The Trials (The Red Trilogy Book 2) (15 page)

To think I used to live like this all the time, vulnerable without even knowing it.

I eye the traffic, study the windows on both sides of the street, check doorways and alleys as I pass. I evaluate the pedestrians, masked and unmasked, and keep my distance from them when I can. I want to be in uniform, anonymous behind my black visor, linked in to a squad willing and able to back me up. I want the counsel and advice of my handler Delphi.

Up ahead I see a new hazard: scaffolding over the sidewalk that’s holding up an ugly canopy to protect passers-by from an ongoing remodel of the building above. The sidewalk beneath the canopy is gloomy and enclosed. I don’t want to go there, but I make myself do it anyway. The scaffolding squeezes the pedestrian traffic and I wind up trapped behind two older women who’ve just come out of a store. On the street, a gray cargo van rolls slowly alongside the curb, falling so far behind the flow of traffic that a taxi driver lays on the horn. It makes me think of the fake FBI van in the parking garage of the federal courthouse . . . and of the merc whose throat I tore out.

I fade back toward the building, watching the van driver who is watching me through an open window. He’s a big man, muscular, with a military haircut. He’s not wearing a mask, so I get a good look at him. My encyclopedia detects my interest and launches a facial-recognition routine, but it can’t come up with an ID so he gets tagged
unknown
.

My paranoia is more creative, and labels him as an Uther-Fen mercenary.

I cut into a corner drugstore, weave between the aisles, go out a different door that opens onto a cross street where there is no scaffolding, waiting there until the van clears the intersection and moves on.

This street is luminous with late-afternoon light. It glints in rearview mirrors and the reflective faces of street signs, and picks out a flight of small objects suspended above the traffic: microdrones, three of them, hovering six meters or so above the center of the street. They look like aerial seekers, the palm-size helicopter drones the army uses for surveillance in urban environments, equipped with camera eyes, audio pickups, and chemical sensors.

I hear a faint buzz and turn to see another microdrone, this one just high enough above the street that it won’t be
hit by trucks. Looking up, I see even more—gray objects hovering high between the buildings. I try to count them: Seven? Eight?

“More than usual,” a man observes.

I whip around, doing a threat assessment, ascertaining the position of potential enemy, but there’s just the one guy. No high-fashion mask for him; he’s going barefaced. He looks maybe thirty, skinny as a junkie, wearing tight jeans, a tighter shirt, and a lifeless prosthetic arm. He’s gazing up into the blue through the lens of his farsights.

“Since when are any of them usual?”

“Since Coma Day. It’s a whole new world out here.” He brings his gaze back to Earth, looks at me, and gets labeled with the same tag as the other guy:
unknown
. “You’re him, aren’t you?” He gestures with his dead arm. “I was in Bolivia. You got better equipment than I did.”

“The difference a couple years make. Who’s running the drones?”

“Police. Private security. Mediots. General snoops.”

“It’s legal?”

He shrugs. “They’re supposed to stay above the buildings. You know how that goes.”

A tiny green light winks on in the corner of his farsights. He’s recording me. I return the favor, logging an image of his face so my system will know him if we ever meet again. As I walk away, the microdrones retreat ahead of me like a flight of fairies.

Up ahead, I catch sight of the imposing bulk of an armored personnel carrier, rolling through the next intersection surrounded by civilian traffic. It’s an urban APC, with four wheels and four doors, marked with police insignia. So it’s come to this? The police riding in military equipment on a beautiful, peaceful spring day?

I cross the street and jog the next block, walk the one
after that, alternating, but always looking around, evaluating threats. There’s so much going on, so much in motion, cars and pedestrians and drones and bicycles, with uncountable windows and rooftops for snipers to inhabit. I need an AI to track it all.

Calm down
, I think.
Calm down.
Too bad my skullnet doesn’t know that command. The icon glows, but it’s only taking the edge off, because in my profession—my former profession—a healthy fear can be the difference between life and death . . . but this isn’t a healthy fear. If Delphi were with me, she’d adjust the biometrics, but I don’t have a way to do that.

