“Specifically,” Angela said, meeting his eyes directly, almost defiantly, “my dependence on you is a problem.”
“How d’you figure?” His voice sounded more like a croak.
“You know my plans, my future. It’s all mapped out, and it’s going to be amazing. But I read the mentors’ write-up of my last evaluation.”
“Spy,” he teased, but the joke wasn’t funny.
“We must be informed, Kellen. Call it spying if you want, but you should do a little more of it,” she argued. “Anyway, the mentors think I have not been tested, that my life has been too safe and sterile. ‘A sword must be fired, else it shatters under pressure,’ one of them wrote.”
“Bullshit. You’re a person, not a weapon.”
“Be that as it may, I kind of see their point. If my whole life is a series of wins, if I never lose, I will lack the necessary wisdom to succeed.”
“There are lots of ways to succeed, though, and suffering doesn’t make any outcome more statistically probable than another. Considering where I come from, just being here with you is success.”
He could tell her plenty about struggle. Back home, before the MIST recruiters saw his test scores and flew him out here to the academy, keeping Sissy safe had been a 24/7 calling. Patching her up after Mama went on a mean streak. Mama always took her mean out on Sissy, leaving him to watch and hurt in impotence and then clean up after.
The academy’d sworn they’d take care of Sissy, get her out of that house. They’d brought him here, fixed his problems, and gave him an outlet to express all these thoughts in his noggin to boot. He was living his success, any way you painted it, and not a lick of it linked causally to whatever his struggles had been. Suffering hadn’t made him what he was. Right now, today, he’d still be a supergenius even if he hadn’t started out in a cheap-wine-smelling trailer in East Texas.
He’d still be important. Like Angela. Weren’t they just alike? Or was that what she meant? That they weren’t, somehow.
She leaned in and kissed him. Hard, that kiss, and close-mouthed. She stilled in the middle of it, with her lips pressed to his, and a tremble passed between their mouths, electrical, like she was in fact recording the moment. A frozen moment she could cram in a snow globe or something. Kellen turned his head, breaking their connection.
“What are you not telling me?” he demanded.
She flinched like he’d hurt her. “There is a new message on your com back in the dorm.” She raised her arm. Her own com was built in so she could never lose it. “We all got the alert, but yours includes a ticket back to Texas. One way.”
He swore under his breath. “But I passed my exams.”
“I know.”
“It’s in the contract. They let me keep enrolling as long as I perform to expectation. Well, I’ve done everything they wanted. Hell, more. Lots more.” How many papers had he written? How many databases crammed full of facts had he memorized? Even western fucking poetry, the god-awfulest stuff on the planet. He knew whole epic poems of that shit by heart and would never get them out of his brain now. The academy, the mentors, had said jump, and he’d fucking asked how high.
He took a long, raggedy breath. “Are you tellin’ me they’re kicking me out?”
She caught her bottom lip between her teeth and didn’t answer. He rolled, pushing her off, separating their bodies. All the warmth of the day fled. The air tasted like dust.
“What’s their reason?” They had to have one.
She looked at him steadily, her dark gaze impenetrable. Unknowable. “It isn’t your grades. It’s Texas. That hurricane came through this morning, our time. It was pretty bad. Cat six. Lowest barometric pressure in recorded history. Comprehensive and pervasive structural failure. Galveston is pretty much gone. Houston, too. It’s all over the channels.”
Ah. Well, as a matter of fact, he did know about that one. He’d been monitoring the storm the weather folks named Agatha. Not because he was going back, though. His family was in Lufkin, inland by several hours. Folks not from around there oftentimes didn’t appreciate how big Texas was, how much ground it covered. Even if that hurricane had hit Galveston dead-on and barreled straight up the ship channel, it still wouldn’t have affected Mama and Sissy much. This was a distraction, an excuse.
Those asshole mentors were still expecting him to take their deal. No baggage. Everybody on the mentor council expected him to flinch. To run. To do their bidding out of reflex.
