the guards’ sensors with their location. Wolf heard and recognized his voice, enough that he froze.
Flickers of red painted Wolf’s image on Trace’s vid shield. The blood would target them more easily than if they’d removed their membranes. He dug in his pocket and extracted his latest creation. Shoving the membrane high enough to reach Wolf’s arm, he ripped a larger hole in the man’s sleeve and pressed a ball of molecular silly putty against the skin.
A gasp hissed from Wolf before the putty doubled and tripled in size, expanding to cover the wound and arm in a rubberized band. The effort would only hold for an hour or so, but the band camouflaged the wound from sensor detection, stemmed the bleeding, and added a layer of disinfectant. Not bad for a quick design on a night when Trace had too much time and too little synthesized whiskey to ward off his memories.
Membrane back in place and sanity restored, Wolf scrambled to a crouch and then gestured toward a new direction. The Crusher and guard squad had passed with no more incidents, but there were no assurances that Regent security cameras might not expand searches in their sector.
Trace held up a hand. Quickly working his way back to the girder, he retrieved the AG box and activated a small mobile transmitter on the ground. Programmed to travel twenty yards, the device would emit a frequency signal that would scramble Regent scanners, diverting the guards away from Trace and Wolf’s escape.
He picked up his pace in time to follow Wolf’s boot heels toward the grid’s edge.
***
A light streamed around the next turn, and Analena squinted to adjust. She freed one hand to give a quick wave to the half dozen or so children collected at the entrance of the wide cavern. Her motion, an acknowledgement and warning in one. Charged with excitement, but with memories of their own entrance to this conclave still fresh, they hung back and waited. Analena offered them a thankful smile.
Synthetic crystals, strung overhead, lit the circumference of the rock hall. The rechargeable energy crystals lent a comfortable atmosphere to the shared living space, but the boy didn’t gain security from the light. And the din, with anticipation of too many hands and voices, only agitated him further.
“Aaron?” Sixteen-year-old Hena had picked up Bits, resting her on her hip to keep the younger child from launching at Analena’s legs.
“Should be here in the next few minutes. He signaled they’d made it to the lower level.”
The boy’s head shifted slightly at the girl’s voice, and his shivering stopped. Though his grasp remained tight around Analena’s hand, he seemed to wait.
Halfway to a seven-foot slab of stone that functioned as a table, Analena froze.
From another tunnel, Aaron preceded a man a good head taller and broader in the shoulders. Granted, Aaron’s six-foot stature exaggerated his lean and lanky frame, but at nineteen, he still had time to fill in muscle. If Onyx was who followed him, then the medic needed to fill in nothing. For a second she doubted her decision to allow him into her private domain.
Even with the shimmer of a visual mask projected around his face to camouflage his features, the man’s posture and gait projected strength and confidence. The blindfold she’d requested was absent.
Analena gave him a complete once over, from mask to thick, black boots, drawing out her assessment to underline her authority. She’d asked him for help and he’d arrived, she didn’t want to challenge him. But she would if he stepped out of line. If he didn’t help the boy, or did something unexpectedly dangerous, he wouldn’t get any reimbursement. That was the least of her promise.
He made no overt gestures, letting her appraisal take place calmly as if awaiting a final pronouncement. Analena sucked back her concerns and finished the short trip to the rock slab that too often posed as her operating table and suture station. The small cry