So slow.
Why am I so slow? When it’s my life to save now and not some other Alt’s that I’m ending—
Someone steps into the room. A guy, with wide shoulders. And he’s tall. I picture the large shoes from beside the bed and for a long, crazy second I’m sure it’s him. That this was all a trap laid by Sabian, a trick to make me think this was an empty.
“West?”
Chord’s voice coming through a dark that’s suddenly lifted by moonlight and my mind is absolutely blank.
He walks into the apartment, shutting the door behind him. The room goes dark again but not before I get a glimpse of his face. The hard set of his mouth, his eyes frantic with worry as he looks around. His hair a wavy mess from the wind and the rush to get to me.
I manage to sit up. “Chord.” His name is a rough whisper, low and desperate. “Down here.”
He’s next to me in a second, on his knees. “West.” His hands run all over me, too much and not enough, checking for whatever damage he thinks he must have done to bring me to the ground.
“I’m okay, I’m fine,” I tell him. “You just sur—”
“I’m so sorry.” Chord’s voice is too quiet, the surest sign of his anger. Slowly his hands on me go still, as if afraid to believe I’m really not hurt. But he keeps them on my arms, holding them tightly, and I know his fear was—and is—as great as mine. “I couldn’t warn—” He breaks off, swearing under his breath, then says furiously, “You’ve got to stop turning off your damn cell, all right?”
I check the sleeping weight of it, still in my jeans pocket, and press my thumbprint against the home switch until it vibrates. “I meant to turn it back on earlier,” I tell him.
“Don’t lie.” His tone scalds me even as his hands are gentle on my arms. “You don’t need to lie. I know why you did it. No one in Kersh missed that news file.”
A shudder runs through me at the memory of that moment. All those eyes on me, seeing me as a cheater, a murderer. And they would be right. “You’re still mad, though.”
“You just took off,” Chord snaps. “You expect me to be okay with that?”
“I had to. This is—”
“No. Quit it with the excuses. I think I’ve heard them all by now.”
“This is different.”
“It’s not. It’s still about your survival, isn’t it?”
I shake my head. “It’s not my Alt this time, or Sabian, or even just the Board anymore, Chord. It’s everyone.”
“If it only takes one person to kill you, what does it matter?” The words are torn from him, raw and hollow. His hands tighten on my arms again, just for a second, before they let me go.
“What about Baer and Dire?” I ask him. The room is colder now without his touch, and I shudder again. Pull my knees to my chest, wrap my arms around myself.
“What about them? Do you really think they’re afraid of Sabian?”
It’s so easy for Chord to dismiss Sabian, having never met him. He’s never heard that false, friendly voice, seen the void in those hazel eyes.
“West,” Chord says, and I can hear the frown in his voice, even if I can’t see it on his face, “however much you fear the guy, Baer and Dire can handle—”
“I think they have good reason to be afraid,” I blurt out. “They’ve been watched this whole time, all these years. Who do you think Sabian’s going to talk to first, if I stay under long enough that he’ll stop waiting for an idle to come along and fix his mess? What Baer and Dire don’t know might be enough to keep them safe.”
“You know they wouldn’t care about that, if they could help you.”
“I care, though! Just like I care about the same thing happening to you, all right?”
Even in the half dark I can’t miss how his eyes go narrow, hot with a fire of his own. “Then you care too much, West, if it means putting yourself in more danger.”
“I’m scared, Chord,” I whisper hoarsely.
His fingers against my face, over the raised streak of my scar. “I know,” he says simply. And that’s all. Not Don’t be or Why, just his acceptance of how and what I am, how I think and feel. It’s this that cuts me apart and gives me away to him, pieces of me he’ll take better care of than I ever could.
“Then stay,” I say against Chord’s mouth. “Please.” It can’t be wrong to want this. If it’s a weakness to want Chord with me now, to ask him to stay instead of making him leave or having me leave him, then I’ll be weak.
He pulls away just enough so he can meet my eyes. Are mine as naked as his, stripped by the darkness of the room even as it conceals? “I didn’t find you only to leave, West,” he says.
It hits me then. What I missed in the rush of seeing him.
