The Flight of the Silvers (Silvers #1)(163)

The cartoonist kept his tense stare on David. “Go to hell.”

“Zack, I have a seriously injured man—”

“—who shoots at unarmed kids!”

“Not unarmed! And not a kid! I don’t know if you’re deliberately blind to your friend’s nature, but it’s moot now. Look around you. It’s over. Your only choice now—”

A loud and echoey thump seized everyone’s attention. They all turned to look at the truck. A second thud bulged the gate as if an angry rhino pounded at it.

Melissa closed her eyes. “Shit.”

Now a huge tempic fist knocked the door from its track. It dropped to the road in a resounding boom.

Theo and Amanda stepped out into the night, their broken shackles dangling on their wrists. The relief of escape lasted three short steps before Mia cried from the side of the truck.

“Amanda! Help us!”

She rushed to David’s side. “Oh God. Mia, we need alcohol. We have to disinfect this.”

“W-we brought a first aid kit. It’s in the car. I can get it.”

“No. Help me get him there. Backup’s coming. We need to go fast.”

Hannah kept a wide and unblinking gaze on her victim until Theo gripped her shoulders and gently turned her around. She took a trembling moment to process him, then wrapped him in a tight embrace.

“I didn’t mean to . . .”

“It’s okay.”

“I didn’t know how fast I was going.”

“It’s all right. They’ll fix him.”

Even as he said it, Theo knew nothing would erase the consequences of her actions. The Deps would remember what Hannah did. They’d probably shoot her on sight next time.

Zack moved behind Melissa and rusted the chain of her handcuffs. She broke them apart.

“Thank you. Now I know you can simulate a juve. What about a reviver?”

His mind flashed back to the dead deer in Nemeth. “No.”

“If you could heal him, Zack, it would go a long way—”

“If I could heal people, I’d be healing David.”

Melissa ran to Ross and checked his vitals. “It’s all right. There’s still time to get him help. We can still fix this, Zack. Everything I said still applies.”

The cartoonist took Hannah’s free arm and helped Theo escort her away. As the Silvers moved up the hill in two hobbling trios, Melissa shouted after them.

“We can protect you! With enough time and cooperation, we’ll even free you! We’ll give you a life on this world! Citizenship! Identity! What do I have to do to convince you?”

Theo turned around to face her. “We believe it’s what you want, Melissa. We don’t believe it’s what we’ll get.”

“If you think you’re better this way, then you don’t know a damn thing about the future. You’re walking to your own deaths! Please listen to me!”

They disappeared over the dark crest. Melissa closed her eyes and pressed a fist to her forehead. “Goddamn it.”

Soon she heard an electric engine start. She watched a boxy white minivan swerve onto the road, kicking a cloudy trail of dust as it sped to the east. She couldn’t read the license plate from her vantage. It didn’t matter anyway. The fugitives would ditch the vehicle before Melissa could get a trace warrant. She wasn’t dealing with amateurs anymore.





THIRTY




The old man wasn’t happy to have guests. The moment the minivan rolled into his garage, he threw an antsy scan around the neighborhood, then closed the power gate. Zack had barely stepped out of the driver’s door when a gnarled and stubby finger poked his chest.

“You the leader?”

The cartoonist stammered. He’d never considered the title before and he didn’t enjoy wearing it now. “I’m Zack.”

“I don’t want to know your name. I just want to know if you’re the man to talk to.”

In his recent portal delivery, among all the notes and handcuffs, Peter included directions to a house in Quinwood, West Virginia, seventeen miles east of the highway ambush site.

His name’s Xander. He’ll be expecting you. He won’t be pleasant but he’ll hide you. He has no love for Deps.

He stood just a thumb taller than Mia, with a scrubbed pink face and the flawless gray bouffant of a news anchor. Despite the early hour, he wore a sharp blue blazer ensemble with a red silk ascot and matching pocket square. Zack figured the man stood out like neon in this rustic little town, a Truman Capote in a sea of John Waynes. Not that the Silvers were any less conspicuous. Four of them were dressed like burglars while two sported the blue prisoner jumpsuits of DP-9.

Xander covered his mouth at the sight of David’s gory hand, which had already bled through its dressing and now dripped a crimson puddle.

“Oh, Lord no. He didn’t tell me you’d have injured people bleeding all over my rugs.”

Amanda narrowed her eyes at him. “Peter didn’t know. If you have towels—”

“Take what you want,” he said, his palms raised in high dither. “I was never here. You’re merely robbers who broke in while I was visiting my sister.”

The hair-dryer whirr of an aerocar motor turned all heads to the door. Theo peered through the glass.