She bolted upright in bed. She had forgotten about the GPS tracker when she’d taken the motorcycle into the Azure District today. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t worry about someone tracking her movements, but Dependability had sent her out to test the bike. He’d be sure to check to see where she had gone, if he hadn’t already. She needed to erase those records.
She was out of bed and changing into her darkest clothing when she realized she had no idea how to access and delete the motorcycle’s logs, or how to get past the shed’s locks. She needed help from someone with technological skills, and she groaned when she realized the one person she knew who met that qualification.
Cass couldn’t sleep, no matter how hard he tried. As soon as he’d gotten back to his room, he’d collapsed onto his bed and closed his eyes in hopes of making the whole miserable day go away. He didn’t know why the universe seemed intent on throwing that warrior girl in his path so much, and he doubted his unfriendliness---not to mention her broken ankle---would get her to go away. He didn’t think anything would deter a woman with the nerve to ask Steadfastness about the Azure District.
He’d tossed and turned for half an hour when Meg stopped curling up next to him and stood on his chest. Cass opened his eyes to find her mechanical, yellow orbs boring right into his soul.
“You’re thinking about that girl again,” she said, licking her paw once she was sure she had his attention. “Stop it. You’re disrupting everyone’s sleep.”
“What girl?” Al asked from his post on Cass’s bedpost.
“No girl.” Cass spoke at the same time Meg said, “The one you maimed, moron.”
“Oh.” Al cocked his head to the side. “I thought we didn’t like her.”
“Well, she’s the only reason you’re not in the scrap heap, so I’d be nice to her if I were you.” Meg stretched, and Cass took a moment to thank his past self for not putting retractable claws on her.
“You don’t sleep,” Cass said. “You’re a machine. And if you did sleep, cats and owls are nocturnal.”
“Owls, yes, but cats actually just sleep most of the day and night,” Meg jumped off his chest. “Also, don’t change the subject. I think somewhere not so deep down, you like the girl. Which is good, because we need friends.”
Cass rolled up into a seated position and buried his face in his hands. “Not you, too. Why does everyone keep saying that? You’re not even real, and you’re hassling me about my social life.”
“Exactly. I’m not real, and you talk to me more than anyone else. That’s not normal. So if you like this girl, I approve.”
Cass’s head shot up. “I do not like Clarity. Do I need to remind you she’s dating my brother? You remember Valor, right? What do you think he would do if he thought I liked his girlfriend?”
Meg rolled onto her back. “I wasn’t thinking you liked her like that, just that you wanted to be friends. But if you want to steal your brother’s girlfriend---”
“I wasn’t thinking about her!” Cass suspected the AI knew he was lying, but he didn’t care. “I was thinking about the oven AI I’m making Mom for her birthday. I think I’ve finally figured out the bug I couldn’t fix.” He hadn’t, but he felt obligated to get up and work on the program anyway. Maybe everyone is right. If I feel the need to save face in front of my cat robot, I might need new friends.
Cass was nowhere near solving the problem two hours later, and he couldn’t go to bed without admitting he’d never known how to fix it. Meg, who was a program and therefore forgot nothing, would no doubt resume her previous topic of conversation, and Cass wanted to avoid that. He was trying to decide how much longer he would have to stay up when his door chimed.
He glanced at the clock. Who could possibly be coming to see me at quarter to midnight? He had a brief moment of panic that Meg or, more likely, Al had caused some kind of massive disruption and he would have to dismantle them, but he took a deep breath and reminded himself they’d been in his room for the past two and a half hours. He lurched to his feet, stretched, and blinked his eyes a few times, then went to answer the door.
Clarity stood on the other side. Cass almost didn’t recognize her at first because she looked so normal. Every other time he had seen her, she’d had on her full plate armor or purple bodysuit and had worn her hair tied back in a severe bun or ponytail. Standing outside his door, she wore solid black clothes, and her hair hung down in waves around her shoulders. Fear shadowed her usually resolute expression, and she glanced to the side as if to make sure no one had followed her. She still had her crutches but otherwise looked almost nothing like the girl who had shown up at his parents’ that evening.
“Clarity?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”
She bit her lip, then took a deep breath, as if steeling herself. “I need your help. Can I come in?”
It was Cass’s turn to look up and down the hallway. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
Clarity let out a semi-hysterical laugh. “You’re probably right. I just don’t know where else to go.”
She looks terrified, Cass thought. I think I’ve only been that scared a few times in my life, and it was always because of… Cass gave the empty corridor another once over, then stepped aside to let Clarity in. After the door had shut behind her, he asked, “Is it Valor?”
Clarity had turned to face him with a more determined version of her frightened expression, but her face twisted in puzzlement. “Is what Valor?”
Cass ran the fingers of his good hand through his hair. “What you’re so scared of. Did he come back? Did he hurt you? I know you think no one will believe you, but I---”
Clarity stepped forward with her hands out, as if trying to find a way to soothe Cass, but after a moment, she returned her hands to fists and dropped them to her sides. “No, it’s not Valor. He’s still on the other side of the country, as far as I know. Why would you think he would hurt me?”
