Freedom Incorporated Read online

  She peeked inside before taking several rapid steps back, shaking her head. “You must be joking.”

  Dan tensed. I don’t have time for this.“No joke, nowget in.” He waved again, this time with his pistol. “Jennifer, he’s coming.”

  She froze. “How do you know my name?”

  “How do you think I know anything about you?” Dan countered, unwilling to tell her the truth. “Hey, look… I’m here trying to save your life. Do you want to live or do you want to wait for that bounty hunter to shoot you with nanotoxin?”

  Jen eyed him distrustfully. “At this point I think I’m willing to take my chances. Perhaps with the portal.”

  Dan’s anger rose unbidden. He honestly wanted to save this girl’s life but she was making that excruciatinglydifficult. Damn it, if she wants to get herself killed it’s not my fault.Still, he had to admit he hadn’t given her much reason to trust him. It was time to consider how far he was willing to go to protecther. He could’ve placed her under arrest, except he knew the Raven would use the opportunity to close in for the kill. He swallowed hard, disgusted by his options. She has to live.For the sake of his conscience, he knew he had to do everything in his power to keep her alive. It was a selfish act. It had more to do with him than an overbearing goodwill toward humanity.

  So what’re you gonna do, Danny-boy?

  “Wait.” He hesitated for a hundredth of a second before dismantling the last of his inhibitions. “Here.” He used the trigger guard to twirl the pistol around his finger, reversing it so the handle jutted toward her. “If you don’t trust me, take this.”

  Hesitantly she obeyed, reaching out to lace her fingers around the chequered grip of the Colt automatic. It was heavy, much heavier than she’d thought. And cold. She frowned at it in her hands, both alarmed and pacified in the same heartbeat.

  “The safety’s on.” Dan pointed to the catch on the side of the weapon. “If you push it this way,” – he showed her – “that red dot means it’ll firelive roundswhen you pull the trigger.” He flicked the safety back on and nodded at her once, urging her to accept his token of trust.

  “Okay,” she said and looked again at the maintenance shaft.

  “You’ll need both handsfor the shaft.” Dan took it upon himself to help. “Here, like this.” He tugged her jeans away from her body and thrust the 1911 deep into the fabric so that only the handle was visible.

  She half squealed, half gasped. The feeling of icymetal on the other side of her underpants sent a shiver down her spine, but that was secondary to the fear of having the firearm discharge.

  “Well you don’t want to drop it, do you?” Dan asked, secretly calculating how long it would take to grab the pistol if the Raven chose that moment to kick down the door.

  Jen looked pale but bravely faced the dark precipice. She swung one leg over, then the other, finding secure footholds for both of them on the cold metallic ladder. Dan offered a helping hand but she shook him roughly away, preferring to do it alone.

  He felt ridiculous standing in the room with no weapon, especially since the hairs on his neck were standing on end, warning him the Raven was close. Jen lowered herself on the ladder, one steady rung at a time. She was trying not to think how far below the ground might be. The fact that she couldn’t see anything when she looked down didn’t have a calming effect.

  “If you don’t want to end this day full of nanotoxin, I recommend you portal out of here. Both of you. Right now,” Dan said, warning the bewildered onlookers. Doctor and patient both looked ready to wet their pants but they were alert enough to nod understanding. Dan doubted they would take his advice; they were more likely to wait for Elustra security. Poor things.If the Raven set his mind on entering the medical centre, therewaslittle Elustra security could do to stop him. And, perversely, the Raven could kill them legally. The old notion of obstruction-of-justice had evolved. If the Raven chose to, he could slaughter any innocent bystander hindering the legitimate apprehension of a sanctioned target. Dan found the idea disturbing. Bureaucrats,he thought in disgust. They have no idea what their laws have done.

  He swung his legs into the shaft and tested a rung to make sure the ladder could support his weight. Jen was already ten metres down and he hurried to catch up. Soon it was pitch-black. After five metres the sparse light from the doctor’s surgery wasn’t enough to see the rungs; he had to feel for them with his hands. Unconsciously he prised his eyes wide, but he may as well have had them shut for all the good it did.

