TWO MONTHS EARLIER

'Atleran?'

'Here.'

'Avardi?'

'Here.'

'Bitman?'

Silence prompts the grey-haired holoteacher to scan the classroom with his lifeless eyes. 'Bitman?' repeats the hollow man, and a youth stirs in his seat, scowling.

'Here!'

'Boonell?'

Another youth stifles a yawn with her hand. 'Here, here.'

I almost yawn too. It's stuffy in here under the bright striplights. I'll swear the air-cons are sucking the oxygen right out of the classroom.

It's just after two o'clock on a Friday afternoon with the sunlight tilting in through the big windows, and we still have two dreary classes to get through. It feels like this school-week is never going to end.

All around me students try to control their impatience as time crawls - one slow second after another - towards the relative freedoms of the weekend. We're only three minutes into the enforced silence of the lesson, and already the students are starting to play with their hands or pick at their noses, fidgeting on seats that are constantly monitoring their life-signs for levels of alertness and attention. By the sounds of it a few of the chairs are already starting to buzz, vibrating under some flagging kid who's wandered off into a daydream - the plastic seat reshaping itself sharp and uncomfortable beneath their numb backside until the kid complies, sits up straighter, gets with the program with a sigh.

'Buller?

Once again there's another long silence in the room.

'Buller?' repeats the holoteacher. 'Buller? … Buller? … Buller?'

It sounds like his algorithms are caught in a loop.

'Ah, Farras got arrested for truancy,' pipes up the prettiest girl in the class. 'My best-friend's sister's boyfriend said he saw him getting dragged from his house last night by the cops.'

'Yeah,' drawls another girl. 'My bro was telling me they hauled him down to the psych ward for school-phobia or something. He says they've got Farras all zapped out on tranquillisers. I guess it must be pretty serious.'

'Thank you,' replies the teacher with all the impassiveness of a reanimated corpse. You'd think they could have spent a little money adding personality routines to these things.

'Filch? … Filch?'

A digital clock counts down from the allotted fifty lesson minutes. A camera stares at everyone from a high corner. The classroom walls are festooned with glittering holograms of Xmas decorations, since it's nearly that time of the year again to go crazy with shopping. A few strategically-placed 3V screens run suitably festive 'educational infoticements' on non-stop loops, selling products to products in the making.

'Henno?'

'Here.'

'Janit?'

'Here.'

God how I've come the loathe this place.

Five days now pretending to be a brow-beaten student at this corporate-run highschool, eating toxic canteen meals and sitting in classrooms as suffocating as mass graves, and I'm just about ready to eat my hand. Thank Chrizt this is my last day here, my last day in school ever again. All I have to do is finish downloading what I need to without interruption, then somehow make it through the next forty-five minutes of this Political Economics class, and I'm gone. Puff.

If nothing else, Orange Hill High has been an eye-popping experience for someone who had never even set foot inside a school before this week. Having been 'homeschooled' in the wilderness by my parents, I now know what mass schooling really involves. I now know what every kid has to go through on this Sprawl World that we humans call Plenty.

It's been easier than I was expecting, pretending to be a student here. I'm older than these kids by a few years, but they all look older anyway due to cosmetics and stress and bad diets, so I've hardly been standing out. My natural solitary tendencies have lent me credence too, not talking much beneath a hoody that I always keep pulled over my head whenever I'm in public, as shelter and protection from the social intensity of my own species.

What am I doing here? Why have I been putting myself through this hell for five long days now?

Because I'm looking for something that's been stolen.

I'm what they call a tracer in the Sprawl. A professional who retrieves all manner of things that have been stolen from other people - people who don't much like Law Enforcement's chances of getting it back for them, or who otherwise can't go to the cops. Stolen vehicles. Pets. Online identities. Drugs.

It's a living, though so far just barely. At least it beats punching the clock every day. Besides, I love doing it. I love all the hacking, the stealthing, the breaking and entering, and that's what counts, surely, if you're going to be spending half your time doing something like this and risking your neck in the process.