I stop wishing for it when I hear a shot—
bang!
—echoing off the buildings. I scramble for cover, shouldering open the door of a deli. Standing well back behind the window display, I try to guess where the shot came from, where it hit.
Bang!
I flinch as another gunshot rings out—except it’s not a gunshot. Across the street, a pair of overenthusiastic kids helping out on a remodel are hurling old plywood panels into a steel truck bed.

My hands are shaking, but I make myself go outside again. The gray van I saw before is waiting at the curb, hazard lights flashing. The sliding door is ajar. Two muscular men stand on the sidewalk beside it, arguing in Russian. They wear civilian clothes but have military haircuts. Both look up at me. “Hey,” one says, switching to English as the van door slides open wider on remote control.

I don’t stay to find out what he has to say, or what’s inside the van. Uptown traffic is stalled, so I make my escape by cutting in front of the van and then weaving between the cars until I’m in the middle of the street. I scare the shit out of an oncoming bicyclist as I dart in front of him to get to the opposite sidewalk. A block uptown a siren goes off. I look over my shoulder. One of the Russians is in the street,
glaring at me, but his hands are empty. He’s not carrying a weapon. Maybe he’s not Uther-Fen after all. Maybe he’s just a civilian who wants to tell his friends he got to meet the fucking Lion of Black Cross.

The siren is getting louder. The Russian glances uptown, scowls, and retreats, jumping into his van as a police APC like the one I saw before heads our way, lumbering across the intersection under lights and siren. I turn and walk fast for the corner. I want to get around it and out of sight, but the cops have other ideas.

The APC swoops up to the curb in a no-parking zone just ahead of me. Doors open. The cop riding shotgun jumps out, along with two more from the backseat. They head straight for me and I know I’m in trouble again for jaywalking in this town.

The first cop grins at his fellow officers. “I told you it was him. Lieutenant Shelley, sir, it is an honor to meet you—”

I glance back at the van, in time to see it turning the corner.

“—but I need to warn you not to cross the street like that. Tickets for pedestrian violations get issued automatically now, and there’s nothing I can do to help you out.”

“What?”

“You know, street cameras, they ID you with facial recognition and a ticket shows up in your city account if you’re a resident, last known address otherwise.” He sticks out his hand; his name tag says
Sutherland
. “Welcome home.”

Officer Sutherland is carrying a gun, but I estimate the odds of him shooting me are low and I don’t want the NYPD pissed off at me, so I shake his hand and then I shake hands with the other cops, trying not to show how messed up I am.

I think they suspect. Sutherland says, “It must be a shock for you, being in the big city again.”

I ask about the microdrones. “Is it always like this?”

They turn to look at my flock of hovering fairies and as they do, the drones move away, rising higher between the buildings. “Shit,” Officer Sutherland says. “Let me get the meter.”

While he returns to the APC, one of the other cops explains. “All the drones emit IDs, so we can cite their registered owners for harassment, and seize the equipment on a repeat offense.”

But by the time Sutherland is back with the meter, the drones are out of sight. “We’ll log you into the system,” he promises me. “Then our drones can monitor the situation.”

I guess that means it’s only police drones that are going to be pursuing me from now on, but I don’t ask.

They let me go on my way, but I’m done. I need to get off the street.

I start to flag down a cab. Then I get a better idea. A few more blocks will bring me to Elliot Weber’s apartment building. Elliot’s a journalist, and he’s been my friend since before I went in the army—though now that I think about it, his name wasn’t in my phone log. It’s possible he doesn’t want to see me. During our last conversation, he was trying to tell me something important, and I wasn’t listening. We didn’t part on the best of terms.

It would be smart to call ahead, but I don’t.

Maybe he’s not even home.

I get to the lobby, and then I make the call.

He startles me by picking up right away. “Shelley? Where are you?”

“Downstairs.”

“Stay there. I’m coming.”

•   •   •   •

His apartment hasn’t changed much: notes and papers on every horizontal surface; a stack of old tablets; a large
monitor on the wall; a collection of long lenses for a digital SLR I’ve never seen him use. He sprawls on the couch, long and wiry, his tightly curled black hair cut short and his eyes veiled by the tinted lens of his farsights. I stand at the side of the window, studying the windows across the street, and the cars and people below. Looking up, I see a microdrone floating against the pale blue sky.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Elliot tells me, “but this needs to be said up front, so we understand each other. I appreciate your intentions on the First Light mission, but I think what you did was absolutely crazy. And wrong. There was no excuse for it. People
died
.”

