“Baked in tracker on everything, and hard quantum encoded,” she lamented, starting to feel anxious again, considering how long they’d been talking.

She should just go, but was still afraid he’d tell if she just bolted, even if he really didn’t seem to be acting like he cared. Was he just a lonely old man wandering around these tunnels in a dirty maintenance outfit more suited to The Under of her old world? If that was the case, maybe someone would be looking for him and might find her.

She really needed to get moving, soon.

“You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?” Valentine asked. “Outsmarting the entire Earth-Mars colonization infrastructure to get back to where you came from?”

Tory nodded again.

He narrowed his gaze at her, the nest of wrinkles around his eyes converging to the black shiny points of his pupils hidden in there.

He finally nodded, walked over to nearby wall that looked different from the basic white and gray, 16x16 different colored square panels instead, snorting and muttering to himself.

“...just like you...” was all the caught.

Tory wondered if she should trust him, not to not give him away, but to get her something that might get her in more trouble than she was already in.

He tapped one panel, then another, and then stopped at the third and knocked hard. Pressing on it, the panel popped open then swung out. Tory’s eyes went wide. It had revealed a big cabinet packed of all sorts of equipment. Totally curious about what was in there, she got back up to her feet and stepped over to get a better look. Once closer examination, the cabinet appeared to be a whole set of emergency tools, despite the fact that it was behind a blue panel and not one of the red ones her newlander class had been taught to look for “in case of...”. From within he withdrew something she did recognize, at least after he’d pulled it from its packaging – an oxyinjector, a lot like the one she’s left in her bedroom. It was bigger, less sleek, more mechanical looking.

Valentine then turned to her, held the thick pen out to her.

Tory shook her head. She couldn’t take the chance.

“Don’t worry,” he told her. “This is an obsolete model, the Y-55. No RFID, disposable. They didn’t start making wireless mandatory until the Y-62. And this one only has five uses, so, I’d advise you to keep your track and field training to a minimum.”

He chuckled at his joke.

“But-” she started, gazing at the object in his hand, both afraid of taking it but desperately wanting it at the same time.

Tory looked back up at him. Valentine was being altogether too generous and had to want something from her, right? Even on Earth, no one got something for nothing.

He let out a big, dramatic sigh.

“I’m not going with you,” he stated. “You’re going to need something the next time you go all blotchy and purple.”

“I do not go blotchy and purple!” Tory protested.

Did she?

He waggled it at her again and she reluctantly took it from his long pale and wrinkly fingers. Tory held the cool device in her hand, checked to make sure it was loaded as he’d claimed, then looked back up at the old man towering over her.

“I don’t understand. Why are you helping me?” she asked. “You don’t know me, and you don’t have any reason to help me escape. You might even get into trouble for it.”

She lifted up the big heavy oxyinjector he’d just given her.

He cocked his head twisted his mouth, looking really ugly in that moment, but still entirely unthreatening.

“You’re young and motivated, not to mention you seem to know where you’re going through this labyrinth. That takes guts. Even I get lost down here these days, have to check the map to find my way out,” he noted patting his spreader cylinder. He smiled again, gave her a look that suggested he bore some kind of secret knowledge. Which was of course, impossible. It was just another geezer acting smug probably. “And I think you’ve got a real heart for adventure that’s just kicking in. I’d like to see how this gamble of yours works out.”

Wow, though, that was something The Steal would have told her.

He stopped his speech for a moment while his eyes looked her over.

“Are you hiding any food or water in all those pockets you’ve got there?”

“Why?” she asked, while she bent a little to stow the injector in one of her coverall’s leg pockets where she usually put hers.

Yes, most of her pockets bulged a bit. That was one thing about Martian clothing. It made people look like walking bundles of pockets and pouches. Taking her pack would have been too obvious, so she’d bought herself an outfit that had a good twenty of various capacities between the vest and leggings. It wasn’t the first time she’d ever snuck out from home before for a ‘trip’. Although, her clothes back home at least didn’t make her look like a total dook.

“It’s a bit of a hike to the transport hub, and then there’s the ride to the Elysium Field,” Valentine told her, “Assuming you take a transport. I doubt you’d want to risk the hopper. You’ll need to keep up your strength. hungry or thirsty on Mars is not a good combination. Never has been.”

Again, he did something weird, laughed to himself, and then Valentine tapped one of the marking on his maintenance uniform’s sleeve, an odd stencil of interspersed red rings.

“You’ll spot one or two articulated transport rigs with a symbol like this on them. You get on any other and you’re in deep shit, and will be right back where you started when someone finds you’ve hitched a ride,” he added. “That’s you safest bet. Hoppers count passengers and weight. And then you’ll probably have to wait a few hours for the next shuttle…”