by C. J. Hill
Sheridan didn’t want to keep feeling the glow of hope inside her, the lifting of her heart. It would make her careless, and she needed to be cautious. Tariq’s plan could be an attempt to get information from her. Tariq could be working for Reilly, using honey instead of vinegar to get what he wanted.
Tariq kept his gaze locked on Sheridan’s. She saw no deception in his dark eyes, only eagerness. She wanted so badly to believe him.
He put his hand on top of hers, weaving his fingers into hers. “Are you willing to give the DW information about the QGPs?”
Sheridan didn’t answer, just kept watching Tariq’s eyes. They were chocolate brown. Hard to resist.
“If I could, I would free you by myself,” Tariq emphasized, giving her hand a squeeze. “I need their help, though.”
Sheridan’s mind spun. How could she ensure freedom without risking her sister? What could she tell them?
When Sheridan didn’t answer, Tariq slid his hands around her waist. “Our romance doesn’t have to be doomed,” he said again, and leaned over and kissed her. His lips were soft against hers. Gentle and coaxing.
She felt a flash of guilt for kissing him. Echo loomed in her mind, his piercing blue eyes watching her. What would he think if he knew she was kissing her guard?
She pushed the thought away. Tariq was trying to help her. He might be her only way out of this prison. She needed a piece of hope to hold on to. As she kissed him back, her mind went through different possible ways to handle the DW, safeguards she would need in order to protect herself and Taylor.
Finally Tariq lifted his head. He took her hands in his and smiled. “Is there something about the QGP that you can tell me—anything that will show the DW you’re going to cooperate?”
No, actually there wasn’t. She let out a long breath. “I have to be sure about the DW’s intentions before I tell them anything. I can’t risk the QGP falling into the wrong hands.”
Tariq ran his fingers up her arm. “It won’t fall into the wrong hands. The DW only want the information to save lives.”
That was when Sheridan realized, with an icy shudder in her stomach, the mistake Tariq had just made—had been making all along without Sheridan noticing. He never questioned the twenty-first-century idioms Sheridan used. If she had used the phrase I can’t risk it falling into the wrong hands with Echo, he would have said, “We won’t drop the QGPs. That would damage them.” Or at the very least, he would have given her a questioning look while he figured out what she meant.
Tariq took in most of her slang without confusion. Without question. Which meant he had heard the slang phrases before and already knew their meaning.
The coldness spread from Sheridan’s stomach into her chest, went through her limbs like ice water. She nearly shivered. The only person Tariq could have heard twenty-first-century slang from was Reilly. And it wasn’t something a person would pick up all at once. Tariq must have spent months, years maybe, with him.
“What’s wrong?” Tariq had seen her expression change. He took her chin in his hand and tilted her face so she was looking at him.
Sheridan gulped and did her best to keep the fear from her voice. “The QGP is a dangerous machine. I’m responsible for it. I can’t forget that.”
Concern flashed in Tariq’s eyes, sympathy. “You’re not responsible for what other people do.”
He seemed so sincere. Was there a chance, however small, that what Tariq was offering her was legitimate? Just because Tariq had been around Reilly didn’t mean he was in league with him. Tariq might be a double agent for the DW. He might be telling her the truth.
But then why would he pretend he didn’t know Reilly? Tariq acted like he hadn’t even seen Reilly until he became Sheridan’s guard.
Tariq dropped another kiss on her lips, still gentle and coaxing. The kiss of someone who cared about her. Perhaps Tariq had a reasonable explanation for not telling Sheridan he’d been around Reilly. Or . . . perhaps she was a fool who was unwilling to let go of a string of hope once it had been handed to her. There was so little to cling to in this place.
When Tariq lifted his head this time, Sheridan said, “Tell the DW I’ll only cooperate with them after they help both Taylor and me escape from the city and go someplace safe. I won’t give them any information until then.”