Lissa died.

The Uther-Fens we killed? I don’t care about them. They were the enemy, and they were in our way.

Still, after being treated like a hero ever since the pardon, I’m almost relieved to hear a different opinion.

“I’m glad you got off,” Elliot adds.

A gray van rolls slowly down the street, but I’m sure now that the Russian who tried to talk to me wasn’t working for Carl Vanda.

Elliot gets up, walks to the window, looks down at the traffic. “What’s up, Shelley?”

“I walked here and it was crazy.
I
was crazy. I was scared to be out there. I thought I’d get over it if I kept going, but it just got worse.”

“Like a King David thing? A warning from the Red?”

“No.” I try to laugh at myself, but the truth is I feel like I’ve been abandoned. “It hasn’t messed with my head since I got back from First Light. I’m on my own now. I think my character’s been cut from the show.”

“Shelley . . .”

“I sound kind of crazy, don’t I?” The van moves on, nothing suspicious about it. “It’s just PTSD. I’m not the scary
prick behind the black mask anymore, you know? I’m just scared I’m going to run into that guy. But it’s stupid. No one came after me.”

“I hate to break it to you,” Elliot says. “But it’s not stupid. You’ve got enemies. You have to know that.”

I tense as I see someone move behind one of the windows across the street.

“I’ve got neighbors,” Elliot reminds me. “Not all of them are killers.”

“Sorry.” I tell myself there’s nothing outside I need to worry about, but I’m not convinced.

“You want to sit down?” Elliot asks, gesturing at the couch.

No.
I want to watch the street and I want to know what’s going on around me. It occurs to me that Elliot likes to know what’s going on too. That’s what makes him a good journalist. Once he latches on to a subject, it’s hard to get him to let go—and he was interested in me. “Did you find out if there was anyone else like me?” I ask him.

“Like you? Another King David?”

“Yeah. Right before Coma Day, you were telling me you’d already heard a rumor about the Red, that there were soldiers in the linked combat squads who’d been hacked.”

“Oh, okay. I remember that. I was doing a lot of research at the time—the unreliable sort that involves fringe sites and crazy speculation.”

“So was it real? Were there others like me?”

“I don’t know. I never got any names or details, if that’s what you’re asking. But you know what? I’ve got something better. How would you like to meet the film editor who put together the reality shows?”

I turn to him in astonishment. “Is that a hypothetical question?”

“No. I’ve met her. She’s here in the city. I can probably set up a time to see her tomorrow, if you can make it.”

“I can make it. How did she get the contract? Who dictated the script?”

He starts in on an involved explanation of how she came to handle the show, but I get a call on my overlay. It’s an unknown number but it’s got my passcode extension, so it rings through. “Hold on,” I tell Elliot. And with my gaze I accept the call.

“LT?”

“Flynn?” I turn away from the window. “Flynn, is that you? Are you okay?”

“When are you coming back, LT?” She doesn’t sound okay; she sounds like she’s been crying. “’Cause I don’t want to stay here anymore.”

“Where are you, Flynn?”

“In a hotel.”

I’m imagining that some asshole she picked up in a bar has been beating up on her, but then I check myself. This is Flynn. She tries to take after Harvey. If a guy pushed her around, she’d probably gut him. Fuck, maybe she did.

“Flynn, are you alone?”

“Sort of. Sergeant Vasquez is next door.”

“You haven’t been in any fights?”

“No.”

“Okay. You stay out of trouble. I know it’s a hard transition, but it’s going to work out.”

“It’s just . . . I’m scared shitless every time I step outside. I feel like I’m gonna get slammed every time I go around a corner. I hate it here. I hate it.”

“It’s just the first day. It’s going to get better.” I hear her ragged breathing. “Flynn?”

“You’re not coming back, are you?”

“I
am
. I’ll see you in a day or two. It’ll be okay.”