Tool

Chapter Six

The streets around the café where she'd met Nicholas only a few days before weren't quite as busy as those she had just left, but there were people around and quite a few clones. What now? Aurelia cursed herself for not thinking ahead for once. Was she supposed to walk up to random clones on the street and ask if they knew Zak? She felt like an idiot. She shrugged and approached the first clone she saw.

The man was polite, but he looked at her as if she were crazy and shook his head. No, he didn't know any Zak. She must have asked two dozen people in the next thirty minutes, and as the dome lightened and morning came, the streets emptied. She had found nothing. She was about to turn and head back to the hospital when she noticed a movement in an alleyway in front of her. A man appeared, sliding out of the shadows enough for her to see him gesture to her to follow him.

She almost didn't. Aurelia might have grown up on relatively safe Earth, but she wasn't completely naïve. She felt the metal weight of Jonathon's stunner still in her pocket. Screw it, she thought. She grasped the stunner in her hand and slowly walked towards the alley.

Seeing her coming, the man turned and led her away. The alley was lighter than she had expected, and she could hear a busy street at the other end. She concentrated on following the man, who wore only black. Without turning or stopping, he spoke. "Stop asking questions."

Aurelia quickened her pace to try and keep up with him, but the man did the same, preserving the distance between them.

"Go back to the hospital and wait. But no more questions."

They were coming to the end of the alley now, and the man spoke only once more.

"Pick this up," he said.

He reached into a pocket and pulled out an envelope. As he dropped it onto the ground, Aurelia had a clear view of thick scars on his wrist. There can be only one reason for that, she thought. The man was a clone who had somehow erased his wrist numbers. She bent to pick up the item he dropped, and when she looked up, he was gone.

The alley let out onto a main boulevard outside the hospital entrance. Aurelia shoved the envelope into her pocket and hurried inside.

***

She didn't open the flat package until she was safe in her living pod. When she did, she felt bemused. Inside was a paper printout of a screen shot, showing an application for a guided tour of the arena. It took her a moment to put two and two together. Then she pulled out her screen, found the appropriate icons, and filled out the application. She assumed this was Zak trying to contact her, but even if it weren't, going to the arena was no bad plan. When she was done, she rolled up her screen and checked her intercom messages. There was one from her parents but nothing from either Jonathon or Nicholas. Her time reader told her she had a little over an hour before she was due at work, so she took the chance to nap. But she couldn't sleep; her mind was too busy to let her.

***

When she appeared in her office, Jason looked confused. "What are you doing here?"

"Er . . . well, I was going to work," she said. Without her first coffee of the day, and after a sleepless night, she wasn't feeling especially sharp.

"You've been taken off the rota today," Jason said, pulling out his screen to show her.

Sure enough, her name had been replaced by his as acting head of trauma. What the hell?

Jason grinned at her. "Forgotten something?" he asked. "Important meeting you're supposed to be at? Presentation you're supposed to be giving?"

Aurelia shook her head. "I don't think so."