Passion Model (16 page)

The four of us left the Lovehut at street level and hopped the pedtread without a backward glance. If Adar’s secbots had figured out our path, they were being remarkably discreet about following it. Or so I thought, until the pedtread slowed, then stopped with a slight jerk.

System spoke with neutral calmness from the row of speakers set into the buildings across from us. “All Newcitizens prepare for random retscan in accordance with statue 1241624. Repeat. All Newcitizens prepare for retscan in accordance with statute 1241624.”

“Census update,” Eddie muttered. “Clever.”

As much as people didn’t like being stopped on their way to debauchery and decadence, the grumbling was minor. Taking census was a common, if annoying, part of regular life in Newcity. Without it, the marketers would’ve no idea just what brand of toothpaste to tempt you with, or what color thong you might prefer. People have grown so used to their personal preferences being recorded, I’m not really sure what we’d do if we had to actually remember them for ourselves.

Behind us, the crowd on the pedtread had obediently, one by one, stepped up to the retscan units, blinked against the red beam, and returned to their spots.

“Does he think we’re idiots?” I said aloud as we stepped off the pedtread. “That we’ll just step up to the retscan and let ourselves be found?”

“Why not?” Declan asked. “They did.”

He was right, of course, and not for the first time I wondered about giving so much power to one family. But then, I thought as I followed Declan, we hadn’t given the power to the Adar family. They’d just taken it.

It appeared Howard Adar had more than just his secbots looking for us. From the line of hovercraft in the street came ten or a dozen blue-uniformed Ops. With a sinking heart, I recognized several from my unit.

“RBRTA 12381965 and TMMY 19601238,” Eddie muttered. Kaelyn shifted in his arms, and he set her down.

She clung to my legs, and I realized how terrified she must be. She hadn’t been outside since I’d bought her from the slave trader. Now, among the crush of people and fleeing for our lives, I was amazed she wasn’t sobbing. I gave her a quick squeeze to reassure her, but her shoulders still trembled. Her wings bunched the back of her light cloak, making her appear hunchbacked.

It’s not the Recreational Intercourse Operatives’ job to take census, and I heard more than one surprised exclamation as the officers mounted the pedtread in search of us.

One reason Eddie and I are such good partners is our ability to guess what the other is thinking. Without saying anything, we each moved to one side of Declan, and took his arm. That meant I had to let go of Kaelyn, but I could still feel her behind me.

“Make way,” Eddie said to the crowd. “Prisoner escort coming through.”

The crowd parted, more surprised murmurs following us as we pushed through the crowd away from the other officers.

We headed for a stopped hovertaxi across the street. Behind us, the shouts started. Eddie and I picked up the pace.

“Where to…ahh, it’s you!”

I don’t believe much in coincidence, which means fate had planned for the driver of this taxi to be the same Nivian who’d helped me twice before.

“Are you the only hovertaxi driver in Newcity?” I asked as we all slid into the back seat.

He shot me a grin that made his scarred face handsome for a moment. “For you, pretty lady, I think so.”

“We need to get to Oldcity,” Eddie said.

The Nivian shook his head but started the craft. I clutched Declan’s hand as it rose into the air. Kaelyn whimpered on my lap, but then peeked out through the window in interest as we took off.

“You got company,” the driver said nonchalantly as the first Op hovercraft rose behind us.

“Outrun him,” Eddie said.

“Man, you just made my day.”

True to his word, the Nivian pulled the accelerator lever all the way. We shot forward, nearly rear-ended a slower moving craft in front of us, then bounced up another five feet to avoid the crash. My stomach lurched to my throat and my fingers made red impressions in Declan’s hand. I closed my eyes.

“It’s all right, my Gemma,” Kaelyn whispered in my ear. I felt the soft touch of her cheek against mine. “We’ll be all right.”

I had to take courage from this child, if I could not take it from myself. I forced my eyes open. “Holy God-of-choice!”

The Nivian had popped the hovertaxi up another twenty feet, and now zoomed not just faster than the other traffic, but above it.

