Hostile Attractions

by Raleigh Davis

  It’s ridiculous because my house is always empty until I come home. I’m the only one here.

  “Minerva?” My heart is starting to pound. If she somehow slipped out, past the guards—or worse, Fuchs slipped in—

  “I’m here.” Her voice is weak as it floats down from the bedroom. Like she was asleep. Or sick.

  I take the stairs two at a time.

  She’s in bed, the covers up to her chin, her face white, skin clammy. Two bright spots of red stain her cheeks.

  “Sorry,” she croaks. “But I think I have a fever.”

  I put my hand to her forehead and jump at the heat there. Jesus, she’s on fire. “Yeah, you do. You must have caught something from being out in that storm.”

  “You don’t catch a cold from being cold,” she mumbles, her eyes half-closed.

  Sick as she is and she still has to argue with me. It’s… it’s kind of endearing. There’s a smile tugging at my mouth.

  “Maybe so. But you’re definitely sick.”

  “No doctor.” With a mighty effort, she grabs my arm. Her hand is small, the bones and tendons delicate. But she holds on tight. “I can’t trust any of them.”

  I agree that taking her to the doctor would be dangerous, but that fever feels nasty. Can’t a person have a seizure if their temp gets too high?

  I don’t know. I don’t know anything about taking care of a sick person because I’ve never had to do it before. It’s a weighty responsibility.

  “I should take your temperature.” I look around as if a thermometer will magically appear. “Except there’s no thermometer.”

  Or aspirin or ibuprofen or chicken soup or anything that might make her feel better. I’ve lived alone for so long that I’ve left all that behind.

  “Don’t need a thermometer. I’m not dying.”

  I’m not convinced of that. Her skin is so hot, her cheeks so red.

  I put my hand to her forehead again, as if I can take a reading that way. She turns into my touch.

  “Mmm, that feels good. Cool.”

  An idea hits me. “Wait here.”

  “Okay.” She laughs a little wildly, as if I’ve told a joke and she’s delirious from the fever.

  I get a washcloth, soak it in the coldest water I can. I wring it out until it’s just damp. I want it to be cool, not wet.

  When I come back in, she’s waiting, her eyes fully closed. She might be asleep, but there’s something restless in her that tells me she’s awake. Awake and too uncomfortable to truly sleep.

  Carefully I lay the cloth on her forehead. She makes a deep noise of appreciation.

  “Better?”

  She nods. “I’ll be okay once I get some sleep.”

  “But you can’t sleep.” She couldn’t last night either, when she was well. I felt her moving in the bed, all through the night. She’d go still for a bit, then start tossing again.

  “I slept the first day,” she says. “I never do that. Or at least not when I was Minerva.”

  My entire body goes tense. Does she even know what she just said?

  “I wondered what you were doing up there,” I say slowly. “It was very quiet.”

  “I worked eighty-hour weeks,” she says. “There wasn’t time to sleep, much less sleep in. He doesn’t sleep, you know.”

  I scoff. “He’s not a vampire. I don’t believe that.”

  Her expression darkens. “Whatever you’ve heard about him, it’s all true. I promise.”

  I’ve heard a lot of crazy shit about Arne Fuchs. Most of it I don’t believe. “The blood thing? Is that true?”

  Her eyes open. “The blood thing? That’s what you want to know about?”

  “To begin with.” If she’s in a talking mood, I’m going to listen.

  “Yes, it’s true. Once a week he gets a blood transfusion from a young, healthy donor.”

  I can’t help the way my lips pull away from my teeth. “Like a blood bag?” I’m picturing some kind of postapocalyptic scene with a tube connecting Fuchs to some young kid, blood flowing from the kid to him.

  “The donor isn’t there,” she says. “But it’s still pretty creepy.”

  “Wait, you had to be in there with him?” Someone might consider a medical procedure to be private. I certainly would.

  “I was always with him. I had to be waiting outside his bedroom when he dressed, and I couldn’t leave until he was back in his bedroom at night.”

