CHAPTER 21

The rest of the afternoon goes terribly. I manage to get most of the soup stain out from the carpet, but it takes far too long to find all the soggy articles on the Network and print fresh pages. The nearest printer is three floors below me, since most people don’t bother with hard copies and my floor has been abandoned.

Worse, it’s lonely. Achingly lonely, without noise other than the air vent and occasional plane flying overhead with a supersonic boom. The silence is deafening. I’m starting to think President Saito is trying to drive me mad... actually mad, not the excuse Dr. Johnson came up with.

I’m coming back up on my fifth—and hopefully final—run downstairs when I hear a strange cooing coming from my office. I slow down... there’s a free NEL tagged in the Network.

It dawns on me that I’ve never actually seen his Network tag, since I’ve only ever met him at the Snow estate. At first, I freeze. I can’t let Dr. Johnson know I’m meeting with him.

But then I realize it would be odd if I didn’t. Everyone already knows I’m friends with NEL, and while I’m not supposed to initiate contact outside of the company, there’s no reason that they can’t initiate contact with me, especially since they don’t know President Koenigin was murdered. This is my chance to get a message out.

I hurry into the room and find the gray pigeon strutting on my desk, pecking at a stray lentil. He turns in a quick whump of feathers to face me.

“Verdi, Verdi!” He puffs out his chest. “Took me a while to find you. But I’m here to cordially remind you of tonight’s ball.” He bows formally, his wings outspread and touching the two remaining piles of papers on my desk. These, however, aren’t so precariously stacked.

I hold up my hand. “There’s been an... incident.” I swallow hard, hoping Dr. Johnson doesn’t cut me off right now. But then, she can’t. Not without making everyone suspicious. And since Silber is one of Maria Snow’s friends, if he sees me go unconscious, Maria might recognize the symptoms of the sleeping poison.

“Incident?” The bird twists his head, staring me down with one beady eye. “What kind of incident?”

“The kind I can’t talk about,” I say, emphasizing “can’t.” The bird hops closer to the edge of the desk. “Until it’s been resolved, I won’t be able to go to the ball.”

He rears his head back in indignation. “Can’t go to the ball? Ludicrous! Ludicrous! For what reason can’t you go?”

I tell him the honest truth. “House arrest.” I tap the Network augment behind my ear. “I can’t leave without my augments going haywire. It’s not...” I can’t think of anything to say that indicates the nature of what happened and won’t give me away to Dr. Johnson. “If I was to go outside the building, or if anyone thought I was outside, it would go badly.”

I hope, hope he understands that means I can’t communicate fully with him, even though I know the chances are slim. He’s a neurologically enhanced life form, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s smarter than me.

I could try slipping him a note, but if Johnson is watching us, she might see him leave with the paper. She might send one of the huntresses who sympathize with her to attack him.

I can’t give her any incentive to hurt him. For now, he’ll have to deliver the idea that I can’t go to the ball... and I’ll have to hope he realizes something else is going on.

“Please apologize to Maria for me,” I say carefully. “I wish I could be there.”

Silber shudders his wings, and I wonder what he’s thinking as he paces along the edge of the desk, strutting as if he’s determined to get where he’s going... even if that place is really just the other side of the desk.

Without warning, he pops his head back up like a little Jack-in-the-box. “I must discuss this with Maria Snow. She will be sorely disappointed, and I imagine she will need to discuss this with President Saito. Leave the window open for me, Verdi. I shall deliver more news when the opportunity is right.”

He leaves my desk in a flutter of feathers—and papers, never mind how I’ve tried to stack them—and disappears from the window in a gray streak.

I swallow hard. Hopefully Dr. Johnson doesn’t try to interfere. Hopefully she lets him get back to Snow safely.

If I deliver these papers directly to Saito, I might be able to warn him that something’s wrong. Then I’ll two chances of getting my warning out. There’s pencils on the desk. If I can slip him a note...

That’s what I’ll do, but I’ll have to wait until this evening, after I’m done with everything, to get him that note.

The sky behind the skyscrapers outside my window is a fiery red by the time I wrap up my work for the day. There are still pages upon pages left, plenty of work for tomorrow, if I’m still around.

I bundle up the papers I’ve already sorted, the ones I think will be of interest to President Saito, and slip my note under the first page. If he thumbs through the stack, like I hope he will, then he’ll see my warning.

Johnson lies. She or Kay murdered Koenigin. Replaced my vials. Will knock me out if I tell.

Probably not the best handwriting, since I usually use the Network and I was making a point not to look at my note, but it should work to give him the gist of what’s going on.

I take the elevator down to his office. I’d take the stairs, but I don’t want to risk losing the pages and having to go all the way to the bottom floor to collect a single article... or my note.

The new president has already left his office for the day, probably to attend meetings, so I hesitantly give the bundle to the wolf at the door. His Assist bot gathers them from me and he takes it inside.

On my way back up the stairs—I still have a few things left to tidy before I’m ready to call it a night—I instruct Agnes to leave a message with President Saito, letting him know the papers are there and who took them for me. I don’t want to risk someone sabotaging me by sneaking off with my hard work, or having Dr. Johnson discover I found a way to leave him a message. And I hope he goes ahead and checks them now, rather than waiting until morning.

Back at my office, I freeze. There’s something... a tingle in my mind, and a slight feeling that the Network isn’t working properly. Goosebumps crawl across my skin. A cool wind blows through the window, ruffling the papers but not moving them, since this time I left a paperweight on top of the stack.

At the center of my desk is a small device, gray and circular, which I don’t recognize.

I approach hesitantly. I don’t want to trigger some kind of bomb or anti-tech field.

This ought to prevent Network communications. The thing only has enough power to last ’til midnight, so be sure you’re back wherever you need to be before then. But if there’s something you’ve got to say, spit it out. Ain’t going to help any of us if she’s blind and you’re mute.

My heart skips a beat. Though it’s typed, it has to be Ebs who wrote the note. He’s the one who would talk to me like this. Silber must have understood that something was wrong. He must have gotten a message to Maria...

If Dr. Johnson realizes I’m currently off the Network, it won’t be long before she sends someone to investigate or suggests to President Saito that I’m a threat. And if he hasn’t read my warning by then, he won’t know what’s going on. Or worse, Johnson might see the warning at the same time he does.

I grab Ebs’ note and shove it into my pocket, and then wrap my fingers tight around the jammer. Because that’s what it is... a basic, low field jammer, meant to behave similarly to Jorgen’s mangled tech. There’s a small dial on it’s face, probably meant to adjust it’s power, but I leave that alone.

I don’t want to accidently shut it off, or turn it so high that it does more to my augments than block the Network.

Without taking any time to finish cleaning the place, I close the window and lock the door on my way out. I rush downstairs to grab my motorbike, my heart skipping like rocks on a pond.