“It’s illegal to hover more than ten feet above street level!” I cried, the words sounding foolish even as I yelled them.

The Nivian laughed and shook his shaved head. “You want to get to Oldcity, you got six hovercraft full of bluesuits behind us, and you care if I’m breaking traffic laws?”

“She doesn’t like to fly.” Eddie leaned across Declan to pat my shoulder. “She’ll be okay. Won’t you, G?”

I couldn’t answer, because at that moment the taxi jerked to the left to head down an alley—the wrong way. In a second, I saw why. We were being chased by not only the R.I. Ops, but also the regular traffic enforcers. Their distinctive yellow and red vehicles fell into line behind us, followed by the blue R.I.O. cruisers.

“Who’d you piss off so bad?” asked the driver.

“My dad.” Declan gave a short laugh.

The Nivian returned the chuckle. “What’d you do, stay out after curfew?”

“Something like that.” Declan slipped his arm around my shoulders and continued to allow me to squeeze his hand nearly blue.

I didn’t think we’d get out of it, I really didn’t. Not with eight hovercruisers behind us and more alerted to our direction. It had been a valiant effort, and my one regret was that I’d involved Eddie and Kaelyn in my adventure.

Never underestimate a Nivian. They are a race of daredevils, adventurers and escape artists. Our driver pushed his rattling hovertaxi to its limits, and he left our pursuers behind like they weren’t even there. I’m not proud to say Newcity law enforcement is much like Howard Adar—not used to being opposed. Peace has its pros and cons. At least it worked in our favor.

He couldn’t take us all the way to Oldcity, of course. Hovertraffic can’t operate outside the dome and its slightly lesser gravity. He took us as far as District 100, though, and refused the credit account number Eddie gave him.

“Nah,” the driver said with a slow grin in my direction. “If you get caught for this deal they’ll just take it away from me. I’ll take something else.”

“Listen, jerk—” Declan began, but the bigger man just held up his hands to stop him.

“Not that, man.” The Nivian looked at me. “I can see she’s your lady. But I’ll take a kiss.”

Declan didn’t like that, either, but we owed the driver something, and his price wasn’t really that high. Besides, I’ll admit to some curiosity. I’d never kissed a Nivian before.

I’m not used to being made to feel small, but in front of this man, I did. His arms were the size of one of my thighs, his chest fully as muscled. His shaved head gleamed in the light shining from inside his hovertaxi.

He ran his fingers along the thin silver line of my scar and gave me a grin that could’ve made my knees weak…if Declan hadn’t been glaring at me. His mouth was surprisingly soft, his lips firm against mine. I hadn’t thought he’d press his luck, not with two men giving him the evil eye, but Nivians aren’t known to back down from anyone.

He took his time with the kiss, never asking too much and never taking more than I was willing to give. It seemed to last a minute and an eternity, his mouth on mine and my hands splayed against his massive chest. Who’d have thought kissing could be so tranquil in the midst of pursuit?

Eddie’s voice broke me away from the embrace. “Damn, G. Quit with the tonsil hockey already and get your ass in gear!”

The Nivian stepped away, large hands outspread in Declan’s direction, to show he’d meant no harm. I felt a little dreamy, a little woozy, and realized he was laughing at me.

“Think about that, pretty lady,” he said. “When you’re heading for the stars. Maybe it’ll help you.”

I didn’t have time to ponder what he said, because in the distance we heard the droning wail of sirens.

Chapter Twelve

Declan and Eddie had the two small bags I’d brought. I grabbed Kaelyn. She pressed her face into my shoulder, hard enough to hurt against my recent wounds, but I didn’t tell her to stop. Fear made her cling to me, and me to her.

Suddenly, I was terrified in a way I’d never been facing even the most frightening situations. I feared losing this inhuman creature I’d come to love as my own child. I feared losing the man I had taken as my lover after so many years alone. I feared losing one of the best friends I’d ever had.

Sheer terror can motivate a person to action, or freeze them solid. I clutched my child, felt the softness of her hair against my face, and thought it would be the last sensation I would ever have. Then my eyes opened, as though someone had tugged the lids, and my gaze met Declan’s. He didn’t pull at me, or yell. He only nodded, once, slowly, as though he’d seen directly inside me and discovered the secrets of my heart.