  “But you said he didn’t sleep.”

  “He still showered, changed his clothes. And there was the housekeeper…”

  Now that was the other rumor I wanted to hear about it. “So that’s true too.”

  She licks her lips. Shit, she’s probably going to need some lip balm. Another thing I don’t have. “I never saw them together,” she says. “But there was definitely an odd current between them.” Her gaze meets mine. “A spark.”

  The spark between us buzzes hard, bright.

  I clear my throat because she’s sick as all hell and I can’t be thinking about those lips and the skin beneath her clothes.

  “You changed.” I shouldn’t be surprised, but I kind of miss my clothes on her.

  “Anjie brought some things.” Minerva’s tone is flat. She must not have liked the clothes.

  I sit halfway on the bed, keeping some distance between us. “I can get you some other stuff. And I’ll need to pick up some medicine. And chicken soup.”

  “Oh yeah.” She blinks like she just remembered something. “That’s what you eat when you’re sick.”

  “Did you not know that?” My childhood wasn’t the greatest, but I did get soup when I was sick.

  “I did. But illness isn’t allowed at Corvus. Especially for me.”

  It’s one of the more common policies at tech companies: you can take as many sick days as you want officially, but unofficially you can’t take a single day off. Work, work, and work some more—anyone who can’t keep up with that gets shamed into doing it anyway.

  I’ve never understood it even though I like to work hard myself. There’s slacking off and then there’s being sick. My dad was the ultimate slacker, which is why I can’t stand laziness. But being ill is part of being human.

  “You can’t stop people from getting sick,” I say. “Even if you’re Arne Fuchs.”

  “You’d be amazed what symptoms you can suppress when you have to.” She sighs. “Like appendicitis.”

  “What? No.” That’s not possible, even for her.

  She nods. “I had to sneak into the ER at San Francisco General one night, get them to discharge me the next morning. He never once suspected.” She says it like it was a tricky work assignment that she barely turned in on time. Not fun, but not that interesting.

  “Jesus,” I breathe. I know she’s done bad things for Corvus, but I never really thought about what it would cost her to keep working there.

  “Yep. Got a nice new scar. To go with all the ones nobody can see.” She laughs that wild, high laugh again. “Might as well lay it all out. I’m fucked no matter what.”

  It’s wrong to take advantage of her illness, but I want to hear this. More than my next breath. So I lean over, close enough to see the tiny lines under her eyes, the flutter of her pulse in her throat.

  “Who are you? How did you end up here?”

  “I never finished college.” She smiles dreamily. “Are you shocked? I dropped out to do this.”

  “But your résumé…” I close my mouth on the rest of it. “Minerva went to UCSD. Not you.”

  “We had such big ideas. Ideals. College was a waste. The real world was calling.”

  “You and your friends?”

  “It was Deena’s idea. That we infiltrate a company, expose the immoral things it was doing. And Corvus was worst of all.”

  “So why didn’t Deena do it?”

  “I was the steady one. The best actress. But we didn’t know what it would cost. A year to us then was nothing. But five years of that…” Her voice catches on
a sob.

  I take her hand, hold tight. Her skin isn’t as hot as it once was. It’s like the fever is draining as she confesses all this.

  “You did an amazing thing,” I say, close to her ear.

  “All those people died because of me.” Her breath is coming in jerky sobs.

  Chills run over my skin. “What do you mean?”

  She doesn’t hear me. “I didn’t want to do it, but I had to. I had to keep collecting and collecting, gathering all the evil things he made me do. That was what I was supposed to do there, and I did it. But none of you believe me.” She’s crying in earnest now, tears slipping down her cheeks. My heart is too heavy in my chest. “Anjie was…” Minerva rubs at her eyes. “It doesn’t matter. I deserve it.”

  I don’t think she does, actually. And it sounds like Anjie had some words with her, which is what Anjie would do. She’s very protective of us.

  But Minerva needs protecting too. “I believe you.”

  She’s done awful things for Fuchs, and she probably should have left Corvus long before now—but she gave five years of her life to get that information. And her identity too. She’s paid a high price for all of it.

