by Kim Harrison
“I brought you in.”
Peri inclined her head. “I was cooperating.”
Flushed, Harmony stood her ground. “How can you possibly know what I’m capable of?”
“You don’t know what I’m capable of, either,” Peri shot back. “You can’t go against a drafter. You can’t possibly.”
Harmony took a breath, expression dark and her anger obvious. Steiner cleared his throat, cutting off her next words. “Harmony, may I speak with you a moment?”
“No!” she blurted, then caught herself. “Sir. I mean, yes. Yes, of course.”
Eyebrows high, Steiner stood and gestured for her to step a few feet away.
Jack leaned over Peri’s shoulder, whispering, “I don’t think she likes you.”
Hand waving, Peri pushed the hallucination away, and Jack vanished. “Good Lord,” Peri muttered, glad he was gone. “What did I ever do to that woman?”
Allen chuckled as he sat beside her, and she shifted to keep from sliding into him. “You want the short list, or long one?”
From by the elevators, Harmony said loudly, “She is here until Denier figures out the Evocane, and then she will accelerate herself and run. Sir. She is a risk, not only a flight risk but to the safety of everyone on my team. She could draft and forget everything but being Bill’s girl.”
“Which is why I want you there,” Steiner said. “We need her to draw them in. Allen is there in case she drafts. Get over whatever issue you have and work with the woman. If she tests clean for the presence of the accelerator, she goes.”
“Sir.” It was flat this time, and Peri smiled an apology when the woman glared at Peri and walked into the open office areas.
“Don’t you love being the bait in the dumb-ass trap?” Clearly disenchanted, Allen stood as Steiner made his way back to them. Peri rose as well, uncomfortable that Harmony was right. The risk of being wiped was real. The chance she might chuck it all and run—even without the accelerator and Evocane—was real. She’d acquired new skills in eleven months, rubbed out the worst of the engineered mental blocks against being alone and the patterns of behavior that made her easy to find. But the chance that Silas could reverse-engineer Evocane and she could remember her drafts . . . that was real as well.
“Give Denier a blood sample before you leave the floor. We depart at eight p.m. tomorrow,” Steiner said, blue eyes hard. “Tell Harmony what you need.”
Her thoughts on Silas, Peri asked, “Is there any way we can go earlier?”
“Intel has Michael at the site at three a.m. We’ll have you in place by two.”
He turned away, and Peri cleared her throat. “An hour for recon?”
Steiner hesitated, his face expressionless. “Recon is there already. You can read the report on the plane. Harmony is in charge. No three-strike rule. You piss her off, and she kicks you back here. Understand?”
“Absolutely,” she said, but he was already walking away.
Allen sighed as he sat down again. “Congratulations?”
Focus distant, she took Jack’s picture out of the trash and blotted the coffee away. “If you say so.” They’d had some good times. Lots of them. That she couldn’t remember them was a small point. The emotion was still there. Am I making a mistake?
Anxiety rose, and she hid Jack’s photo under the rest. The unease that Steiner had left behind was growing, and her eyes strayed to the elevators. “I should run and just keep running.”
“Yeah, there’s a good idea.”
Eyes narrowing, she toyed with the idea of shoving his foot off his knee. “I’m not a child. I can make good decisions.”
Oblivious, he rubbed his ankle. “Yeah? How is running a good decision? You can’t make good decisions when you don’t remember everything.”
Her urge to shove his foot off his knee shifted to breaking his nose. But then she’d draft to fix it. Maybe if she had let Bill pump that crap into her, she might have the pleasure of remembering it. “Excuse me,” she said tightly. “I need to give Silas a blood sample.”
“Peri . . .”
Back stiff, she walked away, shivering as she entered the lab and the cold Silas had it at. Allen wouldn’t follow her in here, where Silas was king, and her shoulders relaxed as she found him clustered before a wave screen with his technicians, looking over a hormone schematic.
“Hey, hi,” she called out, and he looked up, smiling. “I’m leaving at eight tomorrow night. If they shut you out, call me.” And then I’m gone.