“Chord, how did you find me?” I think of my cell, wonder if he tracked me that way, the way he once did. Though shouldn’t the fact that it’s sleeping make a difference? If not, then what’s stopping anyone from—
He takes my hands, traces the marks around my wrists. “Tracking chips, remember?” he says. “I was at Dire’s.”
I nod, my relief immense. “For a second I was worried that I missed something, or left something behind.”
Chord pulls me to my feet. “No, just me.”
I squeeze his hands and then wrap my arms around him. “What about the others? What happened after you guys got the news file?”
“Auden lost it, of course, when he heard about Meyer. The official statement from Sabian is that the Board believes it to be a political thing and that you were hired as an assassin. That ultimately they are dedicated to tracking down who hired you, but in the meantime, their best lead is finding you. Baer and Dire had to physically hold Auden back from rushing out to find Sabian. Guess he really does take after his dad with the hotheadedness.”
“Luc was a bit like that, too,” I say. Maybe not to the same extent as Auden, but still …
Chord nodded. “He was.”
“What then?”
“Auden wanted to go and let everyone know he was still alive, that you didn’t kill him, but Baer and Dire stopped him.” His words have an edge, telling me he had no say in this decision.
“Chord, they had to. Auden proving that he’s still alive doesn’t mean Sabian’s not going to try some other way to get to me. And it won’t bring back those two Alts I’ve already hurt. Sabian would still want me dead because I know too much.”
“I know that. It doesn’t make it any easier.”
“Not for Auden, either,” I point out. “He also can’t prove Sabian killed his dad.”
“Or had him killed,” Chord says. “Maybe tactical—”
“If Sabian didn’t do it himself, he’d get someone from way outside the Board. Not a Level Two Operator. Too dangerous.”
“And we still don’t know why he did it, when it was Auden we thought he was after.”
“Maybe he was really after both the whole time.” My hand curls into a loose fist in his hair, holding on. “I think Sabian’s planned all of this, and not the Board. He was never going to let me go, whether I killed all of them or not.”
Chord sighs. “Maybe. Probably.”
“And Dess?” An image of his face as he ran off, wanting nothing more to do with me because of what I was doing, what I wouldn’t do. “Did he come back?”
“Dess?” Chord pulls back, surprised. “I didn’t even know he was out there. Was he with you when you got the news file?” I wonder if he’s thinking about Taje, his little brother who was made an incomplete over a year ago now. And if he pops into his head at times like these, just as Ehm still does for me.
“No, he … left right before that,” I tell him. “But, Chord, he found out about everything. He heard us talking while we were at Dire’s.”
“How were you planning to explain your missing marks to him, West? I think lying hurts you just as much as it hurts the person you’re lying to.” His hand brushes my hair off my face to take the sting from his words, make them not an accusation. “Especially when you’re trying to keep them safe.”
“I don’t know, I wasn’t thinking about what to tell him. Only that I would.” And that I could only hope he’d be okay with it—because it was never about Dess, or even Chord, really, but me, my own selfishness. “Dess wanted me to finish the job. To kill Auden.”
Chord swears under his breath. “He said that?”
“Yes, but only because he was worried about the Board coming after me if I didn’t. Also …” I’m on the verge of telling him the rest. About Dess’s jealousy of Auden—something I don’t think even Dess knows exists—and his insecurity over being displaced by someone who’s actually related to me by blood, Alt of an incomplete brother or not.
But I don’t. It seems like a betrayal of sorts to reveal these parts of Dess to another, though I know he’s comfortable with Chord, too. But Chord is not the person Dess met while on the run; he isn’t the person who could have walked away without a word of encouragement and didn’t; he isn’t the person who gave him blades out of nothing more than free will.
So I stay quiet, and I know if Chord knew, he’d more than understand.
“Also?” Chord prods, waiting for me to continue.
“Nothing. It’s just … I want him to be okay.”
“If Dess is smart enough to have figured that out about the Board, then he’ll be okay.”
“Yes.” My one hand is still caught in Chord’s hair, and I force myself to let go. I rest my hand against the back of his neck, my marks against the vulnerability of his bare skin there, and tell myself I can’t damage him.
“Time,” he asks softly.
20:57
“It feels later than that,” I say, just as quietly. For whatever reason, it seems right for us to grow hushed now. As though any kind of safety to be found here is the borrowed kind, tenuous and finicky. The sleep that avoided me before is creeping in. I yawn hugely behind one hand.
