Shattered

19. NO ONE DIES

Preparing seemed to take forever as Riley and Jude gathered equipment—that was their word for it, not weapons, not explosives, just equipment—from their contacts in the city, as we mapped out entry points and contingency plans, as we cold-shouldered Quinn, pretending that nothing was going on, as Riley and I huddled in dark corners of the orchard, rifling through our backup options and last-minute, last-ditch possibilities to stop the bloodshed. As I learned, just in case, to aim a gun, learned how it was heavier than it looked but not as heavy as it should have been, how my hand fit perfectly around its grip but its holster rested awkwardly at my waist. As three mechs hung on three posts, carried in every morning, carried out every evening, staring blindly over a roaring crowd, their faces pale and twitchy in the vids, waiting for a rescue that was never going to come.

Riley and Jude prepared their way, and I prepared mine. Riley was convinced that he’d be able to talk Jude down before it was too late. I was in charge of the just in case.

It all seemed to take forever—but it took only three days.

Before we set out, I got Riley alone. “You sure about this?”

“We’ve got to get them out,” he said.

“No. I mean, are you sure we’ll be able to stop him before…”

There was no warmth in Riley’s expression, no hesitation in his voice. “No one’s dying tonight.”

All mech eyes were cold, strangely blank, their flat color only accentuated by the pinprick of light flashing at their centers. But even beyond that, Riley’s gaze was steel. For the first time, I could imagine those eyes set in another face, from another lifetime, surviving in a city the only way he knew how.

Then he rested a hand on my lower back and kissed the top of my head and whispered that it would be all right, we’d all be fine, and the look was gone.

And then we began.

True to his word, Jude’s secrecy on the BioMax tracking tech had come in handy. As far as anyone at BioMax knew from the doctored stream of data, the three of us were safe and sound in bed—when in fact we were crossing the deserted grounds of an expired airport, insane plan in hand and weapons in tow. We set out after midnight, picking our way along the route Zo had marked out. Safely through the electrified perimeter—thanks to a grounding strip passed along by one of Jude’s city contacts—and through the shadows of hangars and warehouses, darting back each time the sweeping floodlights threatened to cross our path. The grounds were too large to cover every corner with cameras—unless Savona had sprung for a military-grade sat-cam, but if he’d gone that far, what little chance we had of success was pretty much gone, so there was no point in worrying. We had to assume that someone, man or machine, was deployed to watch the area around Savona’s secret playpen, cameras that Zo hadn’t known about, that weren’t visible to the naked eye. Which meant we had to assume that they knew we’d been here before and were prepared for our return. Another justification, as far as Jude was concerned, for the surprise attack. Another reason for the guns.

But Riley had jury-rigged a signal jammer, a small-scale model of what they used in the cities to block the wi-fi and energy nets, ensuring that—if it worked—any cameras we passed in range of would report back scrambled, useless data to their central servers. It was a half-assed solution to a problem we weren’t sure even existed—and there was a small, hateful piece of me that hoped it wouldn’t work. That was the thought I tried to ignore as we crept toward the hangar: Come and get us. A silent missive to Savona’s security forces. Stop us before we can’t stop ourselves.

I could have stopped us at any time—by setting off an alarm. Or with one swipe across my ViM, setting the last-minute backup plan in motion long before the last minute. But I’d promised Riley I would wait.

And I’d promised Sloane, Ty, and Brahm—and even Ani—that we would come back for them. We would get them out.

“This it?” Jude asked as we reached the hangar. It was starting to snow, fat, dirty flakes, floating over our heads. We crouched beneath the rusted fuselage of a small plane, one wing missing and the other hanging cockeyed by a snake of heavy-gauge cable and a bent steel frame. Riley began laying out the equipment as Jude tiptoed over to the hangar, kneeling before the broken pane. I watched the play of light and shadow through the frosted glass—it was thick enough to disguise the shapes that moved within, but I had an indelible record playing across my mind every time I made the mistake of closing my eyes. Jude spent only a few seconds at the window, then returned to us, nearly invisible in his black camo gear. Hands shoved in his pockets, shoulders hunched, a fine dusting of snow coating his hair, he scooped up an armful of explosives, his face blank. “It’s just like you said,” he said tonelessly.

“So we ready?” Riley slipped the detonator into his coat pocket. It was a small gray box with a keypad; the correct code would send a wireless signal to the explosives. Riley had programmed it, so Riley held on to it, which would leave Jude free to do most of the heavy lifting without fear of jostling the switch. Riley would focus on the more delicate wiring. And as for me—too clueless to help with the explosives, too untrustworthy to hold the detonator—I was the one to stay behind. I would be the lookout.

