“I don’t need your charity. I can name ten corporations that would love to hire me!”
“Great, then you’re both set,” Mike said heartily. “Dahlia, could you please pass the rice? I’m still hungry.”
I almost asked Rianne what career she was planning, before I remembered: when Rianne grew up she would be dead. My throat choked up.
Just then Rianne and Timothy got into an argument over how many moons Jupiter had. In my opinion, Rianne didn’t even care. She just wanted to argue. Specifically, she wanted to argue with Timothy.
By the end of the meal only Mike and I were still speaking to everyone.
The tense atmosphere should have made for a lousy evening, but instead I had a blast because of Mike. He poured forth energy like a supernova, and the rest of us caught fire in turn. “This is our last evening here. Let’s make it a fun one, okay?”
Timothy wanted to play VR Alien Invasion. Rianne countered with VR Sword and Sorcery.Zinnia diffidently suggested VR Molecule World, but when Mike proposed World-Building we all fell into line. Rianne didn’t even fuss about being carried into the basement by Mike and Timothy.
We all donned VR goggles and strapped on VR bodysuits. Our virtual bodies appeared in the game environment, the images playing on our goggles translating into a fair approximation of reality. The images had a slightly flat, cartoonish quality to them, and the sense of touch was limited to pressure, but it was still amazing.
Each of us designed a world and then showed it off to the others. The evening became a string of wonderful moments:
—walking up a staircase that turned sideways and twisted like an Escher painting, disorienting us, so that we suddenly realized we were walking on the underside of the stairway we had climbed before.
—drifting through a zero-G swimming pool designed by Rianne with bubbles of water that floated free and could be pushed together to form larger bubbles, miniature worlds equipped with tropical fish. Kissing Mike and having a large bubble suddenly envelop us. Kissing in VR wasn’t anything like the real thing, of course, but it was still fun.
—falling over laughing after plunging through a trapdoor into an exercise class run by the Spanish Inquisition. “You, there, on the rack! Give me ten push-ups!”
Mike flirted with me the whole game, and I used the excuse of being undercover to flirt back.
The surprise was Rianne’s behavior. Her VRbody wasn’t confined to a wheelchair, and she ran wild, laughing more than I’d ever seen her and pelting Timothy with green goo. He chased her and finally managed to tackle her and rub goo in her hair. Rianne retaliated by tickling him.
I watched them curiously: did Rianne like him after all? Timothy looked as though he was trying to decide if he should kiss her. I thought he would chicken out, but he didn’t, putting his lips on hers.
Rianne froze. I hoped the VR kiss wasn’t her first kiss.
Timothy drew back, looking unsure.
A moment later Rianne ended the game, saying she was tired. By the time Mike and I carried her and her wheelchair back upstairs, Dahlia, Zinnia, and Timothy had also called it a night. I found myself alone with Mike.
“Well,” I said, with equal parts nervousness and reluctance, “I suppose we ought to say good night, too.”
“Play one more game with me.” Mike’s violet gaze caught and held mine. “For our cover story.”
“Okay,” I said. “More World-Building?”
“Nah. Something faster.” Mike’s eyes glinted.
I was immediately suspicious. “Like what?”
“Badminton.”
I poked at the idea from all sides but couldn’t spot a trap, and I wasn’t about to back down from the challenge in Mike’s tone. “You’re on.” We donned the headsets and gloves again.
I had expected to play against Mike, but to my surprise he set up the game as a mixed doubles match against the computer. He selected Expert level, and a man and woman appeared on the virtualbadminton court. They introduced themselves as Josie Farber and Paul Shinn. A discreet line of text identified them as last year’s Olympic champions.
I fully expected to get creamed—I was athletic, but I couldn’t remember ever playing badminton before—but as soon as Mike and I walked onto the court magic happened. Without consulting each other, we took up positions, me on the left, Mike on the right. Mike served first, a hard drive skimming over the net, and as soon as I heard the twang of his racket striking the birdie, I was moving up to the left corner of the net. When Josie slashed forward to return Mike’s serve, I was there to spike it back over the net for our first point.
