by Jenna Black
“Get a few more hours of rest,” Belinski said. “We’ll talk more at dinner.” He looked at Nate. “Mr. Parker will show you to your room.” He dismissed Nate and turned his gaze to Nadia. “If you would remain for a moment, Miss Lake, I’d like a private word with you first.”
“This way, sir,” Mr. Parker said to Nate, making a sweeping gesture toward the stairs in the foyer.
Nate raised a questioning eyebrow at Nadia.
“It’s okay, Nate,” she said, forcing a smile. “I’ll be up soon.”
Nate still didn’t look happy about it—neither one of them was in much of a trusting frame of mind these days—but he allowed Mr. Parker to lead him up the stairs, leaving Nadia alone in the living room with Chairman Belinski, who looked at her with kindly, grave eyes.
“You indicated that you’ve had no access to the net or telephone the last couple of weeks,” he said, stepping closer to her and reaching out to put one hand on each of her shoulders.
Dread flooded Nadia’s system as she registered the unmistakable signs of pity on Chairman Belinski’s face and realized what his overly familiar gesture portended. She shook her head.
“No,” she whispered. “Don’t say anything. Please.”
“I’m sorry, child,” he said in a voice not much louder. “There was apparently a riot in Rikers Island over the weekend. Your father sustained only minor injuries, but your mother … I’m afraid she didn’t make it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Nadia climbed the stairs, following Mr. Parker, in a glassy-eyed daze. When he gestured her toward a room, she walked in without question, closing the door behind her.
She wanted to cry, needed to cry, but somehow it all just hurt too much. She lay down on the bed, her body curling in upon itself as she clutched the pillow with both arms, willing the tears to start, desperately hoping for some release of the toxic emotions that swirled within her and made her chest ache.
Her sister was dead. Her mother was dead. Her father was injured and in prison. Dante was in the Basement where the bombs would no doubt continue to fall. In her head, she knew none of this was her fault. She’d always made the best choices she could, and she couldn’t take the blame for the things that the late Chairman Hayes and Thea had done. But knowing that in her head did nothing to lessen the smothering blanket of guilt that made it so hard to breathe. Nor did it stop her mind from continually second-guessing every decision she’d made.
If she hadn’t blackmailed Chairman Hayes into destroying the original Thea, would her mother and Gerri still be alive?
The worst, however, was the way her mind kept playing back the last time she had seen her parents, her final cruel words filling her with more shame and remorse than she could bear.
I never want to see either of you again.
She remembered how furious she had been at the time. Furious at her mother for sacrificing Nadia’s happiness for the sake of social standing. Furious at her father for not fighting harder for her. Completely devastated by what felt like her parents’ abandonment, Nadia had snarled those fateful words and had actually meant them. But only in the heat of the moment. Never in her wildest dreams had she considered the possibility that they would be the last words she ever spoke to her mother.
A choking sound rose from Nadia’s throat, but still the tears wouldn’t come, the pain and guilt and grief trapped in her body, making her want to escape from her own skin.
Would those spiteful words be the last she spoke to her father, too? For all Nadia knew, the “prison riot” had been engineered by Thea herself in an attempt to kill Nadia’s parents without the inconvenience of a trial or conviction. If that was the case, then she would surely try again. And eventually, she would succeed.
The dam finally burst, and Nadia buried her face in the pillow while sobs racked her body.
* * *
Nate slept until late in the afternoon, waking up only when Mr. Parker stopped by to deliver a shopping bag full of clothes and shoes so he had something to wear other than the scrubs. Nate took the bag gratefully.
“Miss Lake is asleep for the moment,” Mr. Parker said, “and it’s probably best to let her get whatever rest she can. But I thought you should know she’s had some very bad news.”
