Until now. Am I leading them into a trap?
“It could happen to you if they leave you hanging. Or worse, if they snitch. Think they’ll do either?”
“Anna is a good person.” I don’t know the rest of her family well, but I assume they don’t deserve to die. “I can’t do nothing.”
“Well, you’re definitely doing something. I was just comming to tell you that we’re all set on this end. We can get them to Canada.”
“That’s a long distance to travel.”
“Ground transport’s safest, kid. They’re watching the sky.”
“But a car, really?”
“Not a car, kid. You’ll see.”
Yves’s voice interrupts after a brief buzz. “I’m sorry to cut in, sir, but we’re about to land.”
“Thank you, Yves.”
“Be careful,” says Chen.
“I thought you said cars with immunity chips were safe.”
“Unless people stop playing by the rules.”
“Sir,” says Yves. “If your aunt pages me back to the embassy, I cannot refuse her order. She has the master code.”
“Then let’s hope she wants me to get laid as badly as I think she does,” I mutter. I told her I was visiting Marguerite.
We descend to street level. The sun is setting, painting the sides of the mirrored high-rises with swirls of pink and orange. This is the true enclave of the technocrats, but we’re going to drive right by—and hope that Anna did what I asked her to. I pull up my collar and tap my cheekbones, then my brow, summoning my internal prosthetics, which change the shape of my face just enough.
Yves is silent as he glides around a corner and rolls into a parking garage, passing a sign that says this space is designated for residents only. A scan slips over his metal skin, but here’s the difference between Yves and a car without an immunity chip—this scan won’t be able to tell how many warm bodies are inside Yves, because the chip disrupts all temperature and kinetic signals. The scan would also track Cerepin signals if the ’Pins were network connected, but thanks to the chip, it’s a no go. It’s illegal to fit most cars with such chips, but that’s the benefit of having the protection of a foreign government.
I catch sight of Anna just as we enter the maze of closely parked autocannies. She and two other people, dressed in dark coats and wearing backpacks that make them look deformed, are standing near the elevator. “Open,” I say, then jump out of the car.
When she sees me, Anna shakes her head. “What happened to your face?”
“No time,” I say, pulling her backpack from her slender shoulders. “Get in the car.”
Her mother, whom I easily recognize as Gia Fortin despite her thick black hair being pulled back into a ponytail and her sunglasses, touches my arm. “Anna said she goes to school with you. This is amazing, what you’re doing for us.”
“Please don’t thank me until you’re safe,” I say. “Other technocrats in the city haven’t fared well.”
“Who?”
“The Aebersolds.”
“Oh, god,” she says in a choked voice. “Simon was a good friend. Is our president really doing this to us? All because of me?”
“Please consider pondering that from a place that’s far from here.”
She pushes the man beside her, a grim fellow I can only assume is Anna’s father, toward the vehicle.
“We can’t leave without him, Gia,” he says.
“My son, Hammond,” Gia explains. “He was supposed to be here, but he’s always late.” She bites her lip. “Should I stay, Griffin?” she asks the man.
“No, I will,” Griffin Fortin says. “We can meet—”
“Percy,” Anna calls, leaning out of Yves. “Your car is telling me that there are three vehicles designated as federal units that have just dropped out of skyspace and are heading in our direction.”
“Neither of you will stay,” I announce. “I’ll take care of Hammond—but it’s you they want.” I herd Anna’s parents into the back of Yves before jumping into the usually empty front seat. As it detects my weight, the control panel lights up.
“Human supplementation is activated, Percy,” says Yves. “Federally designated vehicles two blocks and closing.”
“Go!” I shout.
“Doors closing, seat belts activated,” Yves says before accelerating so quickly that I am pressed into the seat. A harness snakes over my chest and clicks closed. He exits the parking garage at unusually high speed and executes a hairpin turn.
“We need to be going west,” I tell him.
“My course is as you specified,” he replies mildly. “With the order to avoid federally designated vehicles as the primary command, followed by the speed and directional priorities.”
My fingers clench over the straps of my harness. “Then do whatever I told you, and I’ll shut up.”
Someone grabs my shoulder from the back. “Do you promise to find our son?” Anna’s father asks.
“I promise. But he might be safer if you aren’t with him.” I hope Bianca is safe. As unpleasant as she was, I still don’t want her to be dead. Maybe she’s just being held for questioning?
I turn my attention back to our predicament as Yves rises into the sky at top speed. Below us I see the shimmering black snake that is the Potomac at night, the western boundary of the District. Once we get over that, Chen and his friends will be waiting to take over. We’re only minutes away.
“The federal vehicles are joining us on this skypath, sir,” Yves says. “And they’re trying to open a channel for communication.”
“Oh, god,” Gia says in a choked voice. “I’m so sorry.”
I glance behind me to see her clutching Anna, her face buried in her daughter’s shoulder. Anna’s fingers are clawed over her mother’s head. Her eyes are riveted on mine. I lay my finger across my lips, asking for silence. Then I clench my jaw and face forward. “Accept the communiqué, but mask background noise and bio-signals.”