When it was my turn to serve, the same thing happened. Mike knew exactly where the return shot would go. The volley lasted longer this time, and on the third whizzing return sent to me by Paul, I wound up my arm as if to spike the birdie. Then I ducked, and Mike did a powerful backhand clear that left Josie scrambling and won us another point.
Instead of serving again, I held the birdie over my racket and looked at Mike, obscurely troubled.
He looked pleased. “Your reflexes trust me,” he said softly. “Listen to them.”
I stopped dead. “What’s going on?”
“You and I used to play badminton. Coach Hrudey was training us for the Olympics.”
His words had the impact of a club hitting my head.An icy shock to my flesh as I fell into cold water. Sinking down, down, through murky green depths. Holding my breath and flailing my limbs,until finally the pressure in my chest grew too great and I involuntarily gasped in water. Choked—
“Angel?”
I heard Mike’s concerned voice, and then he ripped off my headset, and I found myself back in the basement, dry as unbuttered toast. I shuddered, remembering the heavy sensation of liquid filling my lungs.
“Angel, what is it? What happened?” Mike slipped an arm around my shoulders.
I hadn’t the strength to push him away. I turned to him in sudden eagerness. He might know. “Can I swim?” I asked.
“Like a mermaid,” Mike said.
“Do you remember me drowning?”
Mike rocked back on his heels, surprised. “Of course I remember.”
“Tell me.” I gripped his hands.
Mike looked down at my hands holding his, then back up. “Why? What happened just now?”
He wasn’t going to say anything until I explained so I did so, tersely, “Whenever I start to remember something about my past I flash onto a memory of drowning.”Murky water . . .“But I don’t know when or how it happened.”
“Actually,” Mike said, “you drowned twice that I know of.”
I fastened my gaze on him, demanding with my eyes.
“The first time doesn’t really count. You were mad at me for throwing you in the pool so you pretended you were drowning to make me feel bad.” Mike grinned. “I resuscitated you.”
“You kissed me,” I accused, the strange flash ofmemory I’d had in the Induction chamber now explained. But that memory had nothing to do with the drowning memory of falling through dark green water. “What about the second time?” I asked.
Mike’s smile vanished. “That was more serious. Dr. Frankenstein shot you, and you fell off the diving tower. You played dead to fool him, but the loss of blood made you so weak you almost drowned for real.”
I frowned. I remembered falling, but through water, not from a tower. I couldn’t remember being wounded. And the water I remembered had been cold, not warm, and stagnant, not chlorinated.
On the other hand, how many times could one person almost drown?
Mike changed the subject. “There’s something you should know. I checked up on what Eddy told Timothy. Eddy’s troubles with the law weren’t just teenage pranks. He was accused of manslaughter. He had a fight with his girlfriend and abandoned her in a deserted place. It was dark and she was drunk; she walked off a cliff and died.”
I felt chilled, but I wasn’t surprised. “Was that all?”
Mike looked disappointed by my lack of respons
e. “Do you really want to work for someone like that?”
I didn’t see that I had much choice. I shrugged.
“I also did a computer search on Anaximander, but guess what? The only reference I turned up was to some dead Greek philosopher. According to the vital statistics database, the only Anaximander living today is a ten-month-old baby.”
I was disturbed but hid it. “So? Anaximander must be an alias, that’s all. I’m going upstairs. Good night.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement and instinctively threw up one arm. The medi-patch in Mike’s hand that he’d been about to slap onto my neck went flying.
Mike didn’t hesitate. With his first plan shot, he immediately proceeded to plan B and tackled me to the floor. My breath whooshed out of me, and I felt the cold metal of a handcuff fasten around one wrist.
“Sorry, Angel,” Mike breathed near my ear. “But this is for your own good.” He slapped a sticky-gag over my mouth.
MIKE WAS MY ENEMY.I cursed myself bitterly—what had I done when I interrupted his Loyalty Induction?
