Fox Forever

  So there you have it, Carver and illustrious Team. Deal with it. I have a body created in a lab. Eighty percent bioengineered human, twenty percent composites, one hundred percent illegal.

  “You said ‘near exact.’ Tell us about the changes.”

  With a brief scan, I can see the anticipation in all their faces. I’m a curiosity. Something they’ve never seen before. “Gatsbro was a stickler for detail. He even managed to engineer our tissue with our saved DNA so we would retain our original identity. That’s how I knew the changes weren’t an accident. I’m four inches taller now. A lot stronger. Green flecks in my eyes. No cowlick. Straighter teeth. Gatsbro made improvements to help sell his product. But there were some things he didn’t plan on. That’s the wonder of experimental technology. The BioPerfect created some changes he didn’t calculate.” I lean forward, resting my arms on the table. “I can read lips—from very long distances. I never could do that before. That’s how I nailed a cheat back in California.”

  Livvy and Jake exchange glances, probably making mental notes to guard their lips carefully.

  “I’m also learning to read faces.”

  “Meaning?” Carver asks.

  “When I concentrate, I can dissect a face into multiple planes. Emotions stand out the most, usually the ones we try to hide. Fear, anger, hatred.” And also things like blatant lies and exaggerations. I glance at Xavier. “I don’t always get it, but I know when I see something that isn’t quite right.”

  “That might be useful,” Livvy says.

  Carver nods. “Are you concentrating now?”

  I look at his face. Hunger. Need. Hope. I shake my head. “No.”

  “Any other changes?”

  I think of my lapses. He said to share every detail, but I haven’t had a lapse in several weeks. Maybe I’m over that. What about my sensitivity to pain? Is that really a wise thing to share? Gatsbro used it to control me. Or that I heal quickly? In less than a quarter of the time it might usually take? Would knowing this allow them to take greater chances with me? If I’m going to risk life and limb, I don’t want the odds stacked against me. I decide to stick to something that Xavier has already witnessed.

  I sit back in my chair. “I can see in the dark—if I push myself. Not a lot, but dim outlines, enough to find my way. When we were coming down the stairs I could see Jake ready to bust in our brains long before Xavier did.”

  Carver raises his brows. This piece of information transforms his face.

  “But I don’t like the dark,” I add. “I don’t want to spend a lot of time in dark places.”

  “You’re afraid of the dark?” Mr. F asks.

  I make no apologies to anyone about my fear of the dark. When you’ve spent 260 years in a black hole with no sound, touch, or light, you have a whole new understanding of what darkness can mean. “Yeah, Xavier. You got a problem with that?”

  “I got all kinds of problems, kid, and that’s the least of them. Cool your heels.” His eyes are locked on mine, neither of us ready to back down.

  Carver stands and walks in the shadows like he’s trying to divert our attention. “What about this woman named Miesha?” he asks. “I understand she helped you get away from Gatsbro. What do you know about her?”

  “She’s tough—at least that’s the act she puts on. She’s had a hard life. She spent some time in prison. Turns out she’s my niece. Sort of. About eight generations removed. I guess technically, I’m not related to her any more than I am to anyone else, but it’s all I’ve got.”

  “Trust her?”

  “With my life.”

  “She was part of a Resistance movement, wasn’t she?”

  Knowing about me is one thing, but I’m surprised he knows so much about Miesha. “Was,” I answer cautiously. “Her husband and daughter died because of it and that’s when she quit.”

  The others have fallen silent. Carver seems to be in control of where we’re going. I watch him continue to pace in the shadows. “How did they die?” he asks.

  “Burned. Their house was torched by Security while she was away at a market.”

  “Horrible. Did she identify the bodies?”

  “No. She was arrested the minute she returned to the house. That’s when she went to prison. She was in for eleven years.”

  There’s a long silence. I wait for someone to speak, but they all seem to be weighing this information.

  “Is that what this is about?” I finally ask. “Are you part of the Resistance?”

  Carver keeps his face in the shadows, like he doesn’t want to betray his expressions, but I note the hesitation in his step. “There’s no Resistance movement anymore,” he says.

  “There’s always resistance, whether you say it with a capital R or not. You may call yourselves the Network, but I don’t see the difference. The Network exists to help the same people who are part of the Resistance.”

  “You’re wrong,” Carver says. “The Network is only a humble humanitarian effort, while the Resistance was proactive and political. Let’s move along to—”

  I push my chair back. “Can we just cut the semantics crap? You already know all about Miesha, Jenna, Kara’s death, and probably the color of my underwear. Enough with the questions. Why am I here?”

  “To help a Non-pact. We already told you,” Mr. F grumbles.

  “Who?” I’m not trying to hide my impatience anymore. I understand they aren’t sure if they can trust me yet, are maybe even afraid of who or what I am, but I’m just as wary of them. Meeting shady figures in shady basements doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. I’ve already sized up the room, figured out my fastest exit and the convenient obstacles to throw in their paths. I hope they can hear in my voice that I’m seconds from walking out the door. They either meet me halfway or they don’t.

