Final Days

THIRTEEN

Lakeside, Montana, 30 January 2235

Jeff woke up in the back of the car he’d stolen, now parked behind a bar and grill in Lakeside with his down jacket pulled up over his shoulders. He sneezed loudly, though he’d left the heating turned up full all night. The recycled air tasted stale, humid and disgusting.

Pushing himself upright, he found to his relief that the clothes he’d left draped over the backs of the two front seats had mostly dried out. Wincing at the smell, he dragged on his shirt and trousers, then fumbled to open a door before dragging himself out into painfully bright morning sunlight. The car had expanded to allow him the room he needed to sleep, but upon sensing his exit it hummed and creaked as it reassumed its default configuration. A room in a local motel would have been a lot more comfortable, but it had occurred to Jeff that it might well be the first place the surviving assassin would think of looking for him.

He stepped around to the front of the bar, and glanced up and down the single highway running through the small town. He could see two- and three-storey buildings stretching off in either direction, while bull pines spread up the steep slopes rising immediately beyond the rooftops, reaching towards the wisps of cloud streaking an azure sky. Jeff activated his contacts, and a breakfast menu appeared next to the bar’s entrance.

Jeff listened to his stomach grumble, then noted with some misery that the bar wouldn’t open for another couple of hours.

serace="Times New Roman">Something flashed in the corner of his vision and he saw that he’d finally got a reply from Mitchell Stone. He’d tried to get hold of him a dozen times as he fled in the stolen car, before finally giving up, so he opened the message without hesitation. Through his contacts, Stone’s words were projected as thick black letters floating against the brilliant sky.

Need to talk with you urgently, the message read. Bring Dan to these coordinates, and meet me there.

The coordinates were tagged on to the end of the message, which turned out to be someplace in Sioux Falls, the better part of two thousand kilometres to the east.

Sioux Falls, wondered Jeff. What the hell was in Sioux Falls?

He swallowed, his throat dry, and wondered again if looking to Mitchell for help was the right decision. But there were so many questions Jeff wanted to ask him – so many! How on Earth could he have survived, where Vogel hadn’t? And where had Eliza actually had him taken after he was rushed back home?

In that same moment, Jeff became aware of someone watching him from across the road. It was a middle-aged man, in scuffed trousers and work-shirt, leaning against the wall alongside a fabricator kiosk.

Jeff shut down his UP and focused his gaze on the window of the restaurant, as if still consulting its vanished menu. When he turned back to view the street half a minute later, he saw the man was gone, but a light had come on inside the store adjoining the kiosk.

Glancing down the highway to the east, he felt his heart skip a beat when a police car emerged, low and black and shark-like, from a side road and turned in his direction. Jeff ducked back into the alleyway and pulled open his car door, grabbing up his rucksack before hightailing it around the far end of the building that stood across the alley from the bar. After a minute he heard the sound of wheels crunching over gravel as the police car entered the alley.

Jeff peered cautiously around the corner, in time to see the police car pull up next to his own. A uniformed officer stepped out and walked once around the stolen car, before glancing all about. Jeff ducked back out of sight, praying that he hadn’t been spotted.

Long seconds passed, then he heard the sound of a car door opening and closing, followed again by the sound of tyres rolling over gravel. Jeff stepped back out from hiding in time to see his stolen vehicle, now slaved to the police car, following it back out on to the highway, like a new-born calf trailing its mother.

Jeff let out a long groan and wondered what the hell he was going to do next.

He waited another minute before venturing back out on to the highway, glancing warily in both directions. The shops still seemed mostly deserted, though he could hear tinny music from behind one window as he headed a couple of blocks west, keeping an eye out for the cop car. He recollected seeing a bus station a little further along, and before long found himself standing before a parking area containing a half-dozen unmanned buses gathered around a towering stack ofbiomass bales.

Jeff glanced back towards the highway, wondering about using the car-jacker to steal himself another car, but that carried its own risks. If a cop could track down a stolen ride that easily, they’d have no trouble catching him driving on the interstate once the theft had been reported. Carjacking might seem a viable option down Mexical way, but the roads were much better protected this far north.