Looking back, perhaps it had been a mistake to ever propose that deal. It led to a series of virtual reality programs. Each time Sheridan woke up now—whether it was in the morning or in the middle of the night—she didn’t know if what she experienced was real or the work of a computer program. Sometimes Tariq came to rescue her. A few times it was Jeth, Elise, Echo, other guards, even strangers. Once her cell door malfunctioned and she escaped on her own.
Usually during the escape programs, the rescuer told Sheridan that Taylor was already free and they would meet up with her later. Other times Taylor was with them but so sick, injured, or dazed she couldn’t talk much. Taylor always had a reason for not acting like herself, a reason she couldn’t answer Sheridan’s questions.
Sheridan escaped into various safe houses in the city. One time she even escaped out of the city. That experience had been especially strange. Tariq had smuggled Sheridan in a stolen garbage-transport vehicle through one of Traventon’s outer doors.
As soon as the transporter had gone outside, Sheridan had known what she would see: the wreckage of a ruined city, jagged pieces of cement stacked on one another, rebar reaching from the ground, and everything covered with gray dust.
The landscape was exactly how Sheridan had pictured it. Even the outline of the wreckage seemed familiar.
How had she known? Had Reilly put this image in her mind before? No, she was sure he hadn’t. It was new, and yet she recognized it.
The déjà vu added one more layer to the odd surrealness that had become her life.
Every time a new escape started, Sheridan hoped it would be real. She carried that hope around, cradled and protected it while she waited to eat. Her hunger never diminished during the escapes. In fact, it grew worse. Her mind expected food and every single bite left her emptier. Still, with every new escape she hoped. She hoped until she began to hate hope itself. It lifted her up, just to let her fall. She was tired of being crashed and broken.
Sheridan always let the programs play out until someone insisted she give them information. Then she tried to escape. That usually led to her being shot or killed. Which might not have been so bad except that the pain, like the taste of food, was authentic.
Sometimes Sheridan would wake from one program just to plunge into another—to someone opening her door and motioning to her that it was time to go. It was like dreaming you had woken up. She lost track of time, events, couldn’t remember how many days she’d been here. Everything felt unreal and unhinged. Even pacing in her cell and practicing her accent had a surreal quality to it.
Now Sheridan looked at Reilly steadily. “You don’t have my sister anymore, do you?” She liked asking him this question. It made him angry, and that was as good as reassurance.
Reilly put his hands behind his back. The wrinkles between his bushy green eyebrows deepened. “I’m losing patience with you.”
“We had a secret handshake, you know. All twins do. I’ll always be able to tell it’s not her.”
“We have new ways to torture people now,” Reilly said slowly, injecting each word with menace. “I can strap electrodes directly to the pain region of your brain. It’s very efficient.”
Sheridan didn’t answer him.
He leaned closer to her and smiled. “Of course the old methods work well too.” He picked up her left hand and caressed her wrist. “In the Middle Ages, the Normans used to cut off limbs as punishment for crimes.” He turned her hand over, examining it. “How many fingers does a person actually need?”
Prickles of fear jabbed into Sheridan’s chest. She wanted to yank her hand away from him. She didn’t though. She’d played poker with Taylor enough times to know how
to bluff. “You can torture me if you want. We both know I’ll eventually agree to help you. But then while we’re working on the QGP, you’ll have to wonder whether I’m really helping you or whether I’m sabotaging you. How sure are you that you’ll be able to tell the difference?”
Reilly squeezed her hand, each moment applying more pressure until she gasped out in pain. “Fine,” he spit out. “Have it your way. I’ve already scheduled a memory wash for you.” He flung her hand back at her, left it throbbing in her lap. “You have an hour to willingly cooperate with me. After that, your mind will be wiped clean, you’ll be reeducated, and you’ll be taught to work with us anyway. Think about that.”
He turned and stalked out of the room.
Chapter 28
Echo’s hands were gentle as he slid the medical scanner over Taylor’s foot. She watched his progress with a growing sense of dismay. Even though she was lying on the couch with her foot elevated, it was already so swollen, it looked like she didn’t have an ankle. She wasn’t going to be able to walk on it any time soon.
