8. Holed Up

A. Dmytryk and Ada dig a nice hole and hide in it.

8

 

Dawn broke to find the duo holed up in the office of an empty warehouse. It was raining heavily and the For Rent sign on the fence was old and peeling. It was probably the rain that saved them, eliminating any trail that the mutant dogs might have picked up. Dmytryk dozed off in the early hours of the morning and awoke just after dawn to find Ada sweating bullets, tossing in her sleep. Some time in the night, since he knocked out, she’d found a bucket downstairs in the shop and had set it next to the couch he’d tucked her in on under a ratty blanket he’d found in the cabinet. That explained the smell; she’d been waking up in the night to vomit. Dmytryk grimaced. This was going to be rough going.

 

He was still in his robocop bodyarmor, and it was the most uncomfortable thing to sleep in. It wouldn’t do him any good if they found them now, so he stripped it off to reveal a buttonup and slacks, but left the clunky enforced combat boots on as he lacked any other footwear and the shop was certainly no place for bare feet.

 

He’d already established that the water wasn’t running in the building, but there was an earthquake kit in the shop that included a few milk jugs of water. He took the steps two at a time to go down and grab the box of food and a jug of water. It tasted funny but seemed potable so he shook Ada awake to put some water in her.

 

She sat up with a start, looked at him like she’d never seen him before. This was going to be interesting. “It’s okay.” He reassured her quickly, hands up with his palms towards her to show her he meant no harm. “You might not remember, but you came into my lab a few weeks ago.”

 

            “You’re robocop?” Her eyes flickered in recognition. So she did remember, well that was a start.

 

He smiled sheepishly. “Not really. I’m just an assistant really. Plastics development. I made plastics. Or I did. I busted you out.” He handed her a chipped ‘I’m the Boss’ mug. “My name’s…”

 

“Dmytry?”

 

“Dmytryk. Aleksandr Dmytryk, Junior Plastics Engineer, Level 12.”

 

She lifted the mug weakly and slurped it down. Ada sighed as she lowered the mug, and sat up a bit on the couch. “I’m Adelaide Schröder. Fourth year literature major at San Martín State. Or I was. I mean, I am. That’s who I am.” She shook her head. “That’s me. Before,” she gestured vaguely with the mug. “all this.”

 

            “Before HIRA got to you.”

 

She looked up at him with a mix of confusion and fear on her pasty ill face. He was horrified, disgusted by how frail and sick she looked. How could they have done this to some poor girl?

 

“Let’s get a little more water in you. There’s some soup too if you think you can stomach it?” She shook her head vigorously, or as close to it as she could manage, so he refilled the mug and returned it to her but left it at that. “I’m sorry to say you’re probably going to feel pretty crap for a while until the drugs are out of your system.”

 

Ada took the cup and took a few sips before reaching to set it on the floor. Her hand shook and Dmytryk relieved her of the cup, setting it on the end table by her head instead. He stood from crouching by the couch to tuck her back in as she lie back to sleep. “I’ll be back up to check on you for a bit. And, just, until we figure out how to remove those chips,”

 

“Don’t wander off?” She murmurred, and he nodded as he tucked the blanket around her shoulders.

 

They continued like that for days, Dmytryk waking Ada from her fever sleep to feed her soup broth and water from the earthquake kit then tinkering with the rusted and dusty tools from the shop downstairs while she slept. 

 

It took a week for Ada to be up and walking around. By then they’d just about depleted the old and partially expired canned food stash, and Dmytryk was getting anxious. They needed food, and once the cash in his wallet was gone they were royally screwed. There was no conceivable way that HIRA hadn’t frozen his accounts. Probably hers too. Actually, she had certainly been declared legally dead by now, the HIRA would have covered up her disappearance fairly quickly after they’d taken her. They didn’t leave loose ends. Dmytryk was anxious.

