by J B Cantwell
There was the option, of course, that no such thing would happen, that we would die trying, alone in our pursuits.
So be it.
A knock came on the door, startling me. I was definitely not ready for visitors. But when I got to the entry, there was another note waiting for me the had been slipped under the door. I stood up and showed it to Janeen.
“Open it,” she commanded. You idiot, her tone said.
I did.
An address, a name, and a time.
Aidan Valle. Six o’clock.
My heart was pounding. What would he be expecting of me? Sex? Companionship? A friend?
I highly doubted that last option.
I took a deep breath and handed it to Janeen.
Her eyes scanned the note, and she looked up to me, eyebrows raised.
“You really did make an impression last night,” she said. “We’ll need to get you back in order.”
“But what about Damien?” I asked. “He’s got them both, and maybe more.”
“You should follow one instinct at a time,” she advised. “What do you think you should do?”
If I were to deliver myself to Damien, he might very well expect me to prostitute myself for his attention. That would be incredibly risky for me to do. Rape wasn’t something I would ever purposely put myself in danger of. If I went to Damien, that was exactly what I would be doing.
Valle, however, seemed different.
“You’ll need to dress more casually,” Janeen said, already starting to rifle through my closets. “Get in the shower. We’ve got work to do.”
I looked at the clock and realized it was already one o’clock. She was right; I was a mess. I soaked and lathered my whole body in the shower, then wrapped a robe around myself and padded out to the kitchen, where I could smell food cooking.
“You’re cooking?” I asked. “For me?”
She raised her eyebrows. “You’ll need your strength tonight.”
“So, yesterday’s event didn’t count as needing strength?”
She paused, the only part of her moving was her arm as she stirred the eggs in a brand new, previously untouched pan.
“You must learn to be strong, and that includes sustenance. You’ll not be wearing any ball gown tonight. You can afford an inch around your middle, if that’s what it takes, and it will give you staying power.”
I cocked my head to one side. I couldn’t figure her out.
“Janeen, why are you here?”
She shook her head and removed the pan from the burner, then shook the scrambled eggs onto a plate and sprinkled them with salt.
She pushed the plate over to me.
“Eat.”
I picked up the fork and dug into the food. I had never tasted eggs before, and these were one of the best things I’d ever tasted. I’d have even wagered that they were real.
Only the best for Audrey Page.
Janeen stood with her arms on the counter, staring me down.
“I don’t owe you a damn thing,” she said when I’d nearly cleared the plate.
I froze.
“But I’ll tell you why I’m here. Chambers. Isn’t he the reason why we’re all here? He found me when I was young and poor, though not as poor as you. Over the years he helped grease the wheels for me, find me jobs with increasingly rich clientele. Eventually, I didn’t need him anymore, and soon enough the reverse happened; he needed me.”
She eyeballed the last of my eggs, and I could tell she was hungry. But she would never be one to ask, and I was almost completely certain that if I were to offer her some off my plate, I would be greeted with an insulting rebuke.
“So, he hired you?” I asked.
She frowned.
“Of course not,” she said, everything about her voice dripping with the shame of what I’d just inferred.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “I just thought—”
“You thought wrong. That’s the trouble with using children to fight these wars. You don’t have any experience. You’re a blank slate, and while that might be fun in some situations, when the chips are down, you don’t always have the grit, or the smarts, to carry things through to the end.”
She shook her head and walked out of the kitchen. I lay the fork over my plate and followed.
She stopped in the dressing room, and a few moments later, I found her standing on the pedestal. Suddenly, everything made sense. Her bitter bite. Her disapproval. As I looked at her standing up there, what, seventy years old? I realized the truth.
She had never been the one to stand on that pedestal.
Behind the scenes? Yes. In charge? Yes.
But never the one on display, despite her years of starvation and sacrifice.
I felt a new respect for her now. For the past week, I had thought of her as only a menace, an annoyance that I was forced to deal with.
But not now. Now she was something so much more.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked from the base of the pedestal.
Because in that moment, I would do anything. Anything she wanted.
She looked down at me, a grim sort of satisfaction on her face.
“Let’s get started.”
Chapter Twelve
The rest of the afternoon was spent making me effortlessly beautiful. The kind of beautiful that looks real, not done up, not fake. It was the sort of beautiful that only a handful of people in the world could pull off. Soft makeup. Unaltered eyelashes. Slightly sun-kissed lips.
She dressed me in long, white slacks. Heels, of course, black. A blouse, pale green.
I walked. I spoke. I turned, I practiced my smoldering look (which she laughed at), and my angry look (she laughed more).
“Just be yourself, dear,” she finally said, giving up. “Whatever you did last night served you right, so think of this as a repeat. Though, perhaps with just a touch less champagne.”
She was right, of course. But that didn’t mean I would take her advice.
By the time five-forty-five rolled around, I was primed, packaged, and ready for dinner.
But little did I know, dinner was not what was on the menu.
