Freedom Incorporated (24 page)

“
Thanks.” Dan
whisked Jen into the cold half of the house; his parents hadn’t
bothered heating it since their children had moved out.

“
Wow, this
place is huge.” Jen marvelled at the sheer size of the place and
chocked on a string of swearwords when she reached the windowed
door at the end of the corridor and peered into a room with a
cathedral ceiling. By the faint sparkle of light, she saw the
nine-metre indoor swimming pool, its surface as smooth as glass
without a breeze to stir the water. “Your parents must be
rich.”

“
Actually,
no.” Dan was rummaging through
the cupboard
in what had been
his childhood bedroom.
“They worked their whole lives to afford the payments on this
place. They only fully repaid their loan a year ago so they’re
still working to afford groceries and electricity.” He found a pair
of jeans, a white t-shirt, a flannelette shirt, and the only pair
of shoes his size in the cupboard
. They
were
an old pair of work boots, still
splattered with paint.
His sister’s stash of
clothes wasn’t very extensive and Jen had to make do with a black
skirt, which Christine had worn while briefly working as a
waitress, and a sleeveless shirt that was two sizes too small.
“You’ll have to go barefoot. Sorry.”

Jen shrugged. “That’s
okay. It’s not the first time.”

“
I’ll go
first. If you want, you can
talk to my
parents.”

She declined, “Thanks,
but I wouldn’t know what to say. I’ll just stay here.”

“
I won’t be
long.” Dan closed the door and the sound of streaming water soon
filled the hall. He was finished in five minutes and emerged naked
from the waist up, beckoning Jen to follow him into the steamy
bathroom.
W
ell
toned muscles rippled across his chest, upper back and
abdomen
, and
his
exposed flesh ma
de
Jen uncertain
whether
he harboured dishonourable intentions. “Here,” he
said, pressing a nit-comb into her hands, “I need you to brush my
hair.” The comb had
narrow
slits
,
barely enough to fit a single strand of human
hair
. It
would
supposedly remove head lice from an infected person. “I couldn’t
wash it properly with all that glass.”

Jen obediently ran the
comb through his hair while he held his head over the basin. Tiny
flecks of clear quartz chimed against the porcelain and vanished
down the drain. She’d meticulously covered every inch of his head
three times, with ample overlap, before declaring it
contaminant-free.

“
I’ll be out
with my parents,” Dan said, snatching his shirts. “Just holler when
you’re ready for me to brush yours, okay?”

She nodded and
locked the door after he’d retreated from the room. A mirror
covered one wall of the lavish bathroom and she gazed into her
eyes.
How did I get myself into this
mess?
She ran the water. It was pink, just
as she’d expected. Water was expensive. Unpolluted water was
particularly expensive. Hydro-Tech held a stranglehold on the water
market and charged whatever they saw fit. People had little choice
but to pay the ransom – everybody needed water. They added massive
doses of chemicals to sterilise and disinfect it. Pollution made
most surface water unviable for bathing, let alone drinking. The
pink hue was Hydro-Tech’s designation for bath-grade water. Unless
it was clear, it wasn’t fit for human consumption. Drinking water
underwent additional purification phases to eliminate the toxins
deemed harmful when ingested. A glassful cost about two
Credits.

After
a quick shower, she squeezed into the clothes Dan
had given her, reluctantly going without her bra. Shards had woven
into its fabric, making it too dangerous to wear.
T
he stretched white
material of her shirt provided scant protection from roaming eyes
and she felt horribly exposed. She was almost too embarrassed to
call
for
Dan
’s
help, but
doubted she could untangle her knotty hair alone. When she finally
work
ed
up the nerve,
she self-consciously folded her arms across her chest.

“
I’ll find you
something else to wear,” Dan said awkwardly and left to poke around
for something more decent. He found another flannelette shirt. It
was far too big for Jen, but it was definitely an improvement.
“Here, put this on.”

She slipped into the
oversized shirt. Oversized was just the way she liked it. Then she
dutifully let him attack her hair with the nit-comb, wincing with
every stroke. Jen had a particularly sensitive scalp and the
jerking action of Dan’s inexperienced combing sent an aching
numbness to the back of her skull. “Ouch! Watch it.”

“
Sorry.” Dan
combed more gently around
her
bump
and swore under his breath as he
battled the more frustrating knots. “Done,” he finally
pronounced.

Jen looked at her strait,
wet hair in the mirror and gently massaged her bruise.

“
We should go
soon. I don’t want to linger and get my parents into
trouble.”

Jen nodded. “Sounds fair.
So what do we do now?”

“
Where do you
hide your microchips?”

She dug into her bundle
of clothes on the floor and extricated her chip
selector.

“
You got any
in there you’ve never used before?” Dan eyed it
hopefully.

She slowly shook her
head. “The best I can do is one that I haven’t used for, uh, six
weeks or so.”

“
Okay, that’ll
have to do. Use that one. We’ll portal to a station near your
apartment, something that gets heavy traffic, like a supermarket or
mall.” He had a distant look to his eyes and Jen wondered what he
was thinking. “We’ll have to approach carefully and you’ll have to
do exactly what I say, agreed?”

She nodded.

“
Good. Let’s
go.”

They said a
brief farewell to Mr and Mrs Sutherland over what turned out to be
a heavenly cup of coffee. Dan had to promise to stay in touch and
the Sutherlands pestered Jen into accepting a tour of
their
sleepy little town
when she had
some
time to whittle away. Hearty thanks and a quick flash later,
they were standing in the Tweed Heads central mall, a few short
kilometres from Jen’s apartment.

