Free Crashed by Robin Wasserman Page A

Counting paces was easier than thinking, so I focused on the wet thump of our shoes on the soggy ground, marking off five miles, then ten, then twenty. Until a cloud of green mushroomed on the horizon, resolving itself, as we drew nearer and nearer, into a wide, dense grove of trees. We'd reached the border of a Sanctuary, twenty square miles of unspoiled wilderness, off-limits to orgs. Which meant, except for the birds and squirrels and deer, we were alone.
    "Here," Riley said, letting himself slam into a thick trunk, wrapping his arms around the tree and pressing his cheek to the bark. "This is good enough."
    "For what?"
    "For keeping our heads down." He sank to the ground, hands plunged into the layer of dead leaves swimming beneath the trees.
    "You act like we did something wrong." And maybe we did, I thought, remembering the faces. Eyes open, watching me, watching nothing. We could have stayed. We ran.
    "Wake up, Lia," he snapped. "You think it was an accident, that happening when we were there?"
    "I don't think anything. I don't even know what that was."
    "It was a setup."
    "You think that was about us ?" Because of us, is what I meant to say. Is what I didn't want to say.
    He shrugged. "If not, we have some pretty shit luck."
    "What else is new?"
    "I'm staying," he said with sullen finality. "Do what you want. I don't care."
    As if he would leave me behind. It didn't matter how much he sulked, I could tell: He wasn't the type. "If you don't care, how come you didn't just leave me there?"
    "Wasn't thinking," he said. "Now I am."
    I sat down next to him. The ground was spongy. Dry leaves crunched beneath my weight. "Those orgs," I said, quiet. "People. You think they . . ."
    "Yeah." Riley looked down at his hands, still hidden in the leaves. "Some of them, at least. I don't know."
    Some of them what? Died, or lived?
    "I never--" I stopped, about to say I'd never seen a dead body, but that was wishful thinking. I'd seen my own, burned and broken, brain scooped out for slicing and dicing and scanning.
    "What?"
    "Nothing."
    Sometimes it was useful being a mech, staying blank and keeping things inside. The problem came when you wanted to get them out. If I'd been trembling, if I'd been sweating or pale and cold or shivering uncontrollably, if I'd puked until there was nothing left but bile, if I'd felt anything in my body, then maybe my brain could have taken a break. Of course, if I was in a position to do any of those things, I wouldn't have been sitting in the dark, rain beginning to patter against the leaves. I probably would have been dead.
    Riley wouldn't let me link in to the network. "They could use it to track us."
    "We don't even know if 'they' are looking for us," I argued. "And even if they are, you can't track people through the network."
    He gave me a weird look. "Who told you that?"
    "No one had to tell me. Everyone just knows."
    "You want to link in, you do it somewhere else," he said. "Away from me."
    I didn't want to go anywhere. "How long you think we need to wait?"
    "Couple days maybe. To be safe."
    "Here?"
    He almost smiled. "You got somewhere to be?"
    Nowhere to be, no need to eat or sleep, nothing to do except find a way to stop seeing what I'd seen. And I had to admit, he'd picked a good hiding spot. All Sanctuaries had periodic ranger sweeps to make sure the orgs stayed out, but the odds of anyone finding us in the next day or two were pretty minuscule.
    "You can shut down if you want," Riley suggested. "I'll keep watch."
    And lie there unconscious, trusting him to make decisions for the both of us? "I don't think so."
    He tipped his head up, as if there were anything to see but dead branches. "Whatever."
    We sat there silently for a while. I almost laughed, remembering how much I'd dreaded having to spend a few hours in a car with him. Now here we were, playing at being alone in the world. But I didn't laugh--thinking I'd been right not wanting to come.
    Weird how tiny, stupid decisions make all the