Just us. Not machines built by human hands, not minds whirring with data. Not eyes that didn’t blink or hearts that didn’t beat. Not bodies that didn’t move the way bodies were supposed to move, not skin that didn’t feel the way skin was supposed to feel. Not something ugly, not something wrong.
Just him, his arms, strong. His skin, soft. His lips, cold. His eyes on my body, not turning away.
Just me, folded up in his arms. The sensation of his hands, the pressure, the temperature, the properties of closeness, the elements of touch, not like it used to be—not like it mattered.
Not pain, not passion, not abandon. Just a promise.
Just us.
NO ONE DIES
“One way or another, we would always be fine.”
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,” I VM’d Jude and Riley. They pressed themselves against the building, and I retreated farther into the shadow of the fuselage, and we waited. That was the plan: If anyone came alone, without reinforcements, it was most likely they were there for the lab, not for us, and we would let them pass. The snow was working to our advantage—the explosives Riley and Jude had laid were already covered by a thin layer of powder, and the whirling flakes made it difficult to see anything clearly.
But I recognized his limp.
“It’s Auden,” I VM’d.
“Stick to the plan,” Jude cautioned me. “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?” Jude. I ignored him.
“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,” I VM’d. And suddenly I saw it all clearly, how we could all win our happy ending. “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.
“R
iley,” I VM’d. “Just let it go. Please.” He tucked the pulsegun into his pocket and backed away, returning to my side. Auden kept looking back and forth between us, a familiar expression on his face—embittered satisfaction at solving a puzzle with the answer he’d been expecting, even if it was one he’d hoped against.
“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.”