Even as the thought went through my head, I fought back, getting my knees up between Mike and me and kicking. He grunted as my knee caught him in the chest, and I twisted free.
I rolled to my feet, and my leg swept out in a karate kick. I aimed for Mike’s chest, but he anticipated me and grabbed my ankle. He yanked. I lost my balance, and my upper body flew backward toward the floor. I got my hands under me as if I were doing a handspring and pushed off. I tried to do a scissor kick in Mike’s face, but my heels thumped against his shoulder instead.
He hung on to my foot. “The Orphanage fire.”
The words meant something to me. I remembered flames, and then the drowning memory kicked in.Falling through cold water, my boots pulling me down—
By the time I fought my way out of the memory, Mike had cuffed both my wrists together behind my back and had moved on to my feet.
His full body weight lay on my legs, preventing me from kicking, so I threw my body from side to side, trying to make a noise loud enough to attract the attention of the people upstairs. All I succeeded in doing was banging my head against a chair leg.
Within seconds Mike won the lopsided battle. I was immobilized, hands and feet tied, mouth gagged. I lay for a moment, breathing rapidly through my nose, saving strength for my next chance.
Always assuming I got another chance. What was Mike planning to do? Rob the house for the money he needed, or worse, kidnap Timothy again?
“Your Loyalty chip doesn’t want you to remember me,” Mike said, surprising me. His face was so close to mine that his breath washed my face. “It’s using negative reinforcement to encourage you not to remember. Every time you start to remember something, the Loyalty chip uploads an unpleasant memory into your brain and you drown. I’m going to overload the chip’s circuit and break the pattern.The Orphanage fire.”
I started to remember again, orange flames licking inside my mind, and then the water came, drowning me. But when it was over Mike just triggered it again. “A group of radicals set fire to the Orphanage where the violet-eyed children were being kept—” He kept talking, reciting my life. He didn’t give me any respite from the memories, butthere was tenderness in the way he hauled me up, dripping, from the depths, one memory richer, before ruthlessly drowning me again.
“From the time you were three and I was four years old, we were brought up in the Historical Immersions of Canada in the 1970s and 1980s. We were told that it was the 1970s and 1980s, and we believed it. You and I lived in separate towns until 1987.
“We met down by the river. . . . Your best friend was Wendy Lindstrom. . . . Her boyfriend’s name was Carl.” Nudged by Mike’s voice, the memories flooded back to me. I remembered Wendy. How could I have forgotten Wendy? So tough on the outside, so fragile within. The most loyal friend anybody could hope for. I’d missed her without even knowing whom I was missing.
Best of all, Mike gave me back my parents. Originally actors who had been hired by Dr. Frankenstein to play the part of being my parents, they had soon become my real parents. I loved them, and a pang tore through me when I thought of them. I missed them, and they must be worried about me. . . .
Staring out the window at the falling snow on Christmas Eve. My first Christmas with Mike and the joy of making our own little traditions. And the sadness of my first Christmas without my parents.
“What is it?” Mike had asked. He’d put his arm around me and bent his head close to mine.
“I want—” I’d stopped, swallowed the lump in my throat, went on. “I want to phone my parents.”
“You can’t. Anaximander would backtrace the call.” Mike gave me a small one-armed hug, sympathyin his eyes, but no real understanding. His actor-parents had been horrors.
“There must be some way.”
“Even if we knew how, we couldn’t chance it,” Mike said. “What’s to stop your parents from telling Anaximander or the authorities our whereabouts?”
“They wouldn’t do that,” I snapped.
“They took Dr. Frankenstein’s pay,” Mike reminded me.
“Only because they wanted a family. They love me. I know I can’t phone them—” Even if I could have risked Anaximander tracing the call, I didn’t know my parents’ vidphone number or where they lived. I wasn’t even sure if their last name was Eastland, or if that had just been part of the role they had played for so long. “—but I miss them.”
Mike also gave me back myself, building a bridge between Shadow Angel and New Angel.
