Hammer Down: Children of the Undying: Book 2 (21 page)

That was a rare enough occurrence that Zel turned and quirked one eyebrow. “Trouble?”

Instead of answering right away, his friend inclined his head toward the door. Zel followed him out into the hallway, where Lorenzo leaned one shoulder against the wall. “How serious is it? This thing with you and Devi?”

Not a topic he wanted to discuss with Lorenzo any more than he did with his damn mother, but Lorenzo wasn’t likely to be asking out of personal interest. “It’s not nothing.”

“Since the thing with Drake, people have been talking.”

“If this is going where I think it’s going…”

Lorenzo looked away. “You won’t like it, and everyone who knows better thinks it’s bullshit, but you still need to hear it, because you need to know what’s going on.”

“Oh, I can imagine. Devi’s got me by the balls, and the only difference between me and Kate is that Devi hasn’t gotten caught yet.”

“That’s pretty much it,” he admitted. “Except that, for some reason, her decision to base her hauling operation here for the time being has made it worse.”

Not everyone would see the immediate benefits. The council had lists and demands to make Devi’s presence valuable. Most people had nothing but intangible murmurs of better times to come.

A mess, but nothing he could untangle now. “Once we get one or two hauls under our belts and
show
them what having a crew can mean, maybe they’ll settle down. Maybe not. Some of them are going to hate me no matter what happens.”

“Maybe.”

Tension knotted Zel’s shoulders. “You trying to tell me it’s moving past talk?”

Lorenzo met his gaze. “I’m saying you
might
have to deal with it. People aren’t going to trust that a crew of haulers just fell in our laps, at least not right off.”

It wasn’t fair to blame them for that, not when he hadn’t believed it at first either. “If I have to deal with it, I’ll deal with it.”

“That’s all you can do.” His friend hesitated. “For what it’s worth, I like what she’s done for you. She’s made you smile. Made you happy.”

“Yeah, she has.” Zel returned the expression—with a bit of bite. “So you and your obnoxiously charming ass better stay the fuck away from her.”

Lorenzo laughed and shook his head. “I don’t think she’d even notice me, Zel.”

Maybe not. But as Zel followed Lorenzo toward the conference room, he resolved not to take any chances. He’d just have to make sure Devi couldn’t see anyone but him.

Devi pinged Cache instead of going to her assigned room. Chances that she’d be there were excellent, but so was the likelihood that she’d be in the network.

There was a shortcut Devi could have used to log in and find her immediately, but it felt a bit too much like entering a room without knocking. So she sent off a second message and waited.

But not long. A few seconds later a message came back, short and to the point.
Private room. Log on in.

Permission granted, Devi leaned back in her chair and made the connection. Several dizzying seconds later, she opened her eyes and saw Cache, her boots propped up on her desk and a tablet in one hand. “Hey, boss lady. What’s the news?”

“Nothing, really.” Devi pulled up a stool beside the desk. “I missed you at dinner.”

Her eyebrows came together as she dragged her finger across the tablet. “Damn, last time I checked it wasn’t lunch time yet.”

So she’d missed both meals. Devi sighed. “I cooked. Chicken and vegetables.”

“Sounds good.” Cache dropped the tablet on her lap and grinned. “Don’t nag, mom. I’ll be a good girl and eat. I’ve just been settling in and learning what Rochester’s network can do.”

Free access was a far cry from the clandestine exploration she’d been able to indulge before. “And what have you found?”

“Potential.” Her eyes lit up, bringing animation and joy to her face. “So much potential. Trip’s decent with software, but he’s a fucking genius with hardware. Not just the chips—their server isn’t that far behind the next-gen one I had. Spare wires and circuit boards, and he’s made them
sing
.”

Her excitement bordered on devotion. “Sounds like you guys have a lot to teach each other.”

“We’re going to change the world, Dev. Seriously. Change the fucking world.”

Or she might disappear into Rochester’s network, just like Trip.

Devi covered her shiver by rocking to her feet. “I need to talk to you about something important.”

Cache froze in the act of reaching for her tablet again. “Did something happen?”

“No.” She picked up a paperweight and tested its weight. “When Tanner and Juliet were loading the trucks, they offloaded Shane’s belongings. We all figure they’re yours now.”

