Fox Forever (23 page)

I step out of the shadows.

I don’t have much more to lose, and I walk to the clearing so I’m in plain view if she would only look down. She finally does, like she senses she’s being watched.

She looks at me, and even from nine stories below and in the dark, I can see enough of her face to know the old Raine has returned. She has nothing for me. The blanket slips from her shoulders, forgotten, and she walks away, disappearing back into her father’s domain.

Wreckage

There are still no knocks on my door. No fires to burn me out.

She didn’t tell him. Yet.

But even not telling won’t save me for long. It doesn’t matter that I’m out of the Collective, and his daughter’s life. I have no doubt the Secretary’s still digging and has probably doubled his efforts to search my past. He spent far too long scrutinizing the injuries on my face, perhaps trying to match it up with the injuries a half-human might inflict. What throws him off, maybe even makes him lazy, is my age, my stature, my education, and my supposedly rich parents. I don’t fit his profile of a Non-pact with an ulterior motive. In that respect, the Network knew exactly what they were doing in choosing me and creating my background. In the Secretary’s mind I’m too much like the other kids in the Collective to be one of those animals he despises.

I’m out of the apartment early, taking the PAT to Cambridge. My three hours of sleep were short but determined. With the deadline looming and Carver itching to go to Plan B, there’s no time to waste.

I didn’t spend much time in Cambridge when I used to live here. I remember going to some bookshops with Jenna and Kara, looking for old volumes of poetry, and then hanging out at some outdoor cafés, sipping lattes and trying to outquote one another, but we never really ventured past the main streets.

Percel walks me through a maze of alleys and streets. He has no information about 1407 Bridgemont. No visuals, no history, only directions, but with privacy laws he says there’s an opt-out provision so it’s not unusual for this information to be unavailable. I remember Jenna telling me about the privacy laws …
the beginning of the personal privacy era … other than public space IDs, all personal tracking information and devices were outlawed.

That must have really put a damper on the Secretary’s extracurricular activities.

“Left at the next corner,” Percel tells me.

The street I’m on is like one from another time. My time. Quiet, lined with trees that are beginning to drop yellow leaves on streets that are cobbled. A market on the corner doesn’t look that much different from the one my mother used to work at, small, with specials handwritten on placards in the window and silver pails filled with bunches of flowers near the entrance. I pause before I turn left, looking at the various bunches. Mums. Roses. Lilies. Lots of others I don’t even know the names for. I wonder what kind Raine—

Roses maybe. But I’ll probably never know.

“Left here,” Percel reminds me.

I turn onto a long narrow street, one residence butted up to the next with an occasional business wedged between. There’s nothing remarkable about the street other than it’s quiet and pleasant. I begin to look at numbers from force of habit even though Percel has already informed me I have another twenty meters to go.

1401, 1403, 1405, and then nothing.

Between a two-story brownstone at 1405 and a one-story haberdashery at 1409 is an empty lot. Nothing more than gravel and a few weeds. I look down to the corner to make sure we’re on the right street but Percel assures me that the empty lot is 1407 Bridgemont.

I walk up the porch steps to the haberdashery next door and go inside, a bell on the door alerting them to my presence. They’ve really gone for the full quaint effect. A Bot who is cleverly made up as an old wicker dress form brings me back to the reality of where I am. I ask her about the lot next door.

“Not for sale as far as I know. It’s been empty for years now.”

“You mean it used to have something on it?”

She pulls back the black netting on her felt hat. “Yes. A home. It burned to the ground sixteen years ago during a raid. Two humans died.” She tries to interest me in fabrics that would complement my eyes, but I’m already walking out, the tinkling bell and slamming door echoing with all the other thoughts swirling through my head.

Miesha and Karden’s home.
The Secretary had their address and has saved it all these years. It didn’t come through an intelligence report, or through other official avenues. He got their address by way of a small handwritten note. A note that had no other identifying information on it. An anonymous note.

