Freedom Incorporated by Peter Tylee (me reader .txt) 📖

of the building, so unless he added his details to the authorised access list - an impossibility - trying to portal upstairs would probably just trip an alarm. Fortunately, reception was on the fiftieth floor so he didn’t have as many stairs to climb as the previous night. His quadriceps and calves still felt like lead.

With a loose plan in mind, he left the stall and pressed his ear against the disinfectant-smelling bathroom door. He heard a distant hum from somewhere deep in the bowels of the building but nothing from the other side. He circumspectly pushed it open, peering left and right. Nothing looked amiss. Good. His plan relied heavily upon stealth.

He walked casually to the stairwell. It was difficult to look calm when he was an inferno of raw nerves, but discipline paid off and he reached the stairs without anybody asking questions. Seven flights of stairs and an angry set of muscles later, he reached Esteban’s floor. Okay, now what? He drew his Colt and held it up for final inspection. Realising he hadn’t recently tested its accuracy, he cursed his stupidity a dozen times. How could I be so careless? He calmed down when he reasoned that he wouldn’t be more than five metres from his targets when he squeezed the trigger. Besides, he rationalised, I have plenty of rounds to afford a miss or two. Still, it nettled him that he’d missed something so obvious. There was a time when he couldn’t possibly have forgotten something so important, even when stressed.

The lighting was dim on Esteban’s level. Deep shadows stretched across the walls, making things slightly more complicated. He had to focus on every potential hiding spot and reassure himself that nobody was there before declaring each area clear. It was an arduous task, which slowed his progress and frayed his nerves.

He was rounding a corner near that floor’s cluster of portals when he heard someone approach. With the aplomb and confidence of decades of training, he slid into the shadows and vanished from sight, listening to the approaching footsteps. The individual was shuffling, scuffing the carpet as he or she walked. Then, from his vantage in the gloom, Dan watched Adrian Miller approach from the direction of Esteban’s office. He looked heavier than in his photograph, but the facial structure was unmistakable. Hell yes, he’s even wearing the same set of glasses.

The timing couldn’t have worked out better if he’d planned it. Dan checked that nobody else was nearby and stepped from his shadow, Colt raised. “Don’t say a word or you won’t get to drink that beer.”

Adrian froze in shock and nearly dropped everything he was carrying. It hadn’t occurred to him that Esteban was worried for good cause. “Sutherland, listen…”

Dan took a menacing pace forward, silencing him. “Go ahead, just give me an excuse and I’ll end your miserable life. I don’t need all of you alive to get what I want.”

Adrian wisely clamped his jaw around the other words pestering for escape.

“Turn around.” Dan’s tone left no margin for negotiation. “Now walk slowly to the toilets. Any sudden moves and you might start to leak.” They marched to the toilets, Dan buzzing with adrenaline and Adrian pale with eye-widening fear.

Only once Dan had closed and locked the door did the conversation continue. “Put the beers in the sink.” He didn’t want Adrian to have ammunition to throw. “Now turn around and put your hands on the wall.” Dan patted him down and removed the remainder of the beer before declaring him weapon-free. “Going to a party?”

“No,” Adrian replied soberly. He smothered his billowing sense of dread and reasserted his mask of confidence. After all, he was helping to recover Sutherland’s girlfriend, wasn’t he? Didn’t that deserve appreciation? It therefore made sense that he merely needed to convince the man that he was trying to help.

“Where’s Jen?” Dan demanded, steadying his aim toward the centre of Adrian’s forehead.

“She’s twenty feet underground in Baltimore,” Adrian replied, failing to consider how Dan might interpret his words.

Dan blinked, stunned by the traumatic image brought to mind. “You killed her already?”

Adrian emphatically shook his head. “No, no! She’s in an underground building, is what I meant.”

“Is she okay?”

“She’s fine.” Adrian nodded, risking a bullet between the eyes to adjust his glasses. “At least she was two hours ago.” Sometimes he simply didn’t know when it was wise to keep his mouth shut. “I mean, I’m sure she’s still fine, I just haven’t been back for a while.”

“Is she hurt? In any way?”

Adrian thought about the bruises Esteban had left on her breasts. “No, she’s fine. We haven’t touched her, I swear.”

“Take me to see her.” He knew everything would be fine if he could just reach her.

“I can’t,” Adrian replied remorsefully. “The portals only accept member chips.”

The bathroom had an identical décor to the one downstairs. Blue was the punch behind an ocean theme. Wavy tiles reflected the light, resulting in a ghostly shimmer across Dan’s face. It highlighted the deadly black itch in his eyes and an erratic flicker from an overhead fluorescent added a tinge of the surreal to Dan’s threatening stance. He looked like a soulless monster, clad in black and towering over his cringing victim.

Adrian’s voice cracked under the pressure and a trickle of blood escaped from his left nostril. He snivelled. “Look, I’m trying to help.” But the bounty hunter was deaf to his plea. “I’m helping her escape. Look.” He reached for his pocket but Dan jerked his Colt a fraction to regain Adrian’s attention.

“Don’t do that,” Dan warned coolly. “Move like that again and you won’t have a head to consider how shithouse that idea is.”

“Reach into my left pocket,” Adrian implored. “I have Jen’s microchip.”

