Wired (Skinned, Book 3) (34 page)

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they'd kept him in the dark. It didn't mean he couldn't help us, willingly or not.

"I believe you," I said finally.

"Really?" he asked, surprised.

"Really?" Jude echoed, equally so.

"Really. So here's what you're going to do." I channeled my mother, and the imperious way she'd treated him, like he existed only to serve her purposes. I'd seen him bend to her, to M. Poulet, to anyone with enough power. If he liked to be led so much, we could accommodate him. "You're going to take us with you when you go to the server ship. Then it'll be easy to prove that you're not doing anything but helping us. Because we'll be right there with you."

Ben laughed, but it was a sick, frightened noise. "That's never going to happen."

"Try again," Jude growled.

"Do you know how much security there is on those ships?" Ben asked. "Even to get on the launch that's going to take us out to the ship, there are massive layers of security to get through. They're not going to just let me walk on board with a couple of mechs. And trust me, their guns are bigger than yours."

"So you're not going to help us," Jude said.

"I've been
trying
to help you," Ben said loudly, his voice climbing the register. "Why don't you just let me? Walk out of here, and we can pretend nothing happened. Let me stop

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the virus, and you can all just go back to your lives."

"All the people at Safe Haven, they can just go home?" I said.

"Of course."

"Because they're just being held for their own protection, right?"

"No one's being
held,
" Ben said. "It's like I tried to tell your mother: They're not prisoners; they're clients. We're protecting them."

"Have you been inside?" I asked.

He hesitated. "That's not really my area."

"So you can't really say what's going on inside."

"It's my corp," Ben said. "I've been working there for twenty years. I've been working toward
this
, toward
you
, for twenty years. Why would any of us want to hurt you? We
created
you."

"So you're God," I said. "Someone tell Savona. I hear he's been hoping for an introduction."

"I know BioMax took something from you, Lia."

It was a tidy euphemism.

"But look what we gave you!" he continued. "A new life.
Eternal
life. A miracle. And this technology isn't just about saving individual lives or winning wars--this is the preservation of human consciousness. Through any upheaval, through all our global crises, we now have the tools to endure. This is a new beginning for us, Lia. For humanity."

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The saddest part of all was that I believed him. At least, I believed that
he
believed it. He believed in BioMax.

He didn't know.

"What's the EMP generator for?" I asked.

"What generator?"

"In Safe Haven, behind the residence facilities, there's an EMP bomb," I said. "Useful for emitting a giant electromagnetic pulse that could wipe us out in one shot. And not much else."

Ben shook his head. "You're mistaken."

"Or you are."

"We're wasting time," Jude said. "Can you get us to the ship or not? Because if not, you're not much use, are you?"

"Give him a chance," I said. It was a little late to try good cop, bad cop, but I figured it couldn't hurt. "I'm sure he'll think of something."

A bead of sweat trickled down Ben's cheek. His hands had turned white with the pressure of gripping the blanket. "I will," he said quickly. "I'll think of something."

But he didn't. Jude was getting impatient.

"Walk us through it," I suggested. "How do you get to the servers?"

"I have coordinates for the launch ship," he said. "We meet and set off from there--"

"Slow down," I said. "More details. When do you go. What do you do when you get there. You get the idea."

"I'm due at dawn. The rest of my team will arrive by two p.m."

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"Who's on the team?"

"Just my staff, other techs."

"You get to decide who goes?"

He nodded. "I give the list to security; they screen us and let us onto the launch ship."

"And why do you have to get there before everyone else?"

"There's equipment to load," Ben said. "This is a scheduled monthly maintenance check, so we're replenishing equipment and supplies. I have to supervise that it's all accounted for and loaded--"

"That's it," I said.

"What's it?"

"The equipment," Jude said. He got it too. "Shipping crates, right? Anything could be inside them."

"Well, they screen them--"

"But you're in charge," I said. "You say what goes and what doesn't. You could get around the screening."

"Maybe." Ben looked like he was almost as afraid of that prospect as he was of Jude shooting him down in his bed. It occurred to me that if he got caught trying to help us stow away, his ending wouldn't be any more pleasant.

I hadn't asked for this, I reminded myself. And I hadn't started it. BioMax had. Call-me-Ben had chosen his side. It wasn't my fault this was where he ended up.

Still, I was glad Jude was the one holding the gun.

"So we stow away in the crates," Jude said. "Just one

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problem--what's to stop him from screwing us over as soon as we're inside?"

"Don't suppose you'd just take my word for it?" Ben asked weakly.

"One of us needs to get on board with him," I said. "To watch him."

"That brings us right back where we started," Jude said, disgusted. "Nowhere."

"Not quite."

It couldn't be Jude, and it couldn't be me. No one would ever believe two mechs had business on a server ship, especially under these circumstances. Auden's face was too well known. Which left only one option.

And maybe I'd been thinking about it all along.

"Come in here, Zo," I called.

Ben's eyes widened as she came into the room.

"You recognize her?" I asked Ben.

"I don't think we've met, but I know the name."

Zo rolled her eyes. "Typical," she said. "We've met about ten times. Don't feel bad. No one ever notices me when big sister's in the room."

I didn't argue with her, because when it came to BioMax she was right. Which was what I was hoping. "No one knows her," I said. "She could be anyone. Even Halley."

What little color was left in Ben's face drained away. "What did you say?"

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"Your daughter. Halley. Don't you think she and Zo look a bit alike? I know you haven't seen her in years, so maybe you should just trust me on this--"

"Do
not
bring her into this," he said, with cold fury. So he did care about something beyond his corp and his cause. Who knew?