All at once, I had no trouble moving. With Kaelyn clinging to my neck, I reached with one hand for Declan and the other hand for Eddie. “Two blocks and we’re home free, guys!”

That wasn’t quite true, but close enough. We ran, and if we escaped Newcity because Howard Adar wasn’t used to opposition, I’d forever count my blessings to that effect. We fled through the deserted streets and reached the city’s edge. The line of demarcation is an amazing sight, even in the dark. To untrained eyes, Newcity simply…stops.

Eddie and knew differently, of course, as we’d been assigned terms of duty in Oldcity. We didn’t hesitate, but ran toward the blank, faintly glimmering edge of the anti-UV dome that encloses Newcity from the elements. Declan was on my heels.

“Where’s the door?” he cried.

Eddie swerved just before making contact with the barrier itself. We ran along its edge. This close, the chemical stench of it was enough to make Kaelyn cough and my eyes water.

“Zip,” Eddie gasped out without stopping.

“What?”

I knew what he meant. The dome is constructed from manmade components that reflect the sun and keep the synthetic atmosphere intact inside Newcity. It is, however, impossible to keep the dome completely tied to the earth all the way around its perimeter—another engineering faux pas that had never been fixed. Most Newcitizens don’t know that “real” air and sun sometimes make their way in through small slices in the dome called zips, unless they’ve had the misfortune to smell the air or feel the burn of the sun.

“A zip is a rip in the dome,” I explained quickly, not for the first time glad for my enhanced lung capacity that allowed me to breathe and speak and run at the same time.

“I know what a zip is,” Declan said. “I just didn’t think you would.”

Eddie made a disgusted sound in his throat. “Your pops can’t keep everyone in the dark, Adar. Who do you think gets sent out when there’s a complaint about the dome? Not just techs. Us Ops get sent out too.”

“Shut up and look for a zip,” I snapped, not interested in listening to them spar anymore.

I shifted Kaelyn’s weight. My aching arms weren’t going to hold out much longer. Even with all the mecho functions, my body was wearing down. I needed rest, badly, to heal and repair.

“How do you know there’s a zip along here anywhere?” Declan asked me.

“There’s always zips,” Eddie replied. “Ten years from now, the whole dome’s going to come down on us.”

“Make it more like five.” Declan’s voice was grim.

“Shit.” Eddie paused in his jog to look more closely at the opalescent barrier. “Guess you know something us peons don’t?”

“I think I found one!” I cried. I set Kaelyn down to step up to the dome’s edge.

The barrier is only eighteen inches at its thickest point. Here, in this spot, the smooth surface was marred by a zigzag pattern of glittering specks. A small zip.

“Let me take her,” Declan told me as I hunched down to let Kaelyn climb up on my back.

Her clutching fingers answered for me. “I’ve got her.”

“If she’s too heavy for you…”

I felt her tense against me, and knew I couldn’t deny her the comfort touching me brought her. “I’m okay.”

“Let’s go.” Eddie stepped up to the zip and put his hands against it. “Here goes nothing.”

I followed him. Pain, brief but intense, seared my flesh as I breached the dome. My skin tingled from the dome’s electrical and chemical makeup. It was only eighteen inches thick, but it felt like eighteen feet.

Then we burst through it, Kaelyn and I, and fell to the ground beyond. No smooth concrete here, no plazbrick paths. Ancient, buckled pavement tore my knees and hands as I caught myself before I crushed the girl who clung to me so tightly. Stenchful weeds, gray and hideous, grew in the cracks. The remains of a building, once taller than any Newcity skyscraper crumbled to our left, and to our right, an ancient pedtread loading station loomed out of the dark.

Few people resided this close to the dome wall. There was no benefit in it, and long term proximity caused nausea and headache from the chemicals needed to create the barrier. Several blocks away, lights burned.

“Glad we made it at night.” Eddie rubbed his knees where he’d also scraped them on the jagged pavement. “Have you ever seen the sun?”

