Divided (18 page)

But some are. And I have to get off the street, if only so I can decide where to go from here. Part of me thinks I should head to Leyton Ward; its Alts are already much better off and maybe less tempted by the reward. But Leyton is also where headquarters is.

I find myself veering deeper into the Grid, leaving behind Jethro’s suburbs. These parts of the ward are mine—I can move through here in the dark and never get lost, even if it no longer feels quite so safe.

I’m careful to stay clear of my place, Chord’s place, and Dire’s place, making a point to head in the opposite direction. Chord’s likely to still be there. Probably being held back from looking for me. Probably wondering why I haven’t answered any of his many, many texts and calls. The ones I’m no longer receiving now that I’ve turned off my cell.

Not yet ready to talk to someone who can break me in so many ways. Who can make me believe there might be another way out, when there is no such thing—only a way
through.
Chord, who would come with me at one single knowing look, no words even needed.

My eyes scan basement suites and low-level condos as I move past. Looking for a flash of that telltale white hanging from a front doorknob or shoved into a door frame. Empties in the Grid aren’t common, but my chances are still better here than they are in the rest of Jethro. Lots of shift jobs and cheap work here means plenty of piecemeal housing—one-bedroom apartments crammed in here, a makeshift studio sectioned off there. I have to believe I’ll come across something soon.

Ten minutes later and there’s a peek of white shoved into the worn door frame of a first-floor apartment. I reach the front door and yank the tag free. If clearing hasn’t come to sign off on the place by this time of the day, odds are they won’t be back until the morning. Which means I should be fine here for the night. For a few hours of sleep, maybe, even if the idea of sleep seems far off now, a mythical thing, a reprieve I don’t deserve. But I learned to get over that as an active once before, and as a striker, I can do it again.

My fingers are clumsy with the need to hurry as they unzip my bag and find Chord’s key-code disrupter. I press my wrist against it and the lock plate. Listen for the tumbling of gears and then I’m inside.

Strange smells, unfamiliar shapes and shadows in the dark. A bleak hopelessness crawls up my throat. It feels too familiar, walking into an empty again.

I lock the door from inside by flicking the latch over and hang the tag on the back of the doorknob so I don’t forget to replace it later when I leave. The action is done before I even know I’ve decided to do it. Like blinking.

I’m careful to put the key-code disrupter safely back in my bag, knowing I’ll have to use it again before long. Just like I know I’ll have to get more weapons somehow, and soon.

My hand touches on a light panel near the door, but I don’t press it, not even to check for electricity. Better for nothing to be seen from outside, and it won’t take long for my eyes to adjust so I can see more clearly. Though I don’t really want to. Places left behind by incompletes all have the same sense of grim, flat emptiness. I’m the dazed soldier wandering onto a field to look for survivors, knowing there won’t be any.

It’s a single square room that can’t be more than four hundred square feet in size, a studio apartment built for one person. Along the left wall is a narrow glass patio door, its drapes lit just enough from the streetlamps outside that I can see a bit into the room. Directly across from me is the kitchen and eating area, marked by a strip of tiled flooring, a mounted cupboard, and a square table with two chairs. Appliances and dishes and a tablet are positioned neatly on top of a rectangular counter. There’s a closet door and a carefully made bed with dark sheets on the right side of the room, and the lump on the floor next to the bed is a pair of guys’ work shoes. They’re big—he must have been tall, the guy who used to live here.

I move into the kitchen.

The fridge is still running, and inside there’s yellow cheese and apples. I slice off some of the cheese and eat it; the soft, salty texture of it is one of childhood. Rinse an apple beneath the tap—the water is ice cold—and eat
that.
Wash it down with a glass of water because who knows when they’ll shut off the supply.

In the cupboard I scavenge an unopened sleeve of energy bars and place it inside my bag. But that’s about it. Everything else is either too heavy or too messy to eat while on the run. Not that there’s much to pick from. The size of the cupboard is in line with the dimensions of the rest of this place.

I walk toward the bed and sling my bag down onto the bedspread. Let myself collapse next to it. The mattress is firm and the sheets smell clean and I curl up into a ball on top of them, holding my bag against my chest. Wrapped inside its worn cotton canvas is death, a wad of fresh clothing, my wallet—full of useless cards now that the Board will be tracking them—and little else. But it’s all I have that’s mine, so it has to be enough.

