I shrug. “No clue. And given the way he acted about it afterward, when everyone kept questioning him, it’s not something he particularly wants to talk about.”
“You don’t care? You, the man who follows through on his every suspicion?”
“Jin’s my friend. My only real friend.” I ignore the hurt in Lance’s frown. “So no matter how much his actions or words rile up my suspicions, I’m not going to press him for answers he won’t volunteer. He’s a good man—I know that for a fact—and if he wants to keep his secrets locked away for none to see, I have no right to try and force his hand. And neither do you.” My fingernails dig into Lance’s skin, just hard enough to get my point across. “So let it go.”
Lance wrenches his shoulder out of my grasp and stumbles into the side of the vending machine. “Do I hear a threat in there somewhere?”
“You have good hearing.”
“I don’t want to get on your bad side, Adem.”
“Afraid you’ll end up like Lang or Brennian?”
“If only.” A nervous laugh. “I think you went easy on them.”
“Why’s that?”
“You’re a Class Five Command Controller and the most naturally talented maker I’ve ever seen. If you wanted to bring godlike wrath down on another human being, you could do it with a flick of your wrist and a simple whispered wish. But all I’ve seen you do so far is fire a gun at the heart of a man who didn’t have one to start with and let a crazed woman destroy herself in her own dream.” He taps the pretzel button with a knuckle, and the machine spits out a small bag that falls into the receptacle at its base. “I don’t think we’ve quite seen your bad side yet, Adem, and the thought that it might come out some day absolutely terrifies me.”
Lance bends down and retrieves his snack. “So I’ll respect your ‘request’ to protect Jin’s secrets. I will. On one condition: if he does reveal how he knew that cipher key, you make sure that knowledge comes to me. Because if he has in his possession some kind of source that can help us take down this Finn guy, I have to know it, Adem.
“I’m the tech guy. The tech guy at EDPA. People look to me for answers whenever hacking-related buzzwords become the name of the game. And this time around, with so much death and destruction, people are putting the weight on my shoulders more than they ever have. I need to find those answers, one way or another. People lost teammates, friends. I can’t let them down.”
I stick my hands in my pockets and rock back and forth on my toes. “All right. I’ll make you that promise, Lovecraft. If that info does come out, you’ll get it. But whether it comes out or not, and if it does, when—that’ll all be on Jin’s terms. Not mine. Not yours.”
“Deal.” He transfers his pretzel bag to his left hand and offers me the right to shake.
A quick press of skin, and he’s on his way toward the elevator.
But before he can press the down button, I call out: “One last thing, Lance, before you go.”
He peers over his shoulder, eyebrows near his hairline. “Yeah?”
“I don’t blame you.”
Confusion bleeds across his face in a rosy blush. “For what?”
“Club Valkyrie.”
“You…” The pretzel bag slips out of his fingers and bounces across the floor. “You found out.”
“That the whole case, start to finish, was a lie? Yeah. I forced it out of Frederick.” I retrieve my Ocom from my pocket and show him the screen. Clearly displayed is a textbook with the title of The Coordinator’s Guide to Nexus Constructs. “But don’t worry. I’m not mad at you. Perhaps a little pissed you trust me so little, but not mad. No, there’s only one person I’m mad at here, and she and I are going to have a nice chat very soon.”
“Adem, it’s not that we don’t trust you. It’s more complicated than—”
I wave off his remaining words. “Quit while you’re ahead, Lovecraft.”
He swallows hard, retrieves his pretzel bag, and hits the elevator button. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
“It’s not worth anything.”
The elevator doors roll open, and Lance slinks inside. “I hope it will be. One day.”
“Me, too.”
Lance reaches out to push the lobby button, but something like a mental wall stops his finger before it reaches the control pad. “Hey, Adem. I know I have no right, at this point, but can I ask you a question about Jin? About you and Jin?”
“We’re not dating.”
“I know that much.” He smiles, wry. “I thought you were the first time I saw you together, but Chai corrected me.”
