Anarchy Found (21 page)

It blew my mind and the depression hit me so hard. The realization that I was all alone in the world was just too much. I needed to get out. Escape. It was so easy to drop out of life like my mother did. So easy to give in to the sadness.

Then this job offer came and I saw a way forward. Maybe it was grasping at straws, or maybe I had some deep memory of what Cathedral City meant to me.

The school.

Lincoln lets out a soft snore and then turns over, releasing his tight hold on me.

I miss him immediately. Whatever bonds we formed as children, they are still there. Delicate, maybe. Thin strands of memories and emotion that have tried their best to be put to rest over the years. But still there.

I’d like to try with him. Strengthen those bonds. Find what we lost that winter night when we parted ways.

His cave is the perfect place to hide from the world and put it all back together. And I guess that’s what he’s been doing here. Hiding from life. Just like me and my life in the circus, and later the military.

I’d like to join him. I’d love nothing more than to stay here and never go outside again. It could be perfection. Lincoln and me and our little home in a cave filled with tools, and labs, and computers.

I wonder what he does down here. Does he have a job? I bet he’s some kind of engineer or mechanic. And what’s he hiding with those gloves? I look over at the computer in the corner of the room and study the screen. The desktop has no icons on it and the background is a picture of glowing circuits.

I have a sudden urge to snoop, but it’s obvious the screen’s on lock, so why bother.

No. No snooping. I want Lincoln to tell me things in his own time, in his own way. But I am dying of thirst right now and I have to pee. So I ease myself out of the bed and feel around in the darkness until I come up with my panties. I pull them on and go searching for my shirt, but all I find is Lincoln’s. It will have to do for now, so I shrug on his tee and smother myself in his scent.

I tiptoe towards a crack of light coming from under a door and, after a few seconds of searching, find a handle and pull it open.

The light is not bright, but I squint my eyes after the black of his room. The Batcave is humming with computers and the light reflected off the wall-sized jellyfish aquarium is throwing a wave pattern over everything. That giant monitor on the wall where he was talking to Case Reider is grayed out now. But a lot of other things are going on. The hologram of a bike in progress is still hovering over a table and robots scurry around it, busily working as their metal appendages whir with motion.

What does he do here? It sure looks like he’s a bike builder. I walk forward a few paces and then spy an expansive hallway I missed on the first trip. The far left side of the cave is a huge glass wall, and on other side are rooms. One is filled with tanks that hold luminescent jellyfish, smaller versions of the one in the main tank. They flicker rainbow colors in the darkness and I’m mesmerized by their weightless dance in the water.

The main tank is giant, something you’d find in a city aquarium. And the jellyfish are huge. They seem like decorations or pets. I walk forward to get a better look at the new tank room. These smaller versions look like specimens when you take in the equipment surrounding them. Microscopes and refrigerators.

I walk on after a few moments and the next room looks like an engineering lab with various stationary robot arms busy working on another bike.

There’s more to see farther down a slender hallway and another glass-walled room. But when I walk forward to peer inside, this lab is totally different. There’s some kind of operating table in the center with the kind of light above it that you’d see in surgery. The next room has white mice in small cages stacked to the ceiling. More computers, of course. If he’s a mechanic, he’s a very high-tech one. But mice? And microscopes? And what’s with the room filled with jellyfish?

“What are you doing?” I whirl around and find that holographic woman behind me, her transparent hands on her hips like she’s annoyed.

“Just looking for a bathroom,” I say back. “And I’m thirsty.”

“I think we might have a problem.”

I take a step back. Her tone is harsh and even though I know she’s made up of lights, she scares me. “W-w-what kind of problem?”

“I didn’t know about the inhibitor.” She scowls and I wonder just how much power this thing has. “It creates a powerful advantage in your favor. I might have made a mistake.”

“I don’t… I don’t understand.” I’m not sure I should talk to this computer. What if she’s got something against me? What if she resents the fact that I’m here? It’s clear that Lincoln doesn’t bring people down here. She’s probably wondering about our past. “I don’t really know what that means,” I say. “You’re Sheila, right?”

“Correct,” she says, walking around me in a circle, like she’s sizing me up. Trying to figure out if she can take me in a fight. “What if you ever want to hurt him?”

Shit. She is not going to let it go. And she scares me. I don’t think this technology even exists. I have no frame of reference for what she might be capable of. “I don’t—I don’t understand it all, I’m sorry. I just need to pee.”

“Do you know what he is? What he does?”

“No,” I say truthfully. The concept of Alpha was never explained to me. And an eight-year-old does not need to know such things, even if she’s a pawn in the game. The only reason to use a small girl as part of some secret plan is to make her cooperate without having to explain. “But I’m interested,” I say, hoping that will make this thing back down, or at the very least, fill me in a little.

“So you can arrest him?”

“Do I have a reason to arrest him?” I know he’s involved in those murders, but I don’t know the how or the why. He was not on the security footage.

“If you did, would you? Or would you help him? Would you institutionalize him like your mother?”

“What? How the fuck do you know about—”

“I’m a computer, Detective. A very powerful computer.” She seems to grow bigger in that moment. Taller, wider, and maybe even more substantial. The light that makes up her body becomes dense, less transparent. And she seems more solid than she did a moment ago. “I have access to every database on Earth.”