Shutting my eyes, I wish for the sleep I know won’t come. The faint sounds of the Grid outside come through the walls, too constant to ever be completely shut out. Signs that life continues to move onward, no matter how much I’ve messed things up. Is it already over and I just don’t know it yet? Against the Board, I’m little more than a brief, ugly disturbance, no matter how much I might have to hold over them. Sabian is no typical Alt to beat, and I’m no longer a striker at her peak. My odds suck.

A soft rasp at the front door and my eyes fly open. Heart in mouth, panic is a huge wave that smothers all thoughts except for one: I’ve slipped somewhere, somehow.

I was right to think I had no chance.

At the sound of the flimsy secondary lock starting to come undone, I throw myself off the bed. I hit the ground in a roll and the place is so small that I’m already at the wall behind the front door.

Which swings open before I can even get to my feet.

So slow.

Why am I so slow? When it’s my life to save now and not some other Alt’s that I’m ending—

Someone steps into the room. A guy, with wide shoulders. And he’s tall. I picture the large shoes from beside the bed and for a long, crazy second I’m sure it’s him. That this was all a trap laid by Sabian, a trick to make me think this was an empty.

“West?”

Chord’s voice coming through a dark that’s suddenly lifted by moonlight and my mind is absolutely blank.

He walks into the apartment, shutting the door behind him. The room goes dark again but not before I get a glimpse of his face. The hard set of his mouth, his eyes frantic with worry as he looks around. His hair a wavy mess from the wind and the rush to get to me.

I manage to sit up. “Chord.” His name is a rough whisper, low and desperate. “Down here.”

He’s next to me in a second, on his knees.
“West.”
His hands run all over me, too much and not enough, checking for whatever damage he thinks he must have done to bring me to the ground.

“I’m okay, I’m fine,” I tell him. “You just sur—”

“I’m so sorry.” Chord’s voice is too quiet, the surest sign of his anger. Slowly his hands on me go still, as if afraid to believe I’m really not hurt. But he keeps them on my arms, holding them tightly, and I know his fear was—and is—as great as mine. “I couldn’t warn—” He breaks off, swearing under his breath, then says furiously, “You’ve got to stop turning off your damn cell, all right?”

I check the sleeping weight of it, still in my jeans pocket, and press my thumbprint against the home switch until it vibrates. “I meant to turn it back on earlier,” I tell him.

“Don’t lie.” His tone scalds me even as his hands are gentle on my arms. “You don’t need to lie. I know why you did it. No one in Kersh missed that news file.”

A shudder runs through me at the memory of that moment. All those eyes on me, seeing me as a cheater, a murderer. And they would be right. “You’re still mad, though.”

“You just took off,” Chord snaps. “You expect me to be okay with that?”

“I had to. This is—”

“No. Quit it with the excuses. I think I’ve heard them all by now.”

“This is different.”

“It’s not. It’s still about your survival, isn’t it?”

I shake my head. “It’s not my Alt this time, or Sabian, or even just the Board anymore, Chord. It’s
everyone.
”

“If it only takes one person to kill you, what does it matter?” The words are torn from him, raw and hollow. His hands tighten on my arms again, just for a second, before they let me go.

“What about Baer and Dire?” I ask him. The room is colder now without his touch, and I shudder again. Pull my knees to my chest, wrap my arms around myself.

“What about them? Do you really think they’re afraid of Sabian?”

It’s so easy for Chord to dismiss Sabian, having never met him. He’s never heard that false, friendly voice, seen the void in those hazel eyes.

“West,” Chord says, and I can hear the frown in his voice, even if I can’t see it on his face, “however much you fear the guy, Baer and Dire can handle—”

“I think they have good reason to be afraid,” I blurt out. “They’ve been watched this whole time, all these years. Who do you think Sabian’s going to talk to first, if I stay under long enough that he’ll stop waiting for an idle to come along and fix his mess? What Baer and Dire don’t know might be enough to keep them safe.”

“You know they wouldn’t care about that, if they could help you.”

“I care, though! Just like I care about the same thing happening to you, all right?”

Even in the half dark I can’t miss how his eyes go narrow, hot with a fire of his own. “Then you care too much, West, if it means putting yourself in more danger.”

“I’m scared, Chord,” I whisper hoarsely.

His fingers against my face, over the raised streak of my scar. “I know,” he says simply. And that’s all. Not
Don’t be
or
Why,
just his acceptance of how and what I am, how I think and feel. It’s this that cuts me apart and gives me away to him, pieces of me he’ll take better care of than I ever could.

