Until It's You by C.B. Salem Page A

quietly.
    "What?"
    "This anti-tracking, pay-with-cash stuff. You Wipers had your way we wouldn't even have comms on the web."
    She blinked. So he was a Data fanatic. Thought that the world's problems could be solved by enough data and people who opted out of data collection were betraying mankind. News streams had covered them a lot lately, though that could be planted by the companies who wanted to collect people’s data. Never could be sure why anything in particular was covered anymore.
    She looked around to see if they were making a scene. The store was fairly empty at the moment, but that would change soon. It always did at a place like this.
    "I don't want to talk about this," she said. "Give me my purchase or I'll scream. Your manager won't like that."
    "Cretin," he muttered, but he took his hand off. Kristina took her purchase and left the store.
    As soon as she was back out on the street, she took the small black cube out from its box, put the opening between her lips, and inhaled. The box-cooled chemical vapor of the pharm hissed between her teeth and into her lungs. 
    Instantly, her shoulders relaxed with the brief burst of anti-anxiety pharms flowing through her. With each passing second, the nausea receded, until she was standing there and feeling almost back to normal. She exhaled and a light vapor exited her lungs, barely perceptible.
    Relieved, she continued toward the Dunn-Brantley building, half-carried by the crowd and half-carving her own path. The associate's words rang in her ears as she walked.
    You lot had your way we wouldn't even have comms on the web.
    Pretty short-sighted, but something about those words grated on her, and she couldn't quite find the cubby in her mind for why that might be. Like a misshapen block, the phrase hung there as she walked to the Dunn-Brantley building, bouncing awkwardly in her mind. She hated that.
    Even without the nausea, it was somehow strange to see all the different faces as she walked down the sidewalk. As if she was a tourist and everyone was looking at her as something foreign to the system they were all seamlessly part of. Like she was a virus ready to be attacked by the immune system of normalcy at any moment.
    She continued like that for a few minutes until she arrived at the building’s front entrance. A brief scan of the area showed Anna wasn’t there yet, so she made another loop around the block, her eyes peeled for anyone that looked remotely suspicious. Waiting cars, people standing idly on a street corner, anything.
    Nothing.
    By the time she made it around the block again, Anna was waiting at the entrance, looking around for her.
    After a quick check around, she walked up to Anna. Anna continued to look around dimly, seemingly oblivious that her friend was right next to her. That was good.
    She tapped Anna on the gray, padless shoulder of her blazer. “Walk with me,” she said.
    Anna turned sharply, her eyes wide. Her mouth fell open when she saw Kristina, but Kristina shook her head and Anna clamped her mouth shut quickly. Kristina leading the way, they walked down the steps and away from the building.
    Once they had gotten to the bottom of the stairs, she turned to her friend. “Like my new look?”
    Anna looked over her shoulder and then wrapped her fingers around Kristina’s upper arm and pulled her close. “What happened? I tried calling last night but it went to message.”
    "I'm sorry," Kristina said quickly. "Listen, I need to talk to you. There’s been a lot of stuff going on.”
    “Did you find him?”
    It was Kristina’s turn to look over her shoulder. “Can we go to your office?”
    “Kristina, tell me what’s going on.”
    “I will. Can we go to your office?”
    Anna checked her watch. Flicked a screen over, then back. “I have about thirty minutes. Should that be enough?”
    “I think so.”
    They turned heel and walked back, the only sound between them the tapping of Anna’s shoes on the sidewalk. Kristina wore the