  He could hear Jen below, though he couldn’t tell how far she was. “Are you okay?”

  “Fucking terrific,” she said irritably. “What kind of stupid question is that?”

  He ignored the acidic sting of her words and replied calmly. “There should be an exit panel on every floor. And some kind of grate or vent between floors.”

  “Yeah? What other useless information are you going to share with me today?” She was understandably pissed, and Dan was the only person at whom she could lash out. Fair enough too, she thought, he was the one who nearly knocked me senseless.

  She was sorely testing Dan’s patience but he bit his lower lip instead of replying in anger. “Just run your fingers along the side and feel for the seam.”

  Silence.

  “You’re joking now, right?” She gripped each rung with a strength that could only come from fear. “If you want to find the damn thing take your own hand off the ladder.”

  “All right. But when I find it you’ll have to climb back up.”

  She calmed down a little. “Okay.”

  Dan ran his fingers down the metal, listening to the squeegee-on-glass sound it made. The shaft was frosty and smooth. Elustra hadn’t designed their environmental system with the comfort of their maintenance personnel in mind. His flesh was already starting to numb, it felt like he was in a freezer. The sun’s warmth never reached the sterile belly of the superstructure, despite the warmth of the mid-September day outside. If only we could turn on the lights, Dan thought. The darkness amplified his discomfort at the cold. He risked looking up and, when he leaned away from the ladder, his adjusting eyes could just make out the slant of light from the medical centre.

  There were voices above now, and they didn’t belong to the doctor or his patient. He froze, listening intently. Security? Maybe the Raven backed away.He held no illusions that he’d broken off the chase, only that he’d chosen a different angle of attack. Maybe he’s not as trigger-happy asI thought.

  With the last of the meagre ambient light, Dan watched a security officer poke his head into the shaft. Without vision-enhancing goggles, he doubted the man could penetrate the blackness. But that sort of specialist equipment wasn’t standard issue and it would probably take several minutes to fetch.

  “You there!” His commanding voice echoed through the shaft. “Come back up here, right now!”

  Not likely.He hoped Jen had the sense to stay quiet as he lowered himself by another rung. He estimated they were three floors below the medical centre and wondered how he’d missed the intervening access points. Maybe the dark is screwing with my sense of distance.

  The fact that he had no idea how far below Jennifer was gave him cause for concern. He fretted that, with any downward step, he might crush her fingers. And that would be fatal.The nanotoxin-laced shards embedded in the soles of his boots would kill her even if she managed to hold onto the ladder. He froze, looked down, and whispered, “Jennifer?”

  “What?” She whispered back, perhaps seven metres below.

  “Nothing. I just wanted to know how far you’d gone.” He descended another rung just as the security officer above vanished.

  There it is. The seam in the metal was unmistakable. “Wait there, I found an exit.” He was still whispering to protect his intentions from the prying ears above.

  Gripping the ladder with all his strength, he swung his left hand back and punched the panel, popping it out with a clang of metal against metal. The light pouring from the hol
e was blinding and he shieldedhiseyes. He’d burst into the weights room of an Elustra gymnasium, much to the astonishment of the three burly men pumping away at the dumbbells.

  Displaying his gymnastic prowess, Dan vaulted into the room and reached back to offer Jen a steadying hand. This time she accepted with an expression Dan decided to interpret as gratitude, but was more likely her relief at exiting the gloomy shaft.

  “Where to now?”

  Dan led the way. “The car park. Below.” He started toward the door.

  “Hey.” The biggest of the three musclebound weightlifters blocked the exit. “You care to explain what you’re doing in my gym?”

  “We’re leaving.” Dan didn’t have time to waste on the spandex-clad weight instructor. “So if you’ll just step aside we’ll be on our way.”

  Spandex arched an eyebrow and peered menacingly at Jen. “Nobody’s allowed in the maintenance shafts, only maintenance personnel.” He clearly believed it was his duty to enforce the rules. “And nobody’s s’posed to come out of ‘em either. You’ll have to wait for security.” He folded his arms and his chiselled features twisted into a bravado smirk. His two students took their cue and lowered their weights, filing behind their leader with sweat-streaked scowls.