“Peri.” Finger up to ask for a moment, he gave the technicians a last instruction before tugging his too-tight lab coat straight and heading her way. “I doubt they’re going to do that. They want to know how to make Bill’s wonder drugs as much as you do, and I had access to the old research. How was the, ah, meeting? Everything okay?”
She glanced out the big plate-glass window to where Allen dejectedly waited for her, slumped in the white cushions. “About what I expect. It’s a snag and drag. I’ve done worse than bring someone in who didn’t want to come.” Never another drafter, though.
“I meant are you okay working with Allen?”
Unable to meet his eyes, she shrugged. “As long as he doesn’t try to dress me in pastels again.” Depressed, she sat on a lab stool. “Allen is a such a dick.” Silas laughed, and she stared at him. “What’s so funny?”
“You are.” His smile was soft as he leaned against the counter. “Half our conversations used to start that way. You liked him best, attracted to his drive and goal-oriented personality.”
“Well, I don’t remember it,” she said sourly, thinking that didn’t jibe with what she’d been reading in her diary. But she’d gotten only a few weeks into it.
A technician nervously edged forward, and Silas casually took the ticker tape of data he handed him. “That was hard for me to deal with,” he admitted, voice distant as he unrolled his tablet from his pocket and pressed the bar code to the screen to upload the data. The entire tablet flashed blue to indicate a successful transfer, and he threw the tape away. “They can’t apprehend Michael without you. You know that.”
Nodding, she shifted the stool back and forth, thinking about her diary. Clearly something had shifted from what she’d read to the end, and a new desire filled her to find out when—and more important, how—his depression over Summer had shifted to jealousy, and then perhaps . . . a shared desire?
“Be careful,” Silas said, oblivious to her thoughts. “I mean it, Peri. Allen isn’t that good of a field anchor. Steiner thinks all anchors are alike, but if you draft, whatever you lose is gone.”
“I can deal with it,” she said distantly, then remembered why she was here. “Steiner wants a blood test to make sure I’m clean of the accelerator.”
“Huh.”
Silas was frowning at the new data on the screen. “What?” she asked flatly, and Silas straightened, his concern making her uneasy. “Is there a problem?”
“No. It’s the preliminary breakdown of the Evocane,” he said, brow furrowed. “Indications suggest the Evocane will have some nasty side effects. I mean, why is there a sodium uptake inhibitor in there?”
Her diary forgotten, she stilled her chair’s motion. “Side effects?”
Silas’s frown deepened. “I’m sure the chemical architects balanced everything out on paper,” he said, his casual voice confused as he studied the tablet. “But the human body isn’t a test tube. I know you want this to work, but this stuff is ugly. I can’t let—”
“It’s too soon to start talking about me taking it or not taking it,” she interrupted, her stomach clenching. “Maybe I should just run. I’m good at that.”
Silas exhaled heavily, his fingers slow as he closed down his tablet. “I don’t think you should. I think you need to do this. All the way to the end. One hundred percent.”
She sat where she was, stunned. “You want me to be the CIA’s new toy?” she said indignantly. “Risk WEFT pumping me full of this stuff instead of Bill? You kn
ow as soon as I get Michael, I’m in the cell next door.”
“Because they think you’re a weapon,” he said, his expression thick with concern. “This is your chance to prove them wrong.”
She laughed bitterly. “I am a weapon.”
“No, you’re skilled. There’s a difference.”
His eyes pleaded with her, their pinched heartache familiar. She wanted to believe it, but she knew better. “When you can be made to forget, used by the highest bidder or most favorable lie or blackmailed, you’re a weapon. Harmony is right,” she said. “I’m a risk.”
Silas touched her shoulder, and she stifled a surge of emotion. “You are a person. Convince the policy makers that you’re trustworthy.”
Her eyes fell from his. “Convincing Harmony of that isn’t going to happen.”
“She’s just jealous.” Silas gave her arm a quick squeeze before letting go.
“Of me? That’s a laugh.”
