Page 110 of Coldwire
31EIRALE
I close the gate behind me with a solid click.
For a moment, I stay put, waiting for any indication of danger in pursuit. The police cars didn’t pull into the courtyard in time to see me run between the high-rises. The drone was too distracted trying to make sense of the voices. I should be safe. Ishouldbe.
I make one more cursory scan of the street. Nothing.
“Hey,” I whisper into my comm link yet again. “Come on. Say something.”
Nik has been silent this entire time. Maybe his earpiece fell out and he’s too tired to get it. Or the frequency shifted inexplicably.
I hurry through the alleyway, running into the inner building. The most likely explanation, actually, is that he’s dead. That the illness has halted his organ functions and stopped his heart. I don’t know what I expect to find when I skid along the hall and barge back into apartment 1F. A cooling corpse, maybe. The last remnants of life clinging to his softer parts, like the guard in the data center.
I turn the corner into the living room. And I find… nothing.
Nik’s gone.
He’s not on the couch anymore. I locate his discarded earbud instantly, squished between two of the cushions. His bag isn’t here anymore either.
I scoop up the earbud at once, scanning the room to make sense of what happened. There’s no sign of a struggle. The windows are intact. No furniture overturned.
I backtrack out of the apartment, closing the door behind me. When I entered, the front gate under the awning had been latched neatly. If Nik had wandered out in a sickly stupor, I don’t think he would have taken the time to close the gate behind him.
My head turns the other way instead, following the stairs that ascend through the building. The numbers on the mailboxes in the corridor showed ten floors total. No elevator. This residential block is older, built in the days before Threto knew it needed to sustain a population spike. The high-rises I passed before could climb as high as forty floors, but these stay closer to the ground—naturally, if residents have to make the trek up. They tend to have vacant topmost levels, too, because no one wants to rent units that delivery bots on wheels struggle to reach.
I surge up the steps, my hand skating along the railing. Each time I peer around the stair landings, I almost expect to find Nik curled behind one of them. The shadows are thick, permeating densely. Cement walls and cement stairs make for a heavy structure, bouncing back my voice when I shout, “Nik! Come on!”
“Here!”
The voice is weak. I almost think I’ve imagined it, that I’ve mistaken the squawk of a bird for a voice. Then I hurry to the highest floor and through the first open door. The apartment is either abandoned, or very poorly maintained. Its floor is covered in soot and bricks and half-ripped tarps. The windows are boarded up, keeping out most of the morning save for a few harpsichord strings of light. For a beat, I am merely scanning the dark shapes. My eyes may well be deceiving me to find Nik slouched beside the couch.
“Drones came by,” he says when he sees me.
I reach into my jacket and tear through the lidding foil on the Evelinepill. Nik tracks my movement toward him. His gaze is unfocused behind his glasses, and though he attempts to make sense of what I’m bringing him, I still take him by surprise when I grab his jaw, forcing open his mouth.
“Wha—eurgh—”
I put the pill on his tongue. “You’d better swallow.”
Obediently, Nik swallows. He pulls a face, gesturing distaste and dryness without water to wash it down.
“That was disgusting,” he remarks. His eyes flutter.
“Yeah?” I finally exhale, loosening the cramp in my lungs with a long, deep breath. Ignoring the dirt on the floor, I sit too. “Tough luck. What are youdoingup here?”
“Drones, like I said,” Nik answers blearily. “No curtains on the windows, and it was a ground-level apartment, so I thought I’d better find another hiding spot. Kept telling you and wondering why you weren’t replying.” He sticks his finger into his ear, then laughs. “Silly me. It fell out.”
I blink, taken aback. His laugh was short, but its echo peals wide. It’s an ill-fitting sound, and I don’t quite know what to do with it. There must be inflammation in his brain.
“Some stamina you have,” I chide without hostility. “You needed me to drag you through that alley, but you got up ten flights of stairs yourself.”
Nik grumbles something indecipherable. He’s fading out. Eveline is fast.
“Couldn’t stay on stairs and raise alarm from cameras,” he manages in a garble. “Couldn’t break into anyone’s apartment and have police. Just had to keep going up. You’d know I went up.”
His head tilts, and in the next second he’s unconscious. I sigh, letting the silence of the tumbledown apartment sing in my ears. Then I reach into my pocket for the other packet of Eveline, scratching open the foil and plucking out the pill.
I swallow it with a wince. I don’t feel sick yet—and I might be safe entirely given NileCorp’s insistence on keeping us up to date with ourvaccinations. Still, Nik was breathing in my face under the rubble, and I’d rather be preventive than wait for an illness to catch up. Even if it’s only getting in there to scrub clean what’s building.