So they could set fire to Angela. So they could hone her into their weapon.
And she was letting them.
He started pulling on his clothes. “Look, I ain’t leaving, but I am gonna run take a look at the terminals real quick and check in on my people. I’m sure they’re fine, but Mama can get pretty hysterical, even over minor things. She’s all about the drama. Sissy’ll need to talk my ear off, I’m sure. Afterward, I’ll…”
He had his shirt on, unfastened, and his uniform pants in a similar state of half completion. He’d just started on the placket buttons when her silence in the face of his string of chatter made him pause.
Angela had risen and now knelt in the sand naked, like a stone Hatshepsut, dark and perfect and still. Looking at him.
“No, don’t just vid-message them. That’s your home. You need to go.” She took a breath, held it, folded her hands primly, determinedly over her burnished thighs. “I want you to go.”
A one-way ticket, she’d said. And not just because of his family, his commitments. She had even framed it up for him. My dependence on you is a problem.
The bottom fell out of Kellen’s universe, and he finally understood.
She wanted this for her own reasons. She was breaking up with him. She wanted him to go. And not come back.
Chapter 6
PENTARC ARCOLOGY, UNITED NORTH AMERICAN NATIONS, 2059
You watched me walk away. His words bore down on Angela, adding to an already crushing burden of guilt.
Despite all the cruelties she had endured in the years since, that particular memory hurt most of all. Even though, back then, she had been dishing the venom.
You watched me walk away. Yeah, she had. And it had destroyed him. She could see it on his face right now. That haunted, horrible look.
She had done that. To him.
God, had she really?
At the time, she’d been certain her reasons were valid. If she and Kellen had stayed together, neither of them would have grown strong or independent. They would have been blown off course, and neither would now be worthy of respect. They had been so foolish, so distracted in their infatuation. Their grades had slipped, both of them. She couldn’t let herself regret either her actions or her motives. But self-righteousness didn’t lessen the ache. And it sure as fuck didn’t salve that dark look on his face, half kicked puppy, half roiling fury.
And while the former twisted her soul in knots, physically, she was all too conditioned to respond to the latter.
“I never meant…” Words in whispers, cringing. She knew he couldn’t hear her, not from all the way over there, but he must have seen her mouth move.
Frowning like an angry god, he prowled toward her. Bigger than she remembered, imposing, taking up all the air. Angela pressed her back against the elevator doors and blessed them for being cool and solid and keeping her from falling down when her long bones liquefied.
Life had weathered him, but tired and jaded looked so good on his face. Really, really good. His jeans weren’t starched, and his western-cut shirt was only three-quarters buttoned, offering tantalizing glimpses of a body that no longer had a shred of boyish lankiness to it. He was all grown up now.
His dark-gold hair desperately needed tidying, and her fingers flexed to service. She knew exactly what that would feel like, to touch him, to tend him. But she was rooted like a rabbit, too fascinated to run, too scared to sta
y. Her mouth wetted. She swallowed.
He dipped into the shadow with her, and the space shrunk to nothing. She couldn’t breathe.
“I will repeat my earlier question,” he said in a low voice, a rumble that bathed her all over. “Why did you come here, Angela?”
Because you are my home base. Because I thought you wanted me here. Because somebody tried to kill me, and the only place in this whole world I have ever felt safe was in your arms.
“There’s a bruise above your left temple.” He brushed the side of his knuckle against her face, and Angela had to press her eyes shut and bite her lip. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Her entire self focused on that point of connection, the brightest spot in her universe. It had been so long, so long.
“No, the other thing you ain’t saying.”
She opened her eyes and realized he’d gotten himself together. The haunted look was gone. He was even smiling slightly, a rakish half grin she remembered so well, like Rhett Butler at the bottom of the stairs. He still carried a lot of pain—she hadn’t been making it up; it had been right there, and she had seen it—but somehow he had…compartmentalized it. Pushed through it. Impressive. And here she couldn’t even keep herself from sneaking a touch.
