between the close set buildings was a labyrinth of walkways. If you were in a levcar, you had to park it, and walk to the building you wanted. She headed for the main entrance and veered off onto a cloncrete sidewalk bordered by hedges. Behind her, in the night, she heard the distinct sound of car doors slamming, and footsteps running. Chango zigzagged between buildings, the footsteps behind her growing closer. She thought she could make out two sets. There were shouts, and something whizzed past her head, very fast. She ducked around another corner and she was in a cul de sac between two tall sandstone buildings, a high brick wall running between them.

“Give it up,” she heard someone call behind her, but she ran to the wall nevertheless, ran and jumped and scrabbled at it with her hands but she couldn’t climb it. Her breath coming in explosive gasps she clawed and pounded at the wall until her fingers bled. There were tears on her face when she turned around. There were two of them, guys, both dressed in green coveralls and carrying tranq guns and night sticks. One was nearly a head taller than the other, and broader through the shoulders. They stood about ten feet from her, their tranq guns trained on her. She looked at her torn, bleeding fingers. Slowly she lifted one finger to her forehead, and daubed it with blood, and then she walked slowly towards them, her hands at her sides and carefully visible. When she got between them they grabbed her, cuffed her hands behind her back, and each taking an arm, walked her back to the street and the waiting car.