* * *

I’m just turning down the street to the apartment when Xavier intercepts me. I can’t tell if he’s angry or relieved but his expression is wild. “Where have you been?”

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“It’s Livvy. She’s gone.”

“What do you mean
gone
?”

He steps closer, lowering his voice. “There was a Security sweep last night. Carver tried to call you but couldn’t get through. Security Forces went through Livvy’s neighborhood grabbing anyone on the street. They got her and six others.”

“But why? She wasn’t even in public space.”

Xavier’s voice shakes as he explains that sometimes it doesn’t matter. Sometimes they just want to send a warning message. Is it lawful? No. But who are Non-pacts going to complain to? Security?

I lean back against a gatepost, dazed, trying to make sense of it. “Is this because of me going down into the green tunnel?”

He says that may have triggered it, but that it’s not the first time it’s happened and it won’t be the last. They do it periodically just to demonstrate that they’re in charge. “And with the deadline drawing so near, the Secretary is probably breathing down the necks of every man on the Security Force. It’s all about pecking order, and we’re on the bottom.”

“How long will they keep her?”

Xavier shakes his head, looking down at his feet, a mountain of restraint heaving in his chest. “They might let her go. The scare of the raid might be warning enough. Or she might already be on her way to the desert.”

I can barely think, picturing Livvy and … “She’s got kids,” I whisper.

“You think I don’t know she’s got kids?” he hisses. “But she’s already been tagged twice, if they count this as the third…”

Three strikes and you’re out. Tagged like a dog. I search for the same restraint Xavier is able to dredge up on cue. “We’ll get her back,” I tell him. “Some way.”

Xavier pushes his face within inches of mine.
“Stay the course,”
he says in a slow growl. “Her kids are who Livvy is doing this for.
Now
’s not the time to do something impulsive.”

Like I did when I went down into the tunnel. He doesn’t have to say it. I still hear him loud and clear. But sometimes staying the course can mean maintaining the status quo too, and look where that’s gotten them. Nowhere.

I try to walk around him but he sidesteps in front of me. His eyes have gone from troubled to sympathetic. It makes my stomach tighten. “There’s something else,” he says.

He sighs, only making my gut squeeze tighter. “This probably isn’t the best time to tell you this, but we gave you our word. We have some news about Manchester.”

I thought they forgot about that. I had almost forgotten myself. “Did you find something?”

He nods. “They got into the labs. They had to burn the whole place down to cover their tracks, but they found something.”

I close my eyes. I know what the something is. I’m not sure I can take any more bad news right now, not one more complication. “Are they bringing it to me?”

“It’s here. Right now.” He tilts his head gesturing behind him. “Over there.”

A beat-up plumber’s truck is parked outside the apartment. Jake stands next to it. I take a couple of deep breaths.
Hold it together, Locke.
“Have him bring it up.”

“He can’t.” Xavier signals him and Jake rolls up the back door of the truck.

I’m not sure how long I stand there before I start hearing again; how long before I start seeing again. Xavier grabs my injured arm where a deep wound is still healing and the shooting pain brings me back to the present.

“They’re labeled with two names,” he says. “Kara Manning and Locke Jenkins. About a hundred of each.”

Row after row of six-inch cubes all attached to battery docks, like houses on a city block. A whole city of nothing but Kara and myself.

“What should we do with them?”

A hundred possible Karas. Maybe one who is whole, or maybe a hundred who are the wreckage of an experiment gone wrong. A hundred Lockes, each one still trapped in a world of endless black corridors that have no beginnings or endings, still begging for a way out. A hundred Lockes listening to the tortured screams of Kara. But maybe one Locke who is more than me. Better than me. A whole city of uploaded minds—
spares
—that might have been forgotten for another two centuries on a storage shelf, or used as floor models all over the world. Hari still had dollar signs in his eyes even after Gatsbro’s death.

“What do you want us to do with them?” he repeats.

I look at him, trying to understand his words.
Do with them?