Silence. The wild light in Cache’s eyes died a little at a time. Her shoulders slumped. Her hands fisted. “I—I don’t know. I know he has a brother out west, but he’s off the grid. And they didn’t talk a lot…”

“Juliet tried already.” She hadn’t had much else to do, at least before getting clearance to run the trucks out, so she’d spent her time trying to track down Shane’s family. “She found an old address and called in a few favors, but nothing panned out.”

“Okay.” Cache swallowed and picked up her tablet again, though her eyes didn’t look quite focused. “Then…I guess I can figure out what to do with it.”

“You know Juliet. She’ll keep looking until she’s exhausted every avenue.” It was her way of grieving, of dealing with the loss of a friend. “So if you want to hang on to it for a while, that’d be good.”

Cache nodded. Her fingers tapped an idle rhythm on the tablet, one that pulled up windows and closed them again seemingly at random. “I miss him,” she said finally. “It wasn’t—it was never supposed to be serious. We both knew the rules. You don’t fuck crew. But it wasn’t
real
. It wasn’t supposed to be real.”

An easy justification, for everything from casual fucking to fights to the death. “VR’s tricky like that. It’s not reality, but it’s never really entirely fantasy either.”

“I know.
God
, I know.” She waved her hand, taking in the opulent expanse of her virtual office. “This is the closest thing I have to a home, has been since I was fifteen. How is it not more real than towns I see once or twice a year?”

Devi rounded the desk and laid her hand on Cache’s shoulder. “Maybe…because you control all of it. That’s what really hits you, isn’t it? Other people, other situations. Things that can surprise you. I think that’s what feels the most real.”

“I didn’t love him.” She said it too fast. Too forcefully. Then her voice lowered to a whisper. “Yet.”

The quiet words tore at Devi’s heart. “Come here, honey.” She held out her arms.

Cache hesitated for a moment, then rocked out of her chair so fast her tablet clattered to the floor. “This has to be real, Devi. It has to be, or I haven’t heard your voice in two years.”

She rarely spoke of her deafness. Another bolt of pain shot through Devi. “You haven’t heard my voice in two years,” she repeated slowly, carefully, tears burning her eyes. “It sucks, and I wish to hell it weren’t true, Nell, but it is.”

Strong, slender fingers dug into her shoulders as Cache shuddered. “I’m not Nell anymore. She’s gone, Devi, and she’s not coming back.”

Devi found herself shaking her head before Cache finished speaking. “You’re here. You’re still
here
.”

“Parts of me.” The girl pulled back and scrubbed a hand over her cheeks, where the network had evidenced her pain in tears. “Maybe enough. Maybe I’m just too tired to see it now.”

“You’re not lost.” Even as she spoke, Devi feared her words were lies. Maybe Cache had slipped away, bit by bit, until she was as irrevocably bound to the network as Trip.

“Not lost. Just…” She hesitated. “There’s a club, you know. In the Northwest network. Just people who are deaf or blind or can’t walk. And sometimes I go there, and I think we’re lucky to live in a time when we can close our eyes and do anything. And sometimes I wonder if it just made it easier for us to believe that we don’t deserve to live in the real world at all.”

The worse people’s lives were, the more they needed the escapism of virtual reality. “As long as you can live with yourself without it, Cache. That’s all I need to know.”

Cache nodded, quick and jerky, but not forced. “Trip and I are working on voice-recognition software for my tablet. It won’t be perfect, but Zel said he wants me to consider taking Trip’s place as one of his advisors. Just so there’s someone around who knows the tech stuff. The tablet would make it easier to follow the meetings.”

It would get her out of the network, at least for a while. “Maybe Zel can drag you by Sigmund’s omelet cart while he’s at it. Get you to eat something.”

She made a face. “Real eggs taste weird. I know the synth crap tastes about as good as gravel, but at least it’s familiar gravel. I’m going to have to get used to having real food every day around here.”

“You could start with my chicken and vegetables.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She scooped up the tablet and pulled up the time again. “Aren’t you meeting Tanner at the Pit Stop tonight? You could ping me when you’re done, give me time to finish up what I was working on.”

“Nine o’clock.” Devi glanced at the tablet. “Soon. Should be a quick meeting, though.”

Cache nodded and settled into her chair, her calm seemingly restored. “Say hi to Tanner for me. And Juliet too, if she’s there.”

“I will.” If nothing else, maybe she’d given Cache some peace, and a few more things to think about. “Can you help me out with a connection?”

