Resistance

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Nadia had been so shocked by the realization that Thea was still alive and kicking that she didn’t immediately realize she had spoken aloud. Not until Dante and Agnes asked, “Who’s Thea?” in concert.

Nadia blinked and shook her head as her mind continued to reel. Chairman Hayes had tricked her. All this time, she’d been comforting herself with the knowledge that no matter what bad things had happened to her, she had made a difference in the world by destroying the monstrous machine/creature that was Thea. She thought she had saved lives. She thought her own sacrifices were worth it. And all along, the Chairman had been laughing at her behind her back, biding his time until he located the blackmail recordings so he could do away with the pesky little threat she offered him and return to business as usual.

“Nadia?” Dante prompted. “Who’s Thea?”

“Someone who shouldn’t be alive,” Nate answered for her. “And that’s all we can say about the subject, so don’t ask any questions.”

“I’m the one with the car, asshole,” Dante retorted. “You in the mood for a walk?”

“Cut it out,” Agnes said to the boys before they could escalate hostilities. She turned to Nadia with both worry and sympathy in her eyes. “So this Thea person being alive is bad, isn’t it?”

Nadia nodded. “Very, very bad.”

“And you and Nate weren’t supposed to know about it, because Chairman Hayes thought you’d release your blackmail recordings if you did.”

This time, Nadia didn’t respond, as if by now going silent, she could stop Agnes’s agile mind from putting more puzzle pieces together and figuring out stuff she had no business knowing.

“And I tipped you off that she was alive by letting you know the Replica program is still active,” Agnes continued.

Nate muttered a curse under his breath. “You can shut up now, Agnes.”

But the lid was already off Pandora’s box.

“Which means the Replica program isn’t possible without Thea,” Dante said, taking over the chain of thought. “Which means Thea is the person who invented it—and she’s the only one who knows how it works.”

“But how can that be?” Agnes asked. “Surely Chairman Hayes isn’t stupid enough to let the entire program hinge on a single person. I mean, she could get hit by a bus and then poof! It’s all gone.”

Nadia’s gaze locked with Nate’s. Agnes had figured out so much already. And the truly incendiary truth about Thea, the truth that they had to keep hidden from the public if they didn’t want to risk a violent uprising, was her human experimentation—and the Chairman’s willingness to provide her with test subjects.

Nate’s mind seemed to travel the same direction as Nadia’s, for he nodded slightly, and she knew without exchanging any words that he was giving her the go-ahead to tell Dante and Agnes a little more about Thea.

“Thea’s not a person,” Nadia said. “She’s an A.I., an artificial intelligence. She’s this bizarre mixture of biological … stuff and machinery. And she’s smart enough to know that she can use her unique ability to take scans and create Replicas as leverage. I don’t know if a human mind can comprehend whatever it is she does, but she isn’t about to explain it to anyone even if it can.”

“Maybe especially if it can,” Nate said. “As long as she’s the only one who can do it, she’s invaluable, one of a kind.”

“But you think it’s better for her to be dead and the Replica program with her than for her to still be alive,” Agnes said.

“Yes,” Nate replied. “She is very, very bad news. And she has my father twisted around her little finger. Even though she doesn’t technically have a little finger.”

There was a long silence, which Agnes eventually broke with a long, low whistle.

“I knew there was some cloak-and-dagger stuff going on, but nothing like this. Wow.”

“Yeah, but as creepy and disturbing as this all is,” Dante said, glancing at them quickly in the rearview mirror, “we have a more immediate problem. Like, where the hell am I going to take you guys? I can’t just drive around indefinitely. And you can’t go home.”

“Not even me?” Agnes asked in a small voice, tears shimmering in her eyes. Her expression was bleak, suggesting she already knew the answer. Nate had explained why he’d brought Agnes along—Nadia wished she could have seen the boys’ faces when meek little Agnes had pulled a gun on them—but she wished there had been some alternative.

“I’m sorry, Agnes,” Nadia said gently. “But no, not even you.”

Agnes closed her eyes and nodded, her lower lip quivering.

“I wish you hadn’t dragged her into this,” Nadia said to Nate, though it wasn’t fair of her to blame him.

“It was that or let her shoot Dante,” he responded. “It was kind of a tough decision, actually.”

Dante took a hand off the wheel to make a rude gesture that he probably thought Nadia and Agnes couldn’t see.

“It’s my own fault,” Agnes said. “They tried to tell me how dangerous it was, but I wouldn’t listen.” She plucked at the ruffles on her gown. “I wanted to feel brave, just this once.” Her eyes flicked briefly to Nate then away, and Nadia read between the lines easily. Agnes had been trying to impress Nate, fighting against the contempt her future husband had shown her from the moment they’d met.

