Beneath the Shine

  It’s the only reason we don’t crash. He swoops low over the Potomac and streaks into Arlington. “They’ve lost visual, but they’ll detect me when they fly over,” he tells me. I understand what that means—he doesn’t want to lead them to the rendezvous point.

  “Got it.” I use Yves’s diplomatic line to send a quick message to Chen, who tells me he can be at a meeting place within five minutes. “Yves, stop here.”

  He does. I turn to the terrified family in the back. “Get out now, and get into that abandoned library. See it?” I point across the street. “Someone will be here to pick you up shortly.”

  “But they’ll come after us,” snaps Mr. Hethermill. He looks indignant, like I’ve given him bad service at a restaurant instead of saving his life.

  “No they won’t. Now. Get. Out.”

  Yves’s door pops open.

  “Do as he says, Dad,” says Winston. He looks at me, and I see his fear but also respect. “Thanks, man. Sorry I called you a freak.”

  The entire Hethermill family tumbles out of the car, and as soon as they do, Yves asks me what I want to do.

  “Into the air, old man,” I say. “We’re the distraction.”

  “This will present a significant risk to your health and well-being, sir.”

  “It’s not as risky as staying still.”

  Yves ascends so rapidly that my ears pop, but even so, I’m tapping my face, activating the implants beneath the skin of my brow, cheekbones, jaw, and nose. Then I hit the spot on my Adam’s apple that controls my voice. “Ah voilà,” I boom. “Tenor to bass in an instant.”

  “Should I ask why you need that kind of disguise?”

  “Best not to. Now, I need you to go have a conversation with a certain girl.” I pat the compartment between the seats. “You know what to do.”

  “I do. But sir . . .”

  “This is where we part, Yves. At this point, there’s no other way.” I take off my comband, activate the clone of Marguerite’s device, and set it on the seat next to me. “Use this and find its twin. It’s going to be on her wrist.” I give him the coordinates where she should be in about . . . “You have less than an hour.”

  “May I ask what you’ll be doing, sir?”

  “Me?” I draw in a deep breath as we dive quickly, shooting past two federal units that were about to cross the Potomac. “I’m going to topple the empire.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Marguerite

  The taxi drops me off at Hazen Park, the spot indicated by the coordinates Percy sent. Mom was still at the White House when I left, so I asked Renata to tell her I am meeting a friend for a late-night slice of pizza. It sounds so random, but I also streamed a vid earlier this evening talking about how I needed to experience life as a normal teenager, especially when it was this stressful. I’m hoping she sees that and lets me have a few hours. More likely, El will see it and know I’m up to something.

  I know how I’ll spin it—I’m trying to catch FragFlwr. I’m trying to lure him in.

  And I am, sort of. I swear, this afternoon, when he was so close to me . . . we had a moment. I don’t know what to make of it, but I know I want a chance to figure it out.

  I’m trying not to let doubts about it creep in, but Percy is an amazing actor, too. He’s serious and heroic, but he wears the mask of a fool more often than not, a brilliant disguise. And he’s documented his life, top to bottom, in those vids. I know he streams them to hundreds of thousands of fans in the United States and to millions of people all over the world who’ve got the tech to watch him, but in reality, I don’t think anyone knows the first thing about where he really came from or what happened to him. Or if they do, they’re not saying.

  And here I am, shivering in my newly genned coat, obediently standing in the exact spot he told me to, at the exact time. I’ve been thinking about this nonstop since I got his message. I’m guessing I’m a decoy. I glance down at my comband. El is probably listening and watching. Percy is probably up to something tonight, maybe trying to get more technocrats out of DC, and El told me he had more arrests planned. But if he thought he could capture FragFlwr, wouldn’t he divert resources to do that? Wouldn’t that give Percy a little time and space to rescue whoever needs it?

  Then again, the federal government has a lot of resources.

  A single headlight pierces the darkness ahead of me, roaring like nothing I’ve ever heard. I gape at the oncoming vehicle as it speeds toward me, and when I realize we’re on a collision course, I stumble back over the curb to get out of its way. It comes to an abrupt stop in front of me, burping mechanically. It looks like a motorcycle, but it’s leaner and belches smoke. Its rider removes a bulky helmet to reveal—another helmet?

  “Marguerite?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Ukaiah.” The woman offers me the helmet not fused to her skin, and I take it because I’m not sure what else to do. “Get on.”

  “Um. Where are we going?”

  The helmet that’s still on her head is flickering with lights, and her brown skin is slightly puckered in the places where the helmet fits most tightly. Her face is twitching, too. “Away from here. Company’s coming.” When I don’t move, she adds, “Percy sent me.”

  As if on cue, a siren sounds off, a few blocks away. I get on the bike and cram the helmet over my hair, then wrap my arms around the woman’s waist. She’s solid and strong, but her head is shaped so strangely that I lean back away from it. I’m afraid that if I bonked against it, it would hurt her.

  It seems to be bolted onto her skull.

  With a twist of her wrists, she revs the noisy, smelly engine. It must run on gasoline, which means it’s illegal—but also that it’s too old to be part of the DC tracking grid. “It’s okay, stare all you want,” she says as she steers the bike over the curb and turns us toward a dirt trail leading into the woods.

