Artificial Absolutes (Jane Colt Book 1) (6 page)

Corsair: Done, but with difficulty. No Name nearly stopped me.

Archangel: Are you sure it was them?

Corsair: Who else could it be?

Fuck!
Devin tore out the door. If No Name was involved, the situation was more dangerous than he’d thought. It would take at least five more minutes to reach Dad’s transport and another ten to fly to the seminary, even at top speed.
I should’ve left the second she called. Why the hell didn’t I?

“I’m in the control room.” Jane’s voice came from the slate. “Hey, Devin? Shouldn’t there be watchmen here?”

Devin, still running, swiped his slate to return to the video window. “It’s empty?”

“Yeah, there’s no one.” Jane panned her videophone to show him. Not only were the seats empty, but apart from a handful of indicator lights, all the equipment was shut down. “I feel as though there’s no one else in this entire—”

The doors behind her shot open. The deep blue machine wheeled down the corridor toward her, rapidly approaching with what looked like a gun in its robotic claw, the wide barrel aimed at her.

Jane whirled and screamed. The panic surged back.

“Jane!” Devin yelled at her through the videophone, which she clutched tighter than she had the bar under the elevator. “Jane,
run
!”

Jane bolted out of the control room and down the corridor perpendicular to the one she’d seen the machine in.

“Zigzag, and make it random!”

She didn’t question him. She ran left diagonally, then abruptly switched right, haphazardly making her way down the corridor. The building must have been empty, or else somebody should have heard her bang up against the walls.

An electric blast hit the wall near her head. She yelped. “What do I do?”

“Find the stairs,” Devin said. “And when you do, go up.”

“Up?”

“The thing’s on wheels!”

Jane reached an intersection, turned, realized she was going the wrong way, and doubled back. A blast hit the wall behind her. She swung around a corner.

The door to the stairwell was right ahead. She fought the urge to run straight at it.

Left… Now right… Now left…

Jane tore open the door to the staircase and slammed it shut behind her. A blast hit it.

She ran up the stairs. After a few winding flights, her body faltered. Her heart pounded, and her breaths came in jagged gasps.

A
bang
.
She spun.
The machine had thrown open the door. “It can’t handle stairs, right?”

Four legs extended from the machine’s sides. Its wheels folded into its body, and its head shifted forward from the top to the side. It crawled toward her.

“Devin…” Jane pointed the videophone at it, battling the urge to scream.

“Listen, keep going up until it fires its next blast.” Devin sounded out-of-breath. “Then, run down toward it.”

“
What
?”

“It takes time to recharge, and you’ll be faster down the stairs.”

“But—”

“Do it. And
don’t be predictable
.”

Jane swatted away the urge to ask what the hell he was thinking. She continued up the stairs. Her foot slipped. She caught herself as a blast whizzed over her head.

“
Run down
!”

Jane instinctively obeyed Devin’s voice. She zoomed down the steps, riding a sudden energy as she charged toward the machine.

She jumped off the flight of stairs above it. “
Screw you
!”

She soared over the machine and tumbled to the bottom of the steps. Her body yelled at her with pain, but she shut it up with adrenaline, rocketed down the remaining few flights, and crashed through the exit out into the street.

“
Jane
!”

All Devin could see from his kid sister’s video feed was a jerky succession of blurred images.

Beeeeeeep!

He looked up. The transport he piloted was heading into oncoming traffic. He pulled out of the lane and stopped in midair. “Jane!”

“I… I’m all right!”

The image steadied. Jane was a mess. Her ponytail was in disarray, her cheeks fiery red, and her face covered in sweat. But her terror was gone, and she grinned. “Holy
shit
, bro! I made it!”

Devin collapsed forward in relief. “Where are you?”

“The road by the dorm… what the
hell
was all that?” Jane laughed. She sounded almost maniacal.

“You’re in the street?” The building had been empty. Whoever controlled the machine didn’t want to be seen. It wouldn’t follow her. “Are there people around?”

