by Beth Ryan
I slowed down once I pulled up the barebones shell she had created to access a back door into the FTC’s file creation software. This was the system I was most familiar with.
I dove in, typing furiously. Screen after screen came up until I'd recreated everything that had been blasted to pieces in Audry's apartment, plus another profile for Josh.
I swiveled around to look at the weary troop behind me once I was finished typing. Now there was only the processing and loading to wait for. The light was low, the sun dipping down beneath the edges of the Earth.
Audry looked the best, having spent the least amount of time dealing with all of us. Joshua and Ivy were sitting close together, whispering again. Cooper was nowhere to be found.
"Where?" I asked Audry, not bothering to explain. I didn't have to. She knew; she'd always known. No matter what it was I needed or wanted, Audry was there to make things better.
She pointed toward the door without a word.
"Keep an eye out, would you?" I called over my shoulder as I ducked into the hall after him. Cooper turned at the sound of the door shutting behind me. He didn't seem surprised to see me. "Hey."
"Hi," he said, stepping closer.
Our voices were hushed in the empty hall. I wanted to reach out and take his hand again. I couldn't, though. I couldn't take what I wanted when I knew there was a way to get him out of this mess. He didn't belong to me. He never had.
"I need to tell you now, before the others can protest or interfere," I began, forcing myself to take a step back from his orbit. "I can clear your name. I have the cord. I can give you back your original profile or create a new one. Whatever you want. All you have to do is stay silent about the Lemniscate's secrets, and the software won't catch on that you ever knew anything. You don't have to go to Paris with us or become a wanted criminal. You're free."
He stared up at me with those large brown eyes. They held the surprise I had anticipated. Just like Ivy and the others, no one thought I would still be doing my job. My original job. Cooper was my client. The rest of them were superfluous. As far as Cooper's story went, Ivy was the enemy. She was the one who had blackmailed him, and now I knew how to get him free of her. I would do anything I could to fix all of this for him.
His brow furrowed.
Instead of the elation I expected to see once he’d processed his impending freedom, there was anger. He stomped toward me. I stumbled back and was pressed up against the wall before I consciously recognized the position we were in.
Cooper stormed into my personal space, and my lungs burned. Being shorter than me by a good four inches made our positions comical, or it would have, if the fury in his expression didn’t have my heart racing a mile a minute.
My eyes darted around to seek out an exit while my mind worked just as hard to search for whatever had set him off. There was always something inexplicable, some detail I was missing, that had set him off.
My attention was forced back to his angry eyes when I felt his fingers snag my jaw. He wasn't gentle about it, and that only made my pulse quicken. Our eyes locked, and a thrill ran through me as he leaned unbearably closer. I clenched my fists at my sides and reminded myself of the invisible line I could not cross.
Then, he spoke.
"We're going to Paris," he declared, brown eyes boring into mine as the words brushed against my lips.
My breath was ragged as I held myself still, staring down at the determined man holding me against the wall. His golden, topaz eyes had all of my attention when he bit out the last word in an almost-snarl.
"Together."
I was about to nod, unable to form a coherent word with him pressed so close. Then his weight shifted.
He leaned in even further and brushed his hand from my jaw down to the nape of my neck. He drew me down. Our lips met. My eyes slid shut, and like a current of raw electricity being shot through the power grid, everything besides essential life functions were shut down. My mind went a blissful blank. All I could hear was a silent voice within me, screaming a vague mixture of Cooper, yes, and more.
Everything fell into place.
28
Nothing in the world would ever be wrong again, as long as Cooper Hall continued to kiss me. On instinct, I wrapped my arms tight around his waist and let my tongue dart out to prompt for more. His lips parted, and my whole body shivered with excitement. Damn the rules and damn the consequences. I was never letting this go, if I could help it. Never.
"Guys, you need to see—oh god." Audry's voice broke through the perfection of the moment. We both gasped as we pulled apart, but I kept my hands on his waist when I turned to glare at the wide-eyed woman I'd once called my best friend. "Sorry. Oh god. Sorry. You really need to see this, though."
Then she was gone, and we were left to the silent hall and the harsh sounds of our own breathing.
"Um," I began, but there was nothing I could think to say.
Cooper looked disheveled, yet pleased. He stared up at me like he was planning to ignore the interruption altogether. Then he sighed. His lips pressed into a firm line and his shoulders dropped. I knew then that the moment was over.
I dropped my hands to my sides and glanced at the closed door to my right. Behind that door was reality. I didn't want what was behind that door. All that mattered now was the man in front of me.
"We aren't finished," Cooper promised.
I turned back just in time to feel his lips press against mine in a quick, determined kiss. Then he slipped into the room where the others were waiting, and the door snapped shut behind him.
Alone in the hall, I sucked in a shuddering breath and stared at the thick plank of wood I'd been vilifying only moments before. Cooper was behind that door now, and any reality where he existed was one I would willingly join.
I slipped into the dim room ready to demand an explanation or an apology. The looks on Ivy’s and Audry's faces halted my sharp tongue. Before I could catalog each feature and posture individually, a single word came to mind.
