Profiteer

He didn’t like doing it, even though it was only ten meters. There was a chance he could land on his real leg. The remaining few worshipers were turning to watch with growing expressions of shock on their faces. The few underneath him were scrambling out of the way.

 

His left foot, the artificial one, landed on the seat of a pew, sending a vibrating impact up his body. A circuit somewhere was overloaded, and for a split second his entire left side was frozen and numb.

 

He didn’t stop moving. The pew splintered and gave under his weight, and then his right leg hit the ground. A shuddering wave of pain crashed over his right side as his leg buckled under him. Fortunately, Tetsami was prepared when Dom let her go. He had managed to soak up most of the impact, and she only had to roll into the aisle and get to her feet.

 

The overloaded circuit started working again, and Dom could stand up. Tetsami was firing again. The paladin on the balcony was still blinded, but Dom’s enhanced ears picked up the sound of more armor approaching.

 

“Reinforcements are coming.”

 

Tetsami turned to him and noticed his limp. “Can you walk?”

 

“The question is, can I run?”

 

Dom started for the main doors. Tetsami came up behind him and pulled his right arm around her shoulders. She ran, pulling him along. It was a good thing she did. Dom thought his right ankle might be sprained, if not broken.

 

It seemed to take much too long to get to the doors, but they made it before more paladins showed.

 

They made it down the front steps of the cathedral and Dom was gratified not to see the war zone of East Godwin—

 

But he had no idea what part of the city he was in. He had spent way too much time sequestered in his suite at the GA&A complex.

 

He let Tetsami lead. She seemed to know where they were.

 

They’d gone barely thirty meters down the road when she turned him down a brick street that’d be too narrow for half the traffic in Godwin. They passed two skinny doorways and she pushed him into a third. This doorway was a kiosk that someone had constructed a building around. No door, only stairs down. In the darkness, Dom automatically adjusted his photoreceptors until he saw a monochrome light-enhanced image of a frozen escalator descending five stories below street level.

 

“Where are we going?”

 

“The Bakunin underground—” Tetsami snorted. When they hit a landing, she continued. “Five years ago someone tried to run a passenger commuter train from Godwin to Proudhon. For some reason it went bankrupt about three months before they finished construction. Some bank owns it now.”

 

They left a short corridor and ended up on an abandoned train platform. Tetsami appeared unable to see in the darkness, but she moved as if she knew the place. She felt along a wall and found a control box.

 

About half the panels set in the wall started glowing.

 

Dom killed the gain on his eyes and found himself facing the tracks for a high-speed maglev tube. A chromed sign was set in the wall. It read, “Wilson Station.” He still had no idea what part of town they were in.

 

“The Church’s goons can search for us, but if we go about a hundred meters down the tube, they haven’t stolen all the magnets yet—”

 

Dom knew what she meant. He knew the sensors the paladins would be carrying, and sitting under one of those magnets, and under a dozen meters of concrete and earth, would be effective defense against anything but an eyeball search.

 

“Okay. Kill that light. I can see without it, and it won’t help down the tube anyway.”

 

She killed it and reached out for him. He grabbed her hand and started limping down the tube. “How’d you know about this place?”

 

“There are stations all over Godwin.”

 

True to her prediction, after a short walk, the huge magnets still lined the rails in both floor and ceiling, sunk into the concrete. Even though no power ran through them, they still had enough residual magnetism to slightly blur his vision.

 

They sat down, next to each other.

 

“So,” she asked, “after we get out of this, what are we going to do?”

 

What were they going to do?

 

What could they do?

 

Dom called up his personal database and started taking a mental inventory of all the assets he had off the GA&A complex.

 

<>

 

* * * *

 

CHAPTER NINE

 

Insurance Fraud

 

 

“People prefer deals where only they benefit to one of mutual benefit between themselves and others.”

—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

 

“Nobody has money who ought to have it.”

—Benjamin Disraeli

(1804-1881)

 

 

Tetsami sat across from Dom. They were in a waiting room inside the Reynolds Insurance Building, and she wasn’t quite sure why she was here. They should’ve been holed up under a rock somewhere. She didn’t expect to see her 50 K, in the IBASC or anywhere else, no matter what Dom said. It was too easy to move money around when you didn’t have any.

 

Despite that, instinct told her to stick with this guy— and her instincts had taken her five years past the point anyone in her line of work had a right to go.