Right now, an online dealer of spaceweed is hiring me to get back a stolen haul of cryptocurrency, known as crips; three-hundred-thousand worth in Standard Credits, snatched from his online vending account by some lucky hacker who had somehow harvested his access codes. About an hour after I had accepted the job, I'd already traced the theft to the Wire access of this particular highchool. It looked like the lucky hacker was a highschooler who'd been accessing the anonymous Deep Wire through the school's public network. But the digital trail ended there.

So lacking any alternatives, I cracked into the school network and enrolled as a fake student.

The first day was fun, for about three and a half minutes. And then the bells went off and we were herded into a classroom filled with rows of desks, where I sat like everyone else at the instruction of a holoteacher - nothing but a tangle of light beams and digital coding projected from a lens - and the door closed shut with a soft hiss, and the roll call was taken, and then the slow litany of information began drip-dripping from the hologram's mouth in a rhythm that said, you are sleepy, sleepy, sleepy. The air grew stale. On the wall clock, just like now, the remaining lesson minutes slowly counted downwards. In the confinement of their seats, the kids started to fidget and fart.

It came to me how this was the very first class of a seven hour day, on the first day of a five-day week.

Dear god, I thought in sudden horror. What have I signed up for?

It's pretty much been downhill since then, at least in regards to what I've been learning about highschool. The tracing job has been fairly lousy too – mostly eavesdropping on student's conversations in order to get a read on the possible hacker, which isn't nearly as interesting as I'd thought it would be. There are a lot of kids in this place, and they all seem pretty closed-mouth about things. They don't give much away. Maybe it's all the cameras with their microphone pickups. And the armed security guards who seem to tower everywhere the kids are gathered in numbers. And the constant rumours of paid student informants (snitches) and uncover cops. And the arrests of their peers in front of everyone for smoking, swapping downloads, sharing 'extremist' views, talking back to their holoteachers.

Yesterday, I was all for ditching this plan of mine and coming up with something more direct. But then I had a stroke of luck.

I finally traced my suspect down.

I knew it was him when I spotted the kid scrawling >>>Animal<<< on a desk leg during a Customer Relations class - which is the kind of style a young hacker might use to write his handle online. It wasn't much to go on, but then I noticed the small scanpatch on his bag for the CryptoNation. He's too young to be a citizen of the CryptoNation – I know, because I had to wait until I was eighteen before I could become a citizen myself. But it was another clue.

Some sniffing on the Wire confirmed what I already knew in my guts. >>>Animal<<< was a budding hacker who boasted of small-scale rip-offs to his pals on the hacking boards of the Deep Wire. Usually small thefts of cryptocurrency from scammer merchants of illegal goods. Though I was intrigued to see that >>>Animal<<< also claimed to support the Resistance in his hacking too.

The guy is sitting in front of me right now, in the next row over. He's the one who answered the roll-call with a scowl, Dav Bitman.

The kid hardly looks like he's in possession of three-hundred-thousand Credits worth of crips. Neither does he look like a secret supporter of the Resistance. He just looks like a regular-sized fresh-faced youth in jeans and T-Shirt; someone clever enough to keep his head down when he needs to, maybe even sly enough to enjoy a little phone phreaking on the side, or cracking into the school's system to change his grades – but surely nothing heavier than that.

If I hadn't already found his stash of stolen cryptocurrency, I'd have started doubting my instincts by now. And doubting my instincts is something I really hate to do. But find the stolen crips I did, or at least the trace of them, and where they went to – right there in his bag, on his personal Slate. Within the Slate's frozen memory, the stolen crips are being held inside a virtual crypto-safe, suitably called Animal's Hungry Piggy Bank, which itself is contained inside a firewalled space that can't be accessed from the Wire.

That's why I'm sitting here now, with my own Slate running in stealth mode on my lap beneath the desk, hidden from sight of the holoteacher and the camera.

Even though the kid's Slate is in his bag, he's made the mistake of keeping it on low-power mode. So I can still access it through a short-range radio link known as a Fang connection – the kind of localised link-up that lets kids swap ringtones while they're slurping Slurpy Cola's together at lunchtimes. For the last five minutes I've been successfully hacking the device from where I'm sitting.

