Erasing Time (33 page)

“Friction?” Sheridan supplied.

“Yes. Echo shouldn’t have been jealous. He had enough charm to spin with anyone he wanted. But you see, Joseph was the one the caretakers always favored. He was the son who Jeth talked to the most, so it was important to Echo that he be the one the girls liked best.”

Echo shook his head, his eyes so cold they seemed brittle. “Allana was good at playing the brothers on different sides. She knew how to push them apart from each other and pull them toward her. It was entertainment to her—manipulating other people’s lives.”

Echo reached the wall of the room and paced back the other way, unable to stand still. “One day Allana chose between the brothers, and she chose Joseph. The problem was that Joseph was still too loyal to Echo. He didn’t want to hurt his brother. Joseph knew Allana meant too much to Echo, so he told her no.”

Echo’s voice was calm, barely raised, but there was a churning intensity in his eyes. “Allana told Joseph that he didn’t really know Echo, and Joseph laughed because he knew his brother better than anyone. He could
be
Echo when he wanted. The more Allana tried to convince Joseph, the more he laughed. And then she told him that Echo was part of the Dakine.

“She knew because she had recruited him.

“Of course, Joseph didn’t believe her. He went straight to Echo and confronted him.” Echo paused for a moment. “No, that isn’t right. Joseph did believe her. He went to Echo not to confirm the story, but to yell at him. He kept saying, ‘How could you be so stupid? How could you align yourself with the Dakine? Don’t you know what you’ve done?’”

The pain on Echo’s face grew as he spoke. Sheridan walked to him, wishing she could take the hurt from him, and feeling helpless because she couldn’t. “I’m sure Joseph didn’t mean it.”

“Oh, Joseph meant it.” Echo turned away from her. “Echo didn’t defend himself. He couldn’t admit that what Allana said was true, or reveal his membership to anyone who wasn’t in the organization. It’s against Dakine rules.

“So when Echo went to the Dakine base that night, he was furious at Allana. Furious because she’d chosen Joseph, and furious she’d told Joseph about him. To reveal your own membership is forbidden; to reveal someone else’s, to put them in danger that way, is to break the first Dakine law.

“I’ve thought about it over and over again, and I’m still not sure why Echo told his superiors what Allana had done. If only he had put away his anger and pride, if only he’d considered the consequences of what he was doing—but he never realized how dangerous the Dakine were. He only thought of punishing Allana, not about endangering her or his brother.”

Echo grimaced and rubbed absently at the crescent moon on his face. “I guess that’s a fault both the brothers had: acting in anger. If only Joseph hadn’t confronted Echo that way, yelling about his stupidity. So many ifs. So many trips in the wrong direction.”

Echo’s jaw tightened. It hurt him to say the next words. “That night Lobo decided the punishment. Allana was to be executed for revealing a Dakine membership, and Joseph was to die for hearing it.

“Echo never imagined such a harsh sentence—not for Allana, and certainly not for Joseph—but once a sentence is given, nothing can reverse it. With tracking crystals, you can’t hide from the assassins. Only those in the government who warrant bodyguards are safe from the Dakine. For anyone else with a death decree, it’s just a question of when the assassins will find you vulnerable. All Echo could do was beg for time to say good-bye to his brother. They granted him that, because as you heard Lobo say, the Dakine are fond of their families. So Echo went to see Joseph.”

Echo’s voice grew heavy and uneven, and then he stopped talking altogether.

The tears Sheridan had pushed away earlier spilled onto her cheeks. “You don’t have to say any more.”

Echo shook his head with resignation. “I have to finish it. I can’t let you think that Echo didn’t care about his brother.” His gaze slid away from Sheridan, shifting back into his memories. “Echo told Joseph he wanted to switch places with him for the evening. Joseph didn’t know what Echo had planned, but he went along with it because he felt bad about their fight. It wasn’t until after they had reversed their hair and face colors that Echo told Joseph the switch needed to be permanent. He told Joseph what he’d done, and what the Dakine had ordered.”