Jude nodded, looking grim. “Now we tear this place down.”

It was maddening, having nothing to do but watch: Jude adhering the packets of secondary explosives to the walls of the hangar, Riley following behind him with the highly sensitive primary explosives, carefully weaving them together to ensure a few sparks would bloom into a fiery chain reaction. The blurry figures inside the hangar played with their life-size toys, oblivious. And as I’d been instructed, I watched the perimeter. I leaned against the plane, wet snow pattering against my face, ice congealing at my feet, and watched the ground turn white and the buildings around me disappear into a white mist. I didn’t expect I’d have to use the gun.

I wasn’t sure it was him at first, when he appeared in the distance. Or at least, I didn’t want to be sure—the snow masked his face, so there was at least a possibility it could have been someone else. It could have been anyone. That’s what I told myself, as my grip tightened around the gun.

“Someone’s coming,”

But I recognized his limp.

“It’s Auden,”

“Stick to the plan,”

“Just let him go inside. You’re totally out of sight. If you keep quiet, he won’t see you.”

But I wasn’t worried about him catching me.

I told myself that it was safe for him, that no one was dying tonight, that Riley and I had a plan. But I couldn’t risk Auden, not again.

He could change his mind and turn back, I thought. Or he could be going somewhere else.

But according to Zo, the laboratory had been intentionally positioned at the edge of nowhere. He wasn’t going anywhere else; there wasn’t anywhere else for him to go.

Before I knew what I was doing, the gun was aimed, and someone’s voice, my voice, issued an order.

“Stop.”

He stopped.

“What’s going on over there?”

“Hands up.”

They went up.

This isn’t me, I thought, staring at hands that were holding a gun, hands that felt as alien as they had right after the download, when they’d sat dead and useless in my lap, inanimate objects belonging to someone else.

“Lia? What the hell?” Auden’s voice broke the spell.

They were my hands; it was my gun. And at the other end of the barrel, that was Auden, the same Auden who’d stood up for me when Bliss Tanzen had called me a skinner in front of our Persuasive Speaking class, who’d carried me away from a jeering crowd the day I’d frozen in the quad, who’d confessed that he would never get his nearsighted eyes fixed because their weakness reminded him of his dead mother.

Jude and Riley were at my side. “Give me the gun,” Jude murmured.

I shook my head and held the weapon steady.

“You,” Auden spit out in disgust, glaring at Jude. “Of course.”

“Finish what you’re doing,” I told them. “I won’t let him call for help.”

And I wouldn’t let him go inside.

“You go with Jude,” Riley said. “I’ll babysit.”

“Jude needs you,” I said. “I don’t. Go.”

“She’ll deal with it,” Jude said, glaring at me, and I got his message: This is your screwup, and you damn well better fix it.

Riley shook his head no, but he listened to Jude, as he always listened to Jude, and followed his best friend, backing toward the hangar so he could keep his eyes on me, but the distance and the snow got in our way and soon he was just a hunched shadow and Auden and I were alone.

“What are they doing?” Auden asked. I didn’t answer. “What are you doing?” he said, more urgently. “What is this?”

The gun was heavy, but mech arms don’t get tired. I could point it at him forever.

“You knew?” I said. “You knew what he was doing in here? You let him?”

He glanced involuntarily toward the hangar, his eyebrows quirking, and then his face went blank again. It was an easy expression to read, a mixture of confusion and surprise. But this wasn’t the same Auden, and as much as I wanted to believe he hadn’t sanctioned the experimentation, I couldn’t afford the luxury.

Not that it mattered. One way or another, I would keep him safe. Whatever he’d done.

“You going to shoot me, Lia?”

“You going to shoot me?” I asked, nodding toward the weapon at his side, one of the electric pulseguns his guards had used to put Sloane, Ty, and Brahm to the ground. “Or is that in case your prisoners get out of control?”

“You want to give me a lecture?” Auden asked. “You’re trespassing, holding a gun on me, and you want to make it sound like I’m the one doing something wrong?”

He took a step toward me.

“Stop.”

“You’re not going to hurt me, Lia.” Another step. His voice was even, his gait less so.

“I’m a monster, remember?”

“I remember a lot of things.” He kept coming.

I released the safety, just as Riley had shown me. “Stop.”

Never aim a gun you’re not prepared to fire, Riley had warned me.

And I could fire: Down at the snow, over his head, into the plane. I could squeeze the trigger, I told myself. If I had to.

He wouldn’t stop coming at me. He wouldn’t stop talking. “This isn’t you, Lia,” he said. “You don’t want to be here. You don’t want to be doing this. You don’t—”

“Shut up and get back!”

