LICIT AUTHORITY: $52.98
The seventeenth floor was nothing but a hall of doors from the center out to the windows. Two Lawyers were walking toward us, dressed in their Butchers & Rog best. One was a blonde woman with legs so thin they looked insect-like. The other was a man with a narrow mustache. They seemed to greet the morning with determination, noting us without alarm. It scarcely seemed to register with them that anyone would dare intrude at Butchers & Rog. They kept walking. The woman typed diligently on her Cuff, like a reflex, coming off the last tap with a delicate flourish.
An InstaSuit™ appeared on Margot’s Cuff. Twelve thousand dollars for associated pain and suffering from our trespass. The two Lawyers looked from her to me. Their satisfaction crumpled when they recognized I had no Cuff. My heart was beating fast, almost too fast. I was alert, but unsteady. Or maybe I was afraid. I couldn’t think of how we would escape from this. The tower seemed to be crushing in on me from all sides, and I was still far from where I needed to be.
I took a deep breath. I didn’t need to escape. I needed to get down to the WiFi.
The male Lawyer opened his mouth to speak, but Margot slammed him to the floor like a possessed warrior. Insect Legs tottered back in fear, tapping away wildly at her Cuff; it was her only defense. Another InstaSuit™ vibrated from Margot’s Cuff. Insect Legs turned to me, and her mouth fell open, horrified by my bare arm. I wanted to punch her in the face and break her slender, plastic, scalpeled nose, but instead, I swept her legs and she crumpled like a pile of twigs, weeping and tapping from the floor.
Without missing a beat, Margot put a small mask over her face and then slapped one on my head, leaving me to adjust it while she sprayed the two Lawyers like they truly were insects and her pony bottle was a can of bug spray.
When she was done, Margot pulled Kel’s Pad from my hands and panned it from side to side, looking for the heat signatures of our friends. Every room had a Finishing Bed® inside, outlined in a thin neon glow, but all appeared empty until we were halfway down the hall. Margot’s brow furrowed, unsure of what she was looking at.
A few doors in, Henri and Kel were each guarded by a man, with an extra guard inside the door and an outline I presumed to be the Lawyer working the machine. Cold metal shapes holstered in blue told us the guards were armed. Kel was in the finishing bed now, the warm glow of her body stiff in the machine.
Margot’s face was red; her mouth was quivering. There were tears in her eyes. She angrily wiped them away.
“Don’t take Henri from me,” she said, low and throaty. “Please.” Her pony bottle was ready. She shook herself and raised it with one hand, and held out the Pad in the other, turning back into the warrior of a moment ago. She nodded for me to unbolt the lock.
I opened the door without hesitation, swiping the mechanism like I had a hundred others. The door clicked open, and Margot pulled back on the bottle’s trigger.
“Hold your breath, Henri!” Margot shouted, her arm extended blindly inside. I heard him gasp.
Bodies dropped like flies. Henri and the guards didn’t heed Margot’s warning, but Kel and Butchers did.
Butchers instantly understood what was happening and aimed his Cuff at Margot. I leapt at him. He had the same hole bored in his Cuff that Rog did, and before I could think, I jammed his arm up toward the ceiling. His Cuff detonated with four quick shots; bullets punctured the ceiling in a line of holes. Someone above us screamed. In one swift motion, Kel punched Butchers in the throat and he dropped to the ground, gagging, then silent.
“We need to get out of here,” Kel said, looking at Margot with pride. Her Cuff buzzed harshly. Her account had gone so far into the negative from the Finishing Bed® that it registered a debt error. I didn’t know what that was—I’d never seen it before, but her eyes weren’t being shocked. She kicked the machine. Perhaps it had overloaded her Cuff’s system.
“What is that thing?” Margot asked, smirking a little in the glow of Kel’s approval.
“A parlor trick,” Kel answered, kneeling down to Henri and jabbing him with the little bean-like device Margot had used on me. “I suspect it assigns algorithmically likely violations based on your personal history.”
Of course, I thought to myself. Someone as deceitful as Silas Rog would find it easier to fake reading our minds than to do the real thing. He could automate the process of destroying lives. Somewhere in a million words of Terms of Service, you can bet he hid a paragraph or two about results being approximate or simulated based on reasonable presumption.
“We need to get out of here,” Kel said.
No, I thought. I took the Pad. I rifled through the layout of the building, scrolling down below the bottom floor. The map showed nothing but an empty circle. I showed it to them all.
“I think she is brain damaged,” Margot said, rushing over to Henri as his eyes fluttered.
A small thrill flashed in Kel’s eyes. “I don’t think so.” She’d understood me. My heart swelled. I showed the great empty outline to Margot again.
“What does this mean?”
“The WiFi is down below us, Margot.”
Margot considered this, comprehension dawning on her face. I raced to the elevator.
“There won’t be a giant off switch,” Margot muttered, helping Henri to his feet. Henri looked at her, a little dazed, a little impressed.
I pressed the button for the lowest floor available—the garage—as Kel, Margot and Henri stepped on. I couldn’t wait to get there. I was eager to see what damage I might do. The display ticked away each floor—12, 11, 10, 9—and then stopped. The elevator shook and seized.
We had been foolish to file into it. Rog’s voice came over the intercom, groggy and furious. He was awake, and he ordered all the elevators stopped and the exits blocked. Then he swallowed and tried to recover his Legal tone.
“I grant Licit Authority to kill any of the interlopers,” he rasped. “And someone bring Carol Amanda Harving to me.”
Was my sister actually here, or did he just say that to scare me? Terror shot through me as I weighed what he might do to Saretha.
Kel popped open the exit panel in the elevator’s ceiling, like I’d seen in a dozen movies, and we climbed quickly onto its roof. If there was one thing our team was practiced at, it was zipping down cables. It was probably faster for us to travel like this, anyway. The bottom level was two floors beneath the garage, and Kel managed to get the door open before we reached it.
This was it. I would destroy Rog’s world, or I would die trying.