 

“Think you can make it outside girly?” That came midafternoon, after neither of them had left the office since arriving except for the short trips Dmytryk had made down to the shop a few times each day. “I want to go down and turn the water on. But the tracker block’s got a limited range, so you gotta come with me.” She nodded.

 

“How are you going to do that? I don’t think we should, wait, you can’t pay a water bill here, we’re squatters, wait, what?” The look of confusion on her face almost made him laugh.

 

“Nah I’m just going to use a laser cutter and cut the lock off the main then switch it back on. It’s illegal, but it’s not our property. We’re squatters. And we smell. Can’t go out in public to get food until we’ve cleaned up. And we’re almost out of water in those jugs.”

 

She looked sceptical, but definitely wasn’t going to argue with a chance to use the shower.  Or the chance to eat something that didn’t come from a can. “Okay. Where’s the main?”

 

“I don’t know, it’s in the sidewalk somewhere. We’re gonna have to go find it.” He beamed.

 

That turned out to be a fairly simple task of walking the perimeter of the property, which, between the main warehouse that held the office and shop plus two smaller auxilary buildings and an open gravel yard between them, took up the entire block. The water main was by the back end of the property and Dmytryk quickly popped the rectangular cement cover off of it and knelt down to reach into the hole with the laser cutter to remove the lock from the main.

 

Eleven minutes later, he admitted defeat. “It’s stuck.” It almost sounded like a whine.

 

Ada grinned; she’d been waiting for him to give up. “Let me try?” That was her best sweet and innocent voice. It was laced with a bit too much glee to go unnoticed, and he shot her a glare from under his heavy brow.

 

He handed off the wrench with an admonition not to break the pipes, and she knelt to reach in and quickly wrenched the water main back on. Dmytryk’s scowl deepened as she looked up at him, beaming. “Bet you think you’re pretty cool, huh girly.” He meant for that to come out as more of a growl and less of a playful jest, but he couldn’t help it. “I guess you’ve earned the first shower though.” That wasn’t actually anything to fight over as he was sure the water that was sitting in the pipes while the water had been shut off was particularly vile, but she didn’t appear to consider that.

 

“Thanks Aleks.” She returned the wrench with a wink and a side of sass and pranced her way back down the sidewalk towards the gate. Dmytryk kicked the cover back over the main with a smirk, pitched the cut lock across the street, and jogged after her to catch up.

 

 

 

 

 

After few choice words and a lot of laughing on Dmytryk’s part, the duo made themselves as presentable as possible given the dingy shower, sliver of soap, and limited wardrobe that they had to work with. An oversized mens jacket from down in the shop, once cleared of dust and cobwebs, covered the large black print across the front and back of Ada’s jumper, and Dmytryk’s very bland buttonup and slacks detracted attention from the massive enforced army boots he was wearing. Really, they made an odd pair, but they did the best they could.

 

The nearest shop they came across was a solid mile away, a convenience store attached to a gas station. They were both nervous to be out where someone might see them, so it wasn’t long before they were on their way back to the warehouse, laden down with grocery bags of food and a change of clothes for each of them. That took out most of the cash Dmytryk had, a fact which he put to the back of his mind to worry about at a later date. They’d be alright for a little while at least.

 

He decided instead to be more concerned that Ada had insisted on the purchase of a pair of black ski masks. When he finally dared to ask the following day, as she dragged her still pasty-ill frail frame from the couch to join him down in the shop, she replied with a laugh. “We’re like Bonny and Clyde. What if we gotta rob a bank? Can’t have them catching our lovely mugs on camera.”

 

“I’d rather not rob a bank.” There was the money issue though. He had forty bucks, give or take, and no source of income. Or official identity. Or really any other viable options. Still, he’d consider robbery to be a last resort. In their present condition, his primary reasons for that were more logistic than moral, but he was also in possession of a stronger moral compass than one might expect from a man who had until very recently worked in an underground bunker developing plastic polymers for use in weaponry and bodyarmor.