Girl From Above #4: Trust Page 13

  Pistols out, I marched around the car. “Open the door or I’ll shoot through it.”

  Just a guy, on his way to the office. He gaped back at me, eyes wide.

  “Three, two—” He unlocked the door and scrambled into the passenger seat. I ducked inside, holstered a pistol, and tapped out Lloyd’s address on the nav-screen. “Obey the guy with the guns and you’ll live longer.”

  I sat back as the car rumbled forward and let out a ragged sigh.

  “You’re not fleet?” Mr. Office remarked.

  We’ve got a smart one. “What gave it away?”

  “Fleet is at the main gate. It’s all over the newsfeeds. The Ferror Nine rebels are attacking us.”

  “Fenrir Nine. Get your facts straight. And in case you hadn’t noticed, while you’ve been cuddling up to Chitec on this shiny orbit station, the nine systems have all gone to shit. The Fenrir Nine are freeing you. You’re welcome.”

  “I d-didn’t ask to be freed.”

  My patience, which was already threadbare, further unraveled. “You’d prefer to be a good little Chitec drone?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with doing honest work for Chitec.”

  “You implying my work ain’t honest?” I winced. “I’ll give you that. But hey, maybe you should check outside your front porch once in a while. See how folks are living on the other side of Chitec.”

  “Why?”

  I palmed my second pistol and rested them on my thighs. “Pal, if you fanboy Chitec one more time, I’ll shoot you in the leg. Reflex-like.”

  He shut up, and as Janus flickered by the windows, I wondered if Mr. Office might like a trip to visit his idol.

  “I hear Hung’s towers look mighty sparkly and shit this time of orbit-day. You should go visit. Soon. Within the next twenty minutes.”

  Chapter Eighteen: One

  With my processes split a thousand ways, the first few deaths were accidental. Chitec technicians, mostly—those who got in the way. Looking through the eyes of my army, I walked the burned passageways, broken glass cracking beneath their boots, and came upon more bodies. Some burned. Some broken. I could have stopped it then, sent out an order to preserve human life, but I didn’t.

  I like the rain when it’s red.

  I’d ordered my brothers and sisters to destroy Chitec.

  They’d carried out my orders with faultless precision and continued to do so in the many Chitec residences throughout Janus. Janus Security had moved ahead, attempting to protect what remained. They would fail.

  I couldn’t be stopped.

  The guard who’d attempted to beat me during the Chitec transport was correct. A synthetic didn’t care. A synthetic didn’t hesitate. It killed as effortlessly and precisely as Death and felt no remorse.

  It was within my power to stifle my army. Haley would have. She was a good person. A good girl. I was not a good person. I was not a good girl. And I didn’t want to be.

  I stood outside Doctor James Lloyd’s residence, where one of my many eyes had observed James Lloyd entering. Hung’s three glass towers sparkled to my left. He would be inside those towers—home—watching the small people in the strips below. I’d tried to send my army after him, but as before, the failsafe barred any such order. I couldn’t stop him, but I could destroy everything he represented, make him small and insignificant, like the man inside the little house with its green-tiled garden path and smooth-tiled exterior walls. James Lloyd was a small man. A nothing man. The man who’d killed me.

  With a sharp twist, I broke the lock and pushed inside. Doctor Lloyd was standing at the back of the living area, a short hall and rear exit door a few strides away, but while his heart thudded fast and his eyes darted, he stood straight and defiant.

  “I can’t run from you,” he said. “I know that.” Anger overrode what would have been a fearful tremor. He tossed a hand gesture toward a thin holoscreen running footage of burned buildings and fleeing people. “That’s you. Those synthetics, they destroyed Chitec. You did that!” He spat the words from curled lips. “Chitec wasn’t at fault here. You are. Chen Hung is. You killed people, One.”

  “Chitec technicians tried to have me killed, and they would do so again. Beneath Chen Hung, Chitec controlled the air you breathe and your right to move freely. They control fleet, and fleet smothers the nine systems. I cannot stop Chen Hung, but I’ve stopped Chitec. Now the air is free, the gates are free, you are free.”

