Eyeball’s smile vanishes and Benson groans.
“You think I’s fallin’ for dat? Like I’s some sucker who ain’t been ’round the block since I was wearin’ diapers? You got nuther thing comin’.”
Luce gets to her feet. Benson scrambles after her, trying to hold her back before she does something stupid, but he’s too late and she squirms away. As Benson watches in horror, she gets into a fighter’s stance and says, “Listen Turdball, if you don’t do exactly what we tell you to, I’ll kick you in the nuts so hard you’ll feel them in your esophagus. I’ve taken down morons bigger than you before.”
Crap. One hit from a dude this size and Luce will have more than just a scar above her eye. Benson tries to push in front of Luce, his arms out in an attempt to diffuse the situation, but she only shoves him back against the cardboard wall.
“Try me, punk,” she says.
Benson leaps forward once more, determined to tackle her to the ground if he has to. But then, to his utmost surprise, Eyeball laughs. Benson freezes. “Hey, cutie, I’s a lover not a fighter. And I’s just messin’ ’round, havin’ a little fun wit’ y’all. I’s help y’all, no prollem.”
Luce doesn’t lower her fists, her eyes boring holes into Eyeball’s head. “Luce,” Benson says. “It’s cool.”
She ignores him. “What do you charge?” she asks.
Eyeball chews on his sausage-like bottom lip. “For a looker like you? I’ll take fitty percent off. Call it a beauty discount. But your boy will have to pay full price. What services y’all lookin’ for?”
Luce finally looks at Benson, her blue eyes twinkling. She nods encouragingly. “I need my fake retinas removed, and Luce here, I mean Blondie, needs a set of fakes,” Benson says.
“Shouldn’t you get new fakes, too?” Luce asks.
Benson shakes his head. The thought of new retinas suctioning to his eyes again is enough for him to take the risk on his real eyes. “My real retinas aren’t registered. They can’t be scanned. The worst that could happen is that someone will think the scanners are malfunctioning.”
“Okay,” Luce says, turning back to Eyeball. “And we want something to eat. Something edible.”
“Ten thousand,” Eyeball says. “And the food is free.”
“Five thousand,” Luce counters.
“Eight.”
“Seven.”
“Deal,” Eyeball says, extending a thick hand. Luce hesitates, but only for a second, and then takes it, shaking it once firmly. “And for the record,” Eyeball says, “I’m cheerin’ y’all on. The whole system’s in the crapper. Me and my girl have been tryin’ to get a birth authorization for five years. It just ain’t right.”
“Thanks,” Benson says. “I hope you get it soon.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
“Ahhhhhh!” Benson screams, his teeth crushing the rubber stick in his mouth. “Ahhh ahhh ahhh!” He tries to thrash his head, but it’s held tight by some sort of vice-like device.
“Quit being such a baby,” Luce says, looking down from overhead. Although they’re still a shade of blue—albeit noticeably paler—her eyes look so different now. And yet just as mesmerizing. She’s eating half a sandwich. It’s the fifth half a sandwich she’s had, and she’s showing no signs of stopping.
Benson tries to control his screams, but the pain is like a hot iron being stabbed in his eyes. Compared to this, having his father implant the fake retinas was as easy as catching a drop of rain on his tongue.
“Ahhh!” he screams again. Luce shakes her head and moves out of view, so that he can only see Eyeball’s bald dome, haloed by the yellow light overhead.
“Almost done,” Eyeball says, using something sharp and pointy to poke at Benson’s eye.
Almost means ten more minutes of agony. When it’s done, Benson lies on the thin cot panting, vowing to never mess with his retinas again. Sweat streams from his forehead and into his eyes, but the mild sting is a welcome relief compared to the pain he’s just endured. Even the slight tingling doesn’t bother him.
Luce hovers over him, her mouth open slightly. “Oh. My. God,” she says.
“What?” Benson says, his voice cracking slightly. “What’s wrong?” Thoughts of broken blood vessels and red eyes spring to mind.
