Beneath the Shine

by Sarah Fine

  “Percy,” says Sophia. “Your aunt requests entrance.”

  I wipe the screen black. “Tell her to please come in.”

  “Percy?” calls Aunt Rosalie from the hall.

  “Welcome, Auntie,” I say as she comes into the room, a crocheted shawl draped over her shoulders.

  “Oh, Percy, you look pinched, dear.”

  My hands move quickly over my face, reassuring myself that I’ve returned my features to default. “I’ll wear a moisturizing mask to bed,” I tell her with a wave of my hand.

  She sits down in a chair close to the window. “I thought there might be tension with your young lady friend.”

  I turn to her as she pats her silver hair, pushing a stray strand back into place. “The course of young love never runs easy,” I say, “but is there a more specific reason why you suspect such a thing?”

  “Ah, well. I investigated who among your classmates carries this name. Marguerite.”

  Our eyes meet. “And you found her.”

  “She is lovely, Percy, but she is also one of President Sallese’s most vocal attack dogs!”

  “Now, I don’t find ‘attack dog’ quite fair. She’s a normal girl of steadfast opinions who is having some trouble settling in.”

  “Trouble of her own making!” Auntie humphs. “She is absolutely not good enough for you. I am of a mind to revoke your car privileges.”

  I square my shoulders. “Do that, and you will have lost a nephew.”

  She presses her lips together and looks toward the window. “Not for the first time,” she murmurs. “Would you really break my heart like that on purpose?”

  “Only if you break mine first.”

  “But Percy, she is dangerous. You put yourself in the crosshairs of Sallese and his administration by becoming involved with his little plaything. What if they find out who you are? What if they knew you are the son of Valentine and Flore Blake?”

  I sigh and undo my cravat. “I’m obviously harmless. I’m not uploading vids on molecular structures, Auntie. Besides, they must already know. You don’t think they dug deep inside our most private lives before Marguerite Singer came to school? Would Sallese trust his plaything, as you call her, to a group of unvetted technocrat hooligans? Whoever enrolled her at Clinton knew what he was doing.”

  She looks conflicted. “No, I suppose not. But still, this girl is trouble. She is on the wrong side.”

  “Are you supposed to be on a side, Auntie? Isn’t your job as ambassador to—”

  “To pursue and protect the interests of the French people in the United States.” Her voice is losing its rounded softness. “After the recent detentions without due process of several citizens, and with the American government refusing to answer for its actions, Madam President is considering withdrawing all diplomatic personnel from this country until such time that the United States reinstates liberty and freedom.”

  “You mean closing the embassy?”

  “For a time.”

  “Wouldn’t that make things worse? If this government is becoming a fascist dictatorship, it seems like they need to be watched.”

  “We are not here for them, and now I am becoming worried for us. All embassy personnel are currently the focus of an investigation into our fleet, prompted by losing Jacques last night, I imagine. They have requested permission to scan the AI in the vehicles.” Her stare is steady on me, as if she is giving me information only because she is seeking some in return. “I can’t protect you from them as well as I’d like, not while we are on American soil.”

  “I can’t leave, Auntie.”

  “Why? Don’t tell me it is this girl. French girls are much more refined, and those interested in politique engage in a more dignified manner.”

  “Is it wrong to want justice for the citizens?” I ask. “One could argue that dignity is just what Marguerite is pursuing. This administration came riding into power on the swell of a populist wave, Auntie, made up of Americans who felt deprived of their dignity and basic rights as human beings. Who are we to judge the hoi polloi that have been ruled by the technocrat elites and have seen few benefits from such rule?”

  “And so their solution is to send the nobility to Madame la Guillotine? Is that what your Marguerite believes? She has a French name, but does she know French history? Do you?”

  “I know enough, Auntie. Maman made sure of it.”

  She mutters something easily detectable as religious even without a translator chip. “Then you know that things could get a lot worse before they get better. Such a reign of terror goes wide and deep before it burns itself out.”

  “History doesn’t have to repeat itself. That was hundreds of years ago. The world was a different place.” Even as I say it, I’m not overly sure, though. The way Bianca was treated was utterly savage. Cutting off her head might have been a more merciful death.

  “You are not this silly,” she says, and now her voice is sharp, reminding me of her power—including over me until I turn eighteen. “The director of national intelligence himself made the request today. If I allow the CIA to investigate our diplomatic fleet, what will they find?”

  “You won’t.”

  “You are depending on that, aren’t you?”

  I clench my teeth and stand up quickly. “When will Madam President make her decision?”

  “She is trying to reach out to President Sallese directly. If he does not respond favorably with an explanation as to what is happening here, she will make the call.”

  “I just need a week.”

  “For what, exactly?”

  “For you to trust me.”

  She folds her arms over her chest. “You are asking for much from me.”

  “Your trust is out of my reach?”

  She curses in French, but her eyes glitter with tears. Her Cerepin flashes blue and then green. “Do you know how much you remind me of your father? Not all the time. But right now, certainly. He was a pigheaded and thoroughly confounding man. Flore was the only one he seemed to allow inside his head.”