“Up until recently, Opti was hogging all the funds and resources,” he said as he shuffled through a drawer. “You got the good tasks, the new gadgets,” he added as he found a sterile finger lance and a blood-draw film. “And for what? Because you won the genetic lottery? Finding that out was hard. Harmony is good, from what I hear. And then you show up again, stealing her first chance to prove it.”
Grimacing, she held her hand out. “And this is my fault?”
He swiped through his tablet’s apps, shrugging as he pulled up the right one and set the blood-draw film on the softly glowing box. “Bringing Michael in will be the easy part. Convincing Steiner you did it regardless of the carrot he’s holding is harder. Okay. Little poke.”
She steeled herself for it, eyeing the crimson drop before pressing it to the blood-draw film, the tablet recording her fingerprint for identification at the same time the film accepted her sample. “This is a waste of time,” she muttered.
“Not if it makes Steiner feel better,” he said, and Peri snorted as she took the sterile pad Silas handed her. He really was an odd mix of iron-pumping, lab-coat-wearing, PhD-holding psychologist. “Go get Michael. I’ll pick the Evocane apart. If it’s not safe, I’ll make it safe. Promise.”
He always makes it sound so easy. “Thank you.” Rising up on tiptoe, she gave him a kiss on the cheek, finding a compliment in his suddenly tight expression. “Wish me luck.”
Without a single glance behind her, she walked out.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
“I have this, Swift. Go sit. I’ll show you both when it’s all compiled. Okay?”
Peri looked up from her phone as Allen dramatically dropped the CIA-issued tablet onto the tiny cocktail table Harmony had settled herself at. Motion oddly unsteady for the athletic man, he wobbled his way to the front of the jet and all but fell into the scarred, leather-bound chair across from her.
“And I thought you were a control freak,” he muttered, making Peri smile as she rested the flats of her arms on the much wider conference table.
The jet had once shuttled VIPs in the early 2000s, still serviceable but its luxuries faded. Its leather was scarred with age and there was a noticeable lack of USB outlets. The lavatory was more spacious than she was used to, and a universal etherball kept them in contact with the web throughout the flight. Made up to seat twelve comfortably, it was still a nice little jet despite its age, everything that had once made it special now outdated even if it was still functional.
Sort of like me, Peri thought as she picked at the tacky-bottomed tray of desiccated cheese and crackers across the table from Allen. She’d changed into her upscale black suit less than an hour ago, going further to cut her hair to a functional ear length, and she brushed the black strands back, her guilt rising almost as fast as her anticipation. She’d taken pains to distance herself from this—the clothes, the haircut, the sensation of rising tension—and the same patterns she was resurrecting to keep her alive now felt like a trap.
Frustrated, Peri set her phone aside and put her forehead on the table. Her new felt-tip pen pendant swung out to clink on the faded wood, discolored from a thousand spilled martinis. Her breath came back hot and stale, and she turned her head. Out the oval window across the aisle, the sky had faded from deep blue to a black nothing, thick clouds blocking the ground.
Her open satchel sat on the wide leather seat under the window, the corner of her journal showing past her carefully folded street clothes. Frowning, Peri leaned across the aisle to pull the entire bag to her. Bringing her diary hadn’t been a stellar idea, but leaving it in a CIA locker where anyone could find it was even worse, and besides, Silas’s comments in the lab were bugging her.
She glanced at Allen pretending to read his latest rock-climbing magazine, his tablet making his face glow. She hadn’t remembered that he didn’t like to fly. It was unexpected from the adrenaline junkie who liked his bikes off-road and his sports extreme, and she smiled as she settled back with her diary, thumbing past the slow progression of tests, exams, and trials of the first trimester until she got to where she’d left off.
