“She won’t say,” Simon said. “I don’t think she trusts us entirely. Says she’ll be taking every measure to be careful, to make sure her cover isn’t blown before it needs to be.”
“She’s still within the Liberators?”
“That’s my guess,” Simon answered. “It sounds like she must be very close to the master general to have such evidence and worry so much about discovery. Perhaps it’s one of his lieutenants. If that’s the case, she might even be able to help us win over some more allies. Take over the Liberators from within.”
Beth nodded. “That’s a better lead than I’ve heard this whole time,” she said. “Why doesn’t she transmit this evidence over to us? Is it bugged like our data? Self-destroying information?”
“Like I’ve said, she doesn’t trust us yet,” the bodyshell said, a bit of frustration bleeding out through his speakers. “She’s worried we might be setting her up.”
“I’m a bit worried about the same thing,” Beth commented.
“As we should be,” Simon replied. “That’s why she’s proposing we meet in a neutral location. Someplace public, where we can speak face-to-face. That way she can give us the data without leaving a trail. She’s making sure we can’t reverse track her, which is entirely possible if she were to upload it to us remotely.”
“I don’t know if I like this, Simon,” Beth said. “We’re out here because we can’t trust anyone.”
“Well, if we want to stop Tarov and go home again, we have to start somewhere.”
Beth sighed. There didn’t seem to be any winning here. No matter what choice she made, she’d have to take a risk. Staying out here in the wild was a chance against survival, and that’s only if Tarov never comes out this far to look for her. Every day she spent was another day closer to her capture — or even worse.
“Where does she want to meet?” the detective asked.
“A hyperloop station on the edge of the city,” Simon answered. “It’s in a pretty rough neighborhood. The place is so poor that cops aren’t likely to go out that way for anything short of a riot. It should work for both parties.”
“When?”
“As soon as possible,” the I.I. replied. “I can start taking the tent down if you want to pack the cookware.”
Rendezvouz
Beth could almost smell the grime in the air as she descended the stairs to the hyperloop station. There was a set of escalators, but they were broken, an orange framework barrier placed at each entrance to the immobilized device. Beth could hear people coughing as they leaned against the tile walls that formed the interior of Willmington Station.
There was an older black woman pushing a cart down the stairs. It had special wheels that allowed it to roll down the steps without jarring the contents too much. She was wrapped in a wool shawl, her face concealed as she worked the thing down to the lower level. Beth and Simon walked past her and around a couple of tourists who were marveling at the squalor and filth that called the station home.
Once they got off the staircase and were walking with the rest of the commuters, Beth could smell meat smoking over a couple food stands. The aroma wafted through a cloud of cigarette smoke, as well as the perfume of some older women, before it reached the detective’s nose. She wrinkled her nostrils to the odor. The combination was not pleasant.
She couldn’t read Simon as he made his way down through the crowd. He was leading the way, apathetic to the sights around them as he weaved through the crowd. Beth followed him uncertainly, like a child following her family during an important commute. She didn’t know where they were going, but she knew she didn’t like where they already were.
“Hey, hey,” a guy beside a pillar to her left called out. “You wanna try some of this new Blue Fog stuff? Better than the original drug. Gets you much, much higher.”
“No thanks,” she said, waving the drug dealer off with her hand.
They were emboldened down here, she realized. She didn’t even look like a junkie or a street dweller, but this guy had no qualms about offering illegal narcotics to her. In fact, the only downside that existed in his burned-out brain was that she might say no. Not that she might be a detective with the city’s police force and that she might bring the hammer of justice down on him. He knew cops didn’t bother coming this far out of the city’s downtown areas. He was fearless.
The same seemed to be true of everyone down here. Every variety of criminal seemed to breath easy in these subterranean walls, glad to know their illicit businesses wouldn’t be the subject of any scrutiny. Except, perhaps, by competition, but that was easy enough to deal with. Every vendor down here seemed to be packing heat, keeping their large, illegal firearms out on display so everyone passing knew they were not to be fucked with. In a strange way, it seemed to keep everyone focused on their own business.
There was a woman, entirely naked except for a small bit of glittering underwear, dancing by one of the platforms for a small crowd of unbathed working-class men. They hooted and howled at her as she danced to no music in particular. The flesh on her buttocks quaked as she shook her hips, and that seemed to send the men into a mini-frenzy.
“I don’t like this place,” Beth said, watching the people around her through the corners of her eyes.
“I wouldn’t expect you to,” Simon replied. “However, it has its own kind of charm. Some people really find comfort in a place like this.”
“People I wouldn’t want to talk to,” Beth commented.
Simon ignored her and continued along the walkway. He took her past a left turn, away from where the capsules usually picked up their passengers, towards the hollows where stores and bathrooms
