Parched (17 page)

I clear my throat and he yelps. “Holy guac!” With a flick of his wrist, the five gushing streams all pause midway through their descent. He shoots me a wry smile, shaking his head at his own jumpiness. “You are not afraid of the sneak attack, are you?”

“Sorry.” I grin. “I just wanted to see how it was going.”

“It goes,” he says. “Still waiting to see exactly how. Boss lady giving you a break from training?”

I assume he means Ling. “I thought you were a collective,” I say, a little teasingly. “No bosses, right?”

Achilles scoffs good-naturedly. “We let Ling toil under that delusion. But we all know who butters the bread around here.” He gestures to an empty chair next to him. “Please. Feel free to cease standing.”

I sink down into the chair, eyes on the frozen streams. “So, this is the Liamond system, huh?”

“The very one. Tricky little monkey, too,” he adds, rubbing his wrists. “Looks like they recently upgraded.”

After what happened with Magnus, I'm sure Simutech doubled down on all security measures. “Maybe they have something to hide,” I murmur.

“Maybe definitely.” Achilles nods. “But don't sweat it. Achilles Zamata is on the case. The case that involves me not bathing or experiencing sunlight for the foreseeable future,” he adds wryly.

The frozen strings of numbers hang in the air, looking intimidatingly impenetrable to untrained eyes like mine. “Is there anything I can do?” I ask hopefully.

“Not unless you're secretly a wizard code breaker.”

I slump a little. “Nope. Just a regular non-wizard type.”

“You're more than that,” Achilles says.

I shoot him a
huh?
look.

“You survived the Badlands for a year!” he exclaims. “You worked
out how to get past the Quicks at Simutech. You own a
knife
. And, you're helping Kudzu out—who happen to be the most awesome group of revolutionaries ever.”

I want to accept Achilles' compliments, but thinking about Magnus has sent my guilt meter into overdrive. I fiddle with my necklace, searching for a subject change. “How did you find Kudzu?”

His eyes drift back to the frozen numbers. “They found me. I tried to hack a Three Towers security stream when I was about thirteen. Failed, of course, and ended up in community service, where I met Benji.”

“Thirteen years old and taking on the Trust,” I say with a laugh. “Consider me impressed.”

“And yet, that white whale continues to elude.” He sighs, stretching his neck to one side then the other. “No one's ever cracked a Three Towers stream, not that I know of. Just be glad the mirror matter isn't residing there.”

Henny pops her head around the corner. “Lunch, chickens.”

Achilles gets to his feet eagerly. “You'll let me know if there's anything I can do, right?” I reiterate, rising to follow him.

He nods. “Sure thing. But Tess,” he adds, as we head for the hallway, “you're already doing plenty. Don't kill yourself over this. We have a strict no-kill policy when it comes to missions,” he adds jokingly.

Achilles ambles down the hallway in the direction of the backyard, leaving me momentarily alone. The short, sharp word slices through me—
kill
. Kudzu and I are going to kill Aevum. For a moment, the prospect seizes me with its wrongness. What we're planning is murder. Artilects are alive. Then I pull myself together.

We're the good guys. I'm sure of it.

Lunch is a warm salad consisting of quinoa, kale, sultanas, a strong white cheese, and grated carrot. Henny adds a boiled egg to mine—the requisite protein. Lana warns me not to eat too much, as I'll be starting on the obstacle course this afternoon. I sit by Ling as I eat, and listen in on a conversation she has with Naz over weaponry. Snatches of phrases like
smoke bombs
and
contained explosions
seem surreally at odds with the peaceful, sunny vibe of the backyard.

After lunch, the symmetrical saints walk me through an obstacle course that twists and turns all around the grounds of Milkwood and
out into the woods beyond. The workout they've invented would easily rival what you could accomplish on the slickest equipment at the best Longevity Hub. I'm to vault over fallen logs and swing myself over swampy patches, duck under low branches and race through the trees. Lana has already done it twice.

My first attempt kicks my ass in a comprehensive fashion. When I emerge from the woods, red-faced and muddy, Benji and Lana cheer. “How . . . long . . . did . . . I . . . take?” I ask between wheezes.

