The Cleanway: Clean Book 2 Read online

  I heard myself swallow in the silence after the bell.

  “They must have gone to the parking garage,” said Rebecca. Cleans in various different civilian disguises, but all with similar vacant eyes, advanced on us. Rebecca’s hand darted out and hit the call button. The elevator doors remained shut. The lights cycled to indicate higher and higher floors.

  Ryan burst through the doors on the opposite side of the lobby, flanked on one side by a tall woman in a long coat, and on the other side by an armored security officer I recognized from the train station. I tensed, ready to throw a punch if the cleans rushed me and Rebecca, but the mindless human bodies turned and charged toward the new intruders.

  I waved for Ryan’s attention as cleans began to circle his group, looking to strike. For not having memories, they sure weren’t acting mindless like cleans usually did. Ryan nodded to me.

  “She’s in the parking garage,” I called.

  “We’ll get her,” said Ryan.

  Behind us, the elevator bell chimed again. Rebecca took my hand and tugged me into the car. A second later, the doors closed and we headed into the basement of Lotdel Tower.

  Stepping out, I found Thomas leaning against a support pillar in the chill asphalt-paved space. He looked over his shoulder at us. One hand remained clamped on his opposite wrist. A trickle of blood dripped from between his fingers.

  “Are you alright?” I asked.

  “She’s got fighting skills,” he grunted, “Elizabeth went after her.”

  “She what?” I said.

  Thomas raised his uninjured arm and pointed. “They went that way. Go.”

  Rebecca glanced at me. “I’ll never catch them in a dress like this. You go ahead. I’ll see to Thomas, and the two of us will back you up.”

  I nodded, grateful she was not as eager as my other friends to put herself in danger. I’m a pretty big man, and not in the best shape, but I took off as fast as I could manage. My shoes drummed on the black pavement. In mid-stride, a message arrived from Thomas, showing a map of the parking garage, with his van highlighted where it sat, parked near the exit.

  My heart felt ready to explode when I rounded the corner nearest the van. I stumbled, my shoe caught on something made of cloth that gleamed bright in the sickly glow of the light veins above me. It was a pink dress, the one Carol had been wearing upstairs. I scowled and started forward again.

  The click of a safety being removed at my back made me freeze.

  “Not so fast, Jethro,” said Carol from outside my field of vision. “Turn around. Take it slow.”

  I obeyed, worried as much about had happened with Elizabeth as I was about my own situation. Carol wore a black motorcycle suit and held a small pistol, which I guessed must be of military origin. She stood just a few meters from me. A groan issued from a parking space off to my left. In the shadows, I saw Elizabeth on the ground, looking up at me and Carol.

  “Don’t shoot him,” Elizabeth said.

  “I’d really rather not kill either of you.” Carol sighed. “After all, you two are just pawns, like everyone else.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said through clenched teeth.

  “You would not believe the things I’ve been through because of the government of this city.” Carol shook her head. She took a step toward me, the gun still aimed my way. “Don’t take this personally.”

  She drew close. The gun pressed to my forehead.

  Elizabeth screamed. I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling like a fool for chasing them, and dreading the shot.

  The blow hit me on the side of the head, gun-barrel feeling like a cold fist. Pain blossomed in my senses, filling my mind. I staggered, clutching the place where the blow had fallen. I dropped to one knee and looked up in a haze of pain. Carol retreated through the garage to a parking space occupied by a sleek black motorcycle. She climbed on and fired up the machine.

  I turned, dazed, toward Elizabeth. She was staring at me, tears in her eyes. “Jeth, are you alright?”

  “Hurts damn it,” I said with a gasp of pain, “but I’m alive.” I blinked back tears of my own.

  Footsteps approached Elizabeth and me as Carol swung her bike around and headed for the exit. Rebecca and Thomas caught up with us just as the cycle tore onto the surface ramp. In the cold, Rebecca crouched in front of me. “Jeth,” she said, gently touching the searing side of my head, and then looked after Carol “She’s getting away.”

