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ignore her so she and Andy could escape and find a place to figure out what to do next. On the other hand, she wanted them to help her. She wanted them to insist on making her business their business.
    One thing that struck her as she watched the other passengers was how different they were from the people she'd known before she'd been sentenced. Besides the seemingly ever-present POD, some had what appeared to microchips attached to their temples. Others had had augmentations done to their eyes like the kid across the aisle from her who grinned back beneath cat's eyes. Still others sported shades of skin that couldn't possible have come from even the most skewed genetic lottery. She looked at the passengers and felt more different than she should have. Nowhere was the humanity she'd fought and gone to prison for. Nowhere was the feeling of family. She decided right then as she stared at a man who could have been her father that if she was able to get free, if she was able to survive, she wasn't going to help these people. While she'd been gone, humanity had engineered a future that she'd never anticipated, never even dreamed, could be possible. Sadly for her, it was a future that she despised.
    The whine abruptly stopped.
    "There," Andy said with satisfaction. "That should make some of the passengers happier."
    Who cares, she thought. "Where to now? We're okay, right?"
    Shoving his tools back into his side pocket, Andy put his arm around her and spoke into her ear. "Let's pretend we're together, Bec."   He waited until she didn't pull away, then added, "We're not out of the woods yet. There's a tracking device in this baby, and I don't have the tools to get it off."
    "Where will we go?"
    "I have this guy I deal with in Hollywood. If he can't do it, nobody can."
    They rode for another five minutes, then transferred to a new bus. Fifteen minutes later they reached Hollywood. They disembarked at Sunset Boulevard and Fairfax, running through several alleys in their attempt to spoof the police.
    "We're luckier than you know," Andy had said back on the bus. "All in all there are less cops working now than there was before you went in. With technological oversight, flesh and blood policemen became somewhat redundant. Those left deal with High Crimes like murder. Unless someone places you on a high priority list, nobody's going to come for you. All we have to worry about is blind luck—a policeman stumbling into one."
    Which is why they skulked the alleys.
    But so were a lot of other people who didn't want to be noticed, and not all were the kind to extend social graces to two souls in their time of need. inVids leaned against the walls every ten feet lost in some drama where they were king, queen or orgy slave, their slack faces inscrutable. Whatever their fiction, their reality could not be changed. Rebecca couldn't believe the Sisters of the ID frequented this place. Most of the inVids seemed only breaths away from dying. Their skin was poxed. Their cheeks had collapsed, the hollows filled with dark shadow.
    Several cowled men whispered around a barrel roaring with fire. One passed a slim object to the other, then locked eyes with Rebecca. Although his face was hidden, his eyes glowed with a malice she'd rarely seen. Shivers slid down her spine.
    Three gravBoarders stood to the side. These wore black muscle shirts and shorts with white stripes. As they approached, one dropped his board to hover, stepped aboard then sped away ahead of them. The others sneered, their gazes fearlessly traveling the contours of her body. Now that she was closer, Rebecca noticed they wore make-up, their eyes heavily outlined, their lips an impossible red. Her gaze drifted down their legs to their boards as she passed and what she saw there flipped her heart. Five ultra-thin cables jutted from the back of the gravBoard arching forward. Amidst a swirl of tattoos on the back of the boarder's right calf were five protruding receptacles. They didn't