Wired (Skinned, Book 3) (36 page)

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"I don't know."

I didn't want to say it. Mostly because I didn't want him to guess how much I needed the answer. "What happened to you?"

"You know what happened."

"
I
happened? Is that what you mean? I did this to you."

"You didn't."

"I know that."

"You didn't make me jump," he said. "You tried to save me."

"That's not what you told your
Brotherhood.
"

"I never thought you
meant
to hurt me," he said. "I was always very clear about that. I just ..."

"Wanted to hurt me back. Job well done."

"
I
hurt," he said. "Do you get that? You don't feel anything, but I feel
everything
. My back, my stomach, my legs, they
hurt
. And my right arm ..." The one that wasn't there anymore, that had been replaced by plastic and gears. "That hurts the most."

I feel everything. You used to know that.

But out loud: "I said I was sorry."

"Yeah. You did. Right before you walked out. To go be with
them
."

"You
kicked
me out!"

He snorted. "Please. I was half delirious. You
wanted
to believe me. You wanted an out."

"That's not true."

"It was easier to leave, so you didn't have to look at me," he

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spit out. "That's the mech way, right? You hate weakness. You don't believe in it."

"There is no
mech
way. I'm not one of your cultists, too pathetic to think for myself."

Except that Jude was the one who'd told me Auden was better off without me. That mechs and orgs weren't safe together, because they were too weak and we were too strong, because they would always hate us and we would always hurt them. Before Auden had announced it to the world, Jude had whispered it in my ear. And I'd believed him.

Maybe Auden was right, and it had been easier that way.

"I don't know how to forgive you," I said.

"I'm not asking you to."

"Do you forgive me?" I asked.

"No."

I didn't say anything. The walls felt closer than before. It was wrong, lying here with him. We didn't belong like this; we didn't fit anymore.

"Why are you here?" I asked.

"Because you're right. I helped start this."

"Because you believed in it," I pointed out. "You just said that. You thought the mechs were evil, soulless parasites. And you
meant
it, remember?"

"I remember what I used to think of you," Auden said. "Before the download. When you were just one of them, and I was ..."

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The weird loser with the antique watch, the ragged backpack, and the nutcase conspiracy theories. The nobody.

"I thought you were useless," he said. "Not to mention brainless. I told myself you were nothing but a ..."

"Bitch?"

"Pretty much."

"You were probably right."

"I wasn't," he said. "I believed it. I was so certain--that's what I told myself, but that didn't make it true."

Auden was the one, the only one, who'd been sure that I was the same download as I was before. I didn't know how to explain that it wasn't true. That the person he'd come to know, the friend he'd had, before everything had fallen apart,
wasn't
the same person as the blond bitch who'd cheered on the Neanderthals when they leaped on their prey.

"What happened to your glasses?" I asked instead.

"What?"

"Your glasses." Auden had been the only person in our school, the only person in our world, really--that is, the world of people who counted--who was born as a natural. Life-threatening imperfections were corrected in the womb, but everything was else left as it was, thanks to his mother's crazed Faither beliefs. He'd rejected the beliefs but kept the nearsightedness, kept the glasses--right up to the moment when he'd followed in her zealot footsteps. The moment that he'd declared artificial to be evil and natural to be divine. It

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had always seemed a strange time to let himself be artificially perfected, to bring himself that much closer to the boundary between org and machine. And without the glasses he seemed like someone else.

"I finally got it," he said. "What an insult it was. Ignoring the defect when I could fix it so easily."

"An insult to who?"

"To anyone who couldn't be fixed. I thought I was the only one being real. But I was playing pretend. So I got my eyes fixed. No more glasses."

"Oh."

"Surprised?"

"I guess I thought it had something to do with ... your mom." I didn't know if I was allowed to bring her up. "I always thought you kept the glasses because they were, like, some kind of reminder."

"Maybe," he said. "But I didn't really need that anymore, did I? Once I teamed up with the Faithers." He snorted. "She would have been so proud."

"Is that a good thing?"

"She was crazy," he said. "It runs in the family, remember?"

"Auden--"

"I don't think we should talk anymore," he said.

Long hours in the dark. Silence. The sound of the waves lapping at the boat. The engine roar. The bouncing and swaying as the boat cut through the water. Beneath the white

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noise, almost my imagination, floating in the dark: "Lia. I am sorry."

I don't know how long I waited to answer.

But I finally did.

"Me too."

After five hours at sea, nine hours in the box, the engines fell silent. The boat stopped moving. We had arrived.

We waited, though it was torture, as our container was carried out of its storage room and then connected to something that swung us into the air, where we dangled for an eternity, picturing the waves crashing below, and then we waited again, tensed, for the lid of the container to swing open at any moment, as if there were anything we could do if we reemerged into a world swarming with armed guards, all of them aiming at us.

Now, again, it was a matter of trusting Ben to follow through on his promise, with only his life as collateral. We were set down somewhere, and the walls of the crate were thin enough to make clear that we weren't alone. The murmur of voices overlapped with the ViM relay in my earpiece. Zo and Ben were standing just above us--along with everyone else.

"Why don't you all get started with the servers," Ben said. "I just wanted to do one last inventory check, make sure everything got on board intact."

I cringed. It wasn't the most subtle attempt. But then, I

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didn't know if I could have done any better, especially with a gun to my head--or in this case, in it.

"You got it, boss," a man said.

