by Jenna Black
“Shut her down? Are you mad?”
Nadia sat back in her chair and folded her arms, a picture of implacability. “Those are my terms. Take them or leave them.”
Nate almost felt sorry for his father. Distress had stolen the color from his face, and he looked like a different man without the mantle of confidence and authority he usually wore.
“Need I mention again that without the revenue from making backups, Paxco would go bankrupt in a matter of weeks? Is that really what you think is the right thing?”
Nadia gave the thought a moment’s consideration, then nodded. “Yes, I do. Lincoln freed the slaves despite knowing it would have a devastating economic impact, and, eventually, the United States recovered. I figure we’ll recover from the impact of losing Thea, too.”
“You self-righteous little brat!” the Chairman snarled, losing control of his temper for the first time Nate could remember. He shoved his chair back with enough force to knock it over and leaned forward to put his fists on the table and glare at Nadia. She didn’t shrink away from him.
“The United States had to go through a civil war to ‘recover’ from that economic impact. Is that what you want for Paxco? You want to risk the lives of thousands of ordinary citizens, innocent people, to protect a handful of convicted criminals here and there?”
“You’re forgetting, Mr. Chairman. I could have been one of those ‘convicted criminals,’ if you’d had your way. Mosely threatened to make my sister and my brother-in-law into ‘convicted criminals’ if I didn’t do what he wanted. And you were both willing to convict Kurt Bishop of a crime you committed yourselves. Experimenting on human beings would be wrong even if the test subjects really were genuinely convicted criminals, but how many innocents have you imprisoned for the sake of political expediency?” She shook her head. “No, Mr. Chairman. I know we will all be in for some hard times ahead, but this has to stop. If you don’t shut Thea down, I will release the recordings to the public. I think the repercussions of that would be far worse, don’t you?”
The Chairman’s face had been pale, but now it was flushed red, and his eyes were practically incandescent with his fury. He stood up straight and reached into his right coat pocket.
Everything seemed to go into slow motion as Nate realized that pocket was hanging lower than the left one and as he remembered his own uncertainty as to where the gun had ended up.
“No!” Nate yelled, leaping from his chair and tackling Nadia to the ground, trying to make sure his own body was between her and the Chairman’s gun.
The gun roared, and Nadia screamed. Nate wrapped his arms around her, trying to shield every inch of her body as the gun roared again, the sound deafening in the enclosed room. There was a third gunshot, then the sound of something heavy hitting the floor, a sound he was aware of more from the vibration in the floor than from actual hearing because his ears were ringing so loudly.
The room fell deathly quiet. Nate risked a peek while making sure Nadia’s head was still safely tucked against his chest. What he saw made his heart skip a beat.
The Chairman stood facing away from them, arm hanging by his side with the gun still in his hand. On the floor lay Dirk Mosely, blood pooling beneath his head. His eyes were open, but lifeless, and there was a bloody hole in the center of his forehead. More blood spattered the floor all around him, spotting the uniforms of the two shocked security officers who stood in the doorway. Nate swallowed hard, hoping he wasn’t about to be sick.
“I couldn’t arrest him,” the Chairman said calmly, as if he hadn’t just shot a man in cold blood. “He was a patriot, and would have done just about anything for the good of Paxco—except spend the rest of his life in prison. If I’d tried it, he would have talked.”
Nate felt Nadia stirring against him, felt more than heard her gasp of horror when she looked up and saw what had happened.
Still eerily calm, the Chairman popped the clip from his gun and checked how many rounds were left. “I need another clip,” he told the security officers, holding out his hand without looking up at them. The two men looked at each other nervously. They’d shown no surprise at any of the secrets that had been revealed today, so they were obviously part of Mosely’s inner circle. But they were even more obviously unsettled by what they’d witnessed. They recovered quickly, however, each offering the Chairman a clip. He took both, reloading the gun and putting the spare clip in his pocket.
He nodded in what looked like approval, then snapped the clip back in.
“If this first taste of blood hasn’t brought you to your senses, Miss Lake, then come with me,” he said. “We can go destroy Paxco’s economy together.”
Without looking to see if they would follow, the Chairman shouldered his way past the two security officers and out the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
When this day was finally, finally over, Nadia was going to collapse into a heap and have a fit of screaming hysteria. But for right now, at least, her body seemed to have run out of adrenaline, and as she gently extricated herself from Nate’s arms and rose unsteadily to her feet, she hardly seemed to feel anything at all. Just a drifty, floaty feeling of unreality, heightened by the ringing in her ears that made all other sounds seem distant. She looked down at Dirk Mosely, dead because of her, and she felt neither triumph nor guilt.
Nadia suspected she was hovering on the verge of shock, which was probably not a good thing in the long run. But for now, she was grateful for whatever it was that kept her functioning. Beside her, Nate looked a little green, and he was breathing like he’d just run a marathon. Nadia took his clammy hand in hers, giving it a squeeze. She would not soon forget how he’d shielded her with his body when he thought the Chairman was going to shoot her.
“Come on,” she said, tugging his hand so he’d follow as she picked her way around the blood that spattered the floor. “We can freak out later. Right now, it’s time to finish this thing.”
