“Now that’s better than a box of cookies.”
Lightning flashed, a lance of light across the sky as they stepped back onto the roof. Thunder chortled in its wake.
“Hell, we’ll have to close the dome.”
“Yeah.” Eve looked up. “But it’ll still be a hell of a show.”
As the first bolt of lightning stuck, Cill let herself into her apartment. She almost hadn’t come home. Knowing the police had been through her things, poked and turned over her personal possessions, invaded her private space had her dragging her feet every step.
Her mother and stepfather had done the same. Always looking for something that could incite a lecture, shame, blame, punishment. Nothing had ever been private, nothing had ever been hers, until she’d walked out of that house for the last time.
Now what was private, what was hers had been searched and studied, again.
But where else could she go but home? She couldn’t make herself stay at the office either, not with all those flow
ers, all the faded echoes of the people who’d come for Bart.
He was too much there, she thought, and now, she felt exposed in her own home.
Maybe she’d move, she considered. Or just get the hell over it. Var and Benny were right. It was routine, nothing personal. But it was personal to her—that was the problem.
They’d taken some of her things, she could see that immediately. Felicity had counseled them that the warrant allowed the police to confiscate and examine. But why did their rights have to smother hers? Wasn’t there enough to be miserable about without adding this?
She wandered into the kitchen, finally settled on a power drink. She hadn’t been able to eat at the memorial, and she couldn’t find the desire or the energy to bother with food now.
She took the tube with her to the window to watch the dance of lightning. But she set it down again after the first sip. It was too cold. Everything seemed too cold.
She wanted heat and sun, not cold and rain. She wanted to sweat. A good fight, until she was exhausted enough to sleep without thinking about Bart, without imagining the strangers who’d walked through her bedroom, touching her things, judging them. Judging her.
In any case, she’d agreed to work on the program. She didn’t know if the push was because she needed to be shaken out of her funk or if the game needed more tweaks. Either way, she’d do what she promised and accomplish both.
She drew the disc she’d logged out of U-Play from the right cup of her bra. Probably a silly and overly girly place to keep it, she thought, but she’d figured nobody could steal it unless they killed her first.
She kicked off the new shoes that hurt her feet, then walked barefoot to her holo-room.
She loved holo. She could go anywhere. She’d seen the world with holo—not to mention worlds that only existed there and in the imagination. Benny’s research was so thorough. She’d wandered Piccadilly Circus, shivered by a loch in Scotland, explored the Amazon jungles.
She didn’t need a crowded transport, the hassle of customs, the inconvenience of hotels where countless others had slept on the bed before you. She only needed holo.
Even as she slid the disc in, her mood lifted. She set the program, then took a long, calming breath.
The heat enveloped her, the heavy, wet heat of a tropical jungle. Instead of the black suit she never intended to wear again, she was clad in the thin, buff-colored cotton, the sturdy boots, the cocky, rolled brimmed hat of a treasure hunter.
She loved this game for the puzzle, the strategy, the twists and turns—and yes, especially now—for the upcoming battles—fists, weapons, and wits—with any who opposed her on her search for the Dragon’s Egg.
She opted to start at the beginning of the first level, and her arrival at the ancient village of Mozana. It would take hours to run the entire game, but that was all good, she decided. She wanted nothing outside of this, wanted to think of nothing else, maybe forever.
She went through the steps and stages, the meets, the bartering, the purchase of supplies.
In one part of her mind she was Cill the treasure hunter—ruthless, brave, and cunning. In the other she remained Cill the programmer, observing the tiny details of the images, the movements, the audio, searching for any flaws.
She hiked through the heat, watched a snake coil itself on a limb and hiss. She waded through rivers, and raced to the mouth of a cave as the ground shook with an earthquake.
And there, by the light of a torch she found the cave drawings. Carefully, as she had countless times before in development, she copied them in her notebook by hand, and took photographs with her camera.
The simplicity of the first level would pull the gamer in, she thought. They want to move up, move on, face more challenges. As she did.
She gathered clues, racked up points, mopped the sweat off her brow, wetted her throat with water from her canteen.