Beyond Ecstasy (Beyond #8) (21 page)

Sometimes, all it took to make something true was for enough people to believe it.

She refilled her glass. “Is there any word on what the city has planned?”

“Nothing concrete.” Noelle rescued Dallas's abandoned glass. “When I first got here, I wrote this program to track communications between the Sectors and Eden. I thought I was going to break the intel game wide open, give Dallas everything he needed to keep us safe.” Her lips curved in a wry smile. “When Noah and I finally got a filter working for the data, guess what most of it was?”

“Petty arguments and porn?”

“Pretty much.” She sipped her drink and shook her head. “Sometimes we found things buried under all the garbage, but now we don't even have that. The day the wall went hot, the data started coming out encrypted. Noah's been killing himself trying to crack it, but we need more processing power. Ford and Mia are working on something for us, but the factories weren't designed to turn out the parts we need.”

“Maybe Noah will get lucky,” Jeni offered. “Or maybe he's just that damn good.”

“If anyone can do it…” Noelle tapped the list. “This gives me something to work on, anyway. I have pretty hefty files on all the troublemakers. And I'll check out Owen Turner first.”

“It could be nothing.” Jeni hoped it was. Dallas and Lex had it hard enough. The last thing they needed was to deal with the idea of spies in their sector, of people who should have trusted them turning to the city instead.

“It's still a start. And hey—I'm glad you and Hawk are doing good. Forget Dallas, okay? He's snarly and protective, because you're...” Noelle smiled softly. “Not many people get as close as you did, Jeni. You're always gonna be a little bit his. Just like Jas.”

“Not exactly like Jasper.” It was more and less, but nothing so much as...different. “Anyway, if Dallas really thought he needed to be worried, he wouldn't ask me shit.”

“That's the truth. But still, I'm glad. Hawk is sweet, and he cares about people so much. Jas respects the hell out of him, and that doesn't come easy.”

Jeni's cheeks heated. “I didn't realize they'd spent that much time together.”

“Jas grew up on a farm, too, you know.” Noelle poured another shot into her glass and swirled the liquor. “Hawk comes to dinner with us sometimes. He and Jas can talk for hours, coming up with plans for his sisters' place. Cars, too, but mostly farming and family.”

It sounded delightful, more intimate than friendship. It sounded like the family Noelle had mentioned, and Jeni found herself smiling.

This was what Dallas and Lex had built, what they were working so goddamn hard to shield and protect from the threats to come. The reason why Dallas's dark hair was going gray at the temples, no matter how much stress they tried to take off of him.

She spoke without thinking. “You're from Eden, too. Do you think they know what'll happen to us if we don't win this war? Not
us
, I mean—not the O'Kanes or the other people the MPs would kill outright. But to everyone else.”

“I don't know if they can imagine it.” Noelle closed her eyes. “Hawk and Six can. Jasper. Anyone else who lived on the farms or the communes, the places that Eden needed to control. But so many of them think life is already as bad as it can get, and all they've ever known is being ignored, maybe swatted if they got in the way. They don't know how bad it can be when Eden decides to use you.”

Jeni's fingers clenched until her nails dug painfully into her palms. “Then that's what we can do for Dallas. Make sure they never find out.”

Noelle's eyes popped open, then narrowed. “You pulled that list out of your head. Lex told me you're good at that, remembering things you've read.”

“Mostly. Also things like pictures or diagrams, it just has to be something I can look at.” Noelle was staring at her in the oddest way, so Jeni tilted her head. “What are you thinking?”

Noelle twisted Dallas's chair around and came back with a large tablet in her hands. She dropped it on the desk and swiped the screen awake, her fingers flying. “I'm thinking I'm an idiot. Here…”

She spun the screen around, revealing a file full of documents labeled with dates and times. “It's the last of the filtered data we have from before the encryption kicked in. Just the stuff going between the sectors and Eden. Maybe you'll notice patterns we might have missed.”

Jeni opened one document and flipped through the first few pages. It all seemed mundane—letters, mostly, ranging from quick, dashed-off notes to formal correspondence. “You want me to look for things that don't fit?”

