Chapter 67 – Sky Riding
The wind whipped at her clothes, hair, and skin. The board bucked and snapped under her feet, strained by the opposing forces of gravity and her weight attached to the kite.
The city seemed to hang in place around her, the bulk of Angel City's floating towers behind her and to the left. Below, the hard structures of grounded Los Angeles.
The ocean floated on the horizon. Only the clouds appeared to move, or rather she through them.
It was beautiful.
Ash felt as if she were a bird combined with a jet. She easily adapted to the ride. Leaning into the bowline and the mast, she piloted the kite across the sky at what felt like eighty miles an hour.
The clouds rushed around her, one moment she would be enveloped in white and then suddenly, the world would reappear.
Finally, she was through the lowest ones and there was nothing between her and the sharp-pointed structures of steel and glass, rising from the Hollywood below.
Ashley banked as the buildings reached up for her, their giant metal teeth, disguised as antennae and radio receivers, gnashing at her. The kite snapped in the wind, and Ashley held on.
The kite, board and rider spun toward the ground. She was going at least a hundred now and accelerating. She held on.
The first rip appeared. She saw it, it was small, and then it was huge.
The wind caught the kite and threw her toward a structure to her left. She lifted the board and slid along the side of the building. For a few brief moments, she was in control, then she cleared the building and all was noise and wind.
Ashley felt lifted, she’d caught an updraft, and it threw her toward another skyscraper. This time her approach was smoother and the broad building provided much more stability. She carved a path up the side of the scraper, upsetting business meetings and launching herself from the structure at a forty-five degree incline.
She found herself able to control the free-fall a little better, angling toward one building after another. She even landed on a few flat rooftops and skidded down another's sloped side. She wasn't doing it just for fun, buzzing the metropolitan offices slowed her to fifty and sixty miles per, instead of free fall at over a hundred.
There were four rips in the sail now. Ash started to panic. She’d heard them, now she saw them as well.
She made her way toward the curving arch of the Santa Monica Mountains. She came in from the north, sliding down over the structures of old Hollywood, keeping the Mulholland freeway cable to her right and gradually drifting down over the familiar residential neighborhoods and streets of a life gone by.
Ashley curved down toward the mountains, banking off the slower magnetic-cable traffic. She slid down the side of a moving truck, drafted a cruising flatbed and then kicked out toward a mountain wall.
She caught the cliff side as easily as any of the twenty buildings she'd whipped past, but pushed away quickly as the weeds whipped at the sail, her fingers and her face.
The steep slope leveled out, and Ashley caught her breath. She sailed down the ridgeline, cresting mountaintops as if they were swells on a stormy sea.
Cruising along the peaks, on relatively solid ground, Ash felt her heart, arms and shoulders relax. She realized she'd been clutching the kite with everything she had. Her hands had cramped into claws. It took repeated flexing to get them feeling normal again.
Ash sailed down the paths, coming closer to the neighborhood where she'd lived. She came in from the back, down the side of a steep mountain and then around the base on the low side, sailing into her neighborhood along the retaining walls and unprotected backyards of the families living against the mountain.
The knowledge flooded back, intoxicating her.
Sailing down the familiar trails, Ashley hit turns at full speed, banking off trees into huge vertical jumps and landing in sweeping curves to dissipate the shock.
As Captain Snow watched her daughter fearlessly ride the kite board, several thousand feet above the ground, she was overcome with awe and admiration. There is no way she’d have had that kind of courage at her age.
Ross’s voice interrupted her train of thought and distracted her as Ashley dipped below the tree line.
“We’ve got a twenty on Geoff. He’s at the dog pound.”
“Can you get him out?” Snow asked.
“Not without breaking cover and a bit of gunplay. We’ll post up here until they move him. For the moment though, he’s safe.”
“Says you,” Captain Snow said.
“No need for thanks, really. My pleasure,” Ross chuckled.
“Thank you, Kelly. A thousand million Thank You’s for ever‘n ever.”
“You’re welcome, but we’re not out of the woods yet.”
“Not by a long shot,” Snow replied.
Ashley came toward the house from the mountainside and slid her board to a stop in the backyard. Skimming over the streets and rooftops, she hadn't spotted a single parked car with agents sitting in it. She hoped that, if they were out there, they hadn't spotted her either.
Ash pressed her hand against the panel and the backdoor opened. She hauled her kite into the house and closed the door.
Inside, she looked around for any kind of security system. She looked for pinhole cameras or alarm boxes. Ashley checked the main doors, finding just the basic locks, no hint of any kind of security system at all.
