TWENTY-ONE

Who are you?” Caitlyn kept Razor’s folded shirt wrapped against the wound on her arm. “You walk in like you own this place. The elevator key…”

Down below, at the end of the hallway, away from the agents banging on the door, there’d been an elevator. He’d used a special key to the penthouse floor. A key he’d presented by pretending to pull it from Caitlyn’s ear.

Now he and Caitlyn were in the penthouse office, thirty-five stories above the spartan closet where she’d spent the night. Looking out the window, she recognized the Pavilion, where, until the day before, she’d worked as a maid. Gray sky, with clouds of darker gray sliding past the other buildings. If Caitlyn stared without focusing, it seemed like the buildings themselves were moving and the clouds were stationary. It gave her a brief sense of vertigo.

“Who am I?” He turned to her. “More importantly, who are you?”

Caitlyn looked down at her arm. Razor waited for her answer. When none came, he turned back to the window.

Caitlyn thought about the unmarked vials and the hypodermic needles she’d found in Razor’s hideout. Maybe drugs made Razor so difficult to talk to.

“I don’t go anywhere unless I have at least two ways out. Three is better. I know this building better than the engineers who designed it.”

“What about whoever works here? How can you know they won’t walk in any second?”

“Gone. I keep track of his schedule. Besides, I think the NI has likely locked the place down by now.”

Caitlyn sat back against the armrest of a couch that was part of a sitting area of a formal office, part of the layout of a luxury apartment suite, with hallways leading away from the main area. By the window was a spotting scope on a tripod.

Razor had moved to it and placed his hand on the dark steel. Half turned away from her, he explained. “Remember the couple of minutes I left you alone down there?”

Just before they’d entered the elevator, he had disappeared into a utility room off the hallway in the depths of the building.

Caitlyn nodded.

“I went to the control room and recoded some security cameras to cover our moves in the hallway. I gave us a couple hours. After that, they’ll give up the search.”

“So you’re going to pretend like you own this place until then? How do you know all this? Are you some kind of flashy thief?”

“I may be a lot of things, but I’m not stupid.”

“No, maybe not stupid. But dishonest. And wrong.”

“What does wrong have to do with this?” He cast her a look of scorn. “Influentials live in a perfect world. They have money and security. They own the Industrials, like domesticated dogs. Cattle or sheep to be used and abused. And the Illegals are like wild animals, surviving by sneaking around and taking what we can. You think we’d survive if we were obvious? We’re foxes, and the Influentials are the farmers. Stealing their chickens would be stupid. They can count those. And they’d set the hounds on us if one was gone. But if we can find a way into the chicken house, we can take eggs now and then. So I leave this coop the way it is.”

“Unsecured,” Caitlyn said.

“In and out when I want. No traces I was here.”

Suddenly, a helicopter appeared and hovered at the giant windows.

Caitlyn dropped to the floor.

“Well, that’s not good,” Razor said.

“Then move away from the window.”

“That’s not the problem. These are mirrored windows. The bigger problem is that they’ve brought in a chopper. How big is this search?”

He leaned in to the spotting scope and pointed it at the streets. He studied in silence for nearly a minute before he spoke again. “Enforcers. They’ve got cruisers set up as roadblocks. We’re trapped. All they have to do is flood the building with Enforcers and start from the bottom up…”

A few seconds of silence as he studied the situation longer. “And they’re carrying thermal radar guns. We’re dead.”

“Thermal radar kills?”

“What world did you come from?” Again, half scorn. “Thermal radar can scan heat signatures through walls and doors. Not too difficult to tell what’s human. Which would include us. Only thing we have in our favor is time. They’ll move slow, but eventually they’ll flush us out.”

“What happened to fast and sharp and dangerous and at least two ways out of every situation?”

“You say that like you’re happy to see me in trouble.”

“I’m angry. I didn’t need you to step into my life. I’m here because you got Enforcers involved. I’m here because I was stupid enough to trust that you would take me to a safe place.”

“How about you focus on how we get out of here?” Razor snapped. “Worry later about how the entire world has betrayed you.”

Razor paced back and forth, staring at the chopper. It hadn’t moved from rooftop level. That put it almost directly across from them in the sky, a couple hundred yards away.

“Or better yet,” he said. “Let me take you straight outside—up to the roof so the guys on the chopper can wrap you up and take you away. With Melvin out of the loop, I can keep all the money for myself. I mean, you’re going to get caught anyway. It might as well do me some good.”

“I don’t need your help,” she said. “Do what you should have done last night. Leave me alone.”

“It’s a little late for that. If anybody has a way past thermal radar, I haven’t heard about it. Short of jumping off the building and—”

He cut himself off, spun, and stared at her. He spoke slowly. “They know you can fly.” He nodded emphatically, talking more to himself than to her. “They’re watching the roof because they know you can fly.”

Silence as he processed his own conclusion. “But we don’t hear the chopper. It’s a stealth chopper. Not many around. Why would they have that in operation instead of a regular—”

He moved back to the spotting scope and trained it on the chopper. After thirty seconds, he spoke to her. Now disbelief was written across his face.

“Sniper,” he said. “They’ve got a sniper in there.”

He walked closer to her, repeating it. “Sniper. And a stealth chopper. They want you on the roof. Where they can get a clear shot. What have you done?”

“Nothing,” Caitlyn said. She thought of who she used to be. A girl living securely in the love and protection of a daddy she once adored. That Caitlyn—the old Caitlyn—would have been bewildered here. Close to breaking down. Who she was now had learned that if a daddy could betray and hurt, then there was no one in the world to trust. So you got cold and learned to believe in no one but yourself. Or you let self-pity overwhelm you and you gave up. With a cold smile, she drew upon her anger. She was not going to quit, no matter what. If she quit, there was no one to help her find the willpower to continue.

Razor must have misinterpreted her cold smile.

“If you haven’t done anything, then what do they want from you?” His face was intense. “Tell me. I’m now part of this.”

“Don’t be a part of this. Walk away.”

“They want you bad. They’ve got me on police video rescuing you from agents last night. Melvin’s going to let them know we’re on the run together. If I walk out there, you think they’re going to give me a pat on the shoulder and send me on my way? Not if they’re willing to shoot you on sight. You and me are stuck together. I need to know what you know.”

Caitlyn could not answer. She mutely held the folded shirt across her arm.

He began pacing again. “It’s because you can fly.” He laughed. “What is it? Some military secret you stole? I mean, flying soldiers? Surely that’s pretty valuable.” Suddenly he froze, cocked his head as he looked at her. “That’s not as stupid as it sounds. How do you fly? It’s some kind of trick. Right?”

Caitlyn bit off each word. “Just. Go. Away.”

“Not an option.”

“Then stop asking questions.” Caitlyn should have felt fear. Instead, she was defiant and cold inside. She was a freak. Alone against the world. No choice in how she existed the way she did. No choice even in the fact of her existence. Aloneness was all she knew and understood now. And it would be how she died.

Razor studied her face. “When they step into the room in a few minutes, you plan to just stand and face them and wait for them to start shooting?”

“No. If they make it to that door, that chair is going through a window. With me following it. Remember, one of us can fly.”

He walked away, beyond the office area.

Caitlyn didn’t bother to turn her head to watch. Maybe he was leaving her. Maybe she should just go to the roof and stand and wait for a sniper’s bullet. But no. If this was the end, defiance was all she had left. She would not allow herself to be broken. A race to the roof’s edge to beat the sniper, then out into the sky. Free. If only until the first bullets hit her.

She would never give up.