Aurablade

10

The smell of grilled meat and vegetables fills the air by the newsstand. My mouth hardly waters. I'm too busy scanning the tunnel for a scrawny boy in a hoodie, maybe with a backpack slung over his shoulders.

His shadow emerges from the left side, hurrying past a group of laughing teenagers leaving the restaurant.

"No record," he says. My head tilts to the side. "Jem wasn't a cyborg. I looked everywhere."

"Hmm." I pull out a small pod and hand it over. "All the plans are listed here. They were too important to send out through a message, even if said message were encrypted."

Talc receives the phone, dropping it in a side pouch on his backpack.

"Study the plans tonight," I say. "We need to break into the CryoFuture tomorrow during lunch."

"But the surgery. There's—"

"We need to confirm our suspicions. We think there's some shady cyborg stuff going on. Whatever we find tomorrow will prove it. Besides, we need to find out where their true operation site is."

Talc nods. He starts to turn, a sickened expression on his face.

"Watch your back on the way home," I say. His chin turns to the side, though his back is to me. "I think Gang One is onto us."

***

"Aurablade, you copy?"

I crane my neck, staring at the highrise's peak. Surrounded by brick walls in a small alley across the street, no passerby catches my eye. I'm secured in the shadows.

"Copy, Talc."

"I'm in." Clicks come over the phone, the sound of fingers flying across keys. "Security shift change complete. I'll secure the landing pad."

Another series of taps patters over the phone.

"There's three guards up there now. I see two others coming up the stairwell now." Several seconds pass. "They just changed. New security personnel on top, the previous ones are headed down the stairs."

"Moving into position." I slip onto the street, walking several blocks down. There, stairs ascend to the subway platform. A glass tunnel juts out from the platform, reaching across the street far past the CryoFuture's building. The ground rumbles underfoot as a subway shoots along the tunnel, pausing at the platform. While people mill about, trying to board, I slip to the back of the line.

Between the tunnel's glass sides and the subway's rounded body, there's a sliver of space for me to pass through. Cold metal constricts my sides as I slip through. I glance at my watch. In two minutes, the subway will resume on its path, and if I haven't slipped past it, it will rip me into tiny shreds.

The subway is longer than I anticipated. Seconds tick down on my watch, seconds until the massive steel car resumes. Light beams glisten to my left, a sign that I'm almost past. Sweat beads on my brows, and I grunt and strain, pulling myself through.

At last, I reach the end. I stumble into the open air, racing ahead just as the subway eases back into motion, rocking on its tracks before resuming its path downward.

I duck to the side, not wanting an attendant to spot me. A holographic map appears on my wrist when I tap it, and I follow it along the tunnel. After several minutes, the CryoFuture's building looms ahead. It has dark, glass walls and metal beams form squares from the top to the ground level. The top of the building is several stories away from my location on the subway tunnel.

And now, to get out.

I remove a glass cutter from my pocket and press it to the glass. It slices through the tunnel's sides in four, neat cuts along the outer edges. Then, pressing ever so slightly on the side, the glass shifts just enough for one side to stick out toward me. I pull the edge away from the main, steel frame and place the glass panel on the ground. A breeze blows in through the hole. I glance at my wrist again.