Mr. Parker told Nate that Esmeralda Lake had been killed during a prison riot, and a black wave of fury rose from inside him. He wanted to kill Thea for putting Nadia’s mother in that prison, and he was so pissed off at the universe in general for all the shit it had heaped on Nadia’s shoulders—not to mention his own—that he had to fight the urge to kill the messenger. His whole body clenched up with the need to hit something, but he controlled it, pulling firmly on the reins of his temper, finding yet another occasion to practice his newfound self-control.
“Chairman Belinski had some flowers brought to her room,” Mr. Parker said, as though he hadn’t noticed Nate’s fight against rage. “We kept an arrangement aside for you in case you’d like something to give her yourself.”
All the belligerence drained from Nate’s body, and he was surprised to feel a sudden prickle in his eyes. He blinked rapidly, hoping that somehow Mr. Parker had missed the sign of weakness. He had to clear his throat before he could talk.
“Thank you,” was all he said, because if he said anything more, that one small gesture of kindness was going to start him bawling.
“I’ll bring them up,” Mr. Parker said. “The Chairman will be dining at eight, but he would understand completely if you and Miss Lake would prefer privacy in this difficult time.”
“We’ll be there,” Nate said without hesitation. He knew Nadia would want to have a voice in whatever plan they came up with to defeat Thea, no matter how much pain she was in, and Nate, as the rightful Chairman of Paxco, had an obligation to be there as well.
“I’ll tell the Chairman to expect you. There’s a media room at the end of the hall,” he said pointing. “The phone line and net access are both secure and untraceable, so feel free to make use of them however you’d like.”
“Thank you,” Nate said again. But there was no one he could imagine calling on the phone, and he couldn’t stomach getting on the net and seeing Dorothy’s version of current events.
* * *
Nate stood outside the closed door to Nadia’s room and had to swallow the aching lump in his throat. In his hand, he held the small flower arrangement Belinski’s men had set aside for him, but he was having trouble convincing his free hand to knock on the door. Every time he caught the faint echo of Nadia’s sobs, his own eyes teared up, and only copious deep breaths would bring back his sense of self-control.
He wanted to be strong for her, to be a solid and comforting presence in this time of grief, and bursting into sympathetic tears wasn’t the way to accomplish that. He’d never much liked his would-be mother-in-law, had hated her when she’d sent Nadia away to that awful upstate retreat to hide her away like an embarrassment, but though Nadia had been just as angry, Nate knew how she felt right now. Knew it all too well.
“Damn it,” he muttered between clenched teeth as his eyes tried to well up again. Kurt had told him that he still had a lot of grieving to do for his father, and Nate was beginning to think he was right. It certainly wasn’t Esmeralda Lake who was bringing tears to his eyes. Blinking rapidly and taking yet another deep breath, Nate gathered his courage and knocked softly on the door. Standing out here in the hall getting high on the overly sweet perfume of the lilies wasn’t helping Nadia one bit, and it wasn’t doing much for him, either.
“C-come in,” Nadia stammered after a long pause. Her voice was hoarse, and though she’d gotten the sobs under control, he could still hear her sniffling. No doubt she was in there dabbing at her eyes, trying to control and hide her emotions—just as he’d been doing for the last five minutes. And maybe that was something they both needed to stop doing for a while. They were in a relatively safe place with no one trying to kill them right this moment, and maybe it was time to stop be
ing so goddamned strong all the time.
Eyes stinging, throat tightening, Nate opened the door and ventured inside. If the best thing he could manage was to hold Nadia while they both cried, then that was what he was going to do.
* * *
Nadia looked wan and tired when she and Nate headed downstairs for dinner, and he suspected he looked much the same way. The two of them had eventually fallen asleep cuddled together on her bed, holding on to each other for strength. Throughout their lives, they had always been there for each other, and never had they needed each other as much as they did on this terrible day. Especially when they were both painfully aware of the setting sun, of the horrors that would come as night fell. Assuming there was anything of the Basement left to bomb, of course.
Dinner was a quiet and somber affair, and five seconds after each plate was cleared, Nate couldn’t have said what had been on it, although he ate everything that was put in front of him.