But it was too late, he was within reach, his arm smashing down in a hatchet sweep to knock the gun out of my hands, but I was fast and he was clumsy and I dodged out of the way. He stumbled, throwing his weight against me, and we both toppled to the ground, rolling in the snow, his legs spasming beneath me, his arms flailing, hands grasping for the gun, and I pinned him beneath me, trying not to hurt him, aware, with every second, that his bones were brittle, his muscles weak, and he would not stop. For a moment, he lay still beneath me, panting with exhaustion, shivering, shuddering, his hair soaked, his face coated with melting snow, and I remembered the night before, lying in another field of snow with another body beneath mine, a body impervious to the elements, to the touch. I stared down at Auden, at this quivering, sopping, heaving, dripping mess; I stared at him, barely seeing his face, and in that moment, he wasn’t Auden, he was any org, every org, weak and pathetic and alive.

Natural is hell, I’d preached to the mech recruits, believing every word, willing myself to believe, and here it was pinned beneath me, words made real. And here, beneath me, the corollary I’d willed myself to forget: Natural is hell. But hell is life.

It was just a single moment that I lost focus, the lightning flash of envy banished almost as soon as it struck, but a moment was enough for Auden to lash out with his weak but well-aimed kick, to knock me off balance and make one final, desperate lunge for the gun, for our hands to mash together on cold metal, for a barrel to twist and a trigger to fall and a muffled shot to sound.

And a moment, the next moment, was enough to meet his gaze, see my own expression reflected on his face, his jaw dropped theatrically, his lip trembling, his eyes wide. What have I done? Like we’d thought it together, like in just that one moment we didn’t need a chip to translate thought to silent speech, because we both knew—and then the moment passed and we fell backward from each other, action and reaction, shooter and shot.

All I could think was: Thank you. To the universe, to luck or physics or whatever unseen force of fate had twisted the barrel one way and not the other, had left a raw, jagged hole in my right thigh, a hole that didn’t bleed but just gaped, snow fizzling on the exposed wiring, singed synflesh curling back at its edges, a synthetic pain shooting down my leg, up my spine, a rush like jumping out an airplane or over a waterfall clearing out my brain. And Auden, intact, the gun in the snow between us, untouched.

And then Riley was there, his fist smashing into Auden’s face, and somehow it was Jude’s arms beneath me, lifting me up. “You’re okay, it’s okay,” Jude murmured, as Riley pulled his arm back, slammed it down again, Auden’s head snapping back, a soft moan escaping with flecks of blood. “You’re okay.”

“Stop!” I screamed. Jude slapped a hand over my mouth, met my eyes, and nodded when he saw I’d gotten the point, remembered myself and where we were. Then he leaped at Riley, grabbed his waist and pulled him off Auden. Riley struggled, but Jude whispered something in his ear, and he went limp. Jude scooped the gun off the ground, holding it trained on Auden. Riley replaced him at my side, slipping his hand into mine.

“I’m fine,” I whispered, and I was. I let Riley help me into a standing position, gingerly rested a little weight on the leg to see if it would hold. It did. Damaged or not, it still functioned. “It’s fine.”

Auden was staring at me. At us, as Riley brushed my hair out of my face, pressed his lips to my forehead. I shook him off. Back to business.

“I’m sorry,” Auden said quietly. “I didn’t mean—”

“Shut up,” Jude barked. “You don’t talk to her. In fact, you don’t talk at all.”

“I’m fine,” I said again, louder this time.

“Of course you are,” Jude snapped. “But we’ve still got him to deal with.”

“This could work for us,”

“Now we have a hostage.”

“I noticed,” Jude said dryly. He jerked his head at Riley. “Take the org’s weapon.”

Riley yanked the pulsegun out of Auden’s holster, looking as if he’d like to smash it into Auden’s head.

“Riley,”

“Just let it go. Please.”

“Don’t you get it?” I asked Jude. “We can use him as leverage, to get us safe passage off the property.”

“We won’t need leverage,” Jude said, “because no one’s going to know we’re here.”

“We can evacuate the building before we blow it,” I said. “Tell them if they do anything to stop us, we’ll kill him.”

Auden shook his head slowly. “You won’t do that.”

“Really?” I glanced pointedly at the wound in my thigh. He winced. “You want to test us? You’re the one who said we were capable of anything.” I needed him to shut up. I had to make Jude believe that I didn’t care about Auden, any more than I cared about the other orgs. That this was just a smarter plan.

“Thanks for proving my point,” Auden said, adopting a toughness to match my own. “This’ll play great on the vids tomorrow.”

