“I was twenty-one years old and still a Level Three Operator alongside Baer and Meyer,” says Dire. “Meyer was five years older than us, but like I said, content enough just to float along with wherever the Board wanted to place him. Sabian was the same age as Meyer and already a Level Two.
“I was in no hurry to advance, even though the Board already told me I showed enough tactical skill that they intended to push me through to Level Two soon. Thought I had all the time in the world, you know? I was complete, a Board member living in Leyton—and I had Freya.”
I pull out a chair to sit, letting my bag drop into my lap and positioning myself directly across from Dire so I can see him and make sure this is real. Dire as a recruiter of killers makes sense; Dire as a young man in love does not.
“She was eighteen, the daughter of a respected Level Two Operator. If things went the way they were supposed to—meaning she’d complete when she finally got her assignment—Freya would have been a Level Two tactical Operator within a few years. As it was, she still had lots of training to finish and qualifying exams to pass. She was doing some research in the data logs, studying techniques and strategies, when she came across a bunch of old miscoded files that had gotten dropped into the wrong data log. Turns out one of them was about a side project conducted by Kersh’s bio lab fifty-five years ago.”
Dire breaks off abruptly and glances over at Innes, who’s listening as intently as the rest of us, her work at the computer still forgotten. Then Dire continues as if he never stopped, as if we couldn’t have noticed.
“Finding cross-filed data itself wasn’t that big of a deal. There were lots of different data logs, and sometimes mistakes happened. But Freya had never heard of this side project before, so she kept the file to analyze later. It was just a partial one, just bits and pieces of jumbled, miscoded information that didn’t mean anything in and of itself. It was innocent curiosity, that was all.”
From the corner of my eye, I see Baer start moving across the room, pacing. Now he’s the one too restless to stand still. “Start from the beginning, Dire,” he mutters.
“As a Level Two Op in training, one of Freya’s Board duties was to check on the training facilities throughout the ward. Make sure the equipment was still working fine and all that. There were usually enough trainees at any point that a schedule was kept to track who was going where and when. So it wouldn’t have been hard to figure out where Freya’s next check was going to be. Where she was going to be.”
I rub at the sudden chill on my arms. Dire’s words tell me he’s haunted. And beneath the room’s cheap lighting, he looks nearly old, worn down. Not strong.
“It was a brand-new building, not yet open to the public,” he continues. “The skill stations were still being set up. Freya was there looking over the latest shipment of bullets that had come in when the whole place just blew.”
There’s a noticeable break in Baer’s step before he continues pacing. I look over at Chord to see him watching me, eyes very dark. Auden is pale. Innes doesn’t react at all.
“Gas leak,” Dire says, his voice harsh. “They eventually said it was because of a glitch in the computer program that regulated the gas flow. But, you know, nothing like that’s ever happened since. Not in Leyton, or any other ward in the city.
“I had my own facility to be checking at that time, at the other end of the ward. But I wanted to be with Freya and decided to go with her instead. It was five weeks before I woke up in the hospital. Nothing but minor burns that were already healed. And Freya—” Dire’s voice breaks off.
“Was she okay?” Chord asks.
“Freya was … fine.” Dire frowns, and he rubs the side of his face, as though to wake himself. His blue eyes are very bright as he looks over at Innes. Her expression is impossible to read. “She was more than fine actually,” Dire says slowly. “She told me that while I was recovering, she got notice that her Alt had been killed in a train accident. So she was finally a complete, just as I’d been for nearly four years.
“For weeks nothing was clear, like I was looking through fog, and my head felt like crap. But Freya helped me get through it; pain aside, things were good. We had both made it through a freak accident, both of us were completes, and our future positions in the Board were secured. Eventually I felt right again. Except the more right I felt, the more wrong Freya started to seem.”
My throat, dry as dust. “ ‘Wrong’?”