She leaned into his hand and tried not to sound desperate. “My hotel was bombed the night before last, after I messaged you. I’m pretty sure someone tried to kill me, and whoever it is probably thinks they succeeded. I need to have my mech dredge data threads, figure out who’s talking to whom, though I do have some guesses. Mostly, I just need…time.” Her brain finished that sentence differently. She needed a safe spot, had thought that spot might be him. But it couldn’t be. No take-backsies.
“Feel free to settle a while here, then.” His hand was against her face still, strong and steady. He spread his fingers, cradling her.
She’d never seen this expression on Kellen before, not in all their years. He looked…fierce? No. Couldn’t be. Not him. And yet, that look. A shiver hot-noodled through her body, pooling low. She shifted her feet, absorbing the shudder and moving closer. To him, to warmth.
Their gazes locked, and she wanted to tell him everything. But more than that, she wanted to pull his head down and kiss him until thoughts like guilt and fear and regret disintegrated in a furnace of passion.
The sun was behind his head; she couldn’t see his face. He might have leant, and his mouth may have moved, like he was forming words. She rose on the balls of her feet, bringing her face closer to his, shifting until his fingers rested against her throat, then her collarbone. Could he feel her wild pulse?
“Well, this is the suxors.” Chloe’s disembodied voice, in Angela’s head. Wait. Chloe? But yes, definitely her. “Heads up, you two. We’re about to have company.”
The warning came maybe half a second before the wall against Angela’s ass began to move, and she didn’t have time to worry about Chloe possibly having just voyeured this entire reunion.
No, not the wall. The elevator doors. Which she had backed herself against. Damn it. She had forgotten. She lurched forward, away from the sliding doors and smack into Kellen. Obdurate body—not even a hint of softness there, all planes and angles—colliding with hers like tectonic plates, volcanic at the seams, and then he was holding her, and her arms were reaching around to clasp his thick-muscled back. She could feel every contour beneath his threadbare cotton shirt, and the miasma of leather and soap and pure, sun-kissed man stroked her senses.
The door was wide open behind her, but she didn’t give enough fucks to look. All her attention was centered right here.
“I can’t tell you how relieved I am to find you.” Dan-Dan. Except not. Can’t rather than cannot. It was Daniel now, or some weird amalgamation of the two, almost like they were fighting for dominance in his skin shell. “Did you have a nice shower?”
The differences in voice and movement were subtle, but they caught and snagged on Angela’s perception, icing her veins. The salacious thoughts she’d been entertaining whimpered and retreated.
She turned her face against Kellen’s chest and peered sidelong at her mech-clone, looking for facial echoes of the sarcasm that drenched his words. There wasn’t any. It was always weird when he played Daniel: the intonations were full of butter and snark, but inside, she had to remind herself he had no motivations, no desires or psychoses. Inside, he was just a machine. Predictable. Safe.
So why did her body react this way, cringing away from him? Surely she was too evolved to judge somebody based purely on how they looked, even if that somebody was just a robot.
She must have stiffened or something, because Kellen pulled her closer. And Angela, who before today hadn’t touched another human in more than a year and hadn’t endured a gentle touch in some while longer, wasn’t sure what to do with this sudden sensory overload. She was drowning in him and didn’t want to stop. All her other thoughts muddled and sloughed.
Touch. Human touch, skin to skin, body to body, warmth merging with its like. Combustion hovering just on the edge, so close. She remembered what it felt like, that explosion. It was elemental and beautiful and overwhelming and warm and past and future and keening and clawing and want. So very, very want.
She ought to step away, especially now others could see. She ought to get herself under control. She ought to behave like the intimidating persona she projected to the world. Like a war minister.
Instead, she clung. Just for a few more seconds. It felt too fucking good.