I drowned a hundred times that night, and Mike revived me every time. And each time I opened my eyes, gasping, and looked into his violet eyes, he came into sharper and sharper focus. Not Michael Vallant, accused thief, but Mike, my nemesis, my rival, my partner, my boyfriend.
My other half.
“And you won the coin toss to get captured by SilverDollar so we could try to get money and identicards,” Mike finished. He sounded tired. “If we’d known about the Loyalty chips, we would never have risked it. Do you believe me? Do you remember me now?”
I was silent out of necessity.
“I guess there’s only one way to find out,” Mikesaid grimly. He removed my gag and handcuffs and waited, his body as tense as a metal spring.
My throat was too choked with emotion to make talking easy so I kissed him in answer.
“Angel!” He kissed me back, his arms coming around me in an ecstatic hug. “I was afraid I’d lost you,” he admitted a little while later. We were lying side by side on the carpet.
I shuddered. “I lost myself for a little while, but I’m back now.”
Rage vibrated in Mike’s voice. “I’m going to get those bastards for what they did to you. SilverDollar will pay. Before I’m done with them, they’ll throw money at us just to make us go away.”
Coldness shafted through my bones like an arrow. “Don’t say that,” I said urgently. “Take it back.” Without permission, my hand stealthily reached out and picked up the Knockout medi-patch that Mike had dropped on the floor earlier.
Mike didn’t notice.
“No.” His voice was hard. “I thought what Dr. Frankenstein did to us was bad, but this . . . I’m going to smash them until there’s nothing left but shards, and then I’m going to smash the shards, too.”
“Shut up!” I was frantic now. “You can’t say that!”
“Sure I can—” Mike stopped, suddenly wary. “What is it? If the room was bugged, Anaximander would have burst in and stopped me while I was breaking your memory block.”
“There’s no bug,” I said, throat dry. “Just me.” I fingered the medi-patch behind my back, peeled off the protective film.
Mike didn’t get it.
“Tell me you were kidding,” I said fiercely. “Tell me it was anger talking, that you didn’t really threaten SilverDollar. Tell me!” My nails dug into my palms, still holding the Knockout patch.
After the briefest hesitation, Mi
ke said soothingly, “I was just mouthing off. I didn’t mean it. How could someone like me hurt a giant corporation like SilverDollar? It’s ridiculous. I’d have to be crazy to even try.”
I held my breath, seeing if his denial would work. No go. “You’re lying,” I said. There were tears on my cheeks as my Loyalty chip made me hit him with a Knockout patch.
The ten seconds until Mike lost consciousness were the longest in my life. The wounded look in his eyes . . .
I had betrayed Mike again. The thought hammered into me, even as I used his own handcuffs to attach him to a heavy piece of furniture.
The thought of what Eddy would do to him, force him to go through Induction all over again and install a working chip, made me want to retch. The consequences for me were hardly less scary— at the very least, my memory would be wiped again, and this time there would be no notes to bring back Shadow Angel—but I still found myself starting up the basement stairs to call Anaximander.
Helplessly, I watched my foot settle on the bottom stair step—
No!I grabbed my ankles and yanked. My feet kept moving, but the awkward bent-over position made me fall sideways against the wall.
There had to be a way out of this, a way to satisfy my chip and save Mike at the same time, if I could just think of it.
Against my will, I began to climb the stairs again, but more slowly, placing both feet on each step, my hands still holding my ankles. One step. Two. Three. I had to think quickly before it was too late.
I had foiled the chip once before. When I tried to release Mike it hadn’t wanted me to, but I’d convinced myself and it that I wasn’t being disloyal to SilverDollar, that I was trying to save SilverDollar from an overzealous employee.
Okay then. Perhaps Mike had only meant that he wanted to punish the person who had installed my Loyalty chip. I tested out the rationale, loosening my grip slightly.
I climbed two steps before I caught myself again. I was almost at the top of the stairs.
Obviously, that wasn’t going to work; I no longer believed the chip had been installed without Eddy’s full knowledge.
Nothing less than Mike swearing absolute loyalty to SilverDollar was going to satisfy my chip, and even then it probably wouldn’t believe him.
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