Jaguar

by C. A. Gray

  I gave Senior a swift nod, glanced at Cathy, and took Larissa’s arm as we turned to go.

  “Wait!” Cathy cried, and ran to me, throwing her arms around my neck. I just stood there and let her hug me, patting her shoulder blades once before extricating myself.

  “Are you going to ask Dr. St Peters to sequence that back at the compound?” Larissa whispered to me once we got back to the hovercraft.

  I nodded, but couldn’t look at her. My head was too full.

  That had been my intention. But I didn’t really need further confirmation.

  I already knew.

  Chapter 29: Rebecca

  I printed more prosthetic facial clay as Liam packed up our scant belongings, and Miriam brought us some lunch. We thanked her, and I transformed Liam’s face in between bites. Minor changes, mostly—a sharper nose, a cleft in his chin, a slightly heavier brow. The trick was getting it all to blend in without making him look like he was wearing a ton of makeup. Makeup was more believable for Val and me, or for a guy on camera or stage perhaps. Up close, though, heavy stage makeup would definitely look strange. As I worked, he kept tracing a finger along the skin just between my t-shirt and the top of my jeans, distracting me. I slapped his hand away at least three times, which cracked him up.

  Mr. Henderson gave Liam some of his clothes and a pair of shoes, which were a close fit, though not perfect. Liam said his feet were fairly forgiving though, so it would be fine. Once we’d both eaten and I’d finished Liam’s makeup, he purchased Quantum Track tickets from the nearest city with a Quantum Track station, which was called Brundage, to Great Exuma under our aliases. But we still had to get to Brundage, and we couldn’t take the Henderson’s bicycles this time, since they’d never get them back.

  “We’re gonna have to walk,” Liam told me. “It looks like it’s about twelve miles, give or take, as the crow flies—but we’ll have to go through the forest. Otherwise it will be more like forty miles.” I let out an involuntary groan—the very idea made me tired already. “Don’t worry,” he added, “I’ll carry the bots. I know your shoulder still hurts.”

  I shook my head at him, glancing up from the mirror as I reapplied my own disguise. “You were unconscious and feverish less than twenty-four hours ago. How is it you suddenly feel up to a twelve mile hike with a couple of robots on your back?”

  “Well, first of all, I don’t think we have a choice,” he commented. “But second—I don’t know. I thought my energy was pretty good before, but now, it feels like I got an upgrade or something. Which I guess is exactly what happened. I feel fantastic.”

  We made our excuses and offered our profuse thanks to the Hendersons, who fortunately asked few questions. Mrs. Henderson made us sandwiches and sent us with flasks of water, which I carried so that Madeline and Hepzibah wouldn’t crush the sandwiches in Liam’s pack.

  “So,” Liam said once we were on the trail, taking the lead. “It’s only been a week since I’ve seen you, but it was an eventful week.”

  I snorted. “You might say that. So what happened to you, after you left the compound?”

  Liam filled me in on meeting Imogen, Matt’s grandmother, the Simvi Shah disguise, and meeting Jaguar.

  I choked for a second. “You—met her? What does that even mean?”

  “Yeah. I was expecting a supercomputer with a disembodied voice, but she actually looks like a twenty-something college student who has this weird fixation with the color red—she was dressed in it, head to toe. Of course she knew who I was immediately, but she let me think she was just an intern for awhile, mostly so she could mess with me. And, then she called security.”

  I let out my breath in a whoosh. “What was she like?”

  He seemed to think for a minute, before he finally said, “Pouty.” I gave him an odd look and he said, “I know, definitely not the adjective I’d have expected to assign to a superintelligent being either. But she reminded me of that certain type of kid that likes to pull wings off flies and set them on fire with magnifying glasses, just because she can. She’s not pure rationality like the Silver Six… she relished sending me to my death. But mostly because she figured I had to be a Renegade since she didn’t have me in her database, and therefore I must be there to destroy her.”

  “Which you essentially were,” I conceded.

  “Which I essentially was,” he agreed. “I just wasn’t expecting her to have that sadistic streak. I’ve never seen that in a machine before.”