  Her hand drops. I’m still holding the other one. Her cheeks are paler, more rose than red. She looks almost soft.

  “I didn’t mean to dump all this on you.” I realize she’s apologizing. She insults me, then laughs and bares her soul, then apologizes. I don’t know what to make of it. Or her. Or how it makes me feel. “I only wanted to contact my friends, then get out of here. Not get pushed onto the tracks or get sick or…” She bites her lip. “None of it was supposed to be like this.”

  “Leaving him was never going to be easy. And I’m glad I was there to save you.” I can’t help it; I press my lips to the back of her hand. Because I’m so, so glad I was there. “You should get some sleep. We can talk later.”

  “I’ll be fine in a bit.” Her voice is slurry with sleep. “Really, I just need a nap.”

  Nap sounds short. She needs way more sleep than that.

  “Minerva, if you get up, I’m dragging you back to bed.”

  Her eyes stay closed as she smiles. “Caveman. And that’s not my name.”

  I go still as stone. Again, does she know what she’s saying? What she’s giving away?

  “Oh?” It’s all I can manage without sounding too eager. I don’t want to scare her into silence.

  “It’s Emily.” She turns deeper into the pillow. Her mouth purses once, twice, and then a relaxed stillness steals over her.

  She’s asleep. Finally.

  As quietly as I can, I fish my phone from my back pocket. Before I can think better of it, I fire off a text to Finn.

  Her real name is Emily.

  Chapter 15

  He’s feeding me soup.

  Soup and toast and even a bowl of fruit, like I’m some kind of invalid. True, I feel like hell, but the kind of hell that could get up and feed myself.

  When I suggested that, Elliot gave me a dark look, then held the spoon to my lips. “Your hands are trembling. And whenever you sit up too long, you start panting. Now eat.”

  I open my mouth for another bite. It’s soup from a can, the chicken cut into too-perfect cubes and the broth the yellow of a crayon, but it still tastes good. And the toast is sourdough, way fancier than the soup.

  “That’s better,” he says. “If you argued less, it’d make things easier.”

  I open my mouth to point out that I haven’t been arguing at all the past few hours—I’ve been asleep—but he shoves the spoon back in my mouth.

  The twitch of his mouth tells me it was intentional, to keep me from talking.

  He’s not sweet. Our time together has revealed that he’s short and surly and he’s helping me against his better sense. The way he’s lifting the spoon to my mouth isn’t exactly gentle—it’s more efficient than anything. Food goes into the mouth, get it in there I can picture him thinking.

  But there’s care in him. It’s rough, but it’s there.

  “Enough,” I say between bites. “Thank you.”

  He lifts a napkin, pats my lips. “You sure? There’s more.”

  I nod quickly because he’s got a look like he’ll keep going until the bowl is empty. “I’m full.”

  He sets the napkin on the lap tray. I’m propped up in his bed, the tray of food across my lap, and he’s sitting next to me, leaning over me. He smells clean, fresh, like he just got out of the shower.

  I can’t smell that good, not when I’ve been sweating out a fever for hours.

  “Eat a few bites of fruit,” he orders.

  He really is a bossy asshole. If I say no, I already know what he’ll respond with: “It’s good for you and you need your strength back.” And then he’ll give me that lawyerly look, the one that says I can’t argue my way out of that one.

  I like his bossy-asshole side. It makes me want to argue with him.

  I used to love arguing with men. Give me a man who’d debate me for hours on just about anything, and I’d be panting with lust by the end. And not stupid “I’m the man so I’m right” arguing. Real, deep arguments. A matching of wits.

  A fight over fruit isn’t a battle of minds, so I take a bite of some melon. But I’m tempted to give him some sass regardless.

  Minerva didn’t sass anyone. She gave orders, threats. You didn’t argue with her because she had the upper hand in any situation.

  I dreamed that I told him my real name. And that he said it soft and slow, rolling it in his mouth like rare winter fruit.