“There won’t be any vids,” Jude said. “We’re not changing the plan. If we have to, we’ll take him back to the estate with us. You’re right, leverage could be a good thing.”

“We can make this work, tonight,” I insisted. “We don’t have to kill anyone.”

“She’s right,” Riley said.

“She’s living in a fantasy world,” Jude snapped. “You think Savona cares what happens to his little puppet? You don’t think he’d make a better martyr dead than alive? Poor, pathetic Auden, slaughtered by a bunch of mechs. We try to use him as leverage and give the Brotherhood any warning? Then that’s it. We’re done.”

“Savona needs me,” Auden said in a high, tight voice. “Listen to Lia. I don’t care what you do to the building, but those people inside—let me get them out. No one will hurt you as long as you’ve got me.”

“See?” I said.

Jude laughed. “What else is he supposed to say?”

“What if I’m right?”

“What if this is our chance to do what we need to do, without killing anyone, and we pass it up?”

“What if you are right?”

“You want to let Savona just walk away? Along with all his researchers, their brains filled with nasty little tricks to wipe us out? What if this is our chance to stop Savona before he’s unstoppable? Like killing Hitler before he turned into Hitler? Stalin? Zomabi? Ever think it’s our moral obligation to stop him? Here. Now. Tonight.”

“Are you crazy? You actually want to kill these people? Even if we have another option?”

“There is no other option,” Jude said aloud. “And I’m not going to let you risk everything on some childish wish that things were different.” He held out his hand. “Give me the detonator. Let’s just get this done.”

Riley shook his head. “No.”

“What?” Jude looked back and forth between us. “We all agreed this was the only way.”

Riley watched him carefully. “And now there’s another way.”

“Don’t do this,” Jude said, and it sounded half like a threat and half like a plea. “Don’t choose her.”

“This is for you,” Riley said, and then, as I stood frozen between them, everything fell apart. It happened fast and slow at the same time—so fast I could barely understand what was happening; slow, like a series of freeze frames, flashes of action trapped in amber.

Jude lunging at Riley.

Riley grabbing the electric pulsegun from its holster.

Riley saying, “I’m sorry.” Pulling the trigger.

Jude screaming in rage.

Jude screaming in pain.

Jude on the ground, body twitching.

Body still.

“Get the orgs out,” Riley told me, kneeling at Jude’s body, looking like a frightened child. “We’ll blow the lab and get out of here before—”

A siren cut through the night.

Auden’s hand was in his pocket.

Riley seized the gun from Jude’s limp grip and held it pointed at Auden. “Hands up!” he shouted.

Auden gave us a faint smile. “Too late,” he said, holding out his ViM. “The Brotherhood knows you’re here. This is over.”

“You fucking idiot!” Riley growled.

“Now what?” I shouted over the alarm.

“Make the call!” Riley shouted back.

But it was simpler than that—I just skimmed a finger across my nanoViM, linking in and sending the message, all in one motion. Call-me-Ben and the BioMax reinforcements were waiting for my signal. I’d told call-me-Ben we were going to blow something up. I’d told him orgs were going to die. And I’d told him if he acted quickly, did his job right, and kept the operation in house with BioMax secops whose discretion he could trust, he might learn something about the Synapsis Corp-Town attack that could change everything.

I just hadn’t told him the where and the when, and thanks to Jude’s GPS jamming patch, he had no way of knowing.

Until now.

BioMax had been unwilling to stage a rescue operation, but I’d guessed they would be willing to do anything to protect their image, which had taken a huge blow after Synapsis. And Ben had proved me right, eager to strike a deal that would prevent his precious mechs from committing a mass murder that the public would never forgive and for which, I reminded him, BioMax could ultimately be held to blame. Maybe they were partly to blame—but I was gambling on the chance that, whatever role BioMax may have played in all this, Ben wasn’t a part of it.

He couldn’t be trusted to be on our side, but he would get us away from the Brotherhood, one way or another. If he showed up in time.

“Get him inside!” Riley shouted, forcing Auden at gunpoint toward the laboratory.

He didn’t have to explain. Now that the Brotherhood knew we were here, we had two options: Blow the lab with ourselves inside. Or barricade ourselves inside the hangar with Auden as a hostage, keeping ourselves safe until BioMax arrived.

If call-me-Ben was true to his word.

And if Savona and his people really cared enough about Auden to keep him alive.

A river of people streamed out, screaming, as Riley held a gun to Auden’s left temple and shouted over the chaos, urging them to run if they wanted their precious martyr to live. I grabbed Jude’s wrist, struggling to drag his body into the hangar, but it was heavy, too heavy. Riley shoved the gun at me, and I trained it on Auden. They should be shaking, I thought, staring at my hands.