Devastation.
"What happened?"
I stormed over to the computer and scrolled through the screens Audry had been monitoring. No one spoke. My furious searching came to an abrupt stop moments later, as Audry leaned over me and pulled up an audio file. It was a communication that one of the profiler search teams had sent.
I pressed the play button with growing dread.
There was static at first, and then a short, sharp tone. A high-pitched voice, female, spoke.
"Smells like burnt meat out here. This place is gross." In the distance, the wail of emergency alarms played on. There was a crash, and someone swore.
"Pretty sure we got 'em." The voice that replied was male and louder than the woman's. He sounded like he was shouting rather than speaking into a communication device.
"Does it matter either way?" the woman spoke again. I imagined what she must look like, and all I could come up with was a hideous sneer and terrible haircut. "I mean, even with their trackers off, the chips will activate the kill sequence if they try to leave the country, right?"
"Why didn't we just manually activate that instead of putting in all this work, then?" This came in a third voice, much younger than either of the first two. Male again. I almost thought I recognized that voice, but I didn't have time to ponder on it. Heavy breathing filled the audio, and then more of the older man yelling into the device.
"Because, Joe. The children of the president dropping dead in random ghetto hovels is suspicious. Idiot."
"There's a celebration at Kingsland for our job well done," the woman announced, uninterested in the conversation or the search for our corpses. "Let's head out and let the plebes deal with their mess."
"I didn't know chips could do that," Cooper murmured, leaning over my shoulder to stare at the monitor as though it might reveal some visual explanation. He was using my shoulder to prop himself up. My skin burned where his fingers pressed against my clavicle.
An image flashed th
rough my mind then, of Cooper standing beside me on a boat. I watched in my mind's eyes as he slumped to the ground, lifeless. My heart was too tight at the thought.
"Do you have some magic resolution to fix this, too?" Ivy asked me. Her next words were muffled, her face buried in her hands. "I've really screwed this up, haven't I? They're going to keep winning until all of us are dead."
"Don't," Joshua growled, surprising me. He stood behind his sister, hands gripped tight on her shoulders. "Don't give up. You were right before. We can't stand by and let this keep happening. We'll find a way."
"What about what Rhys was looking into, extracting the chips?" Ivy asked. She looked so hopeful at this idea that it broke my heart.
"Not unless you want a spinal injury," I told them.
I leaned my head back, eyes closed. Again came the image of Cooper dropping like a marionette with its strings cut. Cooper's chest, the real Cooper’s chest, pressed against the top of my head, and a wave of calm washed over me. His grip tightened, and I knew then and there that I would do anything to keep him from dying.
And there was something I could do.
"How about," Audry began, and I hated her then for being almost as quick as I was.
We both knew the chip system better than anyone else, and we both knew what the solution was. She might have seen the way out, but she didn't see the full picture yet. She hadn't followed the situation to its completion.
"Let's take a break," I cut her off, keeping my eyes closed and my voice even.
Ivy gave a heavy sigh. I opened my eyes in time to see her shrug off her brother's grip and stride over to me.
Feet bare and eyes sunken, she slipped her hand into my right pocket and grabbed the pack of smokes hidden there. She didn't bother pulling one out, just swiveled around on a bare heel and walked away.
The other three stared after her with a mixture of surprise and confusion.
"Coop." I pulled my lighter out of the other pocket. "She isn't going to get very far without this."
For the first time since I met him, Cooper’s expression was truly unreadable. I stared back with the lighter held out to him. I shook it in front of his face. He blinked.
"I think she needs someone out there with her," I added, and his like-a-book openness returned.
He grabbed the lighter and turned away. Then he turned back to me and grabbed my chin. Lifting my face, I received a quick kiss before he vanished behind the door once again. I tried not to think about how it would be the last one, if everything went according to plan.
"Wow," Audry said.
I glared at the tone she was using. It was half judgmental and half impressed, and dripping with an I-told-you-so. I didn't need any of those things right then.
My hand disappeared into my pocket once more as I pulled out my thick-rimmed glasses. Audry's eyes were glued to them. They were her very best work, and she often referred to them in terms of art rather than tech.
"I know what you were about to suggest, and you know it won't work if we all go," I told her, passing the glasses over.
She took them with ginger fingers. I watched her inspect every inch of them and was glad when she seemed satisfied with the care I'd taken.
"What do you suggest, then?" she asked, half distracted as she pulled one of the ear hooks off, revealing a hidden port. Her eyes narrowed at the thin scratch that was hidden there. She glared up at me.
We both knew what that scratch implied. Drunken alterations weren't something I was supposed to be doing. Alterations in general were banned. It was a part of the agreement we'd come to when she first gave them to me.
"I'll need you to add some alterations to the spectacles, and then it's all down to Joshua."
"What can I do?" Josh asked, sitting down in the chair his sister had vacated.