Bitman's virtual safe is firewalled behind layers of armour and front-ended by a poly-encrypted lock. I haven't even bothered trying to crack into it, since I'm getting paid by the day, not the decade. Instead, since the safe is a basic home-user affair, without all the super-sophisticated protections of a more advanced model, I've instead hacked my way into superuser access of his Slate, and from there I've used some sneaky parsing script to take a 'snapshot' of the entire shape of the virtual safe held in frozen memory. Now I'm downloading the whole thing onto my own Slate while erasing the original on his.

Essentially, I'm ripping out the safe from the wall.

---

'Now class,' says the holoteacher in his dreary grey monotone excuse for living humanity. 'In today's lesson we will be covering some of the more important aspects of the Thirty-Third Consumer Crisis, including its lasting after-effects on the wider global economy as a whole.'

I lean back, finger tapping impatiently on the glossy surface of the interactive desk, waiting for the download to complete.

Man, these local Fang connections are slow.

'If you will now place your hands on your desktops you will be Impressed with today's lesson plan, along with accompanying homework resources for the weekend.'

Students groan as they place their palms on their desktops so they can receive even more homework for the weekend. Thank god I'm firewalled against these things.

'You too, Bitman. Yes. I can see you there.'

Impressions. One of the wonders of the modern age. A technology borrowed from the native Shal of the planet, though largely perverted from its original uses. A way of transmitting information from a physical surface directly into the mind, using only the electromagnetic field of the skin and body. Press a memory surface with your skin, and in microseconds your subconscious is tricked into believing that you've just had a real experience – like you really did just read a screen with your weekend homework assignment on it. Even more clever, the technology does this in such a way that for a while you can recall the details with extreme clarity - like someone with a photographic memory, only not as permanent (they're still working on that part).

The lesson begins, though I barely hear what the holoteacher is saying. I can see on the little stealthed holoscreen of my Slate that eighty-eight percent of the virtual safe has been downloaded. Eighty-nine percent.

Come on come on.

'It was in the aftermath of the Thirty-Third Consumer Crisis, with the help of the new field of Behavioural Politics, that the modern era was born in the form of the New … Anyone? Anyone? In the form of the New Confidence. As you already know, the early decades of the New Confidence saw the shaping of modern democracy into what we recognise today as coalition rule, or what is commonly known as … Anyone? Anyone? As The Combine. Thanks to the economic successes of this period, Behavioural Politics was to become the established third leg of the … Anyone? Anyone? Of the Democratic Process, where it joined alongside Identity Politics and … Anyone? Anyone? Consumer Politics, as another method for both government and consumers to engage on matters of social importance.'

Someone is snoring beside me, oblivious to the chair buzzing beneath her ass. Drool spreads across the shiny surface of her desktop, catching the white brilliance of the sunlight. The class has only started and the rest of the students look just about ready to burst. Outside in the playing field, another class of students are playing sports for an hour, their boisterous voices muted by the sealed plass windows of the classroom. They're the lucky ones, just to be outside with the sky over their heads for a while - for all that they're mostly being shouted at by their instructors.

Ninety-three percent downloaded.

I'm glad I've disabled the chair I'm sitting on so it doesn't give away my lack of attention. I don't know how these kids do it, day after day after day.

When I was younger, my father always warned us about schools like this. Born and raised in the Sprawl, he likened mass industrial schooling to day prisons for children, designed to break them of their free will. A way of creating a population more manageable to its owners; a way of dumbing down people into cogs.

I always supposed he was being his usual overly-dramatic self, but what I've seen during this week of highschool hell has been even worse than my father ever let on. Now I'm the one who sounds overly-dramatic about the dangers of schooling.

What I've witnessed here, in these airless halls and classrooms, is less like real education and more like re-education, more like outright brainwashing going on, from the youngest inmates up to the oldest. Brainwashing on a mass scale, though it's almost entirely hidden behind an edifice of traditions; hidden even to the teaching staff enforcing the daily brainwashing; hidden behind pomp and glossy perfections; behind smiles and outwardly good intentions; behind the unquestionable authority of scientifically-derived structures of routine; behind salaries and much-needed jobs.