“Or just get an idea of what
normal
was before this happened, and then once Noah cracks the encryption…”

It seemed simple enough, though Jeni knew it couldn't be. If it was, Noah would have already written a magical program that could have done this for him. “Is this the part where we make a joke about how technology can't overcome the splendors of the human mind?”

“No doubt.” Noelle leaned back. “We can tell it to look for patterns, but what about the ones we're not expecting? The ones we wouldn't realize were there until we saw them? No matter how smart you make a program, it finds a way to remind you how stupid we'd be without our subconscious minds and our gut instincts.”

“How much is here?”

“Well, it
is
the filtered data.”

“And that wasn't an answer.” Jeni eyed her teasingly over the top of the tablet. “Come on, kitten. How bad can it be?”

Noelle wrinkled her nose. “Not
quite
five thousand?”

“
Pages
?”

“Not quite! Forty-eight hundred, at most.”

“Oh, fuck.” Jeni would need days—weeks, even—just to make a dent in it. “And what kind of time frame does this represent?”

Noelle lifted her glass again—and held it between them like a shield. “The last two days before the wall went hot.”

Jeni felt faint. “How much shit did Noah's algorithms filter out?”

“You don't want to know, Jeni. Seriously.”

“Well.” Her fingers tightened around the edge of the tablet. It was a daunting task, one she wasn't even sure she could handle—but it was special, different from anything else she'd ever been asked to do.

She danced, and she tended the bar. She covered whatever needed to be covered. But until Dallas had asked her to study up on herbs, that had been it. No one relied on her, because all of her jobs were things anyone else could pick up at a moment's notice.

Even the herb garden. Once it was set up and established, it could be cared for like all the rest of the fruits and vegetables. And when the time came to make the tinctures and medicines from those herbs, anyone else could be taught how to do it.

But not this. This was a task that could help them out immensely—that could save their fucking lives in a way salves and balms couldn't—and it was
hers
.

Noelle leaned forward to touch her hand. “Welcome to Dallas O'Kane's spy network, Jeni. Population three, including you.”

She folded the tablet in her arms and had to swallow hard before she could trust her voice. “I'd better get started.”

Kora couldn't remember her parents.

She must have had them—everyone did, even the soldiers in the special programs on the Base, the ones who had been conceived in tubes, perfected under microscopes, and birthed by surrogates. It was an unavoidable biological fact.

When she was young, no more than ten or eleven, she'd gone looking for them. She'd just finished a module about the role of genetics and heredity in disease, and all she could think about was the fact that she had no idea where she'd come from. Who were her mother and father—soldiers? Scientists? Farmers that the Base doctors had taken in and tried to heal? All her adoptive father, Dr. Middleton, had ever told her was that they were dead.

She knew she was healthy. Her regular tests and scans would have shown any illnesses or conditions that needed attention. But she'd been positively gripped by the notion that the past
was
the future, that without knowing her history, she would be adrift with no direction for tomorrow.

Her search started and ended in the same place—with her poring through computer files for any mention of them, any hint of where she might have begun to look. When she found nothing, she dove deeper, accessing secured databases and poking around in classified data.

Still nothing.

She didn't simply
not know
her history. She didn't have one.

Maybe that was why she liked Sector One so much. It was impossible to ignore the history here, and not a shred of it was hidden. The people here celebrated their dead, with art and songs and shrines and tattoos. They marked their bodies with their shared history and bore the ink even more proudly than their scars.

All Kora had were two bar codes on the inside of her wrist.

Sector One was beautiful, not just the scenery or the architecture, but the people, too. Kora could stay here—easily,
happily
—but not when she was needed elsewhere.

She turned toward Gideon Rios, the sector's leader, and prepared to plead her case again. “I delivered another baby yesterday.”

“That's wonderful.” Gideon looked flushed and tired, but pleased. He'd been pushing himself hard to recover from his brush with death, but every day brought strength back to his body. He refilled their tea glasses and gazed out over the garden. “It eases everyone's minds, knowing we have someone qualified here to help them if something goes wrong.”

