Corruption

by Jessica Shirvington

  ‘So … how?’

  Gus grinned. ‘Well, to start with, leaving the phone on was brilliant, Mags. I heard everything that went down while you guys were in that lab, including the conversations after you and Quentin were taken away. I knew where you were and that they were putting Quentin under guard. I have to admit, after Quentin found out everything, I didn’t know if he’d …’

  ‘Hate me?’ I finished for him.

  ‘Well, yeah. But he found a way to contact me through his friend, Morris. Through Morris, I managed to let Quentin know you were still alive and being held prisoner and that I was working on trying to get a message to you.’

  That explained Morris’s weird mood that morning. He’d known what was going to happen, but couldn’t say anything. I nodded. ‘I got the message. It was the only thing that kept me going in there, even though I wasn’t sure if it was real or not.’

  Gus slumped further into his chair. ‘I can’t imagine what you’ve been through. I know I’ve said a lot of hateful things in the past and most likely will in the future, but …’

  ‘I know,’ I said, saving him from having to say anything more. ‘And every hateful thing you’ve said to me I’ve deserved. And then some.’

  He cleared his throat. ‘Well, we looked at it from every angle, but there was no way to break in and get you out and we both knew it. So Quin came up with his plan to get his father to decide to let you out.’

  ‘How?’ I couldn’t fathom how it could have been Garrett Mercer’s idea to set me free.

  Gus laughed, shaking his head. ‘He told his father he wanted revenge. That he was entitled to it, and now that he knew more about the “family business” he also knew he was in a position to get the payback he desired. Garrett Mercer was tickled pink that his son finally wanted to embrace the family way. Quentin made it clear he wanted public vindication for his own Phera-tech and that he wanted you there so he could rub it in your face. He figured that once you all turned on your tech, it would expose the fact you guys were a true match and there’d be so much public attention it would ensure your safety.’

  ‘So they just let me go? But I don’t understand. Why keep me in the dark? Why didn’t you just come to my house if you knew there was a chance I’d be there.’

  He raised his glass as if I’d had a not-so-bright idea. ‘Never an option. Quentin overheard discussions between Eliza Mercer and M-Corp security the moment your release was set in motion. There were guards watching you every second until the lights went out in that gym.’

  I nodded, realising that Eliza’s knowledge of M-Corp’s underhanded dealings was no longer in doubt. ‘Go on,’ I said to Gus.

  Gus pulled out his phone and tapped a few buttons before responding. ‘Quentin assured his father that the combination of your hero complex and your puppy love for him guaranteed that you’d try to find him, starting with school.’

  My heart sank at that, mostly because it was true. ‘Oh.’

  Gus rolled his eyes. ‘Get over it. Anyway, they let you go, but at the last minute Garrett put his own conditions on their deal. He said that if Quentin was after true revenge, it had to be done properly. An eye for an eye.’

  ‘So it was Garrett’s idea to disrupt me and make me a neg?’

  Gus nodded. ‘Which basically ripped our plan to pieces. Hence plan B.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Blow everything up.’ He smiled widely. ‘Frankly, I preferred that one from the beginning.’

  I returned his smile. Because let’s face it, so did I.

  The fire at the school had been much more calculated and much less dramatic than Gus would’ve liked me to believe. He’d pulled in some favours with a few of the black-market crew and they’d rigged a number of small explosives. They were set off strategically in order to move people out of the buildings, and while there was actual fire, it was mostly smoke bombs.

  Quentin and Gus had worn the glowing rings so they’d be able to identify each other in the dark. Quentin’s job was to get me away from the masses – one I’d made easy for him by panicking – and Gus’s was to get me out. Everything, it seemed, had gone off without a hitch. Although, apparently Gus had hit a small hiccup activating the smoke bombs. The plan had been to set off the bombs before we were given our inhalers. I guessed that explained Quentin’s look of unease.

  After we’d shifted to the bar manager’s apartment and Gus had checked our food supplies and made me eat a sandwich, I asked him when I would get to see Quin.