Behind it all, this place really is a form of prison, where kids are confined for conditioning into machine-like behaviour.

Bells like alarms rule the long, dying days here. Regimentation and hierarchy. The separation and boxing of everything and everyone. From what I've witnessed in Orange Hill High, kids are mostly taught to disconnect from themselves and the rhythms of the real world through an endless litany of do's and dont's – don't run, don't dawdle, don't talk, don't get out of your chair, don't fidget, don't stare out the window, don't use that word, don't speak that name, don't question authority or what any of this is for. Even their inner authorities, their own original wills, are cast into self-doubt.

I feel sorry for them, I really do. In a single week I've seen how constant exams and tests and gradings force these kids to race against each other tooth and claw for position. How every day they find themselves ranked on scales of winners and losers that sets them up for the rest of their lives. I've seen how those who knuckle down the most, who learn to jump through hoops and please authority with a smiling, phony enthusiasm, are the ones rewarded with good grades and phony certificates. While the rest just seem to be sourly dragging themselves through the motions, with any remaining sparks of open rebellion effectively suppressed by punishment, mood-stabilisers and good old-fashioned peer pressure.

'I heard they zapped Farris Buller with a taser when they arrested him last night,' one of the girls is whispering behind me over the endless droning of the holoteacher. 'They told him he was mouthing off too much so they tasered him. His parents were in tears.'

I'm half-listening when the Slate purrs on my lap to draw my attention. On its dimmed and minimized holoscreen I see that the download is complete.

Got it!

I have the Animal's virtual safe, along with the contents still locked inside of it.

Right now the kid has no idea what I've just done. Instead Dav Bitman, aka Animal, is pretending to listen to the teacher while he surreptitiously scrawls another scrap of graffiti on his desk leg. Intrigued, I lean over slightly to see what this rebel in disguise is writing.

We Will Be Remembered! read his words in spidery blue ink.

Maybe Bitman is the same person who's been writing all that other stuff around the school that keeps catching my eye. Stuff that's always cleverly positioned to avoid any watching cameras. Don't Swallow Their Bullshit Pills! Or the equally worthy, You Are Not Alone In This. Maybe that's why Bitman always seems to be late for his classes.

I like this kid. I want to go easy on him. I'm not here to get him into any kind of trouble, just to get the money back. Quickly I type a few words into my Slate, then hit send. Bitman jumps when my text message flashes on his interactive desk in the most ugly flashing script I could find.

I HAVE YOUR SAFE - ANIMALS HUNGRY PIGGY BANK.

He's a cool one, I'll give him that. Bitman strains to look around the classroom as casually as he can. I pretend to look down at my desk, and watch him as he hunches over to type a response.

IF YOU HAVE IT WHY TELL ME?

BECAUSE IM TAKING BACK THE THREE-HUNDRED-THOUSAND STOLEN CRIPS INSIDE IT. GIVE ME THE ACCESS CODE. I'LL RETURN WHATEVER ELSE IS LEFT IN THE SAFE.

AH MAN.

THE ACCESS CODE.

I CANT GIVE YOU BACK THE MONEY BRO.

WHY NOT?

SPENT MOST OF IT.

ON WHAT?!

GAVE HALF TO SOME RESISTANCE CROWD FUNDING THING. DROPPED ANOTHER HUNDRED K AT POKER LAST NIGHT.

Great. My client's going to go bug-eyed crazy when he hears the news that most of the stolen money is gone.

WHATS LEFT?

Bitman pauses, wondering whether or not to tell me. Once more he glances around the classroom, taking in the cameras this time, certain that he's being watched.

ABOUT FIFTY K. PLUS MY OWN CRIPS.

ANIMAL. GIVE ME THE ACCESS CODE. ITS THE ONLY WAY YOU GET YOUR OWN CRIPS BACK.

ANIMAL SAYS BITE MY HAIRY ASS.

MAN THIS DOESNT HAVE TO GET UGLY HERE.

NO. THAT'S THE ACCESS CODE.

