Unless . . .
I released my ankles and went upstairs. I tiptoed into the bedroom Rianne and I shared—she kept sleeping, thankfully—and took out a small kit from a hidden compartment in my palmtop’s carrying case.
Mike had regained consciousness by the time I got back. I turned the lights on, set to low. The stony look on his face made me close my eyes against tears.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized helplessly. “The Loyalty chip is making me do this.”
The accusation in his eyes lightened but did not totally disappear. I winced. Mike had never trusted easily, and now I had betrayed him twice.
“The only way the chip will let me release you is if you swear that you’ll be a loyal SilverDollar employee from now on. You have to,” I said fiercely, “it’s our only chance.”
“I swear I’ll be a loyal employee from now on,” Mike said.
I could read nothing from his face, his expression opaque. “The words alone aren’t good enough. You have to mean it.”
Mike watched warily, as I ripped open the plastic pack of medi-patches soaked with TrueFalse and pulled off the plastic film. “What’s that?” he asked.
“TrueFalse, a truth serum.” I paused. “Didn’t Anaximander interrogate you this way when you were first captured?” I had a vague memory of TrueFalse being used on me during my Loyalty Induction, but the Induction, my missing angel pendant, and the drowning were the sole bits of my memory that had not fully returned.
“No.”
Anaximander had lied to keep me out of the way.
But that wasn’t important now. “You have to change your mind,” I told Mike. My eyes pleaded with him as my hands competently stuck the patch on his neck right over the carotid artery for faster absorption.
“I’m mad at what SilverDollar did, but since youhave your memory back I guess I can set aside my revenge. If losing you is the alternative, I swear I’ll be a loyal employee,” Mike said softly. “SilverDollar is probably no worse than any other employer.”
I believed he meant the last statement but not the rest.
Four minutes ticked by.
Mike stirred restlessly. “You fought it once, Angel. Can’t you fight it again? Just for a little while? Long enough to free me? I’ll take it from there.”
I tried. God help me, I tried to make my hands move to unlock his handcuffs until sweat stood out on my forehead and only thirty seconds remained on the clock. Gasping, I gave in. “I can’t. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. Please, Mike,” I was begging him. “This is the only way. Change your mind.”
His lips tightened, and he looked away.
“Refusing to talk won’t help you,” I told him. “TrueFalse was designed to prevent spies from being tortured for information; it also loosens the tongue.”As he would soon find out.“Time’s up,” I said hopelessly. “Swear or the chip will make me call Anaximander right now.”
Mike swore viciously. “Only for you, Angel. I swear I’ll be a loyal employee.”
When a person lied under TrueFalse, they started to sweat. Mike’s forehead remained dry.
I wasn’t fooled. “I swear I’ll be a loyal employeeto SilverDollar.”
“I swear I’ll be a loyal employee to SilverDollar,” Mike recited obediently.
No sweat. Frowning, I reached out and touched his skin. It was dry.
I still didn’t believe him. What was I missing?
Got it.“I swear I’ll be a loyal employee to SilverDollar from now on.”
Mike balked. “And if they fire me, what do I do? Commit hara-kiri?”
I hastily revised the oath. “I swear I’ll be a loyal employee to SilverDollar, and even after I no longer work for them, I will not do anything to harm them.”
Mike bared his teeth, but he repeated the oath successfully. No sweat. He was telling the truth.
The sudden release of tension left me almost boneless. “Thank God.”
“Now that my loyalty is assured, do you think you could untie me?” Mike asked sourly.
“Sorry.” I jumped up and unfastened his handcuffs.
Mike rubbed his wrists. “Exactly how long do the effects of TrueFalse last anyhow?”
“For ten hours or until I give you the antidote.” I took out the second plastic package and gave him the antidote patch. “It’ll take another ten minutes to take effect. Until then, you’ll still have to tell the truth.”
“Swell.” Mike leaned against the wall, eyes closed. “Anything else you wanted to ask me?” he asked sarcastically.
