Fox Forever

  “Raine, please, I can’t explain right now. Keep your voice down. I just need another minute to—”

  She comes at me, screaming, “This is what you had to tell me? You were going to snoop through my father’s files? I can’t believe this! Get out! Get out!” She swipes at the open folders and I grab her by the wrist.

  “I know this doesn’t look—”

  “You’re nothing more than a spy! That’s all you ever were! Exactly what he warned me about! I was only a way for you to get to my father!” She reaches out with her other hand for the files but I pin her to my side.

  “Please, Raine,” I whisper into her ear. “I need this information. You have to trust me.”

  “Trust you? You’ve never done anything but lie to me! Let go! Let go of me right now!”

  I miss half of everything else she’s yelling as I try to maintain my grip on her with my injured arm and read the file that I need. Arlington station—a lighting grid, two pressure points, another grid down the main tunnel—

  She stomps on my foot. Her elbow finds my already cracked ribs. I let go, bending over the desk trying to breathe. She jumps away from me and spins, a river of anger and hatred spewing from her mouth.

  “It all adds up now! Your sudden entrance into the Collective, all the questions about my father, the—” Her eyes widen impossibly larger. “Oh my God. That little Non-pact girl. She knew your name because you’re one of them.” She steps back like the thought horrifies her and she shakes her head. “I trusted you. I gave you—”

  She turns and runs out of the room.

  I close all the files in one sweep and run after her, catching her midway on the stairs. I grab her hand from behind. “You have to listen to me, Raine! You owe me that much! I—”

  “I owe you nothing! Now get out! Get out of my house and get out of my—”

  “What’s this?”

  We both stop and look up. At the top of the stairs a crowd has gathered. Shane, Vina, Cece, Ian, Hap—and the Secretary.

  Raine yanks her hand away from mine and continues up the last few steps. I follow her. The group ambles around us silently, the Secretary’s eyebrows still raised waiting for an explanation. Neither of us speaks, so he does. “It seems that my daughter is throwing you out of our house,” he says. He reaches out and pulls Raine to his side. I watch her stiffen under his touch. He never takes his eyes off me, zooming in on my gashed lip and cheekbone. “Was he inappropriate with you, my dear?”

  Raine stares at me, her eyes large black pools, frightened and filled with fury all at once. Please don’t say it, Raine. If you mention the word spy, I’m a dead man. She breaks her gaze with mine and looks down. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she whispers. “I just want him to leave.”

  The Secretary nods. “I understand. You’re upset. We’ll discuss this matter later in private.”

  “I’ll throw him out. I’d be happy to,” Shane says, taking a step toward me.

  “I wouldn’t,” I tell him.

  Shane stops. I don’t know if it’s the sound of my voice or my eyes drilling into him, but for once he makes a wise choice. He holds back. Vina, Ian, and Cece all stare, speechless, still trying to understand what just happened in the space of a few minutes.

  “No need, Shane,” the Secretary says. “I think my daughter has quite capably handled Mr. Jenkins already. Her message is clear enough. I’ll walk him out.”

  I look at Raine one last time. She turns away and refuses to meet my gaze. I walk to the foyer, the Secretary following behind me. The elevator doors open and I step inside. I turn to face him. His smug smile returns and he touches his cheekbone in the same place where I have the deep gash on mine. I see his gears turning, wondering where I got it. “There was always something about you I found unsettling.” His hand drops to his side. “I suppose one’s true character is impossible to hide for long.”

  I look at him, returning his smug smile with one of my own. “And sometimes it’s impossible to hide it at all,” I answer, and the elevator doors close between us.

  In the Tower

  I return home and tell Jenna to go to the art gallery and stay with Miesha. Now. It’s not safe for her to stay here anymore. As I expected, she argues the point with me, but I argue louder telling her this is my Favor, not hers, and she has to trust me. She must sense my desperation, and she leaves, with the caveat that if I don’t check in with her she’d be back. As soon as she’s gone I pack up all evidence of plans and the Network and destroy them. If it’s not in my head, it’s gone.

