Simon cursed his ill-reasoned choice to exercise his independence. He could have taken one of the Lazarus’ fleet of vehicles when he left for the evening, but instead he had chosen to not be in anyway beholden to the organization’s resources. He had bussed into the city from the farm. That had not been a big inconvenience in the light of day, but after midnight he was limited to night busses with considerably reduced schedules and reach. It had been necessary to transfer twice already and even so, the last bus would still leave him with a significant walk to the farm.
He didn’t bother wondering how much faster he could have made the trip had been able to use hyper-time. That had already been dispelled for him in training.
“Hyper-time will work for sprints, but not any extended distance. You can’t access it long enough. You could cover several blocks perhaps,” instructed Sylvette. “I can make it roughly a dozen. It’s been a long time since I’ve bothered. Hyper-time is best used for ending things quickly. If you want to get somewhere fast, use a car and hope the traffic isn’t too bad.”
The bell to signal for a stop rang. Someone else had rung it. Simon snapped out of his deep thought and looked up to see a young woman rising out of her seat, crumpling an empty potato chip bag. It was his stop too – as close as the bus would get to the farm. He would have a bit of a walk first. Perhaps a short enough walk that he could effectively cover it in hyper-time, but he had been strictly counselled to not waste hyper-time on trivia, you never knew when you were going to need it.
He stepped down off the bus behind the woman. She had already set off at a determined pace in the same direction he was going. If his night vision hadn’t been improved by the transformation she would already hardly be visible in the dark.
The first driveway passed and she walked on ahead of him. There weren’t many options out here. She couldn’t be going much further than where he would turn, or she would have got off at a later stop.
A second driveway disappeared behind them. The woman glanced over her shoulder at Simon. She too was aware of their coincidental proximity. Simon realised that he was effectively following her and slackened his pace. He didn’t want to seem to be in any way threatening.
When she turned up the same side road he had to turn up in order to get to the Lazarus’ training complex, his intention to avoid creeping her out fell apart. As he himself arrived at the foot of the road he stopped and watched as she walked on ahead of him. As he watched in consternation the woman turned and looked back – probably to see if he was still following her. She did not get the answer she was looking for. She turned and kept walking, the up-tick in her pace perceptible to Simon from the distance between them.
Shit. Now what?
His answer turned out to be that he would wait. His night vision was keener than a normal human, so he waited until she had disappeared into the night by the measure of his ability to see, then he followed after her, content that he could not be perceived to be following her any longer.
Thirty minutes later he was approaching the disguised entrance to the training complex – an actual equipment barn with a concealed inner door – when from behind a rusty pick-up truck sprung a voice.
“You don’t look like much of a farmer.”
Simon barked out a startled cry.
“And I’d say that settles it; you aren’t following me.”
A thin young woman, stepped out from behind the truck. It was the woman who had got off the bus. She stood in the damp grass shivering. For the first time Simon noticed that she had no shoes. She stood in her stocking feet.
“You’re one of them, aren’t you? I think you call yourselves ‘Lazarus’?”
Swallowing deeply, Simon couldn’t begin to figure out how to respond.
“I don’t know who is in charge of hiding your tracks on the internet, but it seems you could use some help. Perhaps we could make an exchange. There is a vampire after me.”Chapter 16
No comments:
Post a Comment