Do you still love me?I pressed my lips together on that painful question.
My silence must have been telling. Mike opened his eyes. “Come on, Angel. This is your chance. Ask.”
I phrased my response carefully, not sure I could take his answer. “If I were to ask you something, I would ask: Can you forgive me?”
Mike reached out and took my cold hand. “Of course.”
His answer should have made me feel better, but it didn’t. Dismally, I realized that I could not forgive myself.
“Where’ve you been?” Rianne demanded when I returned to our room. She had awakened in my absence and been surprised to find I had not yet come to bed.
“Talking with Mike.”
“Talking?” Rianne sounded skeptical. I went on the attack. “Yes. So what’s with you and Timothy? You were one hundred percent flirting with him tonight. Did you decide that you like him after all?”
“Of course not,” Rianne said shortly. “I was just having fun.”
I said nothing, but I didn’t believe her.
Rianne must not have believed herself either, because three minutes later she whispered, “How can you like someone and hate him at the same time?”
I remembered the rivalry that had sparked between Mike and me the first time I’d met him in 1987. “That happened to me once. I found out later that I didn’t hate him at all, that I’d just thrown up reasons not to like him because I was scared byhow muchI liked him.”
I rather thought something similar had happened with Rianne. She was so certain that no rich boy was going to fall for a poor disabled girl that she’d sabotaged any possible relationship from the very beginning.
I STARED AT THE DOOR in frustration. On the other side lay freedom, but I couldn’t get to it.
I’d spent the past hour trying to break my Loyalty chip—and failing. I’d tried running at the door to see if momentum would sweep me past the threshold. I’d tried sneaking up on it, pretending that all I was going to do was walk past and then suddenly veering sideways. I’d tried breaking down the task into little steps, first opening the door and then standing on the porch.
And here I still was in the front hall. The instant I thought about escaping, my muscles froze up.
It was almost time for breakfast. One more try and then I’d give up, I promised myself.
Reciting tongue twisters in my head while making my attempt didn’t work either. But I couldn’t give up.
Mad at myself and the chip, I gave up finesse and threw all my furious energy into turning my body toward the exit. I began to breathe as if I wasa long distance runner, my face turning red, but my shoes didn’t move, as if stuck to the floor.
Mike found me there in the hall. “Angel?” His face showed concern.
“I’m going to do it this time,” I puffed.
He let me try for another thirty seconds before roughly pulling me inside his bedroom. “You have to stop doing that. You’ll hurt yourself.”
“I don’t care,” I said between clenched teeth.
“Well, I do. You just got your memory back last night. Be patient.”
He was right. “Whoever genetically engineered me forgot to splice in the patience gene,” I said wryly. “But I’ll try.”
“Good. Let’s go to breakfast.”
Graciana caught us in the hall. “A phone call for Miss Angel.”
Anaximander? I wondered as I went to the living room. Eddy? Please no. Whoever it was, it
wouldn’t be whom I most hoped to hear from: my parents.
I pressed the vidphone Accept button, and the blank screen in front of me jumped into focus. It was President Castellan again, live this time, from an aircar.
“Angel, I just heard about what happened with the reporter yesterday. I’d like to thank you for your quick thinking.”
“It was nothing,” I said, pleased. Anaximander could take lessons from her. “I just wish I could have stopped Seth altogether. Has the story broken?” I asked.
“Not yet.” She looked grim. “I think they’re waiting until the awards ceremony this morning. Timothy will be there to present the awards. He’sworked so hard on this symposium, today should be his triumph.” Anger and frustration thickened her voice. “And now it’s going to be ruined. I’ve tried to persuade Timothy not to attend the presentation, but he’s insistent.”
“Will you be there?” I asked. Timothy would need the support. It was eight o’clock; the awards were scheduled to begin at nine thirty.
“Come hell or high water. Whether Timothy wants me there or not.”
