Two Can Play (Entangled Ignite) (30 page)

“If I’d had any idea what was really happening, I’d have stolen a Glock and taken a cop hostage to get them here. I called you a bunch of times—from a pay phone, from borrowed cell phones, but always got voice mail. I figured you’d shut it down for the show.”

“I shot my battery trying to call you.”

“I gave up on the police, but I had to get you out of there, so I nabbed Nardo, the Electrique delivery guy, who knew the pass code.”

“I’m just glad you’re alive,” she said softly.

“Me, too.” He held her with his eyes. They were tied together by a thread, invisible, yet tough enough to hold them if one of them dangled from a cliff.
I’m sticking
, Gage had said. And so would Rena. At least until they figured out what this feeling meant in the real world.

“I’m just sorry Mason and Maya got away,” Rena said.

“They’ll be caught,” Gage said, his jaw muscle twitching. “Count on it.”

She looked out over the darkened arena, her heart heavy, her insides feeling as bruised as Gage’s poor body. “It hurts…what happened to us.”

“Yeah.”

“The Life was good. It made sense.” She studied his face, read the message in his eyes. “I know you think it was a cheat. You have to make sense of life on your own, battle it alone.”

“Not alone. I don’t think alone is the way. You do it with people you trust.” He squeezed her hand. “You know, Lifers will look to you now, Rena.”

“And I’ll be there for them.” She swallowed hard.

“You’re stronger than you think you are. You always have been. You didn’t need the Life for that.”

“Maybe you’re right.” She just might be ready to believe her Astra battle cry—that she had all the power she needed, that she stood strong and free, that she was more than enough.

As Rena, this time. “Guess it’s time to tap into my inner Astra.”

“This I gotta see.” Gage pulled her into his arms, and she felt lit from within with a hot, white light. She couldn’t wait to show him what she could do.

Chapter Twenty

Three months later

Rena walked through the employee entrance of the Real Life Lounge, happy with the quiet hum of the games. She checked out the big clock she’d installed on the far wall. Two p.m. As general manager, she’d made some changes, including putting in clocks, so gamers knew how much time they were spending away from their real lives. Gaming was fun, but it wasn’t life.

Today was big and Rena had that same knot in her chest she’d had four months ago when Nigel had given her the Quest that set off everything that happened after, good and bad.

Bingham had asked to meet with her. She’d talked to him on the phone a few times, always shaky, but this was their first in-person visit.

She figured it had to do with the next phase of the NiGo bankruptcy plan. Bingham no doubt wanted to wrap it up. He’d been a lifesaver—the legal team from Harris, Long, and Little had been the invisible hand smoothing the financial chaos to calm. She’d be forever grateful for that.

EverLife II
had been abandoned as too costly to maintain. For now, anyway. Loyal
EverLife
subscribers generated enough income to keep the first-generation game online, but the Lounges were in foreclosure, though they’d negotiated eighteen months of Lifer Living Quarters. For the first month, Lounges served as rehab facilities, with counselors and social workers offering therapy, job training, and social services. Nearby clinics provided medical detox, funded by the charity arm of Wingate Technology.

Therapists had made a big difference. A team of them helped Lifers through the first waves of betrayal and loss. Some Lifers handled it badly and folded, ending up in hospitals or mental health facilities. Some left to find a separate path, a few returned to their families. Most stayed on to muddle through, depending on one another, working out a life that made sense.

Not a single Lifer had died from the drugs or their aftereffects. Rena took some satisfaction in that.

The loyalty of Lifers to one another and to Rena still gave her an electric charge. This was her Family, these her brothers and sisters. They were loyal to one another because of the experiences they’d shared, what they’d endured together, the love they held for each other.

The Life
was
its people, not its beliefs or its games or its levels or its gurus.

Right away, Rena was elected GM. Lifers voted on everything now. They made decisions in Group, of all places, debating timidly at first and, then, as their spirits returned to them, with anger and tears, turned-over chairs and a few fistfights, but always with true heart and emotion, not the smoothed-over smear that the drugs had forced on them.

Rena didn’t mind.

She still missed Nigel and the gentle loving mother she’d imagined Naomi to be. So far, Naomi and Mason had eluded capture, though authorities across the world had been alerted to their scheme. Rena hoped the magazine articles Gage had written—the true story of Real Life Lounge—and the media interviews he arranged week after week would keep anyone from falling under their spell ever again.

Baker, Zeke, and Lionel were Rena’s top managers and she depended on them more and more. Leland handled the finances and worked with the lawyers. Zeke and Lionel took care of the arcade. Rena’s Girl Power Project was firmly in place, so each manager had a girl comanager to mentor. Card Girls had become carders, no costumes required, and everyone cycled through prime assignments.