  Mentioning my parents like this, with those tears on her face . . . it’s threatening to undo me. “I’ve heard all this before.”

  “Have you?” she says sadly. “Have I also told you that they were the only ones who believed you’d survive to see your eighth birthday?”

  The memory of my father leaning over me comes sudden and hard, pushing everything else to the side for the moment. “Tell me.”

  Because they never did. They never talked about what I had been. They only focused on what I was becoming.

  “You were a beautiful little boy. We all thought you were perfect. Flore was overcome with happiness, and Valentine with pride. The best of two brilliant people. And there you were.”

  You’re still Maman’s perfect boy. I still remember her voice, soaked in sorrow. I can’t see her face, though.

  “I will never forget the moment Flore commed me. I couldn’t understand her, the sobs. She was crying too hard. Finally I understood there had been an accident.”

  I look down at myself. “The last thing I remember is my seventh birthday party.” And after that . . . I have only pieces. Flashes of strange, insistent memory. His face. Her hands. Quiet voices. The bright slash of a laser. And pain. So much pain.

  “They withdrew from public life to care for you.”

  “What happened to me? I know I fell, but how?”

  “You tumbled over a balcony, darling. Afterward, Flore told me you were trying to fetch your pet bird, which had gotten stuck in a tree whose branches stretched toward the house. The creature—a delicate little thing—had been a birthday present.” Her face crumples. “From me.”

  “You can’t blame yourself.” I remember the canny bird. I remember its tiny, beady eyes, full of secrets. I remember its wings and wishing I could fly.

  “Of course I do. But your mother blamed herself. She turned away for an instant, and you fell more than ten meters to the ground and shattered like an egg. She was
afraid Valentine would never forgive her.” She pulls a handkerchief from the neckline of her dress and dabs at her nose. “She told me that though your spinal cord could be regrown, it wasn’t enough. Because the damage to your brain was permanent.”

  “Well, obviously—”

  “Obviously your parents were more resourceful than most.” Now she looks troubled as her gaze roams my face and body. “Your parents left a will with very specific instructions. They wanted you to make decisions about your own health. Perhaps because so many choices were taken away.”

  They left me with specific instructions, too. I think of my father’s letter, the one he gave me on my sixteenth birthday, just a week before he was killed. “They must have known they were in danger.”

  “Your father might have been a technocrat, but never was he a slave to corporate interests like this Sallese,” Aunt Rosalie says. “Near the end, he felt as if they were trying to take everything from him. He feared for you and your mother.” She blots her eyes with the lacy scrap of cloth. “And he was right. If Flore hadn’t been so stubborn, she’d still be alive. But she wanted to go with him that morning. She wanted to help.”

  I have never asked her before, not directly. But it’s time. “You don’t believe the attack on them was random, do you?”

  She presses her lips together. “I have been afraid to talk about this with you, for fear of losing you as well. But now I’ll lose you either way, won’t I?”

  I sit down next to her. “Not if you help me. Tell me what you know.”

  “I don’t know that much. Flore did tell me they believed that NeuroGo was paying doctors to falsify and fabricate data to support positive claims about the neurostims.” She gives me a dark look. “There is a reason such devices are banned in Europe, Brazil, and South Africa. Most other countries believe they are too dangerous—for the brain, yes, but also because the things are vulnerable to hackers, who might seize control of the signals remotely. Unfortunately, the foreign ban on this technology may have only opened the market for NeuroGo.”

  “If the connection is NeuroGo, does that mean you think Sallese is responsible for the murder of my parents?” I ask. “The timing seems remarkably advantageous for him. First Derek Kasabian disappeared, and I’m sure you know that Weisskopf has vanished now as well.”

  “I didn’t know you heard.” Auntie frowns. “But the detectives never found a clear link. The connection to a larger conspiracy was never proven.”

  “That doesn’t mean Sallese didn’t want to protect his reputation as he ran for president or that someone else didn’t do it for him.”

  “I know that, too.” She touches my arm. “But we have no evidence for this, and he is now the most powerful man in this country. America might be a backward, depressed place, but when it sneezes, the world still catches cold. It is best to let this upheaval work itself out while we watch from Paris.”

  It doesn’t feel right, but arguing more is only likely to cement her position. “I will go with you if Madam President recalls you—I give you my word—but first I have some things I need to resolve, and to do that, I need a car. Marguerite and I have unfinished business.”

  She laughs, then sighs. “Remember to think with your head, Percy.”

  I strut over to my closet, where I begin to thumb through my evening jackets while trying not to wince at the lingering pain along my ribs. “And my heart, Auntie? What about my heart?”

  “Protect it, my love. It might be more vulnerable than you think.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Marguerite

  I push the icon. Instantly, the screen goes gray, and I slide back from it as if it’s contaminated. What if he left traces of his path behind? What if they’re able to find him? By the time my comband vibrates a few minutes later, cold sweat has broken out on my forehead.

  “What’s wrong, Mar?” El asks drily. “Seen a ghost? Wrestling with demons? Both at once?”

  I hate him. “I did what you asked.”

  “Did you? Hans just informed me that you only signaled him after Frag had signed off.”

