Torn

16. FALLEN

By four a.m. on Sunday we were ready. We drove to the loading zone in silence. Ben sat motionless in the back seat, looking neither at us nor the gun. He’d dropped any vestige of fighting back. He did what we said, followed our orders, and every hour, seemed to turn deeper into himself. I knew what it was like to give yourself over to someone else’s decision making, following an external voice and silencing your own. But he was going to have to wake up soon, because in a few hours Jude, Auden, and I would be trapped inside a shipping crate; Ben would be on his own with only my sister and a dubious bluff to keep him in line. He was the only one who could talk us all onto the ship, and I knew he believed his life depended on it. I just didn’t know how much he cared.

The BioMax equipment crates were being warehoused in a secure facility near the docks. Ben guided us through the shadows and pressed his thumb to the security pad. A panel the size of a garage door creaked open. The interior was dark, but I could make out the dim outlines of towering stacks of crates.

“Where’s the security?” Jude asked, suspicious.

“Coordinates of this dock are on a need-to-know basis,” Ben said dully. “For something like this, the best security is no security.”

Jude shook his head. “Bureaucratic brilliance never ceases to amaze me.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off the stacks. “You’re going to hide us in a crate and get us on the ship, right?” I asked Ben.

“That’s the plan, isn’t it?”

“So what happens when we end up at the bottom of a giant stack like this? We just wait a few months for someone to get around to unpacking us?”

“I’ll make sure you end up somewhere private, where you can climb out and… do whatever you’re going to do.”

“And how do you plan to do that?”

“You’re going to have to trust me,” Ben said.

I laughed.

“Trust me,” Zo said. I was sure no one but me heard the quaver in her voice. “He knows what happens if he screws up.”

“You can still walk away,” Ben said. Apparently, he still had a little fight left. “All of you. I won’t say anything. And if BioMax is up to something—if your insane suspicious are right—let me look into it. There’s no reason to throw everything away like this.”

“Show us the crate,” I said.

“Lia, please. Think about your mother. And Riley. He’s waiting—”

“Show us the crate.”

There were two of them, coffin-sized and air permeable so that the one of us who needed to breathe could do so. One was red; one was blue. Both were, according to Ben, intended to hold delicate replacement parts and so would arouse no suspicion when he insisted on personally supervising their loading and unloading. Two crates, three of us—and neither Auden nor I was willing to risk eight hours in a box with Jude.

“So, roommates?” Auden said, with a wry smile.

I wasn’t ready to be his friend. “I need to talk to Zo for a second. Alone.”

Jude looked alarmed. “Lia, just remember—”

I ignored him and grabbed Zo, drawing her deeper into the cavernous warehouse, away from the rest of them.

She shook me off. “If you’re going to ask me if I’m sure I still want to do this—”

“I wasn’t. Should I?”

“‘Want’ isn’t exactly the word I’d use,” she admitted. “But I’m doing it. I just don’t know…”

“What?”

Something in her face relaxed then. The fierce, fearless mask of a warrior fell away, and she was just my sister again. My little sister. “I don’t want to screw this up.” She held the remote detonator between her palms, then crossed her fingers around it, like she was praying.

I could let her make her own choices, no matter how stupid and reckless they might be. But I couldn’t let her choose blindly.

“Zo, there’s something you have to know about the detonator.”

“You mean aside from the fact that it’s fake?”

I gaped at her. “You knew?”

“Haven’t we already established that I’m not a moron? If Jude had something like this, don’t you think he would have mentioned it sooner?”

“You knew from the start?”

“I know a car remote when I see one.” She slipped it into her pocket. “I almost wish I didn’t know. It’d be easier.” She gave my shoulder a light poke. “Of course, you would have just screwed that up!”

I felt like an idiot, on multiple fronts. “Sorry? I think?”

“Maybe it’s better this way,” she said. “At least I don’t have to worry about maybe having to kill someone. Because, honestly? I really don’t think I could.”

She sounded ashamed of the admission. I hated that.

“Are you going to be okay?” I asked. “Knowing you don’t have any kind of weapon, that there’s nothing you can do if…”

“I’m not worried,” she said, though it was clearly a lie. “Besides, you’ll be there the whole time.”

“I won’t be much good, protecting you from inside a box.”

“Like you’d let that stop you.” She looked away. “If I needed you.”

