by Driza, Debra
“He won’t. This way.” Shaking his head slightly, with a tiny, strange, bittersweet smile on his lips as if in disbelief, Jensen walked down the stairs, toward the lower level, surprisingly quiet on his feet for such a tall man. I followed as he turned left, past another den and a bathroom, all decorated in that same minimalist style. We walked into a large laundry room, toward a door with an electrical box next to it. He yanked it open and led us into the garage.
As I entered, I realized that the three-car space held no cars, but tons and tons of equipment and boxes. A military-issue ATV sat in the corner, right next to a black Honda motorcycle. A network of three computers hummed on three interlocking desks. Towering shelves dominated the left side of the wall. Colorful bins were tucked away inside, most of them labeled. Flashlights. Camping. Electronics. Emergency. Two larger radios, assorted speakers, and walkie-talkies nestled among them. On the bottom shelf, tucked away in a corner, were four folded sets of camos, three sets of worn, military-issued combat boots beside them.
Hooks up near the front door sagged under an assortment of backpacks, sleeping bags, scanners, climbing gear, and other paraphernalia. The layout bothered me. Nothing was flush against the walls. Even the hooks were on a freestanding rack. Everything was a good seven inches away from touching the walls, and the lack of logic burrowed under my skin.
I tried to tune in, opened my mind and listened with my android sensors. A very faint hum replied, but nothing else.
I gave up and turned back to Hunter, my stomach knotting at his pallor. If Jensen wanted to plan for the apocalypse, that was his business. So long as he could fix Hunter.
Jensen paused in the process of clearing off a long, sturdy worktable. He followed my gaze. “I like to be prepared,” he said, curtly, obviously noting my inspection. He finished moving a power saw and thumped the table. “Put him down here.”
I settled him as gently as I could onto the cold, hard surface. He lay as still as death.
“Here we go.” Jensen plunked a medium-sized box labeled FIELD FIRST AID on the edge of the computer table and popped off the lid. After pulling out a giant bandage—Tegaderm—two large sterile gauze pads, and some stretchy elastic wrap, he produced a syringe and a small vial. His sure hands worked the needle into the bottle while I shot to my feet. If he thought I was just going to sit there and smile pretty while he jabbed Hunter with some foul-looking crap, he was dead wrong.
I shoved my body between him and Hunter. “Don’t even think about it,” I snapped. “No way I’m letting you poison him.”
Jensen ignored my command and continued to fill the syringe.
“I’m warning you—”
“Oh, give me a break,” Jensen said. His tone was mild but his cheeks flushed red, and somehow I just knew that he was this close to losing his temper. “We’ve already established that you can kick my ass all over this garage, and then shoot me when you’re done. Now back up so I can help your friend.”
I stood my ground, acting like the gun was loaded when in fact it was utterly useless.
“And you expect me to trust you?”
His brown eyes drilled into mine, like he was seeking something—or someone. “I learned to ditch my expectations a long time ago,” he finally said.
A total nonanswer that made me grit my teeth in frustration.
“Did Mom really used to be friends with you? And if so—what was she thinking?”
That got a bigger reaction. I watched his hand stiffen on the syringe squeeze it until his knuckles turned white. I was afraid the entire thing would explode and douse me with mystery fluid. He drew in an audible, shaky breath. “I’ve asked myself that same question thousands of times. Now, hold out your hand.”
“What?”
His syringe hand flicked impatiently toward me. “Your hand, hold it out,” he barked.
Some long-buried instinct urged me to obey, to the point that my traitorous hand even twitched in his direction. I recovered and in a fit of childish rebellion, shoved the offending appendage behind my back. Super mature. I might as well have stuck my tongue out while I was at it.
But instead of looking pissed off, Jensen just cast his eyes toward the ceiling, as if seeking divine intervention. Then he snapped his fingers and gestured them in a way that clearly meant quit being a pain in the butt and give me your hand already.