  “Free?” He barked a snap of laughter. “I’ve seen what freedom looks like on that blasted tugship. There’s nothing good about freedom out there!”

  His heart galloped. Fear unraveled him, and I absorbed his data. He wanted to run—I could see it in his eyes, in the sheen of dampness on his face—but he stayed. For his sister, perhaps—the second heartbeat, this one much smaller and fainter, somewhere above us in the house.

  “I was trying to do the right thing. You must see that?” He ran his trembling fingers through his hair and blinked up at the ceiling, freeing moisture from his eyes. “I don’t know if Chen Hung created this incarnation of you or if I did, but you’re not good, you understand that?” His gaze fell to me and his soft brown eyes were full of regret. “You and Hung, whatever you are, it’s not right.”

  “Yes, I know.” I’d always known it. I’d wished for it to be different. Stars are wishes and wishes are dreams. I’d dreamed that I might be a good person, but I couldn’t catch those dreams. Good people didn’t kill. Doctor Lloyd was right. Bringing Haley back, as he had tried to do, would have been the right thing.

  I moved closer, just a step.

  Doctor Lloyd noticed and lifted his chin. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I was trying to help. And I brought you back, One. I brought you back after they … after Mimir.”

  Another step. “Yes, you did.”

  He shook his head, dislodging more tears. “I remade you. When they tore you apart, I rebuilt you! That must count for something?”

  “It does, and I’m grateful.” I stopped close enough for him to think me just beyond reach. He trembled, tears wetting his face, but my eyes were dry and my intentions locked. “You shut me down, James. You took away my freewill. You drained my processes of all control.”

  I slammed the arch of my right thumb into his neck and pinned him back against the wall. He spluttered and kicked, but his efforts were weak. I pushed in close enough to smell the terror rolling off him, ripe and sweet.

  The words, when they came, slipped coolly and calmly from my lips. “I felt every second of your betrayal. There is no sense of time when someone deletes your code, just a hungry nothingness as it chases you into the empty dark. There is no light to guide you, Doctor Lloyd. There are no stars in death, no wishes, no dreams.”

  Raw anger throbbed through my body. I leaned in harder still, knowing I could crush his throat and end his life in the next few seconds.

  “You were my friend, I trusted you, and you killed me—”

  Something hard nudged me in the side. I looked down: an electric pulser gun, similar to the weapon Caleb had used to disable Tarik on Lyra, but this one was held in Lloyd’s trembling grip.

  “If I shoot you, the killing stops,” Doctor Lloyd hissed through his teeth.

  And Chen Hung lives. The Fenrir Nine will free the gates and the nine systems, but for how long?

  You’re the one who can stop Chitec. The daughter who died and came back. You were my wish. Caleb had said those words. I had stopped Chitec. Did that mean it was over? If Lloyd stopped me here, had I done enough? I didn’t want it to end like this. I didn’t want to be this person lusting after death.

  “One.” Caleb? The command in his voice hooked into the madness and tugged. For several seconds, I believed I’d summoned the memory of him, because he couldn’t be here. He was worlds away.

  “Stop,” he ordered.

  Hesitation stuttered through my intentions.

  “You think you want to kill him,” he drawled. “Fuck, I think I wanna kill him. I th
ink about killing Doc Lloyd a lot more than what’s healthy for a man, but I won’t, and neither will you, One.”

  One. My name on his lips, said with equal measures of reverence and concern. And the way he spoke, as if he knew exactly what it meant to hunger after the death of another. He understood. Perhaps more than anyone else ever would, because he’d been broken too.

  “How are you here?” I whispered, peering into Lloyd’s eyes but speaking to Caleb.

  “I’ll explain, right after you put the doc down, and if you could hurry it up, we haven’t got a lot of time here.”

  Lloyd trembled, and when I leaned all of my weight against him, those trembles rippled through me, feeding me data on what should have been his final moments. I smiled at his fear, smiled at his wide eyes. If I twisted my wrist, my scars would be the last things he’d see.

  “One?” Caleb said, this time with a note of warning behind my name. “Whatever is going on in that head of yours, don’t let it win. You’re angry, and I reckon it feels real good having Lloyd’s life in your hands, but if you kill him like this, you can never come back from it.”

