Wired (Skinned, Book 3) (23 page)

224

EMPTY

If there were no consequences, it was almost like it hadn't happened.

Of course it was call-me-Ben who came in and found me on the floor, back against the wall, knees pulled up to my chest. It was always Ben, delivering the bad news, delivering the truth, delivering me from evil, Ben, who fashioned himself my savior and all the while, I knew now, was only saving me so I could save him and BioMax, use my face to sell their story, and sell myself out with every word.

I didn't fight him.

I searched myself, tried to find that certainty I'd had, that it was all lies, a game, that Riley was coming back--but it had slipped away. Truth or lie, the end result was the same: He was gone.

Somehow, I left the room and left the body behind. Small things registered: the pressure of Ben's fingers on my arm, Zo's strained grimace, Jude's blank gaze. Nothing mattered.

Then, somehow, we were in a conference room: Jude, me, my sister, call-me-Ben. Again I had to shrug off the strange

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sensation that the day was repeating itself, rearranging itself with different places and different players. Jude was like a zombie. Zo told him when to walk, when to talk, pushed him into a chair. I couldn't look at him, because Jude was unthinkable without Riley, as--no matter how much I'd tried to deny it--Riley was unthinkable without Jude.

"How does this happen?" I asked Ben. Thinking,
You did this. We stepped out of line, and you punished us.

Ben held out his hands, encompassing his explanation between them: empty air. "We don't know. I'm so sorry. This has never-- We've been caught unawares here, all of us. But I can assure you there's no need for you to worry--if this was a problem with our software, we would have caught it much earlier than this. No, this had to be some kind of external stimulus."

"Someone did this to him," I translated.

"That's our thought, yes."

"Someone like you."

He literally convulsed at the suggestion, his eyebrows flying up as his mouth twisted down and his hands fluttered. Every time I saw him, Ben seemed less and less the preternaturally cool and collected mannequin I'd once known and loathed. His slimy self-assurance had been an almost reassuring constant. I needed it now, something to hate, something steady and immovable to push back against.

"Industrial sabotage," he said.

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"No. You did this. To shut us up, to punish us, I don't know. Why don't you just admit it? Why
pretend
you were trying to help him?"

"I'm not pretending. BioMax has an obligation--
I
have an obligation--to honor our contracts with our clients. To help them when they come to us. Doctors don't heal just the people they like."

"You're no doctor."

"Still. What happened in the boardroom has nothing to do with what happens in here. Can you understand that?"

I didn't know who we were pretending that it mattered what I thought. As if I had any power. I had nothing.

"And you know very well that certain factions have been researching this kind of disruption for quite a while now," he continued, when I didn't respond. "If they've succeeded ..."

I glanced at Jude, certain his eyes were burning through me. But his head was down, his eyes on the table. Maybe he hadn't even heard.

Yes, this could have been BioMax striking back against us after we'd had the asinine temerity to show our hand and try to force theirs. But it didn't make sense--Riley had never been the biggest threat to them; they'd made that very clear in their pursuit of Jude, not to mention their cultivation of me. Shutting him up wouldn't do anything but inflame us, make us more determined to do ... whatever it was they thought we had the power to do. If they wanted to stop us, there were easier ways.

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And, as call-me-Ben said, they weren't the only ones who hated us. I'd seen the lab with my own eyes, the Brotherhood's attempt to find a way to destroy us. To corrupt not just our brains but the brains stored on the servers; to take care of us--to
delete
us--once and for all. It was why Jude had been so determined to blow the place up, with its researchers inside.

But Riley and I had saved the researchers, saved Savona and his scientists, set them free.

I
had set them free.

Don't think about it.

"You still aren't telling me how it could have happened," I said. "Or even exactly
what
happened."

"Think of it as a virus. Something must have been done to his uplink jack. He was clearly in the middle of the process when it happened, and it's the best explanation we can come up with for how the stored files would also have been corrupted."

"You're saying this isn't random--someone went after
him
, specifically?"

"Looks like it. The uplinker was most likely sabotaged. The network servers are completely inaccessible, so the damage must have been done on his end. Probably someone close to him, with access to his possessions, someone he trusted. Can you think of any--"

Jude's chair clattered to the floor. He was on his feet, fists

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clenched, and then he was out of the room, his footsteps echoing down the hall.

"Where's he going?" Ben looked bewildered.

I didn't bother to answer. "Come on," I ordered Zo. She didn't ask questions, just ran after me as I ran after Jude.

Because I knew where he was going. I'd made the same connection. Someone Riley trusted, even if no one else did.

Sari.

We caught him before he had time to drive away, and threw ourselves into the car before he could lock the door.

"Get out," he said.

"I'm coming with you," I told him.

He didn't argue.

I didn't ask where he was taking us. I assumed he knew exactly where to find her. As Jude was so quick to boast, he knew things. The car turned in a familiar direction, and I curled up with my back to Zo and my forehead against the window. Whatever she did, I couldn't see, didn't care. I didn't understand why she was still there, following us from one nightmare to the next, why suddenly every time I turned, Zo was there, the hole I'd finally gotten used to suddenly filled. Like she could wake up one day and decide to be my sister again. Suddenly I hated her, for being able to come back, disappear and resurface and disappear again, whenever she chose, when Riley never would again.

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Zo had barely known Riley, and for most of the time she'd known him, she'd hated him, just for being a mech. She'd been part of the Brotherhood, even if she'd helped us in the end. Was that supposed to absolve her? Was I supposed to forget?

