The Drafter (41 page)

Allen glowered. “You keep misjudging her, and she's going to kill you.”

Peri struggled to breathe, that man's knee still in the small of her back. She tensed at the scuff-pop of Allen hobbling closer. Working hard at it, he knelt down, and then she gasped as he pulled her head up by her hair so he could see her face.

“Hi, Peri,” he said, his anger obvious in the slant of his eyes, and suddenly she hated his smooth-shaven features and his dark gaze behind his glasses. “We could have done things the easy way. But this has its own pleasures.” Still holding her at an awkward angle, he looked at Bill. “She's been conditioned never to work alone. Where are the rest?”

Bill turned to one of the men at the door. “Gone,” the man said, his expression suddenly worried. “We put all assets on Reed. You want me to send a car?”

“No. She's all I really need.” Bill smiled at her, clearly pleased. “Aren't you, kiddo.”

They got away
, Peri thought, elated, and then Allen let her go.

Peri grunted as she turned the motion of her falling head into a bid for freedom. She twisted, and the man with his knee in her back sprang up and away. Allen scrambled backward, and she halted at a kneel, freezing when she heard the safeties click off. Her short hair was in her
eyes, and she tossed her head, heart pounding. The drug was slowing her down, but she could still move.

“You think I won't remember this?” she intoned, eyes fixed on Bill as she stood. “I'll never accept Allen as my anchor.”

Bill looked at Silas as if they'd already had this conversation. “No matter. We'll have this all fixed by tomorrow, thanks to Dr. Denier. We'll have you up and working in no time. I know it's what you love, and I'm going to give it all back to you.”

“I'm not a part of this,” Silas seethed. “They're using my techniques, perverting them.” He glared at the man with the handgun who jabbed him to be quiet.

Bill checked his phone, nodding as if pleased. “By this time tomorrow, maybe the next day, you will be back to your usual self, and any latent memories that might surface will have Silas's face for Allen's actions. You know what your first task will be? Find and kill Silas. You'll enjoy it. Be driven to break the rules to do it.”

“You can't do that,” Peri said, but Bill's satisfaction said otherwise.

“We can.” Bill checked his phone again before tucking it away. “But a little housecleaning will make it more effective. Allen?”

“Keep her off me,” Allen muttered, and Peri's chin lifted when the guy she'd knocked out in the bathroom stepped behind her, pulling her arms up until she flinched.

“Much of what Silas pioneered to buffer drafters from long-term memory loss has a wider potential in designing more efficient agents,” Bill said.

“You mean brainwashed dolls,” Peri accused, not liking Allen picking through the rubble of her life.

“If you like, but very dangerous dolls. It never lasted long with you, though.”

Her breath came fast as Allen straightened with the picture of Jack and herself.

“We get around that by artificially scrubbing several weeks at the end of a draft, but
you
kept coming back from more and more difficult assignments intact, without a need to jump to survive them. Unfortunately,
if you don't draft, we can't clean house. That's why we took matters into our own hands at Overdraft. It might have worked even then. But Jack screwed it up. He's not good enough for you anymore.”

My God. How long have they been doing this? Is anyone at Opti not corrupt?

Allen pulled out the picture and let the frame drop to dent the wood floor. “If we destroy everything that links you to your past, you might never recall anything. It works best if you see the destruction.” He turned to his cohorts, expression ugly. “Burning works.”

She clenched her jaw when he folded the picture in two, knowing what was going to happen next. “New Year's, right?” Allen said. “I never liked Jack. He thought he was smarter than me. Guess not.”

“Start with this,” Bill said, tossing a loose-leaf journal to land at Allen's feet with a sliding hiss of sound. It was her diary—a year's worth at least.

“Bastard,” she whispered as Allen tucked the photo in a pocket and began ripping pages out. “You're all bastards. I'm not going to forget this.”

“Today should be no different from last week,” Bill said, throwing a lighter to Allen.

Silas shrugged off his captor's hand. “Peri, I'm sorry!” he said, but she didn't know what for. It wasn't his fault. It was hers for having gotten caught. Her jaw clenched as Allen lit a corner of the book, the flame rising up on the outside, black smoke falling from the inner pages. He dropped it, and it flared before subsiding to a low burn that would choke itself if left alone. But he didn't leave it alone, adding torn pages one by one.