Ah. I see he's telling the truth when I type in the pass phrase, and suddenly I have access to his safe.

I also see he's telling the truth about spending most of the crips. I sigh. At least I have fifty K to send back to my client. I do that right now, quickly accessing the anonymous Deep Wire through the school's private network, so I can fire my client an email along with the entire sum of what remains of his crips, set up on escrow. Plus a digital log to prove what happened to the money.

Bitman is trying to take his Slate from his bag without being noticed. He's also watching his desk in anticipation of another message, but I leave him hanging for the moment. There's still nearly ten thousand of his own personal crips inside the safe. I send these to his anonymous Deep Wire identity, >>>Animal<<< so he'll get the money back next time he goes online.

Then I send him a final message:

>>>ANIMAL<<< SENT YOU YOUR CRIPS. DO YOURSELF A FAVOUR. STORE THEM ON A DATA SPIKE, NOT ON YOUR GODDAMNED SLATE! DO YOURSELF ANOTHER FAVOUR. GO TO THIS HACKING BOARD AND ASK THE MODERATORS FOR APPRENTICESHIP STATUS. TELL THEM THE ESCAPIST SENT YOU. ~THE ESCAPIST~

I'm done here, I realise with a sudden rush of relief. Now I just have to sit out the rest of this lesson, then slip outside with everyone else at the end of it, rendered invisible by the crowd, so that Bitman is none the wiser. Then I'll leave this place and get on with living.

I lean back, stretching my spine and arms, warmed by the slanting beams of sunshine and the Slate humming on my lap.

It was an interesting job while it lasted. Now it's done with, I'm reminded how I've been thinking of taking a much-needed holiday from the Sprawl. Maybe my usual thing of camping for a week or two up in the Cascade Mountains, enjoying some solitary campfires under the stars with a bag or two of good spaceweed.

I can almost feel the mountain air stirring through me, just thinking of it.

Feeling spirited for the first time in a week, I reach down to shut off the Slate just as a new email pops into my personal mailbox.

I blink in surprise. It's from my sister, Leaf, all the way from the Salt Plateau. I haven't heard from her in years.

I need you brother, reads her message. The Shal need you. Someone has stolen the First Fire!

I blink a few times then read the email again, thinking it's some kind of joke. My sister lives on the reservation of the native Shal, which is currently under siege by Combine forces due to an unruly uprising.

I can't figure out what she might mean by their First Fire being stolen.

YOU HIGH AGAIN SISTER? WHAT'S UP? I send back to her. Then wonder how long I'll have to wait for a reply, since she rarely checks her mail.

Thirty minutes of the class are still remaining, according to the clock on the wall. Over the heads of the students the teacher's voice carries like an automatic recording, on and on and on.

I really can't take any more of this.

Then don't. Get up and leave! Who the hell cares if the kid figures out it was you? Let's get out of here!

I always get the best advice from myself.

Students turn to look as I climb to my feet and sling the Slate into my bag, staring wide-eyed as I shoulder the bag like I'm casting off my chains or something.

Bitman glances up on my way past.

'Student Asfinkle,' announces the holoteacher as I head for the door. 'Please explain where you are going?'

'Need to drain the old snake,' I tell the hologram, tugging at the door handle just as I hear it's internal lock thudding shut.

God damn it.

'Student Asfinkle. Please explain why you need your bag to visit the bathroom?'

'I don't.'

'You don't what?'

'I don't need my bag to visit the bathroom.'

'Then why are you taking it with you?'

'I told you. I need to go drain my snake.'

Students are smirking behind their hands. The holoteacher stands immobile for a moment, trying to process the enigma of my words. I'm hoping his digitised fuzzy logic will decide it's not worth wasting any more time over, and let me go.

It does. 'Very well then. But make it quick.'

Suddenly the door opens against my tug.

'Remember your hall pass, student Asfinkle. Your hall pass!'

A numbered ticket slides out from a wall printer next to the door. It has a grainy photo of my face on it – or at least the face I'm wearing for this job, which I've modified slightly with the usual enhancements.