“Then stay,” I say against Chord’s mouth. “Please.” It can’t be wrong to want
this.
If it’s a weakness to want Chord with me now, to ask him to stay instead of making him leave or having me leave him, then I’ll be weak.

He pulls away just enough so he can meet my eyes. Are mine as naked as his, stripped by the darkness of the room even as it conceals? “I didn’t find you only to leave, West,” he says.

It hits me then. What I missed in the rush of seeing him.

“Chord, how did you find me?” I think of my cell, wonder if he tracked me that way, the way he once did. Though shouldn’t the fact that it’s sleeping make a difference? If not, then what’s stopping anyone from—

He takes my hands, traces the marks around my wrists. “Tracking chips, remember?” he says. “I was at Dire’s.”

I nod, my relief immense. “For a second I was worried that I missed something, or left something behind.”

Chord pulls me to my feet. “No, just me.”

I squeeze his hands and then wrap my arms around him. “What about the others? What happened after you guys got the news file?”

“Auden lost it, of course, when he heard about Meyer. The official statement from Sabian is that the Board believes it to be a political thing and that you were hired as an assassin. That ultimately they are dedicated to tracking down who hired you, but in the meantime, their best lead is finding
you.
Baer and Dire had to physically hold Auden back from rushing out to find Sabian. Guess he really does take after his dad with the hotheadedness.”

“Luc was a bit like that, too,” I say. Maybe not to the same extent as Auden, but still …

Chord nodded. “He was.”

“What then?”

“Auden wanted to go and let everyone know he was still alive, that you didn’t kill him, but Baer and Dire stopped him.” His words have an edge, telling me he had no say in this decision.

“Chord, they had to. Auden proving that he’s still alive doesn’t mean Sabian’s not going to try some other way to get to me. And it won’t bring back those two Alts I’ve already hurt. Sabian would still want me dead because I know too much.”

“I know that. It doesn’t make it any easier.”

“Not for Auden, either,” I point out. “He also can’t prove Sabian killed his dad.”

“Or had him killed,” Chord says. “Maybe tactical—”

“If Sabian didn’t do it himself, he’d get someone from way outside the Board. Not a Level Two Operator. Too dangerous.”

“And we still don’t know why he did it, when it was Auden we thought he was after.”

“Maybe he was really after both the whole time.” My hand curls into a loose fist in his hair, holding on. “I think Sabian’s planned all of this, and not the Board. He was never going to let me go, whether I killed all of them or not.”

Chord sighs. “Maybe. Probably.”

“And Dess?” An image of his face as he ran off, wanting nothing more to do with me because of what I was doing, what I wouldn’t do. “Did he come back?”

“Dess?” Chord pulls back, surprised. “I didn’t even know he was out there. Was he with you when you got the news file?” I wonder if he’s thinking about Taje, his little brother who was made an incomplete over a year ago now. And if he pops into his head at times like these, just as Ehm still does for me.

“No, he … left right before that,” I tell him. “But, Chord, he found out about everything. He heard us talking while we were at Dire’s.”

“How were you planning to explain your missing marks to him, West? I think lying hurts you just as much as it hurts the person you’re lying to.” His hand brushes my hair off my face to take the sting from his words, make them not an accusation. “Especially when you’re trying to keep them safe.”

“I don’t know, I wasn’t thinking about what to tell him. Only that I would.” And that I could only hope he’d be okay with it—because it was never about Dess, or even Chord, really, but me, my own selfishness. “Dess wanted me to finish the job. To kill Auden.”

Chord swears under his breath. “He said that?”

“Yes, but only because he was worried about the Board coming after me if I didn’t. Also …” I’m on the verge of telling him the rest. About Dess’s jealousy of Auden—something I don’t think even Dess knows exists—and his insecurity over being displaced by someone who’s actually related to me by blood, Alt of an incomplete brother or not.

But I don’t. It seems like a betrayal of sorts to reveal these parts of Dess to another, though I know he’s comfortable with Chord, too. But Chord is not the person Dess met while on the run; he isn’t the person who could have walked away without a word of encouragement and didn’t; he isn’t the person who gave him blades out of nothing more than free will.

So I stay quiet, and I know if Chord knew, he’d more than understand.

“Also?” Chord prods, waiting for me to continue.

“Nothing. It’s just … I want him to be okay.”

“If Dess is smart enough to have figured that out about the Board, then he’ll be okay.”