“Off,” Dire says, correcting himself, the word curt. “Different. At first I thought it was just me still recovering. Then I thought it was just her worrying too much. But, yeah, different. Small things, like forgetting the name of someone she’d known for years but hadn’t seen in a while. Tilting her head to the wrong side when she laughed. Not eating her favorite foods.”
I guessed the truth then. “It wasn’t Freya, was it?”
“No, it was her Alt.”
“Her Alt.” Chord repeats the two words, as though doing so would make it less crazy.
“Something about that side project from the bio lab that she found,” I say to Dire. “Was that it?”
He nods. “Someone was threatened by what she found, or would find if given more time. By the time I was okay again, her notes and the file were gone. And her Alt had, of course, lost interest in it.”
“You’re saying the lab was behind the explosion?” Chord asks. “Because we all know the Board runs the lab.”
“That makes no sense!”
Heads swivel toward Auden. His face is still pale, but set. This is his world we’re dissecting and deciding it’s rotten inside.
“Level Operators are valuable assets,” he says. “Years of training, inherited in-house knowledge, access to elite facilities—all to form the best soldiers. The best citizens. It makes no sense why they would just kill Freya and then go to such lengths to save Dire. Not only save, but also trick into thinking nothing had changed.”
Dire lifts an eyebrow. “You’re sharp, kid,” he says. “It took me a bit longer to reason that out, and then to discover the answer.”
“So? What did you come up with?”
“It wasn’t the Board,” Baer says quietly, finally stopping his pacing. “It was only a single Operator, acting on his own.”
“Sabian,” I mutter.
“Sabian,” Baer says with a nod.
Dire says nothing, and as though sensing Dire’s weariness, Baer continues.
“After Dire got Freya’s Alt to confess—that it was Sabian who bribed her with life as a complete, as a Board member, and a guarantee that her family would never run out of resources, all to impersonate someone else for the rest of her life—he confronted Sabian at headquarters with everything he’d learned.
“Freya’s lab project actually uncovered data about Kersh’s true beginnings. It had been accidentally miscoded to look like a lab project, don’t forget.”
“ ‘True beginnings,’ ” Auden repeats. He sounds about as cold as when he was demanding answers from me, out there on that street in front of the training arena. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“Kersh provides safety for its people from the Surround,” Dire says, still sounding tired. “But it’s also a prison. Now listen, this city really started out as an off-limits zone, a place for prisoners of war, criminals, the diseased. You have to remember the Surround was chaos, anyway—it made things easier just to lock up those they didn’t want around. The Board could control the amount of resources going in. And what did the Surround care about the prisoners eventually dying out?
“But things were going from bad to worse out in the Surround, and three members of the Board began to be particularly vocal about trying to change things.”
“The Founders,” Chord says.
“You bet. Cris, Jackson, and Tamryn. They decided they had to start small if they were going to make much of a difference in the long run. What better place than a prison, already barricaded and self-contained? Over time, they convinced the prisoners to fight back against the Surround. The Founders left the Surround for the last time, crossed the barrier, and Kersh was born. And so here we are—and the Surround continues to want the land back under its control.”
“The part about us being prisoners now, though,” I say, shaking my head. I look over at Chord, and then Auden. They look about as lost as I feel. “How?”
“We’re still prisoners because the Board keeps us here in order to keep them safe from the Surround.”
“But if it weren’t for the Board, we wouldn’t even be here,” Auden says. “We’d have died out ages ago.”
“We also wouldn’t have any Alts to kill.”
Auden says nothing.
“So Sabian was acting on his own when he killed Freya?” Chord finally asks. “Why? And how did he know this about Kersh, when you and Baer didn’t?”
“Only a few of the most senior Level One Operators are ever supposed to know the truth about Kersh once being a prison,” Dire says. “At the time, one of them … well, she had a major weakness for smooth-talking younger guys and eventually got sloppy about keeping Sabian away from her records. And once he knew the secret, he went from not even qualifying for Level Three to becoming Level One within just a couple years. I’d already left the Board by the time he got there. And the Board wasn’t aware that Freya had found anything—only Sabian knew after he overheard Freya telling me about that damn file she was so curious about. When his plan went to hell because I got hurt, the Board was furious that he took matters into his own hands and not only lost one asset but also perhaps two. And that’s why they decided to bring in Freya’s Alt. Damage control. I would never have to know.”
