by C. J. Hill
Chapter 3
Taylor put her head down on the dinner table and groaned. Her muscles ached. She wasn’t hungry. After she’d agreed to be on the QGP destruction team, Brother Hwan Choi, the head of security, had taken her and Joseph to a military-training virtual reality center. They’d been shown how to use gas masks, laser boxes, laser-box disrupters, laser cutters, boot speed boosters, comlink jammers, image scramblers, restorer boxes, and zip lines.
She and Joseph had gone through three different simulations of the mission to the Scicenter. He’d done fine. He already knew how to use most of the stuff. Despite having a “Joseph Box”—the laser-box disrupter Joseph had invented—Taylor had managed to get shot by Enforcers twice and killed by a gasbot the last time. The problem with the Joseph Box was you could use it only once. Its pulse was so strong that it not only disabled all laser boxes in a half-mile radius but also destroyed itself.
If more armed men arrived, you were toast. Granted, the laser boxes in the VR program didn’t actually cut through you or explode your organs, but they still stung. And today was only Taylor’s first day of training. She would have two more weeks of this.
Sheridan, who sat next to Taylor at the table, looked at Joseph with incredulous horror. “They can’t send you to the Scicenter. You’ll be captured.”
The three had taken their dinner trays out of the cafeteria to eat in the courtyard, where it was less crowded. None of them was eating, though. Taylor had barely touched her salad. “I was guilted into going. Guilted into sacrificing myself for the good of humanity. If I die, make sure Santa Fe erects a really big statue of me.”
Joseph ignored Taylor. “They’re sending a security team with us, and we’ll have help from their contacts in Traventon. We’ll be fine. At least I will. Taylor may die from an overdose of drama.”
Taylor pushed away a strand of her dark-purple hair. Sheridan kept her hair its natural color, red, but Taylor changed hers every time she got bored. “Make sure the city council inscribes something nice on my statue. And make sure they put it in Latin so no one vandalizes it.”
Joseph reached over and took Sheridan’s hand in his. “The longest part of the mission will be getting there and coming back. Two and a half days’ trip each way. Taylor and I will only be in the Scicenter for a little while, maybe an hour.”
He squeezed Sheridan’s hand. She didn’t squeeze his back. She was still staring at him in stunned disbelief. “It’s not just Traventon’s Enforcers who are looking for you. The Dakine are too.”
The Dakine were a mob-like group who had killed Joseph’s twin brother, Echo, nearly two months ago. Joseph was also on their hit list.
“Don’t be mad,” he murmured. “If the council asked you to risk your life to destroy a weapon like this, you’d do it. You’d be the first volunteer.”
Sheridan blinked, looking tearful. “They didn’t ask me, though. They asked the two people I care most about.”
“And another thing,” Taylor said, ignoring the love scene unfolding in front of her. “I want my statue to be facing Council Hall and flipping it off.”
“Taylor—” Sheridan started.
Taylor didn’t let her finish. “What? No one from this century knows what it means. You can tell the council I’m pointing upward to remind everyone of heavenly virtues.”
Joseph let go of Sheridan’s hand and turned to Taylor. “You don’t have to go. If you don’t trust Pascal with all the QGP information, you can tell it to me.”
Taylor groaned and put her head back on the table.
Joseph watched her for a moment, then picked up the roll from his plate. “You don’t trust me either?”
“I don’t trust anyone,” Taylor mumbled.
Joseph didn’t comment about that. He ate his dinner while murmuring assurances to Sheridan. He could have saved his breath. Taylor knew her sister well enough to know three things would happen by the end of the night. First, Sheridan would call President Mason to try and convince him not to send Taylor and Joseph. Second, Sheridan would cry when President Mason wouldn’t relent. And then, third, she would volunteer to go with the team.
While Taylor ate her salad, she messaged President Mason to let him know in no uncertain terms that Sheridan could not go on this mission.
