Dreams in the Tower Part 2 Read Online Free PDF Page B

pick up your assets—and be quick about it: we need to get you to Houston as fast as possible.”
    “Houston?”
    “You’ll receive more information later. Hold your tablet up.”
    Pulling her tablet out of her backpack, Dellia hesitated, looking warily at Izza, who was now holding his own tablet up. “If you aren’t going to trust me now, you might as well leave here and find your own way to the CDC.” She stopped wavering and immediately held her tablet up, allowing him to tap his own against it. As she pulled away, ‘Download Complete’ flashed on the screen. “You have everything you need,’ Izza said. “Take it as a token of good faith that I didn’t hack your tab and upload it remotely.” He stood up.
    “Wait.” She stood up too, reaching into her bag and fishing out a small vial, which she handed to him. “Here’s my token of good faith. For you or a friend. Take off the big cap, stick it in your upper arm, take off the small cap. Pretty easy.”
    Even through his mask, she could see a look of genuine gratitude; he seemed struck dumb for a few seconds before taking the vial of vaccine and thanking her. As he stuffed it away in some inner pocket and zipped up his thick hoodie, Dellia asked, “Should I be covering up too? Like with a mask and everything?”
    “Don’t bother,” he said. “We’ve had people assigned to keeping you undetected ever since you got back to Dallas.” He began walking to the car, turning back briefly to add, “We had to hide you from everyone else. Otherwise you would’ve been caught by now.” He left her there, brooding in silence. A minute later he was backing the old car out of the garage.
    Humbled and embarrassed by the revelation of her own foolish naivety, Dellia watched him go and wondered if he had been at the demonstration outside Silte headquarters on that July night. Regardless, he surely at least knew people who were sick, and had probably been close enough to one or two of them to contract the virus.. She hated herself for thinking it, but she realized with regret that she might have just wasted one of her precious vials on someone who was already gone. 

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    12
     
    Sabrina had lost count of how many consecutive nights they had spent in a cheap hotel in neighborhoods she would rather avoid, but this had to make at least ten. If they were lucky, no one here would notice two weary travelers who may or may not be wanted by the most powe rful people in the world: the ones peering down from the tallest building in the city. Unlike all the other hotels, though, this soggy, bug-infested place would be home for a while. At least that’s what her hope was. Now that they were in Dallas, maybe they wouldn’t have to move around so much.
    There were three knocks at the door, and then the sound of a card sliding into the slot. Jason pushed his way into the room backward, his hands full with the rest of the stuff from the car. “We’re all checked in,” he said.
    “For how many nights?”
    “Tonight, and as many more as we need.” He deposited the bags of food and other essentials on the bed. “I told the guy at the desk I’d pay each day in cash by wallet app. I still don’t think it’s a good idea to have them keep the fake account on file, even at a place like this.”
    Every time the phony bank account was brought up, Sabrina felt a little guilty—and more than a little dirty. The first thing Jason had done as they pulled away from his house was to get his shady friend Seito to help set up the account under a made-up identity and fill it with mo ney that did not ‘technically’ exist; they did it even before taking her car off the surveillance grid. This was the kind of thing that used to lead to major raids and arrests when Guardian was still employed by the government. She had helped uncover and prosecute entire rings of bank fraud, and now she was doing it herself. She had to admit,