Chapter 24
As hiding places go, a storage warehouse in Aberdeen was decent enough.
It had only exterior cameras and no people…
like, ever. But also as hiding places went, a warehouse in Aberdeen wasn’t great.
Since it was completely automated, there was nothing to support the basic needs for human workers: no bathrooms, no food, not even a chair.
I checked out several crates, but they were all machine parts—nothing even remotely useful, at least according to Byte.
We passed the hours talking and planning a rescue plan for Nolan.
Byte called it a retrieval plan—it was less convinced that we’d be rescuing anyone rather than simply retrieving a body.
I’d do everything in my power to prove it wrong.
But I couldn’t do it alone. The plan required help, and since I was running light on friends, I’d have to reconnect with the resistance.
But first came food and water. I’d cleaned out my small stash, and my throat was parched from going too long without something to drink.
The storage facility had no water lines, and when I walked around the warehouse complex after dark, I couldn’t find a single water faucet anywhere.
Actually, I’d found three faucets, but not a single one had running water.
That meant I had to walk a quarter of a mile to the nearest residence.
This was the poor part of Aberdeen—these tall apartment buildings were nicer than anything in Dreswick, but surprisingly, not by a lot.
There were still towels draped over windows and broken streetlights.
Many of the apartments had lights on, but there were some that did not.
I didn’t know if those were vacant, if someone wasn’t home, or if someone was home and asleep because they worked the early morning shift.
I watched the building from the darkness an alley provided. There were no outside faucets, and I didn’t think anything that came out of outdoor faucets in this area was potable, anyway.
There must be food and water in there, and the building likely has minimal security features, if any.
“I’m not going to risk hurting regular folk. Besides, someone would see us and then we’d be on the run again.”
Technically, we are on the run now.
“We’d be running on the run, not just prowling on the run,” I said.
Your body needs fluids. We’re dehydrated.
“Tell me something I don’t know. Listen, if there are people, that means there’s a grocery store or something nearby.”
Yes, but the sooner you return to your friends, the sooner we can retrieve Nolan.
“They’re not my friends,” I said, exasperated.
I liked Lyra even though she kept secrets from us.
“Yeah, well, I kind of did, too, until I found out she was planning to be party to my murder.”
I sensed she was honest when she said she’d never let harm come to you.
“She knew about Kynan’s plans, and she didn’t tell me.
She should’ve been honest about that,” I pointed out, even though I already knew it wasn’t fair to blame her for being herself.
She’d always made it clear the “cause” came before everything else.
I was just being egocentric thinking she wouldn’t put it before me .
Knowing that hurt, I ignored that topic.
“We’re finding a store. That’s where we’ll find a taxi to hack to get back to Kynan Kade’s lair or whatever you call it. ”
I avoided any streetlamps, with Byte assisting my senses.
During that distance, we had to hide from two different drones flying overhead.
I’d expected more since we were still within just a few miles of the data centers.
That there weren’t meant that the enforcers must’ve assumed we’d left the area, which gave me a small sense of relief.
But it’d only take one sighting to bring a swarm of drones down on my head.
Turned out, the nearest commercial source of food was another quarter of a mile away.
A row of quaint, old shops and cafés lined a cracked street.
Every place was closed. The lights inside were off, but some still had their outside signs lit.
If it wasn’t for the wasteful use of power, the row could fit somewhere on Dreswick’s north end.
In the two minutes I stood there, five AVs drove by, one of them a taxi. It was as good of an opportunity as I was going to get. I hailed it.
As it pulled up, I said to Byte, “Hack this and have it park in front of Giordi’s across the street.”
It’s the same café I would’ve recommended. It looks like has fewer security features than others on this block.
“Yeah, because it looks like the crappiest place on the street.” Giordi’s was an old café that had faded pictures of various rice dishes with sauces on top.
One window had a crack in the lower left.
If they couldn’t afford to repair a window, they probably couldn’t afford a security system.
Then again, that window could’ve been broken just today.
