DUALITY /#Wattys 2021

Chapter 6

Ridley peered into the mirror, trying to smooth her tight, unruly curls back. Her tawny hair matched her caramel skin, her light blue eyes making a startling contrast in the weak winter sunlight seeping into the room. 

With Sannah's golden curls and alabaster skin, the baby looked more like her father, Simon, and her grandmother, Alana. Ridley rather liked her own blue eyes with her darker skin, but her baby had definitely inherited the better hair, she thought as she finally gave up trying to smooth it back and slipped her red knit hat over it instead, tucking the flyaways under and out of her face. 

Ridley looked more like her own father, whose ancestry had been half Puerto Rican and half Irish. He had been quite the hunter in his day, and Ridley thought she had inherited his stealth. She would need it if she were going to follow Reb to whomever he'd be reporting to. Although he had helped carry their things and get them settled at Rachel's, she still didn't trust him.

Inari had a transport lined up to take them to a hiding place with other Neighbors in another state. She'd come back to find Ridley, Alana, and the baby gone, and panicked, thinking they'd been arrested already. She'd run to Reb's and he had sent her to Rachel's. All had agreed it was better to leave under cover of darkness if at all possible.

Ridley had other ideas. She'd decided to send her mother and Sannah on ahead, because Inari had lined up the hiding place and she trusted her, but Reb, she wanted to know more about. As far as Ridley knew, he didn't know where Inari was taking them. But he was a spy, and Ridley hadn't known that, either.

She needed to know who he was working for. If it were the Guild, or if it were either of the other two global superpowers, Zaibatsu or the Koalition,  they'd need to move somewhere else. She couldn't risk the welfare of the Neighbors who were sheltering them.

Reb was going to confer with whoever he was working for, so there was only one way to find out who that really was: Follow him. She imagined he'd head right into Midgarde, straight to the Guildhall. If he did, she knew she could never trust him again.

If he were working for an actual country instead of a corporation, maybe they could talk.

Only a day with her baby and she had to leave again. The child probably thought Alana was her mother. Ridley drew her hood up over her bright red hat and cinched it tight around her face. Now to practice all Reb had taught them about how to follow a fellow. She bet he'd never imagined Ridley would use it to follow him.

At least this trip ought to be safe. It was cold enough to cover her face in a winter scarf. That wasn't really allowed, due to laws that forbade anyone to cover their faces, but Ridley would do it anyway, especially if Reb traveled through some heavily patrolled place like the train station—which he probably would, if he were working for the Guild. Security and the Guild Private Police didn't usually bother people wearing winter wraps when it was this cold out.

She walked into Rachel's one bedroom, where her mother was packing diapers she'd just washed and dried into a diaper bag for wherever they'd be going tonight. Rachel was due at work in town and couldn't stay home; Sannah would spend the day with Alana, who planned to sleep as much as she could, then be ready to leave at a moment's notice. Rachel had a large cellar with a hidden closet; Alana and the baby should be safe.

Reb, she knew, would likely not leave right away. The trains only ran out here twice a day: once in the morning to take day shift to work and bring night shift home, and vice versa. They'd missed the morning run, so she'd taken the opportunity to catch up on her own sleep. With a plot like the one he'd shown her, she knew he wouldn't rely on any communication device to confer with whoever had hired him.