Declan brushed off his hands. Of all of us, he’d been the only one to keep his feet. “Earth sun? No.”

Eddie made a face. “Let’s hope you’re out of here before it rises, then. You’ll fry like an artiegg.”

I wouldn’t, and neither would Declan, because of our enhancements. Being mecho did have advantages. Eddie and Kaelyn, however, had no such protection. Their skin, unused to the UV rays the holodome protected Newcitizens against, would redden and blister without appropriate precautions.

I put Kaelyn down to stretch my back and shoulders. She was small and light, but still a burden after more than a few minutes. I worked at my tense muscles with my fingers, knowing I’d have to pick her up again.

She looked around curiously. “Where are we?”

“Oldcity, honey,” I told her. “Hopefully we can find some people here who will help us get Offworld.”

She looked doubtful. “This place stinks.”

It did smell in a way Newcity, with its constant air circulation, didn’t. “That’s just…people, K.”

She looked surprised. “My Gemma doesn’t smell like that.”

“I would if I didn’t take a shower for a few weeks.” I didn’t mention the rampant disease Oldcitizens often suffered, either. Germs all Newcity residents, human or not, had been inoculated against, bred and cultivated freely in Oldcity.

She wrinkled her nose. “Yuck!”

Eddie looked back at the dome barrier, which remained unbroken. “They might not know exactly where we went through, but they’ll be sending Security Ops instead of R.I. Ops in here pretty soon. We have to find shelter and passage out of here.”

Eddie pulled a billed cap from his back pocket and put it on. His wallet, which came out with the cap, he left on the pavement.

“Guess I won’t be needing that anymore.”

Declan made a rough sound in his throat. “When we get where we’re going…”

Eddie turned to stare at him, his blue eyes questioning. “Yeah?”

Declan shrugged and held out his hand, which Eddie took. “I’ll see you get back everything you had. And more. For helping us.”

Eddie shook Declan’s hand, and shot me a grin. “Hell, without G riding shotgun, I couldn’t manage, anyway. Time to move on to brighter pastures. I’ve always wanted to move Offworld.”

“Thanks, man.” I could see how difficult it was for Declan to say such a thing, which made it mean all the more.

Men don’t waste time with mushy sentiments, though, and that brief exchange signaled the end to their bonding. They each grabbed a bag, and I picked up Kaelyn again. We set off down the deserted, decrepit street, and sought a place to hide.

It wasn’t as difficult as it would’ve been in Newcity. Oldcity is a haven of thieves, Earthen and Offworld-bred. There are plenty of places that’ll offer succor to strangers—for the right price. Of course, the people who run them will turn their visitors over to their pursuers for another, higher offer, but for now at least, we had a place to stay.

Newcity credits are useless in Oldcity, which has no automated supply delivery, no viddy, not even any constant source of power. What luxuries the city had reveled in three hundred years ago had been dismantled or destroyed while its sister city grew and flourished with nothing more than eighteen inches to separate them.

“Not used to slumming, eh?” Fostruff, the grizzled man who’d taken the contents of our pockets in payment for a night’s shelter pointed at Declan. “Not you, eh?”

“Food?” Eddie asked rudely. “We paid you enough, old man.”

The man, who was probably only a few years older than me, lifted his hands and backed off. “Yeah, I’ll get your food.”

“Don’t ask what it is,” I told Declan under my breath. “Just…eat it.”

He leaned over to whisper in my ear. “I’m not the naive prude you seem to think I am. I spent some time in Class A survival camps Offworld, Gemma.”

“For fun?” I asked. “Good God-of-choice, why?”

“To prove something to myself.” His answer was serious.

“And did you?”

He brushed his hands along my cheek. “Only that what I was trying to prove really wasn’t that important.”

“I’m sleepy.” Kaelyn nudged her way onto my lap. This ordeal had made her far more affectionate and clingy than she’d been before, or perhaps it was the change in our relationship. I didn’t mind.

I tucked the soft floss of her hair behind her slightly pointed ears and smoothed her jersey. “I think it’s time you’re in bed then, don’t you? We have a long trip ahead of us tomorrow.”