  My arm and hip scream with pain. Holding back Raine from the files and then running after her took its toll. Dammit! Hurry! “I don’t have time for this healing stuff!”

  I check my bandages. The wound on my hip has torn, just as Jenna warned, and BioPerfect oozes from it again. I rummage through her supplies and find the tool that punctures and weaves the skin back together. I can’t use anesthesia. I sit down on my bed and turn the tool on and then press it to the torn part of my wound. It penetrates my skin and I grit my teeth to keep from screaming. Sweat pours down my face, trickling down my neck. The only thing more painful than a half-human ripping your flesh apart is a laser needle weaving it back together. My hand shakes, and with every burning pulse, color explodes behind my eyes, blacking out the room, but I keep the tool in place until it signals that the job is complete. The tool drops from my hand to the floor and I fall back on the bed. I don’t look to see if I did as good of a job as Jenna. I know I didn’t. Just so it’s closed, that’s all that matters.

  I wake with a start to find that I’ve slept for two hours. I listen for noise in the apartment, an intruder, but the only sound is the whir of an occasional car passing on the street. I pull myself up, leaving all the lights off, and go to the kitchen to look out the window, which has a better view of the parkway. Nothing.

  The meeting must be over by now. I see Raine’s face again, the shock and betrayal.

  I close my eyes and brace myself against the kitchen counter taking several slow deep breaths. If only I had told her the truth sooner. Maybe then there would have been a chance. But by the time I admitted to myself that I loved her I had already lied myself into a corner.

  We’ll discuss this matter later.

  Is the Secretary grilling her now? Is she telling him what she saw? How much longer before there’s a knock on my door? Or maybe they’ll just burn me out the way they did Karden.

  My palm ripples. I jerk my hand up and check my iScroll, praying it’s Raine, but it’s only Carver. “Off!” I yell.

  Percel appears. “It’s an emergency, sir. I’m told to alert you at all costs.”

  “It’s always an emergency with Carver,” I shout. “I said off!” I can’t recount the details of tonight’s meeting with him right now. There are too many other things I need to do. I need to check the apartment for any lasting evidence in case someone comes. I need time to think. I need—

  * * *

  The Commons is quiet. Deathly quiet. Not even the smallest rustling of animals in the bushes. Is it the chill in the air, or something else? I don’t sit on our usual tree. I hide in the shadows, afraid if she sees me she won’t come down, but she doesn’t come anyway. I wait hour after hour. The clouds thicken, weaving together until they block out the moon, and somehow that makes the silence even heavier.

  Finally, near three in the morning she appears, a dark blanket wrapped around her shoulders so she’s barely visible. She walks the length of the rooftop, maybe the only place where she still feels in control. She leans against the roof wall, looking out, not searching down below for me, but just staring out past the treetops, probably staring at nothing at all. Is she retracing every moment we spent together, imagining that it was all lies? It wasn’t. She has to know that. What we shared …

  I step out of the shadows.

  I don’t have much more to lose, and I walk to the clearing so I’m in plain view if she would only look down. She finally does, like she sense
s she’s being watched.

  She looks at me, and even from nine stories below and in the dark, I can see enough of her face to know the old Raine has returned. She has nothing for me. The blanket slips from her shoulders, forgotten, and she walks away, disappearing back into her father’s domain.

  Wreckage

  There are still no knocks on my door. No fires to burn me out.

  She didn’t tell him. Yet.

  But even not telling won’t save me for long. It doesn’t matter that I’m out of the Collective, and his daughter’s life. I have no doubt the Secretary’s still digging and has probably doubled his efforts to search my past. He spent far too long scrutinizing the injuries on my face, perhaps trying to match it up with the injuries a half-human might inflict. What throws him off, maybe even makes him lazy, is my age, my stature, my education, and my supposedly rich parents. I don’t fit his profile of a Non-pact with an ulterior motive. In that respect, the Network knew exactly what they were doing in choosing me and creating my background. In the Secretary’s mind I’m too much like the other kids in the Collective to be one of those animals he despises.