“Chai?” I rap my fingers against the side of the vending machine and shift my weight from one foot to the other, trying to strike an intimidating pose. But my clothing is too loose, borrowed threads from EDPA’s lost and found stash, and my pants fall so far down my hips when I move that I have to hold them in place, tuck a thumb through a belt loop. Yeah, real scary, Adem. “What exactly did Chai say?”
“That you and Jin are in a frighteningly co-dependent platonic relationship, driven by a traumatic event that has left both of you too guilt ridden to make emotionally healthy decisions concerning one another.”
My brain goes on the fritz for about fifteen seconds.
When it reboots, my cheeks are on fire.
I have never had a stronger urge to flip a table. Alas, there is no table in my vicinity, so I make do by punching all the buttons on the vending machine. A dozen candy bars fall into the bottom bin, and my Ocom, which I didn’t realize was close enough for the machine to scan, dings when the twenty-dollar transaction is complete.
Lance, still standing in the elevator threshold, bites back a hysterical laugh. “I don’t think she meant to offend you, Adem.”
“Oh, I’m sure she didn’t.” I lift my aching hand from the buttons and stick an inflamed knuckle in my mouth. “She just meant to be honest, damn the consequences.”
“Adem—”
“Just go ahead and ask your stupid question, Lance. Before I start throwing candy bars at your head.”
He raises his hands, a request for peace. “Well, I was just wondering how you came to be friends, is all. I’ll admit I don’t know Jin all that well, but from talking to him, even for an hour, I can tell he’s not the sort of person a guy like you would normally befriend. So how is it that you and Jin Connors came to be so, well, what Chai said?” His hands rise even higher. “If you want to answer, of course. You don’t have to. You can tell me to fuck off, and I’ll stop holding up the elevator.”
I scrutinize Lance Lovecraft yet again, seeking signs that he’s out for more than simple answers to simple questions. But, yet again, I remind myself that Lance, smart as he is, and wily, is not Dynara Chamberlain or Chai Bennett or even Evan Briggs and Ric Weiss—he’s a smart-mouthed techy with a traumatic event in his recent past hanging on by a thread. Evidenced by the fact one of his hands is now fingering his keepsake necklace through his shirt. A nervous gesture.
Lance Lovecraft is an intelligent guy caught in a whirlwind of liars and killers and geniuses. (Genius liars and killer geniuses included.)
And every now and then, he just wants an answer to a question he can comprehend, while all the ones he can’t blur past him faster than the echo data on his workstation screens.
So despite the fact I’m pissed he lied to me—though really, I don’t blame him for it—I oblige his need to know what he can in a world where he normally cannot know.
Thus, as the elevator doors roll closed, and Lance steps back to let himself be whisked away at last, I say, in the steadiest voice I can manage, “Jin Connors is my friend because he killed a man for me.”
* * *
Jin lies on crisp white sheets staring out a window into a stormy November day. Snow is coming down in thick, whirling waves, covering trees and vehicles and rooftops. There are few people on the streets, most holed up in warm nooks and crannies. The few who do run about move as fast as humanly possible and duck b
eneath every scrap of cover they can find. The view from the window only extends about thirty feet out. The city beyond is veiled in white, invisible. Not even the Central Business towers, flashing with their vibrant ads, can cut through the wintery shroud. Chamberlain Corp., too, is obscured.
Jin perks up at the sound of his door opening but doesn’t turn to face me. There’s a tray topped with half-eaten food on the stand beside his bed, which either means Jin is in a poor mood or is suffering the ill effects of some medication. (Jin Connors, as a rule, doesn’t leave food uneaten, no matter the quality.) His posture, too, suggests he’s not feeling well: his mattress has been angled flatter than normal, as if sitting up hurts him in some way, and he has three pillows beneath his head instead of the usual one. His fair brown skin is washed out, and his eyes, normally a stormy blue, are dull and glassy. And his hair…
Lance neglected to mention the surgeons shaved off a huge patch of Jin’s hair. There’s an unsightly bald spot on the right side of his head, above his ear, where his skin was stripped and his skull was cracked during the sandstorm car crash. The hairless skin is smooth and unmarked now, though, healed by a med-four session in the past couple days. It’s what’s inside his skull that is still damaged.
