Page 94 of Hellbent

“You have a bed,” she said. “That floats.”

“We’ve covered that.”

“Why?”

Evan blinked at her. “Can we please just get to work?”

She looked around. “Where?”

* * *

When they stepped through the hidden door into the Vault, Joey actually gasped. She circled the cramped space, checking the equipment, noting the monitors. “Is this…? Am I in…? This is heaven.”

She picked up Vera II in her glass bowl. “Cute.”

“Put her down.”

“Her?”

Before he could respond, Joey spotted the 2U rackmount computer bays and beelined over to them. “Good. Good. This is good.” She checked the setup. “You already have an InfiniBand cable, so you’re not entirely useless, but we have to pick up some basic Cat 6 cables.”

“This is a state-of-the-art system. Why do we need Ethernet cables?”

“What we’re building? It’s basically a bunch of graphics cores tied together. We need to hook up the machines, and the best way to do that is using plain old GigEthernet.” She studied his blank expression. “People today. You know how to work everything, but you don’t know how anything works.”

She breezed past him, heading out. “Come on. Let’s go to Target.”

“Target?”

“Yeah, we can grab the cables there. Plus, I need stuff.”

“Like what?”

She faced him, filling the doorway. “There’s no soap. Or shampoo. Or conditioner. Or sheets. Or pillows. And I need some other stuff.”

“I can get it for you.”

“Girl stuff.”

Oh.

“Target it is,” he said.

* * *

Red signs blared 50-percent-off discounts. A kid stutter-stepped past, trying on a pair of sneakers still connected by a plastic loop while his mom shouted, “How’s the toe? Is your heel slipping?” A cluster of girls modeled sunglasses, checking themselves out using their iPhones as mirrors. A stern-looking father was saying, “Read the ingredients. There’s no food in food anymore.” A husband and wife were having a heated debate over detergent. “No, the lavender scent is the one that gives you the rash!”

Evan stood frozen in the wide aisle of the second floor next to Joey.

She did a double take at his stunned expression. “You okay?”

A worker wheeled a pallet piled with jumbo diaper packs, nearly clipping Evan’s knee.

He swallowed. “I’ll wait outside,” he said.

* * *

Evan stood in the parking structure just past Target’s sliding glass doors, breathing the night air, catching his breath. Brimming shopping carts rattled past concrete security posts, shoved by flustered parents in sweatpants. Evan kept his hand near his hidden pistol and his eyes on the circuslike surroundings. Parking disputes proliferated. Car horns blared. Remote-controlled minivan doors wheeled open. By the shopping-cart rack, kids fought over coin-operated kiddie rides.