Free Unawakened by Trillian Anderson Page A

inside, I heard my roommate squealing its excitement.
    “This isn’t food, Colby!”
    “Mommy!” Scorn laced Colby’s voice, and I laughed.
    It took me longer than I liked to find the rack containing the laptops similar to mine, and I handed off a pile of ten of the systems to Rob before taking as many as I could carry.
    “Don’t we need only one?”
    “Most won’t work. Took me five to get one that booted. If we luck out and find two, I’ll take a spare for me. Let’s put these near the door and see if we can find working battery packs for them, external keyboards, and other accessories. If we’re going to help ourselves, we may as well do it right. We can even get data chips in here. They’re old and don’t hold a whole lot, but they’re one of the few formats the government did allow after the reformation.”
    “Imagine the fortune we could make if we took a few extras for the black market.”
    The thought had crossed my mind several times the first time I had entered the vault, but I had decided against the idea. “The money would be nice, but it’s too risky. This place is too valuable to risk for greed.”
    “You never cease to amaze me, Miss Daegberht.”
    “Just what is that supposed to mean?”
    Rob laughed and didn’t reply.

    I was grateful it didn’t take long to confirm if a laptop worked or not. It took three trips to find a functioning system. When Colby made its appearance, it was dragging several laptop bags behind it, and they were loaded with slender tablet boxes and a few accessories. I blinked at my roommate, wondering how it would use a tablet.
    Instead of asking stupid and offensive questions, I opened the boxes and discovered the tablets had a better survivability rate than the laptops; all six Colby had found worked, and deciding the tablets were easier to hide than laptops, I packed them all into the bag.
    There would be plenty of time later to figure out what we could do with them. I filled one of the bags with spare keyboards, mice, and chips while the other held Rob’s laptop and the tablets.
    “Let’s hit the library and get out of here. How long until sunrise?”
    “Three hours,” Rob reported.
    Three hours was more than enough time to reach the library, find a copy of a pre-reformation Bible for Rob, and get out of the vault before the doors closed for the day. I nodded to acknowledge the dae, grabbed one of the bags, and headed out of the storage area. Rob took the second bag and fell into step with me.
    Despite having lived with the dae for three months, there was still so little I knew about him, including how he had managed to integrate so smoothly into society after the Dawn of Dae. So many times, I hadn’t asked the questions eating away at me, not certain how he’d react to my curiosity.
    “Hey, Rob?”
    “What is it?”
    “You were around before the Dawn, right? There’s no way someone so new could forge so many connections in so little time. But you’re a dae, and you’re not one of the ones who was born from a human. How is it that possible?”
    “I was around; I just carefully chose when I’d make my appearances. Baltimore isn’t a place I visited until the Dawn. I have a lot of business here, but it wasn’t a focal point of mine until now. Your refrigerator isn’t the only portal on Earth; it’s just one of the easier ones to access. It’s hard to explain, so I’ll keep it short and simple. I felt the portals open and knew they led to Earth. It wasn’t hard to figure out a new dawning had occurred. I decided to watch and see what would happen. I’m glad I did.”
    Rob was as much of a mystery as the vault. “So there are other worlds out there. With intelligent life, I mean.”
    “There are. Earth is my favorite, though.”
    “Why?”
    “I was born here, that’s why.”
    “Really? But you know so little about the modern times.”
    “I told you I was old. While I have visited Earth, I didn’t stay long—just long enough to conduct