“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 th
e 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?”