<b>Roo'd</b>

# Roo'd

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# Chapter #44

Three hours later Marcus still hadn’t arrived, and they were running out of new drinks they could order. Eventually Tonx simply stood and walked out, and the rest of them followed. They waited until Cessus appeared a small distance away, seemingly oblivious to them, and started walking.

“Where are we going?” asked Fede. He was exhausted now, stumbling along in a semi-delirious state. The caffeine had failed him, making him jittery and itchy but no longer waking him up at all. All he could think about was getting to a real bed.

“To our hotel” said Tonx. “None of us can think well right now. We’ll wait there until we hear from Marcus. He should be able to find us somehow.”

“More likely we’ll find him” said Cass. Tonx said nothing.

The hotel was a thin cement building squeezed between two tall office buildings, its stained grey front unpainted. The sign overhead had one Chinese character in lit neon. The dim dirty light of dawn began to seep through the forest of stone and metal around them. Fede waited outside with Poulpe while Tonx went in to secure things. A few minutes later Fede got a notice on his comm and they went in, repeated Tonx’s name and access number three times to the faceless metal grille where the front desk would have been. He got no response other than a click as the plain whitewashed fire door to his left opened. They went through, walking on threadbare orange-and-brown carpeting. It smelled of mold, of starch and rice. There was no one in the hallway.

They arrived at room 712, and Fede wondered absently if there were really 711 other rooms. He doubted there were more than a few dozen, but when Tonx opened the door and he peered inside he revised his estimate. The entire hotel room was the size of his bathroom at home, three tiny beds so close together Tonx doubted he could get his knees between them. The one window on the far side of the room was framed in electroluminescent panels, white light bright across the glass, the brick wall directly behind washed out in the glare.

“There’s a cot under the bed on the right there. I’ll take the floor. Cass gets a bed. You all can draw straws on who gets the rest when Marcus shows up” said Tonx. Fede fell back onto one of the beds, almost went straight into sleep before he remembered Cessus and comm’d him a quick message on how to get in. Then sleep hit him, heavy, angry, and hot.

He woke later, didn’t know when. He was pushed up against the wall, Cessus’s bony hip digging into his side. He shuffled around, getting a dreadlock in the eye for his troubles. The room looked the same as when they’d come in, Poulpe on the middle bed, Cass and Tonx wrapped around each other on the far bed. Marcus wasn’t there. The cot was out, empty, filling the last of the space between the wall and the beds. Fede had to tip in on its side so he could get by to search for a bathroom. There wasn’t one.

He let himself out, wandered down the hall in search of a place to pee. It was full of identical wooden doors, all numbered. He came back down the hall and peered out into the lobby before spotting a numberless door across from their own. He paused in front of it. Would they have electrified doorknobs here? Should he knock?

The door opened with a soft creak, revealing a miniscule sink and a hole in the tiled floor. A bulb hung overhead, gleaming dimly. It wasn’t LED or anything, just plain old electric filament. A hazard, Fede thought. He aimed a thin stream of piss down the hole, washed his hands in the chill reddish water from the tap, and left.

When he got back into the room Cessus was on his back, arms splayed off both sides of the bed, one leg hanging over its edge. Poulpe had his hands folded over her chest, fully dressed, his face untroubled. Tonx raised his head when Fede came in, eyes bleary.

“There a bathroom out there?” he asked quietly.

“right across the hall” Fede said. “The one without numbers.”

He lay down on the cot, the metal frame biting into his shoulders. By the time Tonx came back he knew he wasn’t going to sleep anymore.

“Any word from Marcus?” asked Fede. He spoke softly, the room somehow made sacred by the quiet breaths of his friends.

Tonx shook his head, tucked a strand of hair behind his ear.

“No” he said. “I don’t know why.”

He signed, tried to pace in the space between Fede’s cot and the door and succeeded only in turning around twice.

“You get any signal in here?” he asked.

“A little. Regular comm channels. Don’t know how the data throughput will be, though” said Fede. “This place seems a little third-world, know what I mean?”

Tonx smiled. “Never thought I’d be in China” he said, quietly. “Thanks for coming with.”

Fede looked at the window, at the brick wall beyond.

“What do we do next?”

“I figure you and Cessus go get some gear. The rest of us will scout out our man and his box.”

“Then what?”

“That depends on what we find out. I don’t know, Fede. We got to get our data, somehow. But I don’t know how, don’t even know where it is.” He sighed, slid to sit on the floor next to Fede’s cot.

“Sorry I got you into this.”

“Fuck off” said Fede amicably. “Better than dead-ending it at some sucker school, you know? I ought to be thanking you.”

Tonx grunted a quiet laugh. “Yeah, guess you’re right. What would mom say if she knew her darling boys were slumming it in China, eh?”

“She’d drink” said Fede. He’d meant it as a joke, but neither of them laughed.

“We’ll get the data” he said, more to himself than Tonx.

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