Migration Read Free Page B

his thoughts tried to put some sensible scenario together as to where the hell she might be, how lost she could have become. Surely she hadn't walked out into the Atrium, Dupe and all!!
    Just then, he heard the familiar rumble of a trolley coming down the corridor. It crashed clumsily into walls as it approached. Definitely Maddie.
    “About bloody time!” he said, turning to face the door and folding his arms as if he was a mother ready to scold her child for coming home after curfew, or perhaps more like a drunken husband, waiting for his unfortunate wife.
    Nothing happened.
    Mo waited for as long as his patience could stand, staring hard at the door, almost shaking, until he finally leapt towards it, feeling his temper rush through his veins and up into his face. He ground his teeth. As the door opened he burst through it, barely giving it enough time to clear and glared up the corridor expecting to see Maddie, but she wasn’t there.
    There was a trolley there, about fifty yards away, just before the corridor cranked a hard left towards the rest of the Disposal suites and away to the Sync rooms. There was no one strapped on it, or next to it, and as Mo walked slowly towards it, he could see it had hit the wall with some force. There was a large split down the leg that had made contact with the wall, its wheel twisted out at an awkward angle and there was a good ten-centimetre gash in the wall. Thermo splinters lay scattered over the floor.
    “Oh great. What the fuck is this?” he whispered under his breath, walking towards the trolley, which had come to rest on the near side of the entrance to Disposal 9. The door was stuck open, probably some debris from the trolley in the runner and as he approached, the room slowly came into view. In the doorway, with their back to the corridor, Mo spied the familiar uniform of one of Aarbee's Drones. Surely Maddie couldn't have fucked up that badly, he thought.
    With that, a flash burst from the room, followed almost immediately by a sharp crack. The noise was painful to Mo's ears, amplifying as it raced down the corridor and Mo instinctively dropped to the floor.
    Gunshot.
    He recognised that sound immediately from his basic training. Just like every other flyer, he'd spent at least fifty hours on the gunnery ranges before piloting his first Kite, getting his eye in and learning the foundations of remote killing for the unlikely possibility of a promotion.
    Somebody cried out. A strange cry pitched up impossibly by fear and desperation, but Mo recognised it straight away as Zayn's voice. Another flash, another deafening crack and a brief, eerie silence swirled out of Disposal 9 with the gun smoke.
    A second Drone stepped in to view and Mo, feeling panic and confusion crashing about in his thoughts, began to scan around for somewhere to run to. He considered leaping over the broken trolley and making for the Atrium, but they would certainly spot him there and even he couldn't outrun a bullet. There was only Disposal 10, but they would surely be coming there next. In the silence, Mo heard more gunshots, further off this time, but unmistakable.
    Then, as if injected into him from somewhere else, a plan formed in his mind. Close to the floor and scurrying for shelter, Mo scuttled his way back to Disposal 10. At the door, he glanced back up the corridor, took a breath and when the door opened darted immediately low and to the left. As soon as he reached the corner, Mo sprung up and grasped the camera that perched high on the wall. On an ordinary day he would never have reached it, but today his jump was powered by adrenaline and the need to survive. The camera ripped from the wall and he stamped it onto the floor without hesitation.
    With that, he grabbed the five trolley belts that were in the room and hooked four of them together end to end. The fifth he slung around his waist and hooked through both ends onto the chain of four. He heard fast footsteps in the corridor. As an after