Free Ultraviolet by Joseph Robert Lewis Page B

heart was still pounding and I felt exhausted.
    “Are you okay?” I asked.
    “Yeah. You?”
    “Fine.”
    “So what now?”
    “I don’t know. Get back to the city, around people. They’re probably going to come looking for us with helicopters or drones, something that can track our heat out here, or the signals from our phones. Let’s just get back and—”
    The engine died.
    “What the…” Felix banged on the wheel and the console as the car rolled to a stop.
    I glanced back up the road. I could still see the parking lot lights. “We only went a mile. I guess the security system locked out the engine because we don’t have the keys with us.”
    I sighed as I opened the door and stepped away from the car.
    “Lux, scooter.”
    My glowing ride materialized and I swung onto it. “You coming?”
    “But it won’t hold us both.” Felix got out of the car.
    “Not for long, but it’s all we’ve got.”
    So he got on and we rode. With a little trial and error, I found that I could keep the scooter stable for about thirty seconds before it flickered out and I had to re-spawn it. So that’s how we got back to the city, thirty seconds at a time. Twenty-five seconds at sixty miles an hour, and the other five seconds slowing down to stop before the scooter vanished out from under us.
    It was a long ride.

Chapter 6

Upgrades
    Felix’s brother rented a room in a row house just a few blocks from my parents’ house. Getting that close to them made me a little nervous, but I shut off the scooter the moment we rolled up to the front stoop and we walked straight inside, so I felt pretty certain no one had seen us.
    We went up to the bedroom where Felix slept on a small cot and his brother slept on a slightly larger cot, both positioned well away from the extremely large wall screen and its impressive array of gaming hardware on the floor. Headsets, gloves, controllers, sensor guns, cameras, microphones…
    So far, so normal.
    “Marcus probably won’t be home before midnight. He’s got a girlfriend now.”
    “Oh? Recent development?” I sat down on the floor in front of the screen and dropped my bag beside me.
    “Yeah, he’s really into her, and she’s not a flake like the last one, so maybe it’s getting serious. Which is good for him, but it means we don’t hang out much anymore.”
    I nodded. “Sorry.”
    He shrugged. “Whatever. Hungry?”
    I felt guilty for taking anything from him, but I was hungry, and I was starting to remember that I had literally nothing now. For the last two months since I got fired, I had been clinging to the idea that I was still special, still educated and experienced, still on the verge of getting out. But now, after a night in the woods and two days on the run, it was finally starting to sink in that I couldn’t go back to the way things were. Not ever. I was broke, and technically homeless. “Yeah. Whatever you’ve got.”
    He had leftover Chinese, and it was really good. I finished off the sweet and sour chicken and then leaned my head against the wall. Riding the scooter had given me a couple aches and bruises, including a very stiff neck and shoulders.
    “So.” Felix tossed the trash in the bin. “Want to watch a movie or something?”
    “Actually, I need to work for a little while.” I nodded over at his printer in the corner. It was the same model as mine. “Mind if I do a little printing?”
    “Seriously? You’re still going to make those gloves for Susquehanna?”
    I grunted. “Nope. I’m going to make more gear for me. I think I need more projection fabric to keep the scooter stable, and to render bigger objects. I’m going to do a jacket and some sort of boots, I think.” The idea was still pretty vague in my mind, but I’d had a lot of time to decide it was the right thing to do when we were struggling to make our way back into the city, thirty seconds at a time. I got out my phone and started working on the new specs to print the holo-projector