Every kid is watching me, unaware than I'm about to step outside to my freedom. It seems like a betrayal of some kind just then - or at the very least, a bad example - to just do as I'm told.

Instead I flash him a toothy grin.

'Animal says, bite my hairy ass.'

And then I walk out of there with the kids whistling and hollering after me, and the young hacker gaping in surprise.

---

Chrizt, if you don't believe these schools are actually prisons, try walking out of one without a permission slip.

Outside in the hallway I'm confronted by another holographic teacher, a plump friendly type with curly hair and plumb-red lipstick. If I didn't know any better, I'd be convinced she was the real thing.

'Young man,' she pipes as she tries to stand in my way, and I walk right though her, headed for nearest exit in my fast loping stride, so that she has to jog to keep up with me. 'You really can't be wandering around without a hall pass. It's against school policy, not to mention a risk to everyone's safety. Please be reasonable young man!'

I walk even faster so that she falls further behind. 'Student Asfinkle, please stop!'

My trainers rap even faster. I'm on the ground floor here, not far from the school's side-entrance. But then, ahead of me, a uniformed school cop steps around the corner, followed by two others close behind him.

'Stop!' yells the school cop with one hand thrust towards me like he's acting in some training video, his other hand gripping his holstered taser as he steps closer. 'Don't you friggin' move!'

Maybe I should have thought this through a little better. The last thing I need is to be arrested here for breaking school policy. They might find out I'm not a real student, and impersonating a student is a serious crime. I know, because I looked it up.

'Stop!' the school cop yells again as I keep striding towards him, and he draws his taser and aims it at my chest - dangerous unruly highschooler that I am. His eyes are bulging from their sockets from the sudden rush of adrenaline going to his head. I can see he's just busting for an excuse to shoot someone.

Behind him, his two uniformed buddies hang back in case I somehow try to bolt around them. They're leaving me no choice here.

It's times like this that I'm glad I took an interest in the Shal martial arts from an early age. Stepping close enough to strike, I lash out faster than the cop can react and grab the hand that's pointing the taser at me, and with the same motion I twist hard enough to snap his wrist with a sickening crack.

His taser drops right into my other hand.

Still walking fast, I aim the weapon at the next cop behind him while the guy is still raising his own in surprise, and fire it right into his neck above his body armour. He jolts and goes down in a spasm of jerking limbs.

I drop the taser and bend to snatch the stunstick from his belt. Straighten up to confront the third cop who's still standing there frozen with a half-eaten sandwich in his hand, gaping at me like I'm death itself approaching in adolescent form. He tugs at his taser but in his panic it sticks in the holster, so I help him along with a good lingering stab of the stunstick to his armpit until he crumples to the floor nicely.

Moments later, I'm at the side entrance to the building and yanking at its plass doors. But of course, they won't open.

Suddenly an alarm starts ringing through the hallways behind me, and a soothing androgynous voice comes over the loudspeakers:

'Please stay where you are. The school building is now in lock down. This is not a drill. Please stay where you are. Members of the local Rapid Response unit are on their way.'

Jezuz, this is getting scary. All I want to do is get out of school early.

But I'm not getting through a locked pair of plass doors in a hurry, even though I can see the playing field and freedom just beyond them.

Retreat. Find another way out.

I pass a startled teacher as I rush along another endless corridor; a real teacher this time, a woman reeking of some flowery chemical perfume. Cameras track me from the high ceilings. The alarm wails in my ears. The gleaming corridor seems to go on forever ahead of me as the seconds tick away. It's all starting to feel like one of those nightmares that you can't wake up from.

My trainers squeak as I round a corner, eyes scanning for the nearest bathroom. I'm figuring my best chance of escape is through a window. But in my haste I've gone in the direction of the school's front entrance, which is maybe not the best of ideas just now - especially since there's a squad of black-masked, black-armoured figures stepping through the distant front doors, aiming their automatic guns left and right.

That was fast.

