“Thanks.” She saluted King, who returned it more out of reflex than friendship. When she pulled her hand away, he smacked Eng on the shoulder and the two of them sauntered down the hall like they were on patrol or something.
Maybe they are.
Teal folded her arms around herself and stared at the blank walls and dingy doors, trying to think. Obviously finding a squat on her own was a no-go. So only one thing to do.
Head straight for the Authority. They could put her up while they tracked down a city slot for her, or Dad. After all, what if it turned out that the stories they’d been telling all these years were true and Dad really was on some kind of mission? Or maybe his ship had just gotten stranded somewhere? It happened all the time. Everybody knew that. The Authority might still find him, wherever he was. Then she’d tell him what had been going on all these years and he’d cry and hug her and call her Starlet, and she’d live with him in El Dorado or Atlantis or one of the other cities, and she’d help him with… with whatever he was doing, and they’d be a family, a real family. Not like her and Chena. Nothing like that at all.
With her arms still wrapped around herself, Teal walked rapidly down the hallway.
The most likely place to find the Authority reps, Teal decided, was the directorate. This time, she stuck to the elevators. Athena Station was four arms rotating around a central core that held the power plants, air processors, and the other machinery of living. Arms One and Two held living quarters. Arms Three and Four were given over to manufacturing whatever Pandora needed, which the Athenians traded for food and water.
Administrative offices were distributed between all four arms, but the directorate was concentrated in Arm One. Teal had come in on Arm Two, so she’d have to get across in one of the connectors.
The elevator door opened onto a corridor jammed with people. Teal stepped out, momentarily stunned by the size of the crowd. It wasn’t in motion, though. The people all stood in a line. Well, some of them sat or squatted in the line. Most of them carried a pack or a case of some kind. A few had droids, dogs, or ferrets on tethers. None of the machines or the animals ran free.
“What’s going on?” Teal asked a woman who balanced a duffel roll on her broad shoulder.
The woman gave her a look of pure contempt for such ignorance. “Checkpoint. No cutting the line, girly.” She jerked her chin up the corridor.
Checkpoint? For what? Then Teal remembered all those strangers in the stairwells, and all King’s and Eng’s tough talk. Had there been trouble? Had there been a breakout of some kind, maybe?
Well, it’s okay. Teal took her place in line behind a pair of men whose gray tunics had bright gold electrician’s badges on them. Four banded ferrets used the men as a climbing gym. The restless animals chased each other in and out of pockets and around shoulders and ankles.
Watching their antics made the wait feel short and left Teal in a much better mood than she’d started out in.
At last she could see the checkpoint between the heads and shoulders of people in front of her, or rather she could see the pair of superiors who were working the checkpoint. But instead of the tan tunics and blue trousers she was familiar with, the superiors now wore black body armor and radio helmets. They carried tasers and pellet guns on their belts. If they were supposed to look menacing, it worked. Teal’s throat tightened. She and Chena had spent hours on mischief as kids, seeing if they could get the superiors to come chase them, but those superiors hadn’t been armed with anything more than cameras and old rules.
But that wasn’t the only change. The bulkhead had been turned into a choke point with bulky scanners welded to the struts. Multiple cameras watched the people coming in, the people passing through, the superiors, the length of the line, and who knew what else.
Each person stopped in front of the superiors. Teal couldn’t hear the questions they asked, but she couldn’t help noticing the process took a lot longer for people without badges on their tunics than for those with some kind of official marking. Bags and cases were opened and searched, as were droids. Animals were prodded, sometimes until they yelped.
Another few shuffles forward, and Teal could see they also examined sheet screens and printouts.
Sheets?
Teal rubbed the chip on the back of her hand. She hadn’t expected her identity to be questioned. Then again, she thought she was going back to the Athena she knew and that knew her.
Up ahead, a woman bent under the weight of her pack handed her sheets over to the superiors. They read them and shook their heads. Her arms waved in the air, and they shook their heads. She reached into her trousers pockets, and the right-hand superior reached for his taser. The woman turned away, and the line made reluctant room for her as she picked her way back down the connector.