“Hey, don’t fall asleep on me yet,” Chord murmurs into my ear. “The bed’s right over there.”
My pulse kicks up a notch, cutting through the blur of fatigue. “The bed’s … small.”
“I know. Good thing I’m not a bed hog.” He brings me over to the bed and sits down on the edge and pulls me down next to him. There’s a thump of something falling to the ground.
Chord picks up my bag from it where landed at his feet. He passes it to me. “Did you have to use it on the way here?”
It. The Roark, of course.
I shake my head as I move the bag onto the foot of the bed—on the other side of me, away from Chord. The weight of the gun no longer seems so noticeable now, as though its time had come and passed, no longer of use. But I still don’t want it anywhere near him. “No, but I might have, if I had no other choice. I didn’t have anything else.”
His hand rests on my face, on my scar. “I’m not judging you, West. Even if you did use it. How can I judge you, when you’ve managed to keep yourself alive for this long? Doing whatever you need to do, or felt you had to do?”
I lean against him. He’s solid, and unbearably close, and more than anything I wish we weren’t here. I should have known the past isn’t changeable, or fixable, especially for a future built on even more death. Like building something on an already cracked and toppling foundation. Fighting fate.
Even though I don’t see him doing it, I can feel Chord reaching into his jacket pocket. “I had to go out to your place first,” he says. “Otherwise I would have been here sooner.” He finds my hand, places something in my palm. “For this.”
My gun. The feel of it is instantly familiar, like a piece of jewelry that’s been worn close to the skin for so long that it’s no longer felt. Simply there—silver bone, steel tissue.
“And these.” My blades. Chord gently folds my fingers over everything. “To do what you need to do. I don’t care who you have to kill. As long as you’re the one left standing.”
A fistful of weapons on my lap, what I’ll need again to help save myself. Chord can only be my shield in so many ways.
I put the gun in my jacket pocket. One blade goes in the other pocket, the other in that of my jeans. “Thank you,” I say to Chord.
He kisses me slowly. “You’re welcome.” Then he takes off his jacket and tosses it on the floor next to the bed. Reaches over, unzips the front of my jacket, and works it off my shoulders.
“What are you doing?” I ask him, doing my best to keep my voice level.
Knowing what my jacket holds, he’s more careful with it than he was with his own, and drops it down slowly onto the floor next to his. “You’re tired, aren’t you? I thought you wanted to sleep.”
Sleep. Squished next to him on a bed that feels smaller than ever, so not touching is impossible. Not wanting him impossible.
A curl of heat in my stomach even as cold logic has me shaking my head, trying to clear it. “I can’t sleep. I have to decide what to—”
“You’re dead on your feet, West.” Chord shifts me over so we’re both lying down on the bed. “A few hours, that’s all.”
I turn onto my side, fit my body against his. He pulls at the covers and flips them over so they lie over me. And he’s right. I can’t deny that my eyes are heavy, my words slower in coming. Even my thoughts seem less than clear, too raw. Being so close to him leaves me vulnerable, but also safe. “I need my gun,” I say against his neck. “I’ve never slept in an empty without it close by.”
“It’s okay. I’m not going anywhere. And I’m not tired.” His mouth on my temple. “So good night.”
“Hmm.” I move my hand up to touch his hair, then down along the back of his neck, before I wrap my arm around his chest. Like marking what’s mine. “I’m glad you’re here, Chord.”
“Me too.”
Sleep. There is no worry about the nightmare coming back tonight, of seeing my Alt—my mind is too full of other unpleasant things. The sound of distant sirens, tripped alarms, and the occasional gunshot. At some point, I must say something in my sleep, because through the haze of dreams Chord’s telling me not to worry, it’s not for us, they’re not coming for us.
They are, even if we’re completes. It doesn’t matter—
Skin against skin, soothing me. I love you, and we are fine.
When I wake up, it’s still dark in the room, and I can tell I’m alone in the bed.
I sit up and the covers and Chord’s jacket slide off me. It’d been spread out on top of me as another blanket.
Chord.