With a gasp I duck back out of sight. Under my hoody I can feel the sweat beading against my forehead. I'm thinking they must have been on patrol in the local airspace to have gotten here so quickly – just my luck - but there's no time to dwell on it now. I slip off my trainers for quieter running then sprint back the way I came, but when I skid around the corner in my socks I see another squad of figures coming in through the side entrance. I wheel my arms and hurl myself back into cover just as the lead figure turns his masked head my way.

I'm trapped, and by a bunch of Rapid Response guys trained to shoot first and ask questions later.

In the tracing business, cool nerves are something of a prerequisite. Panic is strictly for amateurs. Yet even the best tracer hits moments like these when their back is to the wall - and there's literally nothing left to do about it but panic. At least for a few seconds anyway, just to see what your frightened instincts might open up for you by way of options. In my fright, I start trying the classroom doors along the hallway, hoping beyond reason that one of them will open. Kids stare out at me with their faces pressed against narrow strips of plass. Some are yelling their encouragement. Nothing will open though. Not a single damned one.

The alarm stops ringing. In my mind I visualise the pair of Tactical Teams working along the corridors towards the one I'm in, counting down the seconds when they'll be peeking around the corners with the barrels of their guns.

My racing heart is trying to climb out of my throat as I grab at another door handle - just as I hear the squeak of boots approaching round the nearest corner. But this time the door tugs open, and I almost cry out as I dive inside and close it behind me as quietly as I can.

It's pitch black in here, wherever I am. All I can hear is the ragged heaving of my own breaths, loud enough to be heard from the other end of the school. I try to control them with a Shal breathing exercise until my pulse starts to slow down and my head clears. Panic can only get you so far before it kills you.

While I'm at it, I take out my miniSlate and use it to illuminate the space around me, eagerly looking for a way out.

Wonderful. I'm in a janitor's cupboard, not a single window in sight. It's deep and narrow with shelves along one side full of toxic cleaning products in dayglo bottles. I spot an airvent on the ceiling above my head, which I know I'll never be able to squeeze through even if I shed forty pounds in the next few seconds. Two cleaning bots occupy most of the floor like giant plastic beetles, one sitting behind the other.

There isn't a nook or a cranny where I can hide.

Outside in the hallway, a jingle of equipment alerts me to the approach of the Tactical Teams.

Maybe I'll get lucky. Maybe they'll walk right past this cupboard.

Don't be stupid, I growl in my head. The school's cameras will have seen me go in here. These guys know exactly where I am. The only thing in my favour is that they know I'm dangerous, so they'll be approaching my position with caution. I still have a few seconds left.

Another quick glance around the cramped space offers nothing new by way of inspiration. The two cleaning bots on the floor are plugged into wall sockets and recharging. My eyes linger on them, seeing their little holoprojection lenses catching the light of my miniSlate, used for projecting caution signs while the bots are working.

Holoprojectors.

In the way of all inspired ideas, it comes to me in a flash like a gift from the cosmos. I don't even think the plan through. There's no time.

First I stand on the nearest cleaning bot's creaking back, and push at the airvent on the ceiling until it pops open. Hopping down again, I use my miniSlate to take a quick but steady high-res photo of the back of the cupboard, where the second bot is sitting. Then I shuffle down next to it, right at the very back, and pop open the bot's control panel to fire it into low-power mode. Five seconds later and I've establish a Fang connection between the bot and my miniSlate, and I'm squirting the photo image into its holoprojection memory.

I freeze as I hear the muted crackle of a comm signal and someone muttering in reply.

They're right outside the door.

I'm out of time. I need to buy myself a few more seconds.

'Don't shoot!' I wail through the door in my best imitation of a terrified youth, which isn't difficult. 'I surrender!'

'Then come outta there with your hands up!'

'Just don't shoot me!'

While I'm yelling my head off, I'm also busy setting the bot's little holoprojector to project the photo I've just taken of the back of the cupboard. Suddenly the mirrored imaged of the photo appears a few feet in front of my face, flat and hanging there in the gloom. I've just enough time to increase it to a proper life-like size and then the door flies open, blinding me with daylight just as I switch off the light on my miniSlate and hunker down behind the projection of the empty cupboard.

Boots squeak. Men pant quietly. I smell sweat on the inrush of air.

