Laine had never felt so sore and stiff in all her life.
She wasn't even pretending to work, right now. The barista in the café where she and Polly had gone to ground was happy with the "distance survey" excuse, and once Laine had bought tea and a toastie, let the pair take up residence in a corner near the window while Polly "downloaded his data".
Laine propped her head on the wall and dozed uncomfortably. She suspected the unnaturally-quiet Polly was probably taking advantage of the peace to recharge, as well, after spending so much of his battery on generating heat for her, before then running around London all morning. The other coffeeshops they'd found hadn't afforded them much more than thirty minutes here and there.
They'd survived the rest of the soggy night with no further interruptions, but she'd woken absurdly early with a painful backside from sleeping in a sitting position on a hard floor. Dawn had only just been breaking, at that point, and in spite of still having lovely warm Polly clasped in her arms, the air was cold and her clothing was damp from the early-morning humidity and she was already shivering. And her legs had gone to sleep – the instant she stood up, she almost fell straight back down. It took a lot of stomping and shaking to get the blood flowing again.
She still wasn't sure what they were going to do this evening, and hoped something might come to her in a daydream. Dumping her friend off with the cops felt increasingly unavoidable, but the alternative was spending a second night on the streets and she felt like she'd rather go home and deal with Tark than do that. She took a sip of lukewarm tea and wished she'd ignored Polly and gone straight to the police, before she'd had the chance to get so attached to the little guy.
Monday had so far played out much like Sunday, with the exception that there were more commuters and busier trains, and as a result, a much more fractious, jittery Polly. They got separated a handful of times – each time, he hunkered down like a stubborn ball of granite until Laine managed to make her way back to him. She wasn't really sure how he seemed to be manipulating his weight – and to be fair, he couldn't explain it, either – but it saved him getting kicked off the edge of a platform at least twice. (His enjoyment of the Underground was not increasing with experience.)
Their current residence was a smallish place; not as quiet as Laine would have liked, but the steady stream of patrons were mostly preferring to purchase their drinks then leave, so no-one had asked them to move on yet. The hiss of steam and rattle of utensils kept her just awake enough that she hadn't yet fallen off her chair.
A flicker of movement caught her eye and she looked up to see Polly had straightened up, suddenly. The smallest seam of red glowed from between his shutters.
"You got something?"
"I just had a message," he confirmed. He actually sounded cautiously excited. "It said, Doctor Ninestein will meet you this evening at the following co-ordinates."
"And… who is Doctor Ninestein?"
"I don't know! But it felt like someone just reached in and yanked on a whole bunch of command prompts so I figure that means I probably should know who they are? They feel important!"
Laine set her cup to one side. "Who sent you it?"
"Littlebird101." A beat of silence passed. "Oh, hey, that's my number, too!" He jittered excitedly on the seat. "Oh my stars Laine, do you realise? This is it! I found my people! I must have!"
She felt terrible for dumping cold water on his enthusiasm, but felt compelled to add a note of caution. "You have no idea who it is sent you that. Can you trust them?"
"They know my boss's name and they know my number. It can't be a coincidence!"
"Oh, steady on. You don't know who that guy is. Don't you think calling him your boss is a bit of a reach?" Seeing his shutters defensively closing up again and his brow tilting down into a frown, she put her hands up. "Sorry, sorry. I'm just worried. They only gave you two pieces of information and you're jumping at it like it's concrete proof-"
"It's more than I've found anywhere else," he reminded. "I can't afford not to."
"So you're going to go and meet them?"
He gave a single rolling nod.
"Is that wise?"
"I might not like it, but I have a gun, Laine." His words were soft, but determined. "And I can make myself weigh a literal ton. If I decide there's something off about it all and I want to leave, what are they gonna do about it?"
She studied her cold teacup.
"The alternative is you take me to the cops," he reminded. "Like we agreed. Remember? 'Cause I'm not letting you stay on the streets again." Beat. "I'm not staying on the streets again. It. Sucked."
"Yeah. It did." Laine considered his words quietly for a few seconds, and sighed. "Did they give you any other details?
"Just the co-ordinates."
"Are they in London?"
"Yeah. Huh. They're kinda far away though." After a second of cross-referencing, Polly groaned piteously. "Aw, this means we've gotta go on the subway again." He bonked quietly into the table. "Maybe I should get them to come here instead."
She reached across the table and gave him a surreptitious pet. "It might be safer," she agreed. "And if they agree to come, you know they're genuine."