Impulsively, Nadia leaned over and gave Agnes a quick hug. “You were brave,” she said. “I just wish you hadn’t gotten sucked in with the rest of us.”

“Well, she has,” Dante said, sounding like he was pretty fed up with all the touchy-feely stuff. “And the only place I can imagine you being able to hide for any length of time is in the Basement.”

Nadia shuddered at the thought. The Basement wasn’t safe for adult gangbangers with years of experience on the gritty streets. It certainly wasn’t a safe place for a handful of Executive teenagers and a Paxco security spy. However, it was the one place where it was possible to live entirely off the grid. Not only that, but the Basement “dress code” meant they could easily disguise themselves to the point of being unrecognizable. Wigs, masks, face paint … All were used in abundance in the Basement.

“Somehow, I don’t see us wandering into the Basement with me in this tux and Agnes in her evening gown,” Nate said. “Not if we want to make it in one piece, that is.”

“We’ll make a pit stop first. The apartment I grew up in is in one of the crappy fringe neighborhoods. I moved my folks out as soon as I could afford to, and I haven’t set foot in the place since I got my first assignment. We ought to be able to hole up there for a little while. I’ll put in a call to Bishop and see if he can meet us there with some new wardrobe options.”

“I’ll call him,” Nate corrected.

Nadia didn’t much care for this plan. It would be daylight by the time they reached their destination, and she and Nate and Agnes were hardly inconspicuous. And if anyone in Nate’s household realized Dante was missing and told the authorities, they might guess that Dante and Nate were together and check out Dante’s apartment. Even if everything went right and they made it safely to the Basement, how were they going to survive there?

But the fact was, with the kind of enemies Nate and Nadia—and their friends by extension—had gathered, they had very few options. So for now, hiding out in the Basement was the best they could do.

Dante’s apartment was in a seedy neighborhood within sight of the first line of identical concrete high-rises of the Basement. Everything was dingy and run-down, and there wasn’t a ground-floor window in sight that didn’t have bars or metal mesh protecting it. There was graffiti on the scaffolding leading up to the elevated train. The scaffolding was a dreary shade of green, but lighter patches gave testament to the neighborhood’s ongoing attempts to combat the graffiti.

The apartment itself was cramped, and its aging fixtures looked like they would fall apart if someone breathed on them. There was a coating of dust on everything, and the air smelled stale.

“You said you moved your folks to a better place,” Nadia commented as she looked around the dismal living room with its faded wallpaper and threadbare couch. “Why didn’t you go with them?” Dante was eighteen and striking out on his own, but it was hardly unusual for an eighteen-year-old to still live with his parents. Not that Dante really seemed to be living in this apartment, at least not while he was posing as a live-in servant.

Dante hunched his shoulders. “They don’t approve of my career choice. My dad especially. People ’round here don’t think too highly of Paxco security goons.”

“So they don’t know…?”

Dante glanced over his shoulder at Agnes, who had a dazed expression on her face as she looked around and didn’t seem to be listening to them. He lowered his voice anyway. “That I’m with the resistance? Hell no. The less they know, the safer they’ll be if I ever get caught. Not that that’s too likely anymore. I doubt the resistance will have much use for me after I disobeyed direct orders. And used one of their cars to do it.”

“I’m sorry,” Nadia said, reaching out to touch Dante’s arm. Everyone had given up so much to try to help her. “I—”

“Shh,” he said, putting a finger to her lips and stepping closer. “It was my decision to make. And I wouldn’t change a thing.”

Nadia wanted to wrap her arms around him, hold him tight, maybe even kiss him. But she couldn’t do that with Nate and Agnes around. She didn’t have a reputation or status left to protect, but a lifetime’s worth of caution and propriety didn’t evaporate overnight, so instead she gave him a brief squeeze and a peck on the cheek. Even that had her blushing as she stepped back and put proper distance between them.

Nadia paced the length of the living room while Dante scrounged in the cupboards of the kitchen in search of some canned food that hadn’t expired. He came up with two large tins of beef stew and dumped them into a pot. Nadia had never eaten canned beef stew in her life. It would make a spectacularly unappetizing breakfast, but who knew when their next meal would come?

Nadia suspected hers wasn’t the only stomach to do a backflip when Dante distributed four bowls of brown slop. It smelled like dog food, and looked like … Well, never mind what it looked like.

“Sorry,” Dante said, with an edge in his voice. “I gave my chef the day off.”

He’d probably grown up eating this stuff, and having three Executives turn up their noses at it was putting the habitual chip back on his shoulder. Nadia couldn’t blame him, though based on the spark in Nate’s eye, he wasn’t as forgiving.

