Chapter 19
“No,” Jason said. “No way.”
“I told you: It was a bluff,” Sprite said tiredly. Her eyes flicked around; she was working on something in her smartspace, glancing from window to window, but to Jason it gave her a hunted look. “You never told me where the System is, so I can hardly tell him.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. You’re not going to meet him. He’ll kill you.”
“He won’t get the chance.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.” But the tremor was still in her voice.
“That ‘trust’ bullshit?”
“He’s not the one I trust, but yeah, something like that.”
“Who do you trust, then? Your little team? The phreaking System?”
Sprite met his glare with a look that was more desperate than defiant. “A child’s life is at stake, Ghost, and it’s our fault. I have to do this.”
“No, you don’t,” Jason said. He had already directed the jet cab to divert to the location on the map.
Sprite’s brows drew together in suspicion. “What are you up to? Are you—no, Ghost! If you think he’ll kill me, he’ll definitely kill you!”
“What about your team? Won’t they save me?” He was trying to be sarcastic, but he could hear a quaver in his own voice now. But there was no way he was going to let Sprite waltz into MorDread’s arms.
Sprite bit her lip.
“Anyway, I really do have what MorDread wants,” Jason said. “If I have to, I’ll be honest. Norman must know by now what MorDread’s up to, and it’s not like he’s gonna let him waltz in and steal the System. Hell, maybe MorDread’ll give up the idea and bomb the phreaking thing instead.”
“No,” Sprite said. “I know MorDread. I’ll meet him. End of story.”
“End of story, huh? Are you gonna make it there in—” Jason checked his ETA. “Two minutes, eleven seconds? Jet cab, remember?”
Sprite’s arm rose and fell, and over the feed, Jason heard the sound of a surface being violently struck. “Phreak! Share your lens feed, at least. I’ll be in your ear the whole time. I’ll help as much as I can.”
“Thanks,” Jason said, opening the share. “But it should be easy enough, right? A quick trade. I just make sure the little girl is released before I give him the System’s location.” And hope like hell MorDread didn’t immediately kill him.
“It won’t be that simple. MorDread’s not going to let you walk, even if you really give him the location. Your real job is to get a pair of glasses onto the little girl.”
“What?”
“Or you could just let me do it,” Sprite said.
Jason gritted his teeth. “No. Tell me what to do.”
“Use those social-engineering skills,” Sprite said, turning her attention to her smartspace. “Get MorDread to let you put the glasses and earbuds on the girl. My ‘team’ will do the rest.”
The jet cab descended toward a SWAT van hovering below outside a narrow walking lane, and at first, Jason thought it was hovering over the spot that had been indicated on MorDread’s map.
But the cab passed over and landed instead at a public pad several blocks away, and when Jason disembarked, his GPS led him to a different footlane.
A delivery bot waited at its mouth. This time the package it handed him contained not a phone but a brand-new child-size set of smartglasses with integrated smartbuds.
Jason slipped them into his pocket and ducked into the footlane.
There were no public entrances to the towers that lined this lane, and no pedestrians, so the shaded passageway was empty of everything except trees and a garbage cylinder, one of those big plastic pneumatic pods from DC’s famous automatic sanitation system.
The piled garbage visible through the hatch was jarring next to the greenery around it.
But nothing and no one else was present.
He glanced over his shoulder at the bright entrance, then turned back—and found himself face-to-face with a tall, very muscular man. Before he could react, the man reached out and shook his hand vigorously. “Mister Ghossst,” he said. “Ssso nice to sssee you again.”
“Phreak!” said Sprite’s in Jason’s ear. There were no sensors on the man’s bald head, and he was wearing a tacky red, white, and blue T-shirt that read “The Best Eagles are Bald” rather than a trench coat, but his voice was all too familiar.
Huntsman’s handshake was painful, too painful to be accidental.
With his other hand, he reached into Jason’s pocket and relieved him of his phone.
“I assume you are here in place of your fairy friend?” he said, dropping the affected hiss but not the Russian accent.
“How gallant.” He thumbed the phone off.
“Phrea—” Sprite began, but the word was cut off as the phone went dark.
“MorDread is waiting,” Huntsman said. “Let me take you to him. No, no,” he said as Jason tried to free his crushed hand, “I insist. Come this way.”