"I'll message them back," he agreed, reluctantly.
Time crept past. Laine bought a brownie and refilled her unpleasantly icy teacup, and had a pretend telephone conversation with the friend who was in reality sitting opposite her.
Polly tried hard to stay calm, but sat fidgeting the whole time. He lasted twenty minutes before his composure fractured. "Oh, Laine," he groaned. "They haven't replied. What do I do-oo. If I stay here I'll miss them, but what if they come here and we've left?"
Laine steered the crumbs on her plate into a little pile. "If I was them…? And I came here and you'd left?" she said, carefully. "I'd know you were going to the place I originally told you to meet me. So I'd go back there. There's only so many times we would miss each other."
"You think we should go?"
She forced a smile, already unplugging her laptop. "I think this café will be closing for the day anyway, in an hour or two."
Polly hesitated on the doorstep; crowds surged along the street and he balked from dropping down that last little step to the pavement to join them.
Laine stopped behind him. "When did the person say that doctor whoever was going to meet you?"
"This evening. They didn't say specifically when."
"…then could we wait until the crowds have passed, a little? It's rush hour. It'll ease off."
"Hm." He shifted on the spot. "What if I miss him?"
"I'm sure he'll wait."
"You pointed out neither of us actually know him, right now. How can you be so sure of that?"
"Well, it's your choice. But he wouldn't message you, then give you no time to actually get there. They didn't know where you are either, remember?"
"Hmm."
Lots of feet and curses followed them along the street. Laine could tell Polly was growing to absolutely loathe crowds. Instead of the polite little sorry-s from only a day earlier, she could hear his confused little mutterings and curses through her earbud. He couldn't go twenty metres without someone else tripping on him, or kicking him, or knocking him perilously close to the kerb. And while he couldn't easily see where he was going, he couldn't avoid them, either. She fell into step behind him, shielding him from a little of the chaos, but even then impatient commuters tried to barge around her.
They made it to a station without Polly disappearing in traffic, and stood to one side while the worst of the flood of packed commuters poured through the ticket gates.
"I hate this," he said, quietly.
He was pressed into her boots for safety and she could feel him trembling subtly.
"They're so clumsy and they keep kicking me. I don't want anyone to trip and hurt themselves."
"They're impatient, Pols. If they fall over you because they can't be bothered to watch where they're going, that's not on you."
"But what if they knock me off the step on the escalator? I'd knock everyone over on the way down."
"We're using the lift, all right? We've just got to get through the gates. It's already calming down a bit."
"I keep getting kicked," he repeated, and she recognised that was what was particularly bothering him. Being kicked, like a thing. People didn't get kicked like this.
"Won't be for much longer. If we get out there and this is a dud, we'll find a police station and you'll never have to go on the subway ever again."
"Doesn't sound like that great a deal," he said, gloomily, but the crowds slackened, and he led the way into the underworld.
oOoOoOo
" 'Jenny's'." Ninestein leaned across to peer out of Hudson's passenger door, reading the sign above the café's windows. "This is the place we have them going into on CCTV?"
"That's it," Mary confirmed. "They've been there a few hours, apparently. It shouldn't take long to evaluate, so Hudson and I will do a circuit and come back for you." She gave him a loaded glance. "All four of you, hopefully…"
Hudson paused at the kerb while Ninestein and Zero disembarked, then pulled back out into traffic and glided away. The two Terrahawks exchanged a brief glance, before entering the building.
The doctor briefly surveyed the seats; no-one familiar. No lost zeroids, either. He sighed. Bad luck seemed to be following them around.
"Pardon me." He approached the bored-looking server. "I don't suppose you had a woman here recently with a big spherical piece of equipment with her?"
The woman perked up, spotting Zero lurking quietly near Ninestein's boots. "Yeah, we did actually! She asked if she could use our plug sockets to charge her drone while it downloaded its data. Looked a bit like your one; are you doing the same survey?"
"Yes, we are." Ninestein crossed his fingers that it wouldn't come back and bite him when she asked him for more details of the 'survey'. "But we lost contact. I think her drone is damaged. Did you see when she left?"
The barista looked over into an empty corner. "No. But it can't have been that long. She bought a brownie not that long ago." She cross-referenced the record on the till. "Oh, no, wait. It was about an hour ago. Sorry."
Ninestein swallowed the sigh. "I notice you have CCTV." He pointed up at the camera. "Could I take a look?"
