Chapter Four
“All right, make a turn northeast,” Thorne said, directing Titus with a gesture from her recently unbound hand. “Not too much… there! That’s the heading.”
“This is it?” The big man slowed the van to a stop. Around them, wetlands stretched into the distance in all directions. “You’re leading us into a swamp.”
“Yeah, pretty much,” Thorne said. Technically, around these parts they called it a bayou, but she’d never really seen the difference. All that mattered was her bunker was off the grid and hidden well out of anyone’s way.
Thankfully, they’d made it out of the city and were now well beyond its suburbs. Basically in the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t likely to be anyone around to recognize their vehicle, but all the same, they needed to get hidden.
“Hold this direction for two miles, then we’ll come to an acre of trees blackened by fire a year or two back. I’ll show you a good hiding spot for the van once we’re there.”
“I’m sorry, am I driving a getaway vehicle or exploring a new continent?” Titus asked. “You know we have GPS to give us exact directions? Don’t need all this orienteering crap.”
“Where we’re going has no address,” Thorne said. It was safer that way, after all.
“Okay, sure. But it has coordinates, right? I could put them in the van’s computer and we can head right to it.”
“The best way to make sure information stays safe is to keep it up here,” Thorne said, tapping a finger to her forehead. A fact she’d learned all too well during her years tracking down dissidents for the Party. Everyone thought their offline databases were safe, but anything could be hacked. Anything except one’s memory. No computer was breaking into that.
Titus grumbled, then called to the others who were huddled in the rear seats.
“Is it too late to change our minds about this?” he asked. “We can still ditch Thorne in the swamp and find our own hiding place, yeah?”
Neither Kaiden nor Zelda responded. They were too occupied with the database. Zelda had it open on her handheld console and they were flicking through it like mad, thoroughly exploring its contents.
“This thing is loaded,” Kaiden murmured, clearly awed by the information Bernstein had acquired. Sooner or later, she needed to get a look at that database, Thorne knew. Realistically, she didn’t need any more prompting to see what the Party had become, but all the same, she wondered just how deep the corruption ran.
“I’d be more excited about everything Bernstein gathered here if it all wasn’t so terrible,” Zelda said, opening another file on her console’s screen. “Extortion of private customer data from just about every company of significance. Mass surveillance well beyond what’s legal…” She spoke the crimes as she read them, glancing at the evidence coupled with each accusation before moving on. “Taking bribes from criminals. Extrajudicial imprisonment of citizens—”
“Well, that one sounds painfully familiar,” Kaiden chimed in.
“Murder,” Zelda read, the list growing still more severe. “Extreme collateral damage when responding to rebel activities.”
Thorne winced at that accusation specifically. She couldn’t help but think back to the day she’d gone to talk to Zelda’s parents; to Werner busting in and arresting them, and then the bombing. How many innocents had died that day?
“Disappearing ‘political radicals’ and their family members. Operating black site detainment centers.” Zelda shook her head. “It just goes on and on. If even half of this got out it’d be enough to bring down most of the Party’s leadership. I knew Bernstein had dirt – we dug a lot of it up together – but I didn’t know he had stuff like this.”
“This the fire-damaged place?” Titus’ question pulled Thorne’s thoughts from the database. She glanced out the windshield.
“Yeah, that’s it. See the old cypress tree just ahead? To the left? Yup, that one.” She nodded as Titus angled the van toward it. “Take us just beside it, then ease us into that thicket. We can hide the van there. The bunker’s just a short walk.”
Walking through the swamp wasn’t the most pleasant of experiences, but the further they kept the van from the bunker, the better. A lone vehicle abandoned in the swamp wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows, but one parked next to a semi-hidden structure? That’d be a big fat red flag.
“Huh. Look at this.” Zelda said, pointing something out to Kaiden on her screen. “Another one of those broken links. It’s pointing to something that’s not on the database again.”
“Something Bernstein deleted, maybe?” Thorne asked. “Or was this still a work in progress? He didn’t finish it?”
Kaiden and Zelda looked up at her in unison with less than friendly expressions on their faces. Clearly they didn’t care for her listening in on the conversation.
“Forget I said anything,” she said, holding up her hands.
You’re going to have to trust me eventually, though, she added internally. They were right to be suspicious. Honestly, she couldn’t blame them. But she was also experienced enough to know that when things were dire, you didn’t turn down help, especially when you were desperate for it. Probably the trio didn’t realize how much trouble they were in. They’d been in hot water when they’d had the locked cipher. Now, however, they had the unlocked database, and by slipping past Moran’s fleet in-game they’d pissed him off. No doubt he was personally on their case now. She’d always known he was a man not to be trifled with, but with what he’d told her on the Anakoni, with what he’d