  I’m also worried that I didn’t dream it. That I really told him. Things were fuzzy in that fever before he made me take some ibuprofen.

  I take another bite—a blueberry this time—then ask, “Is this enough?”

  He peers into the bowl, giving me a view of the top of his head. His hair is thick, dark, a touch longer than I would have expected. It’s got waves, and it looks like he’s run his hands through it several times today.

  “I suppose that’s good.” Oh boy, Mr. Grudging.

  “I try,” I say dryly.

  He pins me with a dark look. “You’re feeling better.”

  “Wasn’t that the point?” If he wanted me dead, there are better ways to do it. Like leaving me on the Caltrain tracks.

  He doesn’t answer. Instead, he takes the tray and sets it aside, all without getting off the bed. He’s graceful for such a reserved man. No poker up the ass for him.

  “Uh-oh,” he says when he catches sight of my flushed cheeks. He leans over, pulling the comforter tight over my thighs. Pinning me down. “Is your fever coming back?”

  I can’t dodge his hand quick enough. When his palm finds my forehead, it’s like jumper cables directly to my heart. I’m too sick to be reacting like this, but my libido didn’t get the message.

  “Feels okay,” he says to himself. “And you have an hour and twenty-three minutes before you can take more medicine.”

  And there it is again, that care that’s unique to him. I bet he has a timer set on his phone just so he doesn’t dose me a minute sooner than the bottle says.

  “I’m fine,” I say. Mostly to get him to move his hand.

  He lifts his palm but doesn’t move any farther. “We were talking before you fell asleep.”

  Oh shit. I wasn’t dreaming it. “About what?” Maybe I can fake not remembering.

  “Knock it off.” His tone is sharp enough to make me flinch. “Stop pretending.”

  I swallow hard. “I thought I might have dreamed it.”

  “You didn’t.” His voice isn’t as cold, but it’s still hard. “What did you mean about killing all those people?”

  “I don’t remember that.” At his look, I say, “I don’t. Honestly. I thought I told you— I don’t remember that. I told you about the blood transfusions and the housekeeper, right?”

  He nods. Good, I’m not going completely crazy. “You also said something about killing some people. You were crying
.”

  I stare at the far wall. I haven’t cried… for years. The first year, yes. I’d come home and cry to myself. And then I just sort of… turned it off. Turned completely into Minerva.

  “It’s a facial-recognition program.” I can’t look at him as I tell him this. Minerva would have gloated about it. “There were several authoritarian governments that were interested. They wanted to track down dissidents. So… we did that for them, to demonstrate how powerful it was. A group of feminists here, a religious minority there, a troublesome ethnic group everywhere. We tracked down every name and picture they gave us, told them where to find those people.” I pick at the coverlet. The stitches are tight, good quality. They don’t budge. “Those people all disappeared. Every single one that we found.”

  He doesn’t say anything, which I’m grateful for. I want to sit with what I’ve done. I don’t want to hear that it will be okay, that if I didn’t do it, someone else would.

  Someone else didn’t do it—I did. I justified it by telling myself that I’d expose it to the world and stop it, but those people are all still gone.

  Finally I glance over at Elliot. His head is bent and I can’t see his expression. He’s appalled. He must be. Lawyers have a reputation for being slimy, but he’s the furthest thing from slimy. He’s like a knight of old, all upstanding with his code of honor and his shield and sword of the law.

  “We sold it to the FBI actually,” I say to the top of his head. “So that’ll be the thing they use to bring me in when all this is done.”

  He lifts his head and his eyes… I gasp and rear back.

  He’s furious.

  As I watch him, I realize it’s not focused on me. That anger is aimed at something past me.

  “He’ll fucking do anything, won’t he?”

  It takes me a moment to realize Elliot’s talking about Fuchs.

  “I helped him do it.”

  Elliot inhales, his anger fading. “Yeah, but the panopticon, the spyware, killing dissidents—he pursues all that. And for what? How much more money does he need? He’s ruining lives so he can add another billion to his bank account.”