The Chairman might be giving in to her demands, but she didn’t trust him for a moment. If all he did to shut Thea down was flip a few switches, she was certain it wouldn’t be long before he’d flip them back. Somehow, she was going to have to make sure whatever he did was permanent.
Down the hall, the Chairman was standing in front of a heavy metal door with a series of electronic keypads and scanners running along its side. He put his eye to the retinal scanner, then placed his whole hand on a fingerprint scanner, and even that wasn’t enough to open the door, because even after the lights on both scanners turned green, the door was still locked. He punched in a long code on one of the keypads, but the indicator light above it remained red. The Chairman frowned and entered the code again, with the same result. He pounded on the door with his left hand in frustration.
“Don’t be childish, Thea,” he said. “You know I can manually override this door.”
There was no response, although Nadia supposed it was unlikely there were speakers in the door.
“Can she actually hear you?” Nadia asked, curious despite herself. The equipment surrounding Thea’s “examining table” obviously included both speaker and microphone, but what was in the electronic equipment of the door?
“I see no reason why not,” the Chairman said, scowling at the door. “She’s obviously made unauthorized modifications to the door mechanism, and she has shown a tendency to enjoy eavesdropping. She has created ears where none existed before.”
“So she’s conveniently locking you out when you intend to shut her down?” Nadia asked with undisguised skepticism. If she were an unscrupulous bastard like the Chairman, she supposed she’d try to stall, too.
The Chairman ignored her and pounded on the door again. “Thea, open this door immediately!”
If he was stalling, then he was doing a pretty good acting job. He looked like he was about to take out his gun and start shooting again.
The Chairman hit the door one more time. “Fine!” He stalked down the hallway toward the room they had just vaca
ted. “I’ll be right back.”
Nate and Nadia shared puzzled glances, wondering what the Chairman was up to. Nadia half expected him to shut the door and lock himself in the interrogation room, but after only a few moments, he emerged again holding a metal key on a chain. Nadia shuddered when she saw the blood on his hands and realized he must have taken the key from Mosely’s body.
If the Chairman was bothered by the blood that both literally and figuratively stained his hands, he didn’t show it. He flipped open an unmarked panel set in the door itself, rather than in the wall beside the door. Under the panel were a pair of keyholes. The Chairman plugged the bloody key into one of the holes, then loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar to get to a chain he wore around his neck. He slid the chain over his head and inserted the key into the second hole. Then he turned both keys simultaneously and Nadia could hear something heavy moving inside the door.
“Thea can meddle with electronics,” the Chairman said, “but she can’t physically alter the door itself. I originally had the manual override put in in case of loss of power, but I suppose it has other advantages.”
The door made a final clicking sound, and the Chairman pushed it open and stepped inside. Nate and Nadia followed.
Nadia had been expecting a room full of whirring electronic equipment, kept uncomfortably chilly to counteract the heat that equipment generated. Instead, she walked into a wall of damp heat that reminded her of the tropics.
The room was relatively small, only about ten by ten, and three walls were covered with shelves on which sat the expected whirring electronics. But scattered amongst the electronics were a variety of vats and jars, filled with a red fluid that bore a disturbing resemblance to blood. Fleshy red tendrils seemed to grow out of the jars like ivy, reaching out to the electronics and burrowing into ports and vents. A sound like the steady beating of a heart filled the room, and when Nadia looked closely, she could see the faint pulse traveling through the tendrils. She shivered, despite the heat.
“Thea isn’t just a machine,” the Chairman said. “It is her biological components that make her what she is. She is a living, intelligent creature.” He pulled the gun out of his pocket, but didn’t raise it. “I can’t just turn her off like a computer. To shut her down, I’ll have to kill her. Is that what you want me to do, Nadia Lake? Will you sit astride your high horse and order the death of a living being? Or did you get your fill of death when I executed Dirk Mosely on your command?”
“I didn’t command you to shoot him!” Nadia protested automatically. But if she was perfectly honest with herself, she knew there was no way her demands could have led to anything but death for Mosely. Even if he’d been arrested, he would have had to go to trial for his crimes, and a conviction would have led to execution. No matter how bad a man he had been, she knew she was going to bear that scar on her conscience for the rest of her life.
She looked around at the combination of flesh and electronics that surrounded her. Thea was indeed alive, and her abilities were awe-inspiring. If she’d been created and nurtured by someone who had a steady moral compass, she could have been an instrument for good in the world. But she’d been shaped by a power-hungry dictator with only the barest regard for human life. She had a personality of her own, and it was one that mirrored the Chairman’s, treating people like expendable game pieces. She could never be trusted to have humanity’s best interests at heart.
“Do it,” Nadia said.
The Chairman gave her a look of pure loathing, then raised his gun hand and pointed at one of the jars. He was sweating, though that might have been just the tropical heat of the room. He hesitated a long time, darting quick glances in her direction as if expecting her to change her mind any second. The lights dimmed briefly, and Nadia wondered if that was Thea’s version of a flinch. She raised her hands to cover her ears and was peripherally aware of Nate doing the same beside her.
