vN The First Machine Dynasty(33)

"Relax. I'm camouflaging him. I don't want him getting in the way while we do the hard part." He gestured. "Come on. I'm starving."



Amy gave Junior a long look as they walked away. Finally Javier just grabbed her wrist and tugged her along behind him. They skirted the sleeping camelbots carefully, occasionally leaping over them and waiting for them to wake. Javier counted off the seconds on his fingers, to show her. He jumped a little ahead of her each time, and he waited for her to land before springing forward. But there wasn't so much garbage close to the guardhouse – maybe the humans wanted to avoid the smell – and soon only an empty stretch of foam and fence lay between them and their goal.



"Shit." Javier nodded at the guardhouse, where the one light glimmered and danced in a bottom-floor window. Beyond, the compiler sent steam wafting into the night air. "That building and the fence around it are too big for one jump."



"Do you think the roof is charged?"



Javier reached inside his pocket, and plucked out Rick and Melissa's keys. He undid a keychain from the ring, leapt high and hurled it at the roof. It sparked there like a mosquito caught in a lantern. He landed and sucked his teeth. "There goes that idea." He turned to her. "The moment your toes touch the ground, you jump. OK? And no squealing. You make this little noise when you're in the air, and you sound like a kid on a rollercoaster."



"You've taken your kids on rollercoasters?"



Javier took off into the air. Amy followed. She landed inside the narrow strip of sponge between the guardhouse and the fence. Inside, a guard was watching a display.



Amy's dad was on it.





"Jack Patterson, human father of vN fugitive Amy Patterson and domestic partner of murder suspect Charlotte Patterson, was arrested Wednesday for assaulting a police officer during a pro-vN protest."



The display cycled through various shots of her father: flipping grey slabs of vN meat on the barbecue; holding Amy on his shoulders with the Malibu Pier stretching behind them and into the Pacific on a sunny day; kissing her mom under the red paper lantern of a vN kaiseki house in Oakland – the place he'd proposed to her after hearing about the Cascadia quake, that Amy recognized from his almost nightly retelling of the story. Then the display cycled to footage of her father in an orange jumpsuit. The guard watching began idly squeezing something on his chin.



"Amy!" Hissing, Javier yanked down on her hand, hard. Her knees gave.



"Patterson's father, insurance magnate Jonathan Patterson, issued a public statement today saying that he had no plans to offer legal assistance to his son, whom he disowned seven years ago."



Amy stared out into the field of garbage. Somewhere, someone had her father in chains. Somewhere, someone could be interrogating him about her and her mother. He was alone somewhere dark and frightening, and she had no idea where or how to get there.



Don't even think about helping him. Look what happened the last time you tried helping. If you had just left me alone, none of this would have happened.



"My dad isn't a mean guy," she said. "He doesn't even yell."



"In a press conference today, FBI vN specialists said that experiments on Charlotte Patterson have yet to conclusively determine whether her failsafe…"



"They're experimenting on my mother?"



Javier rolled his eyes. "What did you think was going to happen?" he asked. "Did you think they wouldn't start investigating your mom once they figured out what Portia could do? Did you think your old man would sit by and let that happen? He's meat, Amy. They're possessive."



"–search has expanded for an unmanned vessel that went missing four days ago. This marks the latest incident in an unusually dangerous year for ocean-going vessels. Container crews are now in talks to form an international union  –"



Javier's fingers closed around her elbow. "Come on," he urged. "We have to go."



Amy pulled her arm away. "I have to find them," she said. "I have to explain–"



An alarm sounded inside the office. They froze. The pattern of light from the window shifted as the man inside stood up. His shadow stretched long over their bodies. They heard the gate swinging open, and the rumble of a heavy truck coming through. "Chingalo," Javier muttered, and looped an arm around her waist. He hauled her around the corner of the building as the truck rolled past.



The engine died, and a door creaked open.



"You from Redmond? From the reboot camp?" Amy guessed this was the guard.



"Yeah. Here for the bluescreens," Amy heard another man say. "Sorry I'm late. All these new checkpoints…"