Where is he? My eyes are still fuzzy and it’s hard to see and his name is on my lips—
His hand clamps over my mouth. I can just make out his face. He’s crouched over the side of the bed closest to me and he’s holding a finger to his lips. Don’t make a sound.
Someone’s outside. At the patio door. There’s a slight shifting of moonlight from behind a shadow.
Fear works its way up my throat and shakes me fully awake. Chord’s low, soft whisper in my ear as he leans closer to me. “Take this and get out of sight. Wait for me.”
He presses my gun into my hand, the grip warm enough to tell me that he’s been holding it for a while now, letting me sleep under his guard. He gets up and slips out the front door, around the corner from the patio. A flash of something in his hand as he leaves, and both relief and dread fill me.
Chord’s good with a knife. But he’s never used them for me, or over me. What if his emotions get in the way?
I scramble off the bed and stay low to the ground as I shuffle over the few feet to the wall along the patio door. Flatten myself against it as much as possible as I straighten up again. I clench the grip of my gun.
Now that I’m closer to the patio door, I hear it: from behind the cheap drape pulled across the door there’s the thin, high-pitched buzz of a glass cutter at work. Then the nearly silent snick of the small panel of scored glass being lifted away.
I watch—admiration and frozen panic fighting a battle of their own in my head—as a hand reaches in through the new hole in the glass, pushes aside thin cloth drape, and feels for the locking mechanism.
Flips it open and begins to slide the door over.
I lift my gun, and it trembles in the dark. It wavers, unsure.
Shoulder or knee? Shin or elbow? What’s the best way to slow down without killing?
I don’t know. I don’t know.
My lungs are straining from not daring to breathe and my mind is frantic with thoughts of Chord and where he could be and what he could possibly be doing. The barrel of my gun is still undecided when the Alt steps in, perfectly silent, perfectly smooth—exactly as I would have done it.
Without warning, he’s flying into the room with a broken shout and landing on the floor in a clumsy heap. Caught off guard and pushed from behind.
Something I would not have done.
Chord steps into the room from the patio. His knife is still in his hand, ready to be put to work, as he readies himself for the Alt who’s already on his feet, gun beginning to aim. Not at Chord but at me.
Fast recovery at least. In that, I can still be an equal.
My flying leap takes him down at the knees, his gun flying across the room, and only for the most fleeting of seconds does it cross my mind how slight he feels, how his weight can’t be much more than mine—
And then I’m pointing my gun at his face. His face, twisted and harsh.
And see that he’s a her.
A girl not much older than I am, with vivid copper eyes and long brown hair in a sleek ponytail. But in my mind I’m back in that alley in Gaslight and the eyes I see are bleached of their copper color, the ponytail messy and dyed violet and tangled up with a yellow scarf that has a floral pattern.
This Alt. This is the Alt of that idle I hurt. This is the Alt who I saved … who now wants to kill me.
Confusion turns to cold fury and that dark part of me hisses sharply in my head. Just finish it.
I push the voice away and ever so slowly lower my arm, let my hand go slack. My gun drops to the ground next to me, next to her. This Alt who owes me her life.
“Why are you here?” I ask her. I hate the sound of my voice, full of doubt and hurt, sounding younger than I am—and much too innocent to last much longer in this match. “How did you find me?”
A long beat of silence. “The Roark,” she finally says. “Prototypes are built with a shadow system so they can be recalled for testing. You forced my father to withdraw one for you to use. But it’s not hard for a Level One Operator trainee to access tracking and restart a shadow if they know there’s a missing one to look for.”
My father.
This is Sabian’s daughter.
“I don’t understand.” I’m confused, reeling, thinking about that black contract and Sabian knowing exactly where I was this whole time. “Why did Sabian send you here to kill me if he could just track me down himself? And you’re a complete. You don’t need any more training. You don’t need the reward.”
“This isn’t about that stupid reward.” Her words don’t hide her anger, or disgust, and beneath it all I hear her Alt, speaking on her cell to her mom, that she was going to be home soon. “This is about what my father hired you to do.”
“He hired me to save you.”
“You had no right to save me.”
“West, who is she?” Chord asks as he helps me up, his other hand grabbing my gun. Even in the flickering, uneven light, the confusion on his face is obvious.