  “Sorry?”

  “My head. Stare all you want.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “I’ve got eyes back there, girl.”

  I notice the two red blinking lights on the back of her helmet or whatever it is. It looks like a Cerepin that mutated and grew all over her head.

  “It’s an Incomp.”

  “A what?”

  “Internal computer. I told Chen people would think it stands for ‘incompetent.’ I guess I enjoy being underestimated, though.” With that, she opens her fingers and we lurch forward. I hold on so tight that I’m surprised she can breathe.

  Inside the helmet, I hear her voice, echoing and tinny. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “We can talk without your capped screen overhearing for the moment.”

  “Where are we going?”

  She accelerates, sending us charging down the trail. “Away from the DC police.”

  I look over my shoulder to see one police car and then another pull to a stop at the place I was standing just a minute ago. As Ukaiah turns to stay on the trail, a bunch of canny officers get out—it’s easy to tell because they move eerily fast.

  “At least we got ’em out of their cars, am I right?” she asks.

  “They can probably run as fast on foot.”

  “Oh, I know they can.”

  “So you knew they were coming?”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “I knew it. I’m a decoy.”

  “Not exactly.” She sends us roaring up a hill, and then we’re in the air for a few seconds before crashing down on the other side of a small brook.

  My butt rises off the seat, and I yelp as it slams back down. “Then what am I doing here?”

  “Saving the world?”

  I groan.

  “Okay, okay, just the country. Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to do all along? Start a revolution?”

  “Maybe, but this—”

  “Is the real revolt. It starts tonight. Assuming we actually survive.” She swerves as I catch sight of a canny officer’s illuminated skin streaking th
rough the woods only a few hundred feet from us.

  “Where’s Percy?”

  “Percy got the Hethermills out, but he’s still trying to keep the feds off their tail. Right now he’s doing that by putting them on his.”

  “Oh, god.”

  “Yeah. We’re gonna try to help him, but he might be on his own. And Chen says that might not be a good thing.”

  “Why not?”

  Ukaiah pulls a device that looks like a neural disruptor from her belt and aims it at the canny running next to us. “Because Percy is more dangerous than anyone on this planet.” She shoots at the canny, and the thing goes down like it’s just a hunk of lead.

  “What was that?”

  “Localized EMP. Turns the lights out real quick.” She shoots one on our other side without even slowing down. “I invented it myself.”

  We race along with woods on either side. Ukaiah takes down three more cannies and dodges a few others. We nearly crash into a fallen tree as she tries to take out a canny right behind us. “Do you want me to try and shoot it?” I ask, my heart in my throat.

  “Nah. No offense, but if you aim that thing the wrong way and hit me, I’m probably dead.”

  I take in her deformed head-helmet Incomp, which actually seems kind of like an Excomp, if you ask me. “Okay.”

  “Take off your comband. It’s time to give them something else to chase for a second.”

  With my arms still around her waist, I unstrap the screen. El will know, but I guess that’s part of the game. “What do you want me to do with it?”

  “Toss it. Go ahead.”

  I do, and the canny just behind us veers off to retrieve it, which allows us to extend our lead.

  “About time for you to hitch a ride with someone else,” Ukaiah announces. “Ready?” We’re traveling at high speed along a trail, and the headlight illuminates a car as it hovers about twenty feet in the air ahead of us.

  “What about you?”

  “I’m going to give them something to chase. You just . . . let gravity do its thing. Good luck.”

  Footsteps behind me tell me a canny is closing in. I scream as I feel something brush my back. Ukaiah tenses and then slams her palm down on the control panel.

  The engine goes silent even as I feel a startling whir between my calves. We take off and climb into the air to the tune of my startled shriek. I lose my grip on Ukaiah as she rockets vertically into the sky above the trees, and then I’m falling, clawing at the air, trying to get a foothold in the clouds, knowing I’m about to die.

  I hit sooner than I expect, and bounce. The world turns sideways and a voice says, “Welcome, Marguerite.”

  I glance around me. I just fell through the open back door of a car, apparently, and landed on the curtain air bags deployed on its other door. The car rights itself and closes the door. I take off my helmet and peer through the windshield. Ukaiah is a speck in the sky, heading away from us. “What-what-what—”

  “My name is Yves.”

  “And you just caught me midair.”

  “I thought it was a rather skillful maneuver.”

  “No kidding,” I say, panting and holding on to the seat as Yves banks into a sharp left turn, heading back into DC.

  “There’s someone who wants to talk to you, Marguerite.”

  “Percy?”

  “No,” says another voice emanating from the speakers. It sounds weirdly electronic and distorted. He hasn’t engaged vid, so all I’ve got is sound. “My name is Chen.”

  “Oh my god. You’re the one El thinks is a terrorist.”

  Chen laughs. “I’m the one he’d like to finger as a terrorist,” he corrects. “Because it would be pretty convenient for him, don’t you think? Take out the hacker who’s about to expose him by framing the guy for a crime he probably committed himself?”

  A chill runs through me. “You think El is responsible for the bombings?”

  “Think about it, kid.”