“Just over ten minutes,” Benji beams.

“And . . . how . . . long . . . did . . . you . . . take?” I ask Lana, hands planted on my knees to help me catch my breath.

“Three minutes,” Lana answers. “But ten minutes for your first time is totally—”

“Awesome,” I cut her off. “Got it.” I crumple to the ground and lie flat on my back. The golden-haired couple burst into laughter. They're so unflinchingly earnest, it's hard not to fall in love with them.

The afternoon speeds by as I do the course again and again and again. I knock my overall time down to eight and a half minutes, which feels like an enormous victory.

In the late afternoon, when the sun has dropped below the tops of the high city walls, sending Milkwood into shadow, Ling, Naz, Benji, Lana, and I all practice moving and stopping to get past the Quicks. We look like we're playing a kids' game. It's hard to take it seriously, even though we all know one tiny finger shake can blow our cover. We do get noticeably better after an hour, moving and freezing as one solid unit. It makes me feel united with Kudzu in a concrete way.

Eventually, twilight settles around us. Reluctantly, I tell Ling I have to get back to Abel's.

“Got to keep playing ‘good niece,' huh?” she says, eyes flashing with amusement.

“The man loves a family dinner.” I don't feel like explaining the tutoring session that's scheduled. Even though most people in Kudzu are about the same age as me, they seem older. The tutoring thing feels embarrassingly babyish. I just don't believe the whole thing's motivated by Abel's concern about my intellect. Maybe it's just to keep me busy and out of his way. Or maybe, I think with a jolt, it's because he has reason to distrust me. No. That's impossible. How could he know anything about Kudzu? I've been so careful.

Maybe I'll get lucky. Maybe Abel will forget about the session and leave me to my own devices. Maybe Hunter will blow it off.

Yeah, and maybe Gyan will grow wings and fly off into the sunset.

“Honey!” Abel's front door glides shut behind me with a chime. “I'm home!”

Kimiko whizzes into the center of the lounge. “Hello, Tess.”

“Hello, Kimiko, darling Kimiko, apple of my eye, cream of my coffee.”

“You are in a good mood, Tess,” the robot observes in her smoothly modulated tone, spinning to watch me flop down onto the sofa. “I am happy to see that.”

I'm still buzzing with the newness of it all. Secret headquarters and rebel ropers, stream hackers and plans of attack. I pull my boots off and let them thud to the floor. I'll probably have blisters tomorrow from the hikes and all the running. “You're not actually happy,” I tell the fembot, rubbing my feet. “You don't have an artificial nervous system in order to produce the chemicals to feel happy. You'll never know the heart-pounding, knee-knocking, obsessive power of dopamine. But let's not let semantics spoil our evening.”

“Are you hungry, Tess? I am programmed to prepare a variety of nutritious meals.”

“I ate,” I say. I prop myself up on one elbow and twist to face her. “But now that you mention it—Oh. Hey.”

“Greetings.” Hunter pronounces the word in the amiable tone of someone completely unperturbed by my one-hour lateness. I hadn't noticed him sitting alone at the dining room table, empty except for a single piece of scratch.

“Greetings,” I echo, inwardly wincing. I was right: Abel had not forgotten about my babysitter.

“Did you want to eat before we get started?” he asks.

“No, that's okay.” I sigh. “Kimiko, you are dismissed, or whatever.”

“Thank you,” the robot says, then whizzes off in the direction of the kitchen.

I flip myself to my feet and pad over to Hunter. He's wearing a clean white T-shirt and a calm expression of expectation. “Can I be honest?”

His eyebrows flick down in confusion. “Have you not been so far?”

“I don't need a tutor,” I say, sliding into a chair next to him. “Abel thinks I do, but Abel likes wearing lady's housecoats.” Hunter's mouth
quirks in cautious amusement, which I take as tacit approval to continue. “Why don't we just
tell
him we're studying together, you know, without actually doing it. I can go do my thing, and you can go do your thing, and ta-da! We all do our things
separately
.”

Hunter leans forward, mouth still curled into a half-smile. “And what is your ‘thing,' Tess?”

I smile back. “Not doing this.”