In her father's study, everything appeared to be exactly as he'd left it. There was nothing about the house that looked as if it had been searched, ransacked or pilfered. Whatever the agents had wanted, it hadn't been among the family's material possessions.
Ashley's father owned a pair of Japanese samurai swords, standing on a rack in a glass case. Ashley stared at them from across the room, thinking about the reported incident with the blue goo, from his childhood.
Ash walked over to the computer displays behind the desk. She reached out and waved her hand over the console, waking the display.
It requested a password. “Zelena,” Ash said, giving her mother’s maiden name. Ashley had heard her father give the command many times.
“User recognized,” the computer said. “Ashley Erin Fox, Welcome.”
“I need security footage for this location, for Friday, July 26th, around three pm please?”
“Sorry, that footage is inaccessible from this location. This location has been compromised and all data stores have been scrubbed clean. This station must be reinitialized with a new user before any tasks or applications can be run.”
Ashley sighed. She otherwise left the study as she found it, not disturbing any more of its secrets or forcing its locks.
Not feeling especially hungry and already bored, Ash headed toward her own room. She moved slowly, just taking everything in. She peered though the windows at the front of the house. She saw no vehicles closing in, surrounding her. She saw no one at all.
Upstairs, she opened the door to her bedroom. It was just as she'd left it. No Goldilocks had been sleeping in her bed, filling the right half of the room. To the left, set at an angle, her desk was exactly as it had been.
Ashley looked at the center drawer of her desk. Of course, the prototype was in her pocket, but somehow the desk would always be it's home.
Between the bed and the desk, the dollhouse her father had built her, years ago. Behind it, the picture window displayed a magnificent view of the canyon and the homes spotting the other side.
Ashley took in the view.
In the distance, the windows of the homes reflected the brilliant sunlight.
She checked her waistband. The agent's gun was gone. Somewhere during the ride she must have lost it. She hadn't felt it fall away, but she didn't have it anymore.
Staring out across the canyon, she remembered the night of the fire, just before she'd come into possession of the prototype. One of the homes across the canyon had been engulfed in flame. She looked for it and picked it out. It had been fully renovated, of course, but sh
e was sure, it was the one on the crest.
Ash had gone into Geoff's room that night. She'd heard her father get sick in the nearby bathroom. Somehow that house was connected. Ashley stared at it. The all-glass wall and cascading balconies stared back at her.
Suddenly she understood, while there were no obvious cameras in her house, there might be other kinds of sensors, but the cameras were all across the canyon, behind those glass walls. That was where she'd find the security footage she needed, she was sure of it. Maybe that terminal hadn’t been scrubbed.
Not forgetting the need to be careful, Ashley left the house the same way she'd come in, through the back and into the forest.
“Take us up above the halo,” Von Kalt ordered.
“Yes, Sir.” The pilot merged into the afternoon cable traffic. “Sir, the Director said we should…”
Von Kalt stared into the pilot’s eyes.
“Yes, Sir,” the pilot said, reconsidering his question.
The traffic above the central hub of the city was sparse, they could see in all directions. Von Kalt pulled up the teams’ vehicle and helmet cameras. The Fox residence was quiet.
Von Kalt triggered his radio. “Status checks with a pause for course correction.” He pulled the Metachron device from his pocket.
“Foxtrot: We’ve got nothing at the residence.”
“We just reported an access at the residence!” Von Kalt interrupted. “Logs say it was the daughter. You missed her, or you’ve given yourselves away. Remove to a circular patrol, five miles out. Do not screw this up!”
“Copy, Foxtrot Out.”
“Golf: holding position at the school.”
“Very Good, Continue.”
“Hotel: We’re on the labs, all quiet here. “
Von Kalt’s phone rang, it was Stanwood. “Hold,” he said over the radio to his soldiers and accepted the incoming call. “Yes, Director.”
Stanwood appeared to be riding in a transport of his own
“I heard you had a run in with our little superstar?” Stanwood asked.
“Yes, sir. She killed three agents at a shopping mall.”
“And then what, she escaped?” Stanwood asked.
“She jumped, sir.”
Stanwood laughed.
“I already forwarded you the footage.”
Stanwood continued laughing. “Keep me informed.” He disconnected the call.
“Of course, I’ll keep you informed.” Von Kalt hung up and tossed the new phone out the window.
With the Metachron in hand, he dove into the digital maze that was the Child Services Department.
All he had to do was find the brother, and she would come to him. He will rewrite the other, the first one, The Micronix. He will rewrite it, and he will kill her if he has to. She will give it to him, or she will die.