Jin waits for two minutes of silence before he throws a look my way, and when he sees me standing in the doorway instead of, I suppose, Lance, he jerks like he’s been electrocuted. A wide smile stretches across his face—well, it tries to. The left side of his face doesn’t appear to be in working order. The muscles sag, move sluggishly. It distorts Jin’s smile into a hideous…I crush that thought.
“Adem! You’re okay!” His voice is slurred, but the words are clear enough. “Lovecraft kept telling me you were down the hall, but I didn’t believe him. I thought you were…I saw what happened to the tunnel on the news, and I thought for sure you’d been…”
I stroll across the room and grab the chair Lance must’ve sat in, pulling it closer to Jin’s bedside before I plop down into it. “Funny you say that. I was thinking the same about you.”
“You thought I was dead?”
“Several times.”
“Oh. Well…I’m not.” He reaches across his body with his left hand and pats the arm I’ve draped over the railing of his bed. “And neither are you. So everything’s swell.”
“Is it?” I slip my fingers beneath his right hand. “Squeeze.”
A flash of utter devastation zips across his face, all his listless muscles twitching, but he buries it a moment later and tries to give me a hopeful smile. Unfortunately, with his watering eyes and paralyzed facial muscles, the smile comes off so sad and dim that something in my chest tears itself apart. “I can’t,” he says, staring at his limp fingers on top of my own. “My brain’s busted. The right side of my body doesn’t work. I mean, I can feel you touching me, but I can’t move anything.”
A knot chokes my trachea, but I force air past it. “It’s not permanent.”
“I know.” He abandons the false cheery tone with a sigh. “But it’s not a simple fix either. The doctors say I’ll be in rehab for at least eight weeks. And I still have four more nano treatments left today.” He fidgets in his bed. “Those things are awful.”
“The neural med-three treatments?”
“They make me nauseous. I can’t keep anything down.” He eyes the abandoned food on his nightstand. “Feels like I’m on one of those spinning amusement park rides. And there’s this continuous prickling sensation in my head—which is weird, because brains don’t have nerves—and it drives me nuts. Each treatment lasts two hours, minimum. It’s maddening, Adem.”
I lift my hand and grip Jin’s functional arm, rubbing my thumb into the sensitive skin on the underside of his wrist. I’m not the best at comforting people, but this is Jin, so I have to try. “It’ll be over soon. Rehab will be a bunch of physical exercises, so that shouldn’t bug you quite as much.”
“Good to know.” His gaze lingers on my face for a moment, and then he shakes his head. “Why are you looking at me like you don’t think you deserve to be in my presence?”
Leave it to Jin to be perceptive in all the most difficult moments.
“Because I…” My feet in too-large shoes accidentally move my chair, legs grinding against the tile, leaving white marks. “Gods, Jin.”
“Adem?”
“I collapsed the tunnel.”
“Huh?” His good hand grabs mine and tugs me closer to his face. “The hell do you mean? Lang was the one who—”
“No. I was the one who brought the tunnel down. On top of you. I tried to block one of Lang’s attacks, and I stupidly redirected it at the walls of the tunnel instead of back at her or above me or anywhere that it wouldn’t have caused the entire fucking structure to come crashing down. The fact that you weren’t killed is pure luck. And I can’t deal in luck, Jin. I need to do better than that.”
He stares at me, lips parted, head cocked to the right, for almost a minute. Then he releases my hand…and whacks me on the head with a surprisingly powerful fist. My jaw slams into the railing of his bed, rattling my brain, and I slide off my chair, onto the floor, ass meeting rock-hard tile. By the time I recover, stars in my vision, using the hard railing to hoist myself to my feet, Jin has maneuvered himself into what must be an uncomfortable sitting position, the limp limbs of his body folded underneath him. His good arm is tucked under his damaged one, mimicking a crossed-arm stance. His partially paralyzed face is warped with an intense pout.
