ARC10

Chapter 19.5

She gazed at me with desperate, sorrowful self-loathing behind her dark brown eyes. She bit her top lip as her bottom trembled.

"Ricky?" I faced her. "You did this for Ricky Riordeeno? The kid who hangs around the Sink, getting old veterans to buy him Junk? The same kid who's been to jail already and hasn't even graduated GenEd?" I remember the sleazy, lanky eighteen-year-old kid with limp hair that hung around his pointy jaw. Handsome and cocky, he was aiming all of his charm at Moyra. Moyra was gorgeous and intelligent beyond his capacity to comprehend. He was a snake.

She let out sobs in little gasps.

"Where did you leave it?"

"I don't know."

"What did you leave it by?"

"A tree, I think."

"You think?"

"I don't know, we were just driving around, and we stopped and ran when we saw the lights."

"How did you even manage to get it out? Why did you go out in the first place?" I was starting to panic, too.

"It was a dare." The last world trailed off. Her eyes darted to her lap where she squeezed her hands together, wringing them nervously. She anxiously scraped the blue-and-silver polish from her thumb.

Despite the fact that I wanted to strangle her, I knew there was nothing I could do to make her feel worse about this. She already was beating herself up enough for the both of us. I grabbed my boots from the corner of the pod and shoved my feet into them quickly, not even bothering with the laces.

"Stay here." I threw my arms through my raggedy gray jacket.

"You don't even know where it is."

"I know how to track it. Just promise me you'll stay right here. PIM me if anyone starts to wonder where I am or if you hear any news." With that, I flung myself against the broken door and ran through the Rotunda, not stopping until I had reached the threshold of Level 1.

It was late evening. I remember that clearly.

Heavy surveillance kept the hatches well out of the reach of URE youth. But what a lot of the guards and higher-ups didn't know was that just a few rooms over, there was a loose panel in the hangar wall that could easily be lifted out of its place and pushed aside to let in the lithe body of a single teenager. Or a group of them in single file.

I remember my days sneaking out of the URE at night. Dean always expressed his disapproval, but I always chalked it up to the fact that he was too big to fit through the aperture and was, therefore, a wet blanket about it.

In the darkness, I slipped easily through the opening into the night. The stars and wind greeted me with a cool push, throwing my hair around my face. The November air bit my skin in a way that the damp warmth of the URE never allowed. In comparison to being Topside, living in the URE could feel like living inside a mouth with hot breath circulating around crooked, unclean teeth.

I opened my hand to tap around the files on my PAHLM. The current list of vehicles in use showed nothing abnormal. They were all VRAPs—Vehicles Resistant and Ambush Protected. The heavy-duty stuff. Six of them were out for salvage and other miscellaneous errands. The interesting bit was that the three active jeeps were numbers 5, 6, and 9. Normally they were taken in order. Unless 7 and 8 were busted, it was my assumption that 9 was the one that had gone out for a joyride.

I wondered if anyone had started raising the alarms yet.

Most people didn't know how to use the vehicle locators, but as I was studying for Central Command, I had to know all of the mundane, innocuous little nuances of the militia.