“So what are we going to do now?” Nadia asked, then shoved a spoonful of stew into her mouth and tried not to make a face at the taste. She gave Nate a pointed look, and he meekly obeyed by taking a bite. Agnes was still stirring the stuff around, looking a little green.

“I suggest we all try to get some sleep until Bishop gets here,” Dante said, with his mouth full.

According to Nate, Bishop was planning to show up with costumes in hand around nightfall.

“And then we go to the Basement,” Nadia said.

Dante nodded.

“And then what?”

That was a question no one had a good answer to, so they all spooned up some stew and chewed in silence. Even Agnes, though she seemed to chew the tiny nibble she’d taken far longer than necessary, as if she couldn’t quite force herself to swallow it.

“Then I guess we just try to stay alive,” Nate said grimly, when no one else spoke.

“That’s it?” Nadia asked. “We just turn a blind eye to everything we know? We let the Chairman get away with murdering my sister and trying to murder me?” Nadia had spent most of the previous night feeling helpless and afraid; now she gave in to fury. “And what about Thea? Do we just figure she’s someone else’s problem now? We have to do something.”

Nadia looked around at her friends’ faces and didn’t like the expressions of defeat they all wore.

“I don’t like it any better than you do,” Nate said, “but what can we do?”

She knew he had a point, but she kept pressing anyway. “I bet your plan to get me out of the Sanctuary seemed impossible at first, but you didn’t let that stop you. And you got me out.”

“Getting you out of an Executive retreat is one thing,” Dante argued. “Going up against the Chairman is another.”

“Isn’t that what your resistance is all about?”

Dante gave her a pointed look and jerked his head toward Agnes. Nadia would bet her right foot that Agnes had already figured out Dante was involved in some kind of resistance movement, but even if she hadn’t …

“She’s in the same boat as the rest of us,” Nadia said. “Who’s she going to tell? Now how do we sign up?”

“What?” Dante asked, his voice just short of a yelp.

Nadia had been hesitant to dub the resistance the good guys in the past, afraid of their plans and their motives. But that was before she’d known Thea was still alive. Even if the resistance hoped to spark a civil war, it might be worth it if that’s what it took to stop Thea. The A.I. had no moral compass and no regard for human life. She was a menace to society, and the longer her research was allowed to continue, the more dangerous—and more powerful—she would become.

“The resistance,” Nadia said. “I want to do something instead of running away and hiding. So how do we sign up?”

Dante shook his head. “You don’t.”

Nadia opened her mouth to protest, but he wasn’t done.

“They’ll kick me out on my ass once they know what I’ve done. They don’t like loose canons. And there’s no way in hell they’d want anything to do with the Chairman Heir or either of his supposed fiancées.”

“But we know things—” Nadia started.

“Doesn’t matter,” Nate interrupted. “I already had this conversation with Bishop a while back. Executives are the enemy to them, and the three of us are as Executive as you get.”

“So they’ve never heard of the enemy of my enemy is my friend?”

“Even if they believed you were their friends, they wouldn’t have you,” Dante said. “You’re all way too high-profile. Too dangerous to touch.”

Nadia wanted to hurl her bowl of cooling, congealing stew across the room. “So that’s it? We’re just going to cower in the Basement and hope for the best?”

“No,” Nate said. “You’re right: we have to fight back somehow. If the resistance won’t have us, then screw them! We can be our own resistance movement, just the four of us—and Bishop, if he wants in.”

Dante gaped at him. “You can’t be serious.”

“Why not?” Nate asked. “We’re all smart, and resourceful, and highly motivated. Nadia and I managed to beat Dirk Mosely against all odds. And Nadia escaped the retreat after surviving a murder attempt. We’re not pushovers, no matter what my father may think.”

Something fierce and proud stirred in Nadia’s heart. They were not going to accept defeat. They were going to do something more than run for their lives. And she was personally going to make the Chairman pay for what he’d done to her sister.

Dante still looked skeptical. “That all sounds great, but I don’t think—”

“You were so committed to your cause you joined the Paxco security department to spy on them,” Nate interrupted. “You were ready to take a cyanide pill to keep from being captured. Are you seriously telling me you’re too chicken to keep fighting?”

Dante bristled, clenching his fists. “I am not chicken! And I didn’t say I didn’t think we should keep fighting.”

Nadia suppressed a smile. Nate had always been a skilled manipulator. Just this once, she was glad for it.

“So who’s with me?” Nate asked. He thunked down his bowl of stew and held out his hand, palm down, fixing Dante with a challenging glare.

Nadia quickly crossed the distance and put her hand on top of his. Dante made a low growling sound in the back of his throat, but he followed suit.

Nadia expected Agnes to balk. After all, she couldn’t have had a clue what she was getting into when she left the theater with Nate last night, and never in her wildest dreams would she have considered she might be joining some half-baked Paxco teen resistance movement. But she raised her chin high and stuck her hand in the circle with barely a hesitation.