The Chairman pulled the trigger, and the jar exploded, sending shards of glass and thick, coppery-smelling fluid into the air. A shrill alarm sounded, and a fleshy lump spilled out of the shattered jar and onto the floor. The lump had grooves and wrinkles reminiscent of a brain, though the shape was all wrong. The Chairman’s hands were covered with bloody fluid, but he barely seemed to notice. He turned to another jar, pulling the trigger once more. Then he repeated the process over and over, and with every biological component he shot, more of the electronic equipment went dark. The veins that connected the jars to the electronics stopped pulsing, and blood, or something very like it, formed a lake on the floor and coated everything.
Nate and Nadia retreated from the room, but not before they, too, were stained with Thea’s lifeblood, their shoes soaked in it. The Chairman didn’t stop shooting until every jar and vat was shattered, changing clips calmly when necessary. Then he stood there in the still, darkened room, covered in blood from head to foot, and wept.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Nadia stared at her reflection over the sink and wondered if her family would even recognize her. She’d scrubbed off all the blood and other fluids that had stained her skin and hair. Her clothes had been ruined, so now she was wearing a bright-orange prison jumpsuit—necessary camouflage, since she was supposedly being released from prison. The bright orange leached any hint of color from her pale skin, and she had a bad case of raccoon eyes with no makeup to brighten them up.
Despite showering in water as hot as she could bear, she was still shivering, and her eyes were red as if she’d been crying, though she didn’t think she had been. It was hard to be sure. She was so dazed by everything that had happened, by everything she had seen and everything she had done, that she felt like there were holes in her memory. Big, deep potholes that could swallow her whole if she let herself venture too close to their edges.
There was a knock on the bathroom door.
“Nadia?” Nate called. “Are you all right in there?”
No, she was definitely not all right. But she was alive, and she hadn’t been tortured. She hadn’t betrayed Dante and the resistance, and she’d convinced the Chairman to destroy Thea and her sickening research project. Maybe once she got out of the Fortress and back to her own home, she’d have a hope of recovering.
“Nadia?” Nate asked again, and the door rattled. She’d locked it, of course, not trusting that the ordeal was truly over.
“I’m fine, Nate,” she lied. She took a deep breath to steady herself, then opened the door.
Nate had showered in another restroom down the hall. Nadia had hidden away so long that his hair had dried and was even more unruly than usual thanks to a lack of hair product. He frowned fiercely at the sight of her prison jumpsuit. She didn’t like it much, either, but it was a necessary part of the cover story they had concocted to explain the day’s events without revealing anything about Thea. She had supposedly been taken directly from her family’s home to Riker’s Island, and the Chairman had listened in when Mosely questioned her. During the questioning, she revealed that she’d learned Mosely was Nate’s true killer, though she was a little fuzzy on what his motivation was supposed to have been. Mosely had been shot trying to escape, and Nadia was being released and exonerated.
The Chairman had originally insisted that the charade be further strengthened by having Nadia reunited with her family at the Riker’s Island processing center, where inmates were taken in and released, but Nate had categorically refused to entertain the possibility. Nadia didn’t much care where the big reunion occurred, as long as she got out of the Fortress. They were now two floors above the sub-basement, where Thea had resided, but that wasn’t anywhere near far enough away for her tastes.
Nate put his arms around her in a hug. She gratefully hugged him back, reveling in his warmth, wishing it would sink into her flesh and chase away the chill.
“We aren’t safe,” she whispered into his chest. “If your father ever manages to track down the recordings…”
She let her voice trail off. They both
knew what would happen if she ever lost her leverage. The Chairman was usually a cold and dispassionate man, but she had clearly broken through that shell. The way he had looked at her when he’d stepped out of Thea’s room had spoken of a soul-deep hatred and a promise of revenge. She didn’t know how much of that hatred spilled over onto Nate. Maybe now that the Chairman could no longer create a Replica he would not stoop so low as to murder his own son. But Nadia wouldn’t put it past him, and she didn’t think Nate would, either.
“I know,” Nate said, lowering his head until he was whispering directly in her ear. There was no one around to hear, not at this moment, but after what they’d been through, she figured paranoia was natural—and smart.
“What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know. But that’s a problem to worry about later.”
He pushed her away a little, but only so he could look down into her eyes. He brushed a stray strand of hair off of her cheek, tucking it behind her ear in an undeniably tender gesture. “I’m sorry I was such an ass to you yesterday. I was selfish, and judgmental, and otherwise completely out of line. Can you forgive me?”
Nadia’s heart fluttered in her chest. She was standing intimately close to him, staring into his eyes. He had touched her with affection, and there was unmistakable warmth in his eyes. He loved her, she realized, in his own way. It wasn’t the romantic, fairy-tale love she’d have wished for in the man she was destined to marry. Not the kind of love he had with Bishop. But it was love nonetheless, and she would have to settle for it until she found a Bishop of her own someday.
“Of course I forgive you,” she said, dropping her gaze and taking a step backward, not wanting him to read her thoughts.
Nate interpreted her withdrawal differently, not knowing the thoughts and emotions that were swirling through her head.
“You mean you’re trying to forgive me,” he said. “But I guess that will take some time.”