But I was gambling that it’d been like that for years.
If they couldn’t afford to repair a window, then they also probably had lousy food. But hey, stealers aren’t choosers.
I tucked my head and jogged across the vacant street as the AV did a U-turn and pulled up next to the curb, then shut down its lights after it parked.
Once I reached the dark safety of the alley, I leaned against the cool brick wall.
I scanned the area but saw no threat, unless the stench of the dumpster counted.
There wasn’t even an exterior camera. The slums in Aberdeen had less surveillance than pretty much any block in Dreswick.
This area felt the tiniest bit like home, minus the enforcers and surveillance. Sure, Kade’s apartment building was nicer and a lot more secure. But it had been too clean, too nice, too much of everything that Dreswick wasn’t. Giordi’s was damn near paradise, in my opinion.
“Maybe I should retire here,” I muttered.
I would rather us retire somewhere safer.
“All right. I guess we’ll just keep retiring here as a Plan B then.”
Or maybe a Plan Z.
I pushed away from the wall and checked out the dented steel door that had seen decades of hard use. I grabbed the handle and turned, or tried to. “Locked.”
You’ll find a hidden key under the dumpster. The last user was rather lazy in concealing it.
I approached the dumpster. “I don’t see it.”
Look on the backside, near the wheel.
It was too dark to make out anything, and I cringed as I reached out and felt for it, then found a rectangular plastic compartment fixed to the dumpster that was sticky with all horrors of things a restaurant tosses. I slid open the compartment, and a key fell out.
“I can’t believe you saw this,” I said as I hustled to the door.
I can’t believe you didn’t see it. The AV’s lights glinted off the key case when it turned around on the street.
The key slid smoothly in, and the door opened in a well-oiled manner. I quickly closed it behind me and locked the deadbolt.
The sound of something being knocked over froze me in place.
The sound came from the kitchen, but I can’t discern if it was caused by a human, a drone, or something else. I have identified four cockroaches. Five now.
A red Emergency Exit sign cast a glow over the room of tables and a kitchen beyond.
I strained to hear the sound of footsteps or whispers, but heard nothing.
I pulled out the stun stick from my jacket as I tiptoed toward the kitchen.
The stick’s charge was at eighty percent, plenty enough for at least two, maybe even three guys.
But the odds of me shocking more than one before his buddies got me weren’t exactly promising.
With no lights on, it couldn’t have been a worker cleaning up. With my bad luck, someone else was probably breaking into the same damn place at the same damn time as I was.
Be careful, Cal. If it’s a human, they are concealing themselves quite well.
The kitchen was closed off from the dining area with a swinging door. I pressed it inward as slowly as I could, stopping when it squeaked. Well, the gig was up. I slammed it open and jumped inside, holding the baton in front of me.
I was met with the sound of skittering. I hated cockroaches.
I let out a breath. “There’s no one here.”
There was a second Exit light at the back of the kitchen, illuminating the area enough that I could find the refrigerator without banging into a counter. I couldn’t hear any more cockroaches—they’d scurried off into deeper shadows now that something bigger was here.
I opened the cooler door, and bright light blinded me and filled the kitchen.
I’m sure light was bleeding out into the dining room and through the café’s window, but I also couldn’t see what containers to grab without it.
The cooler was filled with large metal pans and several metal jugs.
I pulled out the nearest jug and found it to be just water.
I chugged nearly half before setting it down.
Then I pulled out a pan to find it was filled with cooked pasta noodles in water.
I grabbed a handful of noodles and popped them in my mouth, checking out the other pans as I chewed.
There were different kinds of noodles, and two pans had sauces: one red, one green.
I sampled both—the red was very spicy, and the green was sweet and nutty.
Neither was great, but surprisingly, neither was awful.
I went with the green. If this food or water was going to make me sick, I didn’t want it to burn when it came back up.
With the door still open, I found the carryout containers, and I grabbed one from halfway down the stack, hoping cockroaches hadn’t found it and wiped their asses on that one yet.