Really, he knew that the best thing for him to do would be to ditch his current pair of contacts. Except almost anything he might need to do – make a purchase, call Mitchell, anything that might require money – couldn’t be achieved without access to the funds stored in his Ubiquitous Profile, stored in his contacts; his UP was his bank, ID and means of communication all rolled into one. And even if he did buy and register a new pair, he’d still have to transfer his UP to them before he could use them, and then he’d be right back where he started. Dan’s notion of bootleg contacts, complete with their own fake Ubiquitous Profiles, was starting to make a great deal of sense.

Right now, he either risked using his UP or he walked all the way to Sioux Falls.

Sighing heavily, Jeff stepped towards the nearest bus. Its door rattled open at his approach, the hydraulics wheezing slightly. He sat near the back, hunching himself down low in the seat, and purchased a one-way ticket that would take him all the way. He pictured alarms already strobing red in some secret government facility populated by sober-looking men and women dedicated to his immediate demise.

The vehicle was freezing cold, and he wrapped himself tighter in his down jacket. He entertained a brief fantasy of jumping back off, then making his way back to the cabin and the tool-shed to retrieve the contacts containing the stolen database, but a saner part of him knew it would be the best way to wind up dead. And, besides, they’d almost certainly have discovered the safe where he’d hidden them by now.

He pulled the hood of his jacket over his face and rested his head against the cold glass. He then only realized he’d fallen asleep when the bus rumbled into life, bouncing gently as it pulled out on to the highway to follow its pre-programmed route. He coughed and sneezed, and looked around, noticing that he was still the only passenger.

Jeff rode the same bus all the way back to Missoula, passing through several small towns along the way. By now it was picking up and dropping off an endless succession of passengers. A couple of hours later, he disembarked and grabbed a seat on an interstate hopper that flew him over lakes, hills and towns before depositing him on a landing pad just outside the Sioux Falls city limits. It was now nearly seven hours since he’d woken up in the back of the stolen car, and he felt tired, scared and dirty. However, at least he had managed to grab some breakfast from an autocafé during a scheduled stopover.

Jeff let his contacts guide him towards Mitchell’s coordinates, which ominously enough indicated somewhere inside a huge cemetery sprawling across the grassy lower slopes on the far side of town. As he walked along neatly mown paths laid out between the rows of headstones, his contacts identified the coordinates by means of a giant cartoon arrow hovering straightad and pointing downwards. Before long Jeff came to a small fountain, ringed by wooden benches. The arrow remained directly overhead, but there was no sign of anyone else around.

Nearly twenty minutes had passed before he spotted a lone figure making straight towards him down an alternative path, the newcomer’s face largely obscured under the broad hood of a hunting jacket. As he came closer, one grizzled hand reached up to pull the hood back, and Jeff saw that it was Mitchell – looking just as bruised and battered as he himself felt. He swallowed hard, more relieved to recognize the man than he was prepared to admit even to himself.

‘I’ve got to be honest,’ Jeff began, ‘there’s a part of me that’s not sure if you’ve really come here to help me or . . . or to kill me.’

Mitchell regarded him with unwavering pale-blue eyes. ‘Why would I do that?’

‘I’ve learned to become paranoid over the past couple of days.’ Jeff glanced around. ‘Why here? Why a cemetery, for God’s sake?’

Mitchell shrugged. ‘There’s good all-round visibility, and not much in the way of public surveillance. If anyone comes looking for us, we’ll easily see them first.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s Dan?’

‘He . . . Dan’s dead.’

‘Dead?’ Mitchell’s gaze became suspicious. ‘How?’

‘There were people trying to kill us.’

The frown on Mitchell’s face deepened. ‘I don’t understand.’

Jeff quickly explained the events of the last few days. When he got to Lucy’s death, Mitchell closed his eyes and inhaled loudly.

‘And all of this made you think I might want to kill you?’ he asked, opening his eyes again.

‘You’re still part of ASI. And we stole those files.’

‘Jesus!’ Mitchell clasped his head in a gesture of despair. ‘Who the hell do you think got Lucy access to the security deck in the first place?’

‘I don’t know. I guess I assumed she and Farad found some way of hacking it remotely.’

‘We had a thing together,’ Mitchell replied. ‘Me and Lucy. I guess you didn’t know.’