“I can't lie to your uncle,” Hunter says.

“Yes, you can!” I protest. “It's easy, and it's kind of fun.”

“I can't,” he says firmly. “So let's just get started. I thought we'd begin with art.” He goes to press his thumb into the scratch—scratch that's on-cycle.

“Wait!” I try to look nonchalant as I get my backpack, pulling out the off-cycle scratch I'd managed to get back from Ling. “Use this.”

“Why?”

“It's off-cycle.”

“Why do you have—”

“It was my Mom's.” My voice sounds more like a challenge than I want it to, so I shrug a little and add, “She used it when she didn't want to be bothered by other people.”

He purses his lips. “But you won't have a record of this session.”

“I don't need a record. This is all about making me smarter right? The only record I need is up here,” I say, tapping my temple.

“All right.” He presses his thumb into the corner of my scratch. It glows gold. Hunter instructs, “Show me art.”

The streams burst into life. Such a broad search topic brings up dozens and dozens of miniature clouds displaying art throughout the ages. Paintings, sculptures, installations, performances, and more all spin and whirl before my eyes; the old and the new jostling for our attention. The neatly presented woman who talked me through aevum begins speaking, but Hunter quickly mutes her with his eyes. An entire world of pretty, opaque information hangs above the table, like a magical mobile.

How. Extremely. Annoying.

“Your curriculum requires you to focus on one major movement,” Hunter says, meeting my eyes through the stream. “What do you prefer? Contemporary? Or the classics?”

I slouch in my chair, sulking.

“I don't care.”

“I find contemporary art very interesting,” Hunter suggests.

“Really?” I roll my eyes. “Isn't it all like, a banana in the middle of a room that's supposed to be my soul?”

“Okay, no contemporary,” Hunter says, unshaken. “How about the impressionists?”

“Oh please.” I snicker. “Has it ever occurred to you that they painted like that because laser eye surgery wasn't invented until a hundred years later? That Monet guy probably thought he was doing a bang-up job.”

“Okay. No impressionists.” This time his voice is sharp. It's very satisfying to hear the edge of irritation in his nothing-can-faze-me tone—an itch I can finally scratch. Time to let him off the hook.

“Surrealists,” I say, flicking my hand over a passing Magritte. “I like the surrealists.”

The surrealist stream replaces the general art one. Paintings of melting clocks and feet that turn into shoes and pipes that aren't pipes spin around us. I find my favorite painting,
Mystery and Melancholy of a Street
.

Between two white buildings, on a bright slanting street, a young girl plays with a hoop and stick. An empty wooden cart, the kind they might've used to transport horses, sits next to one of the buildings, its back doors open. In the direction the girl is running, there's the shadow of a person, maybe a man. The buildings on either side of the scene are cut with multiple archways. Small square windows run along the top of them, parallel to the roof, which is scarlet red. The sky is sea green, darkening in the foreground of the painting. Harsh sunlight hits the ground, turning what's not deep in shadow into a brilliant yellow-gold.

“Giorgio de Chirico,” I announce. “This is ‘my thing.' ”

“Really?”

I cut him a wry glance. “Don't look so shocked. I'm surprisingly nuanced.”

“What can you tell me about this artist?” Hunter asks, now in teacher mode.

“Um . . . He was Greek-born Italian . . .”

“More.”

“Born in the 1880s . . .”

“More.”

“Technically a metaphysical painter as opposed to surrealist.”

Hunter raises an eyebrow. “More.”

As we go on, Hunter fills in details of what I can't remember. He's
surprisingly well-versed for a science geek, which admittedly is a tiny bit impressive.

“And why do you like this particular work?” Hunter asks.

“I think because it's so unsettling.” I frown. “All the perspectives are off—the shadows are in all the wrong places, compared to where the buildings are. And the figure of the girl. She seems innocent, running along with a fun hoop and everything, but it's spooky and desolate at the same time.”

“De Chirico painted this in 1914,” Hunter says offhandedly. “Some say it was an allegory for the foreboding atmosphere of imminent war.”

“An allegory for a foreboding atmosphere?” I tease. “Major geek points for that, my friend.” Then, because I am genuinely interested: “Do you like it?”