"Uh." The woman eyed his uniform uneasily but apparently decided it looked un-police-y enough that she could plead ignorance for sharing without a warrant. "Sure, I guess? I don't know if she was quite in range though. It only really covers the till."
As it happened, their runaway zeroid and his human helper were just visible, right in the top corner; the woman sat facing out of the window, propped against the wall and possibly dozing, with 101 on the opposite side of the table, plugged into the laptop.
A lot of nothing happened for a good couple of hours; Ninestein sped up the video so he could get through the footage in just a few minutes. The woman sipped on a cup of tea (which must have been revoltingly cold, by that point), and their zeroid sat motionless, a long charging cable spooling out through one of his top hatches.
Then 101 suddenly moved. It looked like he'd possibly just discovered something, because an instant later, the woman put her cup to one side, and leaned closer over the table towards him. Her mouth moved. Ninestein wondered what they were talking about.
They settled back down for a while, with the aforementioned brownie, although 101 continued to fidget. After about twenty minutes, the woman packed the laptop away in her bag, mimed helping 101 to the floor, and quietly the pair slipped away and out of the door, and vanished.
Ninestein compared the timestamp on the footage to his watch. Forty-five minutes difference. They'd missed them by all of forty five flaming minutes. He swallowed an expletive.
"Any use?" the barista asked, making him jump.
"A little," Ninestein lied. "Did you happen to see which way she went?"
Preparing a fancy latte and mid-pour, the barista shook her head and shrugged. "Sorry. I had customers."
"Thanks for your help anyway." Ninestein emerged from behind the counter and headed for the door. "Come on, Zero."
Without realising it, Ninestein hesitated on the doorstep, with Zero by his boots, in exactly the same spot that their runaway and his helper had stood, weighing up their chances.
"We're stuck at traffic lights but will be with you soon," Mary confirmed. "What was the outcome?"
"I think they went back onto the underground."
Also on their conference call, Ninestein heard Hiro sigh.
"Getting their data promptly has been really difficult. We will have to start over from scratch," the lieutenant said. "At least we know roughly when they must have boarded, and can limit our search to places they could have got in that time."
"Get your zeroids onto it," Ninestein said. "I'll see if I can't light a fire under TfL's ass with a few strategically-applied threats. Dealing with a threat to national security, and all that."
"Ten-ten, doctor. Please keep me updated?"
"Absolutely."
oOoOoOo
Some distance away across London, the two unintentional-runaways exited a quiet somewhat-suburban underground station, and followed the map Polly had in his head towards the co-ordinates he'd been given. It wasn't quiet, by any stretch of the imagination, but even these small crowds were nothing compared to the city.
Where the directions led them to had once been a shopping complex – stores still occupied around half the units, but a good number of the rest were entertainment venues, now, or divided up into restaurants. A large proportion had simply closed down, now standing silent and empty.
The evening shoppers had dwindled, but the diners hadn't yet arrived, so it was relatively quiet. It put Laine weirdly on edge. She wondered if her little round companion felt it, too.
Polly led her down the path next to the service road. The road itself was well-kept, swept tidy and lined with streetlamps, with the backs of the occupied units looking clean and functional. Delivery vehicles buzzed up and down it, in and out of loading bays, restocking the various premises.
The other side of the road was a different matter. A heavy-duty wire fence partitioned off a derelict area of scrubby bushes and old concrete, where industrial buildings had presumably once stood. Holes had been cut in the fence at irregular intervals; some had been patched, but pulled back open again. Chairs stood on the concrete, with overflowing ashtrays and rubbish bins. On the far side of the rough ground, just visible behind a forest of buddleia and silver birch saplings, some rickety old walls and portions of half-demolished derelict warehouses still clung to existence, streaked with rust and algae. A few hundred metres further away, on the very far side of the unkempt brownfield site, were some newbuild flats going up, swaddled with scaffolding and cranes – going quiet, now, with the working day coming to a close. A busy road choked with commuter traffic passed across the far end of the service lane they were walking up.
"Are you sure these are the co-ordinates?" Laine wondered, tightening her grip on the strap of her bag, uneasily.
"It's what the map said," Polly confirmed, but sounded just as uncomfortable. "Maybe they got it wrong, like… it should have been one of the shops at the front? So people would have a good view of everything going on, in case anything went wrong."