Sheridan finished her dinner first, said she had things to do, and hurried off toward their apartment building. Countdown to comlink call.
Joseph didn’t follow her. Instead he stayed with Taylor. “While we’re in Traventon, there’s something else we should do.”
Something else? He wanted to add items to their to-do list? Taylor tilted her head. “Such as?”
“You know how we’re supposed to sabotage the QGP data?” The council had asked Taylor to create a program that changed the data in any existing QGP files so that anyone building new ones would incorporate false data into their designs.
“Right,” Taylor said, finishing the last bite of her salad. “While I was dead during the virtual reality programs, I wrote an algorithm for that and sent it to the council for approval. Everyone thought it was brilliant. Well, at least the two people who understood it did.”
“We could give the false data program more run time if we disabled the rank program beforehand.”
Taylor let out a slow whistle. The one thing Traventon citizens obsessed about was their rank. It was a number determined by a person’s bank balance, age, job status, family status, and friend ratings—a popularity badge that changed daily, and that people willingly wore on their shirts. It was also one of the city’s best-protected programs.
“If the rank numbers blink out,” Joseph went on, “officials will be so busy dealing with the chaos, there won’t be a programmer around who’s looking at anything else. It will make getting away from the Scicenter easier too.”
Taylor nodded in appreciation. “So simple in its utter diabolicalness.”
“Project Misdirect. We just need to find a way to bring the rank program down.”
Taylor considered the idea. “It won’t be possible from the Scicenter computers. They don’t have any way to connect to the rank computers.” Which was true of most computers in Traventon. During one of the centuries—Taylor couldn’t remember offhand which—countries had attacked other countries through the internet. They had wiped out each other’s computers, leaving the population disconnected and vulnerable to incoming physical attacks. Traventon had kept tight control on its computers ever since. Most people didn’t have access to computers with internet capabilities. Those who did were carefully monitored. It was the reason the team had to physically go to the Scicenter. The only computers that could give them access to the QGPs were a few high-security computers on the fourth floor.
The rank building had to be a veritable fortress.
Taylor took a sip of water while she thought it over. “As much as I hate the ranking system, we can’t risk breaking in somewhere else before we go to the Scicenter.”
“We won’t have to. Both computers systems are linked to a common place.”
“Then why not break in there instead of going to the trouble to break into the Scicenter?”
Joseph put his silverware on his plate, gathering his things together to take them back to the cafeteria. “Because that common place is the Dakine base.”
“Ah,” she said. “Well yes, that is a place we need to avoid.”
When they had been back in Traventon, Joseph used some Dakine contacts to free Taylor and Sheridan from Reilly. In return, Joseph had promised the base leader that Taylor and Sheridan would become operatives.
The Dakine were understandably unhappy when the group fled from the base instead.
“The Dakine,” Joseph went on, standing up from the table, “have paths to most government computer systems. That’s how they do their espionage. The Dakine also have a path to the rank system, because selling rank is their biggest business.”
Taylor picked up her salad bowl and stood up. “You think we can upload so
mething from the Scicenter to the rank computer going through the Dakine base?”
“That won’t be the hard part,” Joseph said, heading slowly toward the cafeteria. “The hard part will be coming up with a virus that can get past the rank filters. We’ll need extra time to work on it.”
Taylor walked beside him, already going through possibilities in her mind. The rank program interfaced with the neurochips in people’s crystals. It kept track of over seven million people, each a potential source for a virus.
“If we tell the council what we’re doing,” Joseph went on, “they should give us an extra week to work on it.”
That meant they only had three weeks to find a weakness in a program Traventon had protected for decades. “You think we can do it that quickly?” Taylor asked.
“One of us should be able to.” Joseph’s voice curled off into a challenge. “Whichever of us is smarter . . .”
“You didn’t just say that.” She cocked her head at him. “How many machines did you invent that changed the world’s view on matter?”
“And that are currently being turned into weapons of mass destruction? None.” He smiled at her. “That’s why I’m smarter.”
