He tried to decide if she was bluffing.  No, probably not.  Could he hit her on the head with something and knock her out while he made his getaway?  He had a feeling that worked better in holovids than in real life.  And if he hit her with one of Aunt Lorna's pots or pans, the only blunt instruments immediately available, it would make a hellish bong and wake everybody up anyway, defeating his purpose.

She interrupted his hostile mulling, in a practical tone that reminded him of Uncle Hikaru: "Besides, I have money and you don't."

". . . How much?"

"Over five hundred nuyen," she answered proudly.  "I saved it up from my birthday and chores."

Enough for a dozen tram fares, except that Jin had sworn off the tube system.  He craned his neck for a look at the kitchen clock—maybe two hours till dawn, and everybody getting up and missing them.  That wasn't very much of a head-start, compared to the last time.  It was now or never.  Jin surrendered to the inevitable.  "All right, get ready.  Quietly.  Do you know where Aunt Lorna put my stuff?"

They found Jin's clothes in the plastic basket, along with his shoes, in the closet off the kitchen that harbored the launderizer.  Mina knew which kitchen drawer hid the lunch bars, too, and stuck a dozen in a sack.  Within minutes, they both edged out the sliding back door.  Jin latched the patio gate as quietly as he could behind them, and led off up the alley.

The occasional streetlights made cold halos in the clammy night mist.  "I've never been outside this late before," said Mina, still whispering, though they were well away from the row house.  "It's weird.  Are you afraid of the dark?"  She made to walk closer to Jin; he strode faster.

"The dark's all right.  It's people you have to be afraid of."

"I guess so."

A longer silence, while their feet thumped softly on the pavement.  Then Mina said, "That thing Aunt Lorna said to you, about recid—recidiv . . . I can't pronounce it.  Kids who run away over and over.  They don't really freeze them, do they?"

Jin pondered it uneasily.  "I never heard of it before.  And it would cost a lot of money, I think."

"So she was just trying to scare you into being good?"

"Yeah."  The scare part had sure worked, Jin had to allow that.

"But anyway, they don't freeze you the first time."  Mina seemed to take undue satisfaction from this thought.

An unwelcome memory rose in Jin's mind.  It wasn't the clammy smell of the night that triggered it, because the policewomen had come for his mother in the daytime, but the clammy chill in his gut that day had felt much like this.  Mom kneeling down, gripping his shoulders, saying, Jin, help look after Mina, all right?  Be a good big brother, and do what Aunt Lorna tells you.