Wyre-rat (part 16)

Good. He handed the bottle back to me and I gestured to the bathroom. "You can refill it and keep it, if you'd like."

As soon as that stuff got into his system, it would attack and neutralize whatever tracker they'd implanted. These were the kind of precautions that had kept me free this long.

He got to his feet and did as instructed. He settled back to the pallet with his water bottle clutched in his hand. "Who are you?"

No way I was going to tell him that, when even without the tracker he might go wyre and take the information back to his "Center."

"I'm a free wyre. I run an underground for others who want to get out."

I studied him, waited for his reaction, and wished I was in rat form. The rat would have known whether he was lying just from the smell.

He stared, blank-faced. "Want to get out?" He said it like it was unbelievable to him. "We're taken care of, we have everything. Why would we want to get out?"

So he had been part of a trap.

He stared down at his hands, turned them over. "I don't want to leave. I..."

I heard panic in his voice. "Then why did you come with me?"

"I thought you were a supervisor. Only a supervisor would be allowed out... unmonitored." He blinked, squeezed his eyes shut. His breath came very shallow, and as if I was still in rat form I knew his heart was beating too fast.

Frightened. He looked down at the water bottle. "Did you poison me?"

"No." Let him make of that what he would. "I am not one of these supervisors."

"There's no way." The words were nearly inaudible. "People hate us. The Center saved our lives. Wyre couldn't live out here, you're talking about an impossibility."

"Then why did you come with me?" I asked again. "I'm serious. I can try to get you out, if that's what you want. In most of the rest of the world, we live like anyone else. We're trusted, paid for our work. Treated like human beings."

"You're trying to trick me."



Part 17




If you want to start at the beginning: Wyre-Rat episode 1