“Zo—”

No. No more jokes or compliments disguised as insults or nervous edging around the truth. I hugged her, tight. She let me. Slowly, her arms crept around me, and squeezed. It had been a really long time. I couldn’t even remember how long.

“I don’t want to screw this up,” she said again.

“You won’t.”

She pressed her face to my shoulder. “I missed you,” she whispered.

“You too.”

A small spot of wetness seeped through my shirt. But when she let go and backed away, her eyes were dry.

And, of course, so were mine.

The crate was too small for two people. Auden got in first, which was quickly revealed to be a stupid decision, because it left him crushed beneath me, his breath wheezing under the weight.

“Over a little this way,” I whispered.

“If you just—”

“No, I think maybe—”

“A little—”

“And then—yeah—like that—”

But lying on his side was too uncomfortable, putting all his weight on either a bad arm or a bad leg—not that he complained, but I could hear the soft grunt of pain every time he shifted his weight, searching for the Goldilocks position, but there wasn’t one, and we wrestled and rolled again. I ended up on the bottom, because I could bear the weight. Because I didn’t need to breathe. Auden lay on top of me, and I could feel him trying to hold himself separate, support his weight on his arms, anything not to press against me.

For the first few hours it was easy to distract ourselves. There were the noises of the crew arriving, the sudden, jerky movement of getting transported out of the warehouse and loaded onto the launch boat, the ever-present fear that someone would make a last-minute check of the contents and expose us to the world. There was also Zo, who’d set her ViM to record and relay her every word to mine. So I could listen to my sister play the part of Ben’s daughter… knowing that if something went wrong, there’d be nothing I could do but lie there and listen to the consequences.

Ben did an admirable job of getting his “daughter” the security credentials she needed, claiming that she’d made an unexpected visit and his custody agreement required he not leave her unsupervised for prolonged periods of time. The BioMax team seemed intrigued and almost delighted by her presence, some unexpected entertainment to break up the long, dull journey, and Zo obliged, laughing at their lame jokes and feigning interest in their boring descriptions of network-routing technology. For all we knew, one of them even had some relevant information about phase three and would be foolish enough to mention it in front of her.

It was the kind of luck that couldn’t last.

“Who’s your little friend?” The voice in the ViM was tinny and distant, but still easily recognizable.

I swore under my breath.

“What?” Auden whispered. I shushed him, and waited.

“Kiri,” Ben said, voice tight. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

No chance she wouldn’t recognize Zo. She knew everything about me. It was her job. Or had been, at least.

“If we can nip this virus in the bud, it’ll be a huge PR coup for the corp,” Kiri said. “Which we could use, after the disaster of the last few weeks. They’ve sent me along to make sure we get our narrative right. You know how it is.”

“Of course,” Ben said weakly. I hoped he didn’t sound as suspect to her as he did to me.

“So now it’s your turn,” she said.

“My turn?”

“I told you why I’m here. So why is she?”

Ben didn’t say anything.

I didn’t know what to do, if anything. I could bust out of the crate now, rush to Zo’s side, and—

“Halley,” my sister said. “Nice to meet you. And I don’t want to go on this stupid trip any more than you want me to. So if you can talk my dad out of it, be my guest.”

“Your daughter?” Kiri asked, sounding surprised. Or was that suspicion in her voice? Did she know? Had she guessed? I could imagine Zo’s bitter inner monologue—No one ever remembers me—and just hoped she was right.

“Well, I’ve heard a lot about you, Halley, and I’m certainly not going to pass up the chance to meet the girl behind the legend. Welcome aboard.”

After the terror passed, we were left with boredom. Long hours to kill inside our aluminum coffin, waiting for whatever was going to come next. Auden lay quietly on top of me for a long time. His chest rose and fell with shallow, even breaths, and I wondered if he’d fallen asleep.

“So,” he whispered finally. “This is awkward.”

“We probably shouldn’t talk.”

“Right. Safer that way. Someone could hear.” I could feel his chest moving with every word.

“Right.”

So we didn’t talk. Not for a while, at least.

“The thing is, we never really got the chance,” he said, some endless amount of time later.

“The chance to what?”

“Talk.”

So I wasn’t going to be able to avoid it. “Fine. Talk.”

That seemed to shut him up. It was several minutes before he came up with something to say. “What are you thinking?”

“That’s what you want to talk about?”

“I’m making conversation.”