  I’m out of the apartment early, taking the PAT to Cambridge. My three hours of sleep were short but determined. With the deadline looming and Carver itching to go to Plan B, there’s no time to waste.

  I didn’t spend much time in Cambridge when I used to live here. I remember going to some bookshops with Jenna and Kara, looking for old volumes of poetry, and then hanging out at some outdoor cafés, sipping lattes and trying to outquote one another, but we never really ventured past the main streets.

  Percel walks me through a maze of alleys and streets. He has no information about 1407 Bridgemont. No visuals, no history, only directions, but with privacy laws he says there’s an opt-out provision so it’s not unusual for this information to be unavailable. I remember Jenna telling me about the privacy laws … the beginning of the personal privacy era … other than public space IDs, all personal tracking information and devices were outlawed.

  That must have really put a damper on the Secretary’s extracurricular activities.

  “Left at the next corner,” Percel tells me.

  The street I’m on is like one from another time. My time. Quiet, lined with trees that are beginning to drop yellow leaves on streets that are cobbled. A market on the corner doesn’t look that much different from the one my mother used to work at, small, with specials handwritten on placards in the window and silver pails filled with bunches of flowers near the entrance. I pause before I turn left, looking at the various bunches. Mums. Roses. Lilies. Lots of others I don’t even know the names for. I wonder what kind Raine—

  Roses maybe. But I’ll probably never know.

  “Left here,” Percel reminds me.

  I turn onto a long narrow street, one residence butted up to the next with an occasional business wedged between. There’s nothing remarkable about the street other than it’s quiet and pleasant. I begin to look at numbers from force of habit even though Percel has already informed me I have another twenty meters to go.

  1401, 1403, 1405, and then nothing.

  Between a two-story brownstone at 1405 and a one-story haberdashery at 1409 is an empty lot. Nothing more than gravel and a few weeds. I look down to the corner to make sure we’re on the right street but Percel assures me that the empty lot is 1407 Bridgemont.

  I walk up the porch steps to the haberdashery next door and go inside, a bell on the door alerting them to my presence. They’ve really gone for the full quaint effect. A Bot who is cleverly made up as an old wicker dress form brings me back to the reality of where I am. I ask her about the lot next door.

  “Not for sale as far as I know. It’s been empty for years now.”

  “You mean it used to have something on it?”

  She pulls back the black netting on her felt hat. “Yes. A home. It burned to the ground sixteen years ago during a raid. Two humans died.” She tries to interest me in fabrics that would complement my eyes, but I’m already walking out, the tinkling bell and slamming door echoing with all the other thoughts swirling through my head.

  Miesha and Karden’s home. The Secretary had their address and has saved it all these years. It didn’t come through an intelligence report, or through other official avenues. He got their address by way of a small handwritten note. A note that had no other identifying information on it. An anonymous note.

  * * *

  I’m just turning down the street to the apartment when Xavier intercepts me. I can’t tell if he’s angry or relieved but his expression is wild. “Where have you been?”

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “It’s Livvy. She’s gone.”

  “What do you mean gone?”

  He steps closer, lowering his voice. “There was a Security sweep last night. Carver tried to call you but couldn’t get through. Security Forces went through Livvy’s neighborhood grabbing anyone on the street. They got her and six others.”

  “But why? She wasn’t even in public space.”

  Xavier’s voice shakes as he explains that sometimes it doesn’t matter. Sometimes they just want to send a warning message. Is it lawful? No. But who are Non-pacts going to complain to? Security?

  I lean back against a gatepost, dazed, trying to make sense of it. “Is this because of me going down into the green tunnel?”

  He says that may have triggered it, but that it’s not the first time it’s happened and it won’t be the last. They do it periodically just to demonstrate that they’re in charge. “And with the deadline drawing so near, the Secretary is probably breathing down the necks of every man on the Security Force. It’s all about pecking order, and we’re on the bottom.”