“Of course, he wants you here,” I said, feeling somewhat bemused. Yesterday I’d reassured the son, today the mother.
“I wish that were true.” President Castellan’s eyes lost focus. “He blames me for not getting him home sooner.”
“From his kidnapping, you mean?”
“Yes. Thoserobots,”she said, meaning the Spacers. “I paid the first ransom too fast. I should have negotiated. Eddy recommended it, and for once in his sorry life he was right. I was desperate to get Timothy back so I paid the million the Spacers demanded without a fuss. And then they got greedy. They kept asking for more and more. I bankrupted my savings.
“And then”—President Castellan looked, if possible, even more incensed—“that cockroach who calls himself my half-brother, that bungler, went behind my back to the board of directors and called for my resignation. He tried to get himself appointed president in my place on the grounds that Timothy’s kidnapping had rendered my judgment ‘unsound.’ He all but accused me of paying the ransom with SilverDollar’s money.”
“What did Eddy bungle?” I asked.
“It would be easier to say what he hasn’t bungled, which is nothing,” President Castellan said acidly. “I’ll never forgive him for the way he handled Timothy’s kidnapping, delay after delay after delay. We finally get the Spacers to agree to send a negotiator and what happens? She has a heart attack and dies within a day. Why didn’t he have medical staff on hand if she had a heart condition?” the president seethed.
“And now I’m stuck with Eddy. The board reversed my decision to fire him, saying it was in retaliation for his attempt to get me removed from office.”
“Does Timothy know any of this?”
She shook her head. “No. If I say anything against his uncle Eddy, he gets mad at me.”
I felt sorry for Timothy’s mother and decided to give her a hint. “I realize you probably didn’t want to worry Timothy with money problems or make him feel guilty about the size of the ransom you paid for him, but you might want to mention your money shortage to Timothy. He’s laboring under the impression that the negotiations dragged on because you refused to pay. He thinks Eddy rescued him.”
“What!” Outrage radiated from her face and voice before she clamped down. “Excuse me, Angel. I have some calls to make.” The screen reverted to the main menu.
I smiled. President Castellan had the look of a woman who was going to right an injustice.Take that, Eddy.
Eddy was almost certainly behind the Loyaltychip scheme. Anaximander would, of necessity, be in on it, too, but I felt no desire to get revenge on him. I was almost positive that Anaximander also had a Loyalty chip. I remembered the way he’d staggered after looking at Eddy’s strange butterfly necklace. He’d looked the way I felt when I was trying to remember something and the drowning memory slammed into me.
Eddy should pay for that crime, too.
And then it hit me, a thought so beautiful and so simple that it made me dizzy: President Castellan might not know about the Loyalty chips. Eddy might have been acting on his own, illegally. He was Head of Operations, with a lot of authority of his own, and he had the magic Castellan last name. His subordinates would assume that the president knew. During the long months of Timothy’s kidnapping, President Castellan’s control of her company had slipped, and the Taber facility where the Inductions had taken place was located far away from Tucson. She truly might not know.
If Mike and I told President Castellan for the good of the company, my chip wouldn’t object. We would be free.
I went to find Mike to tell him, but he wasn’t in the dining room, or the bathroom, or anywhere in the house.
Alarm jumped inside me. I could think of no good reason for him to have left the house and several bad reasons.
One, he could be in trouble of some kind. Two, he could have slipped out for some clandestine reason while I was otherwise occupied. Three, he could have left, period.
It was possibility number three that scared me the most.
The reason I’d tried so hard to break free of the chip was because I was afraid Mike might decide that I was a lost cause and bail out. There were no strings on him.
I began to pace, deliberately thinking up innocuous reasons for Mike to have left the house: to get a breath of fresh air, to pick flowers for me.
I’d thought of fourteen lame reasons, when Mike breezed back in through the front door.
“Where were you?” I demanded.
“Angel.” Mike smiled at me; his violet eyes lit with warmth. “Did you miss me?” He kissed me.
