wet and less frigid than standing in the snow outside. Max was not a child afraid of the dark— the tiny amount of cat DNA mixed into her genetic recipe gave her the ability to see even in pitch black.
Climbing into the crate, Max huddled low, disappearing into herself, peeking out from behind the seat back, trying to see between the slats of the crate. She stayed that way, on guard, for half an hour.
Then, from outside the trailer, she heard a man's muffled, “Son of a bitch!”
Max had heard Lydecker say those words, too.
The door pig-squealed in protest as it rose a foot or so, the driver still hanging on to the canvas strap. He was a short balding man with a sphere for a skull, little more than a disembodied head and shoulders floating above the lip of the trailer.
Wide-eyed, a peeled onion of a nose dominating his face, the guy bobbed his ball-shaped head as he looked around the trailer, saw nothing, swore some more, muttered something about “damn kids anyway,” then banged the door down.
Max heard the latch scratch back into place; she allowed herself a minute smile.
A moment later she heard the driver's door slam, the transmission get shoved into gear, the engine roar, before the truck lurched forward.
Some time later (Max didn't know how long, as she'd finally gotten some sleep), she felt the truck come to a stop, back up for a long moment, and then the trailer rocked a little, as if it had bumped into something. She heard the burp of the air brake being engaged, followed by the slamming of the driver's door again. Hopping out of the crate, Max prepared herself…
The latch groaned as it slipped loose, the door made its familiar squeal as it yawned open and daylight cascaded in.
Heedlessly, Max launched herself before she realized the driver and another tall man— both wore jeans and heavy barn coats— were blocking her path, a fork truck sitting behind them, its motor purring.
“What the hell?” the driver blurted, as he took a reflexive step backward, his hands coming up to defend himself, unintentionally clearing the way for her.
Max landed gracefully on the loading dock, the concrete frigid beneath her feet after the trailer's relative warmth. She took one step toward the wide-eyed men, pivoted and leapt off the dock onto the snow-covered parking lot below. Bolting across the lot, the two men yelling at her, she made for a line of trailers against the far fence.
As she pulled away, she could hear the huffing of the two men behind her; again a small smile formed: they were not going to catch her.
The seven-foot chain-link fence beyond the line of trailers proved to be even less of an obstacle than the one back at Manticore; she scampered up and over, the way a spider navigates a wall. And the pair of overweight old men pursuing her hardly compared to helicopters and snowmobiles.
She was gone before the two men were halfway across the yard. Beyond the fence lay a two-lane blacktop road, and across that what looked to Max like a factory of some sort.
Still making its morning ascent, the sun told her it was approaching noon, the sky's compass indicating that west lay to her left. For no particular reason she could discern, she chose that direction, hopped onto the road and ran for all she was worth.
Max passed business after business, trying not to allow the newness of it all to distract her, however much seeing such things in reality, as opposed to some training video, excited and aroused her. She kept arms and legs pumping and, eventually, she left the industrial park behind and moved into an area of houses.
Homes.
Once in the residential neighborhood (
the young soldier thought), she slowed down, finally allowing herself to take it all in. These structures were not much like Hannah's cabin at all. Much bigger and close together, they vaguely reminded Max of castles in Manticore texts.
Though most of the structures were white, occasionally there would be a blue one or a yellow one— a rainbow to a child raised in a blue-gray environment— and all of them seemed to be two-story and have a garage underneath one side. A few cars were parked on the street, all with license plates stenciled WYOMING, like Hannah's last night; but she saw no people and wondered where everyone was.
At the sound of a car motor, up the street behind her, a startled Max took off at a sprint between two houses. She circled the house to her left, coming back onto the place where she'd started, just after the car had passed, rolling down the street, oblivious to her presence.
The vehicle looked different than anything she'd seen at Manticore, and when she focused in on the nameplate, she could make out a word: AVALON. She had no idea what that meant. She did know the Manticore men traveled in black vehicles labeled TAHOE and HUMVEE; this white Avalon looked nothing like those.
Max wondered how far she was from Manticore, and how far away she needed to get, to be safe. Though her sense of time was aided by the sun, distance remained vague to her. She returned to the sidewalk, but she knew her smock would draw attention to her, and that she needed to find cover again until dark… and the sooner, the better.
Rounding a corner, she wandered down a new street. Max had trouble telling this one from the previous one, the houses looking interchangeable, as if manufactured from identical plans; the cars looked about the same, too, and there still didn't seem to be any people around except her and the driver of the car that had passed by.
Max had gone another block or two when she spotted movement in the next block, on the other side of the street.
A child…
… about her age, playing in a yard three doors up. The sight of another kid made Max think again of her sibs, and an emotion rose in her, a caring emotion, and sad: she wondered if any of them had escaped.
She might never know what had become of Jondy and the others— Zack she feared had been killed— but she wasn't sure how she would find any of them, if they
gotten away.
But standing here on this corner, watching that other child play in the snow, Max made a vow that would form her in years to come: she would never stop looking for her brothers and sisters…
Never.
Chapter Two
TITANIC NIGHT
THE CAP
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, 2019
Hanging suspended by a slender nylon rope, eight stories over nighttime Los Angeles, Max thought,
The line tethering her to the building felt snug against her wasplike waist. Though a chilly wind swept over the city, colder than one would expect for early March, it barely registered on Max, upon whom weather had little or no effect. Her lithe, athletic body was sheathed in black formfitting fatigues, providing warmth enough for her genetically amplified body; besides which, her Manticore training in the frigid winters of Gillette, Wyoming, had toughened her far beyond any mere meteorological phenomenon she might encounter in LA. Her silky black hair, worn long since her escape from the compound, was tucked neatly under a black watchcap, and she made an anonymous, asexual figure as she played human spider.
Like the music that had once been made here, the record company that had originally erected the pseudo- stacked-disc structure (where she would soon be breaking and entering) was ancient history. After the Pulse, gangster groups had taken the building in lieu of royalties owed, following negotiations that were rumored to have