"…pretty sure they'd want the opposite, Mister Top Secret," Laine corrected, grim. "Somewhere quiet and private like one of those old warehouses would be the perfect place to abduct you from. Especially if you get all shooty."
"…let's not go through the fence, then…"
The co-ordinates took them all the way to the far end of the line of buildings. It had obviously once been a shop; Laine recognised the logo of a chain that had gone bust some years earlier. The loading dock was quiet, possibly being used as a refuse area for the other properties, if the untidy cluster of stray wheelie bins and windblown paper was anything to go by. Next door was another shop, but that too was quiet, the staff evidently having all gone home already.
Right inside, past the loading bays, down a concrete ramp and up a short flight of metal steps, was a door into the gloom, propped ajar. Above it, a broken light fitting glowed.
"I guess that means someone's home," Laine whispered, uneasily, hovering by the wall and unwilling to step over that imaginary line into the confines of the building. "You still know how to work that little gun, right?"
Polly clung close to her boots. "I hope so."
"Weird place for your boss to choose to meet us."
"Yeah." He rocked back on his axis to look up and meet her gaze. "Do you think we should cut our losses? Or-or maybe just take the quickest little tiny peek, then go?"
"Maybe someone was playing a trick on you. There's definitely something off, here."
He looked back into the gloom. "I can't see anything moving, and I can't hear anyone in there. Maybe they've already gone."
Laine stepped back two paces and examined their surroundings, twisting the strap of her bag between her hands. "We don't go right inside, all right? We stick to just this big open bit. Thirty seconds, then we go back around the front to wait."
"Right."
Laine could feel her heartbeat, echoing in her head as they edged deeper into the shadows. The untidy little clusters of bins felt weirdly menacing – like giant cuboid predators, which would close in on them the instant they were close enou-
"You don't get to escape me again!"
The scream came out of nowhere and before either could react, Tarquin exploded out of the shadows swinging an axe, fuck!
He brought it down with such force on the top of Polly's casing that it spanged off sideways and almost took his own toes off, impacting the ground so hard the shock raced up into his shoulders and sent the axe clattering out of his hands.
Incredibly, in spite of striking something that had punched through concrete with scarcely a scratch, the bladetip left a decent dent in Polly's smooth casing. Transferred momentum sent him spinning in the opposite direction.
Laine tripped backward and crashed into one of the treacherous dumpsters. "-Tark!"
"You two are so fucking gullible!" The man picked the axe back up and hefted it, trying to stretch the pain out of his shoulders. "No clue who the hell you were talking to but you came here anyway!"
"You knew that guy's name!"
"Of course I know his boss's name! My contact told me it!" Tark waved the axe, menacingly. "Like he's told me a whole bunch of other important stuff! Which we could all have used, if not for you. All you needed to do was trust me, but oh no, Laine knows best, as goddamn usual." On the last word, he gave the weapon a wild swing.
She felt something crunch as the axe slammed into her coat. "The fuck are you doing?!" she wailed, leaping backwards. The bins felt like they were crowding around her, penning her in with the psychopath.
"You cost me an opportunity I'll never get ever again," Tark snarled. "Millions of fucking dollars down the drain because you think that little twat is genuinely alive and not just an incredible fake. It doesn't need a friend. It doesn't need a babysitter."
There was a small gap behind him, between the bins. Laine tried not to focus on it, wondering if she could dodge past and get out. Scream for help. "So what does he need?"
"It needs to be in a lab, being studied. Replicated, for the benefit of all humanity."
"And the money you get from it is just incidental, right?"
Something rustled, nearby. Was it Polly? Where had he even gone, anyway? Had that blow from the axe done more damage than they'd realised?
Seeing Tark glance away, Laine took her chance and darted for the opening.
She almost made it.
"Oh no you fucking don't-!"
He snagged the trailing strap of her bag and yanked on it. Momentum sent her crashing sidelong into the predatory bins. Before she could recover, Tark swung wildly, not bothering to aim.
She felt the axe crash down on her shoulder and something crunched. She couldn't help her scream. She collapsed instantly onto the concrete, barely feeling the impact jangle up her knees.
"I had two buyers on the hook!" he shrieked, stabbing his finger in a point. "Two! And one of them was prepared to drop a cool fucking million on that piece of garbage!"