Allana sat on a gel chair not far away. The wall in front of her doubled as a large computer screen, and she flipped through updates from the city’s news channels. She looked bored and beautiful, and kept running her fingers through her silver hair absentmindedly.
Taylor felt an electric tingle from her comlink and smelled pine. Joseph. She unclipped her comlink and read the message. We have a plan in motion to break into the detention center. Have you destroyed the QGPs?
Speaking into her comlink, Taylor said, “I have a plan in motion to destroy them. Let me know when you have Sheridan.” Taylor wanted to tell him about Xavier, and yet at the same time dreaded it, couldn’t do it. She put her comlink back on her belt.
Echo took his attention from the medical scanner long enough to give her a penetrating stare. “You know, sometimes you have to trust people.”
“If you never trust anyone, you’ll never be disappointed.”
He went back to checking her foot. “But you’ll never be happy either.”
Taylor let out a short laugh. “Right now, I’ll settle for cynicism and my sister’s life.”
The medical scanner beeped and Echo read its diagnosis. “Your ankle isn’t broken. You need a shot for swelling and one that reconnects torn ligaments” He put the scanner down and rummaged through the medical bag. Every once in a while he pulled out a vial to check the label. “It will still be—I don’t know—maybe an hour before you’ll be able to walk.”
He was clearly discouraged by this fact, but it seemed miraculous to Taylor. An hour wasn’t that long. And they needed to be hidden out of the way somewhere until Joseph had rescued Sheridan. This place was as good as anywhere else.
Echo found the vials he was looking for. He attached needles to them and then used the scanner to tell him where the medicine needed to go. Taylor’s foot already throbbed so much, she barely felt the needle pricks.
“We’ll need to find some shoes for you,” he said.
“When you say ‘find,’” Taylor asked, “do you mean ‘steal’?”
“Probably,” he said.
Taylor sighed. She just couldn’t seem to stay on the right side of the law in this city.
Echo took the needle out of one side of her ankle and put it into the other. “You can’t walk four kilometers with only one boot.”
Allana clicked on a report about an attempt to disrupt courthouse rulings. The wall showed blurry pictures of the group walking down the hallway on the top floor of the courthouse.
“Enforcers are matching DNA from the scene,” a plaid-haired newscaster said smugly, “and will issue arrest warrants soon.”
Allana scoffed. “Which means they know nothing. Hundreds of people go through that building every day. They’re not going to find DNA that will help them.”
Echo jabbed a needle into a particularly tender spot on Taylor’s ankle. She winced. “Is it good news or bad news that the newsfeeds aren’t mentioning what happened at the Scicenter?”
“Neither,” Echo said, finishing up the shot. “They won’t report damage to equipment that they don’t want people to know about. They’ll try to figure out who we are and how to find us without letting the public know anything about it.”
Finished with her ankle, Echo scooted down the couch to examine Taylor’s hands. He gently turned them over. Streaks of blood ran from her palms to her fingertips, some still fresh. One thumb was swollen. He pulled the lid off a flesh-colored tube, revealing a tip that looked like a paintbrush. “Artificial skin,” he told her. “It will sting.” He dabbed the liquid along her palm.
It didn’t sting; it burned like fire. The stab of pain made Taylor want to jerk her hand away. She didn’t, though. She left it there, trembling, cradled in his hand. “Stinging has apparently become a lot more painful through the centuries.”
He moved the brush to her finger, gliding streaks of pain in that direction. “Did you know,” he said conversationally, “that your fingertips have some of the densest areas of nerve endings in your body?”
“I didn’t,” Taylor said, “or I would have caught myself with my elbows.”
Another finger. More pain. “That would have been tricky,” he said, “but it wouldn’t have surprised me. Not from a girl who walks along ledges backward.” He was trying to distract her from the pain with small talk. She wished it worked better.
