She fell to her knees. Part of her wondered if this meant defeat. If it was pointless for her to continue to fight. Maybe she should just walk to the nearest police station and turn herself in. Submit herself to Tarov’s will and just give up. Then she wouldn’t have to struggle. She wouldn’t have to run. She wouldn’t have to be afraid.
Maybe they’d even let me see Marcus, she thought. Before they killed me.
“Hey, that’s some pretty morbid thinking,” a voice said from within her. “Giving up already?”
It was Simon.
She repeated his name aloud.
“It’s me,” he reassured her.
“How?” she asked. “Where are you?”
“In your head, Beth,” Simon replied. “I jumped just before the capsule crushed our bodies.”
She realized the voice was inside her thoughts. It was almost like she was thinking them, but it came from a source she couldn’t control. She was now engaged in a mindshare with Simon, whether she wanted to be or not. She was too relieved to find him alive to worry about her mental privacy, though.
So, Rubik? she thought.
“They’re still alive, yes,” Simon interrupted her. “But it’ll take them a while to catch up to us with their body destroyed. We have some time — but not much.”
So what do we do? Beth asked. We can’t run back to the camp; Tarov’s people are bound to catch up with us before we even leave the city.
“True,” Simon replied. “But I think I know a place we can hide out. It’s not far from here.”
Lobo
Beth eyed the house with uncertainty. She already didn’t like the neighborhood Simon led them into, but she liked the house even less. She looked over her shoulders to make sure she wasn’t followed before turning down the building’s walkway.
The windows — with two exceptions — were all broken out and boarded up with particle board. Some parts of the original white siding were chipped away. Other bits had been tagged with graffiti, all reading phrases and names that Beth couldn’t make out. The two shrubs that lined the house’s porch steps were both dead, scraggly husks of the plants they had once been. A bicycle was turned on its side, carelessly left on the house’s dying lawn.
Patches of dirt spotted the yard, though the dirt wasn’t much uglier than the yellowing blades of grass that tried to hold onto life around it. There were spots where it looked like someone had been digging with a shovel, likely fueled by one drug or another.
Are you sure this is the right place? Beth asked. Part of her begged that Simon would say no.
“Of course I am,” the I.I. in her head replied. “Why — you don’t like it?”
Let’s just say I won’t be looking at any local real estate listings, she thought.
A form scurried in the corner of her vision. She turned and saw a starving dog, its flesh pulled up against its ribs, sniffing the ground in the yard next door. The poor thing looked like it was looking for any scrap someone might have left behind while too high to realize they hadn’t finished their food.
The sidewalk was cracked everywhere she looked. It was like someone had taken a sledgehammer to each slab of concrete, trying to break the uniformity of it all. Now it rose and receded like still waves, making walking up the path even more difficult than Beth already found it.
So who is this guy anyway? Beth asked. Are you sure we can trust him?
“Lobo and I go way back,” Simon answered. “He was there when I got started in the whole Fog business. He’s a skeezball like all of us, but he’s a loyal skeezball. He’s stuck with me through my darkest hours, and he didn’t rat on me or anyone else when they came to question him. He’s a good friend to have watching your back and I’d trust him with my life.”
Your life? Beth thought. Which one?
Simon ignored her thoughts as they approached the porch. A bit of it was sunken in; the supports clearly gave way some time ago and no one had bothered to repair it.
I still don’t know how I feel trusting a Fog dealer, she said. Let alone staying in a Fog house — among all the junkies and burnouts.
The prospect did not excite her.
“That’s a pretty judgmental way of thinking,” Simon replied. “Good people come in all shades, and sometimes those shades are addicted to drugs. You don’t have anyone in your life who you love — even if their lifestyle is disappointing?”
Beth thought of her brother Nathan. She tried to repress the thought and hide it away from the I.I., but Simon sensed it anyway.
“I thought so,” he said. “You just have to open your mind. I know you already have an idea of what these people are like, but I promise, you cannot predict the depths of a stranger’s generosity.”
But they’re not strangers, she interjected. They’re drug dealer friends of yours.
“All the more reason to trust them,” Simon said. “That is — if you trust me.”
Beth blushed a little. She felt like she was called out for rude manners, but from within her own mind.
She took in a deep breath and pressed the doorbell. It made a dull buzz that she could hear through the door. She stood on the porch in silence for a few moments, then pressed the doorbell again. The door opened.
A middle-aged Latino man with a few tattoos on his shaved scalp peered out the opening, cracking the door just enough for his head to fit. He looked around in the air for a moment, then drew a confused gaze at Beth.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
This can’t be our only option, Beth thought.
“Tell me one better, then,” Simon replied.
She sighed. “Lobo?” she said.
“Who’s asking?” the man behind the door inquired.
“My name’s Beth,” she introduced herself. “I’m a friend of Simon’s.”
The man’s face lit up. One of the