“Fine. I’m thinking…” It wasn’t really any of his business. But then, it wasn’t much of a secret. “About Zo. What are you thinking?”

“You want to know the truth?”

“Not really.”

“I’m thinking about trying not to think about all the water underneath us.”

I prepared myself for yet another guilt trip. Of course he was afraid of the water; he’d nearly drowned. But I wasn’t about to let him tell me it was all my fault. I wasn’t apologizing again.

“Not a problem for you, I guess,” he said.

“What, water?”

“The lack of, you know, facilities,” he said. “I can hold it for eight hours, but I’ve got to warn you, that’s pretty much my limit… .”

“Gross!” I had to smile. “That’s what you were talking about?”

“What’d you think?”

“Nothing.”

“Now, I’m not saying I’m going to wet my pants—well, our pants, really, considering the circumstances—and it’s not like I’m thoroughly humiliated or anything by the mere prospect, which is maybe something else I’m thinking about absolutely, and completely not thinking about.”

I wondered if he was trying to make me laugh.

“Seriously, you can stop now,” I told him, trying not to. “I get the picture.”

“I’m just saying, it’s rough for a guy.” I could tell he was holding in laughter too. “You know, you’ve got the water down there, and then you try to stop thinking about that, and all you can think of are lakes, rivers, water fountains…”

“Showers,” I put in helpfully. “Rain.”

“Flushing toilets.”

“Tall, cold drinks of water.”

“Waterfalls.”

There was a long pause. Neither of us was laughing anymore.

“It’s not an excuse, you know,” I said instead.

“What?”

“What happened to you.” I paused, half expecting him to correct me. What you did to me. But he didn’t. “It doesn’t give you the right to do whatever the hell you want.”

“I guess this is where I tell you that I didn’t mean it. That I was angry. All that.”

“Well?”

“I meant it,” he said. “All of it. Or, at least, I thought I did. Which is all that matters, right? Now…”

“Now what?”

“I don’t know.”

I didn’t want to say it. Mostly because I didn’t want him to guess how much I needed the answer. “What happened to you?”

“You know what happened.”

“I happened? Is that what you mean? I did this to you.”

“You didn’t.”

“I know that.”

“You didn’t make me jump,” he said.

“You tried to save me.” “That’s not what you told your Brotherhood.”

“I never thought you meant to hurt me,” he said. “I was always very clear about that. I just…”

“Wanted to hurt me back. Job well done.”

“I hurt,” he said. “Do you get that? You don’t feel anything, but I feel everything. My back, my stomach, my legs, they hurt. And my right arm…” The one that wasn’t there anymore, that had been replaced by plastic and gears. “That hurts the most.”

I feel everything. You used to know that.

But out loud: “I said I was sorry.”

“Yeah. You did. Right before you walked out. To go be with them.”

“You kicked me out!”

He snorted. “Please. I was half delirious. You wanted to believe me. You wanted an out.”

“That’s not true.”

“It was easier to leave, so you didn’t have to look at me,” he spit out. “That’s the mech way, right? You hate weakness. You don’t believe in it.”

“There is no mech way. I’m not one of your cultists, too pathetic to think for myself.”

Except that Jude was the one who’d told me Auden was better off without me. That mechs and orgs weren’t safe together, because they were too weak and we were too strong, because they would always hate us and we would always hurt them. Before Auden had announced it to the world, Jude had whispered it in my ear. And I’d believed him.

Maybe Auden was right, and it had been easier that way.

“I don’t know how to forgive you,” I said.

“I’m not asking you to.”

“Do you forgive me?” I asked.

“No.”

I didn’t say anything. The walls felt closer than before. It was wrong, lying here with him. We didn’t belong like this; we didn’t fit anymore.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

“Because you’re right. I helped start this.”

“Because you believed in it,” I pointed out. “You just said that. You thought the mechs were evil, soulless parasites. And you meant it, remember?”

“I remember what I used to think of you,” Auden said. “Before the download. When you were just one of them, and I was…”

The weird loser with the antique watch, the ragged backpack, and the nutcase conspiracy theories. The nobody.

“I thought you were useless,” he said. “Not to mention brainless. I told myself you were nothing but a…”

“Bitch?”

“Pretty much.”

“You were probably right.”

“I wasn’t,” he said. “I believed it. I was so certain—that’s what I told myself, but that didn’t make it true.”