“Certainly, sir,” says Yves. “Diplomatic Vehicle Thirty-Two of the French Republic.”
“Diplomatic Thirty-Two, is there a human on board?”
I tap the tiny nodule on my Adam’s apple and begin to speak in a stream of perfect French, my voice an octave lower than it usually is. I explain that we are en route to an official meeting with a trade partner of the French government, an activity that is protected by rules surrounding unregulated commerce.
I looked all of this stuff up last night.
“Noted, Diplomatic Thirty-Two. We flagged you because you were detected at the Patrick Presidential Towers complex, which we have designated for increased security.”
I clear my throat loudly and try my best to explain that my sojourn at that residential complex was of an entirely personal and deeply private nature, and further explain that this is the reason the French think of the Americans as prudish in the extreme, if they have indeed decided to monitor the boudoir activities of foreign diplomats. I can’t help but add that such moral policing could interfere with the quality of the relationship between our two countries if I decided to report it to the American secretary of state. Next, I ask the fellow if he would like to give me his name and identification number so that I may include that in my report. It comes out in such a snobbish string of syllables that my American adversary merely stammers an apology and hangs up.
“Federally designated vehicles decelerating,” Yves reports a minute later.
“That was kind of cool,” says Anna. “I didn’t know you could speak French.”
I tap my Adam’s apple and allow my voice to return to normal. “I can’t. Not really.”
“You have augmented vocals,” Gia says, her tone full of wonder despite the extreme stress of the last few minutes. “Where did you get those?”
“My parents,” I say quietly.
“His face is augmented, too,” Anna tells her mother. “He doesn’t usually look like this.”
“To elude facial recognition?” Gia asks, lookin
g at me with sharp interest. “That’s impressive. Who installed it? I’d like to talk to them.”
I stare straight ahead. I listen as Anna whispers to her mom not to ask me any more questions, that she’ll tell her later. I don’t know if she realizes I hear her. But Gia Fortin didn’t get where she is by being meek.
“Anna told me your last name is Blake,” Gia says. “Were your parents Valentine and Flore, by any chance?”
I don’t answer, so she continues. “Your father was an outspoken critic of intracranial technology,” she tells me.
“He was a brilliant technologist,” I say, “as was my mother. I hardly think—”
“Oh, he was all for augmentations, which have understandably strict regulations,” she says, and I can’t quite translate her tone, despite my auditory chips. “But he insisted anything implanted in the brain should be used for what he called ‘therapeutic purposes’ only. He was totally against Cerepins, which he complained were a lot of risk just to have the Mainstream attached to your body permanently, a totally unfair characterization, by the way. He attended congressional hearings, demanding more rigorous rules about testing and developing the products. If he had his way, Cerepins would never have been available commercially.”
“What about neurostims?” Anna asks.
“Those do have therapeutic uses,” Gia says. “Wynn Sallese pushed hard to get them approved, and Valentine Blake demanded the raw data to perform his own independent analysis every time. He was a pest.”
My fists clench.
Her chuckle is rueful—and oblivious. “Anyone and everyone who was working in intracranial tech at the time pretty much hated him.” She sighs. “But we also respected him. I was so sorry to hear of their deaths. It was such a shock.”
“Was it really?” I ask waspishly. “If he had so many enemies, that is.”
“It just seemed like a terrible tragedy.”
She probably celebrated when she heard the news.
“A tragedy? The murderer was wearing a neurostim device,” I say. I don’t understand why this was never a big deal to anyone but me. “And my parents were there to gather information on their use in treatment of addiction. After my parents were killed, neurostims continued to be marketed as a cure-all. For such a brilliant woman, you seem content to ignore the obvious reek of suspicion.”
Anna clears her throat, but her mother merely gazes at me. “I was quite surprised when Anna told me you had enrolled at Clinton,” she says, obviously caring little for the murders that brought me there. “We all knew Valentine and Flore had a son, of course. But we all heard about your accident—what was it, ten years ago? And afterward, your entire family all but vanished from the Mainstream. We assumed it was because you were . . . permanently disabled. Beyond the reach of modern medicine.” Her eyes narrow. “But clearly you’re quite the opposite—and it turns out you have a few interesting . . . qualities as well. Qualities that make me wonder what your father’s agenda was all along.”
When Yves announces that we’ve just crossed over the Potomac, I nearly cheer—this woman is yanking on my last nerve. “Get ready,” I say as we begin to descend. “This is only the beginning of your journey.”
“But you’re headed back in, aren’t you?” Anna asks.
“I am. It would be an international incident if I didn’t.”
“Please thank your aunt for us,” Gia says.
“I will offer her your sincere gratitude.” Aunt Rosalie would build her own guillotine and escort me straight to its bloody embrace if she had any idea of what I was up to.
“Landing,” Yves says calmly. “Proceeding to the arrival point.”
We touch down on a pitted road somewhere in Arlington, rolling past abandoned storefronts and walls covered in anti-technocrat and anti-canny graffiti. A few wary souls watch us from doorways and windows, but all they see is a sleek black flier with ebony windows. Even if they did have scanner tech, they wouldn’t know who was inside.
