Machinations (16 page)

I have no doubt Samuel means what he said: that we don't have to make a mountain out of this molehill. There's no pressure for us to be more than what we are. Still, for the first time in my life, I don't think it's appropriate for him to stay here, alone with me.

I give him a hug before he leaves, but I notice an unusual reluctance in his embrace—the way his arms reach around me hesitantly, without ever coming into firm contact with my back. We've jumped a fence built in childhood. Now, the only question that remains is what lies on the other side?

From the safety of the observation room, I watch Zelda pace around her holding cell like a caged panther, dark eyes flicking back and forth, back and forth.

Two inches of reinforced glass separates us, impenetrable to everything except sound. At present, the audio is a litany of complaints and shouted obscenities. While the window appears only as a mirror on the prisoner's side, most can guess it's more than just a looking glass. Zelda's not ignorant of this fact, either. I'm just glad I'm standing on this side of the glass this time.

“Either interrogate me or
let me the hell out,
” Zelda snaps, stopping to bang on the glass. “I know you're back there, Forsyth. You or one of your hounds.”

Lefevre stands guard beside me, sentinel to his own thoughts regarding his sister and the serious charges against her. At first, he objected to bringing me here—not on personal grounds as much as security concerns. But he hasn't said a word since I overruled him with a direct order. In his defense, they were legitimate fears, but I'm well aware of the risks involved. Now that I've been given back a portion of command, I'm learning what it means to be a leader again. That means weighing the peril versus the reward, and exercising my right to make decisions.

Doesn't mean Camus won't take my head off when he hears about this, though.

Peril versus reward,
I remind myself.

Samuel stands away from the scene, leaning with both hands on the back of a chair. He doesn't have to say it: I know he thinks this is a bad idea. It's the whole reason he came along, and also why I let him. Acting like everything's all right between us is the only way we're ever going to get through this awkward patch. Not to mention that between Lefevre and myself, we could benefit from a little more levelheadedness.

“I already know the answer,” Samuel cuts in, over Zelda's abuse to the mirror, “but as the only one in this room not equipped with some kind of weapon, I feel obligated to ask: Are you sure you want to do this, Rhona?”

I nod, turning toward the door. “I need answers. I need to know who's trying to kill me, and why. Plus, I want the whole truth, not just whatever trumped-up lies Camus decides to tell me. I've got to go straight to the source for that.”

“My sister took no part in this assassination attempt,” Lefevre says, the first words he's uttered since we stepped into the observation room.

“You sound awfully sure. You do remember she's already tried to kill me once before, right?”

He finally looks at me, pulling his gaze away from his imprisoned kin. His eyes show stone-cold certainty. “If Zelda had actually wanted you dead, Commander, you would never have left that holding cell alive. She would have finished it herself then, not sent a machine to do the deed.”

“Maybe,” I agree, mostly to pacify him. I don't doubt Lefevre's loyalties lie foremost with McKinley, but Zelda is blood. I palm the door open. “But it's like my mom used to say: when you want to find something out, it never hurts to just ask,” I add with a politic smile, exiting.

Samuel follows me out into the hall. “I don't remember your mother ever saying that.”

“Neither do I,” I reply. “But it sounded good, didn't it?”

“Now
that
sounds more like your mother.” He laughs even while shaking his head. I'm about to enter Zelda's cell when he stops me again with a gentle hand on my arm. Then he quickly lets go, acting weirdly embarrassed about touching me, but his eyes remain soft with concern. “Um. Be careful in there, all right?”

Part of me wants to call him on his strange behavior, but I know the reason for it. In the end, I smile and pat my holstered pistol. “Gun, remember? I'll be fine. We're just going to talk.”

“All I'm saying is, don't let your guard down.”

“Advice noted.”

I enter alone, the door shutting behind me.

Zelda stops pounding on the mirror, but her fists stay balled at her sides. I don't mean to provoke her—nor be provoked
by
her. Not if I can help it.

“What is this?” she demands. I'm not sure if the question's directed toward me or whoever she thinks is still hiding in the observation room. Probably the latter, judging by the way she keeps glancing back over her shoulder.