  “Well. The De Vries prototype did supply emotion,” I said. “And this is exactly what we were afraid of.”

  He nodded, letting out a heavy breath through pursed lips. “Yep. Basically. I did get to talk to my father briefly just before the police bots hauled me away, only to discover that he’d already met you and Val when you went to see my mom.” He glanced at me over his shoulder. “So then I felt like a moron for apparently sacrificing my life for nothing—”

  “We tried to get a message to you on the Commune! And then when you didn’t reply, we raced you to London hoping we could get your mom to contact your dad before you ever even got to General Specs…”

  “But I had too much of a head’s start.” He sighed. “I wish I’d been the one to think of getting Mom involved, that was brilliant. Nobody would suspect her.”

  “Well. You were pretty flustered, that last morning at the compound.”

  We both fell silent for a moment, remembering our goodbye. Liam reached a hand back to mine, giving it a squeeze.

  “I’m sorry, Bec,” he said finally, and I knew he was referring to what he’d said to me that morning when we left the underground compound. “It killed me to hurt you like that.”

  I was surprised to find a lump in my throat. Considering I knew it had been a lie, I thought the memory wouldn’t sting anymore—but it still did.

  “It’s okay,” I said. Even though it wasn’t. I briefly considered insisting he never lie to me again, but we’d already broken that pact—no more secrets, no more lies—so many times over. What was the point?

  “How did you think of Mom, anyway?” Liam went on. “Have I ever even mentioned her to you?”

  “I didn’t think of it,” I told him, “Val did.”

  “Good old Val,” he said, sounding a little wistful. “That is just the sort of thing that would occur to her.” He stopped. “Wait, where is she now?”

  “She took the Quantum Track back to London with Nilesh and Dr. St Peters, while the rest of us went to break you out of Pendergast,” I said. “They must be back at the compound already, since they said they finished the virus. But wait—what happened after General Specs? Was Exmorton next?”

  He told me about his stereotypical medieval dungeon experience, the transfer to Pendergast, and then hearing my voice on the hovercraft when he was in and out of consciousness. Next I filled him in—on how we despaired when we heard that he was in Exmorton, on Francis’s plan involving Dr Andrew, and how his mom helped to dress me for my role as “Candy the Pendergast Nurse” to first seduce and then blackmail Dr Andrew at Club Neptune. Liam stopped walking and spun around at this.

  “You were supposed to get him alone to blackmail him?” he echoed, horrified. “He could have raped you and left you for dead, Rebecca! What were you thinking?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m not stupid, Liam. I did the whole thing on the club dance floor, since I knew there was too much ambient noise for the cameras to pick up what we said. It worked, didn’t it?”

  He shook his head, reaching a hand back to me and pulling me to his side. “When I think about all the ways this could have gone wrong…”

  “Well, then don’t think about it! It’s done.”

  “Yeah, until you concoct the next crazy-ass plan.”

  “As long as you don’t get yourself captured again, I won’t have to,” I shot back, glaring up at him in a mock challenge.

  He shook his head at me, his own lips curling in an answering smirk.
“Man, your face looks weird like that.”

  “Whatever. You look like Boris Karloff.”

  “I know. Frankenstein, in more ways than one.” He kissed the top of my head and let me go. “I’m gonna go prematurely gray because of you…” But then he trailed off, and I fell silent too. I knew we were thinking the same thing: would he ever go gray now, after that surgery? But I pushed the idea out of my mind. We couldn’t worry about the long-term side effects of Liam’s surgery right now. Someday, maybe. But right now—no.

  Then I saw that he’d slowed to a stop, inspecting several possible paths in front of us. Up until this point, the path had been relatively obvious, but now every direction looked the same.

  “Are we lost?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” he admitted. “It should have just been a straight shot, but I don’t know why the trail would just end like that.”

  “Too bad we can’t access the labyrinth for directions,” I muttered.