Twenty minutes later, I found myself outside a penthouse front door. I didn’t need to knock.
He opened it, Aidan Valle, and he was drunk.
“You came!” he slurred. “Oh, I’m so glad.”
He leaned through the open doorway and gave me a liquor infused kiss on the cheek.
“Oh, I just knew you were the one from the moment I saw you.”
He backed up, showing me through the entrance to the apartment. I paused slightly, not really sure what I was getting into. But the truth was, I didn’t have much reason to worry. He wasn’t a large man, and I wagered that I’d best him in a fight.
He gripped tightly onto the handle as he held the door open for me, swinging slightly.
I stepped tentatively into his apartment, my shoes clicking on the marble tile floor. Only the best. I wondered if he cared.
I doubted it.
I paused, looking back toward him. He shut the door behind us, and he seemed to have trouble letting go of the handle. Then, at a half jog, he passed by me and touched my shoulder.
“Come on,” he said. “You’ve gotta see. I got your favorite.”
He led me into the kitchen where two long-stemmed glasses were waiting. Grabbing onto a tall bottle of champagne, he shook it vigorously. The cork popped and hit the ceiling like a ricocheting bullet.
“HA!”
I wondered how much, or little, excitement he could count on in a regular day.
“The wine guy told me it was a good vintage and to let it breathe or whatever.” He waved his hand dismissively. “But I figure it’s just fine fresh, too.”
He began pouring the two glasses, and the first one overflowed with bubbles almost immediately.
“Whoopsie!” he said. He blinked hard a couple times. “Sorry, darling.” He handed the glass to me and poured himself another.
>
Clearly, he had already had several already.
“Now, what do we toast to?”
I set my small clutch bag down on the counter. There hadn’t been any security downstairs at all, but I hadn’t wanted to take my chances. Getting caught with an unregistered handgun in the city was a punishable offense. I had come unarmed.
“Let’s toast to … new friends,” I tried.
Valle smiled widely. “To new friends it is!”
I held up my glass to clink with his.
“Oh, no, no, no! You have to look the other in the eye when you clink the glasses together. It’s much more acceptable. Less … lowly. Come on, now, pay attention. Look at me, not the glasses.
I tried to do as he said without crushing my glass against his. It was harder than it looked, but I held his gaze and hoped for the best.
The glasses clinked, he blinked, and we drank. Valle pulled the same trick as the night before, downing his share. But I wasn’t biting. I set my glass down on the kitchen counter and waited.
He slammed the glass down on the marble countertop and filled it once more.
“I’ll drink you under the table,” he warned.
“Mr. Valle, why did you invite me here?” I asked.
He paused, then put the second pour to his lips. This time he didn’t down it right away, but took more measured sips, kind of like he was measuring me.
“I’ll tell you why I invited you here, Riley,” he said, looking up at me from beneath his brows.
I froze.
“Oh, don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me. Trouble is, Damien is on to you. Just like he’s on to me. That guy is nothing but a pain in my backside, I swear. Floating around like he owns all just because of his rebel group. All they want to do is kill people. You’d think they’d come up with something more effective. More … interesting.”
“But how … why …?”
“I’m a hacker, Riley, and a purveyor of people, especially people who don’t belong. You may look the part, and don’t get me wrong, you’re fooling the masses; but I know better. I watch people. I see them. Much in the same way that I’m invisible to most.”
He said this matter of factly. No sadness, just acceptance, which, of course, made the whole thing even more sad.
“So I know I’m your target. But what I don’t know is why. I knew Audrey, the real Audrey.”
“You did?” I asked, suddenly fascinated. “She was real?”
“Real? Of course she was real. She was amazing, too. A real gem.”
Now, a tinge of sadness came through.
“Who was she? I mean, what was she like?”
“She was from California. Or, at least what’s left of it. She was obviously very wealthy, but she kept her wealth a secret. Then, later on, she moved to New York and joined the Volunteers. You see, she was a hacker, too. But just as everybody was oblivious to her wealth, they were oblivious to her talents as well.”
“So, this …” I said, touching the side of my head. “This is all from her? Where did she go?”
“She died, of course, in the Stilts bombings.” His face turned from a happy, drunken, vacant stare to a man who had suffered a great loss. “Of course, when she was still alive, her sheer wealth had resulted in the Platinum designation; she was worth billions, an heiress. The Volunteers were able to remove the designation from her chip, leaving the one in her head blank, untraceable, as if she didn’t have one at all. They would only use the data from her real chip when it was necessary for her to leave the Stilts. The transferring device was held under lock and key, only taken out when she needed to tap into her accounts, which she did regularly. Not a single soul in New York society knew her, and she slowly trickled her money into the Volunteers’ coffers unnoticed. She was, in fact, the primary benefactor of the Volunteers.”
My eyes widened.
Audrey? The benefactor?
“Then, that means that I’m the benefactor now?”
“You can be anything you want to be now. It’s not like they’ll kill you.”