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“Eighteen?” He glanced up at her, surprised. A flash of intrigue went through his eyes.
Taylor realized she shouldn’t have told him anything about herself. He already knew she was from the past and that she and Joseph had come back to Traventon to destroy the QGPs. But he didn’t know that she had also created the QGP and that both the government and the Dakine wanted to capture her.
Echo went back to applying the artificial skin. “You computigate pretty well for an eighteen-year-old.”
“You’re only twenty,” she pointed out. “And you know a lot more about computigating than I do.”
“Yeah. That’s why I know how hard it is to learn.” He finished with her first hand. The pain had already subsided along her palm; it felt almost normal.
Echo looked up at her and did a double take. Then he stared openly at her.
“What?” she asked.
“Your face,” he said. “You look different. You look . . .”
For a moment she was alarmed, and then relaxed when she understood what had happened. “I took a shot to make my face puffy. It was supposed to help disguise me. The shot in my ankle must have gotten rid of the swelling in my face too.”
Echo kept staring at her. It made her feel self-conscious. She wondered if she’d been mistaken and he was staring at her for some other reason.
“What?” she asked, touching her cheek tentatively. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said, and smiled. “I just didn’t realize before how beautiful you are.”
She felt herself blushing and didn’t know what to say.
Taylor had forgotten Allana was in the room until she called out, “Echo, I need your help too. Look.” She held up her left hand to show him. A small scrape ran along her palm. It wasn’t deep, only pink with flecks of blood.
Without glancing at Allana, Echo moved to the scrape on Taylor’s knee. He stroked the brush across the wound. It felt like a burning slash. “Taylor’s injuries are worse than yours. I want to make sure there’s enough artificial skin to cover them.”
Allana let out an irritated huff. “You didn’t even look at mine. How do you know hers are worse?”
“I know,” Echo said calmly, “because if you were hurt worse than this, you would have told us about it repeatedly.”
Allana let out another huff, this one sounding offended. “The medkit has to have more than two tubes of artificial skin.”
The tube Echo had been using ran out. He tossed it onto the couch and opened the s
econd one. “The rest of them fell out in the car.”
That had been Taylor’s fault. She’d spilled things out of the medkit when she was trying to help Xavier.
“Are there pain erasers?” Allana asked.
“If there were, don’t you think I would have given one to Taylor before now?” Echo straightened and took Taylor’s other hand in his. She flinched before he even touched her with the brush. “Are you all right?” he asked patiently.
She nodded. “Just give me a second to catch my breath.”
Allana turned in her chair, coldly surveying Taylor. “Catch your breath?” She laughed in a way that was more mocking than amused. “Is it running away from you?”
“I like the phrase,” Echo said. “It’s either poetic or a very intriguing activity.” He gave Taylor a knowing smile. “You’ll have to show me how to do it sometime.”
He was flirting with her. She wondered if that was solely for Allana’s benefit—Allana had hurt Echo by rejecting him for Joseph, so Echo flirted with Taylor to make Allana jealous.
The strategy was working perfectly. Allana sat tight-lipped on her chair, chin tilted in that angry haughty-couture way.
Taylor smiled back at Echo but didn’t feel it. She didn’t like being used, didn’t want to be discarded after Echo decided he’d punished Allana enough.
“Breath caught?” he asked her.
Taylor nodded. She wasn’t going to flirt back. She would pretend Echo was Joseph and therefore off-limits.
As soon as Echo ran the tube across her hand, pain flamed through her palm. To block it out, she focused on Echo’s face, on the expression of concentration in his blue eyes. The smooth planes of his cheeks. The square jaw. Such a handsome face. Not that she was attracted to him. She was only making an observation. Some people were gorgeous.
Echo glanced at her. She was embarrassed to be caught staring and had a sudden irrational worry that he could read her thoughts. She shifted her weight. “How did you manage to keep from falling when you jumped out of the car?”
“Practice,” he said. “I do a lot of VR adventure programs.”