"No one knows Zo," I said. "No one knows Halley. A little hair dye, some new clothes, a fake ID ... There's no reason to think that your crew would be able to tell one from the other."

"You want--" He swallowed, hard. "You want me to pretend
she's
my daughter? And convince my team--and ship security--that for some reason I need to bring her along on a maintenance trip to a highly secure server farm?"

I shrugged. "Tell them it's a field trip. Or punishment. Or you're trying to buy her love with a vacation on the high seas. I don't care--you'll think of something."

Zo looked as uncertain as he did. "Lia, I don't know--"

"And I suppose she's going to, what? Hide the gun under her shirt? Or you want me to come up with an excuse for that one too? And have you thought about what happens to her if she tries anything? Surrounded by security?"

"We won't have to worry about that," Jude said, unexpectedly, and approached the bed. Ben pressed himself against the wall, eyes wild.

"Turn over," Jude said.

"Why?"

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"Just do it."

"No. No, you want to shoot me, you look me in the eye."

"I don't want to shoot you," Jude said. "But I will if I have to.
Turn over
."

Very slowly, Ben turned over, and lay facedown on the mattress. He was shaking. Jude bent over him. Something silver flashed in his palm as he brought his hand toward Ben's neck. Ben yelped with pain and jerked away.

"You can sit up now," Jude said, backing away. Ben rubbed his hand against the back of his neck, frowning as he felt something that shouldn't be there.

"What did you do?" he asked.

"Just a little fail-safe," Jude said. "Riley designed it. You remember how good he was with explosives."

Ben looked like he was remembering
exactly
how good Riley had been with explosives, at least when it came to wiring the Brotherhood laboratory for demolition. He looked like he was also remembering that the explosion in that case had happened somewhat prematurely.

Jude lowered the gun. In his left hand he held a slim cylinder with a button at the end. "There's a miniaturized explosive embedded beneath your skin, where your spinal cord meets your brain stem. I press this button, you go boom. Elegant, don't you think?"

He held it out to Zo, who waited a long moment before accepting the offering. I wanted to tell her she didn't have to.

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"You're bluffing," Ben said.

"You want a demonstration?" Jude asked. "I give Zo the word, and you'll be smeared all over your bedroom walls. Which, admittedly, could use the decoration--but you wouldn't be around to appreciate it, so what good would that do?"

"Lia, this is insane," Ben said. "Tell me you know this is insane."

"Ben, you scooped my brain out of my dead body and loaded it into a machine. Don't talk to me about insane."

"I want you to leave my house right now," Ben said. "You leave, and I'm calling the secops, and we are done here.
Done
. You simply can't do this. I won't let you."

"Ben, listen to me--"

"Right shoulder," Jude said. "Two inches."

Before I could ask what he was talking about, there was a loud crack. Jude barely flinched with the recoil. The bullet blasted into the wall, two inches above Ben's right shoulder. Ben screamed.

"You understand I meant to miss," Jude said. "Next time I won't. Are you with me now?"

Ben nodded.

"Ready to help us?"

Ben snuck a few small glances at the hole in the wall, jerking his eyes away quickly, each time, like he preferred not to see. Then he nodded again. He was ready.

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* * *

There were preparations to be made. Auden guarded Ben while we dealt with dyeing Zo's hair and dressing her up to look as much like Ben's daughter as possible. Zo herself took care of the fake ID--it clearly wasn't her first attempt. While she was busy with that, I had Jude to myself, which gave me the perfect opportunity to ask why the hell he'd neglected to mention Riley's magic mini-bomb at any point before the absolute last minute.

"Because I didn't think of it until then?" he said.

"You just
forgot
?"

"No, I mean, we needed it, so I made it up."

We were alone in the living room, with no chance of anyone overhearing us. Still, I lowered my voice to a whisper. "You were
bluffing
?"

"You thought I just happened to have the exact super-secret weapon that we needed in that exact moment?" Jude snorted.

"If it's not an explosive, what the hell is it?"

"I palmed some stuff from his lab, just in case."

"Just in
case
?"

He shrugged. "Bad habit. But it came in handy, right? That's where I got the injector. The 'explosive' is just a random chip."

"And the detonator?"

"Remote ignition starter for the car. Never leave home without it."

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I wanted to punch him. "And when were you planning on telling me? Or
Zo
?"

Jude got serious, fast. "Zo can't find out," he said. "The bluff works only if
she
believes it."

"So you want to send her in blind and defenseless?"

"You want to give up and go home?"

I didn't say anything.

"You know I'm right," Jude said.

I didn't know. But I wasn't going to argue. I didn't need his permission to tell Zo the truth; I just had to figure out whether I should. So I pretended he'd convinced me, and shifted the conversation to what would happen if and when we got ourselves onto the server ship. We'd have one weapon, we'd have one hostage--and we'd be extremely deep in hostile territory with admittedly no clue as to what we'd do next. Playing it by ear wasn't exactly a comfortable option, but it wasn't clear we had an alternative. Ben would be able to guide us to the right part of the ship, and from there it would be up to us to figure out exactly what his team was planning on doing to the servers. I was more convinced than ever that he was clueless, which we could use to our advantage--but if he turned out to be a better liar than I'd thought, if he was leading the phase three charge, then we would deal with that, too. One weapon, one hostage. Worst case, we could try to alert the ship's security team, revealing BioMax's plans along with our presence, and probably, if