“Never mind.” Heat rose to Cass’s face. He couldn’t believe he’d admitted his biggest fear to Clarity, of all people, especially since she clearly had no idea what he was talking about. Why would she? She’s a warrior. She doesn’t fear anything. The last thought dripped with sarcasm. “Look, you may not be worried about my brother, but I don’t want to think about what he would do if he found out I had his girlfriend alone in my room in the middle of the night. So I would appreciate it if you would leave.”
“You don’t have to worry about Valor.” Clarity’s tone was dry. “He definitely wouldn’t care that I was here.”
Cass let out a bark of laughter. “You may think you know my brother, but believe me, you don’t. If he knew---”
“We broke up.”
Cass froze. “What?”
“We broke up,” she repeated. “Months ago. After graduation. Or right before? One of those. Before he left, at any rate.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Cass asked, realizing as he said the words how idiotic they sounded. Why would she tell him? They weren’t friends, and her relationship with his brother wasn’t any of his business.
Clarity must have thought it was a reasonable question, though, because she looked guilty. “I told my friends. I didn’t think it was my place to tell his family if he hadn’t.”
And why hasn’t he? Cass wasn’t under any misapprehension that Valor would tell his brother about his personal life, but he’d always gotten along with his parents. Mercy would have been disappointed, but Steadfastness would have danced for joy at the removal of Clarity from his son’s life. “Then why did you come to dinner at my parents’ place?”
Cass expected her to say something about keeping up the ruse for Valor’s sake, but she looked him straight in the eye and said, “I wanted to ask Steadfastness about the Azure District.”
“You exploited a former relationship to infiltrate my parents’ home and ask my father about one of his least favo
rite topics?” Cass should have been horrified, but he had to admit he was a little bit impressed.
“I had to.” Clarity looked far away. “Those people. You have no idea how they live.”
Cass had never thought about how the Azurites lived. He rarely went into the city, and when he did, he stayed close to the Citadel. The Azure District was more myth than reality. “Because it’s forbidden to go there.”
“Right.” Clarity squared her shoulders. “Which brings me around to why I need your help. I went into the Azure District today on a Citadel motorcycle, and I need to wipe its GPS.”
“You did what?” Cass blinked several times, but she was still in front of him, and she had still said the same appalling thing.
“You heard me,” she said. “I didn’t want to involve anyone else, least of all you, but I have nowhere else to turn. I don’t know how to delete files from a GPS system, so I need you to help me.”
Cass exhaled. “Why should I?”
“It’s important! My reputation is on the line. My entire career as a paladin is at stake. Can you imagine what would happen to me if your father found out?”
Cass could imagine, and a few days ago he would have had no problem letting it happen. If she’d come to him with this confession, he might have turned her in himself. He would get rid of the pest who wanted him to do physical training and hurt his brother all in one go. Maybe the news that she and Valor had broken up still had him stunned, or maybe Meg was right, and he was starting to like her. Either way, helping her didn’t seem as crazy as it should have.
That didn’t mean he was going to do it. “What were you doing in the Azure District?”
Clarity hesitated. “Do you need to know? I want you to have plausible deniability if we get caught.”
“Clarity. You are asking me to delete official records. I’m not sure how much more involved I could get.”
She cringed. “You’re right. Let’s just say I got a one-time invitation to go, and I couldn’t pass up the chance. But now that I’ve seen how horrible life is for the Azurites, I only want to help them. I can’t do that if I lose my paladin status.”
Cass honed in on her last sentence. The Visionary might have selected him to join the order at birth, but he had always thought being a paladin was a choice. He wanted to make the world a better place, and he felt like maybe Clarity felt the same. “That’s why you’re worried about your reputation?”
Clarity nodded. “I don’t want to tell you too much about my plans, because I want you involved as little as possible, but I’m going to help these people. To do that, I need your help.”
Cass gazed into the clear, brown eyes of this girl whom, a few days ago, he hadn’t been too fond of. He felt his heart tighten. She needed him. Unlike him, she had tons of friends with a variety of different skills, yet when she was in trouble, she came to him. He couldn’t refuse that anymore than he could refuse her desire to help.
“Okay. I’ll do it.”
Clarity couldn’t believe he’d gone for it. At several points on the trip over to his apartment, and even more times during their conversation, she felt certain she was on a fool’s errand. Why would Cass Hughes, firstborn son of the Grand Conductor, help her on her illicit mission? Even if he hadn’t hated her, asking a paladin to break the law was tantamount to treason. The only thing she could think was that despite being surly and sarcastic, Cass was a decent person. He couldn’t let the people in the Azure District suffer any more than she could.
“Go back to your room,” Cass said. “I’ll take care of it.”
“What? No!” Clarity couldn’t believe he would consider leaving her out of the caper. If he got caught, she wasn’t about to let him go down without her. “I’m going with you.”
Cass smirked as if he thought she wasn’t very bright. “I’m not going anywhere. I can hack into the motorcycle from here and erase the GPS files.” His smile turned rueful. “What, you don’t trust me to follow through? Think I’m going to turn you in after you leave?”