“Yeah, tons.”

“Good. Go to the nearest police station and—”

“I know
that
. How dumb do you think I am?” The video blurred again as Jane sped down the street. “I’ll call you later. And you
will
tell me how you knew all that stuff about the building.”

Devin started up the transport. “I’ll meet you—”

“I can handle it. Just… go back to your reports or whatever it is you do.”

“Are you sure?”

“I told you, I’m
fine
.” She sounded like her usual self again.

If she wants to take care of herself, I should let her be.
“All right, then.”

“And… um… thanks, Devin. I don’t know… Just… thanks.” Jane hung up.

Devin stared at the slate for a few seconds, wondering how to react. How could she be so calm?

He shook off the vestiges of tension, turned the transport, and flew back to the office.

Jane glanced at the videophone, yearning to call her brother and—and what? What could he possibly do other than coddle her? Her grip on her composure slipped, and the last thing she wanted was for him to see how scared she really was.

Dammit, I’m not a little girl. I shouldn’t need my big brother holding my hand and telling me it’s okay.

She felt herself shaking. She put the videophone in her pocket, ducked into the narrow alley by the dorm, and gripped her arms.
I’m fine. I just need a minute…

A noise. She whirled, expecting to see the machine in the street. All she saw was a handful of students.

The air shook with the roar of engines. An unmarked Barracuda zipped across the sky and disappeared into the bluish-gray atmosphere.

Adam’s in there…

Unable to hold back any longer, Jane put her face in her hands and cried.

Corsair: Every member of Citizen Zero has downloaded the images you sent me.

Archangel: That was fast.

Corsair: We’re fast. No one knows what it is or where it came from.

Archangel: Post the pictures on the Collective’s forum.

Corsair: Okay, but if we couldn’t identify it, they won’t be able to either.

Archangel: Maybe an ex-employee of BD Tech or Ocean Sky will recognize it. It has to have been made by one of those companies.

Corsair: BD Tech and Ocean Sky don’t have ex-employees, but I’ll do it just in case. By the way, I finally got the results you asked for. You’re not going to like them.

Jane fidgeted in her chair, waiting for the police officer to return. He’d kept his face irritatingly deadpan as she told him about the kidnapping. The only things he’d said were “Uh-huh” or “I see” until he’d muttered, “Wait here, Miss Colt,” and left her alone in the small, windowless room.

That was almost an hour ago.
What the hell is taking so long?

The image of Adam, unconscious in the grasp of the machine’s creepy appendages, played on an endless loop in her mind.

Get outta my head!

Looking for a distraction, Jane walked over to the screen on the wall. It displayed a list of apps. She pressed the news icon.

Half the screen showed a blond reporter in front of the Presidential Palace. The other half displayed footage of a clean-cut young man with amber eyes and the kind of face that exuded otherworldly charisma. Topic of discussion: a law student who was making waves in the political world. He was the first person from a Fringe system to gain a coveted internship as President Thean’s assistant.

“… Jonathan King lived on Aurudise-Three before the system was evacuated due to systematic failures in its computer networks that put the population in danger…”

Jane switched the screen back to the list of apps. She couldn’t stand another tale of overcoming adversity to achieve great things. Being a daughter of privilege with nothing but a disappointing career ahead made her detest those kinds of stories. She didn’t need to feel any more inferior at the moment.

She had
seen
Adam—he’d been
right there
. If she’d
done something
, he might be standing beside her at that very moment, telling her why she should forgive the people behind his attack.

I just… ran
.

The machine had turned toward her seconds after she’d burst into Adam’s room. She stared at it, and it seemed to stare back. She fled as it fired a blast. The elevator doors opened, and she’d stupidly gone in, which was how she’d ended up trapped.

If only she’d run into the room instead. If only she’d fought it—damn the consequences. She could have grabbed a chair and smashed it. She could have kicked it until she scrambled its circuits. She could have—