"We'll meet you there," another one added. "We've got some business up in the COMCEN."

"What business?" Ben asked.

"That's classified."

"This is my team," Ben said. "Nothing's classified from me."

"This just came in from BioMax."

"And?"

"And--come on, man, don't embarrass yourself in front of your kid. This won't take long. We'll meet you at the servers."

"You asking me, or telling me?" Ben said.

"What do you think?"

Ben didn't respond.

No one spoke for several moments.

"You know what they're doing up there?" Kiri said. I assumed the other techs--at least the defiant ones--had left.

"I'd think that would be obvious."

"Me neither," Kiri said. "But I have some guesses. Nothing good. This corp ..."

"What?"

"How long have you worked for them, Ben?"

"Twenty years, almost. You?"

"Five. But after the things I've heard ..."

"What?"

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"I'm out. After we fix this screwup, I'm getting out. And maybe you should think about it too."

"What exactly have you heard, Kiri?"

"Let's just say if I were you, I wouldn't ask them any questions when they come down from the COMCEN. Probably best we don't know the answers." Her voice brightened abruptly. "Come on, Halley, no need to stick around here while your dad counts processors. Why don't you come with me? I can show you the server room. Thrilling stuff."

Zo hesitated. "Actually, I should probably just stick with my dad."

Kiri laughed. "What kind of teenager are you? Come on, let's see if we can get into some trouble."

Think of something,
I willed Zo, but there was nothing left for Zo to say, and she knew it. "Okay. Sure."

Their footsteps retreated from the crate. They were gone.

Moments later Ben's signal came: three knocks. Time to trust him, one last time. I eased open the top of the crate and peered out. We were in a shadowy storage hold, boxes and crates strewn across a space wide enough to contain the entire Kahn house. And aside from Ben we were alone.

Auden climbed out gently, stretching his cramped limbs. But I was up and in Ben's face in seconds. "You just let my sister wander off? Alone?"

"What was I supposed to do?" Ben asked.

"Stop them! Keep her
safe
."

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And then Jude was behind me, pulling me away, calming me down, reminding me that there was nothing to be done; he'd been listening to the same conversation I had, and Zo had played along, just as she should have. Kiri was harmless; Zo was safe.

"Get it together," he said, giving me a rough shake.

I shrugged him off. "I'm together."

Zo was safe with Kiri, I told myself. Probably. I could still hear them through my earpiece, Kiri prattling on about server architecture and the ins and outs of spin, Zo offering the occasional monosyllabic grunt, as they drew further and further out of my reach.

"So, you believe us now?" Jude asked Ben. "Or you want to tell me your precious corp hasn't turned shady on you?"

Ben looked shell-shocked.

"I got you on board," he said finally. "Now what?"

Jude was still holding the gun. "You heard them," he said--not to Ben, but to us. "Something's happening at the COMCEN, whatever that is."

"Communications center," Auden said. He'd proved himself an expert on server farms, or as much of an expert as anyone could be--a convenient holdover from his conspiracy-theorist days. "Probably up by the bridge."

"Right," Jude said. "That. So we find it. We stop them."

They were right. It made sense. Phase three was real, and it was about to happen here, above us, unless we acted.

"You go," I said.

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Jude wheeled on me. "What?"

"You follow the techs," I told him. "I'm going after Zo."

"I can check on your sister," Ben said.

I didn't know why he'd want to be anywhere near her, unless he'd figured out that the explosive was a fake. Either way, even if he'd proved himself to be as much of a dupe as I'd suspected, I couldn't trust him with this.

"We don't know what's happening up there," I told Jude. "It could just be a coincidence. You follow the techs, I'll go to the server room, check things out there, and if everything's good, I can grab Zo and we can meet you."

"And if it's not good?" Jude said. "What are you going to do then?"

"I ..."

"Take the gun," he said.

"What?" I'd been expecting more argument. "No."

"You're right. We should split up. We only have one weapon. So if you're going to insist on going off on your own, you take it."

"I can go with Lia," Auden suggested.

"No," Jude and I said together.

"The important thing is stopping phase three," I said. "That's where you need to be."

Maybe that's where I needed to be too. Maybe it was selfish to go after Zo instead--whatever I said, I didn't actually believe there was any reason to check out the server room,

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not after what we'd heard. But I couldn't let her disappear into the ship without any backup. If something went wrong, she expected me to be there. I'd let her believe I would be. If Jude and Auden went after the techs at the COMCEN and they managed to sound some kind of alarm, the ship would be crawling with security, and Zo would, most likely, be screwed. Right now, with any luck, the worst threat she faced would be Kiri boring her to death with a history of BioMax. In which case I'd find a way to get her alone, and we'd go above deck together. Who knew, maybe Kiri could even be an asset. If not, I'd deal.

But I wasn't going to let Jude and Auden risk everything out of some misplaced sense of chivalry. As I suspected Zo would be quick to point out, one of us being stupid was more than enough.

"I'll go with Lia," Ben said.

"And why would she want that?" Jude said.

"She won't get into the server room without my help. And without me, I highly doubt if she'll be able to figure out if anything's not as it's supposed to be."

"Right," Jude snarled. "And
with
you she's got an excellent probability of being turned in to the first security team you pass."

"Ben comes with me," I said.

"You trust
him
?" Auden asked incredulously.

"We should lock him in a crate," Jude said. "Just to be safe."