I don’t blame him.
We stand in front of the restaurant.
“Café Pilar,” I say, reading the sign drawn by hand with gold glitter paint.
“Is this the place you remember?” he says. “It doesn’t look like a Thai place. Maybe it used to be a different restaurant?”
I shake my head. I know we’re close . . .
As I stare at the reflection in the window glass, my eyes are drawn to a small dry cleaning store across the street from the café. Its lighted sign spells out Spiffy Uniform Services, though one of the f’s isn’t illuminated.
I spin around and point. “I was standing inside that store, looking out the window, and I saw the sign for this restaurant.”
“So that dry cleaners is important?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s go over there.”
Just as we’re about to cross the street, a bus comes around the corner and sails toward us. I stop but Thomas doesn’t. He’s looking down at his phone, oblivious to the danger. He steps into the street right in front of the bus, which instantly starts honking and putting on its brakes.
But it’s too late. Thomas isn’t going to get out of the way in time.
Everything around me seizes up and stops. It’s as if I’m watching myself from above. I’m so outside my own body right now I’ve become my thoughts.
I grab him by the hood of his jacket and pull him back just in time. The momentum sends him sailing backward onto the sidewalk, where he rolls back so far he does a somersault. A mother with a stroller has her hand pressed to her chest, staring at me, trying to make sense of what she just witnessed.
“You saved his life!” she says.
I stand over Thomas, relieved but also furious. “What’s the matter with you?”
He looks up at me, horrified.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t even see it. I’m feeling so spaced out and disconnected right now—I have to work really hard to concentrate.”
“No kidding.”
He brushes himself off and stands up just as I realize that I really need to sit down. My legs almost collapse beneath me. I have to hold onto the small wrought iron fence that borders the dog park. I pull myself along until I come to a bench and let myself spill onto it, taking deep breaths like I’ve just run as far and as fast as I could.
Thomas sits down next to me as I continue to pant.
“Angel,” he says quietly. There’s a look in his eyes that falls somewhere in the gray zone between amazement and fear. “You do realize . . . you threw me with one hand.”
I’m still trying to catch my breath. “Yeah. I . . . I’ve never been able to do that before. Do you think—do you think it’s part of the Velocius stuff?”
“I don’t know. Those abilities of yours are based on extreme stress reactions. Ordinary people do have bursts of adrenaline and endorphins that give them momentary superstrength. It’s possible that Velocius intensifies those reactions for you.”
“But Velocius is only supposed to speed up my thinking.”
“I don’t think we know all the supposed-to’s when it comes to Velocius. Maybe you’ve got way more going on in your head than anyone wants you to know.”
I wrap my arms around my middle and double over. “I’m exhausted.”
“We’ve been up all night on the run. I could sleep for a week.”
“No, it’s more than that,” I say. “Throwing you like that. It’s drained me in a way Velocius never has before.” I put my hands on my knees and push so I’m sitting up straight.
“Can you walk?”
“I’m going to have to, aren’t I? Unless you’d like to carry me.”
“Believe me, I would love to, but I’m not doing so hot myself.” He puts his hands out in front of him. Tremors are rippling through both of his hands even as I can see that he’s fighting to keep them still.
We can’t afford to waste any more time.
Unfortunately, the dry cleaning store is closed. The sign on the door says it opens at 11:00 a.m.
“So we wait, I guess,” I say. Thomas doesn’t respond. I realize he’s just standing in the middle of the sidewalk, staring off at nothing. “Are you okay?”
“I know what I need to do next.”
I’m not sure if that comes as a relief or a new thing to worry about. It also bothers me that he said “I” and not “we.”
Again.
Chapter 20
We sit in Café Pilar and wait for the dry cleaners to open. While Thomas types madly on his phone, I poke at the plate of food he insisted on ordering.
“Eat,” Thomas says, glancing up from his screen. “Your superfast brain is starved for sugar.”
I take a few bites of my pancake to humor him, and I have to admit, I do start to feel better. I suddenly dive in, shoving food into my mouth like I’ve got to eat enough to last a week. Meanwhile Thomas stares at the screen of his stolen phone.
“You should eat something too,” I say, pointing at the eggs growing cold on his plate. “You’re just as exhausted as I am.”
“Haven’t you ever heard that old adage? Feed a superpower, starve a radical memory-altering drug,” he says.
“That’s not funny. Are you going to tell me about this idea?”
I could count to one hundred before he finally responds.
He sets the phone down on the table. “There. Did it.”
“Did what?”
He takes a swig of his black coffee. “Contacted the Radical Pacifists. Told them that I’ll give them the data in person, no upload.”
“But you don’t have any data to give them.”
“Of course I don’t. That’s what we criminal masterminds call a bluff.”
He motions to the waitress that he wants the check, purposely avoiding looking at me.
“Thomas, what are you thinking? What are you hoping to get out of doing that?”
“I’m hoping they’re going to tell me where to meet them,” he says. “And maybe that will give us a new lead on where they’re keeping their stash of pharmaceuticals.”
I push my pancakes away, suddenly feeling sick. “What happens if they say no?”
