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IMARA STARED AT THE DOOR WHILE a nagging lump grew in her throat. She had just endured torture, starvation, and pain. Inexplicable pain. She only survived knowing Abe would be there for her if she ever escaped. And now, she stood behind a closed door with absolutely no idea whether her job or her relationship would last the night.
She slunk out the front door and climbed into the bubble car still waiting to take her to the airport. Before the car started moving, Keiko waved her down and climbed in next to her. “Where’s Husani?” Imara said.
“Don’t ask,” Keiko said as she pressed the button to get the car moving.
Her mind reeled as she stared at Keiko. She sought the colors with her hila, but they were already starting to fade. Maybe removing the goop wasn’t the only thing that helped with her hila. Maybe Abe’s presence did something too. Without the colors, she turned to body language.
Keiko slumped in her seat with a vacant expression. Her hands rested against her knees with the palms up as she sighed. Defeat.
When the bubble car started moving, Imara saw Husani around a nearby corner. Keiko flinched, and her hands curled into fists. Anger.
“What did he do?” Imara asked.
“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Keiko said through her teeth. Her fists relaxed as she made eye contact. “How are you doing? Abe told us you got tortured.”
“Yes,” Imara said while a frown weighed her lips down. It wouldn’t do any good to water down the truth. And if anyone deserved the whole truth, it was Keiko. “Takara wants to kill Marco Santini because of Riku. Do you know who Riku is?”
Keiko rolled her eyes and leaned back into her chair. “Yes,” she said. “Her fiancé. The man my dad could never live up to apparently.” Keiko shook her head. “Sometimes I wonder about him. Did they really love each other as much as my mother thought? Did she deserve it?” Keiko rubbed her arm with a frown. “I don’t know, sometimes I wonder. Was there a time when my mother wasn’t so evil?”
Imara stared into Keiko’s eyes searching for more body language cues. She was definitely defeated and angry, but those had more to do with Husani. Her chin kept quivering too, and she kept rubbing her nose. Both signs of guilt.
Imara’s new instinct was to search for a positive emotion, but even that didn’t seem right. Maybe instead of ignore the negative, it was better if she helped with it. Maybe she could turn the bad into good. Searching through her mind, she finally pinpointed what she hoped was making Keiko feel guilty. “You aren’t doomed to turn out like your mom, you know?”
Keiko swiped her wrist across her nose. “Obviously,” she said.
But the confidence in her voice couldn’t mask her body language. Prodding, Imara said, “You don’t have to be like her.”
In a flash, the façade fell away, and Keiko dropped her face into her hands. “Not according to Husani,” she said.
Imara lowered her eyebrows as a protective surge shot through her. “What did he say to you?”
Keiko lifted her chin just high enough that her words wouldn’t be muffled by her hands. “He said you can’t rewrite DNA.”
Another protective surge shot through Imara, ready to slap Husani across the face. But the anger dissolved a moment later. Husani was a hopeless flirt and selfish maybe, but he wasn’t cruel. “Maybe he wasn’t talking about you.”
“Yeah, that’s likely,” Keiko said while rolling her eyes. “Whatever. Husani means nothing to me. I only liked him because he compliments me every five seconds, but he does that with everyone so it’s not like it means anything. It doesn’t matter to me anymore. He can go flirt with every single girl in the world for all I care, as long as he stops flirting with me.”
Keiko did care, but maybe it was best not to push it. “How much do you know about viruses?” Imara asked suddenly.
“The sickness kind?” Keiko asked. “Not very much. Do you have one?”
“No, sorry,” Imara said. “Not the sickness kind, the computer kind. Takara said she put a virus on Sef’s ring that located his list.”
Keiko scoffed and pushed her knees up to her chin. “What good is that to her? He’s still the only one who can access it since it’s un-shareable.”
A grin started forming on the edge of Imara’s mouth. “That’s not all the virus does. If Sef ever accesses the list from a wall hologram, the virus creates a copy of the list and downloads it to the wall hologram.”
