by Meli Raine
“I want to be that operative for you, sir,” I say, a glow building in my bones, making my blood warm.
“Me, too!” Angelica chimes in.
“Glen,” Kina whispers, eyes glued to the television.
Svetnu watches Kina, then looks at the screen. “You two really are mirror images, aren't you? Cut your hair and style for makeup and clothing like her and you're exact doubles.”
“Which is why Kina needs to be assigned to The Field,” I begin.
“No!” Angelica interrupts. “Absolutely not.”
“Why not?” Svetnu says, his tone making it clear he's already decided I'm right. “She needs some training. A bit of polish. Otherwise, it makes perfect sense. Glen has made the path to the White House. Imagine the deceit and confusion if we had two of her there? My God, the possibilities.”
“Romeo was right about this,” I remind him. “He wanted Kina to be Glen's double.”
Kina jolts. “He did?”
Angelica tenses.
“Yes,” Svetnu says. “He did.” Eyes jumping to me, he adds, “And so did Callum.”
“What?” she gasps, turning to me. “But Glen told me you fought to keep me here!”
“She lied,” I inform her.
“Is that how we're doing this?” Angelica asks. “Cards on the table?”
“Always,” Svetnu says. “Why lie to Kina?”
A protective wave comes over me, knowing the truths that Kina will hear. If she has to hear it, I'd prefer it came from me.
But Angelica beats me to it.
“Kina, the reason you weren't sent into The Field is because Glen didn't want you there.”
Chapter 24
Kina
“What?” My ears feel like they're full of molasses, and I have to pop them to hear everything. A high-pitched ringing starts.
“You heard me. Your own sister didn't think you could cut it.”
“That is NOT what happened,” Callum thunders. “I was there at the meeting.”
“You were?”
“Yes. And I argued you would be an asset in The Field.”
Svetnu gives a tight grin. “You did. For all the wrong reasons.”
“Sir?” Callum reddens.
“We were concerned you were in love with Kina.”
“A concern that has clearly been proven true,” Angelica says.
“And you! You made her the training body?” Callum's venom feels so, so good to hear, injected straight into Angelica's body as if he were a viper who struck hard, aiming for the throat. She reels back, her chair moving a few inches.
“No! Not me! It was Romeo!” Angelica says.
Svetnu looks at me. My eyebrows go up. His eyes cut to her.
He doesn't need to say a word.
But he does.
“Actually,” he says, clearing his throat, “it was a combined decision to make Kina the training body.”
“You and Romeo?” I ask.
“No. Romeo had nothing to do with it.”
“You and Angelica?”
“Kina, I don't make low-level decisions like that. It was Angelica's decision to make. And one that directly affected her failure to be promoted to Romeo's position tonight.”
Gape-mouthed and livid, Angelica stares at him, the whites of her eyes too bright, so shiny I can't look.
“That decision from nine years ago affects me now?”
“Yes.”
“I spent four years at a mental institution with Lindsay Bosworth, feeding her every lie you gave me, circumventing every outside influence, sir, and –- ”
“You failed there, too. Jane Borokov and McDuff found a way to reach her,” Callum snaps back.
The specific facts they're throwing around become word confetti in my mind. Callum catches my eye and we gaze at each other.
I knew Angelica hated me. I knew she made the decision to make me the training body, because she was the one who chose Janice after me.
But why the fury?
“It wasn't even my idea in the first place, sir! It was Glen's!”
Angelica's cry of outrage that follows is an alarm bell, a gong, the sound of air raid sirens in my head.
Glen?
Glen wanted me to be the training body?
Glen blocked me from being in The Field with her?
I can't even gasp. Can't ask why? Can't think. Can't breathe.
Just can't.
An inner shaking begins, my fingertips rattling against the tabletop, my very essence nothing but vibration. Inside, I am an assemblage of pieces. Not whole any longer, I am just eclectic flesh in a skinbag.
“Glen?” I finally gasp. The look on Callum's face tells me it's true.
“She thought you were too weak for The Field,” Svetnu says. “She and Angelica said as much. You needed to be toughened up here at the compound.”
“Toughened up?”
“In psychometric testing, your empathy was off the charts.” He says this as if it's distasteful.
Shameful.
And obvious.
“So I was put in the nursery and made the training body because Glen and Angelica thought I was weak? When I'm the one who killed Jason? And who later killed Daniels when he tried out his sexual violence skills on me?”
“You didn't just kill Daniels, Kina. You destroyed Martinez as well.”
“Who is Martinez?” Callum asks.
“CAN WE GET BACK TO THE FACT THAT GLEN BETRAYED ME?” I scream, on my feet as if lifted by anger itself, the balls of my feet rocketed skyward. “Who cares about Martinez?”
“Martinez was the fourth person to use his skills on the body,” Svetnu explains to Callum as if I'm not in the room.
“I HAVE A NAME.”
“On Kina,” Svetnu concedes, blinking exactly once, acting like I'm not screaming at him.
“What did you do to him? Kina?” Callum asks, his voice troubled, looking at me as if I'm unstable.
