From the Street to the Stars (Andy Nebula: Interstellar Rock Star, Book 1)

Chapter 15: Withdrawal

"Mmmm?" She rolled over, then suddenly sat up and stared at me, her eyes wide and white in the darkness. "Kit?"

"Yes. It's over. You can let me go."

She didn't move. "How can I be sure?" she whispered.

I opened my mouth to say, Don't be silly, you can be sure because I'm telling you—but the words stuck in my throat. I had to swallow hard before I could speak. "I'm sorry, Meta. I'm so sorry." Remembering the names I had called her, I wanted to sink through the floor. "That wasn't me talking—it was the flash."

"You said you'd kill me."

"Meta, it's late, and we've got to get out of here tonight, before Sloan hands us over to Qualls. If you don't untie me, they'll catch me—and they'll put me back on flash again first thing. And then all this will have been for nothing."

She hesitated a moment longer, then grabbed the knife, sliced through the cloth strips tying me to the chair, and stepped back warily, holding her weapon at the ready in case I leaped at her.

I couldn't have leaped from that chair if it had been on fire. Every movement hurt. Very slowly, I straightened my stiffened legs and managed to stand, then hobbled over to the door and turned on the light. I surveyed myself in the cracked mirror—not a pretty sight. Dried blood and spit covered my blotchy face and the front of my torn synthileather shirt. Slowly and painfully I pulled it off, washed as best I could in the sink, then towelled off and limped over to my bag for a clean shirt—simple white cloth this time. Meta watched me, never lowering the knife. When I'd finished, I held out my hand. "I think I should carry that."

For a moment she didn't move; then, abruptly, she held it out to me, hilt-first. I took it. "You were very brave," I said.

"I couldn't let you take that stuff, not after... what I'd seen."

"Would you have actually used the knife on him?" I held it up and turned it so the blade flashed in the light. "Could you do something like that?"

"I—I think I could. To protect a friend." Her mouth quirked. "Anyway, he sure thought I could."

To protect a friend. I thought again of what I had called her, of everything she'd been through because of me. Some friend. Ashamed to look at her, I slid the knife into its sheath and put the sheath on my belt, then closed the bag, picked it up—and stopped, reconsidering. Nothing in it was really important, and I could do without the weight. I opened it again, took out my Andy Nebula credchip, put it in my shirt pocket, and kicked the bag under the bed.

Then I picked up the stringsynth in its worn, black case and slung it on my back. The battered old instrument wasn't worth anything, but it had been with me from the beginning and I didn't want to leave it behind, even though it weighed me down. "Orbital," I said. "Our next trick is getting past Fat Sloan."

"Won't he be asleep?"

"His security systems won't. He doesn't like people coming and going without him knowing. Especially us. We're worth money."

"So how do we get out?"

"I'm not sure yet." I looked at the window, toying with the idea of turning the rest of the sheet into a rope, but thought better of it. The tavern across the street would still be full of people and we didn't want a crowd of witnesses.

So if we couldn't go down—we'd have to go up. "The roof."

I turned off the light, eased the door open, and peered both ways. It was unusually quiet, for Sloan's; nobody arguing or screaming. I slipped out, Meta behind me, and crept to the stairs as silently as the rickety old floor would let me. Dim yellow light shone into the stairwell from the lobby; I wondered if Sloan was down there, overflowing that stool of his.

I wasn't about to go down to find out. Instead, we crept up, step by creaking step. I expected every minute to see Sloan appear at the bottom of the stairs, blocking out the light like an eclipsing moon, but everything remained quiet. Two flights up, the stairs ended in a red metal door with no handle. A single dim glowtube barely lit it.

"Dead end?" Meta glanced down the stairs.

"No," I said. The door might be steel—but its wooden frame looked as rotten as Sloan's heart. "Stand back."

I braced myself against the stair railing and kicked as hard as I could. The door crashed open, splinters flying, and somewhere below us a piercing beep! beep! beep! began. "Oops," I said. I grabbed Meta's hand and we ran out onto the flat, gravel-covered roof, toward the two red railings, curving over the knee-high wooden wall girdling the rooftop, that marked the fire escape leading down into the back alley.

I glanced back as we reached it. Sloan had been in the lobby; he appeared, puffing, in the shattered doorway, illegal slugthrower in his hand. He raised it. "Stop!" he shouted.

"I don't think so," I yelled back.

The slugthrower cracked and spat fire, and a large chunk of the wooden wall exploded in splinters, one of which scored my cheek, bringing a warm trickle of blood. "Next time I won't miss!" Sloan shouted.

"Go!" I told Meta. She grabbed the railings, heaved herself up and over the wall, turned, and started down the ladder on the other side.

He won't really shoot me, I thought. He needs me alive.

Crack! Another slug whined past, so close my insides quivered.

I hope. I grabbed the fire-escape railings, put my foot on top of the wooden wall, pushed myself up—

—and the gun cracked one more time.

Something smashed into my back.

I tumbled forward into empty space.

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