Ultraviolet by Joseph Robert Lewis Page B

been stuck on level 44 for three months and had pretty much given up trying to get any farther. It was a stupid game. Tap, tap, tap on those little stars, match the colors, line them up into constellations, get them to wink out.
    I must have played for over an hour, because the next thing I knew, I had a crick in my neck and wasn’t feeling at all drowsy anymore. I was just feeling pissed off that I was still stuck on level 44.
    Sighing, I put away my phone and thought about my missing printer, and my missing feedstock, and my deadline.
    There was only one place in the city that I knew would have rubidium. Just one. I didn’t really decide to go there, but I was out of options. I made my little scooter appear in the alley and I sat on it for a minute, waiting for a better idea to come to mind.
    It didn’t.
    So I twisted the throttle and drove silently out into the street and headed toward the only place where I could get what I needed.
    The Cygnus Central Warehouse.

Chapter 5

Acquisitions
    The Cygnus Central Warehouse was technically outside the city near the airport, but with all the sprawl on the west side it could be hard to tell where the city actually ended and where the restricted areas in the county began. When the housing market collapsed, a handful of investors bought up all the abandoned neighborhoods between Baltimore and Washington, and basically fenced them off. That was about twelve years ago. They say the investors are just biding their time, waiting for the market to come back. From what I’ve seen, I think they’re going to be waiting for a long while.
    It wasn’t a long drive out toward the airport, and traffic was light. The old highway was eight lanes wide, but half of them were closed off. The city couldn’t afford to maintain a road that big, and besides, there weren’t enough cars around to use them anyway. So I took my time on the road. All that driving with no helmet was making me nervous. And cold.
    It was after seven when I finally rolled up at the fence around the Cygnus warehouse. To my right, I could see a small private jet landing at BWI just up the road. I’d never been on a plane, but it was one of those things I’d always wanted to do. I liked heights, looking down at the world like it was all one big model, or painting, or toy.
    Some day.
    I rode my scooter around the fence, trying to figure out exactly what I was doing there. It’s not like a store. You can’t just go in and ask for a pound of rubidium. For all of thirty seconds I flirted with the idea of bribing someone inside to bring me what I needed, but that was ridiculous. I didn’t know anyone there, and I didn’t have anything to bribe them with.
    And that’s when I realized I was going to have to break in and steal what I needed. Now, maybe it’s obvious to you that I needed to steal it, but it wasn’t obvious to me until that moment. I just went to the one place that had what I needed, and up until then, I still thought I was the good guy, the victim, the all-American hero, pulling myself up by my bootstraps.
    Whatever bootstraps are.
    But as I stood there looking through that fence, I realized I was just like Cygnus, but on a really tiny scale. Stealing what I wanted, breaking the law, make deals, trying to cover my ass and make some money and help the handful of people I cared about at the expense of everyone else.
    I knew it. I really did. I knew I was going down this really shitty path. But I just couldn’t see another way out.
    What was I supposed to do? Put my parents on the back of my holo-scooter and drive us all up to Canada? I hear the Mounties shoot Yankees on sight now.
    “Lux, off.”
    I walked a little way from the fence and sat down behind a couple trees and waited for it to get dark. Around eight o’clock the trucks stopped leaving the warehouse, and the lights were shut off, and then a small shuttle bus full of workers rolled out the front gate and headed back toward the city.
    All right