Auden was the one, the only one, who’d been sure that I was the same download as I was before. I didn’t know how to explain that it wasn’t true. That the person he’d come to know, the friend he’d had, before everything had fallen apart, wasn’t the same person as the blond bitch who’d cheered on the Neanderthals when they leaped on their prey.

“What happened to your glasses?” I asked instead.

“What?”

“Your glasses.” Auden had been the only person in our school, the only person in our world, really—that is, the world of people who counted—who was born as a natural. Life-threatening imperfections were corrected in the womb, but everything else was left as it was, thanks to his mother’s crazed Faither beliefs. He’d rejected the beliefs but kept the nearsightedness, kept the glasses—right up to the moment when he’d followed in her zealot footsteps. The moment that he’d declared artificial to be evil and natural to be divine. It had always seemed a strange time to let himself be artificially perfected, to bring himself that much closer to the boundary between org and machine. And without the glasses he seemed like someone else.

“I finally got it,” he said. “What an insult it was. Ignoring the defect when I could fix it so easily.”

“An insult to who?”

“To anyone who couldn’t be fixed. I thought I was the only one being real. But I was playing pretend. So I got my eyes fixed. No more glasses.”

“Oh.”

“Surprised?”

“I guess I thought it had something to do with… your mom.” I didn’t know if I was allowed to bring her up. “I always thought you kept the glasses because they were, like, some kind of reminder.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But I didn’t really need that anymore, did I? Once I teamed up with the Faithers.” He snorted. “She would have been so proud.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“She was crazy,” he said. “It runs in the family, remember?”

“Auden—”

“I don’t think we should talk anymore,” he said.

Long hours in the dark. Silence. The sound of the waves lapping at the boat. The engine roar. The bouncing and swaying as the boat cut through the water. Beneath the white noise, almost my imagination, floating in the dark: “Lia. I am sorry.”

I don’t know how long I waited to answer.

But I finally did.

“Me too.”

After five hours at sea, nine hours in the box, the engines fell silent. The boat stopped moving. We had arrived.

We waited, though it was torture, as our container was carried out of its storage room and then connected to something that swung us into the air, where we dangled for an eternity, picturing the waves crashing below, and then we waited again, tensed, for the lid of the container to swing open at any moment, as if there were anything we could do if we reemerged into a world swarming with armed guards, all of them aiming at us.

Now, again, it was a matter of trusting Ben to follow through on his promise, with only his life as collateral. We were set down somewhere, and the walls of the crate were thin enough to make clear that we weren’t alone. The murmur of voices overlapped with the ViM relay in my earpiece. Zo and Ben were standing just above us—along with everyone else.

“Why don’t you all get started with the servers,” Ben said. “I just wanted to do one last inventory check, make sure everything got on board intact.”

I cringed. It wasn’t the most subtle attempt. But then, I didn’t know if I could have done any better, especially with a gun to my head—or in this case, in it.

“You got it, boss,” a man said.

“We’ll meet you there,” another one added. “We’ve got some business up in the COMCEN.”

“What business?” Ben asked.

“That’s classified.”

“This is my team,” Ben said. “Nothing’s classified from me.”

“This just came in from BioMax.”

“And?”

“And—come on, man, don’t embarrass yourself in front of your kid. This won’t take long. We’ll meet you at the servers.”

“You asking me, or telling me?” Ben said.

“What do you think?”

Ben didn’t respond.

No one spoke for several moments.

“You know what they’re doing up there?” Kiri said. I assumed the other techs—at least the defiant ones—had left.

“I’d think that would be obvious.”

“Me neither,” Kiri said. “But I have some guesses. Nothing good. This corp…”

“What?”

“How long have you worked for them, Ben?”

“Twenty years, almost. You?”

“Five. But after the things I’ve heard…”

“What?”

“I’m out. After we fix this screwup, I’m getting out. And maybe you should think about it too.”

“What exactly have you heard, Kiri?”

“Let’s just say if I were you, I wouldn’t ask them any questions when they come down from the COMCEN. Probably best we don’t know the answers.” Her voice brightened abruptly. “Come on, Halley, no need to stick around here while your dad counts processors. Why don’t you come with me? I can show you the server room. Thrilling stuff.”

Zo hesitated. “Actually, I should probably just stick with my dad.”

Kiri laughed. “What kind of teenager are you? Come on, let’s see if we can get into some trouble.”