  He rolled his eyes. ‘I’ll try not to be offended that I’m not your first choice of company.’

  ‘When, Gus?’

  For the first time, Gus looked nervous. ‘I don’t know, Maggie.’

  I pressed my lips together, biting hard from the inside. ‘He doesn’t want to see me.’ It wasn’t a question and, in fact, I realised I’d been ridiculous to even think he’d come.

  ‘I don’t know that either. Our conversations were limited at best and we used all of the time to align our plans. Whenever the subject came up of what would happen after we got you out, all he said was to lie low and he’d get supplies to us.’

  ‘What supplies?’

  Gus shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. But, Mags, he got you out. He cares. For all I know, he’ll turn up here tonight. But just … don’t get your hopes up. As I said, he’s being watched like a hawk and he might not be able to slip them. Morris is helping him, but after everything that went down today …’

  I nodded, eyeing my last few bites of my sandwich. ‘I get it,’ I said, pushing my plate away. I was full and I needed to start acting normal again. Stuffing the remains of a sandwich into my back pocket would not be normal.

  Before long, I was exhausted. There was still so much to discuss and work out. We would not be safe for long, but I was so tired. When I couldn’t fight it any longer, I stretched out on the sofa, quickly drifting off to sleep. When I woke, Gus was sitting on the opposite sofa, working on his laptop.

  ‘How long was I out?’ I asked, sitting up and ignoring the head spin.

  Gus glanced my way. ‘It’s morning.’

  ‘I slept through the whole night?’ I looked around the small apartment. We were alone and I was acutely aware that this meant Quentin hadn’t come.

  ‘That’s usually the way it happens. And frankly, I’m guessing it wasn’t long enough. You still look like shit.’

  ‘Bite me,’ I said, reaching over for the glass of water he’d left for me. My throat felt hoarse and, despite having slept for so long, my sleep had been full of nightmares.

  Gus raised an eyebrow, but then just smiled.

  ‘What?’ I grumbled, stretching my body. Everything ached.

  ‘It’s the first time you’ve sounded like … you.’

  Silence settled for a few awkward beats. I wanted to say something else, something to convince him that I was me, bitchiness and all, but …

  ‘Why’d you come back for me?’ I asked instead.

  Gus kept tapping on his laptop as he replied. ‘I barely left, Mags. Before I even hung up from our last phone call, I was driving back to town.’

  ‘Why?’ I didn’t understand. ‘I’d been blackmailing you for months, forcing you to help me.’ I’d used him for his black-market contacts and threatened him with a long stint in prison if he didn’t do everything I asked. Gus hated me.

  ‘Because you’d do the same thing for me,’ he said, as if it was the simplest thing in the world.

  I opened my mouth, but no words came out. I had nothing. Mostly because he was right. I would’ve gone back for him.

  I swallowed over the lump in my throat. ‘Thank you.’

  Gus put a hand behind his ear. ‘Sorry? I think I missed that.’

  My eyes narrowed. ‘I said, thank you,’ I repeated, this time at a more audible level.

  Gus laughed. ‘Oh, Maggie. You should see your face. Did those words actually hurt coming out?’

  ‘A little,’ I conceded with a small smile.
>
  Still laughing, Gus went back to his work.

  He was deactivating my M-Band. It was delicate work, considering we were acutely aware that, while the GPS hazer might be concealing my location for now, M-Corp was most certainly tracking any M-Band activity. Gus had a new, black-market M-Band that he’d reprogrammed to work with my microchip – now all he had to do was shut down any tracking devices in my current M-Band long enough to transfer my data to the clean band. It would still be risky being out in public. If I inadvertently walked past a chip scanner, I’d set off an alarm for wearing an unauthorised band. But that was an acceptable risk.

  Truth be told, I wasn’t exactly sure what it all involved, but Gus seemed tense so I stayed quiet on the sofa and watched the light filter in through the sheer curtains. I don’t know how long I stared at the dust mites floating in the sunlight, but I quickly snapped out of it when the music started blaring around me.