There were only the three of them eating. Agnes wasn’t well enough yet, and the rest of the household were staff. Agnes’s mother, who suffered from severe chronic migraines, was back home in Synchrony.
After dinner, Chairman Belinski invited Nate and Nadia into a sleek, modern office that looked completely incongruous in the homey farmhouse. There was a small conference table on one side of the office, with a bank of video monitors on the wall at one end. The other side of the office held Belinski’s desk with a couple of chairs facing it. The Chairman gestured Nate and Nadia into those chairs and then took his own seat.
“I’ve been on conference calls with my advisers most of the afternoon,” he said. “We’re all finding your story about Dorothy very hard to swallow.”
The anger that Nate had been suppressing ever since he’d heard the news about Nadia’s mother made his fists clench, and he opened his mouth to let all that anger spew out. But all it took was a significant look from Nadia to shut his mouth again.
“So you’ve decided you don’t believe us?” she inquired, way calmer than Nate could hope to be.
“I didn’t say that,” Belinski answered. “I said it’s hard to swallow. And the problem is if it’s hard for me to swallow, it’s going to be hard for anyone else to swallow, too.”
“Where are you going with this?” Nadia asked.
“We need proof of what Dorothy is before we can act.”
Nate shook his head in disgust. “You know perfectly well Nadia and I can’t provide proof. No one can, except Dorothy.”
“Then that’s who we’ll have to get it from.”
Nate blinked in surprise. “Come again?”
Belinski’s lip twitched in the faintest of smiles. “You said that Thea communicates with Dorothy through some kind of receptor in Dorothy’s brain. And that Dorothy is nonfunctional without Thea’s input.”
“That’s what Dorothy told us,” Nadia agreed. “I don’t suppose she had any reason to lie at the time. I doubt she ever imagined we’d stay alive this long.”
Belinski nodded. “Probably not. So we’ll take it as a given that she was telling the truth. In which case we can prove she is not what she says she is by cutting off communication between Dorothy and Thea. We cut that communication, and Dorothy stops functioning. I suspect that would be very convincing evidence. Especially if it happens in front of witnesses.”
“And how do you propose we do that?” Nadia asked.
“By use of a jamming device. Obviously we can’t be sure exactly how Thea is communicating with Dorothy, but it’s something wireless, which means it uses radio frequencies, which can be disrupted.”
“And you have some kind of technology that will let us do that,” Nate said.
“We’ll have to improvise,” Belinski said. “Most of our jamming devices target a limited range of frequencies, so that our own forces can use the free ones to communicate with each other. But we have no idea which frequencies Thea uses, so we’ll have to jam them all. I have an engineer modifying one of our portable jammers as we speak.”
“And is this going to knock out communications for the whole city?” Nate asked.
The Chairman shook his head. “There’s no need for something so drastic. I’ve been invited to address the board of directors tomorrow afternoon. The new Chairman Hayes and I have been going over the existing trade agreements between Synchrony and Paxco, and we’re planning to announce what we’ve come up with during the meeting. It’s the perfect opportunity to tear the mask off Dorothy—in front of the board of directors, and captured on video, because all board meetings are recorded, even if the recordings are top secret. We can use a very localized signal jammer—one that’s small enough to be carried in a pocket.”
Nate imagined it would make quite a sensation if Dorothy suddenly collapsed in the middle of a board meeting, and once the board of directors found out what she was, she would not be Chairman anymore.
“Discrediting Dorothy isn’t enough,” Nate said. “The real enemy is Thea, and losing her puppet won’t do her a whole lot of harm.”
“True. But Thea is just a computer—an extraordinary one, to be sure, but a computer nonetheless. Without human beings to carry out her wishes, there’s nothing to stop us from shutting her down—and this time we’ll know enough to shut down the Replication tanks, too.”
