One

Jack Stein was fuming. The anger welled up inside him, making him totally aware of his powerlessness complete with the knowledge that there was absolutely nothing he could do. Once again, Outreach had managed to make him a pawn in their own game. At least he assumed it was Outreach. He knew he couldn't say anything that would help. Not to the impassive face across from him watching from the opposite bunk, nor to anyone else. His new friend wouldn't have listened anyway. All spiky hair and stubble, the guy was nothing more than a hired thug. He shifted on the edge of the bunk, his expression unchanging, his pale eyes devoid of emotion. Jack ground his teeth together, narrowed his eyes, and looked away.

Why was it that Outreach Industries couldn't leave him alone?

He knew the answer: They thought he had something they wanted, or at least the key to unlocking the knowledge they wanted. They could be right; Jack wasn't exactly sure.

Back behind him, far, far away now, lay Utrecht and Balance City, teetering impossibly on its rock spire, all metal and glass, and somewhere within that urban construction was Billie. A changed Billie, but still Billie. Maybe by now she had found Dog McCreedy and discovered what had happened to Jack. At the thought of McCreedy, Jack's fingers tensed on the bunk edge and the anger welled up in him anew. He had trusted McCreedy. They had a history. That would teach him.

Never again. History counted for nothing.

He turned back to the man across from him and broke the silence.

"Do you have to sit there watching me? I'm not going anywhere."

His companion grunted.

Jack sighed. "Okay, be like that. Not much of a conversationalist, are you?"

The slight narrowing of the man's eyes was the only acknowledgment that Jack had said anything. Great company.

And Jack wasn't going anywhere. Not anytime soon. They were on one of Outreach's ships, heading back to a past he didn't want to relive. At least they'd already been through the gut-wrenching sensation that was the jump. He didn't think they'd be going through another one. He hoped not, anyway. He'd been through a few now, but he wasn't going to get used to the feeling, the way every cell in his body turned inside out. Damned jump space.

There was nothing he could do, nothing he could say. He glanced across at the cabin's other occupant, but knew he was unlikely to get any further information. They'd be at their destination in a few hours anyway, and there Jack would find out precisely what Outreach wanted from him.

Somewhere else on the ship, probably in his own personal cabin, sat Thorpe, his impeccable slick smugness locked away out of Jack's reach. Right at this moment, Jack would have liked to stretch out and ruffle that presence just a little. Thorpe was Outreach through and through. If nothing else, Thorpe had told him they were headed for the Locality, but that was scant information to work with.

Jack growled inwardly at the thought. Back to the Locality, back to his roots. Jack Stein had moved on from everything the Locality represented. The self-contained, programmed urban structure had been the breeding ground for many ills, and if he thought about it, wryly, Jack knew that he fell into that category too. Four years. It had been four years since he'd been anywhere near the place. And yet, here he was, heading back to the hive, back to everything dirty and corrupt that he'd left behind. Would it have changed? He doubted it. Well, perhaps physically, but that was natural; as it crawled across the landscape, its programmed buildings grew afresh at its tip, right up at the far end of New, and then they decayed and fell apart, to be consumed by the whole down at the end of Old. Inside, its populace mirrored that decay, whether they knew it or not. Jack wasn't looking forward to returning to those roots at all.

He glanced back at his guard and sighed. The guy hadn't shifted. Reconciled to the wait, Jack leaned back on the bunk, swung his feet up, and linked his fingers behind his neck. If that was the way it was going to be, he could at least try to get some rest in the meantime, hired muscle be damned. He closed his eyes, still intimately aware of the other presence in the cabin, feeling the vague energy of another person almost as background noise in his extended senses, and knowing full well that any attempt at sleep would be little more than pretense.

Copyright © James A. Hartley, 2006.