  Carver returns to the table and sits. The four exchange glances. He opens his mouth to speak but Livvy cuts him off. “We aren’t sure, Locke. There’s been a rumor for the last year that the Secretary of Security is holding someone in a special detainment area somewhere in the city. Usually arrested Non-pacts are sent to Reformation and Reassignment Centers in the desert, but not this one.”

  “What did he do? Violate public space?”

  Livvy shakes her head. “No, for that he would have been whisked to the desert years ago. We think he might be someone who stole some money sixteen years ago. A lot of money.”

  I let out a quick puff of dismissive air. “Why would you want to help someone like that? Stealing’s a crime, in case you haven’t heard.”

  “If it’s who we think it is, he didn’t do it for himself,” Carver explains. “He did it for the Resistance.”

  Bingo. We’re back to that after all. I raise my brows in victory, but they don’t seem to notice, more entranced with this long lost thief.

  “It was pure genius,” Xavier continues. “He hit every government contractor who built security systems to keep Non-pacts from public spaces. Nine contractors, eighty billion duros all funneled instantly into a secret account. They went down like dominoes.”

  They have my attention. “Eighty billion?”

  Mr. F smiles like he’s reliving it all over again. “Besides the financial hit, the humiliation factor for the so-called security contractors was so high, the theft was never revealed to the public. He had done maneuvers like this before on a smaller scale, but this time he outdid himself. The day he did it he sent us a ‘complete’ message in the afternoon along with the account numbers, but by evening he was—”

  Carver jumps in. “Gone. And access to the account for eighty billion was gone with him. We thought he had sent us all the numbers, but apparently for safety reasons he only delivered half via cyber-transmittal. We later learned that the other half was to be hand-delivered.” He opens a note window, writes something on it, and flicks it toward me, a virtual memo floating across the air to me. I grab it and it becomes tangible material at my touch, almost like paper. “That was all we got,” he explains, “tw
elve numbers that are virtually worthless without the rest. He said he’d make sure we got the missing numbers but he never had the chance. He disappeared without a trace. He was either missing or dead.”

  “Or he took off with the money. Isn’t that what thieves do?”

  “Not him.” Xavier’s ears redden and he looks like he’s going to tear off my face.

  I blink slowly so he knows I’m unaffected. A lesson for you, Xavier: Never show the enemy your weakness. “Okay. So missing or dead. But you don’t know which?”

  “His house was raided by Security Forces,” Carver says. “Burned out. His body was never produced. His widow—”

  It hits me.

  I finally hear what they’re trying to tell me. “Hold on. Are you saying that—?” My chair squeals back behind me and I walk away to the other side of the room then right back again. I lean on the table and shake my head. “No! No way! He’s dead. Miesha’s husband is dead. She told me so. I saw the scars on her arms where she—”

  “There are rumors about Karden,” Livvy says. “We have to know. If they’re true, he’s been holed up for sixteen years and no one’s tried to help him. We owe him that much.”

  I backtrack, trying to remember every word Miesha told me about that night. She never saw them. All she saw was a burning house. I was walking back from the market.… The front door was open and bursting with flames.… I ran, screaming, breaking a window with my bare arms.… I thrashed, desperate to get to them, and then I felt a tazegun at my neck.… When I woke, I was in prison, and they told me they were dead.

  She said it herself. She never saw them dead. She only knew what the prison officials had told her. They wouldn’t even let me make any kind of arrangements for their funerals.… As far as I know, their remains were shoveled up along with the burned rubble of the house.

  Unless Karden’s body wasn’t there to shovel up. And with eighty billion duros at stake, the Security Forces would have covered all their tracks. But why now, after all these years, are there finally rumors? And if he’s been missing all this time, why the sudden urgency to find him? They all act like time is running out. I look at the four of them seated across from me waiting for me to respond. The table is turned—do I trust them enough to meet them halfway? Eighty billion duros gives them a lot of reasons to lie to me.

  “Is it Karden or the money that you’re really after?”

  “Karden,” Livvy and Xavier both say firmly and simultaneously. Jake nods his agreement.

  Carver is slower to respond. He leans back in his chair and pinches the bridge of his nose like he’s tired and then gets up and begins pacing in the shadows of the room again. A nervous habit? But he doesn’t strike me as the nervous sort—more of the slow methodical type. “We all want to help Karden if he’s alive, but I’m not going to deny that the money is a big consideration too. There’s a small but growing movement in higher political circles that’s mumbling about reunification. They want to have one united country again, but there’s strong opposition from both of the fractured sides. That kind of money could give the Resistance a lot of mileage, and now there’s a small contingent in power who would actually listen. It could mean an instant end to the subclass of people the division created. No more Non-pacts, and as you know, Non-pacts has become a catch-all phrase for anyone who doesn’t meet certain standards.”

  Like me. I know he’s playing to my sympathies, my lab-created body falling way short of meeting so-called legal standards. Miesha’s bitter words cut through me. The human race has always found a group to marginalize—every culture, every time, every race.

  But that inequity still doesn’t mean I’m going to risk what I do have without more answers. “The money has always been out there somewhere. Why the sudden urgency now?”