“Light it up,” Bill said, a thick hand waving to encompass the entire apartment. Peri watched helplessly as men scampered like rats over the apartment, disconnecting the smoke alarms and bringing back more of her life to drop on the growing pile. The sliding doors to the balcony were retracted into the walls, and the smoke escaped, taking with it her desire to fight.

“There will be nothing left of your past, Peri,” Bill said in the new chill sweeping in, and Peri bowed her head to the floor in grief. “I gave it
to you, and now I'm taking it back. I'll give you a new one, a better one. You will accept the past we give you without question. You will take the jobs that Allen brings you, and you will never think twice about their validity.”

“You bastard,” Peri whispered. “You won't walk away from this. I promise you.”

“No,” he said, and she steeled herself when he reached out a fleshy ringed finger and touched her cheek. “I promise you,” he said. “You should be glad you're my best or you would've ended up like poor Jack.”

She seethed, coughing on the smoke as she knelt before him, and he turned to leave. Allen hesitated to follow. “You want me to save anything? Her clothes, maybe?” he asked.

Bill paused on the threshold, giving Silas a long look. “Just the cookbooks and yarn. I believe we still have that yarn bag she left at the airport.” Turning, he smiled at Peri. “Mustn't let those Opti-approved obsessive-compulsive stress relievers go by the wayside. I like your hair long, though. Allen, implant the thought that she likes it that way.”

“You can't do this!” she shouted, starting at the prick of another dart. A part of her was victorious—they were afraid of her—bound and darted, they were still afraid of her.

“Get him!” someone yelled, and she blinked the smoke from her eyes as she realized that Silas had shoved Allen down and run. He'd left her. Again.

“Let him go,” Bill said, bringing everyone to a halt. “Finding him will be part of her conditioning. Someone called in the smoke. City services are on the way. Everyone out.”

She was pulled to her feet, and she fought to stay where she was, with her past. Her shoulder burned as she fell on the heated picture frame, and she rolled from the flames. “Get off me!” she screamed when another dart struck her.

And then everything went blessedly away.

W
aking up to a cat purring on your chest isn't the worst way to start the day. Peri had been drowsing the last half hour, listening to her upstairs neighbors move from the bathroom to the kitchen and finally to the parking lot six feet from the patio of her new Opti-issued apartment. When the doors of the couple's car had finally slammed and the battery-powered vehicle hummed away, she'd thought she might get a few more minutes of sleep.

But when a cat wants you up, you have no choice.

“Carnac!” Peri yelped when sharp nails made it through the covers, and the orange cat leapt from her, clawing her stomach even deeper. “Bossy cat!” she exclaimed, sitting up and pushing aside the covers, and then her nightshirt, to see the little red marks. Carnac stood by the open bedroom door, his tail switching and ears slantwise.

Immediately Peri relented, trilling to coax him back. The fickle cat jumped onto the bed, bumping his head under her hand in the hopes of some breakfast. “How's my old tom?” Peri said, breathing in his sweet-smelling kitty fur and fingering the ornate collar embroidered with red Xs and the name that she'd found him with.

The cat was the only thing that felt real to her, which was odd, since he was a stray she'd found hiding in the bushes outside her building,
walking up to her and into her apartment as if he belonged. She loved him for it, all the while harboring hope that his real owners would never claim him. It felt good that the found-cat fliers she'd reluctantly put up last month were slowly being buried beneath band fliers and car-for-sale ads.

“Hungry?” Peri asked as she held him up to look him in the eye. The cat refused to make eye contact, but the purrs never ceased. She'd gotten a clean bill of health weeks ago from Opti's physical guys. Her psych review was this morning, and she wasn't sure how she felt. Excited, yes, but despite everyone's positive words, she still felt the cracks in her threatening to split wide open, even after six weeks.