Jason locked his legs and looked toward the mouth of the lane, where a jogger was passing beneath the trees, but something hard and sharp was shoved against his back.
Huntsman said in a low voice, “If you call for help, I stick needle in you. You will have seizure, and concerned passerby, meaning me, will try so hard to save you, but will be sadly unable to.”
Jason stopped resisting. Huntsman ushered him to the garbage cylinder.
Thick green plastic capped each end, and a round hatch about three feet in diameter lay open to the sky.
A wide tube led down the side of the treescraper to the hatch, and as Jason watched, a brief stream of garbage shot with a hiss down the tube and into the cylinder.
Huntsman pressed the Override/Clear button on the nearby panel.
With a hydraulic whir, the hatch slid shut, the cylinder was lowered into the ground, and a steel door folded over top of it.
There was a muffled, explosive hiss, and the door opened again and a new cylinder rose, its hatch open and empty.
“In you go,” said Huntsman, and gave Jason a shove toward the cylinder.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Jason said. He’d been pushed into a locker once in junior high and had missed a whole period before someone thought to look for him. In the stuffy air, with his arms pinned in the cramped space, he’d had a panic attack and almost passed out.
“Seizure?” Huntsman said.
Jason clambered into the cylinder.
“Lie down.” Jason started to sit, but Huntsman said, “No, you want your feet on other side. Trust me.”
Jason turned around and sat, then wriggled the rest of his body through so he could lie down. Except for the hatch above him, he was surrounded by a darkness that stank of warm plastic and old refuse. Between the nerves and that stench, he gagged, and gagged again.
Huntsman waited patiently for him to get himself under control.
“If you breathe slowly,” he said, “you should have enough air for trip.” He chuckled.
“And enough time to reflect on disposable nature of usual cargo of this pod.” He tossed Jason’s phone onto his chest, and as Jason scrabbled for it, Huntsman pushed a button and the hatch slid shut, enclosing Jason in garbage-scented darkness.
With a jolt and a mechanical whine, the cylinder descended into the earth.
Jason thumbed his phone on. The light of its boot screen caught the logo embossed on the hatch above: WasteNet.
He forced himself to take a deep, slow breath.
Not the best idea. He inhaled eau de garbage and gagged again.
He hadn’t recovered before there came a sound like a steam boiler bursting and he was slammed against the bottom of the cylinder by a violent acceleration.
His phone flew out of his hand and was lost somewhere near his feet.
Now he knew why Huntsman had told him to put his feet in that direction: They took the brunt of the force.
His legs buckled as much as they had room to, which was just enough for his knees to smash painfully against the top of the cylinder.
He tried to brace with his hands, but the only thing to get a grip on in all the smooth plastic was the WasteNet logo.
That, even more than the constricting space, made his claustrophobia rise again, bringing acid to the back of his throat.
He was literally inside one of Norman’s networks, trapped, careening through it like a packet through wires.
The cylinder jerked left and right at irregular intervals, pinning him to the walls with each twist, then slowed and stopped. The hatch slid open, and another Russian-accented voice said, “Well, well! Not Sprite, but Ghost! Welcome!”
Jason pulled himself, blinking, into the light.
His eyes focused on a hand, extended and waiting.
He grabbed it and allowed himself to be helped out of the cylinder.
As he clambered out, he found his phone with one foot, pulled it toward him, scooped it up, and pocketed it.
It had finished booting and paired with his lenses, but now he knew why Huntsman had let him have it back: The only thing showing in his smartspace was a blinking “No reception” icon. Sprite was unreachable.
“Welcome!” the voice said again, and the hand helping him out reversed so he could shake it. He did, shaking his head at the same time, clearing it so he could focus on the speaker.
He was a short but heavyset man with unkempt blond hair and a round, beaming face that made Jason think of an archetypal overenthusiastic shopkeeper from BloodReign.
This was only accentuated by his, well, accent, which was even thicker than Huntsman’s.
“I’m MorDread!” he said, pumping Jason’s hand. “So good to meet you in person!”
Jason nodded, trying to squeeze MorDread’s hand manfully, which was hard when he was turning his arm into a noodle. “A pleasure,” he managed, trying to sound sarcastic.
“Pleasure is mine! Come, let me show you my . . . What is the phrase? Humble abode.” MorDread waved an arm at the space around him.