Think of something, I willed Zo, but there was nothing left for Zo to say, and she knew it. “Okay. Sure.”

Their footsteps retreated from the crate. They were gone.

Moments later Ben’s signal came: three knocks. Time to trust him, one last time. I eased open the top of the crate and peered out. We were in a shadowy storage hold, boxes and crates strewn across a space wide enough to contain the entire Kahn house. And aside from Ben we were alone.

Auden climbed out gently, stretching his cramped limbs. But I was up and in Ben’s face in seconds. “You just let my sister wander off? Alone?”

“What was I supposed to do?” Ben asked.

“Stop them! Keep her safe.”

And then Jude was behind me, pulling me away, calming me down, reminding me that there was nothing to be done; he’d been listening to the same conversation I had, and Zo had played along, just as she should have. Kiri was harmless; Zo was safe.

“Get it together,” he said, giving me a rough shake.

I shrugged him off. “I’m together.”

Zo was safe with Kiri, I told myself. Probably. I could still hear them through my earpiece, Kiri prattling on about server architecture and the ins and outs of spin, Zo offering the occasional monosyllabic grunt, as they drew further and further out of my reach.

“So, you believe us now?” Jude asked Ben. “Or you want to tell me your precious corp hasn’t turned shady on you?”

Ben looked shell-shocked.

“I got you on board,” he said finally. “Now what?”

Jude was still holding the gun. “You heard them,” he said—not to Ben, but to us. “Something’s happening at the COMCEN, whatever that is.”

“Communications center,” Auden said. He’d proved himself an expert on server farms, or as much of an expert as anyone could be—a convenient holdover from his conspiracy-theorist days. “Probably up by the bridge.”

“Right,” Jude said. “That. So we find it. We stop them.”

They were right. It made sense. Phase three was real, and it was about to happen here, above us, unless we acted.

“You go,” I said.

Jude wheeled on me. “What?”

“You follow the techs,” I told him. “I’m going after Zo.”

“I can check on your sister,” Ben said.

I didn’t know why he’d want to be anywhere near her, unless he’d figured out that the explosive was a fake. Either way, even if he’d proved himself to be as much of a dupe as I’d suspected, I couldn’t trust him with this.

“We don’t know what’s happening up there,” I told Jude. “It could just be a coincidence. You follow the techs, I’ll go to the server room, check things out there, and if everything’s good, I can grab Zo and we can meet you.”

“And if it’s not good?” Jude said. “What are you going to do then?”

“I…”

“Take the gun,” he said.

“What?” I’d been expecting more argument. “No.”

“You’re right. We should split up. We only have one weapon. So if you’re going to insist on going off on your own, you take it.”

“I can go with Lia,” Auden suggested.

“No,” Jude and I said together.

“The important thing is stopping phase three,” I said. “That’s where you need to be.”

Maybe that’s where I needed to be too. Maybe it was selfish to go after Zo instead—whatever I said, I didn’t actually believe there was any reason to check out the server room, not after what we’d heard. But I couldn’t let her disappear into the ship without any backup. If something went wrong, she expected me to be there. I’d let her believe I would be. If Jude and Auden went after the techs at the COMCEN and they managed to sound some kind of alarm, the ship would be crawling with security, and Zo would, most likely, be screwed. Right now, with any luck, the worst threat she faced would be Kiri boring her to death with a history of BioMax. In which case I’d find a way to get her alone, and we’d go above deck together. Who knew, maybe Kiri could even be an asset. If not, I’d deal.

But I wasn’t going to let Jude and Auden risk everything out of some misplaced sense of chivalry. As I suspected Zo would be quick to point out, one of us being stupid was more than enough.

“I’ll go with Lia,” Ben said.

“And why would she want that?” Jude said.

“She won’t get into the server room without my help. And without me, I highly doubt if she’ll be able to figure out if anything’s not as it’s supposed to be.”

“Right,” Jude snarled. “And with you she’s got an excellent probability of being turned in to the first security team you pass.”

“Ben comes with me,” I said.

“You trust him?” Auden asked incredulously.

“We should lock him in a crate,” Jude said. “Just to be safe.”

“He’s right,” I said. “He can get me to the servers.”

“And he’ll do that because he’s so eager to help us? Much less get up close and personal again with the girl who can turn his pretty face into modern art?”