I hold on to his arm and pretend to be steady. “A complete. Sabian’s daughter.”
A single indrawn breath. “You mean one of the ones Sabian hired you for?”
“Yes.”
“But you got rid of her Alt for her. Why would she want—”
The girl gets to her feet, careful to move slowly. Two against one, and neither Chord nor I are easy targets to overcome. “A complete at the hands of a striker means nothing,” she says fiercely. Fire in her voice, laced with hate. If words could kill, I would already be dead. “You took away our only real chance to prove ourselves worthy! Everything we’ve trained for and worked for since birth! You had no right.”
Only Chord’s hand on the small of my back keeps me from physically backing away from her rage. I’m struck dumb at her venom, and it’s he who speaks next.
“Watch it,” Chord says to her. His voice is deceptively quiet, pushed nearly too far. “She saved your life.”
She ignores him, glaring at me. “You and our father took away what should have been ours.”
“You say ‘ours.’ You and your brother’s?” I need to be careful. I can’t mention Auden yet, not until I know why he’s been set up to be killed. Not until I know he’s not going to be in danger by her finding out, this daughter of Sabian’s.
“Mine and my brother’s,” she confirms. “The two contracts.”
So she doesn’t know how far Sabian’s plans really go. But what does she know, then? What to say without saying too much? Because there’s more than guns and blades involved in this game.
“You don’t have an answer, do you?” she goes on. “What made you think it was okay to decide who was worthy and who wasn’t?”
“What difference does it make?” I say. “You’re a complete, what every Alt fights for. And not only a Leyton one, but also a Board one. Exactly what Kersh needs to stay strong.”
“I still need to prove that! I don’t know how strong I really am or that I’m what Kersh needs. All you’ve done is put everything in doubt.”
I wrap my arms around myself, wholly chilled, not only from the cool night wind blowing in through the open door, but also from the depth of what she believes. I don’t even know what to believe anymore. Didn’t I make everything stronger? How could I prove it? What could make this girl believe it?
I look at her. Feel the wind find its way into my guts and deep into my bones. “Why are you here?” An echo of the very first question I asked her. I’m not going to let it go unanswered again.
“You killed our Alts.” The glint of faint moonlight off her eyes, which are all too sane and full of determination. The same kind that I’ve tasted myself, lived off of, made me keep going. “So you’re going to be those Alts now.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask her.
“There’s only room for the best. If we can beat you—the striker who killed our Alts—then we’ll know we’ll have killed them for sure, if we had the chance. And I need to know we would have won, if not for you.” Full-blown pain reaches her eyes, obliterating the logic and the will that was there. “Besides, if not for you, Auden would still be alive.”
Beside me, I can feel Chord’s entire body go tense.
“Who was Auden to you?” I ask her.
“I loved him, and you killed him.”
She sounds broken, hollow, and for a second I think of my Alt. She must have felt like this, holding Glade’s necklace in her hand and knowing it meant I’d killed him, the boy she loved.
“Auden is—” Chord begins.
I squeeze his arm, hard, to make him stop talking. As much as I want to tell her Auden’s still alive, I can’t. She’s Sabian’s daughter—no way I can trust her to keep such a secret. It’s still possible to save Auden. His being alive is the one card I have left to play in making sure he stays that way.
But now I can also add revenge for Auden’s death to her list of reasons of why she needs to fight me.
“Why would I ever agree to your challenge?” I ask her.
“Because we’re not giving you any other choice. With this black contract out on you, you’re dead either way, whether it’s going to be some idle or our father.”
“Unskilled idles don’t scare me, and neither does Sabian.” A lie, if only so I can make myself believe it.
“What about him?” she asks, her voice rough and savaged as she looks at Chord pointedly. I know she’s thinking about Auden, wondering why he’s gone and Chord’s not. “He might be an accidental PK. It could be tomorrow, or years from now.”
My hands are fists at my side. The only thing keeping me from attacking is knowing that I would do the same if I were her; I would say the same, think the same, if not worse. The idea of Sabian going after Chord makes me raw, furious. “If you win?” I ask her.