“Yes, but—” Kora bit her lip. Demands didn't work on Gideon, but an appeal to his sense of logic might. “They don't
need
me, strictly speaking. Your midwives are very skilled. They would have plenty of time to send for me if—”

“Kora.” Gideon had a gentle smile for a hard man, a smile befitting a prophet. “The midwives
are
skilled. More skilled every day, in fact. If you leave now when they're still learning so much, I'll have a riot on my hands.”

Her gut twisted. She had come to One with no other thought than to help the women and children who had been wounded when the city bombed Sector Two. She could still remember the
rage
, the urge to scream at the heavens that anyone could do such a thing, could kill and maim and terrify an entire sector.

But it would be childish and dishonest to pretend she hadn't known the city leaders could do such a thing. After all, she'd seen their files. They'd tried very hard to keep her and the other doctors oblivious to the depths of their depravity, but she didn't just have Special Clearance. She'd
used
it.

The patients from Two were all gone now, for better or worse. And she was left attending births and patching up scrapes.

At first, she'd assumed that Gideon wanted her close because of his own injuries. It hadn't taken her long to set that thought aside—Gideon possessed a wealth of concern, but he seemed to lavish it on everyone but himself. So she'd moved on to thinking he wanted her here for his family, in case the city attacked his sector next. But something about that didn't sit quite right, either.

Nothing did, and it was starting to make her nervous.

She opened her mouth to question him further, but Avery Parrino came out into the garden, holding a carved wooden tray with another glass pitcher of tea.

She set it on the table between them and winced when a bit of tea and crushed mint sloshed over the rim of the pitcher. “Sorry,” she breathed. “I thought you could use a fresh one.”

Gideon straightened slightly in his chair. “That's very thoughtful, Avery. Thank you. Would you care to join us?”

She began shaking her head before he even finished speaking. “Oh, I couldn't.”

“Of course you could. You have to help me convince Kora that we still need her here.”

She watched him for a moment. Her usual fidgeting ceased as she gazed down at him like an equation she wasn't quite sure how to solve. Then she turned to Kora, a warm smile curving her lips. “If you left, we'd miss you terribly.”

Kora hid her answering smile. “Thank you, Avery.”

She bowed her head, the heavy fall of her dark hair almost obscuring her face as she glanced at Gideon again.

He smiled as well, but Kora could sense the emptiness behind it. “Yes, thank you. If you're going back in, would you mind taking the empty pitcher?”

Wordlessly, she bowed, more deeply this time, and removed the pitcher. Then she removed herself, practically fleeing back to the house.

Kora snorted. “
Why
did you do that?”

The smile vanished, and Gideon rubbed a hand over his face with a soft sigh. “You'd think I'd be used to it, wouldn't you? Every stray word being mistaken for a command. But I'm not used to it
here
, in my own house.”

Turmoil rolled off of him in waves that turned Kora's stomach. “You're the most powerful man in this sector, and all Avery knows is that powerful men are to be obeyed.”

“Well, she'll have to learn otherwise,” Gideon said firmly. Then he arched an eyebrow at her. “You don't share that problem.”

“If I'd been taught obedience, I wouldn't be here.” She'd be back at home, and a sudden wave of emotion swelled in her throat.
Home
. The city was a pleasant place to live—
if
you had money and status.
If
you could ignore the dark undercurrents of violence and greed that lurked beneath its polished surface.

Kora didn't miss it. But she did miss the Base, and her patients, and being able to do her damn
job
.

She put down her glass, careful not to betray her agitation. “Why am I not allowed to leave?”

To his credit, Gideon didn't deny it. He sipped his tea, then set his glass gently on the table. “I've been given information indicating that you could be in danger if you leave Sector One. And you're the best trained regeneration technician on either side of the wall. I had hoped you'd be happy enough here that you didn't want to leave, but…” He shrugged. “If happiness won't keep you here, perhaps responsibility will.”

So many layers in those words. Kora turned them over in her mind, dissecting them, teasing them apart. The stuff about responsibility she discarded immediately. They'd already established that she could move quickly if she needed to return, and her sense of responsibility was the reason she wanted to leave in the first place. But the rest of it…