But they didn’t do that anymore.

I expected Auden to lunge at me again, take advantage of the chaos to escape and leave us at the Brotherhood’s mercy, but he kept his head down and trudged through the snow as I pressed the muzzle to the back of his neck, safety on, knowing that if I was tested, I’d drop the weapon and let him go. Knowing that was the only thing that kept me moving forward, one foot in front of the other.

Riley hoisted Jude’s body off the ground and cradled it in his arms, Jude’s head resting on his chest, Jude’s eyes open and sightless. And somehow we made it inside the laboratory, safe behind a locked door and shaded windows, alone with the damaged mechs, with Jude’s still body, alone with Auden.

“Tell them to leave us alone if they want you to stay alive,” Riley ordered Auden. We had retreated to the far corner of the hangar, putting as much space between us and the entrance as we could, just in case.

With a trembling finger, Auden activated his ViM and spoke into it. “They want me to say they’ll kill me if you move on them. Just wait for my signal. And tell Savona—”

Riley snatched the ViM out of his hands and threw it across the room. “Enough.” He forced Auden down into a chair and sent me on a hunt for something that could be used to tie him up. There was a roll of duct tape in one of the cabinets. I tossed it to Riley. With a cool competency, Riley bound Auden’s wrists behind his back, then lashed him to the chair at his waist and ankles.

“Do you have to?”

Jude lay on the floor beside them, faceup, arms splayed.

And when Auden was secured, Riley stood over Jude’s body, hands clenched into fists, nothing left to do but wait. I touched his shoulder lightly. “I can’t believe I did it,” he whispered.

“You had no choice,” I reminded him.

“There’s always a choice,” Riley said. “I was supposed to choose him.”

He turned away from me. “I’m going to take a look around,” he said, voice rough. “Keep an eye on him and”—he nodded at the four gurneys—“them.”

“Okay.”

The hangar had been cleared of anything left over from its aeronautic days, and much of it was still empty. The walls were lined with screens and the far side of the room was littered with unidentifiable spare parts and long, empty tables—waiting for more experimental subjects to fill them up?

Only a few feet away from us, four mechs lay prostrate on four gurneys, surrounded by unwieldy equipment I recognized from my early days in the BioMax rehab unit, when I’d lain in a hospital bed, frozen, wires like tentacles hooking me to the machines, their sensors feeding into my exposed brain. Ani’s gurney was the closest, and as I drew near, I could hear her murmuring something. A ceaseless string of incomprehensible babble, like a baby testing its tongue. Her head was shaved, tangles of wires connected to a series of monitors disappearing into her open skull. I brushed the back of my hand against her cheek. Her eyes were open, staring past me. And her lips kept moving, spilling out the stream of whispered nonsense syllables.

“How could you do this to yourself?” I murmured. Then forced myself to look past her to Sloane, to Ty, to Brahm, the three of them in the same or worse condition. The fingers of Sloane’s right hand twitched uncontrollably. The skin on Brahm’s chest had been flayed, the wiring left exposed. His eyes roamed wildly, randomly, skidding from one side to the other, pupils contracting to a point, then periodically expanding in a flush of black that flooded his irises. Ty just moaned. At least her eyes were closed. “How could you do this to them?”

“What’s wrong with them?” Auden asked, straining to see.

“You tell us,” I said. “You did it. You and your Brothers.”

“I don’t know anything about this,” Auden said. “Tonight was the first I even heard about this place.”

“Right.”

“I was on my way here to find out what was going on. I never thought…” Auden scowled. “Believe whatever you want.”

He twisted around in his chair, watching the door. Outside, everything was quiet. For all I knew, the Brotherhood had us surrounded, their pulseguns drawn. If they called our bluff and broke down the door, what then? We could end up on those gurneys too, right next to Ani. Or we could finish this right now. Send Auden outside and blow the place up—blow ourselves up with it.

It’s not death, I reminded myself.

And it was infinitely better than whatever lifeless madness awaited us on those gurneys.

“They’ll come for you, you know,” Auden said. “Holding me hostage isn’t going to get you out of here. You’ll never get off the property.”

“We’re not worried about that,” I lied.

“Will they be okay?” Auden asked. “Your friends?”

“What do you care?”

“Will they?”

“They’re just machines, right?” I said. Hating him for the fact that I couldn’t hate him, even here, surrounded by the fruits of what he’d accomplished. “No souls, no consciences. Not alive. So honestly, what do you care?”

“This was never about anyone getting hurt,” Auden said, his eyes involuntarily flickering to the hole his bullet had torn through my thigh.

