Page 106 of Coldwire
“Barely.”
Nik’s voice is muffled. I imagine he’s got his face pressed into the couch arm, but he sounds lucid otherwise. With a swipe of my finger, I bring down the volume on my earbud.
I take a deep breath. The sun has risen over the horizon, beaming red across the lower clouds. For a few moments I only bounce on my feet, preparing myself to go. Before I am fully ready, I bolt forward, breaking into a sprint. I dash through a thin backstreet filled with dumpsters and parking spaces, tracing the map in my memory. When the gravel turns to grass, I veer left and hurtle past the exterior of a high-rise, wincing because I know every camera in the hallway inside is tracking me through the windows.
The surveillance circuit must know I’m here. It’s only a matter of how long it takes before it sounds an alert and this escalates into a pursuit. Really, it’s sheer luck the pursuit hasn’t already reached me.
I slow and quiet my steps at the next turn when sleepy conversationfloats down from an open, lower-level window. Once I’ve put enough distance between myself and the voices, I speed up again, gulping mouthfuls of air to stay at my pace.
Almost there. I hurry around to the front of the building, then across a courtyard—a shared leisure space, smack-bang in the center of three identical high-rises. The benches glisten with a layer of condensation. A wide road makes up the courtyard’s fourth side, and across that road awaits a row of breakfast restaurants. Once I sight the signs for porridges and soups in the distance, I know I’m on the right track. The pharmacy is at the end of the restaurant row.
A loud bang thuds overhead just as I’ve almost crossed the courtyard. I whirl around, clutching at air to feign having a weapon in case that scares off a pursuer.
It’s only a woman on her balcony, pulling open her chair. Right below her, an elderly man is sitting on his balcony too, smoking a cigarette. We make eye contact. Slowly, he takes a long puff.
I lower my arms, almost embarrassed. The moment I look, I register another figure, then another, then several more—all out on their balconies, getting air first thing in the morning. Many are watching me, but no one says a peep. Some are clearly reading on their glasses; others hold a paper book. I thought more would have gone upcountry.
I pull myself away, my breath coming short. The courtyard is as quiet as a cemetery when I finish crossing it, looking left and right before stepping onto the empty road. If Threto weren’t under lockdown, the breakfast restaurants would be at their busiest now: serving dry noodles with beef and scallion chunks, hot buns fresh out of the steamer, fried dough that crunches on every bite.
I’ve seen all the videos. On particularly exhausting days at the base after I finish running drills, I go back to my room, plop onto my bed, put on my glasses, and open the feed to watch people eat in Threto. It’s a guilty pleasure that I was always afraid NileCorp would find out about, andthough the company likely had access to my watch log, there’s no reason anyone would check it unless provoked. It’s hard to explain exactly what was so compelling about those videos save for the fact that I wanted to be in Medaluo for those mornings. The vlogging quality wasn’t the best, since the videos were filmed on handhelds, and still I could smell the crisp pepper flakes, still I imagined the splatter of shallot-infused oil dripping down my fingers too.
I shouldn’t feel guilty about my feed history, but if it gets publicized while I’m at large, it’s another piece of evidence held against me. Unlike my assassination deepfake, those videos in my history are real. I watched them to feel like I might understand something about Medaluo. This country might actually run in my blood. If I had had a family here, I could have been one of those laughing customers queuing in front of a small restaurant, grabbing a bowl every morning before school.
Movement flashes from the junction at the end of the road. I have a split second to dive behind a postal box when a drone swoops into view, whizzing above the restaurants. The side of my hand scrapes hard on cement, but I’ve hidden myself before the drone can spin in my direction, its lights flashing blue and red.
Most of the lockdown drones are sound-activated, chasing after footsteps and voices rather than movement. It’s cheaper to process. People are rarely running away without making a huge racket anyway.
I hold my breath, watching the drone pass by. It beeps happily. There’s nothing worse than police drones that have faces installed on them, as though a small winking emoticon will make them as lovable as the server bots.
As soon as the scene is clear again, I get up from behind the postal box, securing the jacket tighter over my head.
I’m running immediately, hurrying past each shuttered storefront. In my final pivot, I almost go right past the pharmacy. The gated entryway has been secured with three padlocks down the side. Closed—the pharmacyironically deemed a nonemergency entity during citywide quarantine—though the green sign remains lit. I consider the state of the padlocks, then shuffle around the back.
I kick my foot softly against the smaller back door. No shudder, so I expect it’s dead-bolted from the inside. There is, however, a glass panel along the door, and I take my jacket off my head, wrapping it around my fist instead.
The first strike bounces against the glass, pain rippling along my knuckles. The second strike appears to make more headway, the glass quivering. I brace hard. On the third strike, the glass breaks, fragmenting into shards that dust the back step. An alarm goes off inside the pharmacy at once, but I ignore it to reach through the broken panel, unlocking the door, then pulling open the dead bolt too.
I grit my teeth. Tug my arm back. Nudge open the door.
“Okay,” I say, directing my focus past the screaming alarm. Everything I say aloud I’m sure Nik can hear—he’ll be getting a good earful of the alarm blaring too, which should be helpful in keeping him alert.
I dust off my hands and tie my jacket around my waist, inspecting the back room. I’ll give myself two minutes. Any longer, and the authorities will send that drone from before with its firing capabilities activated, which are significantly harder to avoid than the guns of human police officers. I scan through the shelves in the dim light, my eyes squinting to make sense of the tiny print on the labels.
“Come on, come on,” I mutter. These are antibiotics. I might be looking in the wrong area.
I dive to the next shelf, then immediately strike gold when I spot a viral medicine. Evelinemustbe somewhere nearby, and if not on the shelf itself, then…
A small metal lockbox waits at the bottom of the shelf. I don’t hesitate. I pull the lockbox out and set it on the floor, then stomp down hard with my shoe. The lock breaks off. My heart is slamming in my chest when I flip the lid off and find only two blister packs inside. One tiny pill in the centerof each. When I scramble to flip one of the packs over, the lidding foil at the back is printed withEVELINE™ ONE DOSE EVELINE™ ONE DOSE EVELINE™ ONE DOSEover and over again.
Success.
I shove the two packs into my pocket without hesitation. Past the pharmacy alarm, I catch the first screech of distant sirens.
The morning air is heavier when I emerge back outside, closing the broken door after myself. The horizon has darkened despite the sunrise, as though a storm will be rolling in soon. I creep around the pharmacy. The drones are multiplying down the road.
“Warning. All citizens are instructed to stay inside. This is a mandatory public health and safety effort. Breaking lockdown without official permit is prosecutable up to…”
The recording fades when the drones turn the corner. The sirens, meanwhile, are getting louder.