  “We don’t have time to wait for security.” Dan reached into Jen’s jeans and drew his Colt. “Stand aside.”

  They hesitated.

  “Please?” Dan undid the safety catch. He knew he’d never fire, but his bluff, combined with his apparent unpredictability, was enough to discourage the weightlifters from trying anything stupid. They were clearly stronger than Dan, but they were also musclebound. Dan could shoot all three of them before they could reach him.

  The weightlifters wisely backed down and Dan slipped past, keeping his muzzle trained on Spandex and Jen safely behind him until they were at a prudent distance. They hurried past change rooms, saunas, and many torturous-looking exercise machines before arriving back at the public walkways. They were on floor 37, which had fewer attractions and was therefore less crowded.

  But that didn’t make Dan feel comfortable.

  “I thought you gave methe gun,” Jen said, a quaver of nervousness in her voice.

  “So I did.” Dan flicked the safety catch to cover the red dot, reversed the pistol, and thrust it back into her hand. “Come on. Walk quickly but don’t run – that’ll attract too much attention.”

  So they walked, briskly. It went against Dan’s natural inclination, but he knew slipping away unseen would be better than shooting his way out. They reached the main escalator belt and heading down. Elustra had arranged the mall so that it never took patrons long to get where they wanted to go, but only if they used the portals. The escalators were free, so Elustra discouraged their use by building them inconveniently out of the way. That, however, worked to Dan’s advantage – there were fewer people about.

  The mall’s main escalator belt was also one of the few areas Elustra had dispensed with their design philosophy of keeping every fourth floor solid. By leaning over the rails, it was possible to see all the way to the top and all the way to the bottom. Elustra had compensated for this apparent lack of safety by installing liquid-glue guns around the rim of every floor. If the sensors detected someone falling, the guns would fire tentacles of warm glue and snare the individual before he or she damaged the plastic garden at the bottom. The glue guns had spoiled several would-be suicides and, after the incidents had reached the media, nobody had tried to suicide in that way since – removing the glue took five days in a hospital solvent bath.

  It took agonising minutes. They made their descent in tense silence. It felt like it would last forever; every time Jen glanced over the rail, the ground looked no closer. Dan was just beginning to hope they’d slip away unnoticed when his plans shattered around him – they were taking the turn on the fifth floor when the Raven spotted them from fifteen floors above.

  The Raven’s analytical mind calculated the risks and decided to seize the opportunity. He lined Jennifer Cameron’s head up in his Redback’s sights, whispered a silent prayer to his omen, depressed the trigger, and was gratified to feel the potent recoil in his palms.

  Dan felt the pellet whiz mere centimetres past his ear.He knew what it was; he didn’t need to hear the Redback’s cough to be sure. Silenced, it barely made more than a puff – not something he expected to hear from a distance.

  “What was that?” Jen heard it too.

  “Death’s mistress.” Dan pointed at the black-clad man above them. Bah! Man? No – beast!“He’s the one that’ll kill you unless you do exactly what I say.”

  Jen’s eyes went wide. A shrill feeling that wasn’t quite fear and wasn’t quite panic infused her. She shifted uneasily, realising she’d totally lost control of the situation – not that she’d had much to start with. She squinted at the distant figure just when another volley of shots whizzed through the air. Then she mimicked Dan and ducked beneath the rail, though the Perspex panelling seemed like scant protection.

  “Come on.” Dan abandoned his plan for stealth and bounded down the escalator, taking two steps at a time. Jen laboured to keep up as they skipped down one, two, and then three stories. Her heart pounded in her chest and her teeth and bronchiales ached the way they always did when she overexerted herself.

  They finally reached the only level of the mall dedicated archaic transportation – the car park. Dan veered wildly to one side, skirting the line of vehicles. With society no longer dependant upon vehicles for transportation, only a few motor companies had survived the paradigm shift. Cars were luxury items to entertain the rich. Spoiled sons and daughters used them to drag in surreptitious locations on stormy nights. Consequently, the cars parked in Elustra’s spacious lot were mostly luxury or sports vehicles. Scrap dealers had long since stripped the older models of everything recyclable and dumped the remainder in landfills – junkyards on Mars were brimming with spare parts because PortaNet made transporting scrap so easy.