“You can die knowing that Kersh is in good hands after all,” she finishes. Not even a trace of arrogance there, just the simple fact of truth. She’s an idle of the Board, born and raised to be the best. You’d expect being complete to be enough for any Alt; that it’s not for her, this future Board member and Level 1 Operator, speaks well of her eventual intentions for Kersh. I also acted for the city’s sake, but it’d be wrong to say my reasons were entirely selfless.
“And if West wins?” Chord asks.
“My father lifts the contract. No more being hunted.”
“You can’t force Sabian to do it afterward. You’d be dead, remember?”
She turns to him. Her look is withering. “It’s not hard to set up a news file. And tapping into our broadcast system as future Level One Operators isn’t that hard, either. A news file about our father hiring her in the first place is already triggered to go public if he doesn’t call the contract off. And if she dies, I’ll delete the news file myself. I’d have no reason to shame the dead.”
Such a threat can only mean one thing.
“Sabian doesn’t know you’re doing this, does he?” I say to her, another piece slowly falling into place.
“Even if he did find out, he couldn’t stop us. Not with what we know now.”
“West.” My name on Chord’s lips, full of warning. “Don’t listen. You don’t need to do this.”
I shake my head. “Chord—”
“She does need to,” the girl says to him. “She owes us.”
Chord swears at her. “What if she told you your Alts are still—”
“They’re dead, Chord,” I blurt out, cutting him off. I know he wants to save me, but not by setting the Board after the non-Alts instead. I’ve already taken away too much from them. “They’re gone.”
The girl shakes her head. “Nothing you say will—”
“What if she wasn’t the one who killed Auden? Or Meyer?” Chord snaps at her. “What reasons would she have to want them dead?”
She looks over at me. Her eyes are very hard. “So then who hired you?”
I can’t tell her, as much as I’m tempted to scream her father’s name in her face. I remember Sabian’s warning about what would happen if details of the contracts ever leaked—how he would hurt those important to me.
I look down and say nothing.
“And if I killed you first?” Chord says to her. The coldest and calmest I’ve ever heard him—he’s furious at my silence. He’s pointing my gun toward the girl. “West doesn’t have to do it. No one would know the difference, if you’re going to die anyway. No one could stop me.”
“She would stop you,” the girl says, her gaze moving from Chord back to me, as though already sure he’s no real danger. “A part of her knows she shouldn’t have done it. That it’s absolutely gutless to kill an idle without any warning. She’s already wondering how she’s going to live with it.”
Chord’s shaking his head. The flickering of filtered light is to his back, leaving his face in the dark, but I don’t need to see it to know his look of defeat. In this, he can’t help me. “West, just say the word, and I’ll do it,” he says.
But of course I can’t, because she’s right.
Chord stares at me, my silence my answer. “West—”
“No, Chord. I have to do it.” My words are impossible to take back. Not that I would, because Chord’s safety is not something I’m willing to play around with. Revealing Auden wouldn’t save him for long, and claiming innocence over Meyer’s assassination means nothing without proof.
“I win, you get rid of Sabian’s contract on me and no one touches Chord,” I tell her. “You win … well, I guess it means I’ll finally have paid for what I’ve taken.”
She nods, cool in her success, more Level 1 Board Operator than sixteen-year-old complete now, and the movement is almost regal, reminding me of Auden. Both of them born and bred to be the best, and what she says next, succinctly and matter-of-factly, puts ice in my gut: “But you won’t win.”
I probably won’t. No spec sheets to work from means going in cold. No memory of fighting their Alts to draw from, and all I can remember of what Sabian told me back in that diner, lifetimes ago, is the fact that they are the ones; they are worthy.
“What are the rest of the terms?” I ask her, sounding much calmer than I feel.
“We have a twenty-four-hour window when we’re expected to be away from headquarters for off-site training.” She says nothing else, and I don’t miss what it means.
Twice as many Alts, in half the time.
Two chances of dying, with twice the danger.
“I choose Point of Origin,” I say quietly. “If you’re looking to get as close to a natural completion as possible, then you know odds need to be more level than what you’re giving me.”
She takes a minute to consider, then gives another elegant nod.
“Keep your cell turned on. It won’t be long before we contact you,” she says, and it’s Sabian I hear again. She bends down, looking for her gun on the floor, but Chord steps in her way.
“Go,” he says to her, his voice low and hot and about to break from wanting to tear something apart and not being able to. “Tactical will have replacement guns for you.”