Chapter 4
Joseph worked through more than one night, but on the evening before the team left, he finished his QGP program. It would simultaneously send instructions to three semifunctional QGPs, making them work together so they were capable of searching for people and transforming their matter into perfect energy flux waves. It was a thing of beauty. A thing of genius. A thing of infinite danger if the wrong people got ahold of it. Joseph didn’t let himself dwell on that. He had to run the program through a few simulations to make sure he’d gotten the glitches out.
The front door chimed. He didn’t even bother glancing at his bedroom wall to see whose name flashed on it. He wasn’t expecting anyone. He scanned over the preliminary results. Good . . . good. . . .
Jeth, Joseph’s father, yelled, “Sheridan is here!”
Sheridan? Joseph’s gaze flew to the time display on his computer. Sangre. It was seven fifteen. He’d told her he would meet her in the apartment’s dining hall at six thirty.
“Coming!” Joseph called back. He minimized and locked his screen. As he walked toward the front room, he heard Jeth say, “You are Sheridan, aren’t you?”
A couple of weeks ago, Taylor had dyed her hair back to its original color and pretended to be Sheridan. Now Jeth was perpetually unsure which twin he was talking to. The trick shouldn’t have bothered Joseph. He and Echo had done it often enough. It did bother him though. He knew Taylor had been testing Jeth and him to see if they could tell the difference. Joseph wondered what Taylor would have done if he hadn’t been able to recognize her.
“It’s me,” Sheridan said. “I’m not staying. I just brought Joseph some dinner.”
Jeth stood by the door, his maroon hair in an untidy ponytail. He gave an unhappy grunt at Sheridan’s announced departure and didn’t take the dinner box from her. He called over his shoulder, “Sheridan says she’s not staying!”
Joseph had reached the door by then. “Sorry,” he told her. “I didn’t realize what time it was.”
Sheridan wore a white formfitting shirt and a blue skirt with two rows of white buttons down the front. She always chose clothes that were similar to twenty-first-century styles. He liked it that way, liked that she was different. Her long auburn hair hung loosely around her shoulders, framing her fresh, beautiful face.
Joseph had expected Sheridan to be mad, to have that haughty look of superiority Taylor always got when she was angry. Instead Sheridan smiled and held out the box. “It’s all right. I know you’re busy. I didn’t want you to miss dinner though.”
Joseph took the box, then took her hand and pulled her into the room. “Sorry,” he said again. “I haven’t had much sleep and I was working on—” He didn’t finish the sentence. Sheridan didn’t know anything about programming and always assumed he was working on the rank virus. He didn’t like lying to her, though. “I meant to meet you,” he said.
Jeth retreated down the hallway to his bedroom, leaving the two alone. Santa Fe had strict chaperone rules, and whenever Jeth wanted to talk history with Sheridan, he claimed he ought to respect those rules. Joseph was glad this wasn’t one of those times.
He led Sheridan toward the couch. It was a made of green gel and had tiny air bubbles floating around in the middle. Cheap but comfortable. “Why didn’t you call me when I didn’t show up?”
“You’re getting ready for your trip tomorrow. You don’t need distractions.”
“Maybe I want to be distracted.” Still holding on to her hand, he sat down on the couch. The gel molded around him to support his weight.
Sheridan sighed, looked back at the door, and didn’t sit down. “I should go. I’ll feel terrible if something happens to you because you didn’t have time to program things right.”
Joseph motioned to the spot next to him. “I’ll feel terrible if something happens to me and I know I wasted my last night alive with a computer instead of my girlfriend.”
She sat down, sadness gleaming in her eyes. He shouldn’t have joked about this being his last night alive. Taylor routinely predicted both of their deaths, using an assortment of twenty-first-century slang: bite the dust, pushing up daisies, meet their maker, and something about being six feet under. Sheridan was soft in all the places where Taylor was hard. She couldn’t joke about him getting hurt, didn’t want to be reminded it was a possibility.