I feel more grounded than I ever have, even as the world is cracking in two.
“Did you kill him? Like the third one?”
Angelica looks at Callum. It's enough to indicate she's surprised he knows.
“No.”
“Then what?”
I turn to Angelica. “Tell him.”
She huffs. “You don't order me around.”
“Tell me,” Callum growls. “And I do order you around. I'm your boss now, damn it, and you will tell me.”
“She cut off his balls with his own knife.”
Callum swallows exactly once.
“And?” he asks, knowing there's more.
“Pinned them to the front door to the eighteen-year-old male dorm.”
“And?”
“We told her she had to stop harming the trainees.”
“And I told you the truth,” I spit out.
“Which is?”
“Any trainee who attacks me and is too weak to overcome The Mule doesn't deserve to live.” I don't mention that I could not do it again today. Nine years of caring for the children – nine years of children I bonded with rising through the trainee ranks – means I cannot detach myself, even via elevation. It makes me vulnerable. Weak.
Easier to target.
Dr. Svetnu smiles. “She had a point.”
“So you – you let the trainees continue? You used her as The Body?”
“No. Kina was never used again. Not after that stunt.”
“I'm glad someone in the leadership had some sense.”
“It wasn't because the leadership changed my role, Callum,” I inform him. “It's because the trainees realized I meant it. I was crazy enough to kill them. After Daniels died, you'd think they'd have learned. I had to do to Martinez what I did to make them see.”
“Oh, we saw,” Svetnu says, then turns to Angelica, eyes hardening. “Or, at least, some of us did.”
“And Glen was the one who suggested I be made The Body?”
“Yes, Kina,” Svetnu says to me in a tender voice. “How doe
s that make you feel about her?”
“Disappointed. Hurt.”
“Then perhaps she was right.”
“Right?”
“You are too attached. You are too empathetic. Emotions are tools we use to manipulate other people.”
“No, sir,” Callum and I say in unison, startling each other. A shared look spans nine years of missed time.
“Sir,” I say, holding my tone as flat as possible, my dispassionate countenance as purposeful as my words, “it's my attachment that gives me even more power. I knew that if I were constantly being raped, it would compromise my ability to do my job in the nursery. You want my empathy to make the children smarter. Stronger. For their nervous systems to be resilient. How was I to do that from a position of unremitting trauma? I had to find a way to make the trainees view me as a risk.”
“What you did made some of them view you as a challenge.”
“And look where it got Martinez,” I say, mouth held steady, eyes lasered on Angelica.
“I'm surprised a group didn't ambush you, like the night of The Test,” Callum says.
“Ambush?” Svetnu asks. One eyebrow rises, enough to indicate this is truly new information to him.
“Jason and Chui led an ambush. Glen was in on it, too,” Callum explains.
My turn for eyebrows to lift. “She was not!” I hiss.
“She was.”
“Callum, you can't know that.”
“I saw her hit you, Kina.”
Angelica's eyes light up. “You expect us to believe that, Callum? You waited nine years to tell everyone this sudden piece of information that makes Glen look bad? She isn't even here to defend herself.”
“I was going to tell Kina.”
“When? You've had nine years!”
“No, I haven't. I haven't thanks to you. Glen and I were rushed out of here and I never had the chance. I was told Kina was in The Field and that contacting her would jeopardize her assignment. And then all of my leadership meetings took place in The Field. So don't tell me I had nine years to tell her, Angelica.” I can tell he wants to use profanity. Call her a name. Say something salty and awful.
But he's not.
He's not because he's smart.
Losing his cool right now would be a grave mistake.
And Callum has grown into being a man who makes very few of those, I suspect.
The pager in my pocket goes off. It's Phillipa. New baby.
Newborns arrive at odd times. We haven't had one in months. I stand and leave the room without saying a word. I'm halfway through the cafeteria when Callum catches up, grabbing my arm.
I stop, but don't face him.
“I'm telling the truth, Kina. I know you know that.”
His breath is ragged, punchy, harsh and filled with emotion he doesn't express in any other way.
“I don't know what I know, Callum.”
Breaking his grasp, I sprint for the nursery, stunning Phillipa with my rushed appearance. In her arms is a new baby, curled up and sleeping, face against her chest. Like a burrito, it is swaddled, tight, eyes closed against the world.
Ah, to be so simple.
Half expecting Callum to follow, I stay on alert as Phillipa shows me the folder that comes with all of the newborns. From the color on this baby, I'd say she – and it is a girl, who comes with no name – is no more than three days old, brought here into the cocoon of our project, rescued from the outside world's brutality.
As I breathe in her baby scent, the fuzz on the crown of her head tickling my lips, I close my eyes against tears.
Where, exactly, is the brutality?
For nine years, I lived with assumptions.
And in a handful of hours, each of those has been stripped away.
The spot on my arm where Callum touched me still burns with yearning, with regret, with something greater than need but less than recrimination. Who do I trust? Who is lying? Who tells the truth?
And most of all – does it matter?
