"What's wrong?" Austin asks sleepily.
He doesn't open his eyes or turn towards me. It's the middle of the night, and I've been tossing.
"I just...have to go to the bathroom," I fib as I roll from my side out of bed.
But that's not why I can't sleep. That's not the problem. My real problem is that I have no idea how to find Chris. No way of knowing how to contact him. I need to tell him that I can't hack into iTronics.
"We'll find you," he said when I asked.
And so, after being waylaid by Rupert in the lobby of the iTronics building, I went home. I didn't know what else to do.
When I return from our massive en suite, Austin is snoring softly. I think about squeezing back into bed with him. But I can't just stay here and wait for my secret to be revealed.
I go into the closet and grab a blazer, a pair of shoes, and my purse. I throw them on quickly, careful not to wake my husband. This is my chance.
I pad quietly through the house to the study. I walk to the window in Donald's anti-bot sanctuary and pry it open. I crawl out of it and release myself gently onto the driveway below.
I walk. It's the only way to avoid the bots and their constant information collection. I start towards the center of town. Rolled up in my purse is my FlexPhone. It contains all the information I gleaned from observation of the iTronics quantum computers.
The streets are slick with rain, but it's no longer falling. Beyond the domes of New Rome and the mountains, quiet thunder booms and vague flashes of lightning announce that the storm has moved off.
The slight chill of this night of the month we call Leo, similar to November back on Earth, suggests the Mediterranean winter to come. I shiver and pull my blazer closer around me.
It feels like a long walk towards the center of town. The lights gradually get brighter and I start to wonder where exactly I should bend my steps. I don't have to wait long for an answer.
The streets are so quiet. Walking through the European District is almost always like this. Most of the late night parties that the young people of this city of upper classes attend take place in the neighborhoods filled with the monuments of the Americas.
Perhaps they feel like debauchery should take place near the 'Empire State Building' and the 'Cristo Redentor'. I don't know. All I know is that tonight, there isn't even a single pod car that passes me on the street.
Until suddenly, there is one.
As I walk on the sidewalk, it rolls up slowly beside me, then stops. The back door pops open.
"Anderson?" Asks a woman I don't recognize. She sits in the back of the car, clad in all black.
"Who's asking?" I stop walking at the sound of my name.
"You know who. Get in."
I don't have time to argue. She and a man get out of the car and bustle me into the back seat.
#
"Well, do you have it?" Chris asks.
I sit across from him in the dim-lit back room of his speakeasy. It's the same place I first saw Matt here on Mars. When the pod car stopped, I was shoved out into an alley.
In front of me was a green storm door that led to this, his den of Anti-Robotists. Down some stairs I found the dark room.
People don the rags of their Earthbound brethren. They huddle around small round tables in a room with its foundation walls painted black. Along the far wall is a bar with a flesh-and-blood bartender who wipes out a martini glass.
There's a lean girl with long, icy hair in the corner who is singing as another young girl with knotted brown hair topples over a guitar. The voice of the singer is sweet and high and the song, though I can't understand the words, is achingly sad. It's in a Romance language, perhaps Spanish or Portuguese. I can't tell.
And there he is, standing in the doorway: the man I would have once left my husband for. Did I ever take that prospect seriously? Was it a fantasy concocted in a stress-addled brain, never to really come to light?
Chris - with those icy eyes that could turn hot as blue flame with rage in an instant. I could never have been with him, not properly, not even if he had not been given over to betrayal and chaos.
Even before that - he was not gentle, he was not giving. He was not Austin. As I head down the stairs, he strides towards me.
"Follow me," he rasps into my ear. His vice grip tightens around my arm.
I follow him back through the door he entered. Beyond the giant of a man who stands as a stalwart against unwelcome guests is a smaller dimly-lit room painted black with a red couch adjacent to the entry. On the couch slouches a couple who sip amber drinks. Across from the couch is a folded partition, ebony with marble inlays.
Chris leads me behind the partition where another, smaller bar stands at the end of the room with its own bartender. The bartender, also human, laughs with a patron at her bar. There are a few tables scattered at which people sit drinking in duos and trios. The mouth-watering smells of thick stews and human-made curries follow us.
The singer and guitar can still be heard here, loud enough so that the mutterings from tables are barely audible. Chris sits down at the only empty table in the place, in the middle of the small room.
Although we're in the back room of an unlisted and probably illegal bar, as I sit down I can't help feeling entirely exposed. I'm wearing a blazer over a form-fitting beige nightie. I didn't even take time to change out of it.
I've got an expensive haircut and a new set of wedding jewels to replace the ones we sold on Earth. No one else here looks like me.
"Yes, I have it." I answer when he asks about my information.
My hands fly to my tiny purse and I begin to fish through it. I take my time. I'm not anxious to see his reaction to my lack of information.
"Come on, Teach," he says after a moment. "Let's go."
I hear shuffling at one of the tables just behind me. I open one side pocket to reveal a Flexscreen folded up neatly into a tiny square. My hand shutters against it at the sound of my old nickname and the sudden memory of his nearness.
I begin to unfold the Flexscreen, to look through its menus. But he grabs it from my hand. After a moment of prodding he nods almost imperceptibly.
"All right," he says.
"I don't know if we should trust her, man," comes a voice from across the room.
She slinks from out of the shadows. Despite her leanness and the clothes that hang from her, she can't hide her identity.
"Shari," I gasp. "What are you doing here?"
"What are any of us doing here?" She says. "Trying for a better life, just like you."
She makes a vague gesture to the room. I notice that the dim faces have all turned to look at us. Their eyes are like tiny lamps in the darkness. The bartender's laugh has gone silent. This isn't a random mix of Anti-Robotists sharing a drink at tiny tables. This is a gathering.
"Any of us?" I mimic.
"Maybe I shouldn't trust her." Chris doesn't take his eyes off me. "There's not much here, Teach." He indicates the FlexPhone.
"Yeah, well, it wasn't easy. It's not like they gave me much to go on."
"Do I sense a 'but'?"
"But it was enough for me to know that I can't do it. It's beyond my skills to hack the bots."
"You better hope it isn't beyond you," he snarls. "Because there's more at stake for you than you can imagine."
"What..."
"Come on," Chris says as he pulls me out of my seat to the back of the room and through a door.
I glance back. All the Anti-Robotists follow. Down an industrial metallic staircase, past the furnace and water heater, into a room small enough that they all crowd around me.
"What are you doing?" I ask.
"I've got a surprise for you," Chris replies.
(Continued in Chapter 87...)