“I’ll be fine,” he told her. “I’m smart enough to do this.” To do all of it.
She leaned into the couch, shifting the gel. “Sometimes being smart isn’t the issue.”
He undid the flaps on the dinner box. “Well, this time it is. You can get around almost anything with the right knowledge.”
The box held a rice-and-bean dish, an apple, a protein twist, and two large cookies. She’d given him her dessert—something they got only once a day because they were still at refugee status. No jobs yet meant no credits yet. And the cookie was chocolate, her favorite.
She saw him looking at it. “I thought you’d want something good to eat tomorrow. Taylor says you’re only getting nasty-tasting meal squares on the trip.”
He smiled at her and then laughed.
“What?” she asked.
Joseph stood up, walked to the table, and brought her back a box. “I meant to make wrapping paper to go over it.” From his studies, he knew it was taboo in the twenty-first century to give a gift without first hiding it behind special paper. Joseph followed Sheridan’s customs as much as he could.
She looked at him curiously, then opened the box. She grinned at what was inside: five chocolate bars.
“You went without dessert five times?” she asked. “Now I feel cheap.”
“One to eat each day I’m gone. That way you won’t miss me too badly.”
“Yes, because being with you and eating chocolate are about the same in my book.”
In her book? He didn’t ask. Instead, he leaned over and kissed her. “Good. Now you won’t miss tonight’s cookie.”
Joseph took out his rice dish, not realizing how hungry he was until he started eating. Sheridan talked about her day—studying for her classes and volunteering at the stables in their district. As he listened, his mind kept drifting to the mission.
By this time next week, he would be back. Would he be a different person after killing someone? Maybe he was already becoming one. He hadn’t told Sheridan about any of it.
Once everyone knew what he’d done, how would she react? Could a girl who was made of so much softness understand killing and subterfuge? Would she love him anyway?
Without wanting to, Joseph pictured Allana, his last—well, girlfriend wasn’t the right term. She and Joseph had never been exclusive. She’d dated others, including Echo. Allana had been the last girl Joseph had cared about, though. The chairman of trade’s daughter. Beautiful,
rich, influential Allana.
Allana wouldn’t have blinked at the news that Joseph had killed someone. In fact, she would have probably critiqued his methods and told him how he could improve the next attack. That was how the Dakine were. He just hadn’t realized it back then.
Joseph leaned his head against the couch and concentrated on Sheridan. His eyes lingered on the sloping curve of her neck, her hazel eyes, the way her long hair fell across her shoulder. Everything about her was gentle and innocent.
He’d been quiet for too long. Sheridan considered him for a moment, then said, “I should let you get back to your work.”
He took hold of her hand. “Don’t. Let me look at you for a few more minutes.” Right now she still loved him. There was no disapproval in her eyes, no sense of guardedness or withdrawal.
“Look at me?” she asked.
“So I’ll remember everything about you.”
Her eyebrows quirked up. “You’re not going to forget what I look like. You’ll be with my identical twin sister the whole trip.”
He ran his thumb across the back of her hand. “Taylor doesn’t have your smile.”
“Yes, she does. We have identical dimples too.”
“Your voice is softer, and Taylor tilts her chin down in an aggravated, superior way.”
“Those are mannerisms, not differences. Can you really even tell us apart?”
“Of course,” Joseph said, smiling. “Taylor’s eyes don’t glow like yours do.”
Sheridan tilted her chin down in an exact impersonation of Taylor. “That’s the difference? My eyeballs are shinier?”
He threaded his fingers with hers. “There are a few other differences too.” He would have added to the list, but the wall screen chimed. Taylor’s name flashed on it, announcing she was in the lobby and on her way up to the apartment.
“Taylor’s here?” he asked.
Sheridan shrugged. “She’s probably found a way to destroy the rank program, and she came to gloat.”
As it turned out, though, Taylor hadn’t come to gloat. She’d come to spit fire.