The Water Wars - Cameron Stracher [22]
“It won’t look that way.”
I was still gripping Kai’s medicine kit. Now I looked inside. Four neat, contoured insulin reservoirs were secured in an insulated pouch next to two boxes of blood-testing strips and a spare adapter for the injector pencil.
“He left without his insulin,” I said.
“Why would he do that?”
“He didn’t do it,” I said. “They took him.”
“We don’t know that. He could have been running.”
“You saw the bodyguard! Do you think he shot himself?”
“Maybe he got shot protecting Kai and his father, and they got away.”
“Then where’s the blood and the other bodies?”
“Could be no one else was wounded.”
But Will knew I was right. No matter how desperate Kai’s situation, he wouldn’t leave voluntarily without his insulin. It was a death sentence.
“We have to help him, Will.”
“We can’t go to the Guard, or the army. They’ll be looking for us.”
“Then we have to go ourselves.”
“Don’t be crazy. They’ll have guns, and we don’t even know who they are.”
“If we stay here, the Guard will arrest us. You said so yourself.” My voice cracked; my throat was bone dry.
“And what do we do if we find him? Shoot our way inside?”
“If we have proof, the Guard will come. Especially if there’s money in it.”
Will frowned. But he knew the Republic Guard would help a wealthy driller if we had a holo or even an audiogram—anything they could link to bank records.
“We should tell Dad,” said Will. “Just in case.”
I couldn’t believe Will was suggesting this. Our father would never let us leave. I told Will he was scared and making excuses. He said he was being rational and weighing the risks. The more we argued, the more forceful I became. For once I was the leader and Will the reluctant follower. He may have had logic, but I had passion and desire.
“If we lose Kai, we lose the river,” I said. “We lose everything.”
The lights had come on outside our building, and soon the grid would shut down. Will’s face was smeared with dust and grime from the ride, and I assumed I looked the same. My lips stung, and my hair felt matted with sweat and sand. But I felt exhilarated and prepared for anything. Will’s uneven grin told me he felt the same way.
“We don’t know where to start,” he said.
“Yes, we do.”
I retrieved Kai’s father’s notebooks from my side basket. In them he had detailed the site of an old well that was about forty kilometers from Arch. I couldn’t understand all his notations, but it looked like he had found water there. If so, there were plenty of suspects who would kidnap him for the information.
We cleaned up as best we could outside. Luckily our father was making dinner for our mother. He didn’t notice as we tiptoed past him to the bath. By the time he returned from the bedroom, I had set the table, and we were sitting in front of our plates looking as innocent as we could. I have no idea what we talked about. Every bump and sound made me jerk with worry that the RGs had arrived. We could only pray that it would take them some time to review the tapes and run a data scan, because it was too dark now to cycle on the roads. I don’t think I slept a wink, and I know Will didn’t, because I could hear him thrashing and pacing in his room.
We left before dawn. We wrote a note explaining that we had gone to school early with a friend’s parent for water team. It was something our father could have checked, but he had plenty of other things to worry about. It was not the first time we had gone to school early, nor the first time someone had given us a ride.
Our plan was to return before dark. We had goggles, masks, and sunshields. The wind could be fierce on the open road, and the shields would also protect against flying sand. Will brought some food, two liters of water in a saddlebag, and his old instant holo-camera. I brought my credit chip. I had saved my weekly allowance for most of the year, and although it was only fifty credits, that was enough to buy four meals and another liter of water and still leave something for an emergency. I also had Kai’s medicine kit with his insulin and injector.