“What did you do when you found out about her Alt?” I ask him. Suddenly this, of all the things I just learned, seems most important of all.
He sighs, rubs the back of his head. “The mind’s a messed-up thing, Grayer. I believed what I wanted to believe. And by the time I realized I was wrong, it was too late. Freya or not, I did love her, even as I was devastated to lose the person I’d thought she was.”
Chord shakes his head, his eyes black fire, lit with indignation. “You’re saying one Alt is interchangeable with another. That one isn’t different enough from the other to matter.” I can guess what he’s thinking. Chord wants nothing to do with his own Alt, the person who killed his best friend.
“I’m saying I was too sick to notice,” Dire nearly snarls at Chord.
“In the beginning, maybe,” Chord says. “Not later.”
“Listen, kid—”
“Just looking like someone and sounding like them and behaving like them—it shouldn’t be enough to be them,” Chord says. “Loving that Alt as though she were Freya, you’re saying everything that happens after birth means nothing.”
“Loving her Alt didn’t mean I felt less for Freya, you got that?”
“You really loved both, then?” I ask Dire. “Her Alt lied to you. How could you … how could she—”
“I did lie, but only at first.” Innes’s sharp voice cuts through the room.
Shock strangles us into momentary silence.
Innes is Freya’s Alt.
It’s Auden who breaks the silence first. “But now you’re both here, recruiting strikers to work against the Board.” He glances between Dire and Innes. “Why did the Board let you leave, if they wanted so badly to keep you both as Operators?”
“I knew the truth. About Kersh—about Freya and Innes. Sabian confessed to the prison, to the explosion, and to switching Alts. Everything I knew was enough to make them let me walk.” Dire glances up at Baer. “And I told them that I left all that info with a friend. So if anything happened to us, it’d all come out.”
Baer. He’s still standing there, listening, and it’s hard to imagine him as a twenty-one-year-old. I try to picture him and Dire both at that age, and Baer keeping such a secret for all these years to secure safety for his friend.
“Did you blackmail the Board so you could leave, too?” I ask Baer now.
He nods. “Not long after, a few months. And then I found out Dire was a recruiter of strikers. I understood his grievances against the Board—what I couldn’t understand was his chosen method of fighting back. He called me a weakling.”
Dire snickers. “Actually, the word I used was—”
“Hush, you two,” Innes says. She turns her head to look at Auden. Her green eyes make me wonder about her Alt, how different or similar Freya would have been. How I’d feel living in the shadow of another, forever trying to be both. “So now the question is,” she says, “why does Sabian want you dead?”
For a second, Auden says nothing. Then he pulls out his cell from his jeans pocket. He taps it awake, opens it to a file, and hands it over to Innes.
She takes it from him, and whatever she reads there has her green eyes widening in shock. “These are Freya’s notes on that old file.” Her finger slides across the screen, moving across the page. “And the miscoded file itself.”
“What?” Dire’s voice is uneven. He steps over and looks at the screen with Innes. “That’s Freya’s handwriting … and a copy of that file she found. …” He shakes his head and stares at Auden. “Where did you get these? The file went missing after she was killed.”
“I found them in a folder in the old research section of the lab,” Auden says. “They were old enough that … well … I read some of it, and I got curious, so I scanned it all with my cell before putting everything back. It’s all gone now, anyway. They’ve just cleared out that whole paper section to make room for digital storage.”
“Why were you in the lab in the first place?” Innes asks, surprised. “Most Level Alts choose active training to fulfill their qualifying hours.”
“I think the technical side of things—like our gene maps and why we’re still sterile—is pretty interesting, too.”