The anger came out of nowhere, so strong that I had to wrap my hands around the seat belt to keep them from wrapping around her throat--and then it drained away, as quickly as it arrived. I felt nothing.

The city rose before us, jagged knives stabbing the gray sky. Jude stopped the car long before we got anywhere near the dying towers. Instead he guided us into the dribbling remnants where the city faded into the wilderness, a kingdom of low, crumbling stone buildings, their roofs sagging or caved in.

"She's here," Jude said.

She could have been anywhere. "How do you know?"

"I know." Jude stopped the car in front of a three-story house that looked no different from any of the others, except for the red streaks of graffiti smeared across the stone like it had been marked in blood. "Rats always go back to the nest."

Zo's eyes bugged as she took in the burned-out cars and broken windows, the clumps of orgs with rotting teeth, rotting skin, rotting faces gathered around fires that stank of rubber and dogshit. I realized this was her first time. The stories had haunted our childhood, tales of men like animals, prowling the streets, blood smeared across their faces like warrior tattoos, long nails sharpened like knives, bodies writhing in the gutters,

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screwing or dying or both at once. For Zo, as it had been for me, the city was a nightmare land, a monster in a bedtime story, the beast that would swallow you whole if you ventured too close. And this decrepit corner of hell was, according to Riley, the worst of the worst: a lawless no-man's-land of the lost and abandoned, the castoffs in a city of castaways, the lowest of human refuse--and the animals who preyed on them.
All the lies they told you about the city,
Riley had said.
That's where they come true
.

"You can stay here," I told Zo.

"By myself?"

I had visions of returning to a car set ablaze, or graffitied and crushed, or returning to find the car gone altogether, and Zo--

I didn't let myself imagine any further.

She drew back her shoulders and opened the door. "I'm not scared," she said. "Let's go."

I should never have brought her here
.

Jude didn't wait for us to gather our nerve. He had already started toward the house. I could drag Zo back into the car and drive away, taking her somewhere safe. I could protect her, like I hadn't protected Riley.

Or I could follow Jude.

"Let's go," Zo said again. I let her make the choice for me. She took off after Jude, and I followed, leaving the car and any thoughts of refuge behind.

The house looked worse inside than it did out. There was

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no furniture, no light, no visible features but a gaping, splintered hole in the center of the room where the floor had given way. Sari crouched in the far corner, tucked into a blanket, watching the door as if she'd been waiting for us.

She flew to her feet. "I didn't do anything." As she spoke, she backed away, pressing herself against the wall. Jude advanced slowly.

"What did you do to him?"

"You deaf?
Nothing.
"

"Then why run?" His eyes lit on the pile of clothes and electronics she'd snatched from Riley's place.

Sari stepped between us and the treasure hoard. "So?" she spit out. "They don't need it. They've got plenty of credit; let them buy another set of speakers."

"Are we supposed to buy another Riley?" I asked.

She didn't bother to look at me. "What's the bitch talking about?"

"Riley's dead." Jude flattened her to the wall, one hand pinning her wrist, the other at her throat. Zo sucked in a sharp breath, but I didn't move. Couldn't, or wouldn't, it didn't matter. I felt like I was watching them on-screen, with no choice but to wait patiently and see how things turned out.

Sari shook her head. "Fuck you."

"You killed him."

"Shut up."

"Make me."

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"You're machines," Sari said. "You can't die."

He grimaced. "Surprised me, too."

She hit at him with her free arm, but Jude grabbed it. Her wrists were narrow, and he was able to hold them both with one hand. His fingers tightened around her throat.

"You're hurting me."

"Good."

Zo leaned into me. "Shouldn't we do something?"

I ignored her, like Jude ignored Sari's struggling. "What did you do to him?" he said, his voice deadened. He was staring past her, into the wall. Like he was the machine she expected, mindlessly pursuing his mission directive.

"Nothing!" Sari shouted. "She said nothing would happen to him."

Jude threw her to the ground. "Who said!"

"Stop it!" Zo screamed.

Jude knelt over Sari, pinning her down. "Shut her up or get her out of here," he said quietly. "Or I will."

I still couldn't move. Zo shut herself up.

Sari wasn't fighting anymore. She lay on the ground, eyes closed. "He's not really dead, is he?"

"Tell me who."

"Just some lady. She gave me something to stick in that thing he used for backing up."

"She walked up to you one day and
gave
it to you?"

"She paid me, okay?" Sari snarled. "She had credit and I

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needed credit, and that's it. She told me it wouldn't hurt him. She said you couldn't get hurt."

"She lied."

"How the hell was I supposed to know?"

"What was her name?"

"I don't know."

"What did she look like?"

"I don't remember."

"Tell me
something
!" Jude drove a fist into the rotting floorboards.

"I think she was one of those Brotherhood freaks, okay? She had one of those robes and everything."

Jude slapped her.

"What the hell--?"

"You killed him!" Jude roared.

Absolute control demands absolute release; that's what Jude had always preached. There were no middle grounds, no compromises, only two opposing states, and a lightning trigger between one and the other. He was always in control, every action deliberate, every decision considered. For Jude, even letting go was a willful choice, a verdict delivered after evaluation of all the options; even that was purposeful.

This wasn't.

Zo's nails dug into my arm. It meant
do something
, it meant
stop him
, it meant
fix this
. Or I could stand there and watch Sari die.