  “Bank accounts with no activity for fifteen years are absorbed by the country where they’re deposited. There’s a one-year grace period to reclaim them,” Livvy says. “We’re in that grace period now. But more importantly, if Karden is alive, once the money is gone for good, there will be no reason for the Security Forces to keep him alive. He’s living on borrowed time.”

  “If he’s alive,” I say. “It might be just that, you know? Only rumors.”

  “We’re well aware of that,” Carver answers.

  They all stare at me, silent and waiting. The cards are laid out and it’s my turn to play.

  This is no ordinary Favor. With this one I could lose everything I’ve managed to gain in the last few months. My freedom. After all those years of being a prisoner, first in a hellish cube and then on Gatsbro’s estate, I could end up in prison again. Big-time prison. Or worse, dead. In my old neighborhood, people could end up dead over a Benji in their wallet. With eighty billion duros at stake, plugging someone wouldn’t even be an afterthought.

  But we’re talking about Miesha’s husband. Leader of the Resistance. I’m still trying to get my head around that possibility. I remember the knife in my pack. His knife. It was the only thing of his that Miesha had left and she gave it to me. I remember using it to cut away the CabBot’s fingers that clutched my wrist. And before that it slashed and disabled the iScroll on my palm that Gatsbro was using to track me. His knife has saved my skin twice already. It’s a long shot, but if it is him …

  “I’m not here to join any Resistance,” I tell them. “Just to return a Favor.”

  Carver and Livvy both nod.

  I throw my pack onto the table and sit down. “Okay. How do I fit in?”

  The Set

  I walk around the apartment. Small but extravagant. Beautiful, even. Impressive. And that’s the point. To impress. Louisburg Square means as much now as it did when I lived in Boston, but I never set foot in one of these houses back then.

  “How can they afford this?”

  Xavier opens the bedroom door and waves me in. “I told you. They’ve sunk everything they have into you and finding him. The funds are drained. I probably don’t need to tell you the money didn’t come easy either. A lot of skipped meals for a lot of Non-pacts who wanted to contribute.”

  I’m already feeling the weight of their hope on me.

  “We only have the apartment until the end of next month. That’s when the real owners move in.”

  End of next month? I don’t plan on playing this role for a week. I need to get on with my life, my plans, all the things that have been put on hold for too long. I need to figure out who or what I am. I need to live the life that Jenna wants me to live. I need to hurry and live it. Catch up. Is that possible? Can I ever catch up to Jenna?

  “It shouldn’t take that long,” I say.

  “Says you who’s never met the Secretary.”

  I ignore Xavier and open a closet. It’s full of shirts and pants and shoes that are all equal to any of the expensive clothing that Gatsbro provided me. And it all looks like my size. They knew I would do this. I turn to Carver who has followed us into the bedroom. “Is all this really necessary? This expense?”

  “We only get one shot at this. He has to believe that you are who you say you are. We have to get you in a position where he lets his guard down.”

  All they need is for me to get close enough to the Secretary of Security to find out where he’s keeping Karden—that is, if he’s keeping Karden. I’ll be sneaking through files, reading lips, listening—any slip of information that will help us. They know Karden’s not in the usual temporary detainment center in the city, but there’s no record of any other facility. They’ve tried to find a way into the Security Headquarters to get information but it’s an impassable fortress. Besides, they think the Secretary and his cohorts have their own secret stash of prisoners that would never be in the official records—prisoners they keep for their own purposes.

  “I still don’t see how having all this is going to get me into his house.”

  “You have to play the part. Xavier will explain later.” Carver is distracted, shuffling through files at the table, one Vgram after another flipping up
as he searches for the right one. “These files aren’t indexed,” he complains, shooting a glance at Xavier. “Ah. Here it is, File Twelve. Over here, Locke. I need to review this with you.”

  I join him at the table. “This is the layout of his house—at least the last known records of it. It’s the Tudor Apartments. Don’t let the name fool you. His is a double unit and takes up two floors and eleven thousand square feet. He may have made interior changes, but it’s not likely, given the historical nature of the building. It’s going to take you a while so start memorizing the layout. Every inch of it. You won’t be able to bring this with you.” He slides a disk toward me. “Here’s your new ID.”

  “I already have a new ID.”

  He shakes his head. “That was just to get you here. There can’t be any traces of where you just came from. We have a new history for you. Besides, we decided using your own name is best. There’s no present-day record of a Locke Jenkins anywhere that we haven’t recently created, and we can’t afford slips. Your name is perfect. You’ll answer to it without hesitation. That’s what we need. You’ll be believable as Locke Jenkins.”

  I listen as he methodically goes step by step through this new person I will become, even if he has the name Locke Jenkins. I’m the son of a Barrett Jenkins, a resource consultant currently on assignment in Bvlsavia. Livvy will play my mother as necessary. We’ve lived abroad for years but are returning home to complete my education and because of my mother’s undisclosed health problem. He tells me I will be believable because unlike other Non-pacts, I’m physically fit and already have the advantage of an advanced education, not to mention my other special abilities, which will come into play later.