“Absolutely nothing,” Luce says. “It’s just…your real eyes are…beautiful.”
Oh. “Uh, thanks,” Benson says, feeling yet another blush blanket his cheeks.
“Just gimme my money and get the hell outta here,” Eyeball says.
“C’mon, big guy, don’t be such a hard ass,” Luce says. “It doesn’t suit you. Here.” She hands over a stolen LifeCard. “Take an extra five percent for such good service and the delicious sandwiches.”
Eyeball pretends to still be annoyed but Benson can tell the tip has won him over. When the funds have been transferred, Eyeball says, “Don’t get y’all killed. You can find your own way out.” He saunters off, back into the cardboard maze.
“Well,” Luce says, “that went well.”
“Maybe for you,” Benson says, still feeling somewhat nauseous from the pain.
“Did anyone ever tell you you scream like a girl?” she says.
“Only on Tuesdays,” Benson says. “Every other day it’s more of a manly roar.”
“Riiiight. Tuesdays,” Luce says. “That makes sense.”
Benson lays back and sighs. Has it really only been twenty-four hours since this nightmare began?
“Benson,” Luce says.
“Yeah.”
“I’ve been thinking…”
“About what?”
“Your father.”
“Oh. Him.”
“Yeah. Him. Why do you think he did what he did? I mean, he’s the freaking Head of Pop Con. Why didn’t he just pull some strings and get a birth authorization for you? Surely he could’ve done something. Why go through all this trouble on the back end, when it was too late?”
Benson has to admit, he’s been wondering the exact same thing. “I—I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t work that way. Maybe there are no special privileges, because the system would break down if there were.”
“But there must be tricks. Ways to improve your chances of getting a birth authorization. And of all people, why would he get your mother pregnant before you were authorized? It doesn’t make sense.”
Benson stares at the ceiling, which is twined with exposed copper pipes, thinking about the very good questions Luce is asking. Why indeed. “Maybe he did use all his tricks. Maybe they didn’t work the way he’d hoped. Maybe creating me was an accident.” He bites his lip, fighting off the wave of emotion that threatens to pull him under an ocean of despair.
Luce pulls herself closer, squeezing beside him on the half-a-bed, draping her arm over him. She doesn’t even flinch this time. Progress, Benson thinks. “Well then you’re the best accident in the world,” she says. Her hand settles into his and he wants to kiss her. For real this time. But he doesn’t.
They stay like that for a long time, and Benson wonders if she’s thinking the same thing he is:
Like this, they’re invisible to the world, like when they kissed in the Tunnels; but the moment they pull apart, they’re wanted criminals with death sentences hanging over them.
~~~
“What next?” Luce says, almost an hour later.
“I have to know the truth,” Benson says. “But I can’t ask you to come with me. We should both be running as far away from this city as we can, but I can’t do that. Not until I answer all of my questions. But you can. You can go. You can survive this. Eventually they’ll forget about you. All they really want is me.”
“Nice speech,” Luce says, squeezing his hand. “But I’m coming.”
Benson shakes his head, slowly coming to terms with the fact that he’ll have to save himself to save her. There’s nothing else to say, and anyway, he’d rather be with her than alone. “You know where we have to go, right?” he asks.
“Yeah,” s
he says. “And you know what? The Department of Population Control might just be the safest place for us in the city.”
He raises an eyebrow. “How do you figure that?”
“Everyone will be out looking for you. It’s the last place they’ll expect us to go.”
“You’re insane, you know that?” Benson says.
“Takes crazy to know crazy,” Luce says, grinning.
Benson grins back, feeling remarkably happy under the circumstances. Almost giddy. Must be a death-bed thing, he thinks.
Hand in hand, they zigzag through the maze until they find an exit sign.
“Over, under, or through the middle,” Luce says, pausing at the door.
Benson thinks about it. The Tunnels will be crawling with Hunters and Crows. The city streets will be patrolled by holo-ads and the Hawks. The Tubes will have their fair share of scanners, cameras and law enforcement bots, but it’s the last place they’ll be expected to go.