Without another word, she walks away, steps through the open patio door, and is gone.
Chord drops my gun and the blade he was holding onto the bed and takes the single step that separates us. He stops just short of touching me. Like he’s almost afraid to—as though I’m going to fight him, hate him, leave … or worst of all, stay and love him and still go through with it.
“I love you, West,” he says, each word hollow, raw with feeling. “But right now I almost hate you, too.”
“I’m sorry.” Again and again. It might never be enough.
“You don’t have to do this.” His dark hair is tumbled and chaotic, his eyes bright with insistence.
“I do. Too many people involved—”
“The only one—”
“—you, Baer, Dire, Auden—”
“—who matters to me—” Here he comes even closer.
“—even Dess, who I know might hate me now, but he can’t hate me forever.”
“—is you, West Grayer.” And now Chord does touch me. He slowly wraps his arms around me so I don’t break apart. He takes my mouth with his and doesn’t let go. He makes us fit together and breathe together until it seems even our heartbeats run together.
“We could,” he says against my lips. “We should, damn it.”
The traitorous salt of my tears tinges my tongue. “We should what?”
“Run together.” Chord brushes my face with his fingers. “We could just take off and not come back.”
I lean back and look at his face. The Surround. “No, that’s not—”
“West, I can put that key-code disrupter back together. And then once we get through, we’ll destroy it so no one over there would ever know about it. And everyone here would still be perfectly safe.”
“Don’t do this, Chord.”
“It’d be a way out.”
“Chord …” The hope in his voice is hard to listen to. It tells me of his desperation, that he’s willing to give up safety for me. “You heard Dire and Baer. It’d be like being active again, except it wouldn’t stop.”
“But we have a better chance if we just wait them out, don’t you think? If we stay here … walking into a cage match against two Board Alts …” One more kiss. “West, you might be a striker, but you’re also human.”
I press my face into his neck. The scent of him makes me hurt. “I know, but that doesn’t change anything. I have to fix this.”
He tilts my chin up so I can’t refuse to listen to the brutal truth that will not be left unheard. “You of all people know what it’s like to be driven by the need to survive. How it takes over you, makes you think of nothing else. These guys, they’ll have revenge on their minds, too—not only for killing Auden and Meyer, but also for what they think you took away from them. Now they think this is their right—that they deserve this fight. People can be made to do almost anything if they tell themselves they’re doing it for all the right reasons.”
His words, intentional or not, are sharp as barbs. “But that’s what I did, Chord. That’s what I was thinking when I changed those idles. I thought making their Alts completes would be enough. How is that any better than what those Alts want to do to me now?”
The buzz of my cell in my pocket and both of us freeze.
Chord pulls back so he can see me. Shakes his head, silent and already looking haunted. No. It’s too soon.
I lift my cell to my mouth and speak, trying not to think too much.
When I hear Sabian’s voice and not his daughter’s, shock is like a single, well-aimed jab.
“Grayer.” Suppressed rage makes my name sound like a curse. “Did you really think you could get away with it?”
My hand goes to my throat; it’s so hard to breathe all of a sudden. “What are you talking about?” The most distant sensation of Chord leaning close, knowing something’s deeply wrong.
“You lied about your last contract. That last idle is still out there, weak and unworthy and of no help to this city. You will finish that completion, Grayer.” Not a request. Just fact.
“I don’t want any of it anymore,” I say to him. “None of it.” For a brief second I clench my eyes tight, making a child’s foolish wish, willing it to work, for him to say I’ve done enough, that I’m free to go.
“What you want and what you agreed to are very different things.”
“Tell me why you wanted me to believe Auden was an idle and not a complete. Then maybe we’ll talk. Because right now I’ve got just as much on you as you have on me.”
“Ask yourself this,” he says. “How did I find out Auden is still alive?”
“I don’t know. Someone saw him and told you.” A wild guess, but other than Auden giving himself up in some way, intentional or not, what else can it be?
“And if that person happens to be someone you know very well?”
Someone I—And when I know the answer, I must make some kind of sound because Chord’s arm is around me, keeping me from falling.
Dess.
“I don’t believe you,” I say to Sabian. “He wouldn’t do that.”