  “How long will they keep her?”

  Xavier shakes his head, looking down at his feet, a mountain of restraint heaving in his chest. “They might let her go. The scare of the raid might be warning enough. Or she might already be on her way to the desert.”

  I can barely think, picturing Livvy and … “She’s got kids,” I whisper.

  “You think I don’t know she’s got kids?” he hisses. “But she’s already been tagged twice, if they count this as the third…”

  Three strikes and you’re out. Tagged like a dog. I search for the same restraint Xavier is able to dredge up on cue. “We’ll get her back,” I tell him. “Some way.”

  Xavier pushes his face within inches of mine. “Stay the course,” he says in a slow growl. “Her kids are who Livvy is doing this for. Now’s not the time to do something impulsive.”

  Like I did when I went down into the tunnel. He doesn’t have to say it. I still hear him loud and clear. But sometimes staying the course can mean maintaining the status quo too, and look where that’s gotten them. Nowhere.

  I try to walk around him but he sidesteps in front of me. His eyes have gone from troubled to sympathetic. It makes my stomach tighten. “There’s something else,” he says.

  He sighs, only making my gut squeeze tighter. “This probably isn’t the best time to tell you this, but we gave you our word. We have some news about Manchester.”

  I thought they forgot about that. I had almost forgotten myself. “Did you find something?”

  He nods. “They got into the labs. They had to burn the whole place down to cover their tracks, but they found something.”

  I close my eyes. I know what the something is. I’m not sure I can take any more bad news right now, not one more complication. “Are they bringing it to me?”

  “It’s here. Right now.” He tilts his head gesturing behind him. “Over there.”

  A beat-up plumber’s truck is parked outside the apartment. Jake stands next to it. I take a couple of deep breaths. Hold it together, Locke. “Have him bring it up.”

  “He can’t.” Xavier signals him and Jake rolls up the back door of the truck.

  I’m not sure how long I stand there before I start hearing again; how long before I start seeing again. Xavi
er grabs my injured arm where a deep wound is still healing and the shooting pain brings me back to the present.

  “They’re labeled with two names,” he says. “Kara Manning and Locke Jenkins. About a hundred of each.”

  Row after row of six-inch cubes all attached to battery docks, like houses on a city block. A whole city of nothing but Kara and myself.

  “What should we do with them?”

  A hundred possible Karas. Maybe one who is whole, or maybe a hundred who are the wreckage of an experiment gone wrong. A hundred Lockes, each one still trapped in a world of endless black corridors that have no beginnings or endings, still begging for a way out. A hundred Lockes listening to the tortured screams of Kara. But maybe one Locke who is more than me. Better than me. A whole city of uploaded minds—spares—that might have been forgotten for another two centuries on a storage shelf, or used as floor models all over the world. Hari still had dollar signs in his eyes even after Gatsbro’s death.

  “What do you want us to do with them?” he repeats.

  I look at him, trying to understand his words. Do with them?

  I always thought I knew what I would do. But a hundred. Maybe one that is—

  I shake my head. I can’t think. “You’re right. This is a bad time.”

  Right now all I can manage to do is to stay the course.

  Suspects

  I walk around the small basement apartment, making my promised appearance, but also needing to ask Miesha something. The apartment takes up about half of the basement of the gallery. I look up at the small window that looks out at street level. Everything about the basement is different from when Kara and I used to hang out here with Jenna, except for the stone walls and the windows. “It doesn’t look anything like I remember.”

  “It’s been centuries. The whole house has been gutted and restored several times over,” Jenna says. “It took some hits during the Civil Division too, and that had to be repaired. Only father’s study on the second floor is still intact with all the original walls and contents—right down to the books in his library and the pen on his desk. I guess when you create something as groundbreaking as Bio Gel, people want to get a glimpse of the mind that created it. But most of the house is devoted to the art gallery now.”