Awakening Read Free Page B

Kayla’s hands had taken on a blue tinge despite her GEN circuitry kicking in to warm her.
    Working doggedly in the downpour, Kayla trudged from lorry to warehouse and back until only a dozen crates and a half-dozen sacks of kel-grain were left. Her arms and shoulders felt like mush from the wet work. The two GEN boys had run out of steam too, carrying only one sack or crate each per trip.
    Kayla toted the last three crates, following Risa, who had the final kel-grain sack slung over her shoulder. Risa slung the sack on top of the pile, then nudged Kayla, gesturing toward the front of the warehouse where a GEN woman waited.
    Risa tossed over her sekai, which Kayla caught onehanded. Kayla started down the line of stacked crates and kel-grain sacks toward the GEN woman. The woman led Kayla to an alcove carved out of the warehouse space and sat behind a battered desk.
    “I have the invoice here, Teki,” Kayla said, setting the palmsized reader on the woman’s desk.
    “Let me take a look.” Teki picked up the sekai. Her other hand cupped over something on the desk and slid it toward Kayla.
    Teki lifted her hand just enough for Kayla to see the edge of a thumbnail-sized thinsteel packet underneath. Teki’s closed fingers concealed the packet from view of the netcam focused on her makeshift office.
    “Twenty sacks of kel-grain?” Teki said. “I only saw nineteen.”
    “You might have missed that last one Risa brought in,” Kayla said, leaning on the desk, her hand next to Teki’s.
    A sweep of Teki’s hand toward Kayla’s and the packet was safely in Kayla’s grasp. “You’re right,” Teki said. “I didn’t see it.”
    Her back to the netcam, Kayla tucked the black packet into a hidden pocket in her leggings. Teki held the sekai to her left cheek, and the device scanned the unique pattern of Teki’s tattoo. Kayla took the sekai and did the same, although her tattoo was on her right cheek. The kel-grain and synth-protein delivery acknowledged by them both, Kayla made her way back to the loading dock. With another DNA packet to deliver to the Kinship.
    She found Risa on the plasscrete dock, rain dripping from the wide brim of the lowborn’s hat as she stared up the narrow alley to Qaf’s main street. “An enforcer on Abur Street. Might just be a scheduled patrol.”
    “He didn’t go to the seventeenth warren, did he?” The neighboring warehouse blocked their view of Abur. They could only see the top three floors of the warren.
    “Don’t know. Didn’t dare go down the alley to look.”
    Kayla handed back Risa’s sekai. “Maybe he’s a GEN enforcer, not a trueborn.”
    GEN enforcers handled minor issues in the sector— mediating disputes between GENs, delivering Assignment tack to fifteenth-years a day or two before they were Assigned. So if the enforcer was a GEN, they might be okay.
    “Walked like a trueborn,” Risa said. “Like he owned the world.”
    “We could skip the drop,” Kayla said.
    “Long way to the next one,” Risa said.
    “But it’s my jik skin that’s at risk.” Kayla faced down Risa. “Unless you want to be the one to take it in.”
    Risa squirmed a little. “Not how it works.”
    Kayla didn’t like it, but Risa was right. The enforcer would see Kayla in the lorry and wonder why the lowborn driver was making the delivery and not the GEN Assigned to her.
    “Well?” Risa asked, leaving the choice to her.
    Kayla weighed the risk of keeping the packet against the hazards of confronting the enforcer. “Let’s do it.”
    Risa whistled for Nishi and the seycat trotted from the brush. Nishi’s irregular gait was unbalanced even more by the rat-snake dangling from her jaws. The seycat jogged up the stairs, across the dock and into the cargo bay.
    Risa swung shut the doors and slammed home the latch. While the lowborn woman took the stairs to descend from the dock, Kayla jumped the meter and a half. Water from a puddle gushed up around her, soaking her synth-leather shoes. As