He waits until I sit down, shaking, in my chair. Before he says: “For a smart guy, you’re an idiot, Adem. You honestly think that you should be blamed for defending yourself and me from an attack by a murderous psycho?” He takes a deep, frustrated breath. “You have got to get over your guilt complex, man. Lang is to blame for what happened in the tunnel, along with what happened to everyone else in this case. And if not Lang, then Finn. Certainly not you.”
“But I—”
He shushes me with a warning finger and continues. “Okay, so your echo combat skills aren’t as perfect as you want them to be. That doesn’t mean you get to take the fall for things that are not your responsibility. I may have almost died in that tunnel, but if you hadn’t been there to stop Lang and Anderson from spiriting me away, I could be tied to a chair right now being tortured to death. You saved me. Just because it wasn’t a perfect rescue doesn’t mean it shouldn’t count.”
I massage my aching jaw and run my tongue across my teeth, checking for chips and cracks. “Logically, I know that, Jin, but seeing you…”
“Ah. Yeah.” His expression softens. “Now you know how I felt when I found you bleeding out in your bedroom after that stupid dragon dream.”
“So, what? Are you saying this makes us even in terms of emotional distress?”
“Sort of.”
“Does this mean you’ll stop acting like a mother hen whenever you drop me off at work in the morning?”
“Never.”
A smile tugs at the corners of my lips. “Didn’t think so.”
Jin matches my smile, and the tension between us dissipates as quickly as it formed. We’ll have more arguments about all this in the future, probably when we’re on the couch, watching movies, shoveling popcorn into our gullets. Or when we’re at bars, him drinking, me not, and the flash of some pink-haired modder brings up bad memories. Or when we see the news spouting some obvious cover-up orchestrated by Dynara and the other EDPA brass. We’ll argue about shortcomings. Over and over again. But the arguments will always end like this, the two of us shaking hands like business partners and promising—
“Ahem.”
I twist around in my chair to glimpse the visitor standing in the doorway of Jin’s room. Tall, dark, and imposing. As usual. I nod in greeting and say, “Commander.”
Briggs crosses the threshold but stops short of approaching the bed. “Sorry if I’m interrupting your heart-to-heart, Adamend, but I need to speak with Connors in private.”
&n
bsp; Jin releases my hand and turns onto his back again, a hint of resignation in his frown. “We have to do that now, sir?”
“Afraid so.”
“Do what?” I glance between them, but neither offers me an answer. And suddenly I’m back in the car before the sandstorm crash, watching Briggs throw meaningful looks at a moping Jin, who knows more about the mysterious Finn than he’s willing to admit. There’s something in the gap between Briggs and Jin that I am apparently not allowed to see, and I wonder if it explains the way Briggs regards Jin—the reason he seems to respect Jin more than most agents of Jin’s rank, even while he berates the “goofy” Cyber Sec agent for his frequent antics.
And is this something recent? Or something from the distant past?
Jin’s past. Something I barred myself from ever knowing that day at Jericho.
Briggs opens his mouth to try to convince me to drop the subject, but I cut him off. “Never mind. I actually have somewhere to be.” I stand up on wobbly legs, my chin still on fire, and stagger past my old boss, who wears an expression that seems to read, In time, Adamend, he might tell you. But for now, you need to let sleeping dogs lie—else you might get bitten in ways that do not heal.
When I reach the door, I turn briefly and wave goodbye at the two men staring after my unexpected retreat. “Call me if you need me, okay?”
I don’t specify who should call me, or what qualifies as a “need.” But they know.
How could they not?
Chapter Nineteen
Chamberlain Corporation sports a six-level lobby topped with a holographic ceiling.
When I cross through the security scanners and onto the main floor, artificial light beams down at me from a sun in a false blue sky. (A stark contrast to the blizzard outside.) My wet boots squelch across the expensive pastel marble, and as I reach the middle of the cavernous room, I pause to take a panoramic look at the brave new world around me.
Epitaphs (Echoes Book 2) Page 27