THE STAIN OF A SENTENCE: $51.95
A bell kept sounding.
“Where is Henri?”
The bell sounded again.
Something struck my face. My eyes opened to see Margot’s hand hovering in the air.
“Where is Henri?” she demanded. She was sitting over me, her face tight and hard. She had Kel’s Pad in her non-slapping hand. The Pad was working again, lit up with the building’s map. She shoved the map in front of my face.
I looked at her blankly. She slapped me again. The bell sounded. My head ached.
“Wake up, Speth. Tell me where Henri is.”
The bell sounded again. We were on the elevator, going down. Where was Henri? We were on the sixtieth floor. Was Henry still on seventeen? Margot took a small, bean-shaped device from a pocket near her biceps. It looked like it had a little stinger. She jabbed it into my arm, and I felt my heart start racing. She slapped me again, one more time than was necessary. I sat up angrily.
“Type it!” she demanded. She held the Pad out to me. I hesitated, and her face grew red with anger. “You typed Silas Rog, goddamn it, you can type Henri’s location.”
We weren’t in a Squelch, but I didn’t know if that mattered. The Pad wouldn’t register it, and I had no Cuff to report it. I was too groggy and panicked to have the debate in my head about what I could or could not do anymore. We had to get to Henri and the others. I raised myself up and swatted at the 17 on the elevator’s control panel.
“This elevator is stupidly slow,” she complained. We were on the forty-fifth floor and dropping.
I looked around in a foolish pantomime, as if Rog might be on the elevator someplace, hoping Margot would understand what I asked.
“I hit Rog very hard on his head. Maybe he is dead. Maybe he is up and plotting. We should move quickly.”
Damn it. Our next moves would have been simpler if I knew he couldn’t interfere. She should have made sure he was dead, but murder was rather a lot to ask.
I tried to stand, but I felt weak. We were on the thirty-fifth floor. Margot looked determined.
“I told myself not to come back,” Margot said, rummaging through her bag. “I said to myself, Henri is a big boy.”
The thin bell rang again. Thirtieth floor. I looked at the elevator’s display, scanning down to the lowest level. I had a plan. What had it been? I needed to get beneath this building. I needed to find the place where the WiFi was housed. That’s what I needed to do. I stood and pressed the elevator’s glass display. I queued the garage, the lowest floor I could find. Margot noted what I did and shook her head.
“Kel is an idiot,” she said, examining her green pony bottle of sleep gas. “We’re going to save her, too.”
She attached some kind of nozzle. I didn’t have a nozzle. I wouldn’t have been able to use one anyway, since I couldn’t have let Rog see me take the canister out.
“You are coming with me.” She canceled my garage call with a swipe. Maybe she was right. Maybe she could help me after we rescued Henri and Kel. Maybe they all could.
The elevator slowed. I stood and looked for my bag.
Margot hooked it on my arm for me. I put my palm to my temple. There was a small spot of blood when I pulled it away.
“You’re fine,” Margot said, and she gave me a little shove halfway between playful and impatient as the elevator doors opened.