“He would, and did. Though to be truthful, Dess did not come simply to tell us where Auden was. He came to offer to finish the job of killing him. Without further consequence to you.”
No, Dess. You are no striker. You are no killer. And in my mind, I see two of him. The boy with hurt shock in his eyes at finding out what I once was and then started to be again and the boy who could barely control his fury at what I could no longer do, for his sake as well as mine.
“But even though he’s a complete, he’s no match for Auden,” Sabian says. “He might … get hurt.”
“Don’t let him do it, Sabian.” I’m begging and hating myself for it—my doing. My fault that Dess would even think about killing any Alt other than his own. “Because if you do, you’re not safe. For that, I’d easily kill again.” And I would, no matter what that meant for me.
“I’m assuming that I have an answer, then.”
“The whole city is going to be looking for me!” Desperation—I’m scrambling. “I don’t know if I can get to Auden.”
“Already admitting defeat? What a shame—especially when Dess seems like a very nice boy. Very loyal.”
“You were the first to lie! And then you set me up for Auden and Meyer.”
“I admit to being deceptive, but I had no real choice. Would an insincere apology make it better?”
I feel sick.
“I’m still waiting for your answer, Grayer.”
The one you knew I’d give you. “I’ll complete the last contract and then you’ll let him go.”
“Three dead Alts and then I will let him go.”
Three dead Alts.
The phrase echoes in my head, each word vivid and sharp, and suddenly I know what I have to do. The only thing that can be done.
I need to move. Fast.
“As with any striker contract, you have twenty-four hours.” With that Sabian disconnects, leaving me listening to nothing but the details of a plan being laid out in my head.
I shove my cell into my pocket. Grab my gun and blade and bag from the bed, my jacket from the ground. I toss Chord his from where I dropped it after getting up. The urge to hurry leaves me winded, as though I’m already trying to catch up.
“Tell me what’s going on,” he says as he pulls his jacket on.
“We’ve got to go, Chord. Can you text Dire, tell him we’re on the way?” I zip up my jacket, make sure my gun and blade are still in their pockets. Where I need them to be again. And without a doubt they will be shields this time, and not weapons. Can I walk that fine line between killing and saving, know which way to lean when the time comes?
I’ll have to. Standing on the edge of that precipice again, I can’t fall. Not if Dess is to be saved.
“West, you’ve got to talk to me.”
I touch the side of Chord’s face, an apology for moving too fast again. My marks against his skin are simply there. Bearable. “Sabian’s got Dess.”
Chord’s expression, full of shock. “What? How did he—Is he okay?”
“He is, for now.” I grab his hand and pull him toward the open patio door. The thin drapes catch on us as we wind our way through them and out of the apartment.
Chord holds me back as we come to a stop right before we step onto the open sidewalk. People are walking by even this late, and I’m reminded that I’ll be an open target again out there as we make our way through the Grid and out to Leyton and headquarters.
It’s hard to keep myself from simply racing out there and do what needs to be done. But I have to talk to Auden first. It’s too risky having him leave Dire’s. Dess’s life is at stake just as much as Auden’s is, and asking Auden for tips on how to take down the best should be done in person.
“Sabian wants Auden for Dess, doesn’t he?” Chord asks. The cool evening wind tosses my hair. He traps it down into the neck of my jacket, pulls the hood over my head. So he’s remembered I’m still a target, too.
I nod. “And not alive, either.”
“So what are we going to do?” His hair is wild in the wind, matching the rising panic I can see on his face. Who are we giving up? Because you’re not in this alone, West. We’ll be horrible together.
I didn’t miss his use of that word: we. But nor can I use it, no matter how much I want to. The issue of whether I do this alone might not be up to either of us anymore.
“Sabian’s not getting either one,” I say. “And I still need to find out why he wants Auden dead.”
“Will fighting Sabian’s kids give us an answer?”
“I don’t know—I hope so. By the end of it, I’ll have to make Sabian think he has no choice but to tell me.”
Chord’s eyes narrow just the slightest. “Tell me how and we’ll make it happen.”
“I’m going to give him something more important than three dead Alts or Auden dead. More important than the integrity of the Board.” I press a kiss on his lips, fast and light. “I’m going to give him back his kids—alive.”