“I’m not so sure about this,” Gia says. “You know these people well?”
I peer out the window, and when I see what’s waiting for us, I realize I really don’t. Chen and Ukaiah aren’t here, but the three people waiting in the garage bay are wearing Incomps—their heads seem slightly misshapen and are a mass of fused biocompatible plastic plates, data chips, and seemingly randomly placed LED lights. Gia lets out a squeak of horror when she catches sight of them. “This is a group of people who will always take the side of the private citizen over the corporate interest,” I say.
Even in the dim light, I see the alarm on Gia’s face. “And you’re confident they’ll help us? Because . . .” She gestures at the group as if they were a nest of vipers.
I chuckle. “Well. You’re the disenfranchised one now, aren’t you? Yves, open.”
We step out of the car and are greeted by a terrible smell, along with what turns out to be two men and one woman. “We’ve got it all set,” one of the men tells us after introducing himself as Jack. He gestures behind him at a freight truck. “Destination Toronto. Nonstop. It’s ground all the way, which means a hundred percent automation.”
“They’ll have Bioscan machines at the border,” says Griffin Fortin, looking alarmed. “We’ll never make it through.”
“We’ve thought of that. We selected the freight specifically for that purpose,” says the woman, who has enviably prominent cheekbones that are discernible even through the mess of plastic and sensor wire beneath her eyes. “Live hogs.”
Anna chuckles as her eyes meet mine. “That explains the stench.”
“You’ll have to completely disable your Cerepins, though,” says the woman. “You can be tracked via their signals.”
“It’s a closed network,” says Gia.
“Doesn’t matter. Electromagnetic scanner could still pick up the energy, even if it can’t translate the information. You have to go dark until you cross the border. Unless you want to get caught, that is.”
Anna reaches up and taps her Cerepin nodule. “Come on, Mom. We can sleep the whole way.”
“It’s a twelve-hour drive,” says the woman with the cheekbones.
“We’ll be refreshed when we arrive,” says Anna.
Her mother envelops her in a tight hug. “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she says, her voice tight with tears. “And if Hammond doesn’t make it . . .”
“He will,” I tell them. “I’ll make sure.”
The woman ushers Anna and her parents toward the back of the freight transport, and Jack moves next to me.
“Are they really going to make it?” I ask.
“There’s a pretty good chance,” he says. “Ground transport is highly automated, since beating hearts tend to travel via skyway, and even the traffic patterns are handled by the regional computer systems. The interstate system and border are federal, of course, but this transport originated in Georgia and won’t raise any red flags. They’d have to be willing to halt the whole system to even begin to search for the Fortins, and they wouldn’t necessarily know exactly where to start. Assuming they get going in the next fifteen, because that’s the scheduled end of this truck’s recharging.”
The third man in the group pulls a connector out of a port on the side of the truck and winds the thick cord around the dock, which was used for fire trucks long ago. “We’ve got a network up and down the East Coast and can program where certain transports are set to refuel,” he says. “We also boosted the output so we got a full charge in eighty-six percent of the time.”
I watch Anna disappear into the back of the truck with her family. “Farewell,” I murmur.
Jack clears his throat. “So . . . I heard you say you got someone to go back for?”
“A young man. Hammond Fortin. He’s only sixteen, though. It’s possible that he won’t hold any interest for the FBI now that his family is gone.”
Jack’s ruddy cheeks are almost purple beneath the plastic. “I don’t know about that. Chen commed me a few m
inutes before you arrived. Said he needed to get a message to you but your coms were busy. He said it was urgent.”
“Then why are you just telling me now?”
Jack lowers his voice. “Because I didn’t want to make that family more anxious before we stick ’em in little transport boxes for the next twelve hours.”
“Just tell me, Jack.”
“Chen found your friend Bianca.”
“Is she all right?”
“No, kid. She’s not all right. She was one of the last corpses brought in. She’d been in one of the hangars at Reagan, I guess.”
“Dead?”
“That’s not all. Chen said there were signs of torture. Like they played with her for a few hours before killing her.”
My gorge rises so fast that I have to clench my teeth to keep from gagging. “What?”
“Burn marks. Lungs half-full of water. I could go on, but you probably don’t want me to.”
“Why would they do that to her?” I whisper.
“Chen’s morgue friend said it looked personal. Her Cerepin was ripped right outta her head.”
Suddenly, Marguerite’s words come back to me so forcefully that I nearly fall to my knees. God, she’s toxic. I’d like to rip that Cerepin right out of her head. “She couldn’t,” I mouth, unable to draw breath. “She wouldn’t.”
I remember the look on her face, though, when she realized what Bianca had done to her. I remember her voice echoing out of that classroom as she talked to El, as she calls him. It took me five minutes to determine El to be Elwood Seidel, the president’s chief of staff.
Wouldn’t you love to take them down? El had asked.
At the moment? Hell yes, Marguerite had replied. She’s so freaking awful.
But so is karma, Marguerite. And I have a feeling it’s going to come back to bite Ms. Aebersold. Trust me on that. El had clearly relished the thought. And he had the power to make things happen.