Dan faltered and said, “Turn around and face the wall again. Hands up high.” He wasn’t stupid enough to risk rummaging through Adrian’s pocket while facing him. “If you’re lying I’m going to shoot you in the knee for whatever stupid prank you’re pulling.”

“I’m not lying,” Adrian assured him, patiently waiting while Dan fumbled near his groin. “It’s deeper.”

Dan thrust his hand in up to his wrist and extracted the device. It was cold. “Okay, back around.” He stepped back two paces to a safe distance, taking his eyes off Adrian for long enough to flip through the identities in the selector. They were Jen’s. “What were you doing with this?”

“I stole it from Esteban,” Adrian said proudly. “I was going to give it to Jen. The portals have no restriction on outbound travellers so she can escape with it. She underground, the building has no doors so I couldn’t just let her out. Hey, I’m on your side.”

Dan unsheathed his knife and twisted the blade to the light, savouring the note of fear in Adrian’s eyes as he pressed the tip to the soft patch under his chin. “You’ll never say that again if you know what’s good for you. You and I will never be on the same side.” He didn’t assign any nobility to Adrian’s selfless act. He didn’t allot him any credit for risking his life to steal Jen’s chip selector. All he could see when he looked at the man was the second person to rape his wife. Urine from this man’s bladder had soaked Katherine’s lungs, and Dan could never forgive or forget a detail like that.

“But I’m…” Adrian frowned, not sure Dan understood what he was trying to say. I’m helping you.

Dan didn’t care and stubbornly refused to accept his assistance. He reversed the knife and turned the serrated edge outward, placing it tenderly against Adrian’s lower eyelid. With the slightest dip to Dan’s wrist, he could tear the lid clear from Adrian’s face.

Adrian squirmed backward until his head was pressing against the cold tiles. He couldn’t understand why Dan was so aggressive toward an ally. It didn’t occur to him that he was seeking retribution for past crimes.

“Nothing would give me more pleasure than to rearrange your face.” Dan tilted his head to one side. “Maybe if I cut off your cheeks you’ll stop dribbling shit.” He was the closest to insanity that he’d ever been. It was in the air; he could smell it and taste it. It hung around him like a sour cloud, obscuring his thoughts and twisting him to its will. And the insanity had a name: Revenge. Every atom in Dan’s body ached to inflict as much damage on Adrian as he’d caused to Katherine. He wanted them all to pay. He wanted them to see that they couldn’t flippantly torture someone and expect to get away with it. Murder victims had husbands, brothers, fathers, or sisters, mothers, and wives who were frequently willing to retaliate with their own round of death and destruction.

“I need something from you.” Dan put more tension on Adrian’s eyelid. Wait, I have to give him hope… “If you cooperate I’ll give you the chance to live. If not, well… you can go under the knife. So? How about it? Do you want plastic surgery? We could see how pretty your smile is without cheeks. I bet you have lovely teeth.”

Adrian fluctuated between looking as pale as plaster and flushing dark red when he suffered successive outbreaks of anxiety. He would’ve nodded if Dan’s serrated knife weren’t resting on his eyelid. “I want to help.” His voice was hoarse. “Just tell me what to do.”

“Good.” Dan retracted his knife. “I need a code to the portal in that underground building.”

“I told you, it won’t help,” Adrian explained hesitantly. “It only admits-”

Dan silenced him with a warning finger. He was still aiming his Colt at Adrian’s forehead. “Not the destination code, the… other code. Long. Forty digits… alpha-number shoelace or something.” He was struggling to remember how Hans had explained it.

“You mean the SAT?” Adrian prompted, trying to be helpful.

“What the fuck is a SAT?”

“The Standard Address Transform, it’s for identifying portals on our routing tables. It’s a forty-digit alphanumeric string.” He snivelled on his trickling nosebleed. “But you can’t do anything with that.”

“I’ll worry about what I can and can’t do with it; you should worry about how helpful you’re being.” Dan’s threat struck home.

This is an exam. Adrian gulped. He’d never been fond of exams. And I need to pass in order to live. He felt a flutter in his stomach when he realised he had no idea of the pass mark, but he rallied himself to be as helpful as possible. “I’d need to go to work to get it. I need my computer.”

“Fine.” Dan was willing to suffer a lot to get the number. It was his gateway to Jen.

“You know, if you let me go I could save you a lot of trouble,” Adrian offered.

“Do you think I’m an idiot?” Dan wagged his pistol to get Adrian moving and scanned the corridor for unfriendlies before ducking to the portals. He didn’t trust Adrian to tell him the number for PortaNet reception, he was more likely to select the Guild and vanish from Dan’s grasp forever. Instead, he ordered Adrian to stand in the tube while he entered the code for the nearby portal station. “Remember, I’ll be right behind you, so if you’re thinking of running you’d better be damn fast.”

Adrian flashed away and Dan jumped inside the white circle, typed in the code, and braced himself for the shift in vision. He raised his Colt and was ready to defend himself if Adrian took advantage of his momentary disorientation to launch an attack. Instead, he found Adrian placidly waiting eight metres away.

“You expected me to run,” Adrian said. “You don’t trust me yet.”

“I’ll never trust you,” Dan replied gruffly. “Come on.