Ji Jin and the K men team were working on new games to bring in more revenue. True to the meaning of his name—Precious Wisdom—Ji Jin had added three girl programmers to the team. Rena had set Geoffrey Harris a special mission—to arrange for Ji Jin’s sisters to be brought to the U.S. Trust was growing slowly and there was some foot-dragging, but they were working toward the greater good—the real greater good, not the false one the Blackstones had used against them.

Day by day, they muddled through. Gage handled media and community relations for them on a part-time basis. He had temporary quarters on Rena’s floor, but he preferred his trailer in the desert.

That was fine with Rena. She needed time for the new Rena Novo to plant her feet solidly in the Dead World, slowly coming alive for her, before she blended her life with anyone else’s. Gage struggled with the concept, too. He got restless after too many days in close proximity and would retreat to the desert for a few days before returning. He always returned. He’d kept his promise. He was
sticking
.

Now Gage waved to her from the entrance where he stood with an older man. Bingham Wingate III. Her adoptive father. Rena’s stomach burned with acid. She was so
nervous
. As they headed closer, she managed a smile.

She’d seen Bingham’s pictures in tech magazines, but she was surprised by how old and small he looked. He’d loomed much larger in her memory.

Rena looked at Gage. His eyes said
you’ll do fine.
More and more, his concern for her had become a blanket around the inner chill she still felt. It was nice to take comfort from someone. Whether they would stay together or not, she had no idea. She was taking it one campout under the stars at a time.

“Hello.” She shook Bingham’s hand.

“Genevieve.” Pink smears on the man’s cheeks told her he felt as awkward as she did. Here he was, her father. She felt the weight of their history heavy in the handshake and in their glancing eye contact.

“I’ve set us up in a meeting room.” Her voice shook, despite her determination to stay cool and collected. With a last look at Gage, who would wait outside, she led Bingham to the room. “There’s fruit.” She waved at the tray. “And that’s raspberry iced tea.” She pointed at the pitcher.

Bingham made no move toward the refreshments. He sat a few feet from the chair she chose. “You’re well?” he asked.

“Yes. You?”

“I’m well. Quite well.”

Now what? Silence swelled like a living thing between them. Rena flashed on her meetings with Nigel, the father she’d longed for, how much he’d seemed to care for her.
An illusion
. Nigel had meant well, but Rena had been as much a ghost sipping his drugged tea as she’d been as a child invisibly wandering Bingham’s mansion.

“I want to thank you for the legal help and the money. It’s meant a lot to all of us,” she said, getting to the point of the meeting.

“It’s been my pleasure to be of some assistance.”

“It’s been great. Really. Great. Sure you don’t want tea?”

“Thank you, no.” Good, because her hands shook too much to pour.

They stared at each other, tongue-tied.

“So, well…” She tapped her finger on the table, jiggled her foot, crossed her legs a different way.

“Yes. Well.” He cleared his throat.

“Let’s get this over with. I assume you called this meeting to end things?”

He frowned, looking lost. “End things?”

“Stop paying our bills. Sign off on the bankruptcy.”

“Why would I do that? I’m committed to completion. As long as you’ll have me.”

“Oh. I see. Well, yes, we still need help…”
So why was he here?
“So that’s not why you wanted to meet?” Nervous sweat popped out all over her body. What was she to make of the man she’d hated for years? It still hurt, remembering how he’d left her to deal with her pervert of an uncle. But that was a long time ago and here they were, looking at each other in nerve-racking stillness.

“No. Not at all.” He cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable. “I thought we should…touch base. Just in general. To, you know, clear the air.”

“Oh. Okay.”
Whatever that meant
. “How’s, uh, the tech business?” she asked, wanting out.

“Busy as ever. You can’t close your eyes in this industry or you’ll be dead.” He looked around, taking over the nervous finger-tapping from her. “Hell, Rena, I don’t know what to say to you. I never did. I’m not really father material. I never was. You know that.” His words held finality.

“I do. I do know that.” She looked into his jumpy blue eyes. That was the best he could do, she realized. Excuse himself because he wasn’t
father material
. Blame it all on Tiffany. What could he have done?

A million things, that’s what.

She could yell at him, spit in his face, hurt him with every bitter detail of her past. She could throw him to the ground like an opponent in the Dome and leave him bleeding.

But she didn’t want that. She was no longer the lonely little girl begging the housekeeper to play checkers, but she needed something from him, some acknowledgement.

“You can start with saying you’re sorry,” she said flatly.

He startled and blinked again. “I am. Of course I’m sorry.”