“Tubes,” Benson says. “From now on, we’ll do the exact opposite of what they expect us to do. Starting with hiding in plain sight.”
Together, they push through the exit and climb the steps to the fifth floor, where the building links to the Tube.
Benson presses a red button and the door opens from bottom to top. Hordes of pedestrians march past, staring at projections from their portable holo-screens as they commute to work. Checking the news perhaps? Getting the latest buzz about the hunt for the big bad Slip? Enthralled in their personal devices, not a single person glances up to look at them as they step into the Tube.
“C’mon,” Luce hisses. “Act like we belong.”
The bandage wrapped around her head might make that kind of hard, Benson thinks. But it’s not like they have any other choice. So they do. They enter the stream and march along like everyone else; and, also like everyone else, they let the cameras and scanners read their eyes. Benson’s will come up with an error, his retinal signature not in the system—a standard error that occurs from time to time. No big deal. And Lucy’s will come up as another person. A fake person. Eventually some observant analyst will figure it out and put it all together. But by then they’ll have reached their destination.
A Crow walks right past, a bot-dog pulling at its leash. The bot cranes its head to scan them, its pointy metal ears sticking straight up, but then the dog moves on to the next person. It’s programmed to find Benson Mack and Lucy Harris. Not them.
Still holding hands, they move through the throng, trying to ignore the stationary holo-ads on the glass Tube walls, as well as the cameras and scanners that track their movement along with everyone else’s.
That’s when it happens.
The holo-ads blink off, going dark. The cameras and scanners flash red and then stop moving. Immediately after, people start complaining. “Damn holo,” a woman says, banging the side of her device. “I just bought it.” “What the—” a guy says, rubbing at his screen as if the friction will bring it back to life.
Murmurs filter through the crowd, which, like a single organism, stops moving all at once. Benson and Luce look at each other, and then back at the stunned people, where every single holo-screen has gone dark.
“Mr. Blue Eyes,” Luce hisses. “What’s going on?”
“The entire comm system is down,” Benson whispers back.
“Has that ever happened before?”
Benson shakes his head. Not that he’s ever heard of. The network has crazy levels of security and backups on top of backups.
“Then how?” she asks.
He can think of only six words that might explain it. “My father is still helping us,” he says.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“What the hell?” Michael Kelly says to his holo-screen, which is now dark. After sitting outside of his empty house for almost an hour, he ended up programming the aut-car to go back to the office. He slept for twenty minutes at his desk and then logged in to get the latest on the Sliphunt.
Nothing much had changed. After Corr’s and Domino’s bungled attempt to capture him, the Slip disappeared, along with this Lucy Harris girl. He was just scanning through the girl’s profile—parents’ dead, a brother still alive, eventually ran away from the system, has been presumably living on the streets ever since—when his screen went dark.
He taps the screen a few times, and then presses the reset button. Nothing happens. The green light is on, so it still has power, but it’s not getting a com signal.
“Lacey!” he calls out, before remembering that she still hasn’t shown up for work. He’s about to get up from his desk when the door bursts open.
The woman’s eyes are wild and scared, her face shiny with sweat, like she’s run up a load of steps. “Sir, I’m sorry to barge in like this, but we have a situation.”
He turns his empty screen toward her. “You think?” he says.
“It’s not just yours,” she explains. “We’re still analyzing the problem, but it appears every holo-screen in the city is down.”
He frowns. “The backups will kick on soon, and then you’ll have time to figure out the issue,” he says.
She shakes her head. “The backups aren’t—they aren’t active.”
“In English please,” he says. “What does active mean exactly?”
Her hands are shaking, and he almost feels sorry for being so stern with her. “We think we’ve been attacked. Some kind of super-virus. We can’t even get into any of our private systems to assess and fix the problem. We’ve never seen anything like it.”
