Preparation

The soldiers didn't show up to Linden's apartment until an hour after Ethan had left for the meeting. There wasn't much warning, just a feed from the camera she had set up in the hallway popping up on her Screen as it's motion sensor was activated. The feed was only up for a couple of seconds before it was cut off, but it was enough to see the soldiers outside her door, one of them aiming his shotgun at the dead-bolt.

She was glad that Ethan hadn't been caught, but she also knew that there was enough questionable material in her small apartment for them to black-bag her. She grabbed her go-bag from next to the couch and ran to the bathroom, glad that she hadn't gotten around to putting it in a closet after she had assembled it. She managed to shut the door quietly before she heard the gunshot followed by the sound of the door rebounding from the cabinets as they came in through the main entrance in the kitchen.

Linden started to climb out of the window that led to the vertical shaft running from the basement to the roof. For the first time since she had moved in, the extra cost of having a ground floor apartment seemed worth it, she wasn't sure if she would have been able climb down five stories of pipe and window sill. Even the fifteen feet or so down to the basement was bad, but she made it.

She moved out from under the shaft, and allowed herself a moment to think. Getting to the basement was as far ahead as she had thought. The basement exited to a narrow walkway that ran between her building and it's neighbor, which in turn had two exits, one to the street and one to the alley. She was about to make a break for it when she noticed that the basement door of the adjacent building hadn't been shut all the way.

She pushed it open to find an empty basement much like the one in her own building. She turned on the light, and headed up the winding staircase. As she was heading toward the front door someone opened the door to one of the apartments ahead of her. Linden froze automatically before starting to walk again. A guy in a Mariners cap stepped out. He looked up at her, but didn't recognize her and kept on walking. She followed him out, staying close to him for half a block before veering off.

After a few minutes of walking it started to rain and she crouched down to get her rain jacket out of her bag. It was a good sign, people wearing jackets would make it difficult for anyone to spot her. She also checked her homeDrive, to make sure that it was inside one of the bag's rubberized pockets. The homeDrives were supposed to be waterproof, but she didn't want to test it.

A couple more blocks and she was at the coffee shop. Once she had her chai, she opened her Go bag to check it's contents. It was just a small messenger bag, so it didn't hold much, but she would be able to survive for a couple of days. The spare phone was crappy, but it wasn't on the cell networks, instead using meshNet. She used it to send a message to her parents that she was going camping and would be out of touch for a couple of days. She knew that they would eventually track it back to the phone, but she didn't want her parents to worry, either. Things had been hard enough on them already. After that it was just a matter of figuring out a way of contacting Ethan.