“Tell that to your partner,” I said. Then pointed to Ani. “Tell that to her.”

“You two are the ones with the guns and the explosives,” Auden said. “You’re just proving that everything we say about the skinners is true.”

“Mechs,” I said. “Not skinners.”

“Whatever you say.”

“You used to tell me I was just like everyone else,” I said quietly, searching his eyes for something of the old Auden. “That the download technology was amazing. You said I was just as human as you.”

“I said a lot of things.”

“Yeah. You did.”

He blushed, and I wondered if we were both thinking of the same moment. I wondered how much would have been different if I’d let the kiss continue. Then he shot a glance across the room, where Riley had given up playing with the machinery and was just sitting on the edge of a table, his back to us, his back to Jude.

“Lia, look at yourself,” Auden said. “Look where you are. You really think you made the right choice? To be with them? With him?”

“I’m not the one who chose.” I didn’t mean for my voice to sound so small. “You made me walk away.”

“No one makes you do anything,” Auden said. “You’re Lia Kahn, remember? You do what you want. Isn’t that what you always told me?”

“You told me to go away,” I said. Even smaller. “And never come back.”

Auden’s face spasmed, then went still. “And you never did.”

“So that’s why you did it?” I asked “Tried to turn me into a murderer?”

“You’re the one with the gun.”

“I’m not talking about this,” I said in a low voice. “Syanpsis. My face in that vid.”

“What about it?”

“I know the Temple was behind it,” I spit out, getting angry all over again. “Savona told me everything.” Surprise flickered across his face. “He didn’t tell you that I knew?” I asked, tempted to fake a laugh, just so he would know how much his little band of brothers disgusted me. “And he told me it was your idea,” I added. “To set me up. Make me a killer.”

He pressed his lips together, tight, like he was holding in the answer.

Tell me I’m wrong, I begged him silently. Tell me Savona lied.

“So? Maybe it was my idea,” he said hoarsely. Before, I would have known—whether he was admitting the truth or lying to sound tough. Whether he was proud or guilty. I would have read it on his face, because he was a horrible liar, and because I knew him. But I didn’t know him anymore. He shook his head. “You think that would make us even?”

“Do you?”

But before he could answer, a rolling peal of thunder shook the building. The night filled with shouts and screams, and the windows blazed, illuminated by sweeping spotlights. “They’re coming for me,” Auden said, going pale. “Tell your friend to put the gun away. I won’t let them hurt you.”

“We’re just machines, remember?” I said. “Nothing can hurt us.”

“I’ll protect you,” Auden said firmly, absurdly, his ravaged body strapped to a chair. “You won’t end up… like that.” Neither of us looked at Ani; we both knew what he meant.

“Riley?” I called. “You ready? If we have to…”

He nodded, mouth set in a grim line, hand clutching the detonator in his pocket. We’d have to move fast to get Auden to safety. No one dies tonight.

Except maybe us.

The thunder roared from above, drawing closer. Not thunder at all, I realized, but a helicopter swooping down on us, or, from the sound of it, a fleet of them.

“Put down your weapons!” a voice boomed from the sky. I wondered if the ex-Faithers out there in the dark thought they were hearing the word of God. Tough luck, psychos, I thought. It’s not your ultimate Creator.

It’s mine.

“They’re not coming for you,” I told Auden, hoping I was right. “They’re coming for us.” He looked confused and frightened and something else—something sorry and sad that we’d ended up here, with duct tape and a gun between us and an armed helicopter overhead.

The windows shattered. BioMax had arrived.

At least twenty of them in green uniforms with the BioMax logo striped across the back stormed through the shattered glass, guns raised—both the electric-pulse kind and the ones that shot real, org-piercing bullets. Riley and I flung our hands into the air, allowed the BioMax grunts to restrain us and search us while the others secured the building, insuring there were no mechs (or Faithers) hiding beneath the bulky equipment. Rough hands pinned my arms behind my back. I didn’t struggle. Riley too went along quietly. He handed over his weapons voluntarily, and though they gave him a cursory pat down, they missed the most dangerous one of all: the harmless-looking detonator bulging in his coat pocket.

“All clear!” one of the men shouted. Only then did call-me-Ben deign to enter, his gray heart-pulsing suit as smooth and unrumpled as his hair and face.

“Quite a mess of things you’ve made here, Lia,” he said, jerking his head in my direction. The man holding me let go.

“Once you see what they’re up to in this lab, you’ll thank me,” I told him, joining Riley, putting my arms around his waist, my head against his shoulder. Still tied to the chair, pearls of sweat beading on his face, Auden pretended not to watch. It’s over, I thought.