Echo’s voice dropped until it was hardly more than a whisper. “Joseph didn’t want to let his brother die in his place. There was nothing he could do, though. Echo stood there writing down every Dakine fact he could think of—locations, passwords, symbols, everything he’d computigated for the organization—all to help Joseph play the part of Echo. Joseph kept refusing, but Echo told him he wasn’t about to let Joseph pay for his stupidity. Echo wouldn’t live with that debt in his heart. Either they would both die, or only Echo would die, and Joseph needed to think about Jeth.”

He let out a shuddering breath, as though the story had exhausted him. “So I thought about Jeth, and I let my brother die in my place. And I’m still not sure I did the right thing.”

Sheridan put her hand to her lips. “You’re Joseph.”

“I am, and I’m not. I died with my brother on that day. I can’t ever be who I was before.”

Sheridan leaned over and put her arms around him, holding him tightly. Joseph. He was Joseph, and he’d carried the staggering weight of his brother’s death. She wanted to speak but found her voice was caught behind a tight ball of sorrow in her throat. Such things shouldn’t happen. They just shouldn’t.

Joseph put his arms loosely around her and rested his cheek against her head. “Now do you trust me? Now do you understand why I have to get out of the city before the Dakine discover what’s happened?”

“Yes.”

“But the tracking crystals,” Taylor said, still sitting on her chair. “Why doesn’t your crystal reveal who you really are?”

Joseph lifted his head, keeping his arms around Sheridan. “The crystals work with a person’s DNA. Identical twins have the same DNA. Supposedly the scientists did something to the crystals to make them work for twins, but whoever was in charge of that project must have decided it would be easier to fix the data than the problem. I’m sure he got paid the same, and what few twins there are in the city never brought the matter to the government’s attention. Echo and I learned early that if our caretakers were trying to track one of us, the tracker picked up whichever one of us was closer. After Echo died, I made sure I was closest to the records building, so it was my crystal that the government turned off and not his.”

“Which is why when someone tracks you, you show up at the cemetery,” Sheridan said. “Echo’s crystal is the one that’s still on.”

Joseph nodded. “I answered my comlink as much as possible so that no one needed to track me. I spliced into the life bank and the car systems’ computer logs to make them keep my account open. Sooner or later someone would have noticed that a dead person was eating three meals a day. I was planning to leave the city before I was caught. Although now …” He didn’t finish the sentence, but his meaning was there anyway.
Now that everyone is looking for us, now that we’re locked in a Dakine room, now that things are hopeless, it doesn’t matter.

Joseph turned away from Sheridan’s embrace and walked across the room. He suddenly wished he hadn’t told the truth. As long as he had pretended to be Echo, it was almost as if Echo hadn’t really died. Now that he had admitted to being Joseph, in one short moment Echo had disappeared entirely. No, not disappeared. The memory of that day stayed with Joseph. Always. Like a data loop in his mind. A horrible memory, and yet somehow the most vivid one of Echo that Joseph could recall. Horrible and comforting. He clung to it.

Joseph tried to clear his mind from the past and concentrate on this room, on this problem. He glanced back at the painting behind the desk. The Dakine symbol stuck out like a giant snake wrapping itself around the rest of the lines in the picture.

How often had he seen that symbol before he switched places and not realized what it was? Now he saw it everywhere. In stores. In offices. On the clothing people wore.

He pulled his gaze back to Sheridan. She would be the hardest to convince. “We need a plan. When the boss comes, I’ll pretend to be angry with him. I’ll claim his organization hasn’t properly revealed itself to mine. We’ve spent weeks closing in on the DW, and all of that could have been avoided if they’d followed the correct protocol. They’ll ask us to swear an oath that we’re Dakine and not DW. I’ll need to teach it to you—”

“No,” Sheridan said flatly. “I won’t pretend to be Dakine. I can’t deny my beliefs in the hope that it will buy me another chance at freedom.”

