Read Online Root of Unity by SL Huang - Free Book Online

surprised if anything ever happened between them.”
    I’d never heard of Sonya Halliday before last night, and here was Checker with her whole life’s history. Everyone else had known what was going on here before Arthur had pulled me in for dumb computational comprehension and hadn't even trusted me to agree to be that.
    I stabbed at the keyboard.
    “Hey,” said Checker. “This might be the most inappropriate time to ask this ever, but are you okay?”
    I kept stabbing. “Fine. It’s just a concussion.”
    “I don’t mean now, although I’m glad to hear a concussion is included in your definition of ‘fine.’ I meant in general. Until today I hadn’t seen you in weeks. You’ve been ignoring all my messages—”
    I tried to shrug him off. “I was on the job.”
    “One, that’s never stopped you from mocking me through text before, and two, no, you haven’t been, at least not the whole time. I checked.”
    “You were tracking me?” I put a little righteous anger into the words, even though I’d already figured he had been.
    “Of course I was; I wanted to make sure you weren’t dead! What happened to coming over here to get your tequila on? There’s another season of The X-Files that’s begging us to play drinking games to it.”
    “I didn’t feel like company,” I said, still concentrating on my screen. And maybe I’d been sick of trying to live up to his and Arthur’s standards, sick of trying so hard to be the human being they saw me as. Sick of failing at it.
    “I get that,” said Checker, oblivious. “You just seem—I know, I know, concussion. But…you know if you need anything, that I’m—I mean, you can…right?”
    I was saved from answering, thank Christ, by hitting the jackpot. “Hey. I found the van.”
    Checker was at my shoulder immediately. “Where?”
    I didn’t know how to do any sort of fancy computer highlighting, so I traced a rough circle against the monitor with my finger, ignoring it when Checker cringed. He didn’t like people touching his screens. “It disappeared into this area almost half an hour ago and hasn’t come out.”
    “Are you sure? There’s no way it could’ve—?”
    I glared at him, and he shut up.
    “Okay, I get it, you’re sure. Two possibilities, then: their base is in the zone, or they switched vehicles. Can you run the security footage on the border of your zone forward and—never mind, I’ll do it,” he said hastily, at my blank look. He started punching keys. “You know, you could learn to do this stuff in about three seconds if you gave half a crap.”
    I didn’t answer. Checker and I drank and watched bad movies together fairly regularly when I wasn’t avoiding him. It was stupid to think I wouldn’t see him anymore if I didn’t need him for the computer junk.
    Stupid.
    “It’s a bit of a long shot, but we can put together a likely vehicle list crossing the boundary,” Checker said absently, his focus on the screen. “Most cars that exit within the right window will be registered to people statistically unlikely to be involved, especially as stealing one would probably put our bad guys on the police radar more quickly and conspicuously. I’m skeptical this will work, though—I’m betting it’s not a coincidence they stopped out of view of any security cameras. These guys are very good at staying hidden.”
    “Because nothing says ‘discreet’ like coming after Arthur and me with a grenade launcher,” I said.
    “You might think that, but I assure you, I’ve been trying to trace that SUV since this morning with no luck. It’s like it popped up out of nowhere. I’m hoping Arthur will at least be able to get me a partial VIN. No, they might go in for the dramatic, but the way they’ve been disappearing in between—”
    His hands froze on the keyboard.
    “What?” I said.
    Checker turned to one of his other machines without answering and started typing very fast.
    “What is it?”
    “I think—” His fingers