For a moment, just a moment, Michael nearly smiles, his lips quivering at the corners before he remembers himself. He forces his frown even deeper. “Will this affect Corrigan Mars’s Hunters, too?” he asks, tapping his toe beneath the safety of his desk, which is hidden from the front.
“Yes,” she says. “The whole city is down.”
“Okay,” he says. “Keep me informed if anything changes. As the Hunters return to HQ, give them manual instructions to continue a grid search of the city for the Slip, as well as Corrigan Mars and his rogues. Nothing changes except the way we communicate. Everything will have to be face to face. And all previous orders still stand.” Bring the Slip in alive.
“Yes, sir,” the woman says, before turning and exiting.
Interesting, Michael thinks. What should be a complete disaster seems much more like a blessing in disguise. Without the power of the holo-screen network, finding the Slip will be almost impossible for anyone, including his ex-second-in-command. But who could have accomplished such an enormous attack on the system? It’s the type of thing Corrigan Mars would do, but he wouldn’t sabotage himself just to get back at him, would he? Another possibility is the Lifers, the terrorist-like group that’s been blowing up government installations for months now. This could be the start of a fresh wave of attacks. If so, their timing couldn’t be better from Michael’s point of view.
Just as he’s starting to fully realize how helpful the com blackout will be in protecting the Slip, his screen comes to life.
No.
It’s too soon. His analysts were too efficient, too smart. He needed the network to be down for days, not minutes.
But wait. He taps the screen and it doesn’t respond. Instead, a message projects out, one letter at a time.
Dad. It’s Harrison. I’ve got Mom. You have to stop hunting the Slip.
He blinks once and then speaks his response.
~~~
Harrison’s father’s voice crackles through Wire’s speaker system. “Son, I’ve got something to tell you. Your mother, too. Come to my office and we’ll talk.”
He looks at his mother, who’s still on all fours looking around, but whose ears are now perked up, like a rabbit’s. “HimHimHimHimHimHim,” she whispers.
“Son?” his father says.
“Yeah. Let me think, Dad,” Harrison says. He looks at Wire, who only shrugs as if to say, “I only handle the technical part—the rest is up to you.” If he goes to his
father’s office, surely he’ll be in trouble. Big trouble. His mother will be taken back to the asylum; he’ll have criminal charges brought against him. His father will pull some strings, make them go away, but still…
“Son?”
“What happened to my brother?” he asks.
“Harrison, I really don’t think now is—”
“TELL ME!”
Wire jumps back, startled by Harrison’s outburst, knocking over his chair. His mother, on the other hand, seems drawn by his anger, flitting over like a moth to a flame. “Tellllll. Himmmm,” she says.
“Janice? Is that you?”
“Yes and no and everything in between,” she says. “Your son is on the trail and he wants the truth. The crazy one should tell him—and that’s you.”
“Janice, I—are you okay?” Harrison’s surprised to hear genuine concern in his father’s voice. Even with everything that’s going on, his first worry is his wife. But it’s too late for that.
“She’s fine. Now tell me about my brother,” Harrison says, leaning forward.
“No,” his father says. Harrison grits his teeth and cracks his neck and squeezes his fists so tight he thinks they may crack into a thousand pieces.
“You owe me the truth, at least,” he says. “I’ve been the perfect son. Good grades, captain of the hoverball team, popular, never causing any problems, letting you put work first…” He’s surprised when his vision blurs. The tears snuck up on him; he wipes them away with the back of his hand. “All for what? For you to hunt down yet another Slip? Someone’s brother? Someone’s kid? They teach us in school that it’s the only way for us to survive, and I believed them. I mean, they’re so logical about it, so practical. The numbers and statistics don’t lie, right? Is that how you justify what you do, Father? Is it? Are you able to sleep at night because you tell yourself the three babies you killed today will save millions? It’s all bullshit. Why’d you do it? Why’d you kill my brother?” The tears are back and this time he doesn’t bother to dry them. He just waits, eyes forward, tears dripping from his chin. Waiting for the monster to speak.