Always/Never

Chapter 2 / Sidekick Code

My head flashed with a headache, and my limbs were fuzzy, as if disconnected from the socket. As it turned out, the ceiling was rather comforting to stare at.

Tiles crossed and doubled in my fragmented vision. The corners smudged with a darker shade of black, speckled with raised white dots emulating goosebumps. Strips of light placed above each cubicle dimmed, leaving trails that chased each other across my eyelids when I blinked. My temples ached to a drumbeat, but I was used to that.

I lay there for a while, counting the lightbulbs in groups of five each, waiting for the electricity to stop crackling in my ears.

Something prodded at my awareness. A pinch at the back of my neck. There was a certain connection to my power from the spinal cord, I figured. Some kinship between pathways, gates, systems. It fizzled around me in pulses. I nudged back at the Oort cloud of technology and reestablished the pinprick connection to the monitors.

The centre one chirred. A message appeared on the overlay.

Files received. Files received. Files—

It repeated. Always the same two words. Twenty-six times.

I knew it would work.

If June listened to me, she would have figured out that I already finished step one of my plan. I had scoped out Havens' local banks and companies, targeting the ones that shared the same system to transfer funds.

Twenty-six transactions completed. Which amounted to a little less than thirteen cents of skimmed interest, but it would accumulate.

I gave the system the command to erase any trace of Dianne. Stood, grabbed the key card so Tandem could shred it, and staggered to my feet. The breathable material of my suit clung to my arms, extending to thin gloves that held a host of my inventions inside of the v-shaped cuffs. Extending a tiny laser in the shape and size of a pen, its faint blue light sliced through the cords. I reached for the metal band beneath it, an auto-knitter made from a coil of silver. Thread looped within the cage and caught onto the charred threads, repairing the holes in the fabric of my pants and replacing them with a patch of matte black.

Once I'd gotten to my feet, I sighed. Checked the cameras. Still out of commission, which was a good sign.

The system politely informed me June was with her handler. His phone's calendar had a meeting scheduled. Heat gathered in my chest like coal burning. That was where she'd gone?

Gideon Parkland can seriously get a life. If one thing was certain, she'd never allow herself to be late. He didn't tolerate it.

He'd also, judging by the outside road cameras, called sanitation.

Ridiculous.

Sanitation was also under the direction of handlers like Gideon, usually heroes of any class except a fighter. It was their job to restore battle sites to their previous condition, cutting into the money the hero received, of course. Their lime green suits moved in unison up the elevator as I dodged from the room.

It seemed like overkill for a little drywall.

I crouched as I made my way to the fire exit. Scaling the building was an option, if a little too bold for my plan of escape. Plus, some of the business-casual suits were still camped outside, as if this whole thing was an event, a sort of new-age birdwatching. And so trucks filled with families parked across the curb, gazing out at the aftermath, their phones attuned to Cape's app for their handler news, either lamenting they'd missed June, or waiting to see what minor heroes showed up to deal with the civilians.

I cleared two flights before a door above me snapped open. Ducking into the relative safety of the cubicles, I made a semicircle to watch sanitation work. Music plugged into an old phone leaked the sound from someone's headphones. A glucose monitor flashed with numbers. Another's exercise watch counted heart rate and over seven thousand steps.