  I looked up to see a very satisfied Gus standing by the stereo, turning the volume even louder. He was playing an old song that I had always liked called ‘Uprising’. A few bands had remixed it over the years, but he was playing the original.

  ‘I’ve decided we need an anthem!’ Gus yelled over the music.

  I figured this meant my new M-Band was up and running. I smirked at Gus as he headbanged his way across the apartment, arms out wide in worship to his own awesomeness.

  When he grabbed my arm and yanked me off the couch, spinning me around, I laughed for the first time in what felt like forever. And the lyrics were right. M-Corp couldn’t control us and I would do anything I could do to stop them from degrading every single one of us.

  The words slowly seeped into me, filling me with a sense of strength that I greedily stole.

  It felt good. Like hope.

  After Gus’s anthem breakout, I resumed my position on the couch and took stock. I was starting to feel better. Physically, my body was remembering to function and food was gradually becoming easier to stomach. What I needed right now was to do something normal.

  Before I knew it, I was back on my feet.

  It turned out I’d been staring at the window for a few hours so I padded my way to the kitchen and rummaged through the cupboards, collecting ingredients to make lunch.

  Gus joined me after making a few calls. For the past month he had been trying to track down Kelsey – he told me she’d been MIA since the night before I was captured.

  ‘Need some help?’ he asked. ‘You look like you might fall into the pot of boiling water.’

  I glared at him. ‘No help necessary.’

  ‘I guess some things never change,’ he murmured.

  I didn’t look up from my cooking. I’d decided on pasta and a very light sauce.

  ‘Wanna talk about it?’ he asked eventually.

  I concentrated on chopping a small onion. ‘It was dark.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m planning on repressing it.’

  ‘Solid plan.’

  ‘Totally.’

  And that was the end of our chat about my father who’d left me for dead and the darkness we both knew I’d never forget.

  Focusing on cooking spaghetti and making the sauce while Gus worked away on his computer – setting up nearby surveillance by hacking into government street cameras – was comforting.

  As I dished out the pasta into bowls, I glanced up and caught him watching me, sadness in his eyes.

  I sighed. ‘Did you always suspect?’

  He wasn’t surprised by the question. He gave a slight nod. ‘Your dad had access to technology that was valuable. I knew that dose of neg disruption you had meant that he could make more. When you have that kind of a discovery sitting in the palm of your hand … power and money is extremely tempting. The only thing I could never work out was …’

  ‘Why I thought he was such a great guy?’ I heaped a few large spoonfuls of sauce onto Gus’s pasta and just a drizzle on mine. I jabbed my fork into the bowl of spaghetti, hoping it would alleviate the bitter taste in my mouth.

  ‘Pretty much. I figured he must’ve been taken, like you said, if he cared about you anywhere near as much as you did him.’

  I swallowed back the bile. The whole thing was still so raw. But I couldn’t pretend anymore and it was long past the point where I could avoid admitting to my failings. ‘He didn’t. I just never opened my eyes.’ I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘Gus, I’m sorry.’

  Surprising me, he reached out and covered my hand that was now repeatedly stabbing away at the pasta.

  ‘Maggie, I hacked into your closed files six months ago and found the evidence and pictures you had on me.’

  I blinked. ‘What?’

  He shrugged and released my hand.

  ‘Wait, what?’ I blurted again. Those files were hidden beneath a cyber shit-fight. I’d paid the kind of money that ensured that if you didn’t know exactly where you were going, there was no way to find them. But if Gus had hacked my files, he could’ve deleted everything I had against him. There would’ve been no reason for him to keep being my … well, in his words, my bitch.

  He shovelled a fork-load of spaghetti into his mouth. ‘Someone needed to have your back.’

  Christ, I was not going to cry. I copied Gus and concentrated on eating to give myself a moment to pull it together. When I finished, I looked back at him and simply said, ‘You’re my best friend, Gus.’

  He snorted. ‘I’m your only damn friend.’

  There was that too.

