City Living by Will McIntosh Read Free Book Online Page A

or eight miles, he and the kid might have a chance. Quinto pushed himself to pick up the pace, but when he did the kid started to fall behind, looking panicked. Quinto slowed.
    In the distance, Quinto heard the worst sound in the world: the sizzle-crackle of a Luyten lightning stick, a sound as much felt in your body as heard by your ears. Then another. He was spared the pungent, unearthly sweat smell of the weapon. He was too far away.
    When he’d made it through the town, Quinto took another glance back. The kid was a hundred yards behind, one hand clutching his side. No way this kid was going to run another four or five miles. Panting, his throat coated in phlegm, Quinto considered leaving him behind. No. No matter how fast he ran, he wasn’t going to outrun Luyten on foot. He could try calling HQ and beg for a carrier to come get him, but they’d only tell him what he already knew: They weren’t going to feed the fish any more than they had to.
    So he stopped, pulled out his comm, and waited for the kid to catch up. The kid stopped beside him, put his hands on his knees.
    “You want to call anyone? Your mom or dad alive?”
    The kid eyed the comm. “Just my little sister.” He swallowed, looked at Quinto. “We’re going to die, aren’t we?”
    “Yeah. We are.”
    “Maybe they got distracted by something. Maybe the others killed them.”
    “Maybe,” Quinto said. He thought he heard the snap-crackle of something moving through the woods to the north. “Come on.” He tugged the kid’s jacket and headed into the woods on the opposite side of the road.
    Should he call his own mother to say goodbye? He would like that, but he didn’t want to risk having her on the line when he died. He didn’t want that to be her last memory of him.
    Branches whipped his face as he tore through the brush. It was pointless, but he couldn’t relinquish that last millimeter of hope that he might get lucky, just one last time. He barreled down a slope as the landscape opened, then splashed through a stream and raced up the bank.
    He spotted a flash of crimson ahead, behind a thick cover of green leaves, and stopped short. The kid stopped short beside him, looked at him, questioning, just as a bolt of lightning burst through the foliage.

1
Oliver Bowen
    March 9, 2030 (nine months later). The South Pacific.
    The door was locked. The room was comfortable, replete with a well-stocked kitchen and an entertainment system that was so up-to-date it contained movies yet to be released. But the door was locked.
    You’re considered a risk. They don’t know the extent of my power to influence you.
    Oliver turned in his rotating chair to face Five, whose accommodations were less plush. Behind the carbon alloy mesh that separated them, Five’s room was empty except for a water dispensation device that resembled a giant hamster lick. Five was lying flat, his appendages splayed like the spokes of an elephant-sized wheel. His skin had a stony, mottled texture, and there were bristles protruding at evenly spaced intervals across it. The cilia protruding from the tips were as thick as nautical rope, and transparent.
    “Because you were able to win over a thirteen-year-old boy, they think you might be able to convince me that I’m fighting on the wrong side? That’s absurd.”
    But they don’t know that
, Five said.
They think you’ve become too familiar with me. Too friendly.
    The CIA yanks him out of his position at NYU three days after the invasion begins, shifts him from Research to Interrogation as their field agents die off, tells him to figure out how to communicate with Luyten, and when he succeeds, he becomes a suspected sympathizer? Beautiful.
    The next time someone comes, ask them when you’ll be informed where we’re going.
    Oliver couldn’t help laughing. “You mean
you
don’t know?” He waved in what he guessed was the direction of the submarine’s bridge. “Pluck it out of someone’s mind.”
    I don’t have to