I kissed him back but wasn’t distracted. “Where were you?”
“We shouldn’t talk here,” Mike said. We stepped into his empty bedroom. “I wanted to talk to Anaximander about the security arrangements he’s made to protect Timothy from reporters.Unfortunately, I couldn’t find him.”
It sounded logical, but I felt a small thrill. If his absence had been so simple he would have waited until I was off the vidphone and either told me what he was doing or invited me along. He was hiding something from me, something he didn’t want my chip to know.Had he found a way around my chip?
I tried to keep the thought from my Loyalty chip by thinking hard about who would win the essay contest.
God help me, I tried, but the chip caught the thread of guilt and began to chew at my mind. It worried at the question like a buzzing dragonflytrapped in my skull, creating a weird dissonance that dropped me to my knees.
I vomited.
Mike was at my side in a flash. “Angel?”
I swallowed down bile. “You’re hiding something from me. What is it?” In another moment the chip would make me bring out the TrueFalse again.
“I wanted to wait until I had proof, impress you,” Mike said quickly. “I think Seth Lopez is a Spacer.”
Whatever I had been expecting it wasn’t that. “What?”
“I don’t think he’s a reporter. I did a computer search and couldn’t turn up any bylines or credits for that name.”
My nausea faded. “What did you find?”
“Nothing. Five Seth Lopezes in the database, none of them listed as having silver eyes. I think he may have been trying to get close enough to Timothy to kidnap him again.”
A tide of relief washed through me.Mike hadn’t been plotting against SilverDollar.
I wouldn’t have to betray him again.
“So who called you anyhow?” Mike asked after I’d freshened up and we’d cleaned the floor.
I told him about my conversation with Timothy’s mother and my hope that she was unaware of the illegal Loyalty chip Eddy had installed. With luck, she would seize the excuse to fire Eddy, and my chip would be removed.
Mike shook his head. “It’s too risky. What if she’s in on the plan? Or even if she isn’t, she may decide to neutralize us rather than let the UN find out and penalize SilverDollar.”
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My face fell. He was right. And now that he’d pointed out the danger to SilverDollar’s reputation, my Loyalty chip wouldn’t let me pursue any avenues that led to the UN finding out. Arrgh.
Everything led back to the chip. I was stuck in an endless loop.
“Why are you still here?” I whispered, tears in my eyes. “Why haven’t you given up on me?”
I expected—hoped—that Mike would say something reassuring, like, I love you, or, I’ll never leave you. “I can’t,” he said, and then, terrifyingly, he added, “Not yet.”
Yet. My heart thudded. He planned to leave me. Just not yet.
He went on, the words obviously painful to him. “You’d fight forever for me, but I’m not as strong as you are, Angel.”
Strong? I wondered bitterly how he could call me strong when I couldn’t even defeat one microchip. The thought of Mike leaving me behind frightened me. I’d only just found him again. Words deserted me. I reached up and kissed him. Mike’s arms closed around me with equal desperation.
“There’s a voice inside my head that says, Cut and run, grab your freedom while you can. But if I go, I’ll be alone again. I was alone from the time of the Orphanage fire until I met you last year. You’re the only one who knows me, Angel,” Mike confessed. “The only one whocanknow me. With everyone else I’m just playing a part. If I have to, I’ll leave and be alone again, but I don’t want to.”
I hugged him harder, feeling the strong bones inhis back. I knew how difficult it was for him to say what he was feeling. I wanted to tell him that I loved him, but right now the words would only make him feel guiltier.
“We’d better grab some breakfast,” Mike said finally, kissing me on the forehead.
I nodded, reluctantly unpeeling myself from him.
Dahlia was speaking as we entered the dining room. “Three of our trustees are coming to see which one of us wins.”
Rianne bristled. “How nice for you. What if neither of you wins? There are three other finalists, you know.”
Dahlia sniffed to show how unlikely she thought that was.
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