“I got you on the ship,” Ben said. “You’re going to get caught eventually—I don’t need to do anything to speed that along. And in the meantime I’m as curious as you are about what the corp is doing. So I’ll keep my mouth shut, and I’ll get Lia to the servers, and, well, if you don’t want to take me up on it, that’s your choice. Doesn’t seem like you’ve got a lot of options right now.”

He was sounding like himself again, which was almost as infuriating as it was comforting.

“Let’s go,” I said. “We’ll come find you in twenty minutes.”

Jude tucked the gun into his waistband. “If we’re wrong, and something’s happening in the server room, or if you need me—”

“I’ll call.”

“Be careful,” Auden said.

“You too.”

Jude grabbed my hand. “We can do this.”

It sounded too much like a question.

“We can do this,” I echoed him, no doubt in my voice.

Jude shook his head, and smiled.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing.”

“Let me guess, you’re wondering how to admit, without sounding like an idiot, that all this time you were totally wrong about me.”

He was still holding on. “Actually, I’m thinking—as usual—I was right.”

Ben led me through endless corridors punctuated by locked doors and ID panels, the walls striped with logos making it clear that the mid-decks were filled with server farms for every major corp. Without him I would have been wandering blindly through what seemed like miles of hallway, searching for BioMax; with him I had only his word that he was taking me to the right place. The ship was larger than any building I’d ever been in, and aside from the almost imperceptible thrum of the engines, several decks down, it was hard to imagine we were actually moving through the water. Its size did offer us one advantage: It felt like a ghost town. I caught glimpses of security guards, from a distance, but we made it much of the way without catching their attention.

It had to happen eventually: Footsteps approached. Ben grabbed my wrist and dragged me down the corridor, jiggling door handles while he went until one gave. He shoved me inside.

I waited in the dark, ear pressed against the wall, fists balled, ready to fight.

“BioMax,” I heard Ben say. “Here’s my ID.”

There was a mumbled response.

“Headed to the server room now, sir,” Ben said loudly. “Just getting my bearings. Easy to get lost here.”

Another mumbled response, and then they both laughed. A moment later the door opened, letting in a shaft of light. Ben’s face appeared in the crack. “Clear,” he said. “Let’s go. Fast.”

Zo’s ViM relay had gone dead, but I told myself not to worry. No doubt all the computer equipment was just jamming the signal. Not to mention the fact that we were in the middle of the Atlantic in a high-security zone; no reason to think that wouldn’t interfere with network communications. Still, I started moving faster. We wound down long, featureless corridors, turning corners seemingly at random, but Ben seemed confident he knew where we were going, and I was starting to trust that, if nothing else, he was determined to get us to the server room intact. Both of us. It was clear I never would have found my way here without him. And when we reached the giant steel door with the BioMax logo painted across it, I knew that without Ben, there was no way I would have been able to break my way in.

“Why are you helping me?” I asked quietly.

He triggered the locking mechanism and heaved the door open, gesturing me inside. “Keep out of sight. I’ll check on Zo.”

The room was loud and cold. Computer servers were lined up like dominos from wall to wall. I didn’t know whether it was the refrigeration system or the servers themselves, but there was a low, constant thrum, a vibration. It almost felt like I was shaking.

Ben swept down the central aisle, his eyes pinned on the numbers marking each row. It was a room built for hide-and-seek, and I tucked myself into one of the narrow alleys between server rows, padding softly down the aisle as I shadowed Ben through the room. He threaded through the rows and I slipped behind him, always keeping the thick, towering computers between us, though he never turned back to look. Finally, he stopped. One row away, so did I.

Kiri was waiting for him, with two BioMax techs. One had a hand clamped around Zo’s wrist.

“Learn anything interesting?” Ben asked his “daughter.”

“She didn’t,” Kiri said. “But I think it’s safe to say that I did.”

Ben’s expression didn’t give anything away. “Problem?” he asked mildly.

“You tell me.” I’d seen Kiri Napoor in a variety of moods—conciliatory, wheedling, triumphant, frustrated, distraught—but I’d never seen her like this. There was no mood, no emotion, just: cold. “Why am I standing here with Lia Kahn’s little sister? And why are you trying to pass her off as your daughter?”

I cursed myself for not taking Jude up on his offer. If I had the gun, I would… what? Burst out from behind the servers, guns blazing, shooting wildly? Save the day?