“I agree.” And now Innes is looking at Auden more curiously. The more she talks, the more I can see past her catlike beauty so she’s less intimidating, more human. “It’s just another way to approach a fight, isn’t it? With a different kind of weapon—knowledge.”
I think of Innes and her tracking chips in striker marks, her binding agent to speed healing, her poison in the Roark guns. I never thought of knowledge that way before—how it’s not whether things hurt or help that’s important, but the knowledge that led them to exist in the first place.
“How would Sabian know you saw those old notes, though?” Baer asks Auden. “Sabian must know you have this knowledge and want you stopped, just like he stopped Freya.”
Dire still seems unable to speak. Caught in the past. I watch as Innes reaches over and touches his arm.
Auden shakes his head. “I don’t know. It just doesn’t seem possible. I think it must be something else.”
“He did say the Board wanted to make sure these Level One trainees completed,” I add, picturing Sabian telling me this, back in the meeting room over in headquarters. “The ones I was contracted for. Because the Level Two Alts weren’t good enough to take over if something happened.”
“So he wants me killed just in case?” Auden asks. “I couldn’t care less about rank.”
“It’s possible Sabian sees that,” Baer says. He looks thoughtful but touched with doubt. “He always did find fault in Meyer for not caring more. He said it was an unworthy trait for a Board Alt, let alone a Level Alt.”
“Well, whatever Sabian’s reasoning, it’s not going to give us any more time,” Innes says. “For now, I can study those notes with Auden. Perhaps there’s something more to them than he told me about, that first time he came to me. Something he’s scared about someone finding out.”
“Maybe Sabian had been lying about Kersh’s origins as a prison,” Chord says. “It’s all miscoded, right? So the notes could mean almost anything.”
“No, that was no lie.” Innes eyes are very green, suddenly catlike again, and I’m reminded of her own skills in a lab. “I was there. The top Level One Operators at the time confirmed it.”
Baer utters a single command into his watch: “Time.”
13:18
“Cutting it way too close, Grayer,” Dire mutters. “Barely enough time to get back to Leyton and be where you’re supposed to be to kill Auden. Take the outer ward train, walk the same route you would have to get there, wait the same way. Sabian will be expecting that, and we can’t risk raising his suspicions as you go to him to get your marks removed.” His words are eerie echoes of many past instructions for strikes, of preparing to go under. “Time to learn how to lie—and lie well. Well enough to fool even yourself.”
I stand up straight. Heartbeat amped, pulse skipping. My hand reaches for Chord to settle me. “What about Auden? Where will he go?”
“Pull this off first. He can stay here for now.”
“The Board knows about this place, though. I just didn’t know where else to go.”
“Sabian has no reason to believe you won’t kill Auden, Grayer,” Baer says to me. “He doesn’t know you suspect anything. We’ll deal with that after you get back from headquarters.”
Headquarters. The idea of going back there sends new chills through me. But Sabian agreed to erase my marks; changing my mind all of a sudden, for something that I pushed so hard for, would be a huge red flag.
I have to go. No simple text to confirm completion this time. The first time I’m to break striker protocol and meet a client in person after I’ve killed for them. The first time I’ll walk in and be more afraid of them than they are of me.
“Remember,” Dire says. “Get in, finish the job, get out. It’s as simple as that.”
I take a deep breath. Slip in and out. Leave no memory. Leave no footprint. The last strike I’ll ever do and the one that carries the most significance. No target, no gun, no blade, just my weak words and transparent face.
At least I won’t need the Roark anymore.
“Dire, wait.” I pick up my bag from the ground and unzip it. Pull out the gun and hold it out. “I don’t want to take this,” I say to him. Auden’s off to my side, and I feel the weight of his emotions as he watches what would have been his instant death be passed from his striker to her recruiter—disbelief, embarrassment at having to be saved, gratitude.
