17.
Sienna
Oh, man, did I have plans for my next nap. Big plans. Huge plans. Plans that defied the scope of the universe itself…
Okay, really, I just planned to make sure I dreamwalked to Reed or Zollers or Wexford or—hell, the list was starting to really mount up.
But also…I could have really used a nap.
Swimming across the Firth was not as easy an endeavor as it might have been had I attempted it at Edinburgh. There, the two banks were only a short distance apart, maybe a mile or two.
Here? Where I was now, the distance had to be ten, twelve miles. It wasn’t exactly marathon distance, or Cuba to the Florida Keys, but it was a long swim for a girl who typically didn’t get in the pool.
Also, cold. Still really, really cold. My nipples were practically cutting through the water for me on every stroke. Brrr.
I wished I’d removed my draggy, stolen clothes before I’d jumped in, but then I’d have been a shining beacon of white that could have been spotted from space, even as the day dragged to a close. I cursed the fact that Scotland was like Minnesota in its long days during summer. I bet the sunset wouldn’t even happen until close to nine o’clock, and that was probably hours off (I didn’t have a watch or phone—not that either would have survived the water). All I had before me was the swim.
The long, long swim.
Well, okay, not that long. I was probably halfway there, and I’d been going for a little over a half hour.
I’d lost sight of the bank behind me, but the bank ahead, I could see in the distance. My arms were weary and tired, and my legs were screaming and protesting my sorry efforts. They wanted to quit and let me sink, and I was tempted to let them. I was threading my way through the channel at an hour best suited to being anywhere else, where visibility was high and if a ship passed, I’d surely be seen.
On the other hand, if a ship passed and I could get aboard, I should probably do that, even if it went to Thailand or something, because frankly, my original strategy of retreat on a chartered plane and arm up, then come back at Rose with Suppressant and bullets had badly, badly failed.
And while I’d done a reasonable job of coming up with an alternate escape plan, I was kinda shit out of luck when it came to what to do next. This part of the plan that I was currently implementing was still all about the evasion, about getting the hell away. Unfortunately, once I had gotten the hell away—as far as I could, in this case—I was still going to be in Scotland.
Which was not nearly far enough from Rose for my taste. Not when my bag of goodies had gotten torched in the Cessna.
I put one arm in front of the other, churning my legs like a shark. I was cruising along at a good clip, probably looking a little like a jet ski as I buzzed through the water. I didn’t make an actual buzzing noise; it was probably more like a gurgling, from my efforts and the sound of me throwing my head to the sides to breathe as I sucked in hungry, greedy breaths on each stroke. Paddling like a junior wheelboat wasn’t exactly light on the oxygen consumption.
Plan. I needed one. Getting to the bank of the river was a start, but that didn’t get me out of Scotland.
So, what could I do?
Well, in order:
a) Evade on land. If I made it to the south bank, I would have increased the search radius so broadly that Rose’s helicopters would have a hard time tracking me. If I could avoid creating any other John Clifford-like entanglements—which was to say little bombs of info to shout out, “She was here!” in my wake once I landed—Rose would have no idea I’d reached the southern shore, or even that I’d gone for a swim at all. She’d just be sitting at a map table somewhere in her evil lair, wherever that was, and every hour that she didn’t have a bead on me, the circle that indicated her search radius would get wider and wider.
She’d have to assume I got my hands on a car too, or hitched a ride on the back of an unknowing truck. Boom. That’d carry me farther away. Not as far as if I could still fly, but far enough that she and her minions—I assumed Police Scotland was co-opted based on the amount of overhead helicopters I’d seen after me post-airfield—would struggle to cover all the ground as the radius got wider and wider.
b) My second option, which I dismissed almost out of hand, was to evade by going out to sea. Assuming I could maintain a bearing of due east without any reference point but perhaps the sun and stars, and could survive the freezing cold of the North Sea, in about five hundred miles I’d make landfall in Denmark. Optimistically, I could maybe make that in two or three days. With no sleep. In the freezing water. (Not actually freezing, it just felt like it.) So I’d wash up on the shores of Denmark half dead and probably collapse right there, assuming I didn’t drown on the way.
As a side plan, call it “b2,” maybe I could latch onto a commercial ship of some sort like a barnacle and hitch a ride to elsewhere in the world, lying low in a lifeboat or something. This felt like more of a long-odds plan, and I dismissed it, too.
c) Land, lay low. That was less evasion, which I considered to include movement, and more sheltering in place. Break into a house like with John, take a hostage and keep them for a few days. Downside: taking hostages meant exposing yourself to the risk that the people you took would be missed. Over the course of several days, this became more and more likely, and produced the offshoot result that even if you imprisoned them as I had with John, unless I killed them and hid the body (which I was unwilling to do) they’d eventually rat me out.
The other alternative to this plan, let’s call it “c2,” was the idea that I should find a cave or other natural formation, a spider-hole kind of thing, and pull the earth in over me. No movement, no food, nothing, just stay there until some of the heat subsided. Major downside: a few days without food and water and I’d get weak. Especially water. If I could find a place that had water it was slightly more feasible, but when I did come out, I wouldn’t be in peak fighting condition.