Ben sighed. “You knew.”

“Of course I knew.” Kiri scowled. “It’s my job to know. I’ve never understood why you thought so little of me. So you want to tell me what she’s doing here?”

The situation could still be salvaged, I told myself. As long as no one panicked.

“Well?” Kiri pressed, when Ben didn’t answer.

“What is that?” he said, turning his attention to a small pile of equipment and mess of wiring at the base of the server bank.

“You’re asking me questions?”

“You’re just here to observe,” Ben said. “So what are you hooking up?”

“What’s she doing here?”

“Is that an uplink device?” Ben said, approaching it. Kiri blocked his path. “Zo’s here as a favor to a friend,” Ben said. “Nothing to worry about.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Kiri said. And with the same jaunty grin she’d always given me when talking me into yet another tiresome BioMax PR chore, she pulled out a gun.

The two BioMax techs did the same.

Zo yanked her arm out of the tech’s grasp. She brandished the remote over her head. “Don’t!” she shouted. “If I press this button, he blows up.”

Kiri turned to Ben, eyebrows arching toward her forehead. “Is that true?”

“Afraid so.”

“A hostage,” Kiri said to Zo. “Impressive. And now everything makes sense. I can see why he’d do whatever you said.”

“Exactly,” Zo said. Her voice was shaking, but her hands weren’t.

If I showed myself now, would I make things better or worse?

“It’s an untenable situation,” Kiri said. “We’ll have to fix that.”

She raised the gun.

Zo screamed.

A spot of red bloomed on Ben’s forehead, and he dropped backward, arms splayed, eyes open. Dead.

I was halfway out of my hiding place—halfway to Zo—when I realized that she was still on her feet, unharmed.

I stopped.

I hid.

It was the smart move; we were outnumbered, and throwing myself at two men with guns trained on my sister could only make things worse. If Kiri had intended to shoot her, she would have done it already. Probably. Still, I felt like a coward. And I hated myself for it.

Ben was dead.

Ben had kept his mouth shut about me, about Jude and Auden. He’d picked a side, our side. And now he was dead.

Without taking my eyes off my sister, I reached for my ViM. If I could get through to Jude, if I could call in a rescue—

“Where are the rest of them?” Kiri asked Zo.

“The rest of who?” She was staring at Ben, eyes wide and watery.

“You’re not here alone.”

Just tell her, I thought.

Or maybe, Don’t tell her. Information was leverage, Riley had once reminded us. Secrets were power. If Kiri got what she wanted out of Zo, what need would there be to keep her alive?

On the other hand, if I showed myself, gave Kiri what she really wanted, maybe she’d just let Zo walk away.

“It’s just me,” Zo said, and I could tell she was trying to regain some semblance of spunk. It wasn’t working. “Sorry to disappoint.”

Something buzzed at Kiri’s waist. She lifted her ViM to her ear and nodded. “Good. Bring them in.” Then she turned back to Zo, with that eerily familiar smile. “I see you’re just as big a liar as your sister.”

I didn’t have to call Jude. He was here, with Auden by his side, both of them frog-marched into the room by four BioMax techs, techs carrying guns—a real one for Auden, a pulse one for Jude, both of them deadly.

“Any problems?” Kiri asked.

“Not a one,” the tallest one said. “They fell for it all the way.”

“Good job.” She waved a hand toward the nearest wall. “Put them over there.”

The techs shoved them into the wall, along with Zo, lining them up, their hands out at their sides, fingers outstretched, palms empty, nothing up their sleeves, so to speak. Nothing left to stop this… except me.

“So where is she?” Kiri asked.

“Who?” That was Jude, eyes wide, expression clueless. Unconvincing.

Kiri just laughed. “I know she’s here, somewhere, lurking about.” She raised her voice. “Are you here, Lia?” she shouted. “Hiding? Typical. Most people would want to help their friends—their sister. But not you, Lia, right? Nothing changes. All that matters is you.”

“How long have you been talking to yourself?” Jude asked. “You may want to see someone about that.”

Kiri ignored him, and gestured to the two techs who’d been there with her the whole time. “What are you staring at? Get back to work.”

They put their weapons away and knelt at the base of the nearest server bank, where they began fiddling with a web of wires spiraling out of the exposed circuitry. They were hooking up a device and clipping it to the wires.

Seven of them. Three of us, backs against the wall.

