by Anna Sheehan
I think.” I shrugged.
Bren rose slowly to his feet and did something that really surprised me. He put his arms around my shoulders and wrapped me in a warm, strong hug. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered in my ear.
Now, this just wasn’t fair. It was as if he were trying to tear out my heart, just so he could grind it into the dust. His breath was heavy in my ear, and his body was as comforting against mine as sleep. I couldn’t hold back a gasp of relieved shock, but I was angry. He didn’t mean it. He was just torturing me. I pulled away. “What for? I’m fine.” I was surprised my voice sounded as strong as it did.
He stared at me, his face as soft and open as I’d ever seen it. He shook his head slowly. “Rose, you are not ‘ fine.’ ”
“Yes, I am,” I said, glaring at him. “Who are you to judge my coping mechanism? You go hit a tennis ball; I go into stass. No difference.”
Bren stared at me in disbelief, and then he slowly closed his eyes. He shook his head a few times. “Fine,” he said, opening his eyes. “Believe that if it gives you comfort.” He grabbed my hand. “We gotta get you back home.”
I balked. “No.”
Bren turned to look at me. “No?”
“I’m not ready to go back yet.”
Bren stared at me for what seemed like a full minute. “Too bad,” he finally said.
“You’ve got half the police of ComUnity on the alert. Your foster parents are in hysterics. Guillory and Granddad are so riled up that they’re about to come to blows. So grow up, get a grip, and get upstairs.”
I winced. “Just leave me alone,” I groaned. “Tell them I’m fine. Tell them where I am. I just can’t go up there yet.” I pulled away from him and sat down on a crate.
“Why not?”
“It’s too . . . soon,” I said. “Everything’s supposed to have gone away. It’s supposed to have been long enough that it doesn’t matter anymore.” I stole a glance at him — wretched beauty —and my heart twisted. Nope, not long enough. “It hasn’t been.”
Bren still stared at me. He crept forward, as if I were a feral cat, and crouched at my feet so that I would meet his eyes. “Rose,” he said. “I really am sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I said to you. It was . . . cruel, but you took me by surprise. I misinterpreted you.” He sighed. “I’m not very good at getting to know new people; our little group is pretty . . .”
“Insular,” I supplied.
“Yeah. That’ll do.” He smiled ruefully. “And you’re so quiet. That’s what I meant when I said you were like a ghost; it wasn’t anything to do with the stass stuff.
It’s hard to get to know you when you don’t talk. I really didn’t see it coming.
Not in the least.” He struggled for the right words. “You’re unreadable. To me, anyway. Otto saw you that morning, when you left school. He was worried about you. I told him you just had a crush on me and were overreacting, but he thinks . . .” He hesitated. “Otto thinks there’s something wrong with you.
Not with you, I mean, he doesn’t think its inherent or anything. But you have these gaps in your mind. I didn’t know what he meant, but now I think . . .”
“It’s not the stass,” I said firmly. “You wake up one morning and find your entire world gone, everyone you’ve ever known and loved dead in one fell swoop, every place you’ve ever been to changed so radically that you don’t recognize it — even the expressions on people’s faces are different — and see how whole your mind is!” By the end of that little speech, tears had welled again in my weakened eyes. “Coit!” I muttered, trying to force them back. I was right. I hadn’t been stassed long enough.
“That’s the longest speech I’ve ever heard you make.” He touched my face. “You can cry,” Bren said quietly. “I’d cry, too.”
“No, I can’t. I can’t let anyone see this. I’m too high- strung. I need to control myself.”
“There’s no one here to see you but me.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “It isn’t proper. I need lots of time to wind down.
That’s why the stass, okay? I’m too emotional. Besides, I spent all of last night crying. I shouldn’t need to cry anymore.”
Bren tilted his head, amused. “Last night you were in stass,” he pointed out.
“Oh,” I said. Bren’s mouth quirked to the side, and then he came and sat down beside me on the crate. He put one arm around me and rubbed my shoulder. It seemed entirely platonic, but actually heartfelt. I sighed. This was the first touch I’d felt since I came out of stass that hadn’t felt forced. Unless you counted Zavier. My head tilted until I leaned against Bren’s shoulder. “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable yesterday,” I said.
“Three days ago,” Bren reminded me.
“Right,” I said. Organizing time when you’d been stassed was always a conundrum. “I’ve never really dated anyone. I don’t know any signals.”
Bren snorted lightly. “No one really does,” he said. “It’s always hit or miss. I thought you said you had a boyfriend.”
I nodded. “Xavier,” I said. “But he and I didn’t need to know any signals. We knew each other so well it was like water joining water. I knew him all his life.”
“You wanna tell me about him?” Bren asked gently.
I took in a deep breath. “He was the son of our next- door neighbor. I met him as a baby when I was seven. We used to play in the garden. We grew up together. He was like my little brother, and then . . . somehow he became my best friend. My only real friend. He was the only one who understood, the only one who listened. When we were both fifteen — or, I think he was sixteen by then —we . . .” The tears started again, and this time I just let them go.
Bren squeezed my shoulder and pressed his cheek to the top of my head. “I’m so sorry, Rose. It must be so hard to have had someone like that and never have had a chance to say good- bye.”
But that was what made it even worse. “I said good- bye,” I said, and my tears distorted my voice. “I just never had a chance to say sorry.”
Bren didn’t understand that, but he didn’t need to. All I needed from him just then was to let me cry myself out.