  “Not if I can help it,” said Thomas, pulling open the door of the van next to me. I hadn’t recognized it in the shadows, but his van for transporting goods around the city was right beside us. “Get in if you want to catch them as bad as I do,” he said.

  Elizabeth pulled herself to her feet. Rebecca helped me up, and all of us turned toward the van. Crazy as it seemed, I wanted to catch up with the woman who had just cracked me on the skull. The others obviously agreed.

  The van rumbled off the ramp. I hung on as Thomas turned the wheel to follow the scream of Carol’s motorcycle past Bailey Court Garden and continuing north. Carol rode fast, and the van would not have the acceleration to catch her, except for the denser traffic up ahead.

  “She’s got a gun,” I said. “What are we going to do if we get close?”

  “Easy,” Thomas said through gritted teeth, “You three will all attack her mind at once. Stop her that way.”

  Elizabeth grimaced and looked at her legs, probably going to bruise where Carol had tripped her. “This is not my idea of a fun evening.”

  “It’s not about fun.” Thomas increased his pressure on the gas pedal. Aeons disliked electricity and fossil fuels, but vehicles like this one were still allowed with the proper license. I could only imagine how much fuel Carol’s motorcycle was burning at that moment.

  Thomas seemed to know the limitations of his vehicle well because even as we accelerated, I noticed he was waiting for the high street leading straight north to really floor it. With a limited number of transport vehicles, we would have plenty of room to maneuver once we reached the high street, even at top speed.

  We raced up the entrance ramp at a velocity that exceeded my thinking. Just like that, we followed Carol onto the raised high street, where the speed limit was completely nonexistent. Only cross-city shipping vehicles used high street regularly in any numbers. Even at dinner time, the lanes were mostly vacant.

  A single small light cut through the falling snow ahead of us, marking Carol’s position. As I watched through the windshield, white flickers in the air and the smell of rubber faint in my nose, I spotted a shadow racing alongside Carol’s motorcycle. It was the same size and shape, except for its rider. I squinted at the second rider with a scowl. Damien.

  “She’s not alone.” I reached for Rebecca’s wrist. “We can slow her down.”

  Rebecca took my hand, and let my fingers touch her bare wrist. Her skin was cool to the touch, but a far cry from the armrest I had been gripping tightly just moments ago. She nodded to me. “We’ll get them.”

  And then our senses went hurtling from the car, joined together in an ichor-powered projection. I reached for Carol’s mind first, ignoring Damien for the moment. Like a ghost, my mentality slid through her solid black helmet and grasped at her psyche.

  She kept the bike steady as her antibodies tried to stop me. Swift, centipede-like forms and invisible barriers hemmed me in from every side and angle. Rebecca’s burning presence appeared beside me, then darted forward. I followed and readied a defense disruption program I had been working on in my spare time since the garden.

  We scattered the defenses of Carol’s mind. Part of me heard her external senses as I pressed the outer layer of her thoughts. The wail of the bike, the chill in the air, the fear—of something else, not of my friends and me, all assailed my perspective, threatening to disorient me. I moved away carefully from the sensory layer and plunged toward motor controls.

  Another group of defense-ware fell away before Rebecca. I used the opportunity I saw to dive de
ep. With a grunt of concentration audible back in the van, I pinched a muscle in Carol’s leg. The trick worked and she lifted her foot from the gas. I held my concentration, keeping her from putting her foot down.

  The bike slowed.

  Thomas said, “Get ready everyone. We’re almost on her.”

  Carol’s other shoe hit the brake, causing her motorcycle to swerve violently. She somehow managed to remain upright as the bike spun sideways in the middle of the high street. The wheels skidded, but she had slowed enough the bike did not flip or roll.

  I braced for an impact, but Thomas stopped accelerating and braked as we drew closer.

  Despite her dizziness, some of which I shared thanks to my brush with her senses, Carol drew her pistol from a saddle bag and aimed unwaveringly at our onrushing van. The bright visor of her helmet hid her face.

  Damien sped away into the night.

  Carol muttered, “Damn you all,” under her breath. She pulled the trigger.

  Unregistered Memory, Ryan Carter, Lotdel Tower Lobby

  Ryan clenched his fingers around Conner Kohl’s thick hand. They watched Carol’s bike on the high street spin and come to a stop. Ryan grimaced.