I wish I'd had time to check what the holo-picture looks like from the other side. Please don't flicker. Please don't look like a piece of crap.

'Where is the little cocksucker? Goddamned cupboard's empty.'

'The airvent,' spots someone else, and over the top of the hologram, which hangs across the cupboard from wall to shelving, I see the shadow of someone leaning inside and peering up at the dark airvent above. I crouch down even more, hoping he doesn't hear the sound of my pounding heart.

'What is he, twelve or something?'

'Looks a lot older than that on the feeds, Sarge.'

The figure steps back outside again.

'Damn it. Hootch! Tell surveillance to keep looking. Suspect still at large. Crazy kid must have squeezed himself into the airducts.'

And with that, I hear them moving on along the hall.

I release a breath I didn't know I was holding. Count to one hundred to make sure they're well clear.

They've left the door wide open. As soon as I step outside again the cameras will spot me, and they'll know where I am. But at least that's one problem I can solve from here. Using my miniSlate, it takes me a few seconds to hack into the school's network once again, and a few more to switch off the building's cameras and lock them down.

While I'm in the network, I locate the nearest bathroom from my position and send a command to remotely unlock its door.

Time to get out of here.

I head out again in my socks, bag on my back and trainers in hand. There's no one in sight. In a mad dash I sprint along hallways passing trophy cabinets and shining boards of holophotos, skidding to a halt before each corner, taking a good look to check my path before running onwards. Somehow I make it to the bathroom without being spotted and surge through the door, closing it behind me.

There – the high window at the back of the room. I rush for it, but in my desperate scramble I slip on something that sends me sprawling to the floor. Some kid has thrown toilet paper all over the place. I gasp and blink down at the words that are scrawled all along the paper in black marker pen:

FREE FARRIS! FREE FARRIS BULLER!

More gasps and grunts and I'm opening the window and tumbling outside. I land in some shrubbery and hop clear with hissing curses. Kids are running about on the playing field, screaming at each other in the midst of a touchball game.

I take a deep breath of reinvigorating air while I slip on my trainers.

Man it feels good just having the open sky over my head again.

---

When I make it back to my parked Vito, I spot a patrol car slowly taking a cruise around the carpark. I hunker down behind the dash until they drive past.

The little Vito is stolen, of course, since I can't be leaving a trail while I'm on a job. Using my little bluebox I start the car's ignition, and soon I'm driving slowly and carefully from the school grounds, taking a side-exit to avoid all the fuss around the front entrance. As I head onto the freeway I keep expecting a police car to appear in the rearview mirror, but nothing like that happens.

I'm in the clear.

'Hah-hah!' I whoop, drumming my hands on the steering wheel in celebration.

But then I hear that awful crack of the cop's wrist bone again. And remember all those kids still back there, some of them still facing years of their mandatory school sentence.

Thank god my sister and I never had to go to one of these highschools. We would have warred with the entire system until we were free.

Leaf! In all the excitement I'd forgotten I was waiting for my sister's reply. Freeing one hand from the wheel I fumble for my miniSlate and check my inbox for new messages. Even as I do so, her reply arrives with a ping.

We're twins. This kind of coincidence happens to us all the time.

I need you brother. The Shal need you. Someone has stolen the First Fire!

She's sent the same identical message as her first one.

How typical of Leaf, to stubbornly hold her ground without concern for others. Doesn't she realise I need a straight answer here? Doesn't she know I'm about to head off on a much-needed trip into the mountains?

Damn it to hell. She isn't going to give me any more information over the Wire.

Damn it, damn it, damn it.

Still muttering my curses I toss the miniSlate onto the passenger seat, realising where I have to go.

Next Episode - 'Life On The Rez ...'

(Previous Episode can be read here)

(cc) Creative Commons Licence BY-NC-ND

The High Wild is a passion project that I'm releasing on Steemit as I write it. The artwork is my own. With the support of readers, I'd like to release a High Wild novella as a free ebook when it's finished, under the Creative Commons license. Please consider supporting the project by Upvoting, Following and Resteeming, or donate a TIP for the author's efforts. Cheers.

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