Chapter 31

Six hours later.

Time: Wednesday, January 23, 2019 2:17 PM

Ashley and Hannah pulled up to a nondescript lamp store with their bikes and two side-cars. Nondescript, that is, except for the flashing white light on the high sensor node. Ashley waved at the sensor just inside the locked door. The sensor responded with a red-blink-pause-yellow-blink. It was the signal acknowledging their arrival and a command to hold their current position. Ashley nodded and dismounted her bike to stretch.

What a fantastic find, and it was their new recruit Lynn who had made the breakthrough. The sensors had integrated microphones but no speakers. They were designed for monitoring, not two-way communications. But Lynn had postponed her medical treatment and to go through the Matrix technical specs manual. She found that individual sensors could be tested remotely. There was one set of diagnostic tests had the option of giving color-coded flashes upon completion. Voila! The flashes could be used as return communication, and it made easy to communicate to the bike team where the sensor nodes were. Such a simple idea, but it had taken Lynn to come up with it.

The result was that Ashley and Hannah had been trailing Segundo’s party for the last three hours, and their Leophone still had close to a full charge. The phones were essential in case their target suddenly changed direction while the women were biking between nodes. A phone call would then be necessary to tell them to back up.

The store entrance beside them was at spiral mark 36,836, just one node away from the Green Mall sky-bridge at spiral mark 37,540. The fact the Ashley and Hannah were holding at this position implied that Segundo’s party was between the sensors at spiral marks 38,257 and 38.988. Their mission plan was to maintain a separation of at least two sensor jumps. The same was true for Ann and Madison out in front of Segundo. The two teams were almost identical, except that Madison was armed with a pistol.

Hannah frowned slightly at the feces and urine on the floor a few tens of meters in front of them. She couldn’t really blame Segundo’s party for this. They had no other toilet option, and the mall servos were not being given enough of a buffer to remain hidden and clean up the messes. Still, the wet puddles and turds were unpleasant to find.

Ashley picked up on Hannah’s displeasure. “There’s no more pink mixed in with the urine. Maybe Cassie has stopped bleeding.”

Hannah grimaced and muttered under her breath, “The monsters, they’re driving her to her death.”

Ashley shivered in response. Four hours ago, she and Hannah and Emily had been near the hub area of Black Mall. There they found a horrific scene of chopped up pieces of sled and most of Bambino’s torso. The mall servos had not had time to complete its decomposition or clean up the blood and other bodily fluids.

Interestingly, the servos had left a stack of water bottles alone. Emily commented that the servos had decided the bottles were a depot of supplies and not garbage, and thus had left them untouched. After a brief discussion, the women spent a few extra minutes opening a store and stashing the bottles behind a counter.

And now it was 2:24 PM, and Ashley and Hannah were still waiting by the lamp store. Segundo was driving his group hard, a grinding 6 kph pace along the spiral, hour after hour. Ashley thought their go signal should have come two minutes ago, and then finally there it was. Lynn had just verified the sensor’s internal data buffer twice, producing two quick blue flashes. Ashley nodded at the sensors and took off with Hannah to their next station. This one would be impossible to miss. Lynn wouldn’t even bother to white-flash the sensor. The next sensor node was the Green Mall sky-bridge, and it became more and more visible around the curve as they biked.

Simultaneously, at the 39 km mark of Green Mall.

“Fucking hell,” thought Segundo. “Now my throat is sore, and whose fault is that? It’s the fucking whore’s fault. Fucking bitch!” He was walking a few meters out ahead of his group in an attempt to cool off, and it wasn’t working. Hadn’t Cassie learned her lesson back at the hub? This was the third time in less than an hour that he was screaming at her to speed up, and he had just finished by telling her in a raspy voice that this was absolutely her last warning. “Stupid, lazy, dumb bitch!” he had screamed. “You want more of what you got this morning?!” But the screams this time had made very little impact on her pace, made her steps more wobbly if anything.

Segundo looked ahead at the featureless and barren corridor, beginning the struggle anew with what he was doing. By himself, perhaps he would have turned back an hour ago, agreeing with Ernesto’s assessment that there was no way Chico’s party could have come this far this fast.