Keiko’s knees dropped as a gleam appeared in her eye. “That’s brilliant,” she said. “If I made a virus like that, we could get...” she trailed off as she tapped her ring and began working on her hologram.
“Do you think you could recreate the virus?” Imara asked.
“Maybe,” Keiko replied. She tapped away on her hologram for several seconds, then said, “Takara is way better at hacking than me because she has more experience, but also because she’s a pattern sensor and can see patterns in the code that most people can’t. Even if I do create a virus, hers is bound to be a lot better.”
She chewed on her bottom lip as she tapped her hologram screen. Her eyes flitted from one corner of the screen to the next. Awhile later, a smile curved onto her face. “I bet I don’t have to recreate the virus. I’ll make a virus that piggybacks on top of hers. Then, our virus doesn’t have to do anything but track Takara’s virus.” She tapped a few more times and said, “I’ll start it tonight.”
Imara sat back with a smile. At least one good thing had come from getting kidnapped. They didn’t get Takara arrested or stop the taggers, but at least they were one step closer to Sef’s list. “Are you going to start coming on missions all the time?” she asked Keiko. “I’ve liked having you around.”
Keiko flinched and tapped off her ring. She stared out into the night and said. “No. I’m—” She looked down at her hands as she clasped them together. “That’s why I wanted to come with you to the airport. I came to say goodbye.”
“What?” Imara asked. The question came out in a strangled breath. “Are you leaving Cairo?”
Keiko dug her knuckles into her leg as she spoke. The frown on her face kept rising and falling, as if uncertain whether the news was good or bad. “Some rich dude in Alexandria wants to hire my dad to paint a mural in his house. My dad’s an artist, by the way. I don’t know if you knew that. If my dad takes the job, it could take months to complete. So, it makes sense for us to move there during the job.”
Imara tried to swallow over the lump in her throat but failed miserably. It also did nothing for the re-emergence of the tightness in her chest. She wanted what was best for Keiko, but she didn’t want to say goodbye either. She only had five friends. Maybe four since Edrice might hate her now. And if she got fired, she could count Husani out as well. She didn’t even want to think about whether or not the list included Abe.
At least she still had Naki.
She shook her head, trying to clear those thoughts from her mind. Keiko’s dad needed a better job, and this one sounded perfect. How could she be selfish enough to want Keiko to stay in Cairo. “That will be nice,” she forced herself to say. “You can see all your old friends in Alexandria again.”
“Yeah,” Keiko said, forcing a smile on her lips. It fell away a moment later. With a sniff, she said, “I sort of lost all my friends. Last year was really rough for my dad and me, and I took it out on them. I was jealous and mean.” Tears suddenly welled in her eyes until a few spilled over onto her cheeks. “They all left me, and now I’m stuck wondering if I was that horrible to my dad too, and he just never said. I love him the most, and I may have hurt him the most too.”
It felt so natural to wrap an arm around Keiko as she cried. Imara cared about that girl a lot more than she had cared about anyone during her teenage years. But the truth of those words stung in her heart. Apparently they shared the fear that they had hurt their family most of all. But maybe that was the point of families. To be there through the worst and still love you anyway.
“I’m sure your dad understands,” she said. “If you’re worried about it, just show him how much you love him instead of only telling him. But I bet you weren’t as bad as you think.”
“Yeah,” Keiko said with a nod. She looked up with a half smile. “You know, I always liked being an only child because I got all the attention.” She squished her mouth up in thought. “But I would have liked having a sister like you.”
Imara’s head dropped just as her heart sunk. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew how I treated my sister.”
Keiko laughed. “All sisters fight. Maybe you weren’t as bad as you think either.”
Just then, the bubble car arrived at the airport. As Imara climbed out of the car, Keiko said, “Will you message me to let me know how things go over the next couple of days? I might be too busy to make it to headquarters.”
Imara nodded and hopefully hid most of the despair that had washed over her face. How would things go over the next couple of days? She didn’t know, and she wasn’t excited to find out.