Ben himself slit the tape binding Auden to the chair. Auden tried to stand, and one of his legs buckled. A BioMax guy swooped in to hold him up, but Auden shook off his help, then limped toward the nearest wall, leaning against it for support, chest heaving.

Two of the men lined the three of us up against the wall, weapons loosely trained on us. The others swarmed the hangar, examining equipment and beginning to load it onto a series of large dollies. Ben just watched us for a moment, hands on hips, head cocked in amusement. He nudged a toe into Jude’s body and raised an eyebrow. “Tell me, Lia, does betraying your friends get easier the more you do it?”

Riley glanced quickly between me and Ben. I kept my face blank, knew that even Riley wouldn’t be able to read anything from it. But I didn’t like what I’d seen flickering in his eyes for that brief moment. The questions.

“I trust you won’t mind sticking around for a bit?” Ben said, as if we had any choice. “I’m sure we’ll have a few questions.”

“I haven’t done anything wrong!” Auden protested.

Ben did a slow turn in place, taking in the machinery, the mechs on their gurneys, then faced Auden again. “You’ll stick around,” he said, not a question this time. “You’ll answer for what you’ve done.”

So the three of us stood there, watching and waiting, as the BioMax men bustled around us as if we were invisible, examining the equipment, studiously adjusting the machinery that monitored Ani and the others. Riley wrapped an arm around my shoulders, and I let him. Auden kept a foot of space between us, watching the BioMax men go to work on our damaged friends.

“Will they be okay?” I asked as one by one the mechs were carried out of the building, their lips still moving in nearly soundless nonsense.

“One way or another,” call-me-Ben said.

Life as a mech: One way or another, we would always be fine.

We waited as a BioMax medic examined Auden to be sure we’d done no permanent damage, as she forced Auden to sit, to breathe into a mask that would infuse his weakened lungs with a supply of oxygen. “I’m okay,” he choked out, knocking the mask away. Standing up again on wobbling legs.

“We’ll get you a wheelchair,” the medic said.

Auden shook his head furiously, eyes meeting mine. “I have another hour, at least,” he insisted.

“The nerve-impulse electrodes give you four hours of mobility under optimal conditions,” the medic said. “This much physical and emotional stress, it’s not unusual your system would be overwhelmed, need a rest. You have to remember that for someone in your condition—”

“I’m fine!” he snapped, pushing the woman away. One foot dragged noticeably behind as he limped back to his place beside us. “Contact Rai Savona,” he ordered Ben. “He can explain to you what all this is—”

“I’m afraid your friend Savona has disappeared,” call-me-Ben said serenely. “Slipped off the property as soon as you were taken hostage. Seems he didn’t want to stick around to see how things played out. So why don’t you tell me what it is the Brotherhood was doing out here?”

“I don’t have to explain anything to you,” Auden said. “This is private property. BioMax has no authority here.”

“And yet here I am,” Ben said. “And here you are. Your loyal followers have all been encouraged, strongly encouraged, to go home for the night. Your loyal partner has fled the scene. It seems like it’s just the two of us.”

Auden pointed a shaky finger at Riley and me. “They broke into a private facility, tried to blow it up, and when that didn’t work, they took an innocent human being hostage. And you want to interrogate me?”

Ben smiled. “Apparently.”

“You can’t do this,” Auden said, furious. He was already starting to sound less like the boy I’d known and more like the man I’d seen up on that stage, preaching to his masses. “By this time tomorrow, I’ll make sure the whole network knows that you and your corp have chosen the skinners over the welfare of fellow humans.”

“Tomorrow’s tomorrow,” Ben said flatly. “I don’t deal in predictions. Tonight, your welfare is in my hands, and I’ll make whatever choices I want.”

Ben drove his foot into Jude’s side. The body didn’t move. “I can wake him up now,” he offered us. “Or wait until you’re long gone if you’d prefer. Avoid the messy meet-and-greet?”

Later, I wanted to say.

“Now,” Riley said, before I could.

Ben did it himself, accessing a panel beneath Jude’s armpit. Whatever he did next, he made sure to shield it from our view—preserving his trade secrets, the functions of our bodies that we weren’t allowed to know about. Jude’s eyes closed, then opened again, aware. He sat up slowly, shaking away the fog, gingerly testing first his arms, then his legs, then climbing to his feet and staring at us, indictment plain on his face. He took in the scene calmly, without question, as if there could be no doubt as to how events had played out while he was down.

“Take him,” Ben ordered two of his men.

