GID blinked to dismiss the newscast overlay and clicked her teeth to turn down the volume. In her peripheral vision, Kaiden first stood up straight and then leaned in again, like he thought proximity to the monitor would let him see Muire.
With Kaiden’s movement, Daria’s and Val’s gazes locked onto that part of the room. They both pushed off the wall.
“Kaiden?” Daria said.
“Sub-level G.” Kaiden snagged his denim jacket off the back of the chair and shrugged into it. Between the jacket and his jeans, he looked like he was off to the farmstead to shovel manure and shoot coyotes. He was every bit as wolfish in appearance as Daria, even more so in attitude.
They had split into seven teams earlier, so they didn’t waste time now. Alex shoved through the front door, Kaiden on his heels. Nunes and Jager and the others filed out behind them. Val and Seven headed for the back door with Daria and Gid on their heels.
The hidden passage echoed, dark and empty, but only until they rounded the first bend. The passage widened there, and a makeshift shantytown lined its walls. Beds made of sawdust-stuffed sheets and in a few cases real mattresses wedged against the unfinished walls. In offshoot niches carved between floors, scraps of plywood and repurposed furniture created spaces that resembled actual living areas. The air was a cross between nursery cozy and sick ward stale.
“Worse than the living boxes,” Daria murmured.
“Except for the part where Protectors aren’t going to bust in and haul them off to be killed.” Gid frowned at Daria’s back. “Stop listening to Alex.”
Daria flashed a look over her shoulder. “He’s not entirely wrong. Just keeping everyone fed is—”
“A challenge. Yeah, sure. But people are helping each other out. It’s not like we’re forcing them to stay here.”
In truth, very few people were “home” in this passage right now. Some were with the teams heading to sub-level G. Others were out scrounging for the stuff Graves needed to keep things going. Gid guessed when the other option was “go to lockup and probably die,” people got good and motivated to help themselves.
“You talk your dad into leaving H yet?” Gid followed Daria around a couple of quick turns.
“He still thinks he can do more good ‘out there.’ Ear to the ground.” Daria answered without looking back, but her voice was tight. “He says he’s safe from arrest.”
“Because the Protectors are hoping his ruthless murdering children will pay a visit and get themselves caught.”
“Something like that, yeah.”
“He’s probably right, you know. About being safe where he is.”
“Yeah. Probably.”
There was this edge Daria got to her voice when she talked about her dad or her brother, like she was terrified and supremely pissed off all at once. Gid heard it now, so she prepared to let the subject drop.
“Thanks, by the way.” That edge remained in Daria’s voice, but there was warmth, too. She sounded less like the new responsibility-laden leader Daria and more like the old “just-my-friend” Daria. “If not for you and your fancy encrypted, piggy-backing whatever-it-is you do, I couldn’t talk to him at all. He wouldn’t know—”
“That you’re not really a murderer? He’d know. He’s your dad.” Gid’s stomach clenched as she said the words, but she ignored that. This was about Daria, not her.
Ahead of Daria and Gid, Val hung a right. Seven glanced back, fixed Gid with a hard look that she interpreted as, “FFS be careful,” and followed Val. Daria turned left, and Gid followed her.
Sub-level G wasn’t too far down, but it covered everything under the damned big square anchored by the city’s four towers. It was a good twenty minute hike to get into their assigned position. Daria and Gid stayed inside the hidden ways the entire trip, passing through more of the makeshift living quarters that gradually filled what had used to be nothing more than spaces between.
“Muire can’t keep doing this forever.” The way Daria said it, she’d had a whole initial conversation inside her head that Gid hadn’t heard.
Muire Henderson was Kaiden’s “friend” in the APS. Based on shift assignments and manpower within the Protectors, Muire could tip off Graves about what day she thought there would be a mass arrest in the sub-levels and even which sub-level it would probably be on. Muire had gotten good at predicting the basics, but she couldn’t provide an exact location—which was why the Graves crews had split up and spread out.
Gid shrugged and kept her voice light. Daria had enough people nit-picking at her as it was. “Probably not. Sooner or later someone in the Protectors is going to wise up, and Muire’s going to be in the shit as deep as the rest of us.”
“More,” Daria said over her shoulder. “And yeah. Kaiden’s expressed his concerns. A couple of times.”
Sarcasm dripped from Daria’s voice. Gid snorted. “Have I mentioned lately how I’m glad he’s your brother and not mine?”
Daria shot a dagger-filled look over her shoulder. For a second it was like the good old days, romping through the hidden passages to do a little spying or a little stealing or other cool stuff where people’s lives didn’t depend on their escapades.
The two of them clambered down makeshift steps between sub-level G’s walls and into the space between its floor and H’s ceiling. Daria located the surveillance spot, tagged with a Graves mark, and stepped aside to let Gid do her thing.
“Getting pretty good at the whole ‘finding shit’ deal, Novotny.” Gid slid past Daria and ran her fingertips along the rough seam of the wall until she found the hole drilled through it.
“Even without a map overlay in my head.” Daria leaned against the unfinished wall and turned her face toward Gid. “Cheater.”
Gid grinned. “Not cheating. Efficiency. And technically, the maps aren’t—”
“In your head. I know.”