  “No kidding.” We backtracked a little ways to see if we’d veered off the path somewhere, but as we did so, we saw that the path had just grown fainter and more overgrown the deeper we went into the forest. Once we found the definitive trail, but had no idea where to go from there, Liam clapped his hands together, and looked at me. “Well,” he said, eyebrows raised. “Lunch?”

  I laughed. “I don’t know, do we need to stretch our supply out for days until we’re rescued?”

  In the end, we just kept going straight. Presumably that was the right move, because hours later, we emerged on the other side of the forest. My shoulder throbbed, my feet hurt, and sweat made my clothes cling to me. Fortunately the prosthetics didn’t melt off my face, but I desperately wanted to wash it off… and really, all of me could use a good soak. The last shower I’d had was at Cathy’s mansion.

  “The very first thing I’m gonna do when we get to a hotel is take a shower,” I complained when we reached the edge of a tiny town, which didn’t look like it could support a hotel.

  Liam glanced back at me, and said, “So let’s agree on our story before we get there—since Travis and Tracy just got married a few days ago according to the labyrinth records—”

  “—and also, just sprang into existence a few days ago,” I added, “if anybody bothers to dig that deep…”

  He nodded and went on, “So then, we’ll have to tell whoever we encounter that we’re on our honeymoon, went backpacking and got lost.”

  I snorted. “As if I’d be doing this on my honeymoon.”

  He tossed me a smirk. “So you can handle getting shot at, but the dirty, exploring kind of adventure? Forget it.”

  “Not on my freaking honeymoon! And… yeah, okay, maybe never. Did I mention I want a shower?”

  Liam pointed at a very small lot of cars for hire. “They’re not hovercars, but it’s transportation, at least.” The car we hired did at least have a driver bot built in—convenient, because we needed something on the labyrinth to tell us where the closest hotel was, which turned out to be about thirty minutes away. Liam and I settled into the backseat, and he helped me pry my pack off my back as I winced and tried not to cry out. Very gently, he started to massage the angry muscles near my wound, sending tingles up and down my whole body. I could see the goosebumps on my arms and hoped he couldn’t see them. But he did, of course—Liam never missed that sort of thing. He rubbed his fingers up and down my arm with a tiny chuckle and kissed my neck. I wasn’t sure if this was all show for the driver bot, or if this was just… us, now.

  Us, I thought, feeling a little dazed, and maybe a little giddy. There’s an us.

  The hotel was on the outskirts of what looked like the medium-sized city of Brundage, and it was surprisingly modern-looking for having been so close to the middle of nowhere. Liam told our cover story to the bot at the front desk, who told us cheerfully that she could offer us the honeymoon suite. We’d already shared a room at the Hendersons’ house, so I don’t know why this felt so different all of a sudden… but then, Liam had been unconscious nearly the entire time. I definitely would have been more comfortable with my own room, but obviously if we were supposed to be honeymooning, that wouldn’t work. Liam accepted, scanned his thumbprint as our room key—which now would be traced to Travis Mason, complete with however much history Mom had managed to create for him on the labyrinth—and we took a glass elevator to the top floor, his fingers entwined through mine.

  “Well!” Liam said cheerfully when we opened the door to the suite and stepped inside. I followed his gaze to the bathroom, feeling all the blood drain from my face. There was no door separating the shower and tub—big enough for two—from the rest of the room. He grinned at me. “So there’s your shower. Go for it!”

  I felt like my cheeks might burst into flame. What am I gonna do now? I desperately wanted to get clean, but not… like that. “Can you… maybe… go downstairs to the lobby for a little while?”

  “I’ve got to update the Commune,” he winked at me, “can’t do that in a public space.” He crossed to the interior of the room, out of view of the bathroom entrance at least. On the little desk between the bed—omigosh, the bed, I thought with another spike of panic—and the enormous window overlooking the city, Liam opened the netscreen. I peered over his shoulder, and saw Mom write him almost at once.

  Rebecca! It’s been nearly twelve hours, where on earth are you? What’s going on?