  Dan examined each in turn, looking for a car he could use. A ’23 model Toyota Celica MT looked promising. Unfortunately, modern cars were expensive and most owners opted to fit them with microchip disablers. Only drivers from a predetermined list could start the engine. The Celica MT was one of the first models to run on methane gas. Except,Dan noticed,this one has a soybean-oil conversion kit.But as far as the productive lifecycle of a car was concerned, the MT was an old model, so he doubted anybody would’ve bothered installing a disabler.

  He retracted his elbow, feeling safe within his thick coat, and smashed the driver’s window. He quickly disengaged the central locking and said, “Get in.”

  Jen stumbled to obey, brushing the glass pebbles from her seat before sliding in and slamming the door.

  Dan came prepared. He reached into one of his many inside pockets and fumbled for a small black-handled device known amongst thieves as a kick-start. It was barely larger than a thick pen but it emitted a strong electrical field at undulating frequencies and wavelengths. It could bypass the ignition system to start a car; the trick was finding the correct frequency. He waited impatiently with eyes fixed on the escalator, wondering how long before the Raven came streaking into view.

  Jen was wondering the same thing. The shadowy figure she’d glimpsed from fifteen stories away sent shivers down her spine. She wanted a better look at him; something deep within demanded a face for her nightmare.

  The LED on Dan’s kick-start was still flashing red.

  “You are an unauthorised driver,” a non-threatening voice said over the car’s speakers. “I cannot start for you. I have alerted the nearest police department.”

  “Oh shit.” Dan opened his door. “Get out.”

  “What is it?”

  “A disabler. It’s looking for its owner’s microchip,” Dan said, gingerly rubbing his jarred elbow. He’d hurt it breaking into the Celica and a numbness was radiating up to his shoulder, steadily making his right arm useless.

 
; “Come on.” Dan was running full speed down the row of shiny cars. Jen was pale, panting uncontrollably in her attempt to keep up. The adrenaline helped, but it was gone now and she had only determination to keep her going.

  “This one.” Dan kicked the window in.

  It was a ’31 model, built one year after portals had been invented. A spacious family car, it had probably been the top of its line. With sleek curves and fuzzy-logic controlling every system, it was difficult to find something to complain about. I just hope we can start the damn thing,Dan thought desperately.Mandatory microchipping hadn’t come into effect until 2059, so Dan hopedthe owners of such an old car wouldn’t have bothered fitting a disabler.

  He turned on his kick-start and watched the matchstick-like numbers on the display flicker through the range of possible frequency, wavelength and power combinations.

  “Look out!” Jen rasped, pointing at the Raven.

  “I see it.” Hurry up you piece of shit.He gripped the kick-start harder and shook it a little, as though trying to convey to its electronic circuits that they were in a hurry.

  The Raven fired and one of his pellets burst through their windscreen before detonating, showering them with toxic slivers of glass. Dan reflexively closed his eyes and hoped Jen had the sense to do the same. “Careful,” he warned her, “whatever you do, don’tcut yourself on that stuff.”

  Shards had sprinkled everywhere and Jen shook them off her shirt the best she could before reaching into the glove compartment for a tissue. She used it towipe her jeansclean thenmirrored the service for Dan, whogrunted his thanksdespite the desperate flutter in his stomach.

  The Raven was relentless; he halved the distance to their car and steadied his aim a second time.

  “Are you going to use that?” Dan pointed with his spare hand at the 1911 stuffed under Jen’s belt.

  “Here, take it!”

  He felt better as soon as he’d gripped the pistol and he leaned out the window to lay covering fire. It was difficult to aim without looking down the sights but he compensated for the awkward angle and squeezed the trigger. His shots scattered far away from his intended target, but it did make the Raven cautious, he crouched behind a vehicle for cover.