Then her eyes are back on me, full of loathing. “Forsyth can't actually charge me with anything, so he's hoping I'll—what? Incriminate myself by attacking you again in front of witnesses?” She issues an unattractive snort. “Not likely.”

I take a seat, illustrating my fearlessness, since that's all I really have to work with. Impressions. There's no way she's going to trust me. I'm the enemy as long as she thinks I was responsible for Ulrich's death. Earlier, Samuel suggested I try building rapport with her, but now that I'm here, suffering beneath her angry glare, I get the feeling no amount of rapport is going to make a difference.

“Look, I'm not here to play games with you. I just want answers,” I tell her.

She refuses to sit down and crosses her arms instead. “What makes you think I'm going to tell you anything different than what I've already said?”

“Because it's not Camus standing behind that window.” I tilt my head toward the mirror. “Your brother's back there, and he seems to believe you're innocent. I'm not eager to prove him wrong, but I sure as hell can't prove him right if you're not willing to cooperate.”

A tenderness comes across her face as she stares into her reflection, maybe seeing a hint of her sibling in her own features. She doesn't trust me, but she trusts him. I think I can use that. “Fine,” she says, throwing herself into a chair opposite me, the cold metal table stretching between us. “What do you want to know?”

“Let's start with the obvious. Did you have anything to do with the attempt on my life two days ago?”

“No.”

“Okay. Then do you know who else might have been responsible?”

She relaxes against the back of her chair. “No,” she says, smug.

I'm starting to get frustrated. “But you do know how to reprogram a machine, like the one that attacked me.” I don't phrase it as a question, because it's not. I know she does. It's more of a control question, to see whether or not she'll lie.

“Yes.”

“If you're going to keep giving me monosyllabic answers, we're not going to get anywhere.”

Leaning forward suddenly, fingers rapping in an oddly patterned rhythm against the tabletop, Zelda tells me, “Maybe you're not asking the right questions.”

“Or maybe you should just tell me what you know and save us both some trouble.”

For someone who is as intimate with the inner workings of machine hydraulic systems as Zelda, you'd think she'd know the meaning of taking the path of least resistance. But, no. She's going to fight me for every morsel of information, making this conversation needlessly difficult.

“Orpheus tells me I shouldn't hate you,” Zelda says. “Soldiers die in war, he says, as if
I don't know that.
” This last part she announces loudly enough for her brother to hear. “He forgets they also die from poor leadership. Maybe karma is catching up to you, Long.”

“You don't like me. I get it. But you know something, so I'm just going to sit here until you tell me what it is. I don't particularly want to. I have better things to do, but if this is what it takes to get you talking…” I lean back in my seat, folding my arms over my chest. “I guess I might as well get comfortable.”

Her jaw tightens, her teeth grinding together behind closed lips. The ploy seems to be working. The only thing she can't stand more than being falsely accused is, apparently, my presence. Perfect.

“All right. I might know something.”

I sit forward. “Now we're getting somewhere—”

“I'll tell you what I know in exchange for the truth about the project you assigned Ulrich to,” she finishes.

It takes me a moment to recover from the shock of the demand. “I don't suppose you'd be willing to negotiate on that point?”

Fury undoes her restraint. She shoots to her feet, slamming her hands on the table, which reverberates with a metallic echo. “You sent him away for
two years.
All I had was his promise he'd come back, but you took that, too. So no,
Commander
, I am
not
willing to compromise on this point. I want to know where he was all that time and what he was doing. And if you even think about lying, I'll have your tongue out before you even have a chance to go for that pretty gun of yours.”

Although I feel calm, given the danger, my mouth is inexplicably dry. “You know, making threats against me isn't exactly helping your case.”

Zelda doesn't care and she tells me as much with a shrug. “Those are my terms. Take them, or leave me alone.”

Bold talk, but I'm not fooled. She wants this knowledge as badly as I want to know who's trying to kill me. Maybe more. If I leave, she knows she'll get nothing—but neither will I. Yet I'm not a good enough liar to trick her into believing anything less than the truth. I'm not even sure the truth will satisfy her grief. It may in fact make it worse.