“You should be. You acted like I didn’t exist and sometimes I wondered if I did.”

He swallowed again, his Adam’s apple a slow lump in his neck. “I am sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”

After a few more tight silent seconds, she said, “So now what?”

Another jiggly swallow. The man couldn’t choke out a word. Pathetic. She’d have to run the show.

“I guess we go from here,” she said finally.

He blinked. “Okay.” His breath rushed out.

“The money’s great. The money means a lot, but don’t think you’re off the hook. Right now, for the moment, I’m looking ahead, not behind.”

“That’s fine,” he said gravely. “What are your plans?”

“I’ll manage this place until everyone is okay. After that, school, I think.”

“What will you study?”

“Not sure.” She was interested in people, in the puzzle of personality. Maybe she’d be a therapist—a better one than Maya—one who knew human beings had to stumble, fall, and climb back up, no shortcuts. Chemistry alone couldn’t fix them. You had to stick with it, keep fighting, like a Dome battle that went on all life long.

But that was the fun of it, right?

“If I can help you in any way,” he said.

She nodded. “I’ll keep you posted.” She stood and moved to the door. Not bad for a first visit. These real-world quests could be a bitch, but they were worth it every time.

…

Through the glass, but out of sight, Gage watched Rena talk to her father. She amazed him, how strong and resilient she’d been, getting past her pain to step up to the plate for the people she cared about.

He felt lucky to know her. She was the one good thing to come from the horror of the Real Life Lounge.

He’d failed Beth, and that still ate at him and always would. He’d seen the proof in her very words, when he’d finally decoded her wall writings a few days after the Lounge crash. He’d been relieved that they held no clues that might have helped him find her sooner, but they were troubling, all the same.

She’d begun to doubt the Life. She’d signed on for a place to belong, for people who had her back, but she’d begun to think it had been a mistake. In her last entry, she wrote that she hoped her new job at Body Artist would be what she needed.

One entry mentioned him and it was agony to read. He carried it folded in his wallet so he would never forget how he’d failed.

I wish Gage understood. He wants me to be strong, to handle things on my own, but I’m not like him. I need people. I need help. The Life seemed right at the time.

He’ll be so disappointed in me. I gave up the cash he saved. I’ll figure this out on my own, like he’d want me to. I’ll make it right and make him proud if it’s the last thing I do.

If only he’d listened instead of lectured, pulled her close instead of pushing her away, however unconsciously. Rena kept reminding him that Beth wanted to be her own person, to handle her own life. On the good days, that helped. On the bad days, nothing did.

The memorial they’d held for all the Lost Lives had been good for him. He’d had Beth’s ashes shipped down from Seattle to be part of it. Nearly fifty Lifers had either been killed by Mason’s assassins or, like Murphy, had had their brains too scrambled to survive without intensive medical treatment they were too broke, lost, and scared to go after.

One day, Gage and Rena would take Beth’s ashes to the Verde River, Beth’s favorite place to camp, let them fly on the breeze and spend the night there in her honor.

Gage had been rethinking how he intended to spend his life. Always an observer, journalism had been a good fit for him. Now he wanted to do more than investigate and report. He wanted to make a difference.

He’d started by writing a series of articles about Lounge Life that had been syndicated all over the world, and he was working on a book. What else he would do, he wasn’t sure, but he would put his all into it—head and heart and hands. Rena and the Lifers had taught him the value of believing in something good, of being part of it, of putting himself on the line. Never again would he hold himself apart, as he’d done with Beth. In a way, he’d been in his own world as much as the Lounge Lifers had been. Rena had shown him that.

The two of them were working out a way to be close but not dependent on each other. It got rocky at times, and it was risky, but Gage was sticking.

Oh, yeah. He was sticking.

…

After she walked her father to the door, Rena turned to find Gage at her side.

“He seemed to have all his parts intact,” Gage said. “Did it go well?”

“We’re not planning a picnic in the park, but we’re talking. We’ll see.”

“Good.”

“He’s not crapping out on the cash yet, either.” That had been nice…and a relief.

“That’s good, too.”

He ran his hand down her arm and linked fingers with her. “Want to come out to my place on the Commando and spend the night? The quails had babies. They’re like fluff balls on the run.”

“I’ll think about it.” She thought about everything now. Every act was a decision she had to make. It wasn’t always easy and she made mistakes, but they were hers to make.

“We’ll talk later.” He leaned in to kiss her.

She got the usual rush of lust, but also something bigger, something she could count on for a while. That was worth the push-pull, cling-shove that turned out to be how a relationship worked. It was new for her and it wasn’t half-bad.