I didn't answer at first. Joshua wasn't the one who would make trouble for me. It was Audry who would object to the plan once she realized what I wanted to do. I'd have to get her on board before Cooper returned, or I'd be outnumbered, and everything would fall apart. Which meant that we didn't have much time to get everything into place. If I were lucky, I would be gone before Ivy and Cooper knew what was happening.
My last words to Cooper Hall wouldn't be a goodbye, but we hadn't known each other very long. He'd be fine once he was walking the streets of Paris. He might even forgive me someday, when our country was liberated and he could resume the life he'd had before. By then, I'd be all but a faded memory of a man who'd done his job a little too well.
29
May 20th, 2080
I often tug at the collar of my suit when the lies become too much to bear. It is a habit and a ritual, just like the pack of cigarettes on the char-stained sill. Just like staring out the window with Cooper sitting on the bed. I don’t see my dark alleyway anymore. I see a dark life, filled with darker people.
The truth about the Lemniscate is that they never lie with their words. Instead, they lie with their actions, their appearances, and their silences. There’s a divide between us and them, between the truths they share and the lies we live.
I still don’t really know who Cooper was before, and he doesn’t tell me. We’re long past honest words now. Only actions matter when it comes to the two of us, so we both suffer in silence, haunted by the secrets we pretend we don’t have. And we dance on.
30
November 20th, 2079
The whole world burned as I walked through the wreckage that had once been Audry’s neighborhood. I couldn’t imagine letting her see this. The buildings turned to rubble and the people turned to barbecue. I was stuck in a disgusting loop of hunger and revulsion, propelled by the fact that I hadn’t had a real meal since before Cooper had arrived.
It wouldn’t matter in a few hours, anyway.
I knew how this ended for me, and it wasn't pretty. Despite Joshua's assurances that I'd manage to get into the Kingsland Mansion without much trouble, I knew how these things worked. I might be able to get in. That didn’t mean I would be getting back out again. The Lemniscate had fooled the whole world for generations. They were experts in subterfuge and secrecy. They wouldn't be tricked by a bit of looped film and a system glitch. Not for long, anyway.
I shivered, missing the coat I had left hanging off the back of the chair. There had been no way to take it with me and keep Audry in the dark about what I really planned to do. If she thought I’d left her the gun, she wouldn’t have let me go. Now she would have both to keep her safe, and there was nothing she could do to stop me.
I kicked a rock and watched it clatter down the road. Somewhere in all the smoke and flames, there were people shouting. People whose lives mattered, who had done nothing to deserve the outright attack that their government had hoisted upon them. I was doing this for them, as much as I was doing it for Audry. For Ivy. For Cooper Hall.
Taking shallow breaths, I followed the same path I always did to get home. It was mostly the same, aside from a streetlight that had been knocked down, live wires left exposed. It would be a while before that got repaired.
Turning a corner, the sounds of despair quieted down behind me. The juxtaposition between the ruined buildings and the untouched street was startling. Those who lived on the right side of things had either shuttered their windows for the night or gone about their business unconcerned.
That godsforsaken old man sat against one of the buildings, under the red glow of a neon sign. He was still holding his cracked credit card and soggy cardboard sign. He kept his eyes down as I approached.
Shoving my hands into my pants pockets, I pulled out the credit card I’d upgraded to only a few months before. It was scratched now, chipped in one corner, but still functioning. I held it out to him.
“You need this more than I do,” I told him, watching as big blue eyes looked up at me from beneath wild grey eyebrows. He reached out and then hesitated, like he’d thought better of it.
“Why?” he asked, glancing back toward the sounds of sirens and scre
aming that I’d emerged from. “What’s going on?”
“The revolution is beginning,” I told him.
I didn’t need to see my own credit levels to know that it would be enough to get him out of this gutter and to keep him out of it for the rest of his life.
I dropped the glass tech onto his lap and walked away. I didn’t have time to explain more or say anything else that would only get us both in trouble. I only hoped that it would be enough.
As I turned down the familiar road that hosted the strip mall covered in graffiti, I found myself grateful that it wasn’t raining for once. I was already morose as it was, and freezing to death on top of that wasn’t how I planned to go out.
There was a black patch over the section where white words had been the day before. They had been painted over, but I knew they were still there. The nameless, faceless soul who had put them there was added to the list of people I was doing this for. I felt like I was gathering people like so many crumpled reasons to keep walking, keep fighting. To keep myself from fully realizing what I was about to do.
I came to a crossroads and paused. There were two ways to get where I was going from here. The shortcut that would take me through the back alleys I usually used, and which I yearned for now, or the longer route that would lead right past the stoop where I’d left Jimmy bleeding from the hole in his head.
I’d made a promise to myself that I fully intended to keep. I turned right, taking the long way home.
There was an unmistakable stain on the stairs leading up to the Espinoza house. I stepped around it and knocked on the front door, wondering if Johanna would even still be living there anymore. I was the one who had kept their family afloat for so many years, and there was no telling how much Jimmy’s funeral had cost.
“What do you want?” Johanna asked the moment she laid eyes on me, one hand resting over her pregnant-heavy stomach.