Dire only shakes his head at the gun. Pushes it back at me. “It’ll set off alarm bells if you don’t have it on you when Sabian asks for it back. And also … well, just keep it on you for as long as you can.”
“Just in case, you mean.” I still have one vial. Am I to finally use it on Sabian the way it’s meant to be used? Does Dire want me to make it meant for Sabian?
His eyes are hard but worried, and I know I’m wrong. “Just in case.” To take care of you, not to take care of Sabian.
So I slip the gun back inside my bag, slide the straps over my shoulders. Horrible to admit that the renewed weight is a relief. Completely empty of weapons, my bag had felt too light.
Dire and Innes head upstairs, and I’m left looking after them. Wishing they would stay, if only so time could stop.
Auden gets to his feet. “West, I …” His gaze moves from me to Chord and then back to me. “I don’t really know what to say. Except thank you for not killing me, back in the training arena. I know you could have, easily, from what I saw.”
“I wasn’t going to kill you,” I say to him. “Not exactly.”
“Thanks for that, too, then.” He nods, exhales. “Don’t get killed.” And then he follows Dire and Innes up the stairs.
Baer walks over to me and I’m careful to not look too closely at him. I don’t want to see traces of that earlier doubt because if I do, I know it can only be doubt for my survival.
“Not all weapons are made of metal,” he says. “It’s not just a gun or blade that makes you capable, Grayer. You’re a complete, and you have earned it.”
I have earned it, haven’t I? All of it, all of this. The possibility of everything going wrong.
“Chord,” Baer says, “I know you want to go with her.”
Chord’s shoulders stiffen. “And?”
“That’s all I’m going to say. You both know what to do. We’ll be waiting upstairs. Make it fast.”
Chord and I, alone. I turn to face him.
“You think that’s Baer’s way of telling me I should go with you?” Chord asks. His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. They’re carefully shuttered, all emotion banked down so the fire of what he’s feeling won’t escape, burning both of us.
Because I have to go, and he has to stay, and that is not something that can be argued.
Still I nod and smile, wanting to pretend for just a bit longer. “Yes.” Our shared lie on my lips.
He sighs. “Yes.” Comes closer, puts his hands on the sides of my face. “I know you’ll be okay, West,” he says, his voice rough yet soft enough to make my chest ache. “You will be okay.” His desperation won’t let me believe otherwise.
“I know,” I say.
“Lie like you’ve never lied before.” A hint of a smile on his lips. “Better than you ever did with me, okay?”
“I will.” I force a small laugh. “Even though I swear I’ve never lied to you.”
Too many memories of too many close calls flicker across his face, and I know he’s haunted by her, my Alt who won’t stay dead. She’s only ever one blink away, that one degree separating who she was from who I am. How to tell him she can’t go quiet yet? That it’s she who makes that part of me work, kill, lie?
“I can go out there with you,” he says suddenly, fiercely. “He won’t even see me. I’ll be—”
I shake my head. “You can’t do that, Chord. You can’t do any of this. Only I can. If Sabian even—”
“He won’t. I swear he—”
I kiss his words away. Absorb his fear with my hands in his hair, draw it from his skin with mine. Like sickness threatening to cloud his judgment, a thorn pricked with good intention … a drug to make him vulnerable.
Not this time.
“West,” he says against my temple, my ear, my neck. “Please.” And I know it’s not a plea to change my mind, but for me to come back.
I wrap my arms around him, make a new memory of how he feels against me, a different kind of mark than those around my wrists.
A soft trill of my watch—felt against my arm more than heard—and my pulse, already racing, speeds up even more.
“I have to go, Chord.” The words are wrenched from me. The last thing I want to say—the only thing I can say.
One final hard embrace and he’s the one who lets go first. It’s right and what has to be done, but it hurts just the same.
Chord’s lips on mine. The last parts of us left touching now because it’s good-bye and it’s so very hard, so excruciatingly painful. “The faster you go, the faster you get back,” he whispers against my skin. “Just remember that I love you.”