Allen rented a skiff today, and we went out on Lake St. Clair. Big twenty-footer, with a tiny kitchen and a bed in the bow. Toward sunset, Allen spilled wine all over the cockpit, then fell in while getting a bucket of water to rinse it off. I think he did it so I’d come in after him and I’d have to choose between wet clothes and wrapping myself in a beach towel for the sail in, but Silas cut the dinghy loose and we sailed on, leaving him sputtering and swearing. We went back to get him about an hour after it got dark. He was pissed, but honestly, it was the only time out there that didn’t have Allen flapping his lips about something or other, usually about how we could beat everyone else in the next trial. The man never stops thinking. Plotting, Silas says, but I have to admit between Allen’s underhanded strategies and Silas’s tech innovations that make them work, we’re staying ahead of the curve.
We’re not winning any friends, but our supervisors are running this last year in training as if it’s a freaking island where people are getting voted off, and I intend to be standing on the beach when this is over. I want that task. Silas needs it or he’s going to kill himself with guilt. Allen . . . I can’t tell if Allen wants it because he believes in bringing down the corrupt faction of Opti, or if he’s looking for the job security that will come from this one task. I don’t care. If he can keep doing what he’s doing, we have a chance.
Silas and I watched the sun set behind Detroit, not saying a word. I think he appreciated the silence. I am such a chicken squirt. I should’ve done something other than put my head on his shoulder, but I was afraid I’d screw it up, and it’s nice to see Silas doing better. He still has his moods, but he’ll let himself enjoy something occasionally now. I love his laugh. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sound of it, mixing with the waves and slapping sails when Allen dragged himself into the dinghy and we just kept going.
But she had forgotten, and feeling ill at opportunities lost from silence, she closed her journal, unable to read more. Why hadn’t she made a memory knot of that? She had written about it so clearly she could almost see it. But the answer was obvious, sitting across from her and flipping through his magazine with little clicks from the tablet. Allen had burned that year from her mind. He would have taken extra care with that memory.
Cold, Peri carefully hid her diary under her clothes and zipped the satchel up. She couldn’t find it in herself to be mad at him. She’d wanted it, fought for it, and a frown furrowed her brow. She was still wearing it when she looked up to find Harmony standing right before her.
“My, aren’t we happy,” Harmony said, her face expressionless as she dropped two of the three CIA tablets on the table. “I’ve got your intel ready.”
Allen shut his magazine down and reached for his packet. “Finally.”
Exhaling slow and long, Harmony took the chair farthest from Peri. She’d changed into a blah navy pantsuit, her shoulder holster empty for the moment. Though it was off-t
he-rack and lacking the style of Peri’s outfit, she nevertheless looked professional. “Top pages are building schematics,” Harmony said, eyes on Allen as he eagerly flipped through them. “Everblue is in an industrial park between the airport and the city. Lots of room. Slow response time. Security is high, but it was put in after the fact and there are major holes.”
“Which we can use to our advantage as much as Michael,” Allen said, studying the last page where the electronic fence was detailed out.
Peri pulled her tablet closer, flipping past the grainy, probably drone-obtained cover photo of a standard warehouse/manufacturing facility to find the rough building blueprint and see where the exits were. Not liking them, she put her lower lip between her teeth and studied the air ducts and considerable upper crawl space. Though Everblue’s facility looked like a one-story, it was really three apart from the big hangar where the heavy machinery was. “Generators?” she asked, not bothering to decipher the diagrams Allen would be more familiar with.
“No,” Harmony said. “City hookup. Intel says no need to cut it.”
Depending on people she’d never met before felt wrong in about three different ways. “Live guard?” she asked.
“Nothing we can’t work around.” Harmony reached for a piece of cheese as if it was guilt itself. “There’s a three-hour window between on-site presence. I told you, we have this.”
Peri was starting to feel like the punch line to a joke, coming in at the last minute. Allen was taking it even worse, a born plotter, and she could see him chafing, torn between trying to replan everything and dealing with the stress of being a team player and trusting someone else. She, though, didn’t have a problem making waves. “Are you sure?” she asked.
Harmony’s chewing slowed. It was the only indication of her mood. “Yes.”
Emboldened, Allen leaned forward. “What if Michael cuts the power? Shouldn’t we—”
“My team is already there,” Harmony interrupted. “You, Swift, are to stick with Peri in case she drafts. That’s it.”