Chloe fizzed into visibility just beyond Daniel, and they both stepped out into the barnyard area, leaving Angela and Kellen tucked still in shadow. Kellen tensed in response, but Angela couldn’t see his face, just the scruffy chin near the top of her head.
“This is dangerous, what you’re doing, Chloe-girl,” he said.
“Back atcha.” The nanorobotic intelligence raised her eyebrows higher than a real person physically could. The effect was comic, almost cartoonish. Her form blurred on the edges where it met sunlight, but she was grinning like a cat in cream.
“I’m serious. Told you before, if the wrong eyes see you…”
Chloe cut him off with a huff. “Fine. I will go back to the plane. Real soon now. But somebody needed to show Angela around, and nobody down here was doing their job.”
Kellen sighed heavily. “Do you even know who this is?”
“Oh sure, she’s Angela. She’s your—”
“Senator Neko.”
“Yup.” Chloe nodded her not-there head vigorously.
“Of the government that has outlawed your very existence.”
Short pause. Chloe might have wanted to say something but held back. On her holographic face, though, it was hard to guess her thoughts.
“You see now why I told you to stay away?” Kellen went on. “Why Heron had Angela confined to her quarters, at least until we could figure out our next steps?”
“I am always away,” Chloe said in a barely audible voice.
Angela turned, and Kellen loosened his hold of her as if she’d asked it of him. She hadn’t. The loss of contact hurt, physically hurt, but she did need to pull herself together, if not for her own dignity, then at least as reassurance for Chloe. She took a step away from Kellen and smoothed her skirt.
“You don’t need to worry, Chloe,” said Angela. “Even after I leave here, I won’t report you. Promise. And Dan-Dan won’t either.”
Another legally iffy complication. She was getting downright mired in those things, but she didn’t see a good wiggle around this one. The last thing she wanted was for Chloe to go rogue, run away from the people who were keeping her hidden, keeping her out of trouble. A self-recursive AI would be infinitely more dangerous on its own, learning ethics based on trial and error. At least somebody like Kellen could train her. Like that vicuña.
Chloe’s
grin suddenly widened unnaturally, and her eyes sparkled. Literally. Particle effect?
“See?” she said, turning to Kellen. “She likes me. She won’t cram me back into a vat. We’re good.”
“Ang, why don’t we leave these two to work things out?” Daniel asked, extending his hand to Angela.
She shivered and did not take his hand. She would never feel comfortable hearing that nickname. If she didn’t know essentially how mechs worked, she would never believe, mere hours ago, this creature had been her way-too-thoughtful and puppy-loyal assistant. That he had talked her through a stressful in-person event. That he had saved her life when her world fell apart.
All traces of that programming were gone, wiped. She had done that. She had broken him. God. How many ways could she fuck stuff up? And she was supposed to be able to handle power.
“Nah, she don’t need to leave.” Almost as if he couldn’t help himself, Kellen settled a hand on her shoulder. Possessively. The gesture halted the dark path her thoughts were taking, brought her back to the present, focused her. Kellen went on, facing the mech-clone, “But you can make yourself useful. I need you to get to a terminal and plug your head in, find out if the attack on Senator Neko’s hotel was a contract. If a government or a megacorp was behind it, chances are they would have hired somebody else for their dirty work. Plausible deniability and all that bullshit. You do know how to access the darknet, right? Most freelancers scout jobs there.”
“I’m sorry,” mech-Daniel said, “but my protocol prohibits me from following instructions from anyone—”
“Do it.” Angela hadn’t meant to snap, but she was at the end of her emotional tether. Shit was coming at her too fast now, and not even academic, geopolitical shit her brain was conditioned to process at speed. Feelings shit. Which took more out of her, required more focus. She didn’t want to focus. She wanted to loll right here, press herself back up against this man, and pretend the last decade of her life hadn’t happened. “You do whatever he tells you to, Dan-Dan.”
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