Daria dragged out the palm device she was forced to use. Gid had the same display open in the corner of her lens monitor—a basic overlay of the entire city, with blips of colored light that marked the locations of the other teams. The tracking blips spread in a neat pattern over the map, just like they should.
Voices crackled faintly in Gid’s ears, but she had the volume most of the way down. The more input she had flowing through her tech and into her brain, the harder it got to concentrate. Daria could hear the same voices through her earbuds. She’d pipe up if anything critical happened. Gid had her own job to do.
The mini-pack Gid carried—a glossy poly in shocking pink which Gid adored all the more because no one else would be caught dead with it—contained the few pieces of tech Gid couldn’t carry around in her head.
The mini camera was no bigger than the tip of Gid’s pinky and sat at the end of a flexible neck. Gid powered it up, pointed it at Daria, and moved her eyes to flick through menu options on her lens monitor.
Two of Daria filled Gid’s vision, the real one leaning against the wall and the image on her monitor. Both of them crossed their arms and frowned at Gid.
“You know you look just like Kaiden when you do that.” Gid flipped the camera’s view to near-transparent while she fed it into the hole in the wall’s seam. Seeing the camera’s rapid movement during placement was a nausea-inducing experience.
Daria sighed. “There has to be a better way.”
“Yeah. Don’t do that, and you won’t look like Kaiden.”
“I meant this. There has to be some way to stop the arrests. The killings. Something we can do to shut it all down permanently.”
“We don’t even know what they’re doing, exactly. Or why. Or who’s running it. Or—”
“I know. I know!”
With the camera in place, Gid turned up its visibility and made some minor adjustments until she had a clear view of sub-level G’s corridor.
“Getting the answers to those questions, that’s part of why we’re doing this, remember?” Gid centered the view on the elevator hub. “It’s not just about keeping people out of Protector custody. It’s about the people we do allow to get caught. The ones we plant.”
“I know the plan.”
“See, now you sound like Kaiden, too. Be a little more surly?”
“Gid.”
“Daria.” Gid tweaked the camera’s angle. “You know, speaking of the volunteer mole troupe—”
“No.”
With the camera set, Gid turned and planted her back against the wall. “I’m wired already. It would make sense.”
Daria was quiet a second before she said, “You’re the only tech geek skinny enough to… to keep my head on straight if I need it.”
Daria started off like she was trying to be all joke-y, but the last few words came out like a weary sigh. She’d been staying with Gid, so Gid knew how much sleep Daria had been getting, and the answer was “not enough.”
Gid slid down the wall and planted her ass on the cold concrete floor, pulled her ponytail over her shoulder, and smoothed it out. Brilliant blue strands shone out through the black. Maybe she’d keep it a while. Just because she liked the blue—the urge for semi-permanent hair color had nothing to do with Daria’s wisecrack about there being no hair stylists in the mainland wilderness. Even though that had been a month ago, and Gid still remembered it.
“OK,” Gid said. “You talked me out of it.”
Daria’s laugh was short. “That was easy.”
“Well, yeah. I didn’t really want to get arrested. And, you know, the last time I attempted to infiltrate something, it didn’t go so well.”
Daria didn’t answer, but her silence was loud. Gid’s skin suddenly felt too thin.
“You saved a lot of people, Daria. It wasn’t your fault.”
“Wasn’t really Alex’s fault, either.”
That brought on a shit-storm of emotional responses strong enough to make Gid’s head ache—her turn not to answer.
Gid concentrated on the image of elevator doors and sub-level corridor that filled her lens monitor. Only a handful of people were coming and going, and they weren’t Protectors.
“Gid.”
“Not talking about that right now. Anyone getting anything?”
Gid knew they weren’t. The hiss of voices in her ears was faint but steady. No one was shouting. Yet.
Daria sighed. She went quiet except for the faint tap of her fingertip against her palm device. “Check in,” she said a second later.
In Gid’s ears, the whisper of voices rose and fell in a steady cadence of responses. The volume was too low for her to make out words, but none of them sounded excited.
Daria shook her head at Gid. “Nothing yet. We must’ve moved faster than the Protectors this time.”
On the other side of the camera, the elevator light flickered. The doors slid open, but only two people got off, and neither wore a gray uniform.
“Huh. Muire’s usually pretty spot-on with these.” Sudden uneasiness tickled in the pit of Gid’s stomach.
“Yeah,” Daria replied. She sounded like she was frowning.
The background voices in Gid’s ears abruptly spiked. Even with the volume cranked down, she could make out enough to tell it was Kaiden. The boy did not do calm well. Or, you know, ever.
“Shit,” Daria whispered. “Oh shit shit shit.”
Gid blinked to shut down the camera and hauled herself off her ass. By the time Daria called where they were going, Gid would have everything packed up and be ready to fly. “Which sector of G?”
Daria was already shaking her head, but in response to Gid’s question she shook it more emphatically.
“Not G. They’re on H.” Her eyes met Gid’s, and as Gid shut down her lens monitor the rest of the way, she noticed how pale Daria had gone.
“Your dad.” Gid spoke the words as the realization hit her, too.
Daria’s fists clenched as she turned and stormed off down the passage, leaving Gid to scramble after her.