And then there was me. Hiding. Waiting. Watching.

In other words, doing nothing.

“That’s an uplink jack,” Auden said suddenly, loudly—far more loudly than he needed to, unless he was hoping to be heard by someone who might be all the way across the room, invisible. “I’ve seen one of those before.”

Ben had pointed it out too—just as loudly.

“Smart kid,” Kiri said, sounding distinctly unimpressed.

“So you’re uploading something into the network?”

I flashed on the data banks we’d discovered in the BioMax basement, the neural patterns they had filed away for a rainy day, for whatever machine they deemed ready for an obedient human brain to guide its movements, its actions at the beck and call of BioMax, mechanical slaves.

What would happen if they uploaded one of those obedient cybernetic slaves to the network? How much would they control? Maybe the AI, the war machines, had all just been practice—maybe BioMax wanted more than money. Maybe they wanted everything.

Kiri ignored Auden and addressed the techs. “How close are we?”

“Five minutes,” one of them said, voice slightly wobbly. “If it works.”

“It better work.” Kiri jerked her head at the two techs guarding Zo. “Make yourself helpful,” she snapped. “Go see if you can’t hunt down their little friend. I know she’s on board.”

They shifted nervously, glancing at each other, but neither moved. One mumbled something under his breath.

“What’s that?” Kiri glared.

“Bad numbers if we go,” he muttered. “Three of them, two of us—”

“They’re children.” She rolled her eyes. “Fine. Kill the defective and the girl, but save the skinner. If this doesn’t work, we might need him.”

“To upload?” Auden said, nearly shouting.

Not because he was afraid. Not because he was panicking.

Because he was talking to me.

“We can’t use him,” one of the techs said. “If we upload an intact one, it’s possible—”

“Who said he’d be intact?” Kiri smiled. “Now, take care of it.”

Kill the defective and the girl.

Two men raised two guns. Kiri watched, waited. Still smiled. And it was like she was smiling right at me, like she knew I was there and was taunting me, daring me to show myself, to do something stupid, throw myself at her, at Zo, at the weapons, throw everything away, like she couldn’t wait for it to happen, and she couldn’t wait to watch.

Two men, two guns. But there were no guns guarding the uplink device. Only two techs, who were barely my size, who had dropped what they were doing and were frozen, watching Kiri, watching the guns, watching death about to happen.

This is a dumb idea, I thought, but there was no time to think.

I ran.

I ran toward the server, toward the uplink jack, toward the techs, who scattered as I barreled toward them, and I lunged for the uplinker, fumbling with the familiar wires and switches, aiming the wireless input jack at my pupil, only one chance to get this right, to flip the switch, to do something, even if the triggers compressed and the guns fired and physics took over. I couldn’t stop Kiri. I couldn’t stop bullets. But maybe I could stop them from uploading whatever they were so desperate to upload—by uploading myself first. Maybe it would only stop them for a moment, I couldn’t know. But a moment might be enough to save Zo.

Kiri’s thugs flickered at the edge of my vision, and as I fumbled with the device—urging myself faster, faster—I saw them whirling around, and then there was an explosion in my ears, and suddenly the world shifted. I didn’t understand why the ceiling was so far away, why I was on the ground, why I couldn’t move, why the explosions were still firing, but quieter now, like sharp popping noises, distant bombs bursting in air and, with each of them, pain, bursting in me. Legs, chest, neck, more, until there was no telling one from another; the pain radiated everywhere, sharp and sweet, and in the rush I could believe that my body was a body, that I was alive.

The upload worked, I thought.

I will survive.

But it didn’t work that way. The memories would survive. The pattern would survive. But I wasn’t in the uplink, and I wasn’t in the servers. I was on the ground. I was bleeding a viscous green fluid and firing sparks and watching uselessly as my friends took advantage of the distraction and struggled for their lives. I was stuck, as I was always stuck, in this body that didn’t belong to me, that wasn’t me; that’s what Jude had taught us, that’s what I was supposed to believe—I was my mind, I was my memories.

But my mind, my memories, were locked inside the head, and the head was bleeding.

The eyes were bleeding, fluid clouding the artificial irises, and Kiri appeared before me tinged with muddy blue, the pulse gun she raised little more than a black smear. I didn’t hear what she said. I saw Zo open her mouth, but couldn’t hear her scream.

This is not my body.

This is not me.

This is not—