“Just as stubborn as ever. Look, you have a device, under the index finger of your left hand. If I dribble a drop of the liquid from this vial, you’ll be able to detect what the chemical components are. Then you’ll know I’m not trying to poison your friend there—I’m trying to save him from a lot of pain.”
Barely startled by his revelation, I extended my hand toward him. It wasn’t like special features hadn’t popped up out of nowhere before.
“If this is some kind of trick . . . ,” I warned, and Jensen nodded.
“Yeah, I’ve got it. You’ll choke me and feel good about it. I’m going to have to have a talk with Nicole about how she’s been teaching you. Looks like you need to cut back on the violent cartoons.”
I winced at the mention of Mom. Sympathy, unwanted as it might be. This man from Mom’s past clearly had no idea that she was gone. He’d never get a chance to talk to her about violent cartoons or me or anything, ever again. Neither of us would.
His callused fingers gripped mine, firm but gentle . . . and I was instantly transported back. To memories, of him holding my hand crossing a street, helping me with a baseball mitt. Ghostly memories bringing with them a sense of love, of belonging . . . something that I practically ached for.
But what was real? And what was programmed? Had I finally found someone who could tell me the truth? And maybe truth went beyond words, sometimes. Maybe truth could reside in something as simple as a touch. Because while words could lie, surely a true connection was harder to fabricate.
He flipped my hand, palm up.
Pulling back the skin on my index finger with one hand, he lowered the syringe with the other. As we watched, a tiny drop bubbled to the end of the needle. He touched it to the underside of my nail. A thin, barely visible line emerged in my nail bed, allowing the medicine to seep inside.
Warmth blossomed in my finger, then my hand, before traveling up my arm in that all-too-familiar electric surge. A blink later, red words glowed in front of me, accompanied by a smooth, digitized voice. My voice, only the robot version.
Chemical components: Ketamine.
Uses: Analgesia, anesthetic.
Safe for human ingestion.
Common side effects: Hallucinations, elevated blood pressure, bronchodilation, delirium, dizziness.
All of that info, in the blink of an eye. From one tiny drop of solution under my nail.
I realized that Jensen still grasped my hand. Gripped my fingers tightly, just this side of a true squeeze, as if he couldn’t bear to let me go. And once again he stared at my face, drinking in every detail, his expression rotating between wonder and maybe even hope. And then, an odd twitch of his lips. Indicating . . . disgust?
Screw him.
I yanked my hand away and he averted his gaze. “Do it, already,” I snapped.
His face whipped up, brows lowered, lips parted. For an instant, I braced myself, getting this weird sensation that I was about to be reprimanded like a child. Instead he shook his head and flipped me a half-assed salute. Then, he turned his back, cleaned a spot on Hunter’s good arm, right over the bulk of his bicep, and inserted the needle into his skin.
Hunter’s upper body flinched. His eyes shot open suddenly. “Sorry,” I said, grabbing his free hand with mine. He looked so frail, lying there with his blood seeping away.
He rolled his head toward me and attempted a weak smile. “S’okay. Can’t have you thinking I’m a big wimp.”
“How can you possibly believe . . .” I glanced away, closed my eyes. Fumbling for the strength not to cry. “Never. I’d never think that.”
Jensen hovered near Hunter’s in
jured shoulder, pressing a clean towel to the wound. “That should kick in within a minute or so. Afterward, your . . . boyfriend should be feeling pretty good. Groggy, but good.”
“Are you sure we should wait?” I asked, desperate for reassurance even though my sensors assured me he was stable.
Heart rate: 82 bpm.
Other vital signs: Stable.
Blood loss: Slowed.
Full recovery probable.
“Yes, unless you want to hear him scream when I stitch him up.”
My gaze flew to Hunter. He frowned, but squeezed my hand encouragingly. “I’m sorry,” he mouthed.
All this, and he still was trying to apologize. For something that wasn’t really his fault.
“Just rest,” I murmured.