I won’t pretend to be Dakine
. Funny, he’d said those same words once. And then he’d seen reason. She would too. “Sheridan, the Dakine don’t let people out of their bases who aren’t Dakine. They’ll kill us all.”

Her shoulders sagged. “You can pretend to be Dakine if you want. I’ll be the prisoner you captured while setting your trap.”

“Sheridan, no.” There was a sharpness to his voice he hadn’t intended. “No,” he said again.

“Haven’t you ever believed in something?” She sat down tiredly in the chair next to Taylor’s. “You said that when your brother died, a part of you died too. If I denied my beliefs, a part of me would die.”

Joseph sent Taylor a pleading look. “Convince her to be reasonable. She’ll listen to you.”

Taylor looked up at the ceiling, considering the matter. “Have you ever thought about all the people throughout history who died for their beliefs? After the Reformation, life for Protestants in some parts of Europe became so difficult that it was safer to get into boats and sail across the ocean to America than it was to stay in Europe. And the Jews during the Holocaust, the early Christians … so many more in so many countries. How did they do it? How were they that strong?”

Taylor’s gaze turned to Joseph, still deep in thought. “With every decision we make, we’re telling the world what we believe. Honesty or expediency? Work or play? Help a friend or help ourselves?” A hint of a smile crossed her lips, a plea for Joseph to understand. “I’ve already lost everything else. When it comes down to it, I don’t want to lose my character too. I won’t deny my beliefs either.”

Incredulous, Joseph stared at Taylor. Now, when he needed her to be logical, she’d become philosophical about human nature? Joseph threw up his hands in frustration. “For people who came from such a violent time, you don’t have a very well developed fear of death.”

“There are worse things than dying,” Sheridan said.

“Not many,” Joseph said.

Taylor shot a look at the door. “Being forced to make weapons for the government or the Dakine—that would be worse.”

Sheridan stood and crossed the room to Joseph. She took one of his hands in hers and caressed his fingers softly. “You can do whatever you want. We won’t blame you.”

He resisted the urge to grit his teeth. “I can do whatever I want? I can watch the execution, you mean. I’ve already done that once, and I don’t need a repeat here. You said if I told you the truth, you’d follow my instructions.”

Sheridan’s fingers were warm against his skin. “I can’t.”

He pulled his hand away from her and let out a low groan. “The last time I cared about a girl, my brother was killed. Now I take a spin with you, and we’ll probably all die. If I do come out of this, I’m completely giving up dating.”

She took a step toward him, reached for his hand again, but he turned away.

He expected her to become angry, to defend her position; instead her voice was as gentle as a lullaby. “I’m sorry.”

Her decision was final then. She was already planning her death, just like Echo had done. Joseph hadn’t been able to save his brother, and now as he stood here waiting for fate to reenter the room, he desperately tried to think of a way to save Sheridan and Taylor.

Before he could even begin dredging up ideas for a plan, the door slid open, and two men walked in.

Joseph surveyed the men quickly, assessing them in case he had to fight. The waiter with dark braids was followed by an older man. His gray hair was tied behind his head the way restaurant workers usually wore their hair, and his face looked worn, but there was an energy, a sense of power about him, that made him seem too vital to be very aged.

The waiter nodded in Joseph’s direction. “These are the customers I told you about.”

The boss sauntered toward them, scrutinizing each one of them so carefully, Joseph was sure his first question would be about the gray dirt on their shoes. Taylor and Sheridan both waited, statue still. Taylor, he noticed, was trembling, and trying to hide it by crossing her arms tightly across her chest.

“Who sent you here?” the boss asked.

“We came on our own,” Joseph said.

“Your requests for dinner were peculiar.”

“We’re peculiar people,” Joseph said. The answer earned him a raised eyebrow from the boss, though Joseph wasn’t sure why.

The boss walked around Joseph, eyeing the back of him. “Were you planning on meeting anyone for dinner?”

“No, and we want to leave now.”

The waiter crossed his arms, flexing massive muscles as he did. “Tell my boss who you planned to meet for dinner.”