Commonwealth: A Novel of Utopia, part 1, chapter 11
Author’s Note: This is an excerpt from my novel Commonwealth. The rest of today’s installment is free, but only on my Patreon site. If you want to read the next part today, it’s already up on Patreon as well. You can sign up for as little as $1/month, or $2 for exclusive author’s notes and behind-the-scenes material. There’s also a table of contents for all published chapters.
Rae kept walking, trying to get as far as possible without making it obvious that she was fleeing. The sirens blared in the distance, sometimes near, sometimes far, but never out of earshot. She was nerve-wrackingly unsure whether they were searching for her or whether it was only coincidence, some other emergency in a city bedeviled by crime.
After a few minutes, she paused and leaned against a dry fire hydrant to catch her breath. She tried to calm her racing pulse, organize her thoughts.
Okay. Focus. Need a plan.
I need somewhere to go. Somewhere the police won’t find me. Where?
As she shifted her weight, she felt something in her pocket, something thin and rectangular that jabbed her in the hip.
She dug down and found two business cards.
She had forgotten she had them. These jeans had been through the wash at least once. The text was blurred, but readable.
One bore the address of Senator Stern’s New York office. It was from the day she met him when he toured Switching Station No. 1.
If I called his office, what would they do? Would he or his people help me? Would they hide me?
She thought of the filibuster that was responsible for her current predicament, of all his grandiose gestures, his futile attempts at turning the tide.
No, not him.
She looked at the other card. She smiled in grim satisfaction.
Now, that’s more like it.
It was the Anton Aerospace card with Will Anton’s personal address, the one he had given her the night he came to her apartment.
I’m a fugitive. A felon. I need someone who has no morals to help me.
Put in those terms, the choice was no choice at all.