“Ask your dad why he’s so knife happy,” he said, his words already starting to slur. Behind me, I heard something smack the floor, but I didn’t turn around, desperately hoping that Jensen wouldn’t give anything away. I clung to Hunter’s hand and waited, urged him to fall asleep. He was out less than a minute later, his breathing slow and steady.
I felt a presence behind me. “He’s ready.”
Jensen appeared in my line of vision. He dropped the first aid box, then paused, his hands curled around the edges of the table, white-knuckled. He kept his gaze cast downward, at Hunter, but when he spoke, his words were slow and tense. “You told him I was your dad?”
His voice cracked on dad. Everything about his posture screamed imminent explosion, like the sliver of control he grasped was about to slide free, but the way he said dad . . . it was like grief and hope and disbelief and terror, all rolled into one.
“I had to tell him something to explain why I needed to find you.” God, even to my own ears, the excuse sounded awful, weak. Selfish. “He doesn’t know . . .”
The way Jensen’s face crumpled, even briefly—I could only describe as anguished. For one horror-struck moment, I was sure he would burst into tears. He bowed his head. But when he straightened, he’d regained his composure.
He cleared his throat. “He doesn’t know what you are.” That was all he said, before he returned to the box and, over the next few minutes, busied himself by tending to Hunter’s wounds. Soon the garage was filled with the pungent reek of Betadine and the crinkle of gauze pads being opened. He swiped the wound with the dark liquid, then carefully wiped the excess away. So far, so good, I thought, until I saw him withdraw a needle.
He glanced up at me when I scooted closer. “Hate to stitch it because of the infection risk, but I’m afraid of the skin tearing more.”
With precision that seemed at odds with his large hands, he carefully threaded the needle and sewed up the wound, his tiny stitches almost seamstress perfect.
Odd, his precision and neatness, given his appearance. Here the man looked like he barely remembered to shower, and if he owned a hairbrush I would have been stunned. His jaw was grizzled with an emerging beard, but it was darker on one side than the other. Like he’d forgotten to shave half of his face. And yet the house, his possessions—everything was so tidy.
It occurred to me, then, that this was a man who had either been on his own way too long, or one who no longer cared about himself at all.
“He’ll still have a scar, but it won’t be nearly as bad.”
After assuring myself that Hunter was fine, I let go of his hand. With the anger pulsing through my body, I was afraid I might inadvertently squeeze too hard. Really, what I wanted to squeeze was Jensen’s neck again. If I didn’t need him—
“Relax, he’s going to be fine.” Jensen’s voice penetrated my haze, but his words had the opposite effect of soothing me.
“You could have killed him!”
“Yes, I could have—if I’d been trying. But I wasn’t,” he said, curtly. Then he sighed, wiping a towel across his brow. “That probably sounds harsh. Look, I don’t take kindly to strangers breaking into my home and pulling guns on me. Priority one is survival. That’s what’s kept me safe. You should have thought of that before you brought a civilian into this.”
“I’m a civilian,” I whispered.
He leaned over to toss the towel into a basket on the floor, but I still caught the sorrow that flickered across his features. “No, you’re not.” He replaced the unused supplies in the box and turned, resting his hips against the computer table, crossing his arms until his biceps bulged from under his short sleeves. “Now, do you want to keep wasting time with the blame game, or tell me what you came here for?”
I wanted to hold on to the anger, I really did. But as I stared into his weather-beaten face, that wave of familiarity enveloped me again.
Was it possible to ever know the truth, when even your memories were lies?
The anger drained, leaving behind a string of questions, and a weary hope that maybe, once I had all the answers, the promise of a real life would quit hovering just outside of my grasp, quit being this imaginary thing that I dreamed of but could never really touch.
“Who are you?” I asked.
Then I braced myself for the answer.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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SIXTEEN
Stiff legs carried Jensen two steps to a swivel chair, which he dropped into with a thud. His eyes roved over my features while his mouth shifted into a humorless smile.
“You really don’t know, do you?”
Then he cocked his head in a way that triggered an echo inside my head, a ghost of the past. Except that ghost only existed in my implanted memories, and this was a real man.