At first, Jeff couldn’t think what to say. ‘I . . . didn’t,’ he finally stammered.

‘She knew I was sympathetic, and I helped her out. She took a big chance through confiding in me, but I knew how badly things were being run. So I gave her my access privileges – it seemed the right thing to do.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Jeff, his face flushing with embarrassment. ‘You didn’t say anything when I told you Lucy had . . .’ He paused as he remembered the look on Mitchell’s face when he had told him.

‘It’s not the first time I’ve lost someone close to me.’ Mitchell put a hand on Jeff’s shoulder. ‘Look, you’re not the only one on the run. They were planning to take me apart just so they could figure out what happened to me in that pit, and they were very clear about me not being expected to survive the experience. That’s why I contacted you. I badly need your help.’

‘Of course. But you still haven’t told me what exactly happened to you.’

‘When was the last time we spoke to each other, Jeff?’

‘You mean before I met you here?’ Mitchell nodded. ‘I guess . . . back at Tau Ceti, just before we set off for Site 17.’

‘And when was that?’

‘Several weeks ago now.’

‘What would you say if I told you it’s been a lot longer than that for me? More like the better part of a decade?’

Jeff stared at him, clearly perplexed. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘I’ve got a lot to explain once we have the chance.’ Mitchell glanced around. ‘But first we have to do something about your contacts.’ He pulled a foil blister-pack out of a pocket. ‘These are fresh ones, registered with false UPs.’

Jeff stared at the blister-pack. ‘How did you get hold of them?’

‘I worked in security for fifteen years, Jeff, so I know a lot of things you don’t. Now take out your own contacts, before your friends with the guns catch up with us.’

Jeff hesitated, then reached up and delicately pinched the contact out of one eye, dropping it into the palm of his right hand before repeating the operation with his other eye. He then fished out a plastic case with his other hand, and carefully placed the devices inside.

‘You did remember to deactivate your UP before you took them out, right?’

Jeff nodded.

‘Hold on to them,’ advised Mitchell. ‘You might need them later.’

Jeff accepted the blister-pack from Mitchell and popped one of the bubbles open, dipping one finger in to lift out a contact. He leaned his head back and dropped it on to one eye.

‘I’m surrised they haven’t caught up with us already,’ Jeff remarked as he opened the second blister.

‘Trust me, they won’t be far behind. But as long as we don’t use our own UPs for now, it should be a lot easier to stay out of sight.’

Jeff dropped the second contact into position, and blinked a couple of times. A manufacturer’s logo appeared briefly in the lower right of his vision, before fading to nothing.

Instead of asking him to register his current UP, the new contacts informed him that his name was Eric Waites, and he was a native of Connecticut. As info-bubbles popped up here and there, he discovered that Eric possessed a big enough bank balance to keep himself comfortable for at least a couple of weeks.

‘Okay,’ said Mitchell, ‘let’s start walking. The sooner we get out of here, the better. How did you find your way here, exactly?’

‘I had to pay for a bus ticket.’ As they rounded a hedge, Jeff glanced ahead and spotted another exit from the cemetery, not too far ahead.

Mitchell eyed him sharply. ‘Didn’t you tell me you stole a car?’

‘Yeah, to get away from the cabin. But it was just sheer dumb luck I didn’t get caught once they managed to track it down.’

‘Buying a bus ticket made you just as easy to find,’ Mitchell said reproachfully.

‘To hell with that,’ said Jeff, feeling irritated. ‘I’m here now, so the most important thing to worry about is getting back to Montana and retrieving that database.’

‘You’re kidding.’ Mitchell raised an eyebrow. ‘Unless I heard you wrong, you went to hide out in a cabin that you owned under your own name. Could you have made it any easier for them to find you?’

Jeff felt his face burning. ‘I guess I hadn’t thought of it that way.’

Mitchell gestured dismissively. ‘Well, you can forget about going back there. My guess is they’ll have the whole area well covered, in case you try to do exactly that.’

They were almost at the cemetery gates now, Jeff noticed. ‘Then what the hell do we do? What’s the point in even meeting like this if we’re just going to do nothing?’

‘You at least want to stay alive, don’t you? What’s the point of charging back up that mountain, the two of us against the whole ASI? How do you think that would pan out, seeing they’re already hunting you?’