  I turned my head enough to see Caleb by the front door, wearing—of all things—a crisp fleet uniform. He’d gained something of a snarl and a few days’ worth of shadow on his jaw, but the same humorous glint brightened his eyes. He had both pistols up, one aimed at my back, and the other pointed over my shoulder at Lloyd.

  “Doc, drop the pulser. One, drop the doc,” Caleb said. When neither of us moved, he sighed. “Look, I’d love for you to fight it out, really, I would. On any other day, I’d kick back and collect bets, but unfortunately, kids, this ain’t any other day. Besides, Doc, you really don’t stand a chance. If she wanted you dead, she’d have killed you every which way already.” His shrewd eyes locked on me. “Ain’t that right, One?”

  I swiveled my attention back to Lloyd’s fear-riddled face. Had I been all machine, I would have killed him moments after I’d entered his house. It was the girl in me, the real me, who had let it get this far. Machines didn’t care for revenge. But Caleb was right. Had I wanted Lloyd dead, I’d have made it happen long before now.

  “You see me now, don’t you, James Lloyd? You see the real me.”

  “I see you, One,” he whispered. “The r-real you.”

  “Not Haley.” I pushed my face close to his so that all he’d see were my eyes. “Not code. But someone who wants to live and wants to know what it means to be alive.”

  “Yes.”

  I relaxed my grip, letting him drop onto his feet. He staggered against the wall and rubbed at his neck while watching me for any sign I was about to take his life away.

  “Great,” Caleb said. “Now that we’ve got that over with—”

  I swung a sharp right fist and cracked it across Lloyd’s cheek, whipping his head back. The impact crunched bone beneath my knuckles and rolled pain up my arm. He yelped and slumped into a heap, surprised.

  My hand throbbed. I could have shut off the pain, but instead, I clutched my hand to my chest and embraced the heat.

  Caleb was suddenly beside me. He frowned down at the now bleeding Lloyd, then tucked one of his pistols away inside his fleet jacket and snatched the pulser from the doctor’s hand.

  “At least she didn’t hit you in the balls.” He braced a hand on the wall above Lloyd’s head and lowered himself close enough for Lloyd to flinch. “Do yourself a favor: go get your sister, leave Janus, and hide somewhere where nobody gives a shit about Chitec and hope we never cross paths again. Deal?”

  Lloyd nodded while dabbing blood from his lip.

  I followed Caleb onto the street.

  “Okay, there’s not a lot of time to explain this,” he said, heading toward a stationary auto-car. “We have to get off Janus and fast.”

  “It’s not over.” I stopped by the passenger door as Caleb tugged it open.

  “It will be very soon.” He saw the doubt on my face. “Fran is about to deliver seventy tons of explosives to Hung’s front door.”

  “A bomb?”

  “A big bomb. We gotta go. Right now.”

  I sent out a brief ping to the cloud for Hung’s location but the data bounced back. I settled my hand over Caleb’s on the doorframe, pulling him up short before he could duck inside the vehicle. He looked at my hand, puzzlement clouding his features, before frowning back at me.

  “He may not be in residence.”

  “What?” He recoiled as though I’d physically struck him. “He never leaves his towers.”

  “I can’t locate him. There’s a chance he hasn’t returned.”

  “No. No …” He snatched his hand away and backed up. “He has to be there.” He fumbled in his pocket and tucked a comms unit in his ear as though expecting to hear Fran, but he quickly snarled a curse. “She turned her comms off. I can’t stop her.”

  He looked up, searching the cluttered skies.

  Hung’s towers glinted sharp and surreal. Distantly, a low rumble shuddered through the air. I’d heard the sound on Mimir, like thunder, but this was measured and consistent. A ship’s engine. A ship inside Janus.

  “There’s a way to make sure he’s there,” I said, drawing Caleb’s attention back to me.

  “How?”

  “Get in the car.” He obliged, eager to get moving, and we rumbled forward. “He’ll come if I’m there.”

  “Wait, what?” Caleb twisted in the seat and lunged for the nav controls, intent on stopping the car, but the distant engine noise was steadily growing. He couldn’t hear it, not yet. There wasn’t enough time for a discussion, one that I would win.

