"Well, yeah. It's probably bugged. Just about everything is, these days."
Feeling rather exposed, he grabbed his backpack and followed her. But just before she reached the raft, her pocket beeped. She looked over her shoulder, said, "Trouble, Al. Move it," and started casting off.
He looked up just in time to see a hovercam duck behind a tree. He ran to the raft, which was already moving, and leapt aboard. Wide-eyed, he gasped, "Who's it after, you or me?"
The woman pointed at a hand-hold for him to grab onto, set her feet for stability, and turned up the water jets until they were racing down the flooded streets followed by a small roostertail. "Who do you think it's after? I've been picking up my mail here every week for years. Until just now, it's been ignoring me."
He gaped. "But why? I haven't done anything!"
She rounded on him. "Sure you did, kid. You came looking for me. They can ignore an old troublemaker like me as long as I keep to myself. But you broke pattern. You suddenly took off across the country, looking for me? That's suspicious. They've been tracking you the whole time, waiting to see what you'd do. That's how they work, you know." She shook her head in disgust. "Like everyone else these days, you think you're free, but you're not. And now you've got them interested in me again. So give me one good reason to not toss you over?"
Panicked, he said, "Because I think we can help each other!"
She veered left, zipped past an abandoned house, and struck off into the bayou. Once they were deep in the cypress swamp, she slowed and let the raft drift. She took a deep breath and turned to face him. "How the hell do you think you can help me? You don't even know who I am."
"You're right. You're right. I'm sorry. All I know is that there's a file on your share, or at least the link claims it used to be there, about something called the Green Party."
"The Greens?" She laughed grimly. "Even if there was, what could they possibly have to do with the destruction of the Barrage? They haven't existed for decades."
He nodded. "But they did when that thing was built, and it was important enough to them to be involved in the design review process. What I want to know is this: why did someone go to the trouble to remove all traces of the Green Party from the record? All I found was one mention, and that one pointed at something that used to be on your share. You said I was wrong, that the destruction of the Barrage really was an act of war. Well, I think the Green Party, whatever it was, got wasted because they got in someone's way." He shook his fists in frustration. "So tell me: who were these Greens, and how was the Barrage destroyed, because it sure as hell wasn't an explosive demolition. And one more thing" for the love of god, who the hell are you?"
"Well, if you must know, my name is Maira Bundis."
"Thank you. Does that mean I don't have to swim back?"
She smiled, and in a very gentle voice, said, "You don't. Please forgive me. I've been living a quiet life for so long, I didn't realize how much I missed living on the edge. I think we could both use a bite to eat, so how about we head back to my hideout?"
It was a long trip, especially at the speed they went. Judging by all of the turns she made, Alphon guessed she didn't take a very direct route through the bayou, but then without much of a sense of direction, he couldn't be sure. She felt him out on a number of subjects, including his work assessing the likelihood of event cascades during infrastructure failures, and why he chose to live where the rising Pacific Ocean wanted to move to -- the rent was cheap because it wasn't even possible to get flood insurance there. Then, after a lengthy pause in the conversation, he asked her what she used to do for a living.
"I ran a maker studio. A damn good one, too."
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