Read Online Under Dark Sky Law by Tamara Boyens - Free Book Online Page B

was looking
for. Another smile spread across her face and she chuckled a
little. That bastard Sanchez had made it after all. They were a
hard pair to kill. The laser had tagged him in the chest,
collapsing his lung and blowing out his shoulder joint on the way
out. Thankfully, the shot had missed his heart, and the strike
itself was clean. One benefit to the laser guns was that they
didn’t leave behind the shrapnel of a conventional weapon. She’d
been hit with a real bullet or two in her time, and it wasn’t an
experience she wanted to relive.
    With that question settled, she moved on to
her next agenda item. The other great thing about the tablet was
that it was connected to the internet. One of the most annoying
things about the pits was the lack of internet. Some of it was
being restored, but much of it was still patchy, slow and
unreliable. In some ways it had restored privacy that was
nonexistent in dome life, but it made many other things
inconvenient. Some of the pits that were in close proximity to
areas of former technology glory, like the areas north of San
Francisco and the Silicon Valley were actually bringing an
underground network of sorts back again. Xero was ambivalent about
the whole affair, and hadn’t done much with her home area yet.
There was a certain appeal to living off the grid.
    With Sanchez accounted for, that just left
the matter of figuring out what became of Argon. There was no way
to try and contact him directly through the tablet that wouldn’t
lead to suspicion and traces on their communication that were
unacceptable even in dire circumstances. The sanctity of the Grease
Weasels was bigger than the safety of any one member, and it wasn’t
worth the risk. Even if Argon were in dire straights, with her
communication abilities severely hampered there wasn’t much she
could do. Hopefully if the shit had started to fly he would have
tried to make contact with home base back in the pits where they
might be able to activate some of their covert ops teams to come to
the rescue. She trusted Milo to make the best tactical decisions
for the circumstances.
    She spent a few precious minutes combing
through the hospital records on the off-chance that someone fitting
Argon’s description or going by his real name or any of his various
aliases had been admitted to the facility. When she came up empty
handed, she moved on to the last productive thing she could do
while in possession of the tablet. Digging through a few layers of
search engine filters, she tapped into a few of the more well-known
taboo websites in search of any news regarding the riots in the
flats or any associated instability dome-side.
    She had just located an article that
contained a photo of some of the carnage in the flats when the same
nurse marched back into the room.
    Xero sighed and dropped the tablet on her
lap, lifting her hands in the air to show surrender in an attempt
to avoid full restraints or premature sedation. “Busted,” she said
with a mild attempt at sheepishness.
    The nurse wasn’t buying it. She stomped her
way to the bed, the smooth porcelain veneer of her dome drone face
cracking into a sneer. Her eyes beady eyes were squinted into even
smaller bland brown pin points. “How dare you,” she said. “You just
violated not less than seventeen hospital policies.”
    Xero shrugged. “So sue me,” she said, unable
to help herself. She was really slipping on this trip. Good thing
she could blame the drugs for her cheeky behavior.
    The nurse snatched the tablet from the bed
with a careless speed that seemed to surprise her, and Xero smiled,
knowing that she’d successfully gotten under the nurse’s skin. The
nurse took a second to collect herself, and with deliberate
carefulness she placed the tablet back into its rightful cradle at
the foot of the bed. With a very purposeful breath she smoothed
down her white scrubs and a smile pushed itself out to her lips
like a tube of old play dough.
    “More than one