Free No Going Back by Mark L. Van Name

probably newstainment groups, are watching the front door, hoping you’ll leave through it. They are unlikely to know all the exits. Once you get out of the chute, if you’re outside, stand where you emerge until I call. If you’re inside a building, go outside, and wait for my call. It won’t be long.”
    “I don’t like this,” she said.
    I hate dealing with amateurs. I understand their feelings, but in the middle of any operation, feelings are the last thing I want to deal with. I kept my voice calm as I said, “I know, and I’m sorry, but we’re almost done. Now, leave immediately.”
    “Okay,” she said. She disconnected.
    The transport was close to the SleepSafe, so I had it stay the course. We’d pass by the front of the building and continue until we knew where she was. It shouldn’t take more than a minute or two—provided, of course, that Chang moved quickly.
    As we were pulling close to the hotel, Lobo contacted me. “Got her. She’s waiting outside as you said, a block and a half from the hotel. Ninety seconds from your current position.”
    He gave me the coordinates. I directed the transport to them.
    I called Chang. “Stay where you are,” I said. “I’ll be to you in less than ninety seconds.”
    When the transport stopped, I opened its rear door. Chang was leaning against a building across a sidewalk from me. “Get in,” I said.
    She hesitated for a moment, then joined me inside. When she saw the unconscious boys, she gasped. I was pulling the door shut as she said, “What are you doing? Are they alive?”
    “Please, Lydia, relax,” I said.
    She dropped to her knees and cradled Tasson’s head in her arms; I’d put him closest to the door so she could reach him easily.
    “Yes,” I said, “they’re fine. Just sedated. We’re going to wake them once we get where we’re going.” I instructed the transport to head to the corner of the park that Lobo had determined was free from surveillance. I hoped he was right. If not, at the very least, I’d be causing trouble for the man who’d loaned me the transport. At the worst, I’d be risking getting captured.
    “What did they do to him?” she said.
    I had no way to know for sure, but now was not the time for speculation. “Nothing beyond drugging him and, as you’ve probably seen on the feeds, displaying him.”
    “Those men were going to buy him, as if he was a melon at the market.” Her throat and fists were clenched with her rage.
    “Yes, but they didn’t. We stopped them, and now he’s safe with you. We’re almost done. I still need your help, though, to get these other children safely to their families.”
    She slowly scanned the nine other unconscious kids. “They’re all so young. They must have been so scared.”
    I said nothing.
    She carefully returned Tasson’s head to the floor and stood. “They’re going to punish those men, right?”
    “I hope so. We supplied them with a great deal of evidence.”
    She looked up at me, her eyes locked on mine. “I wish you’d killed them all. I wish you’d hurt them and made them suffer and scared them and then killed them.”
    I stared back at her. Seeing her love, her anger, I wished I’d had someone to come fight for me when I was a boy. I nodded. “I understand. I really do. I’ve been—” I stopped myself. “Part of me wishes I had.”
    “I’m with her,” Lobo said over the comm.
    I ignored him.
    “You’re ten minutes out from the park,” he said. “Time to give them the drug. If I’ve calibrated correctly, and we both know that is an entirely rhetorical ‘if,’ because why would I make an error, it should wake them just in time.”
    “What do we do next?” Chang said.
    I pulled ten drug capsules from my pocket. “We carefully inject each of the kids with one of these.” I showed her one and bent to the girl beside Tasson. “Do as I do.”
    She kneeled beside me and watched closely.
    I put the small capsule against the girl’s arm and pressed