I always thought I knew what I would do. But a
hundred.
Maybe one that is—

I shake my head. I can’t think. “You’re right. This is a bad time.”

Right now all I can manage to do is to stay the course.

Suspects

I walk around the small basement apartment, making my promised appearance, but also needing to ask Miesha something. The apartment takes up about half of the basement of the gallery. I look up at the small window that looks out at street level. Everything about the basement is different from when Kara and I used to hang out here with Jenna, except for the stone walls and the windows. “It doesn’t look anything like I remember.”

“It’s been centuries. The whole house has been gutted and restored several times over,” Jenna says. “It took some hits during the Civil Division too, and that had to be repaired. Only father’s study on the second floor is still intact with all the original walls and contents—right down to the books in his library and the pen on his desk. I guess when you create something as groundbreaking as Bio Gel, people want to get a glimpse of the mind that created it. But most of the house is devoted to the art gallery now.”

“It’s strange to think you’ve been here before,” Miesha says. “I keep forgetting how far back you two go.” She walks over and brushes hair aside that hangs over my eye, like she’s still my caretaker at Gatsbro’s estate. “You’re looking better than you did yesterday.”

“What else would you expect?” I answer, trying to put her at ease. I even add one of my impish grins.

She balks. “Don’t even try to use that on me. I know you too well.”

I put away the smile and pretense. “You do know me, Miesha. And there’s something I need to know about you. But no questions asked.”

She delivers a long slow blink, clearly not fond of conditional information, but waits silently for me to continue.

“When you lived in Cambridge with Karden all those years ago, who knew your address?” She looks startled and I tell her I’m only curious, trying to piece together the early activities of the Resistance. “I remember you told me that you and Karden lived under the radar and moved frequently, but you must have told some people where you lived.”

She shakes her head. “I shouldn’t have done it, but when we returned to Boston I contacted my parents. I wanted them to see their only grandchild. I thought if they saw Rebecca, that might change things between us, but they refused to come. They rejected her the same as they rejected me. They would never accept me being with Karden.”

She pauses, looking down as her hand slides over her scarred forearm, the lasting proof that her long-ago nightmare really happened. Her gaze jerks back to me. “But if you’re wondering how Security found us, it wasn’t them. My parents had plenty of opportunities to turn me in before but they never did. They may have hated Karden but they didn’t hate me. I told you before that Karden had been working on his next maneuver. We stayed in Cambridge longer than we had ever stayed anywhere before. Too long. I think Security must have traced his activity.”

“And no one else knew your address?”

“Only a trusted few in the Resistance.”

“Who were they?”

“You’ve already met them. Carver, Livvy, and Xavier.”

I try to process what this might mean. Her estranged bitter parents versus three trusted members of the Resistance. “Was Karden close to the three of them?”

“Carver and Karden were childhood best friends.” She shrugs. “But they all had a long history together.”

“You don’t seem to like any of them.”

She steps over to a hutch that holds a few dishes for the tiny kitchen, checking a plate like she’s just noticed a speck of dirt on it. “It has nothing to do with liking. It has to do with reminders. I can barely stand to look at them because when I do all I see are memories.” She pauses, rubbing her thumb across the plate. “They make me remember all the nights I lay on my cot in prison, staring at the ceiling and wishing it had been them and their families in the burned rubble instead of mine. Every ugliness in myself and every horror from that day are what I see when I look at them.” She pulls a towel from the drawer and begins wiping down each plate and restacking them. “When I saw you yesterday…” She shakes her head. “I thought, they have no right to do this to me again. No right.”

I walk over to her and pull the towel from her hands so she has to look at me. “They aren’t doing anything to
me
, Miesha. I’m here because I want to be. I don’t know how all these things work, how any person ends up in a place where they never expected to be, but maybe sometimes we find ourselves in exactly the wrong place at the wrong time and then maybe there’s just as many of those other times too when we’re in exactly the right place just when we need to be there. I’m hoping
this
is one of those other times.”