Staring at the bathroom mirror, she fingered the tips of her shoulder-length hair, wondering why she'd ever cut it. It was taking forever to grow back out. But Allen liked it long. A smile flitted across her face as she thought of her anchor. His Flexicast was coming off today, timed perfectly with the psych eval. Allen had come out of their last task with a torn ACL, broken fingers, and a shot foot. It had been a bad task—everything had gone wrong.

Peri's jaw clenched as she started the shower, her hatred for the alliance operative who'd tried to kill them making her motions sharp as she stepped into the hot water and scrubbed her scalp. Silas Orion Denier. He'd tried to kill Allen. Saving him had taken every last scrap of memory of their three years together, and seeing Allen's hesitancy toward her, even now, hurt.

She lingered under the hot water, carefully feeling the odd burn on her shoulder. It was the only physical mark she had of the ordeal, and even that was fading. Opti hadn't found a lead on Silas yet, or at least, they hadn't told her of one. It rankled Peri that
Silas
was free, and she and Allen were struggling to put their lives back together.

Peri turned the water off and got out. The towel was rough, and after a token scrub at her hair, she wrapped it around herself and padded barefoot into the bedroom. Her life was coming together at the pace of a glacier thawing, but some of that might be her fault, since she'd insisted on moving from Opti's rehab to her own new apartment
instead of sharing one with Allen. Bill hadn't been pleased, but when Allen had agreed she needed time, their handler had okayed her own place. Trouble was, now that she had it, she was reluctant to let it go.

Her frown deepened as she finger-combed her hair. Allen had defragmented what he could of the task, and the memory of Silas's smug smile when he pushed Allen through the window and then over the balcony of her old apartment still haunted her. There was a gap after that since Allen hadn't seen what happened, but the short of it was that Silas had escaped. That Opti wasn't doing anything to find him made her more than angry.

“Give me a sec, Carnac,” she said, grabbing a pair of jeans and a black sweater, as the cat complained over his empty bowl. It was the only thing in her closet she liked. She dearly wanted to go shopping, but every time she set aside an afternoon, something came up. “What was I thinking?” she said as she held up a blue blouse with red flowers on it. Maybe she'd been channeling her mother when she'd bought all the stripes and patterns.

My boots are nice, though
, she thought as she sat on the edge of the bed and pulled them to her knees. The dull ping of the doorbell sounded, and Carnac ran out, tail up straight. “Coming!” she shouted, looping her pendant pen around her neck before going into the living room. The blinds were closed at the patio door, and spotlights glowed on her shelf of talismans. None of them called to her. Even the picture of Allen and her standing before a sunrise over a beach last New Year's didn't reach her soul. It was depressing, but she couldn't let go of the hope that someday one of them would do its job and help her remember.

On the tips of her toes, Peri looked through the peephole to see Allen fidgeting, his dress shoes scuffing the carpet. She always wondered how many of the scars he had were because of her, but he wouldn't tell.
Maybe I should have dressed up
, she thought as she saw his black slacks and tie, but they were meeting at Overdraft. Why would she get dressed up to go to a bar at nine in the morning?

“Hi, Allen. You look sharp. Give me a sec and I'll put on some slacks,” she said as she opened the door. His hair was tousled from the
spring gusts, and the safety glasses reminded her of Clark Kent. She harbored a belief he wore them for the same reason: to hide his strength.

“Morning,” he said, moving adroitly despite his cast to give her a quick kiss. “Don't change for me. I like the way you look in jeans. Ready?”

“Almost. I just need to feed Carnac.”

“Why do you even
have
that cat?” he said, his good mood souring as his eyes lingered on her pendant, and she tucked it behind her sweater. “Haven't his owners called yet?”

Shrugging, she shut the door. “I like him. I hope they never do. He doesn't hog the covers, and he doesn't eat my ice cream.”

Allen shuffled to the breakfast bar, sighing as he levered his backside up onto a stool. Peri went to the kitchen, keenly feeling the distance between them. There was always space, and she didn't know why. Was it his guilt that she'd lost so much to save his life, or had the loss of memory changed her and he didn't love her anymore? She knew she and Allen had once had a good relationship by the heartache that flooded her when she thought about having lost it. She was trying. Allen was trying. But she still felt . . . broken.