Nate shuddered, remembering what it was like when he and Nadia had faced Thea in the flesh. She was more than just a computer. She also had flesh and blood mixed in with her machinery, and shutting her down was not as simple as just flipping a switch. It would take guns, though no doubt Chairman Belinski had plenty of access to those as well.
“We’ll be in the Fortress for the board meeting anyway,” Belinski continued.
“In the Fortress?” Nate interrupted, surprised. “The board usually meets at Headquarters. I’ve never heard of them meeting in the Fortress.”
“They’ve been meeting there ever since Dorothy took over,” Belinski said. “According to her, it’s a more secure location.”
You couldn’t get much more secure than the Fortress. It was in the Fortress’s subbasement that Thea resided. But Paxco Headquarters was almost its equal, and it wasn’t like Paxco was at war—except with the trapped denizens of the Basement. So why would Dorothy feel the need to have the board meet in a more secure location? Nate wondered if Thea’s control of her puppet was better when Dorothy was nearby. Certainly she had better control of the building itself. Her original had been ensconced in that subbasement for years and had made unauthorized changes to some of its electronics. For instance, Nate’s father claimed Thea had added listening devices where none had existed before by modifying whatever software she could connect to. Which no doubt made it easy for her to listen in on private conversations in rooms that were supposedly free of bugs—and thereby increase her power over the board members.
“Once we’ve proven that Dorothy isn’t a real person,” Belinski continued, “we can go down to the subbasement and take care of Thea right away, before she comes up with some other way to protect herself. With the entire board of directors as witnesses, I don’t imagine we’ll have too much trouble getting to her.”
“You’re assuming no one but Thea is going to resist,” Nadia said. “Cutting Dorothy off from Thea might make the board acknowledge Nate is the true Chairman, but they won’t necessarily all agree that Thea has to be destroyed. After all, Nate’s father didn’t see Thea for the monster that she was until way too late.”
“That’s why you and Nathaniel will be coming with me to the board meeting,” Belinski said. “You’re eyewitnesses to the things that Thea has done, and once we’ve shown them that you’re telling the truth about Dorothy, the rest of the crazy story sounds a lot more plausible. I would be stunned if your board didn’t agree Thea has to be put down after hearing everything.”
Nate wondered if Belinski was giving the board too much credit, or whether he himself wasn’t giving them enough. The last couple of months had turned him into a cynic, but the fact t
hat the board had approved cutting off food and medical aid to the Basement and then bombing it didn’t do much for his faith. Even if Dorothy had fabricated evidence that the Basement was in full revolt.
Apparently, Nadia was feeling equally cynical.
“You’ll be asking them to give up the revenue from making backups and Replicas,” she said. “They might be harder to convince than you think.”
Belinski’s eyes turned shrewd and cold. “If they won’t listen to reason, then I’ll have to resort to more drastic measures. If everything you’ve told me about Thea is true, then she has to be stopped. No matter what.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
When Nadia returned to her comfortable little room after a brief visit with Agnes, she saw that someone had left a bottle of sleeping pills on her bedside table. She was so exhausted—both from a lack of sleep and from an excess of grief—that she didn’t imagine she’d need any chemical aid, but almost as soon as she’d closed the bedroom door behind her, her mind turned on itself and the litany of recriminations began.
She took a pill, and was asleep within fifteen minutes.
She felt like she could sleep for a week, but a woman on Belinski’s security team woke her up before the sun had risen. The board meeting was scheduled to begin at nine A.M., and there was a lot to do—plus an hour-long drive—before it began. Nadia soon found herself sitting in a chair surrounded by lights bright enough to make her head ache, while two other members of Belinski’s household studied her with a focus and intensity that made her squirm.
“We’ll need to change her hair, obviously,” the female member of the duo said. They hadn’t bothered to introduce themselves.
“Do that first,” the man said, opening up a large black case and sifting through its contents.
The woman came at Nadia with a pair of scissors, and she jumped out of the chair. “Wait a minute!” she said, glaring at the scissors. “What are you doing?”