“We are a force to be reckoned with,” Nate said with conviction, “and we’re going to win.”

And for that moment, Nadia allowed herself to believe it.

The plan to spend the daylight hours sleeping made perfect sense. They were all exhausted, and if anyone had slept at all on the ride back from the Sanctuary, it had been for scant minutes at a time.

Nadia and Agnes shared the bed that had once belonged to Dante’s parents, while Dante slept in his own bed and left the couch for Nate. If Dante was trying to needle Nate by relegating him to the couch, it didn’t work. Nadia felt oddly proud of him for his lack of reaction.

It was actually Agnes who felt the most obvious discomfort at their surroundings, looking at the double bed she was to share with Nadia with distaste.

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Nadia told her as she pulled back the covers. “And right now, we’re beggars.”

“I know,” Agnes said, chewing her lip. “But … I’ve never slept in someone else’s bed before. I mean, in a guest room, sure, but, you know…”

“There’s a first time for everything,” Nadia said, because apparently she was too tired to speak in anything other than clichés. She couldn’t think of a time when she’d slept in another person’s bed before, either, but that didn’t stop her from sliding under the covers and laying her head on the lumpy pillow with a groan of relief. She hoped she was tired enough for sleep to overwhelm her quickly, rather than leaving her trapped with her own thoughts.

Agnes clearly wasn’t as adaptable. She took off her shoes and earrings, and she took down the elaborate updo she’d worn for the opera, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to get into the bed, so she merely lay on top of the covers instead. In her strapless evening gown, which likely had hard metal stays in its bodice. How was the girl going to survive the hardships of the Basement? She had been remarkably brave and cool last night, but she had been raised to slavishly follow the rules of Executive society, and to say she was now a fish out of water was an understatement.

Then again, Nadia had been raised the same way, had long lived in dread of taking a single misstep. Defying authority was hardly in her blood, but necessity had changed her. Maybe it would change Agnes, too.

Discomfort from the evening gown aside, Agnes seemed to fall asleep about five seconds after she lay down, her breathing growing deep and even while Nadia found she couldn’t even keep her eyes closed. Instead, she lay on her side and stared at a hairline crack in the paint of the far wall. And with no immediate threat bearing down on her, with no decisions to be made right this moment, she couldn’t stop herself from thinking about Gerri.

Tears ran sideways down her face and soaked into the pillow, pain wrenching her heart. Gerri had died because she’d wanted to save Nadia from a lifetime in the Sanctuary. And because Nadia had refused to tell her the truth about what was on those recordings. Because Nadia hadn’t trusted her own sister to do the right thing.

Nadia’s shoulders started shaking, and she stifled a sob. The last thing she wanted to do was wake Agnes and have to deal with a near-stranger’s pity. Unfair, perhaps, when that near-stranger had very possibly destroyed her whole life in an effort to help her, but feelings don’t care whether they’re fair or not.

Swallowing convulsively, trying not to gasp too loudly for air that suddenly seemed thin and inadequate, Nadia slipped out of the bed. The pain of guilt and loss doubled her over, and she put her hand over her mouth to try to hold it all in. Agnes didn’t stir, but Nadia knew it was only a matter of time. She staggered out into the hall, planning to lock herself in the bathroom and sob her heart out, but when she turned to close the door, she saw Nate draped awkwardly over the living room couch.

As if he felt her gaze upon him, Nate turned his head and opened his eyes. Her face must have looked awful, because he sat up quickly and held his arms out to her. The idea of crying in the bathroom lost its appeal, and Nadia quickly crossed the distance between them and practically flung herself into his arms. She tried her best to muffle her sobs against his chest while he held her tightly and rocked her back and forth, an anchor in her storm of emotion.

She cried until her throat was raw and her head felt swollen to twice its normal size. Her eyes burned and her chest ached. Mingled with the devastating grief was a rage so enormous she didn’t know how she could ever manage to hold it in, and if Chairman Hayes were to appear before her, she knew she would happily kill him with her own two hands.

“I’m so sorry, Nadia,” Nate said into her hair, his own voice choked with sympathy. “There’s nothing I can do to make this right, but I swear to you, if it’s in my power, I will make my father pay for what he did.”

Nadia squeezed him tightly, grateful for his steadfast support. Cold logic told her that their impromptu teen resistance movement was just a pretty fantasy to hang their faltering hopes on, but she didn’t voice her doubt.

“Thank you.”

And although she figured she should wash her face and get back to bed, Nadia found she needed the warmth of Nate’s friendship too much to go anywhere just now. She’d bask in it just a little longer before she made another attempt to sleep …