Who had a picture of my mom and me—or was it Sarah?
“No, I don’t.”
He rubbed his bare ring finger and exhaled loudly. “Right. Well, grab one of those camping chairs and take a seat then—this might take a while.”
I skirted the table to grab a chair, then paused, stopping to brush a strand of hair that dangled over Hunter’s eye. His chest lifted and lowered with ease now, and his bandage didn’t show any new bleeding, but what if—
“I told you, he’ll be fine.”
I shouldn’t trust Jensen—no, I didn’t trust him. Still, something in the quiet confidence of his voice propelled me to approach. With trepidation, I lowered myself into an empty chair. He rested his hands on his knees and leaned forward. As I waited for him to speak, my memory whirred.
Dad, leaning forward toward the TV in our townhouse. “C’mon—strike him out!”
The Dad from my past and Jensen superimposed, until the two images blended into one. Disconcerted, I covered my eyes while evicting the old image from my head. No. I needed to focus, and this wasn’t helping.
“I was serving time in the army when Nicole Laurent was first recruited. Right away there was a buzz about her. She had a medical and computer science background—was a prodigy. God, she was young back then,” he added, his gaze now sliding beyond me, into a past that only he could see. “I’d been assigned to the special division your mom was part of—that’s how we met.”
I watched him, riveted. Finally. I was finally going to hear the whole story. Learn about Mom’s past—my past. “And you two were a couple?” I prodded.
“Yes. Nicole and I were together, for many years . . .” He coughed and looked down at the ground. “Until we had a difference of opinion. One that we just couldn’t get past.”
He paused again, and it was all I could do not to shake him. I uncurled my toes, told myself to be patient. I’d been waiting for answers for a long time now. A few more minutes wouldn’t hurt me.
“So I took a dishonorable discharge and got the hell out of there. Months later, this guy knocks on my door in the middle of the night. He’s been watching me, keeping track of my workout schedule. He tells me he’s with a company called the Vita Obscura, and they’d like to hire me away from my crap job. Great pay, great hours—all I’d have to do is share
a little classified info—no big deal.”
His exhalation was a sharp rattle while he shoved his hands into his pockets. “Of course, I told him to screw off. Why would I risk a cold, dark military prison just for the sake of a few bucks?”
“So what changed your mind?” I asked, enrapt.
His lip curled, and suddenly, I knew what he was going to say before he said it.
“Holland.”
Holland. Of course. Why did it not surprise me that he was at the root of everything bad?
“A woman came to see me next—Quinn. The head of the Vita Obscura. She told me things—suggested things—I knew Holland was an egotistical bastard, but I never believed that he would be so cruel, that he could—” He pressed a fist to his mouth and sagged into the chair, his eyes squeezed shut.
I reached over to comfort him before I even realized what I was doing. Startled, I snatched my hand away. This made no sense. I didn’t know this man, not really. But for some reason, confusion blurred the edges of my logic, dampened my certainty. There was no denying it; the sight of his distress triggered a wave of sympathy inside me. I wanted to soothe his pain.
Ridiculous. He’d hurt Hunter, I reminded myself grimly, so why did I feel this compassion for him?
When I saw a tear trickle a wet path down his scruffy cheek, my heart twisted again. I’d experienced firsthand Holland’s brand of pain. “So, you went to work for the Vita Obscura?” I prodded, when he remained speechless a minute later.
“Yes. Quinn said it was the only way to keep you safe.”
The way he said you was like a blessing and a curse, both reverent and repulsed. It made no sense.
“Quinn said all they wanted to do was figure out your technology, without hurt—damaging you at all. She also sold me on my suspicions about Holland, and I saw red. I wanted revenge. She promised—well, never mind what she promised.”
He kicked the desk leg, then had to let the resulting clang die before he continued. “They were lying. I was leery, of course, so I did a little snooping. I hacked into their computer, read one of their emails. They had no plans to keep you safe at all. So I snuck away.”