“
I live over
there,” she said once they’d left the lethargic bustle of tired
workers who were scrounging
for
something quick but not necessarily nutritious
they could nuke in a microwave. “On Boundary
S
treet.” It was the northernmost tip
of New South Wales, the street dividing Tweed Heads from
Coolangatta in southern Queensland. They technically formed a
single city – the councils merged in the summer of ’35 – but
neither side had been willing to lose their name, nor their
identity, so Boundary
S
treet still held some significance for the local
population.

Dan pressed his lips
together, annoyed with the humidity after spending only a few
minutes in the heavy atmosphere. It always made him feel sticky and
irritable. “All right, let’s go.” They strolled through the centre
of town, not looking all that different from any number of
love-struck couples that were on an evening walk.

A gaggle of seagulls
squawked overhead just as Dan caught a whiff of ocean breeze. It
revived him, bringing an unusual sense of calm that he couldn’t
explain. It had a similar effect on Jen. She walked with more
spring in her stride and stood with a confident posture.

“
Tell me the
second you see anything unusual,” Dan ordered when they turned onto
her street and began climbing the hill. “Which one’s your
apartment? Can you see it from here?”

“
It’s on the
other side of the street. You’re in Queensland now.” Jen motioned
with a jerk of her chin. “Can you see that two-story townhouse? The
blue one with the old brick retaining wall?”

“
Bagged?”

“
Yeah, that’s
it.”

Dan slowed
their pace to a crawl, holding Jen back with a light touch to her
forearm
.
T
hen he made
pretence
of doing up his shoelace,
giving himself a
decent
opportunity to scrutinise the street. He scanned for anything
and everything: the rustle of leaves in the nature strip, the puff
of a cigarette from a man smoking on his balcony, anything that
could spell danger and possible death by a glass pellet. “Is there
another way in?”

“
There could
be, if you’re willing to climb. We could circle around the back and
shimmy up an embankment.” She’d done it
once
before but it hadn’t been
easy.
At the time, creeping in the back had
seemed the best way not to disturb her friends. It hadn’t worked,
but that was beside the point.

“
I’m not sure
yet.” Dan lapsed into survival mode: sceptical of everything,
believing only what his eyes
could
confirm
.
It’s
possible the Raven’s already inside, waiting for
us.
It wasn’t a pleasant thought and he
didn’t want to burden Jen with the
possibility
that her friend Samantha
might already be a smouldering mound of decaying flesh. He kept
going, urging her to keep up. Years of training boiled to the
surface, activating triggers in his mind that generated automatic
but potentially lethal responses. If an enemy appeared, Dan
wouldn’t need to calculate distances, angles, ranges and rates of
fire – he’d know them already. He also knew the likely survival
rates for the gamut of available options, and he would act
accordingly if someone ambushed them. Of course, it would do him
little good if a hail of gunfire cut him down before he could mount
an effective response. But his heightened senses were searching for
danger.

They went past
the apartment.
At least Jen had the sense
to keep her mouth shut at such a critical point,
Dan thought thankfully. His surveillance continued unabated
and he was preparing to announce the area clear, for the moment
anyway. He knew the Raven could make an entrance at any time. “Keep
going. Lead me around the back.”

She steered him to the
right and they squeezed single file through a tiny alley. It sliced
between two three-story buildings, which Dan presumed had a
magnificent view of ocean sunrises.

“
Through
there,” Jen whispered, pointing into the shrub-cultivated gloom.
“It’s the seventh on the left.”

Dan nodded,
the movement lost in the dark. He saw what she meant by a ‘climb’.
The embankment was easily 12 feet high and practically vertical. He
edged toward the blue-bagged apartment with his eyes, now fully
adjusted to the dark, darting from one likely sniper post to the
next. He was displeased to note there were literally dozens of
perfect nooks for the Raven to hole up in and wait for his target –
Jen – to show her pretty face.
Not if I
have anything to do with it.
He clenched
his jaw, sending a ripple of tension through his neck. He held up a
hand to indicate Jen should stop and pressed an urgent finger to
his lips, demanding silence.
Something’s
wrong.
He waited with his back pressed
against the embankment while he scoured the trees and nearby houses
for trouble. A huddle of rooflines sprawled to the ocean on his
right and it presented the Raven with an endless parade of
possibilities to perch and observe his prey.

Jen inwardly
squirmed, her filthy toes numb despite the warmth of the
subtropics. Prickly blades of grass
dug
into
her bare feet, which the sandy soil
had made gritty.

“
Okay, let’s
go.” Dan stalked forward until they were directly under Jen’s
apartment. Once, a long time ago, it had been a large
townhouse.
But
s
ince its construction, developers had
subdivided the townhouse into three apartments
.
Jen pointed to the top balcony and
whispered, “I live up there.”

Dan ran a hand
across the sheer embankment, relieved to find ample cracks that
would suffice as finger- and toe-holds. Surveying the neighbourhood
with one last piercing gaze, he abandoned the shrubs’ scant cover
and started
scaling the
wall
, surprised by how easy it was. Moments
later they were crouching below a window of the ground floor
apartment. Dan peered inside, somewhat suspicious that the
occupants hadn’t drawn their curtains.
Maybe they
just
enjoy gazing
at
the ocean.
He hoped so.
Or maybe the Raven killed
them.
That was a less pleasant possibility.
He was relieved a moment later to see the tenants in the throes of
a passionate kiss, the husband pressing his wife against an
imitation-alabaster wall while a curious hand worked under her
skirt. Someone had obviously renovated the décor in the
forties.