"You don't think they'd have actually paid you, do you?" Laine wailed back, not sure if she should sob or scream or laugh hysterically. The padded strap on her bag had miraculously protected her from a far more catastrophic injury, but her left arm dangled uselessly at her side, shoulder sagging dramatically. Blood already saturated the front of her top and was probably dripping down her arm, but the surging adrenaline meant she hardly felt it. It could have been pouring out in a flood, for all she knew. "They'd have just followed you and taken him themselves!"
"Stop. Calling. It. 'Him'!" Tark hefted his axe, bringing it up behind him. "I am taking it and some sad, unimaginative nonentity like you can't stop me!"
Somewhere behind, a small voice spoke up. "Maybe she can't. But I can."
Polly caught him mid-swing. A pulse of phased energy bit the air between them and launched the weapon down the length of the loading area – along with three of his fingers.
Tark's scream was much louder than Laine's.
"I might be a silly wobbly little ball whose gyroscopes don't appear to be working any more," Polly said, unexpectedly fiercely. "But thanks for helping me see I can at least shoot straight!"
Tark staggered away from him, backwards, too shocked to do anything more than huff with fright, wild-eyed and clutching his mutilated hand against himself.
"And you don't hurt my friend-!"
Polly didn't have to revise his aim; Tark's backbone had already failed him. He fled, wailing.
Still not sure if she should be sobbing or laughing, high on adrenaline, Laine pushed herself partway upright, with a snarled expletive. She left scarlet handprints on the concrete.
Polly hastily rolled over to her, damaged gyroscopes leading to a lopsided and slightly drunken curve. "Are you okay? Oh gosh, that looks bad. What should I do?"
"Don't fuss, it's fine-" she hissed through gritted teeth. "Ah. Oh, fuck."
"No, you aren't fine. Tell me what to do."
Laine flexed her fingers – at least Tark hadn't chopped through any nerves. Her collarbone felt like it was in a thousand pieces, though, and itchy, sticky blood stuck her jacket to her arm. "Could you phone an ambulance?" She fished her phone out of her pocket – and discovered what it was that had crunched so ominously the first time Tark had hit her. The screen was in a million pieces, held together by just the plastic protector. Bits of glass had already come loose and shreds of circuitry could be seen through it. The entire device actually looked crooked, like someone had tried to fold it in half. "Ah, fuck- This isn't looking too hot, either."
Polly took over anyway, hunching over it and plugging into the damaged jack. "There's still a bit of charge in it. Let me see what I can do."
"…do you still have a Bluetooth connection…?"
"It doesn't work like that."
"Oh, you can figure something out." She grimaced into a despairing laugh and tried to wipe the tears off her face without covering herself in blood, instead. "Man. I already knew he was a shithead but this is some fucking way to find out the truth about the guy you lived six months with."
Polly was silent for several heartbeats, examining the handset, before turning away. "Take your phone back. I'm going to find someone outside, with a phone that actually works. They can call the emergency services for us."
Laine fumbled it back into her pocket. "They'll find out about you."
"Oh big deal. The alternative is that you don't get help and bleed to death. Stay here." He leaned into her knees. "It's my fault you're hurt. We should have left. I'm so sorry. Let me do this for you. It's no big deal. Who cares if the world finds out I'm not just a big drone. Tark's gonna tell them all anyway."
"No. I'll come with you." She forced herself back to her feet, unsteadily, knees bowing. "It'll probably be better coming from me."
"Nuh-uh, you need to stay here, where it's more safe and I know where you are!"
"What do you think Joe Average will do if you rock on out there and start talking to them?" He was too small for her to use as a crutch, but having him sticking close to her ankles as they shuffled towards the road felt reassuring, at least.
"What do you think they're going to do, seeing you drowning in blood?" he countered. "They might run away before they're victims of the mad axe murderer as well."
"I'm your boss, remember? I'm telling you not to divulge what you are."
"Blanket decision-making pre-authorisation."
"I already revoked that!"
"Yeah and I already decided to ignore you." After a beat, he added; "That's probably why no-one's ever given me authorisation like that before."
"Now who sucks."
"Sorry not sorry."
They made their way slowly, slowly towards the square of fading daylight. Polly navigated in a wide semicircle away from the bins, and as they passed, Laine realised the object he was giving such an enormous berth was an amputated finger.
"I was aiming at just the axe," he explained, sadly. "Guess I wasn't shooting that straight after all."
They were almost at the road when an old man stepped into their way.
"Hello, earth ball," he gurgled, with a huge insincere smile. "We've been looking for you."