Waxing the Moon of Lewei: Tales of a Former Space Janitor by Julia Huni

Author:Julia Huni [Huni, Julia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: IPH Media
Published: 2022-02-27T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

This early in the morning, the hotel hallways should be deserted. I open the stairway door a crack and peer down the hall. The door to my suite is open, and the hum of cleaning bots filters to us. They don’t waste any time at the Zhengzu-Maryought. If I could connect to the building’s network—

The NexUs Cuffs! I pull Katie’s from my pocket and tap the screen. “Do you know anything about how these things work?” I connect my holo-ring to the device.

She shakes her head. “I really am just a call-center girl. Can I have it back?”

I hand it to her, then sit on the bottom step to start looking for a back door. “If I can break into the system, I should be able to find a cam on one of those cleaning bots and see what’s going on in the room.”

She straps her device to her arm. “Why don’t I just walk down the hall and look?”

“What if they see you?”

“I’ll say I got off the drop chute at the wrong floor by accident.” She taps her Ncuff. “I’ll send you a connection request—so we can stay in touch.”

“On an open line?”

“There are millions of people wearing these things—they can’t track everyone.” She opens the door again.

I grab her arm. “Actually, they can. And they’re definitely tracking mine—I’m a foreigner.”

Her eyes go wide, and her mouth forms an oh. “You shouldn’t use it at all!”

“Relax. That’s why I’m not wearing it. Let’s just go look.”

We walk down the hallway. The door to my suite is still open. As we pass, we casually peer through the opening. A vacuum zips across the floor, but no human cleaners are visible. Voices emanate from the front bedroom. A faint whiff of smoke and burned wire tickles my nose. I pause and look closer. There are singe marks around the bedroom door. I grab Katie’s arm and hustle her back to our stairway.

The door clicks shut behind us. “Was there a fire?” Katie whispers.

“I think my team had a self-destruct in the comm room.”

“Comm room?”

I shake my head. “Never mind. We aren’t going to find anything in there.” I drop to the steps and cradle my head in my hands. How are we going to rescue Vanti and O’Neill?

“Hello there. Who are you?”

I look up, startled. Katie crouches at the top of the next flight of steps, a hand reaching downward. A familiar black furry face butts at her fingers.

“Apawllo!”

The cat purrs and presses his head against Katie’s stroking hand.

“Is this your cat?”

“Kind of. He must have gotten left behind when they evicted the others.”

“That’s sad.” She lifts the tag hanging from Apawllo’s collar. “This is odd.”

“What?”

She rubs the tag between her fingers. “It doesn’t have his name. It’s just a blank disk.”

“Give me that collar. He didn’t have that before.”

Katie unbuckles the collar and hands it to me. While she strokes the cat, I examine the tag. It’s thicker than an engraved tag needs to be. On any other cat, I’d assume it was simply a tracking chip.

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