Jenna? A motherly air? “You picked up a lot in just a few seconds.”

Her eyes narrow. “Yes. I did.”

I watch her walk down the stairway. Hap waits at the bottom watching both of us. When she’s halfway down I call to her, “Raine, one other thing—how did you figure out where I live? I never told you.”

She answers without looking back. “Hap told me.”

Facing Plan B

It’s already tomorrow. I watch the dim light that skirts the edges of my window shade grow brighter. I stared at my ceiling for half the night, trying to force my body to heal, trying to make it hurry. It seems like for the past year that’s all I’ve been doing. Trying to hurry.

It’s an irony that isn’t lost on me. I had too much time for so long, years, decades, even centuries when there was no hurrying, when time crept by so torturously slowly that I begged for an end to it all, and now it seems there’s never enough time. Hurry to get away from Gatsbro, hurry to warn Jenna, hurry to find Kara, hurry to live life, hurry to catch up. And now hurry because time is running out.

I roll to my side to get up and wince, my breath caught in my chest. I push up with my left arm, because my right is still too weak to use. I shuffle to the mirror. The outside is looking better, but the inside still feels like hell. Hurry. I hobble out to the kitchen, my bones and muscles feeling stiffer than the day before. Am I getting worse?

Jenna is surprised to see me up so early. She’s even more surprised when I pour myself a cup of coffee. “Lots of changes in just a short time,” she says.

I try to straighten out my right arm. “Too many changes.”

We ease into the morning slowly and once I’ve finished my first cup of coffee I begin telling her about Raine, explaining how I found out who she really is, and the kind of life she lives now with the Secretary.

“And she has no idea who her real parents are?”

“None. All she knows is that the Secretary saved her from some unknown Non-pacts who threw her in the trash.”

“And no idea who you are either.”

I shake my head.

Jenna sighs. “Poor girl. And I thought my life was a mess when I was her age.”

“She thought you were my mother. Can you believe that? She said you had a motherly ‘air’ about you.”

“Locke, I do have a motherly air. I’m a mother, after all.”

“I don’t see any air.”

“Maybe that’s because you’re not looking.”

She leaves to get the salves that Xavier brought during the night and begins preparing them at the kitchen counter. Whatever she used on me last time worked like a miracle, and I remember how Kara’s bloody blisters disappeared almost overnight. She dabs it on my lip and face and then changes the bandages, noting how much I’ve healed on the outside already. “Your BioPerfect is definitely more advanced than any Bio Gel I’ve ever seen. Some of the smaller cuts are already gone. But this might speed the others along.”

“What about the inside?”

“I can give you some pain meds, but your BioPerfect is on its own there as far as healing goes. Concentrate, Locke. It’s all connected, your thoughts, the biochips, and everything you want them to do. Put them on speed dial.”

I grin. Only Jenna would know that obsolete phrase. “Even the ribs?”

“Bioengineered with the blue goo?”

I nod.

“Then even the ribs.”

I spend the next couple of hours concentrating as Jenna suggested, and while I think I might be seeing some improvement, it’s still not fast enough. I promised everyone, including Raine, I’d be able to go to the meeting tonight.

By nine A.M. Livvy arrives, and a few minutes later, Carver and Xavier show up, both dressed in building maintenance uniforms. How many different kinds of uniforms do they have stashed away? They all acknowledge that I’m looking better, but when they watch me hobble from the kitchen into the other room like an old man, I see their faces drop.

“How are you possibly going to be able to go by tonight?” Livvy asks.

I have no idea, but I don’t see that I have any other choice. “I will,” I answer.

Carver lowers his shaking head into his hands. “This isn’t going to work.”

“We need to put it off another day,” Xavier says.

Carver looks up. “We can’t! We’re running out of time! We’ve got less than a week before the money’s gone forever and we still have no clue where Karden is!”

“Yes we do,” I say.

They stare at me, their attention focused. “On the old westbound track, about a hundred yards in, there’s another tunnel, one of those unofficial tunnels that doesn’t show up on any maps. There’s probably hundreds of them down there but I had a feeling about that one and I went down it. I had only gone another thirty yards or so when I sensed something.”

“Sensed what?” Livvy asks.

“Karden.”

“What? Did you see or hear him?”

I shake my head. “No, no, I just sensed him. I knew I was close. He was there, somewhere. I know it.”

Carver jumps up. “Sensed? Somewhere?” He throws his hands up in the air. “Is this what we brought you in for? So you could guess?”

Xavier stands too, shaking his head, rubbing his hand across his scarred cheek. “We need to rethink this.”

“You’re damn right we do. Maybe it’s time to go to Plan B. He still has an in with Raine. All he has to do is lure her away from that big ugly chunk of metal that’s always by her side, just long enough so we can grab her and then use her as a bargaining chip.”