“Yes.” My one hand is still caught in Chord’s hair, and I force myself to let go. I rest my hand against the back of his neck, my marks against the vulnerability of his bare skin there, and tell myself I can’t damage him.

“Time,” he asks softly.

20:57

“It feels later than that,” I say, just as quietly. For whatever reason, it seems right for us to grow hushed now. As though any kind of safety to be found here is the borrowed kind, tenuous and finicky. The sleep that avoided me before is creeping in. I yawn hugely behind one hand.

“Hey, don’t fall asleep on me yet,” Chord murmurs into my ear. “The bed’s right over there.”

My pulse kicks up a notch, cutting through the blur of fatigue. “The bed’s … small.”

“I know. Good thing I’m not a bed hog.” He brings me over to the bed and sits down on the edge and pulls me down next to him. There’s a thump of something falling to the ground.

Chord picks up my bag from it where landed at his feet. He passes it to me. “Did you have to use it on the way here?”

It.
The Roark, of course.

I shake my head as I move the bag onto the foot of the bed—on the other side of me, away from Chord. The weight of the gun no longer seems so noticeable now, as though its time had come and passed, no longer of use. But I still don’t want it anywhere near him. “No, but I might have, if I had no other choice. I didn’t have anything else.”

His hand rests on my face, on my scar. “I’m not judging you, West. Even if you did use it. How can I judge you, when you’ve managed to keep yourself alive for this long? Doing whatever you need to do, or felt you had to do?”

I lean against him. He’s solid, and unbearably close, and more than anything I wish we weren’t here. I should have known the past isn’t changeable, or fixable, especially for a future built on even more death. Like building something on an already cracked and toppling foundation. Fighting fate.

Even though I don’t see him doing it, I can feel Chord reaching into his jacket pocket. “I had to go out to your place first,” he says. “Otherwise I would have been here sooner.” He finds my hand, places something in my palm. “For this.”

My gun. The feel of it is instantly familiar, like a piece of jewelry that’s been worn close to the skin for so long that it’s no longer felt. Simply there—silver bone, steel tissue.

“And these.” My blades. Chord gently folds my fingers over everything. “To do what you need to do. I don’t care who you have to kill. As long as you’re the one left standing.”

A fistful of weapons on my lap, what I’ll need again to help save myself. Chord can only be my shield in so many ways.

I put the gun in my jacket pocket. One blade goes in the other pocket, the other in that of my jeans. “Thank you,” I say to Chord.

He kisses me slowly. “You’re welcome.” Then he takes off his jacket and tosses it on the floor next to the bed. Reaches over, unzips the front of my jacket, and works it off my shoulders.

“What are you doing?” I ask him, doing my best to keep my voice level.

Knowing what my jacket holds, he’s more careful with it than he was with his own, and drops it down slowly onto the floor next to his. “You’re tired, aren’t you? I thought you wanted to sleep.”

Sleep. Squished next to him on a bed that feels smaller than ever, so not touching is impossible. Not wanting him impossible.

A curl of heat in my stomach even as cold logic has me shaking my head, trying to clear it. “I can’t sleep. I have to decide what to—”

“You’re dead on your feet, West.” Chord shifts me over so we’re both lying down on the bed. “A few hours, that’s all.”

I turn onto my side, fit my body against his. He pulls at the covers and flips them over so they lie over me. And he’s right. I can’t deny that my eyes are heavy, my words slower in coming. Even my thoughts seem less than clear, too raw. Being so close to him leaves me vulnerable, but also safe. “I need my gun,” I say against his neck. “I’ve never slept in an empty without it close by.”

“It’s okay. I’m not going anywhere. And I’m not tired.” His mouth on my temple. “So good night.”

“Hmm.” I move my hand up to touch his hair, then down along the back of his neck, before I wrap my arm around his chest. Like marking what’s mine. “I’m glad you’re here, Chord.”

“Me too.”

Sleep. There is no worry about the nightmare coming back tonight, of seeing my Alt—my mind is too full of other unpleasant things. The sound of distant sirens, tripped alarms, and the occasional gunshot. At some point, I must say something in my sleep, because through the haze of dreams Chord’s telling me not to worry, it’s not for us, they’re not coming for us.

They are, even if we’re completes. It doesn’t matter—

Skin against skin, soothing me.
I love you, and we are fine.

When I wake up, it’s still dark in the room, and I can tell I’m alone in the bed.

I sit up and the covers and Chord’s jacket slide off me. It’d been spread out on top of me as another blanket.