  “I told him we’d get her. Why won’t Jeth just let us handle this?” he said.

  Not waiting for an answer, he closed his eyes and reached out with his mind, following the path the motorcycles and the van had taken through the streets heading north. A gunshot shattered the frigid evening air but the bullet whined into the night without hitting its mark.

  A long shadow crossed before the beams of the van’s headlights. A tall man in a thick coat grabbed Carol’s wrist. The figure had no detectable mind, nothing to disrupt or distort. He’s an aeon, Ryan thought.

  Then a series of disruption drones broke through Ryan’s mental defenses. His world spun and he lost his grip on Conner’s hand. The vision of the high street disappeared, replaced by the ceiling of the lobby, spinning overhead. He could not even gather his senses enough to send a tracer after his attacker. Dizziness turned to blackness.

  I stared at Carol and the massive figure beside her. She struggled with his grip. He twisted the gun out of her hand. He grinned with huge white teeth emerging from a slit in his black cloth mask.

  Thomas hit the brakes hard and the van screeched to a stop just a few meters ahead of the motorcycle. The high beams made Carol blink in their glare.

  Rebecca and I immediately scrambled for the side doors. I didn’t know what my plan was, but the huge man was an aeon, judging by his undetectable mind. Maybe not an aeon, I thought as I dropped onto the high street pavement, maybe a rogue star. I walked toward them slowly. The aeon tossed Carol’s gun to the street. It skidded to a halt by the median barrier, ten meters away.

  “Who are you?” I said.

  No answer.

  “Who are you?” I repeated.

  The aeon’s grin never wavered. An image smashed through my mental defenses with a sensation of dread and pulled my attention inward. The image of teeth, the snapping jaws of a dog, filled my mind, bared and gleaming, yellowed and bloodstained in places. The image shocked me, but the true power followed it, a series of mental blows straight into my sensory centers.

  My knees hit the pavement. Wet snow permeated through my pant-legs. I looked at the rogue star, blinking. Rebecca circled behind the van and stopped beside me.

  Thomas was still behind the wheel. Through the driver’s window, I watched his face change from horror to determination. Perhaps he had seen the same vision of gnashing teeth I had, perhaps something worse. He gritted his teeth and pressed the gas.

  The aeon moved with blinding speed, twisting Carol in front of him as he sidestepped. The edge of a headlight clipped her side and broke. She cried out in pain. Blood spattered onto the high street along with fragments of broken glass. The aeon released Carol. She crumpled, and her helmet cracked against the asphalt.

  I forced myself to my feet, trembling. The rogue aeon turned its eyes on me, whites searing with unconcealed hatred. I still could not see much of his face, but he seemed to know me, based on the way he prowled closer. I raised my hands, but they were shaking too badly to form fists. The aeon would be too strong, even if I had any fight left.

  Rebecca moved to interpose herself between me and that towering menace.

  Elizabeth’s door swung open, slamming into the aeon’s back with a heavy clunk. The aeon whirled. One hand lashed out and dragged Elizabeth from the cab. I staggered toward the monster as he held Elizabeth by the collar, hoisting her high. The aeon’s grin was gone, replaced by a snarl that distorted his black cloth mask.

  I held out one hand. “Don’t hurt her. Please.”

  The aeon’s snarl morphed into a terrible sneer. His pale eyes gleamed. “Do not attempt to direct me,” he said in a thick, slurring voice. He dropped Elizabeth but caught her again in the same hand just a few centimeters lower. This time, he grabbed her by the throat. “Do not attempt to stop me.”

  I lowered my hand, unwilling to risk the aeon’s wrath. I had seen what a rogue star could do to a human with just bare hands. I shook my head. A trickle of tears born of helplessness ran from my eyes.

  Rebecca tensed to move, then froze at my side. She kept her eyes on the aeon. Thomas stared from the cab, as still as Rebecca and I. Carol lay unconscious on the street behind the rogue star. Only Elizabeth moved with purpose, her hands struggling to find purchase on the aeon’s wrist. She looked at me in fear.