She terrifies me. “That’s impossible,” I say boldly.

“Is it?”

“No one has that much power. There are firewalls and… stuff. I’m not very technical, but people take precautions. They don’t just let… clandestine programs wander in and take their information.”

“Is that what you think I am? A clandestine program?”

“I have no idea what you are.”

“You think I can’t get by a firewall, Molly Masters? You think I’m what? Some ordinary hologram? Because you’ve so seen so many of those, right?”

“Jesus, I don’t know. What are you asking?”

“Lincoln is not what you think. He’s not your Alpha anymore, Molly. He’s mine.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. What, are you jealous?” I laugh. “I’m not having this conversation with a computer. You can’t—”

“I might have made a mistake by encouraging him to see you again. You have no idea what’s happening here. And I don’t want you coming in and misunderstanding.”

“Then what is he?” I place my hands on my hips, ready to fight it out with this thing about who knows Lincoln better.

Sheila continues to circle me like prey. And even though I know my hand would slip right through her lightshow of a body, she’s intimidating. “What special power did the Prodigy School give you, Molly?”

“Special power? I don’t have a special power. I was used, Sheila. I was a pawn to try to keep Lincoln from disobeying. It’s not my fault I have that effect on him. I didn’t ask for any of this. I just wanted him to be my friend.”

“That can’t be all. What you see is not what you get with Lincoln, Case, or Thomas. So why should it be that way with you?”

“Oh, please.” I snort. “What’s
his
special power then?”

“He writes languages.”

“What? Languages?”

“Computer languages, Molly. Specifically, he writes computer languages that rewrite other computer languages. Do you know what a retrovirus does?”

“A retrovirus, like AIDS?”

“Yes, like that.”

“No, not really,” I admit. “I’m a cop, OK? I’m not a scientist.”

“A retrovirus inserts itself into your DNA and recodes. DNA is a code, Molly. And all codes can be rewritten. That’s what Lincoln’s computer languages do. They insert themselves into a system, rewrite the code, and then take it over without a trace.”

“So he’s a hacker. I didn’t know that, no. But it’s not surprising given the mad scientist cave we’re standing in.”

“He’s not a hacker, Molly, he’s a god.”

I snort.

“That,” she says, pointing to the operating room, “is his life’s work.”

I stare at her, utterly confused. What is she talking about? “I don’t see anything in there but a bed and a light, so you’ll have to give me more details.”

“That’s because he’s not in there at the moment. And he is his own greatest achievement.”

“Cryptic much? Is there a bathroom I can use? Or should I just go wake up Lincoln and tell him about our little conversation?”

“By all means, I’d love for you to go wake him up. Turn the lights on in there, while you’re at it. Ask him to take off those gloves too. See what he does then.”

Is she threatening me? Is she trying to make me think he’s going to hurt me? I sigh, not sure what to do, but I am curious about those gloves. So I ignore my bladder and walk back the way I came. I pass by a chair where his leather jacket is hanging off the back and spy that anarchy symbol on the shoulder.

It’s a sharp reminder that Sheila is right. I have no idea who Lincoln is. I have no idea what he’s been doing down here. And I have no idea what he’s been doing out there to those Blue Corp scientists.

I force myself to continue walking. My feet are freezing all of a sudden. The cold concrete floor sends a chill up my body as I head towards the open door, and when I get there, I stop just inside the darkness and feel around on the side of the rock wall for a switch.

“Where is the light?” I whisper.

“They’re voice-activated.” Sheila is directly behind me, but on the other side of the threshold. “So just say, ‘Lights on.’”

I swallow down the dread that is suddenly pulsating though me and force the words out. “Lights—”

They flicker on before I even finish.

What I see shocks my heart. My eyes scan the walls of the cave, taking it all in. And even though my heart wants to make it all disappear, my brain won’t let me and I fall against the side of the cave in shock.

Chapter Twenty-Nine - Lincoln

The lights flick on and I’m awake and out of bed instantaneously. “Molly?”

She’s pressed against the cave wall, her mouth agape, staring up at my ceiling, then panning her eyes across the walls. Sheila is standing behind her, behind the threshold she is not allowed to cross.

It takes me a minute to realize what just happened. Then I turn slowly, my eyes glued to the bedroom walls. I take it in. I take it in the way Molly would. And when I turn back to her, she’s looking up at me with tears in her eyes.

“W-w-what…” she stutters. “What are you?”

My shoulders hunch and a sigh escapes. She was going to find out. There’s no way to keep this a secret if I want her in my life.

Molly snatches a computer printout from the wall. “What,” she yells as she walks forward and thrusts the paper into my chest with all the force she can muster, “is this?” She looks down at my legs. The metal plates running down my outer thighs are in plain sight now. She never had the opportunity to touch me much last night. I was doing all the touching. “What the fuck is on your legs?”

But there is no good answer for any of these questions except the truth. “I’m a monster,” I say quietly, owning it out loud to someone I care about for the first time ever. “A monster, Molly. The monster they made me.”

She turns away, her hands covering her face. “You’re a killer.”

“Yes.”

“A serial killer.”

“Yes.”