She nodded, then yawned so hugely the sharp points of her teeth showed all in a row. I took her to the back room we’d rented and put her on the pallet. It was clean enough, at any rate, with no sign of vermin. We’d gone to a lot of hostels before settling on this one.

“Sweet dreams, Kiki.” I pulled the covers up to her chin, and she closed her eyes. I kissed her forehead and took in the fresh scent of her for a few moments. Elovenians have a life span approximately twice that of humans, yet they reach maturity about twice as fast. Kaelyn wouldn’t be a child much longer. What that meant for us, I couldn’t know. I only knew that I loved her as much as I could ever have loved a child I could’ve carried in my womb.

With another kiss that made her smile in her sleep, I left her. By the time I returned to the front room, our host had provided several bowls of thick gravy and a platter of some brown sliced something or other that smelled suspiciously like artibeef.

“Don’t ask, remember?” Declan told me as he stabbed a piece with a broken-tined fork.

The Adar family probably dined on meat several times a month, but real beef hasn’t been available to the public for about one hundred years. Oldcity didn’t get the shipments of algae processed into foodstuffs, and it certainly didn’t raise cattle. I took my own advice—I didn’t ask.

Whatever animal it had come from, the meat was surprisingly sweet and tender, with an undertang of wood smoke from being grilled. I had real beef once, just a taste, at Alfie Zoydman’s house. He’d received a package as a gift, and he’d eaten it while taking one of his forever-long soaks in the tub.

Eddie returned from the hall with a piece of crumpled paper scribbled on both sides. He laid it flat on the table while he helped himself to a plate of food. He didn’t even comment as he chewed, but Eddie would eat anything.

He pointed at the crude map on the paper. “We’re here. Closest checkpoint is over here. We got lucky.”

The zip we’d found was units away from the closest official door through the barrier, which worked in our favor. “Still, it won’t take them long.”

“My father commands the entire Newcity Security system.” Declan paused, swallowed, touched the map. “But I don’t think he’ll risk sending more troops than what followed us last night.”

“No?” Eddie asked.

I shook my head, thinking of how much Howard Adar feared the public learning of his son’s nasty secret. “Even he’d have to explain using such large amounts of force somehow. He won’t want to draw undue attention to the chase.”

“So a dozen officers, no more.” Eddie chewed some more, swallowed. “What the hell is this stuff?”

“Don’t ask,” Declan and I said together, and we laughed.

The laughter lifted a weight I hadn’t realized was on my shoulders. We weren’t out of trouble yet, but being able to laugh made things seem much brighter. We had shelter, we had food, and for the moment, we had a chance at escape.

“Fostruff says he can get us in touch with a pair of Annvillian traders who’re heading Offworld tomorrow.” Eddie smoothed the paper to point at another location about twenty blocks from where we were. “Here. He says they’ll be willing to take half payment now and the rest when we get to Annvilla.”

“I can handle the amount when we get to Annvilla,” Declan said. “But what are we going to do about now?”

“We’ll figure it out.” How, I didn’t know, but with my belly full my mind’s attention was turned to other things, like the pain in my muscles. “Didn’t Fostruff say there was a bathroom around here?”

Eddie folded his map and put it in his pocket. “You go ahead. I’m going to get some shut eye. We need to leave just before first light.”

Declan and I stared at each other across the table after Eddie went into the back room. It seemed foolish to be thinking what I was when this was not the time, nor the place, but the heart rules the mind, not the other way around.

“Come with me?” I asked, and held out my hand, and he took it with no hesitation.

“Anywhere,” Declan said.

What Fostruff had called a bathroom was little more than a closet with dripping, stained sink, toilet and a narrow but deep plazglass bathtub standing on rusted metal legs above a glowing brazier. He had promised hot water, though, which was a luxury worth every cent we’d paid him, even if the water was synthetic and not real.

The tub was just wide enough to allow Declan and I to sit facing each other. The water came up to our chests, cloaking us in blessed heat kept at temperature by the glowing coals beneath.