Clarity gaped at him. The thought hadn’t crossed her mind that as soon as she left, he might rat her out, but she realized it probably should have. “No, I---”
Cass waved his mechanical hand. “It’s fine. Stand there while I do it if you don’t trust me. Not that you’ll be able to tell if I’m doing what you asked or not.” He muttered the last sentence under his breath, but Clarity still heard it. She thought about defending herself further, but she didn’t want him thinking she was any dumber than he already did.
As he headed across the room toward his computer, Clarity glanced about the room. Cass had half-built machines with wires sticking out of them on almost every surface. Some of them had glowing LED panels, but almost none of them looked functional. The exceptions, of course, were the metal owl perched on Cass’s bedpost and the mechanical cat curled up on the bed.
“Hoo,” said the owl when it---he?---caught Clarity staring at him.
“Don’t mind him,” Meg said, standing up and stretching her front paws in front of her. “He always plays dumb when he doesn’t know what to say.”
“Hello, Meg,” Clarity said.
“Oh, finally noticed I was here, did you?” The cat licked her hindquarters, creating a soft but rather horrid metal-on-metal sound. “I was starting to think you liked Cass better than me.”
Cass had sat down at his computer and navigated through a few three-dimensional programs that, as he had suspected, Clarity couldn’t identify. At the cat’s words, he turned and pointed at her. “Don’t start.”
“Start what?” Meg tucked her legs under herself into a cat loaf. “Cass, if you didn’t want a narcissistic pet, you should have built a dog.”
“I really should have built a dog,” Cass muttered. Clarity had the odd impression she had walked in on the middle of something, but she had no idea what it was. Despite Meg’s insistence on her own lack of autonomy, Cass treated her like a free agent. Clarity had to wonder if that meant Meg truly did have sentience, or if Cass was just lonely. “What motorcycle did you ride today?”
Clarity rattled off the make and serial number, and Cass raised an eyebrow. “What?” she asked, sounding more defensive than she intended to. “I like motorcycles, okay?”
“No, I’m just impressed,” Cass said. “Most warriors don’t know anything about their tech other than how to turn it on.”
Clarity wanted to ask him how many warriors he’d bothered to converse with to determine their level of tech proficiency. From what she could tell from working tech support with him, he assumed all warriors were idiots and treated them accordingly. She didn’t want to have an argument with him while he was doing her such a huge favor, though, so she let his insult slide.
Cass swore. “Are you sure that’s the serial number of the one you rode? You didn’t mix up a digit?”
Are you sure you heard me correctly? She took a deep breath and reminded herself he was helping her. She repeated the number, more slowly this time.
Cass cursed again. “It’s not on the network,” he said. “Someone must have turned it off.”
That doesn’t sound good. “What does that mean?”
“It means I can’t access the files from here.”
“Oh.”
Cass held up his hands, parallel to each other, as if he was trying to box something in. “Look, I have a plan. If anyone comes to you asking why you went to the Azure District, you play dumb and tell them you didn’t. They’ll assume the GPS is broken, and I’ll make sure I’m assigned to repair it.”
Clarity’s heart sank. For a second, she’d thought he might have a workable plan. “I can’t lie.”
Cass shot her an exasperated look. “You’ll sneak into the forbidden part of the city and ask me to hack paladin paladin property to cover your tracks, but you draw the line at lying?”
“I don’t mean I don’
t want to lie. I mean I am physically incapable of it. I am the world’s worst liar.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked. “You lied to my parents for months about dating their son.”
“I didn’t lie. I just let them believe it. If Mercy or your father had asked me point blank if I were still dating Valor, and I had said yes, there is no way they would have believed me.” Clarity took a deep breath. “We’ll just have to go turn it on.”
“Are you insane? Do you know what kind of security the motor shed has?” Cass held up his hand. “Don’t answer that. Of course you don’t. I forgot who I was talking to. Suffice to say it’s second only to the Grand Hall. I’m not sure I can get past it at all, and I definitely can’t do it without leaving a trail. They’ll know we were there.”
“They won’t know we were there, and when they see nothing’s missing, they’ll forget all about it,” Clarity said. “They’ll think it was some student out for a joyride.”
Cass studied her a moment. “You may have a point. But regardless, there’s no ‘we’ about this. You’re staying here or better yet, going back to your room.”
“I’m not,” Clarity said. “I told you I’d go with you, and I meant it. Why do you think I wore black?”
Cass stood up and pulled a coat off the back of his chair. “You may have worn black, but you can’t get around without those bright silver crutches. They couldn’t stand out more if they were backlit in green. I’m not going to turn you in or decide not to do it, okay? You can trust me.”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” Clarity said. “I’m just not sure you can do it on your own.”
Cass gave her a disbelieving look. “You don’t think I can hack a door and wipe a motorcycle on my own? Which part of that did you plan to help with?”
“Do you know what the bike looks like? Sure, you can read the serial numbers on every vehicle in the shed, but I know exactly where it is. I also know the guards’ patrol patterns, so I can avoid them. Besides, if we do get caught, no one’s going to believe you suddenly decided to liberate a motorcycle on your own, but they might believe I would.”
Clarity's Edge: Technopaladin, #1 Page 7