“I don’t think they will. Besides, we’ve got nothing to lose.”
“I just wish we knew what you were walking into. I wish we knew more about these Radical Pacifist people.”
Thomas picks up his phone again. “Well, while I was on the train I posted on a message board asking about them. I pretended that I was making sure they could pay me for a job.” He winks at me. “Don’t ask how I know about the message board, just be grateful that I have a nefarious past.”
“Okay. So has anyone posted a response?”
“A charming fellow called BlackDog214 says that the Radical Pacifists should be able to pay me well. In fact I should double whatever fee I’m charging them because they are, according to him, ‘flush with cash.’ He says someone pumped a lot of money into their operations as recently as two weeks ago.”
“Around the time Mikey says someone tried to kill him,” I say.
“We don’t even know if that’s true, but yeah, maybe the timing is important. BlackDog also says, ‘Don’t know who would fund those guys. No one wants to see them succeed. Take their money if you must but don’t help them. Stick a worm in their software. If they get what they want, we’re all out of business.’ ”
“What does that mean?”
“Not sure, but when he says ‘we,’ he means people like me. Hackers for hire.”
“Soooo, he’s saying that whatever the Radical Pacifists are doing is bad for bad guys? Does that make it good?”
“I doubt it.” Thomas looks down at the phone again. “Oh. Hey. Just got a brand-new message from DeepSeaSquid1227: ‘I wouldn’t do business with those open source zealots if I were you. I agree with BlackDog. Bad for bidness.’ Interesting.”
“What’s an ‘open source zealot’?”
“I think he means these Pacifist guys are for open source
information. No secrets. Everyone has access to anything.” Thomas sets the phone down and massages his forehead. “Now I can see why they’d be after what 8-Bit was working on. Velocius would be the ultimate scoop for them. A top-secret mind-altering program, exposed to the whole world.”
My partially-digested pancakes churn in my stomach.
“This is why I wish you could lie low and stay out of this, Angel. If Velocius is the hot fudge sundae of secret data, you’re the cherry on top.”
I shake my head. “If the Radical Pacifists knew about me, wouldn’t they have tried to kidnap me along with you? Instead they tried to kill me.”
“You’re right,” he sighs. “It doesn’t make sense.”
I think about the disappearance of my security detail. “Then again . . . we know the Feds don’t want anyone else to find out about me. I think the reason they hound me and trail me is not so much to protect me as to make sure I stay hidden.”
“Given your history exposing Erskine Claymore’s sketchy business dealings, that’s understandable.”
“True. Maybe they’re afraid that I’ll do to them what I did to Claymore. In fact, I bet they’d rather see me wind up dead than have me fall into the hands of a group like the Radical Pacifists. If they thought there was a good chance the Radical Pacifists could stumble across me . . .”
Thomas’s voice turns grim. “They’d do anything they could to keep you out of their hands.”
“Right. From their perspective, better a dead girl than an exposed secret.”
I tap the side of my water glass with a spoon. It sounds like a bell going off over and over again.
Thomas nods toward the diner’s front window. “Hey. Looks like we’re back on the trail.”
A balding man in a New York Rangers jacket stands in front of the cleaners. He pulls out a set of keys and unlocks the store. Thomas and I get up. Though our check hasn’t come yet, Thomas leaves several twenties on the table, courtesy of the woman I “mugged.”
As we enter the dry cleaners, I try to prepare myself for an onslaught of memories. I take a deep breath and feel Thomas’s hand on my back. He’s bracing me for bad news.
But as the door closes behind us, the bell attached to it tinkles and I feel . . . nothing.
Nothing at all.
I stand face to face with the man in the Rangers jacket—he’s Asian, mid-fifties. The phone immediately starts to ring and as he picks it up he says to us in an unfriendly way, “Be with you in a minute.”
Behind us, the bell tinkles again. A girl with long bangs hanging over half her face walks in, looking tired and miserable. She has dozens of braided cloth bracelets on each wrist. She’s small and twitchy and her long, grumpy face looks very familiar.
“Tai! You’re late again,” the man says, covering the phone with his hand. “I’m doing your job right now. You see this?” She doesn’t respond, just heads to the back room. By the time the guy hangs up the phone, she’s back, without her coat and purse. “This is the last time you’re late or you’re done,” her boss snaps. “See what these people want!”
He waves a hand at us and stalks into the back room.
The girl takes his place at the counter. “Can I help you with some—”
Our eyes meet. Recognition instantly inflates between us like an air bag.
“You,” I say.
Not Thai. Tai.
I lunge across the counter at her.
“Angel! What are you doing?” Thomas manages to grab me just before I get my hands around her throat. He yanks me back and lifts me up as I kick my legs at her. She backs up into a rack of nurses’ uniforms.
“Angel,” she says, looking at me and then at Thomas. “Oh my God. I can’t believe it. You’re . . . I thought . . .”
“You thought I was dead, Tai? Is that what you were going to say?”
“Yeah, I did.” She puts her hand over her mouth and her eyes fill with tears. “Where have you been all this time?”