“So?” she prompts. “What's it going to be,
Commander
?”

“I can't tell you that information,” I say. “It's classified.”

“Then
un
-classify it. I'm not ignorant. I know it's within your power to do so.”

“What exactly am I going to get if I do? You haven't told me anything yet. For all I know, your information is going to be useless, and I'll have wasted my hand.”

She sits back down, slowly, reluctantly.

“You want a show of good faith?” I can't tell whether that's a note of scorn in her tone or, conversely, if she's impressed I'm not stupid enough to take her at her word. Maybe a little of both. “How's this for good faith? I can give you the names of every person in this base who has experience with programming machines.”

“I already have those,” I lie, although I'm pretty sure there's mention of AI expertise in the personnel files.

“You think so?”

I bite the inside of my lip. “I did up until a second ago. What are you getting at?”

“Not everyone advertises their occupation. In case you haven't noticed, or for some reason don't remember, let me jog your memory. Programmers like myself haven't exactly been winning any popularity contests since the Machinations started. People still blame us for what happened. We're black sheep, and even hung as scapegoats from time to time. If you think there's mistrust in this base, that's nothing compared to the mistrust between factions of the resistance. It's one big, ugly power struggle beneath the smiles and helping hands. Forsyth is right not to trust Meir and her ilk. And that's all I'm saying until you hold up your end of the bargain.”

While it's possible Zelda is bluffing, preying on McKinley's fears, my gut tells me she's not lying. Of course, that still leaves me with the problem of what truths to share with her, since the topic of cloning is obviously off the table. I'm just about to begin when the door swooshes open like a giant gasping in surprise.

Samuel steps inside, drawing Zelda's attention. The hostility goes out of her face, although tension remains in her shoulders.

“Samuel,” she says familiarly.

“Zelda.”

I'm still wondering what the story is there when he sits down next to me.

“Rhona was telling you the truth when she said she couldn't reveal the details of the assignment,” Samuel tells Zelda in all seriousness. “It's not out of spite, Zelda. It really is a matter of international security.”

“Then tell me something, Samuel. You were on assignment with him. You worked the project. I want to know, was it worth it?”

His eyes don't flick to me, but there isn't any hesitation when he gives his answer, either. “Yes,” he says. “It was absolutely worth it.”

“What else can you tell me?” she asks, less angrily.

Over the next ten minutes, Samuel tells her stories of Ulrich and the past two years they spent in the Brooks Range facility. I watch Zelda's reactions as she processes the news. Most of the tales are quaint, like when the heating system broke down and the pair spent a week bundled in so much extra clothing they could barely move about, or the time Ulrich tried to teach Samuel how to handle some advanced weaponry, and Samuel nearly took Ulrich's leg off by accident, causing him to curse in German for five solid minutes.

You wouldn't know these were trivial instances from Zelda's expression. As she listens, the grief is reduced in her eyes and her anger gives way to amusement. It's as though those years spent in bitter wondering and loneliness have suddenly been given back to her, redeeming some of the pain.

Samuel concludes the recollection by mentioning how Ulrich frequently cheated at their card games—something I distinctly recall the German thinking he wasn't aware of—and this makes Zelda smile. For the first time, I glimpse the woman Ulrich must have fallen in love with. She's actually quite beautiful—when she's not snarling or trying to rip my throat out.

“Deal's a deal. I'm guessing you want your answers now,” she says, and I nod. “Look to Churchill for the culprit.”

“What makes you think Churchill had something to do with it?” I ask.

She gives me a condescending look, as if I should know. “First, there's no one in this base with the know-how who's also stupid enough to mess with a machine like that. Second, this attack conveniently happens at the same time Churchill operatives are visiting? Please. It couldn't be more obvious.”

“You said you had names.”

“Not exactly,” Zelda confesses, although she doesn't seem sorry about the exaggeration. “But I know how to figure out who's responsible. Meir didn't bring a lot of people with her. It's got to be one of her delegation.”