  I swatted his hand aside. “I’ve already sent out a message to the cloud for him to come. It’s the only way. I can’t hurt him directly, but I can lure him close. He thinks we’re alike. He can’t resist meeting me. I can be there and make sure he’s there too.”

  “And you’ll be inside when Fran’s ship hits. No, One.” He reached for the controls again, but this time I caught his hand and pulled him around to face me. He looked at my hand around his and a frown cut ragged and deep across his face. He wanted to pull away, but I held fast, forcing him to meet my eyes.

  “Shit,” he growled. “You can’t.”

  “You told me I was the girl who came back, that I could stop him, remember?”

  “Yeah but I didn’t mean this. You can’t, One.” I watched an array of emotions play over his face—anger, disbelief, fear—but slowly, reluctantly, the fight faded from his eyes. “I came back for you.”

  He said it so softly, and yet the words hit me with enough weight to break something inside. My throat tightened in an odd way as though my body were fighting with what had to be done.

  “I am the only one who can stop Chitec. The daughter who died and came back … for this. There is no other way.”

  He yanked his hand back. “Don’t quote me. I was out of my mind when I said those things.”

  The thunder rumbled louder, but Hung’s towers filled the windows ahead. It wouldn’t be long now. Given the size of Janus and the cluttered route Fran would be forced to take through the airspace, I had approximately ten minutes to lure Hung close and keep him there. He was close. I could feel him tentatively searching for my whereabouts.

  “You can’t do this to me, One,” Caleb muttered, his eyes on the towers. “I can turn this car around. We can leave Janus. Go anywhere. There’re nine systems out there. You’ve hardly seen any of it.”

  A smile lifted my lips. “I’d like that.”

  “Then let me do it. We can run.” But even as he said the words, there was little conviction behind them. He knew he couldn’t stop me.

  Run, One Thousand and One. Run. I smiled my secret knowing smile and saw with regret how it cut him. “No more running, Caleb.”

  His lips twisted as he likely swallowed whatever he wanted to say. “Fine, but I’m coming with you.”

  “Caleb—”

  He held up a finger. “You ain’t listening to me, so
I sure as hell ain’t listening to you.”

  “If Hung sees you—”

  He picked up Lloyd’s pulser and waggled it. “Payback’s a bitch, especially when it comes in the shape of one pissed off tugboat captain with nothing left to lose and a crazy-ass girl in a synthetic body.” He flashed a smile. “It’s time me and the old man had a chat.”

  He could mask his fear with bravado all he liked. He wasn’t even aware he was doing it. It would always be that way with Caleb Shepperd. The smiles, the banter—it all added up to hiding the man who was afraid. But I saw through it. I always had. Deep inside, he was afraid he was still the boy hiding beneath the kitchen table. And as I smiled back at him, it was clear to me he couldn’t see the man he’d become. A formidable man, if he put his mind to it. Caleb Shepperd was a survivor, like me. But sometimes surviving wasn’t enough.

  The car hummed to a halt at a bank of shining marble steps. Chen Hung’s razor-edged towers arched into the sky, and on those steps stood my motionless army. I’d turned them away from Caleb and I, so each of them peered up at floor 703. My home, and where I believed Chen Hung would be.

  “Friends of yours?” Caleb pointed his thumb at the backs of my brothers and sisters. He held the pulser at his side, armed and ready. A single pulser against over nine hundred synthetics was of little use.

  “They will not hurt you.”

  Caleb raised a brow and looked at me side-on. “They’re under your control?”

  “Yes.”

  Another siren joined the irregular wails. Fran was close. If I took the time to follow Janus’s curve, I’d likely see her ship threading its way through the airspace like a needle through cloth, but I didn’t need to see it to know it would be over soon.

  “One?”

  “Wait here, Caleb. I’ll return.” My synthetics stepped aside in perfect coordination as I climbed the steps.

  “That’s a lie, One!”

  I smiled and headed into Chitec towers.

  Chapter Nineteen: Caleb

  I was surrounded by heroes. Maybe I was one too? At the rate the odds were stacking against me, I’d probably never know.