  Suddenly, it all makes sense. El was at the Department of AIR that morning. He could have even planted the device himself! He put Uncle Wynn in a terrible position but ultimately got rid of Fortin Tech, clearing the way to serve his own financial and political interests. And while the president was encouraging me to be a true friend, El was setting everything up to destroy anyone who got in his way. “But if he’s willing to do that . . . you have to be careful, because he’s coming after you.”

  “It was only a matter of time,” he says. “Because I’ll never shut up. And now we need to talk about Percy, because he’s going to need your help. We’re all going to need your help.”

  “What can I do?”

  “First, you need to understand him for this to make sense. Percy isn’t normal.”

  I laugh, and it ends in a scream as Yves touches down and starts to race along a residential street. “Yeah, I already knew that.”

  “That’s not what I mean. You know his parents were killed.”

  “I saw the vid taken right after their murders,” I say. “I read your comment. That was you, wasn’t it?”

  “Not one of the smartest things I’ve done, making that comment. It’s what drove me underground. But that was an emotional day for me. The Blakes were my heroes. I was a junior associate at the Blake Consortium before it lost its funding.”

  “Did you know his parents well?”

  “They were pretty secretive, but I knew what they stood for. I only found out later what they were protecting.”

  “And that was . . . ?”

  “Percy. But Blake must have trusted me—after he and his wife died, I received a little trail of breadcrumbs that led me to the treasure—his notes. Basically, his last will and testament. One of his requests was that I take care of his son, and so I have. The only way I know how.”

  “What do you mean, ‘take care of him’? Why would Percy need that? He has family, and he lives at the French embassy.”

  “Yes, but even Rosalie doesn’t actually know him. She doesn’t know what he is.”

  “So what is he?” My heart is beating so fast.

  “Well, before the what, the why. Percy nearly died. Valentine’s files said that his skull was smashed in a fall, along with a few dozen other bones in his body. He was injured so badly that he was never going to walk or talk again, even with the best medical care. His parents took him home from the hospital, and that was that.”

  “But he looks so . . .”

  “Perfect? Do you have any idea how brilliant his parents were? And what kind of resources they had access to? They basically turned him into their guinea pig, and before you get all high and mighty about that, remember the alternative would have been Percy the cucumber.”

  “Why did they do all of this in secret?”

  “The government was coming after the consortium. Zao wanted to clear the way for places like Fortin and, believe it or not, NeuroGo. If Blake had revealed what he was doing to his own son, they would have used it as an excuse to crush him, discredit him, and then steal from him. In the end, they did anyway, but the secrecy probably bought him a few years. It was only the Blakes’ sense of justice that did them in, you know. They could have sat back and let those neurostims go unchallenged, but that wasn’t who they were. And by that time Percy was healthy again. He could protect himself. He was just never meant to be alone at such a young age. And I’m afraid I’ve made it worse.”

  “What did you do?” I mutter, pressing my forehead to the seat. Immediately, it grows cool against my skin, as Yves responds to my biostats.

  “Percy is half canny, Marguerite,” Chen continues. “At least half. He’s still discovering the full range of stuff he can do. He has almost complete conscious awareness and control over most of his biological systems. He is as fast as a canny. He can hear and see just like they can. He can morph his appearance at will to avoid facial recognition, and he can change the way his body moves to evade gait analyzers. His body is full of self-organizing nanocytes, and they are part of a self-monitori
ng system, but he can also control them manually either by accessing the implanted augmentation chips just under his skin or through use of a neurologically integrated menu. But he’s not connected to any network, so there is no trace of him except what he decides to show to the world. And he’s more clever than even I gave him credit for. Possibly more suicidal, too.”

  I raise my head. “Suicidal? He doesn’t seem depressed at all!”

  “No, the opposite. I believe he’s overly rational.” Chen sighs. “Percy is equipped with a self-destruct mechanism. I know that must sound crazy, but I’m sure his dad just wanted him to be able to control his fate.”

  “And he can just trigger this thing at any time?”

  “As far as I know. And tonight, he’s taken off by himself, and he’s playing his own game. But I’m also pretty sure he’s going to let himself be captured.”

  “Why, when he knows what El might do to him?”

  “Because he also knows El is connected to his parents’ deaths. Figure it out.”

  “He’s going on a suicide mission. And he’s hoping he can take El with him,” I say, my lips growing numb with horror.

  “There you go. And it’s my fault, and if he succeeds, I will live with that for the rest of my life, which might not be very long, because I’m going after him.”

  “El will kill you, too, though,” I say. “You’d only be giving him what he wants.”

  “Are you proposing I just let the kid die?”

  “No. I’m proposing you let me try to save him.” I have to try. Killing El isn’t the solution—bringing him to justice is. “And I’m proposing that you help me.”

  “I may have something to assist you,” says Yves, who has just taken off into the night sky yet again. He’s been driving on a seemingly random track and I have no idea where we are, but for the moment, there doesn’t seem to be anyone following us.

  “How are you going to do that, Yves?” asks Chen.

  “I am in possession of something that’s important to Percy. He wanted Marguerite to have it. At the right time, it might remind him of what he has to live for.”