  Liam typed, It’s Liam, Rebecca is beside me. He told her what had happened and where we were, and she harangued us both for not checking in sooner. Liam asked how Francis was doing, and Mom wrote, He and Larissa went back to London to talk to your parents again. Liam blinked, a bit taken aback by this, and Mom went on, He is going to try to get your dad to talk to the Silver Six and convince them that Jaguar is a threat against them, in hopes that we can get them to fight each other for us. He’s networked your dad’s A.E. chip to the Commune so we can see their response. Please send your new A.E. chip number as well, so that we can network you to the Commune until you arrive back at the compound. We’ll make sure we remove you before we release the virus, but I don’t want to lose contact with you two again.

  Liam glanced up at me and rolled his eyes. “Uh huh. She just wants me on live streaming to make sure I behave myself in the honeymoon suite with her daughter.” He wrote to Mom, I’ll send it over as soon as we leave for the Quantum Track in the morning.

  “Liam!” I scolded him, “If she wasn't thinking that before, she is now!”

  Sure enough, Mom wrote, Why in the morning? Why not now? You’re being hunted, and if anything happens to you tonight, we want to be able to respond quickly!

  We’re in disguise, and under a layer of false identities, thanks to you. Nobody’s hunting us here, Liam wrote back, and we’re not going anywhere until we catch the Quantum Track tomorrow. I’ll send it then, I promise. He shut the cover of the netscreen. To me, Liam said, “If I gave your mom my LP now, she could just use it to comm me and track our whereabouts—or she could set it to live stream, and watch everything we say and do. I’m not taking that risk.”

  “Why? What is it you think we’re going to be… saying and doing?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

  He gave me a rakish smile, standing up and stepping toward me. “Well, I’m not quite sure, but whatever it is, I do know I don’t want your mom watching.” He made a show of lowering all the shades, so that even passing hovercars or hovercrafts couldn’t see in our windows, and checking in all the corners and possible hiding places for cameras. Then he crossed back to me. My heart thundered in my ears as he reached me, gently peeling the clay from my face. This time it didn’t crumble—probably because I’d sweat so much that day. I felt it come off in one large sheet, as if he were removing a sticker. I shivered—it felt like he was undressing me.

  “There you are,” he whispered, twining his fingers with mine and leading me into the bathroom. I had no idea what he was doing, and wasn’t sure whether I was mor
e terrified or excited to find out.

  The bathroom was about half the size of the suite itself, with soft lighting and elegant cream colored tile. Liam reached into the shower and turned the water on hot, running his fingers underneath it until he found the right temperature. Then he turned back to me, glancing down at my injured shoulder, and then at my clothes.

  “Need some help?”

  “I’m fine,” I gasped, and his smile grew wider as he held up his hands.

  “It’s a totally innocent offer. Unless you don’t want it to be an innocent offer, in which case…”

  “Liam,” I cut him off with a deadpan look, and he chuckled.

  “Here, just… you’re going to hurt your shoulder. Can your raise your arms?”

  My heart galloped in my chest, but I started to do as he said until my left arm reached the halfway point. Then I gasped in pain.

  “Oh-oookay,” Liam soothed me, grabbing my left elbow. I was doubled to the side, so he slid the t-shirt up and over sideways, easing it off my left arm last. I was standing there in my bra now, but for the moment he focused on the bandage on my shoulder. He peeled it off and peered at the stitches.

  “We’ll re-bandage it when you get out,” he said, shifting his gaze to my chest. I felt my breathing quicken as he leaned forward, tracing his fingers down my bare spine as his lips met mine. I gasped involuntarily, which was so embarrassing. He seemed to like it though—I could feel him chuckle against me, his fingers sliding up to the clasp of my bra. He unhooked it. I gasped again, but for a different reason this time, shoving him away with my good arm and clutching my bra in the front to keep it from sliding off.

  “Liam!”

  Unfazed, he said, eyes twinkling, “Come on. There was no way you were gonna be able to reach that yourself.”

  I could feel my face burning. I wanted to retort, but I realized he was right.

  “I’ll be in the other room. I promise not to look.” He leaned in and kissed my nose lightly, his eyes nevertheless lingering where they shouldn’t. “Unless you need help…”