  “Frag told me he’d be able to tell when the scan started,” I babble. “I was hoping Hans could get something if I did it quickly enough right after?”

  El has his face close to the screen, so it’s the only thing I see. “Nice try.”

  I roll my eyes. “No matter what I do, it’s never good enough.”

  “Just do exactly what I say. Frag is willing to engage with you, Marguerite. That makes you valuable. I took a quick read of your transcript, and really, it’s masterful.”

  I start to relax, but then he says, “Until that last tip-off, of course.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t play dumb with me. I know you better than that.”

  “It’s not like I’m used to all this coded covert master-spy crap, El.”

  “Mm-hmm. I’ve watched you win over skeptical crowds just by sensing the vibes in the room, the looks on a few key faces. You know how to do this.”

  “Okay,” I say. “But how about this—by tipping him off, I’ve made him trust me more. Because I don’t think he believes I’m stupid, either. I’m counting on it, in fact.”

  Oh, god. I’m just making this up right now. What I need is El to trust me, because that might be the only way to gain access to the president—and that’s the only way to stop what’s happening.

  El is watching me intently. “You think he’ll seek you out again.”

  “I do. Especially if your hacker guy can’t trace him. He’ll feel safe. And more confident.” Then I’ll see him in school, and maybe together we can get out of this. Assuming I can get him to trust me. I’m not doing so well on that front these days.

  El smiles. “That sounds like it could work. I’ll give you another day to make contact again.”

  “Just a day?”

  “Things are moving quickly. We’re trying to nail down all our assets and contain this before Americans start to lose confidence in their new president. They expect results quickly, and we need to give it to them. Fortunately, we got a big break about an hour ago. A lead in the bombings.”

  “Really? And?”

  “Uh-uh. That’s classified.” His look is classic El. He was just waiting for me to ask so he could put me in my place.

  “You’re hilarious. I know you want to tell me something, just to keep me hanging. I’ll wait.” Because he’s not the only one who knows things.

  “Fine. There’s a hacking collective here in DC that caused all sorts of trouble for the Zao administration. As they left office, they gave us their notes on these hooligans.”

  “Really? Something we actually agreed on?”

  “Apparently these folks were so much trouble that the Zao administration wanted to see them caught no matter what. They gave us info just on principle.”

  “You think these hackers had something to do with the bombings.”

  “They think they’re more clever than they actually are, and one of them flew a little too close to the sun.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Oh, we dug deep on some personnel files at a few local facilities after some info leaked that we felt was best kept out of the public eye.”

  “You caught someone who was going to tell on your agents for torturing innocent girls?” Even saying it makes me sick.

  “You make it sound much worse than it was.”

  “Somehow I doubt that.”

  “Anyway. We figured out that one of these guys was once a roommate of a man named Martin Chen. And Chen, well.”

  Cold chills run down my back. Triplechen. He said the deaths of Percy’s parents weren’t random.

  “Well what?” I’m proud of how calm I sound.

  “Just rest assured that we’re going to catch the culprits of the worst terrorist attacks in DC history. They were almost certainly paid by Gia to do this. We’re going to hang these guys.”

  “I feel safer already,” I mutter.

/>   “We still need to find out who’s smuggling them out of DC, though. The embassy car . . .” His expression shifts from eager to calculating. “So, I was reviewing files on your classmates, and I found an interesting connection.”

  My heart rate skyrockets. “Oh, do tell,” I say, all boredom and annoyance.

  “Percival Valentine Blake. His aunt is the French ambassador. Know him?”

  “Of course I know him. He’s hard to miss.” If El catches me in a single lie, Percy’s dead, so I need to tell as much truth as possible.

  “He’s an orphan—did you know that?”

  “Yup. Common knowledge.”

  “His dad was a piece of work, I can tell you. The guy did his best to take down both Fortin and NeuroGo. He had no problem trying to deny lifesaving neurostim treatment to millions of Americans.”

  I stare into El’s eyes. “Until he was murdered.”

  El smiles. “Yeah, that was a tragedy. But it wasn’t the first to befall this family. Percy was.”

  “Well, he’s kind of an idiot, but that’s hardly what I would call a tragedy.”

  “No, that’s more of a miracle, actually. See, that kid should have died a long time ago.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  And El can see that he’s hooked me. “The Blakes’ only son suffered a terrible fall when he was seven years old. And the kid wasn’t seen or heard from again . . . until he enrolled at your school. Interesting, am I right? Despite the fact that his hospital records show—”

  “Those are private!”

  “Matter of national security. I got a warrant.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  “Anyway, his hospital records show that his spinal cord was severed and he had severe brain damage. The kind that doesn’t mend. Then his parents took him home—they were offered hospice care for the child, but they didn’t accept it. And then, almost a decade later, here’s this kid.”

  This doesn’t make any sense. Percy has no visible scars, no problems moving around. His brain seems to work just fine . . . mostly. “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “Don’t you think it’s odd, Mar? Especially since his parents were specialists in use of augmentation chips and nanotech—most of which have been banned for private use because of the risks involved? If they used that stuff on their kid, that’s just cruel. And illegal.”