“Anything I want to be …” My voice trailed away as I thought about this new world and my place in it, all of which had abruptly changed. I had become Audrey in every respect, and the transformation would be, could be, permanent.
If I wanted it to be.
I thought about Alex, locked away in some room somewhere. Would he ever recognize me again? Would he always wish I hadn’t changed? Could he love me in this new body? This new face?
I didn’t feel that way about him. I wished he hadn’t changed, that was true. But it wasn’t, wouldn’t be, enough to drive me away.
But he wasn’t here now. It was just me. Just Riley. And, of course, Audrey.
“So, what do you want from me?” I asked. “From Audrey?”
His face became serious for a moment, and it looked like I’d taken the wind out of his sails with just this simple question.
He took a step toward me, and I instinctively took a step backward.
He stopped, shaking his head sadly, blinking.
“No, no. I didn’t invite you here because of that. You’re beautiful. Irresistible, even. But I don’t want you. What I want is your help.”
“Help? With what?”
He took a step backward and picked up both glasses of champagne.
“Come on,” he said, cocking his head toward the living room.
I watched him walk away from me, and for a moment I thought about leaving. Running. I could take out this chip, just as I’d done so many times before. I could rejoin Melanie, fight beside her.
But this was a whole different game, and the potential rewards were enormous. Chambers had given me a gift; I understood that now. The only question was, how was I going to use it?
I shook myself out of my thoughts, and I followed after Valle.
I was about to find out.
EPISODE 4
Chapter One
I was a shadow.
I ducked around buildings as I made my way to my Volunteers’ old headquarters, hoping beyond hope that Melanie would be waiting for me.
But, just in case, I’d brought a pistol in my belt.
People could see me if they wanted to, though I found it unlikely that they would recognize a Platinum designation. I had been a Green my whole life before I’d joined the Service.
But now …
My heart pounded as I slipped through the Brooklyn alleys.
At least they can’t tell how wealthy I am.
True. That danger was something well hidden within my accounts, not broadcasted to the rest of the world. They may wonder, though, about the designation in a place like this. Just as I’d wondered when I came across superiors in the Service, Bronze and Silver.
I ran faster.
I’d made sure to dress as ratty as possible. I’d found a pair of jeans, one pair of jeans, in Audrey’s closet and taken scissors to them. I cut holes in them to mimic wear, but the jacket I’d had to get from Albert. It was his own, actually, and huge.
I pulled the hood up over my head, turned away from the main streets, and went down a once familiar alley. The tide was out, but I still didn’t want to trudge through three feet of water to go around the fire escape.
But there was no rope ladder here. Not anymore. The cold, wet Hudson was the only way to make it to the entrance of the building where I’d hidden my Volunteers during those first nights in Brooklyn. It seemed like ages ago.
Had it been?
I splashed into the dirty sludge and made my way around to the front of the building. With the tide out, the frigid water only came up to my belt, but it was enough to cause my whole body to shiver.
The glass along the storefront on this side of the building was still broken, the space long since flooded. I stepped inside and waded over to the back door and the staircase beyond.
I started to climb, and it wasn’t long before I made it to the fourth floor. The lights were out, always out, so I had to feel my way down the hall in
nothing but the moonlight coming in through the slim windows on either side.
And then I was there. A pile of broken wood beams still lay in a heap in front of the open doorway, and I pushed them aside as I made my way inside.
I had barely crossed the threshold when I heard the cocking of a gun in my left ear.
“Who are you?” a voice said. Melanie.
I turned to face her and stared directly down the barrel of her gun.
“An old friend,” I said.
“Who?”
“I don’t know if you’d even believe me if I told you.”
Of course she wouldn’t. Even my voice was no longer my own. I was, in all respects, Audrey.
“Try me.”
I sighed heavily, both proud and tired. Tired of all the fighting, the war. Proud of her for stepping up to take my place.
I tried to think of something to convince her. I’d tried the whole way here. What could I tell her that would make her believe?
“Can we go over to the window?” I asked. “I think it will be better if we can see each other.”
She stood there, stewing for a few moments. Then, “Fine. You go first.”
I turned, and while I couldn’t see her, I could feel the presence of that gun pointed at my back. Part of me wondered why she hadn’t shot me yet.
She wants information first.
I got to the indoor window, an atrium from years past. The light from the floor to ceiling windows was enough for us to see each other clearly.
I turned to face her.
“So, Jonathan contacted you. He’s a snake, but he’ll do just about anything for enough cash.”
She scowled at this.
“All he told me was to meet you here, that you were someone important.”
I smiled, laughing a little.
“He’s such an idiot.”
She held the gun up again, pointed it directly at my heart.
“Put the gun down, Mel,” I said. I’m no threat to you. Here, “ I pulled the gun out of my belt and slid it across the floor to her. “Take it. I don’t need it. I thought you might have a whole host of people with you, and I was scared. But something about being in this place makes me feel better. It was our first shelter once we got to Brooklyn. I wish it still could be.”