“Shhhhh,” I say to the baby, who begins to fuss, tiny lips opening, making a suckling sound I know well. My breasts always tingle when they do this, though I've never made milk. Biology is a curious thing, is it not?
Instinct overrides all.
Moving into the kitchen, I find the tiny formula bottles, feeling for the little one's diaper. It is dry, and the greedy movement of her lips against the tiny nipple makes it clear she hasn't eaten in a bit. Sinking in to the present moment, I hold and soothe, examine and observe, taking in her signals and giving off my own.
You are safe, my body tells her.
You are loved, my heart whispers.
You are cared for, I want her to know.
As tears drip from my eyes onto her ear, though, I have to wonder whether I am telling her that?
Or me?
Chapter 25
Callum
The walk back to the conference room feels like I'm on my way to Death Row.
Not because I'm about to be killed in there. Far from it. Angelica is in deep shit with Svetnu. In fact, waiting a few beats in the hall is a good strategic call. Let her stew in it. Let Svetnu chew her out.
No, the sense of dread I feel is all about Kina. Somehow, every interaction with her is a pendulum that swings wildly in one direction or the other, never moving slowly in the middle.
The conference room door flies open. Angelica gives me a sickening grin. “Get in here. Svetnu is livid.”
When I walk in, the man has the same blank expression on his face he usually possesses.
“Camera footage at the sex club where you let Romeo die shows you, Callum,” she crows.
“Bullshit. And I didn't let him die and you know it.”
“He was your partner. You weren't in the room. He died with an opposing operative watching him bleed out after shooting him. For all we know, McDuff took the capsule from Romeo and shoved it in his mouth, all because you weren't there.”
“You should write novels for a living, Angelica. What you just said was nothing but fiction.”
“She has a point,” Svetnu says, reaching for a phone, clearly tapping a message to someone. He doesn't look up, his voice dry. “We'll never know exactly what happened. And that McDuff character had it out for Romeo.”
“Why?”
“We don't know, other than love.” He sneers on the last word.
“Love?”
“McDuff is obviously in love with Lily Thornton.”
“She's alive?”
He nods, once, then rolls his tongue over his upper teeth. “Yes. She's supposed to be dead. McDuff, too. Set up to make her death look like he did it. Instead, we've lost one of the lynchpins in the Stateless project and this McDuff guy and Thornton may have seen you.”
“You don't believe the bullshit about video footage, do you? Because that club was clean of all recording devices.”
“Not in the club. In the restaurant above, connected to it.”
Damn it.
“There's no way around it,” I say. “Everyone has a video camera now. American liability law makes small business owners nervous.”
“For good reason,” Svetnu replies. “But that doesn't change the facts.” His eyes jump to my neck. “You were spotted. You were also seen by Lily Thornton, no?”
“I don't think so.”
“But you cannot be one hundred percent certain.”
“No.”
“This is a problem, Callum.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Not enough to demote you, of course,” he adds, deflating Angelica. “I knew all of this before you pointed it out,” he tosses at her, the verbal insult deceptive in its simplicity.
“Sir, I - ” Her protest is cut off by Svetnu standing, scratching his chin, and looking away from her.
From both if us.
“Callum is now your director, Angelica. You understand our hierarchical structure. In the field, you must be flexible. Responsive. Agile. In here, though – it is different. An
d Callum is your new Romeo.”
Her face turns red at the words.
“Yes, sir.”
“As for the mess involving Glen – and make no mistake, it is a mess now that Kina knows – I caution you both: has it occurred to you that Glen and Kina are playing a much deeper, longer game than either of you?”
As he leaves, the door clicks shut, leaving me and Angelica in stunned silence.
“No,” she hisses. “No way.”
Ignoring her, I get up and leave, the feeling of long, strong steps allowing my stride to take out pent up emotions my muscles can't quite discharge. Romeo's old office is to my right, but I skip it, headed for the central computer system instead.
Hacking in to a corporate computer system is simple. Military installations are far harder, but possible, especially over time as so many of our operatives have been hired to help them remove the same security vulnerabilities that we ourselves have created. But the Stateless system is as close to flawless as possible precisely because we hack so many other systems. The patchwork of errors we observe becomes a bug test for our own system.
Nothing I do will help me crack the system.
But now that I am in Romeo's position, I have new access. New pathways to information. The leaders will only let me see what they want me to see.
They do not realize they only see what they want to see, too.
I can find information by pattern matching. Everything in life is connected to everything else if you know how to look.
Not just where.
I log in using the fingerprint system that Stateless has had for quite some time. We don’t use retinal scans because I’ve spent the last nine years turning them into a bucket of loopholes and trojan horses. Our simple fingerprint and face scan systems are custom-built and bulletproof. Modern national security revolves around convincing the masses that security checkpoints in transit centers are cumbersome and annoying, so why not pay a fee, be scanned, and move through the crowd with privilege?
So far, so good. More and more faces are online. More and more data is in the system.
For the next hour, I'm left uninterrupted. I am also as happy as a child in a Christmas commercial, if mainstream society is to be believed. Layers of records in the Stateless database are revealed to me, my access to higher, confidential levels already granted by Svetnu.