“Sure.” Her keyboard and screen materialized on her desk, and she typed something with one hand as she waved toward a thick wooden door on the far end of the room. “That’ll dump you into the Pit Stop.”

“Thanks, Cache.” She hesitated, her hand hovering by the door. “If you need me…”

Cache smiled. “You’re always a ping away.”

“Always.” Devi shoved through the door.

Smoke burned her eyes, and this time it made her smile. Yes, some places in the network were as real as those out of it, as defined by people’s experiences as the physical world was, as solid as wood and stone.

She found Tanner in the corner, his back against the wall and a gigantic glass mug of beer in one hand. “Cheers, boss.”

She slid into the seat across from him and claimed her own mug from the pitted surface of the table. “How’s the run going?”

“Surprisingly well. We made the trade without a whisper about our new friends. If the ADS bugged any of them, they didn’t show it.”

“Any trouble avoiding the checkpoints?”

“Nope.” He took a sip of his beer and shrugged one shoulder. “But we turned right around and headed back, instead of spending the night. Ruiz is teaching one of the halfbloods how to drive the truck.”

Devi arched an eyebrow. “Because she has to or because she wants to?”

“Dunno, honestly. I don’t think she
has
to. The two of us could make it back, taking shifts. Fairly damn sure that her pretty little smile’s what has him wanting to learn, though.”

Devi wasn’t self-deluded enough to bemoan the attention. “You’re probably going to be in the same boat if you hang around, you know. All the women will be making big eyes at you.”

Tanner made an amused noise. “You know me better that that, Dev. I don’t play where I work.”

“Neither does Juliet, usually.”

“Neither do
you
, usually.”

“Point.” Devi gulped her icy beer, more to buy time than anything else. “You think I’m being an idiot, don’t you?”

He hesitated, which said enough. “He’s a dangerous bastard. Don’t let the friendly mother and the teasing family interaction fool you. He’s deadly…but maybe not to you.”

“So am I.” She set her mug down with a thump. “Or have you forgotten who killed Shane?”

“A demon killed Shane.” Tanner covered her hand with his and held her gaze, his dark eyes unusually serious. “He was gone the second he got popped. All you did was evict the bastard who’d stolen his body.”

She’d told herself the same thing a thousand times. “Then why doesn’t it feel like I did him a favor?”

Tanner slid his hand away and curled his fingers around the glass stein. “You know I was a soldier. Two years. My squad had a sixty percent death rate, and we were the lowest. Most of those got popped, and we had to put ’em down ourselves. It never feels like a favor until you see what the demons do with their little puppets.”

“The first thing that one did was try to use Shane to kill me,” Devi murmured.

“And that was a good day. Trust me, Dev. You protected yourself, and Cache, and Shane.” He drained the beer, then glared at the glass. “Too bad this place is too cheap to get you drunk.”

“Sure it can, you just have to lay out more credits.” She squeezed Tanner’s hand and released it quickly. “Not that I recommend it, if you’d have to drop out and face Juliet’s wrath.”

“Not worth it. Better things I can blow the credits on, like that sweet little club over in the Northeast network. Since I didn’t get to make any friends during our stopover in Cheyenne Mountain, I think I earned a little virtual R&R.”

Devi rose. “Go. Blow off some steam, and I’ll meet you in the garage when you get back.”

“You got it.” He grinned. “Tell Cache to stay out of trouble.”

“Cache
is
trouble, just like you.”

“Only because we learned from the best.”

“You can’t be talking about me.” The locale and the banter made it feel like old times, and Devi was left wondering how the hell things had changed so much, so quickly.

And why she wasn’t more scared by it.

Chapter Sixteen

Bringing Devi to the training room had been a terrible idea. Zel’s only solace was that he’d known it would be, and had scheduled their time accordingly.

The room was empty. The door was closed. Locked. Devi stood a few feet away, most of her weight balanced on the balls of her feet, her stance showing more than a passing familiarity with personal combat. Then again, considering that Tanner rode with her, that was hardly surprising.

Thinking of the other man was a mistake too. Zel forced his attention back to Devi and let his gaze linger on the elegant curve of her neck, where a few curly strands of hair had escaped. He’d kept their sparring light in deference to her recent injury, but Devi seemed more than willing to push herself, and a thin sheen of sweat made her tawny skin glisten.