  I shivered and shook in the cold night. The smell of fuel hung in the air. I could not think of any way to stop the aeon, and was not willing to risk Elizabeth in any attempt.

  Fear is human. Fear is normal. Paralyzed, I watched the aeon seethe, teeth still bared in my direction. Then, he stepped back and crouched. One huge arm slipped under Carol and he tossed the woman onto his shoulder.

  “Do not follow,” said the aeon.

  He turned his eyes on Elizabeth. Some kind of network message passed from him to her. She went limp in his grip. Her arms dropped to her sides. The aeon draped her unconscious body across his shoulder beside Carol.

  I grimaced, but could not force myself to move. Rebecca started forward without a word. Her burning mind lit and she aimed a tracer packet at the aeon. He stepped forward once again and swung a fist almost casually at Rebecca. She darted out of reach, breathing fast.

  “Do not interfere,” slurred the aeon as he backed away. “I will not hesitate to kill you, Rebecca.”

  Then he marched to the edge of the high street, where the barrier went up as tall as his shoulder. He jumped it easily and glided downward into the city. Rebecca and I ran to the place where he had leaped. We watched him spiral slowly out of our reach, carrying Elizabeth and Carol on his shoulder with ease.

  “Damn it,” Rebecca said, “he’s gone.”

  My eyes were wide and wet as I turned to her. “Not if we can help it. We can find where he’s going.” I reached for her hand.

  “Not here,” she said. “Too dangerous with the other renegades out here.” She sighed. “We need to search from somewhere safe.”

  I nodded, though a painful rush of anxiety would not let me forget how dangerous the monster that had just attacked us could be. Rebecca led me to the van. Thomas met us there, shaking.

  “We need to go,” said Rebecca.

  “What about Elizabeth?”

  “We can’t help her from here.” Rebecca bowed her head, “but we will help her. I owe her too much not to try.”

  “We’ll all help,” I said. “We have to.”

  Thomas wiped his fingers across his eyes. “I just wish—I should never have brought it up… what we were talking about at dinner.”

  “No,” I said as firmly as I could manage. “That is not why this happened.”

  “Jeth.” He looked at me unsteadily, but said nothing more, even as he drove us back to Lotdel Tower.

  When we arrived the cleans had all left the lobby. Purifiers were investigating the inc
ident there, but Ryan and his team had already left. Nobody even asked us for statements. We rode the elevator to my apartment and began the search.

  I paced the apartment, then sipped ichor before taking Rebecca’s hand to sensocycle. Every hour we repeated the ritual.

  We scoured the city all night for Elizabeth and Carol, or any sign of the aeon who had taken them.

  Nothing.

  By the early hours of morning I was a wreck. Sitting on the couch in my apartment beside a dozing Rebecca, Thomas asleep in the chair across from us, I could no longer keep my eyes open.

  When I woke again, sunlight filtered through the windows. Sunday morning had broken through the gray clouds outside. Rebecca lay curled against my side, cradled by an arm around her shoulders, her breath pushing her gently against me, then drawing her back as she exhaled. My hand was asleep, the fingers feeling pinpricks as I came around. I stared at the ceiling and tried to work feeling back into my fingers without disturbing Rebecca.

  She woke slowly, despite my effort. Her bare hand found my half-numb one. She looked at me with tired eyes.

  “I didn’t want things to be this way,” she murmured.

  “It’s not your fault,” I said.

  She jerked away. “That’s where you’re wrong, Jeth. I—I didn’t tell you everything.”

  A sinking sensation grew in my stomach. “What didn’t you tell me?”

  Rebecca glanced at Thomas, who still sat in the chair, snoring softly. She sighed and stood up before turning toward me again. “It’s about me and Yashelia.”

  I lurched forward from my slouch. “You used to work for her, didn’t you? Don’t blame yourself because of that.”

  “It isn’t just that I worked for her. It’s the kind of work I did.” She smoothed the front of her dress with both hands. “You don’t understand. I didn’t want to tell you because I thought it didn’t matter. I was wrong. We’re all in danger now, anyway.”