Not that fighting had been much of an option thus far, but…still. I wouldn’t be in peak running condition either.
I turned my head and took another gasping breath. The shore was drawing nearer and nearer, sand and sea meeting in a glorious symphony of salvation. I couldn’t quite hear the crashing of the waves yet, because my own splashing was heavy in my ears, but I dreamed of a moment when my feet would touch dry land again, and I could stop swinging my arms like I was a motorboat, maybe spit the saltwater out of my mouth and not have it seep back in again.
Modest goals.
I didn’t like plan c at all, nor plan b. Staying still or evading by sea seemed like non-starters to me. Even the idea of trying to catch a commercial ship relied heavily on the idea that I wouldn’t get caught, or that I could somehow bribe the crew. It seemed unlikely I could survive without water in a lifeboat, so I gave up on that idea.
It was going to be plan a all the way. Which begged the next question:
Where should I go once I made landfall?
I needed to get the hell out of Scotland, that much was sure. Here, Rose was on her home ground, and however she had done it—I was doubting the Siren explanation, but I had no reasonable alternative—she seemed to exercise a certain control over portions of the populace. Or at least the cops in Edinburgh.
Which meant if I could avoid it, I should stay the hell out of Edinburgh.
That left me with a few avenues. I could try for the Channel Tunnel. That was really the only convenient ground route out of the UK. I could potentially get on a ferry at Dover. Maybe there were others, I didn’t know.
Or I could try and get a plane. Though we’d seen how that worked out the first time around.
Which brought me to another question: How had Rose found my rendezvous point at the airfield? Just simple luck seemed right out, especially since a US government team had shown up at the same place, same rough time.
That suggested my fears of some sort of NSA cell phone hacking might be well founded. Shit. When I called my banker again, I’d need to use a landline, for his safety and mine. Less chance of interception that way. I’d have him make arrangements this time, leaving it to him to make contact with and to get money to someone who could.
I didn’t want to rely on Fritz again for transport, given what had happened last time I’d put my future location out there. Which meant exfiltrating the country was on me. A commercial flight was pretty much out, because even if I could procure fake ID—which seemed difficult, again, owing to the trouble that came from having to rendezvous with people and giving away my location in the bargain—I doubted if I’d be able to pass the scrutiny of a security checkpoint given that I was the most wanted fugitive in the UK right now. They’d be on high alert, and watching for me.
The tunnels and ferries? Maybe I could sneak through there, though that was kind of suspect too. I would have laughed in the face of the EU meta embargo now, at the thought of crossing into France only to be arrested there for being a powered person, but…it wasn’t that funny.
Either way, if I wanted to get into position to do that, I needed to get the hell out from under Rose’s nose.
I needed to get the hell out of Scotland.
Car, rail, or on foot. Those were my main options for getting back into the south of the country. Once there, maybe I could exfiltrate myself. Hell, I could swim the English Channel. Though, maybe I’d be better off making contact with Wexford—in person, or via landline somehow, or even better, dreamwalk—and letting him sort out my escape, given he probably didn’t want me caught here.
Hopefully, anyway. If Wexford was off my side…
Well, then I was really alone.
The shore was in sight now, my excessive thinking roiling in my brain like my arms were doing to the water around me. Only a few hundred yards to go and I’d be out, out of this frigid wash, out of immediate danger, out of…
Well, not out of the soup, because I was still in deep shit, but…closer to a break, at least.
And I needed a break.
I couldn’t see anyone on the beach, and suddenly I was thankful for the utter lack of sun overhead. Hell, if it wanted to break loose and start pouring, that would only aid me, really. So long as the choppers weren’t flying with IR sensors, I was safe as houses in a downpour, though I’d look suspicious if anyone peeked out their window and saw me hotfooting it across the hills in a tempest at metaspeed.
Dragging myself through the rough surf near shore, I fought against the breakers that threatened to knock me over. Apparently the tide was high. Who would have guessed, given how late it was probably getting in the afternoon?
The exhaustion was sweeping; it had me from toe to head. My brain swirled in a slow eddy of worry, looking up and over my shoulder for helos. Still none in sight. There were ships out in the Firth, but none that had gotten terribly close to me. As long as none of their crew picked up their microphones and called in the sight of a crazy person swimming like mad through the water…
I couldn’t rely on that. Up on shore now, I was dripping across the clumped, tan sands and occasional rock like I was the sky letting loose. My clothes were clinging to me like weighted chains, threatening to drag me down. They weren’t actually that heavy, especially to a meta, but to a meta who was battling exhaustion?
Yeah. They felt heavy, soaked and cold and clutching at my skin like an industrial-strength full-body suction cup that had been licked by someone who’d just taken a drink of ice water.
I dragged myself up on the beach and forced myself to go on, kicking up the sand as I went, my feet barely lifting with each step. I needed to keep going, just a little farther inland, somewhere that I could find a safe spot to take a break…
And maybe pass out for a few hours, before I ran myself to death, maybe literally.