Polaris Rising (Consortium Rebellion, #1)(26)
I checked the total then modified it to fifteen hundred and scanned the chip embedded in my right arm. The machine beeped, I picked the correct account, and then I handed the reader back to her. “I added a little token of appreciation,” I said. “I do love a woman who barters well.”
Veronica smiled in acknowledgment. She produced a plain white card with a number embossed in a beautiful antique font. She leaned across the display case and tucked the card in my overshirt pocket. “If you need anything, anything at all, call me,” she said. Her smile turned sultry. “Any time, day or night.”
Once we were outside, Loch took the lead. “Do not say anything, and do not return to the house,” I murmured to him. “I need a secure space.”
We walked for ten minutes in a direction I knew was opposite from where we’d spent the night. A few curious eyes followed us at first but soon we were once again in an abandoned part of the city.
Loch stopped outside of a seemingly random plastech building. Now that I wasn’t freezing, I could see what drew him to the buildings he chose. For this one, the walls were solid and dust around the entrance showed no signs of footprints.
He picked the lock in record time and soon we were inside. The living room was right off the entry. I set the bag of items I’d bought, the card the fence had given me, the cloak, and my overshirt in a pile in the middle of the floor. It might be overkill, but I didn’t think so.
“I need your cloak,” I said. Loch added his cloak to the pile. Without the heat field or extra shirt, the temperature in the room was bitingly cold.
“I’ll see about some heat,” Loch said.
I picked up the new com, touched my right thumb to my right ring finger, and held the com up to the chip in my arm.
The highly illegal, highly specialized, highly secret chip in my arm.
Most people were embedded with a single identity chip at birth. I had that one, my main identity chip, in my left arm, but it was dormant most of the time. The chip in my right arm was a House von Hasenberg family specialty, though I had no doubt the other Houses had something similar. The chip could hold multiple identities and each identity could be selected by a series of finger movements.
Designed for spying, the chip also worked great for staying a step ahead of Father’s trackers. Purchase a new identity with untraceable funds, and—voilà!—a clean break. The trackers would eventually find the new identities, but it took time and gave me a chance to escape.
The com unlocked. Some sneaky bastard had stolen the com from my abandoned room on the station, realized it was locked beyond hope, and sold it just in time for me to buy it. And here I thought the universe didn’t love me. Granted, this was the second closest planet to the station, and the shadier of the two, but I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Not only was this a top-of-the-line communication device, it was also designed especially for von Hasenberg family members, though you would be hard-pressed to notice based on the design. It had a few extra features, too.
I set the com to run a self-diagnostic, and when that came back clean, I turned on scanning mode. Designed to secure a space for communication, this mode would find any trackers or bugs the fence had managed to attach to us. Most coms had some form of bug sweeping functionality, but this one was much more sensitive than standard.
The card and shirt came back clean, much to my surprise. Our cloaks were a different matter. Each had a tiny tracker attached. I used my com to connect to the trackers and reconfigure them. Whoever was monitoring the trackers just saw them go offline. I, however, could now see their locations overlaid on a map. It wasn’t a standard com feature, but it proved useful enough that von Hasenberg family coms always came equipped with it.
I attached the two trackers to Loch’s cloak—one high near the neck and one at the bottom edge. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him . . . but I didn’t trust him.
The rest of the stuff I bought was clean, including the shirt, pants, necklace, and bracelet that were all mine originally. It wasn’t everything I’d left behind, but the com, necklace, and bracelet were definitely the most important bits.
I scanned myself and didn’t find any new trackers. “Loch?” I called. He’d left the room to find heat but hadn’t returned. When he didn’t respond, I put on my overshirt and cloak. I stored the small items in a cargo pocket and then put the clothes and Loch’s cloak back into the bag.
Something felt off, but I wasn’t going to freak out without reason.
The entry was empty, as was the dining room on the other side of the house. A hallway led deeper into the building, much like the house we’d stayed in last night. It was dark and silent.
“Loch?” I tried again. Silence answered.
Normally when presented with a choice between going deeper into a dark, creepy abandoned building or stepping out the front door into the—admittedly low—light, I’d choose the light every time. But Loch had disappeared down this hall and while I didn’t necessarily think he was in trouble, it was weird that he wasn’t responding.
The flashlight built into the com wasn’t great, but it cut through the darkness better than nothing. I drew my knife. If Loch was just in the bathroom, I was going to feel really silly.
An open door on my right led to the empty kitchen. My stomach grumbled, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten enough to cover the calories I’d burned. I ignored it and continued deeper into the house.