It had been part of the deal. I had saved myself and Riley, but I couldn’t save Jude. “We can’t have him running wild anymore,” Ben had told me. “Now that you know what he’s capable of, you should understand that.”

We didn’t have a choice, I reminded myself. We waited until the last possible minute. We tried.

“Let me just say good-bye to my friends,” Jude said, imperious, as if he were still in charge.

Ben nodded, and Jude was released, allowed to approach us, as Ben remained a short distance away, making an ostentatious show of turning his back, leaving us to say our good-byes among ourselves.

Riley disengaged from my arms, stepping away, meeting Jude alone. For a long moment, they didn’t speak.

Riley began. “We didn’t want to.”

“Don’t,” Jude said quietly. He leaned in close, folded Riley into a loose embrace, whispered something in his ear. Riley glanced at me, his eyes narrowed, then backed away, down the wall, to the other side of Auden and as far as the BioMax men would let him go without raising their weapons again in warning.

He just feels guilty, I thought. He doesn’t want me comforting him.

I told myself that was it, and that it had nothing to do with the way he’d looked at me before, when Ben started needling me about betrayals.

“What did you say to him?” I asked Jude.

“Just the truth,” Jude said.

Just lies, I thought. And whatever Jude said about me, Riley wouldn’t believe it.

“I’m not apologizing,” I said.

“Good. Because I’m not forgiving. Or forgetting.”

Jude stepped toward me, grabbed my wrist, hard. The BioMax guys approached, but I waved them away. “I was trying to do the right thing,” he said. “One day you’ll figure that out.”

“You stole my line,” I said, trying to pull my arm away, but he held fast. His voice was angry, but his face was something else. Lost, like I’d stolen something from him, the thing at his center that told him what he was. He yanked me toward him, until his lips brushed my ear.

“You want to save your precious orgs?” he whispered. “Three minutes, starting now.” Then he dropped my arm and stepped away. “You can do whatever you want with me now,” he called out. “Just get me away from these skinners.” Flanked by an entourage of BioMax thugs, call-me-Ben took Jude’s arm, personally escorting him away. Of course: Riley and I were toys, fun to play with while he had nothing better to do. Jude was the real point, the grand prize.

One minute passed as a security cadre walked Jude out of the building, as I let his words play through my brain, as, without processing what I was doing, I glanced at Riley—at Riley’s pocket, checking for the telltale bulge of the detonator. It was gone.

And that’s when I screamed.

“Everybody get out!” I shouted. “Explosives!”

Riley shoved a hand in his pocket. Then he started shouting too.

The BioMax guys took off running for the exit. Riley ran. I ran. And Auden ran—but only a few steps. Then he stumbled and crashed to the floor.

One minute left.

I turned back for him, screaming his name, feeling like I’d been thrown back in time, like the air was water and I was swimming toward him again, the current carrying him away, and somewhere, dimly, I heard Riley shouting for me, and I grabbed Auden’s hands and hauled him to his feet, forcing his arm around my shoulder, forcing him to lean on me, as Riley ran in the wrong direction, not toward the door, but toward me, and then everything got very loud—then very silent.

Time’s up.

The explosions were like gunshots, close range, and in their wake the world fell quiet, and the building shook.

The building shook, and a chunk of the wall blew out, slamming into Riley, knocking him down in a cloud of plaster and twisted steel.

“Riley!” I shrieked.

There was no answering call.

Flames licked the walls, smoke turned the air heavy and opaque, and Auden buried his face in his shirt as we lurched toward the door, gasping for breath. This time I couldn’t breathe for him. I could only get him out.

The walls were crumbling.

Riley’s head and torso jutted out from the pile of debris, and he was shouting something I couldn’t understand, arms waving in an unmistakable gesture. Go. Go, get out.

Get Auden out.

And that was what I thought, as I turned my back on Riley, as I held Auden up, grabbing on as he slipped away from me, as his head nodded drowsily, eyes clouding and lungs filling with smoke. Not him, not again, I thought, as I stumbled through the smoky black in the direction I imagined the door to be, sound returning to the world in the form of smaller, secondary explosions, ceilings collapsing, equipment imploding, as we pushed through an opening in the wall, into the cool fresh air of night, and left Riley behind.

No one dies tonight, I thought as the BioMax troops dragged us away from the flames, dragged me away, as I kicked and screamed and lunged toward the flickering storm of fire, and they held me back, because they were stronger. They were in control. And Auden sucked in oxygen as I watched, now silent and still, no breath and no heartbeat, helpless and useless, as a geyser of fire spurted through the roof, and the laboratory—and the machinery and the research and Riley—disintegrated in a crash of thunder and a plume of blue-orange flame.