Her boss sticks his head out of the back room and scowls at her. “This is a workplace. Not a place for hanging out with your friends.”
“We’re not friends,” I say through clenched teeth.
Thomas still has his arms wrapped around me from behind. “Angel. We need answers. She might be able to help us.”
I don’t want to need anything from the person who sent me into the clutches of Evangeline Hodges.
Tai’s eyes dart toward her boss, who’s about to start fuming again. “It’s okay, Mr. Yee. They were just going. It’s fine.”
After shooting us another suspicious look, he disappears again. I pull away from Thomas and head for the door. “Let’s get out of here. This was a mistake.”
“Come back in twenty minutes,” Tai says quietly. “Mr. Yee is going on delivery. We can talk then.” She shoots a nervous glance toward me and then says to Thomas, “Please.”
I walk out with no intention of returning. My anger is so enormous, it’s blotting out all reason, and probably the sun along with it. I hate her. I hate her for what she did, what it led to, and what I became because of her betrayal. I don’t care if she knows something that could help us; I never want to see her again.
Thomas catches up to me but I pull my arm from his grip.
“Don’t you want to hear what she has to say?” he says.
“No!”
“Angel, if Larry sent you to her, maybe she knows something that can help us.”
“That girl is the reason I have holes in my head!” I point at the small scar above my eyebrow. “That girl is the reason I’ve got holes in my life!”
“Whatever she did then, she might be able to help you now.”
“She turned me in,” I say.
“I know. It was a crappy thing to do—beyond crappy. You have every right to be . . .” He backs up and looks me up and down. “On the verge of punching a lion in the face. But you’ve got to put that aside—”
“Put it aside? PUT IT ASIDE?”
“Yes. Put it aside. What’s done is done, and we need whatever information she might have. Larry seeded your brain with clues that sent you back to this place, specifically to this girl. Let’s just hear what she has to say. Come on.”
He tries to pull me into a hug, but I push away from him and plant my feet, not wanting to move or listen or be touched at all.
“I don’t want to hear her excuses,” I say.
“Maybe they’re good excuses.”
“Good? What are you saying? That I deserved what she did to me?”
“No, but I can tell she’s sorry,” he says, looking back toward the storefront. “She asked us to come back. And I saw her eyes when she realized you weren’t dead. She was happy to see you, but afraid too.”
“How do you know?”
“I have a PhD in guilt, remember? And there’s that hacking thing I do so well.”
“Right. You can hack people’s souls, is that it? So hack me right now. Tell me what I’m thinking.”
He gives me a tired smile and puts his hands on my shoulders. “You’re not thinking at all. You’re just angry.”
“Yes, I’m angry. She’s the one who’s responsible for what happened to me!”
“No, she’s not. At least she’s not alone in being responsible.”
He rubs my cheek with his thumb but I don’t look into his eyes. “If she hadn’t called the police, if I hadn’t ever gotten caught . . .”
“Your mother would still be gone. You’d be what? Bouncing around foster care? Out there, making life difficult for your grandfather? Same old, same old.”
“At least I’d still have all my memories!”
“And you’d be living a life built on lies and not even know it. You wouldn’t know the truth about who you really are, about Virgil being your father. And worse than that . . .” He gets in front of me, leans forward, and puts his mouth next to my ear. “We would never have met.”
That shuts me up.
He kisses me on the cheek. I work hard to
keep my anger from ebbing away completely, but his words have opened up some sort of release valve inside me.
I take a step toward him. He pulls on one of my hoodie drawstrings and puts his forehead against mine.
“See, life is good at consolation prizes. I’m the best consolation prize you could ask for, right?”
I look at him, trying very hard not to smile.
“And you’re also thinking, ‘Wow, he’s so super hot when he’s right.’ ” He winks and starts gently guiding me back toward the dry cleaners.
He’s halfway down the block when I pause again.
Because suddenly I realize why we’re here. Not because Larry wanted me to remember anything about files or possible backup data locations. Maybe there wasn’t any secret agenda except this: He was trying to send me home. That’s all.
All the things he told me—all the mental breadcrumbs he scattered inside my mind—it was just so I could find my way back home.
I hug myself tightly.
I should be disappointed—frustrated. We came all this way, followed all these clues, hoping it would lead us to valuable information, information that would save Thomas. And yet—I’m grateful for this. Larry saved me once. Maybe he’s doing it again.
Chapter 21
“I’m sorry, Angel,” Tai says. “You don’t even know how sorry.”
I look at her, trying to place her among the scattered, cloudy memories I have from my life before the hospital. It’s almost like picking up a photograph that someone has crumpled and tossed onto the ground. I open the thoughts, try to smooth them flat so I can get a better look. She is familiar to me, but it isn’t until she flicks her long bangs out of her eyes and bites her lower lip that I know her, remember her, as someone who was part of a life that’s now gone.
“You got your nose pierced,” I say.
“Yeah. It’s kind of annoying when you need to blow your nose, actually. Been thinking of letting the hole close up.”
She looks up, looks past me, looks anywhere but in my direction. Finally, when there’s no avoiding it, she makes eye contact. Thomas is right. She is deeply sorry.
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