  So my new bestie and I spent the afternoon running through inventory and discussing my new plan – the one I’d been pondering for a very long time. Weeks ago, Gus had raided my room above the garage and collected everything he thought could work as a weapon. All up, we had a good stockpile, but I would’ve felt better if we had more.

  ‘Maggie, stop whinging. You wouldn’t be able to carry anything else anyway.’

  I reloaded the tranq gun, then got to work on the smoke grenades. ‘Yes, but I’d trade a lot of these for the two tech-bombs I’d been saving up.’ Gus hadn’t known I had them hidden in the ceiling of the garage, and we couldn’t risk going back.

  ‘They would come in handy,’ Gus admitted.

  That was putting it mildly. Tech-bombs worked like grenades, but when they went off they released a silent frequency that sent all tech within a two-mile radius haywire for a few minutes. Including M-Bands. People panicked when they went offline.

  But they were damn hard to get hold of. And more expensive than gold.

  The flashing images on the television in front of us caught my attention. I grabbed the remote and turned the volume up.

  ‘What’s all this about?’ I asked.

  ‘Riots in Mogadishu, Somalia. A group of rebel troops stormed the city and have been bombing and burning nearby villages.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  He shrugged. ‘No one knows. They’ve come out of nowhere.’

  I felt sick looking at the images: children injured, starving and homeless people now walking the long roads out of the city. ‘Why isn’t anyone helping them?’

  ‘Somalia have been sending in their own troops, but it only seems to be escalating things. They’ve refused international aid.’

  I shook my head. ‘The world is going crazy.’

  ‘Says the girl who’s about to declare war on its most powerful single entity.’

  ‘Someone has to,’ I mumbled.

  Gus looked back at our supplies, pushing aside the decoder and my toolkit. ‘Everything here you’re going to need, and we don’t have nearly enough money to buy tech-bombs.’ He glanced up at me. ‘Of course, we wouldn’t need the tech-bombs if you didn’t insist on going back down there. The plan is bad enough without you risking your life. Plus …’ he threw a hand towards me, ‘you’re far from your best.’

  I clenched my jaw. The idea of going back … Just talking about it had me breaking out in a sweat. But if I didn’t do this,
I was no better than everyone else who made noise while achieving absolutely nothing.

  ‘You and I both know that without physical evidence they’ll put some PR spin on it and cover it all up. It’s the only way to make sure people see the truth. But you’re right, I need to get back in shape.’ Thankfully, with our location now off the grid, we could use this as our base. For now at least.

  ‘Well, it sure will stir the shit pot, but Mags, you gotta know they’ll be looking for you and they won’t be shooting with tranqs.’

  ‘I know,’ I said softly. I grabbed my utility belt and carefully placed the smoke grenades inside before looking up at Gus, hoping he would understand.

  ‘And good luck floating this plan with him,’ he added.

  ‘I know,’ I said, knowing he meant Quentin.

  But this was something I had to do. And in a world where gambling was king, why not stake everything? Besides, as the hours continued to tick by with no word, I was beginning to wonder if Quentin even cared to know.

  Five

  Quentin did not come to me that night.

  Or the next.

  Or the next.

  After some prodding – of the annoying variety – Gus sent a message to Morris using an old-fashioned handheld cell. I wasn’t surprised to discover Morris also had a less traceable method of communication. He ran a number of established gambling rings at Kingly Academy and beyond. An hour later, we got our response.

  Q being watched too closely.

  Not worth the risk.

  In some ways, I was relieved, even if I couldn’t help wondering if he’d meant to say that I wasn’t worth the risk. Still, the break was giving me a chance to get my strength back and … facing him right now, knowing he wouldn’t be happy when he heard the new plan, wasn’t something I was looking forward to. On the flip side, seeing the constant barrage of pictures – him on the news and in the social pages at M-Corp events standing at his father’s side – was unbearable. And though I told myself the real Quentin was not the person captured in these images, I worried that the longer he spent with those people the more chance I had of losing him forever. Hell, I still didn’t even know how he felt about the whole ‘us’ thing. For all I knew, he was just being Mr Nice Guy who would never leave someone locked up in the dark.