He was right, Jeff realized; but even worse was admitting to himself that Lucy and Dan’s hard work stealing the Tau Ceti databases might well have been for nothing. He stood there, feeling utterly impotent, and for a moment saw himself as Mitchell mus see him: idealistic, naive and foolhardy.

‘The best thing we can do right now,’ Mitchell continued, ‘is just keep ourselves alive. Doesn’t anyone else have a copy of that database?’

Of course. It was something he’d actually forgotten for a moment. ‘Farad . . . Farad has a copy, but none of us had heard from him. I guess I’ve been assuming he was dead too.’

‘But you don’t know for sure?’

Jeff merely shook his head.

‘Then don’t make too many assumptions, okay? You’ll not prove anything if you wind up dead yourself.’

‘So what now?’

‘Now we get ourselves to the Moon, preferably before the first of the growths makes an appearance here. Are you with me on that?’

‘Yes, I . . . guess.’

‘Good.’ Mitchell turned to him just by the gate. ‘But, before we do that, there’s something I need you to do for me. You used to work for Arcorex, didn’t you? Down Omaha way?’

‘Sure.’ Jeff nodded. ‘That’s where they always take the Founder artefacts, after they arrive. Why?’

‘Do you still have clearance? Can you still get inside there?’

Jeff shrugged, looking bewildered. ‘I don’t know, maybe . . . unless it’s been revoked. I wouldn’t know until I tried, but I haven’t been there in a couple of years.’

‘Good.’ Mitchell chewed his lower lip for a moment, then nodded as if coming to a decision. ‘That’s where we’re going next.’

‘Arcorex? What in God’s name could you need from Arcorex?’ Jeff demanded. ‘First you won’t help me recover those files, then you tell me you want us to go to the Moon, and now you want to take a detour via Omaha?’

Mitchell let out a heavy sigh. ‘I swear I’ll explain everything to you on the way. Until then, I just need you to trust me. It’ll all become clear by the time we get there, I promise you.’

Jeff gave a strangled laugh. ‘Maybe you should just tell me now. Why Arcorex?’

‘You sound like you don’t trust me.’

Jeff let his hands flap against his sides, in a gesture of helplessness. ‘I don’t know who to trust, Mitch. I never thought I’d . . .’

‘Screw up this badly?’

Jeff glared at him, his fists bunching.

‘Look,’ said Mitchell, ‘I swear, we’ll talk on the way.’

‘It’s going to have to be a really good explanation.’

‘It is.’

‘All right.’ Jeff managed to push his anger and frustration back down into the same place he’d been keeping them bottled up for the past few days. ‘But I’ve got a condition of my own.’

‘What?’

‘Olivia.’

‘Your ex-wife?’ Mitchell shook his head, clearly confused. ‘What about her?’

‘When we head to the Moon, she’s coming with us.’

Mitchell gaped at him, his mouth hanging open. ‘Jeff—’

‘No.’ The muscles in Jeff’s jaw tightened. ‘That’s not up for negotiation – not if you want me to get you inside Arcorex.’

Mitchell sighed again. ‘It’s going to complicate things, a lot.’

‘Even so.’

Mitchell shook his head wearily. ‘Fine.’ He led Jeff out on to the street. ‘We’ll fetch Olivia, but right now I’ve got a ride waiting for us.’ He pointed to a van with a silver finish parked on the kerb.

‘Tell me what’s in Arcorex,’ Jeff demanded.

‘Somebody we need to rescue.’

‘It’s not a prison, Mitch. They don’t keep people locked up there.’

Mitchell grinned, as if at a private joke. ‘You’re wrong. Somebody’s been held there ever since the incident at Site 17, and we’re going to bust him out.’ Mitchell stepped up to the van, slapping one hand on its ID plate as Jeff stared after him. The door made a clunking sound as it unlocked.

Mitchell looked over at him. ‘Get in the van, will you?’

‘What happened to you in that pit, Mitch?’

Mitchell climbed inside and touched the dashboard, a preprogrammed route springing up in response. Jeff shook his head, and went to get in on the other side.

‘I’ll tell you,’ Mitchell replied, as the van pulled away from the kerb. ‘But I’m wrning you, it’s going to take a lot of explaining.’