I didn’t get the chance. A harsh voice pierced the silent gloom of the subbasement, startling me from my grief. “You are Rosalinda Samantha Fitzroy. Please remain still for retinal identi fication.”
– chapter 13—
I pulled away from Bren. “Did you hear that?” I whispered, praying he’d say no.
I’d rather be hallucinating than have that thing really after me.
“Yeah. Hello?” he called into the darkness. “Who’s there?”
There was no immediate answer, except from me. “Coit!”
“What’s wrong?”
“He’s real!”
Bren looked confused. “What’s real?”
I looked at him, panicked. “I thought he was a dream, but —”
“Voice match con firmed. Please remain still for retinal identi fication.”
I closed my eyes and dodged out of the way, pulling Bren with me. I huddled behind the crate and looked left and right for a way out. There was nothing.
Just corridor upon corridor of dusty crates and boxes. Maybe there was a weapon or something. . . .
“What’s going on here?” Bren asked.
“No time!” I said. “Run! He’s after me, not you!”
“Run? What are you —?”
But I was already running.
He had lost sight of his target. It had hidden behind the crate, and then run down one of the corridors of shelves. He activated the warning signal. “Remain still. My orders are to retain and return. Should return prove impossible, my orders are to terminate.”
Meanwhile, he was walking up and down the corridors. He could not hear his target or the noncombatant, as his hearing mechanisms were not up to optimal performance after so much time in standby mode. He connected to the net and searched f
or a diagram of the subbasement.
STATISTICAL ANALYSIS, CONCEALMENT POSSIBILITIES BY SIZE. He began a strategy program, ready to systematically search each corner of the basement while blocking access to the exit.
BEGIN STRATEGY PROGRAM.
The maze of storerooms and shelves in the subbasement proved too much for my stass- fatigued body. I lost track of Bren, and I couldn’t get to the hallway with the lift. Panting, my chest burning, I crouched in a corner behind a broken chair and tried to remember which direction the lift was in. A hand grabbed my shoulder. I shrieked and then bit my arm, hating myself for the noise. It was only Bren. “Why didn’t you run?” I hissed. “He’ll be here in a minute. Don’t wait for me.”
“Who will? What are you talking about?”
“Didn’t your parents ever teach you how to evade a kidnapper?” I asked.
“No,” Bren said. “Why would they?”
My mouth hung open at this oversight.
“Rose, will you tell me what is going on?” Bren sounded more exasperated than worried.
“This shiny, crazy plastic- looking man attacked me in my studio the other night. I thought he was a dream, but I guess he’s not. He was going to put a control collar on me and return me to some principal.”
“Oh.” Bren stood up and looked down the corridor. “You mean him?” I looked.
My attacker was advancing, slowly but steadily. He was halfway down the corridor, but he was going to get to me eventually.
“Oh, God!” I breathed. “Come on!” I tugged at his arm. “He’ll get you, too!”
Bren took hold of my shirt, keeping me from running away. “It’s not a he,” Bren said, rather arrogantly, I thought. “It’s a machine. Quit trying to run; it’ll keep itself between you and the lift, and you’ll get tired long before it will.”
“He said he was going to terminate me!” I said. “What I’m I supposed to do, offer him tea and crumpets? Last time he nearly killed my dog!”
“What did Barry and Patty say last time?”
“Nothing.”
“You got people trying to ex you and they said nothing?”
“I didn’t tell them,” I hissed.
“Why not?”
I opened my mouth, but I didn’t really have a reason. I’d convinced myself it was a dream, but why didn’t I say anything that first morning? “I don’t know.”
Bren stared at me for a moment, and then he shook his head. “Ae, Rose. Learn to talk!” He stood up and pointed at the man. “Abort mission!” he said in a loud voice. “Abort, abort, abort!”
“Bren!”
“Abort! Abort! Target at specified return location! Abort! Abort!”
“Voice match invalid,” said the flat, mechanical German accent. “Secondary target impeding mission. Terminate secondary target.”
Bren froze. “Coit,” he whispered. He grabbed my shoulder. “You were right the first time. Run!” He pushed me away from my broken chair and down one of the corridors. He ran the other way.
Of course, the thing came after me. I ran as fast as I could, but now that the thing had me in its sights, it was going much faster. My heart pulsed with an arrhythmia as my overworked nanos protested the exertion. With a terrifying screech, a wall of shelves collapsed behind me, shedding boxes of out- of- date clothes and plastic toys before landing with a terrible crunch. With inexorable determination, the shiny man plodded through the rubble, crushing the aluminum shelving beneath his feet. Bren was right —this thing was definitely not human.
It was just like my nightmares. I wanted to run, but my stass- fatigued body was already past capacity. My lungs were burning, my heart was racing, and my feet seemed stuck in treacle. I couldn’t possibly go fast enough.
The thing jogged behind me, and I could feel him, nearer and nearer. Until something struck me in the back.
He hadn’t hit me; he’d only touched me with his cylindrical baton. But even through my uniform jacket, the stick could clearly do its job.
My body stopped working. It was as if I were the machine, and I’d been turned off. I wanted to scream, but couldn’t. I collapsed like a rag doll, every muscle tensed and powerless, as if I were a puppet cut from its strings. It was worse than if I’d merely been electrocuted. Shooting pain radiated out from the point where the stick had touched me. I was sure he’d shorted out my nanobots.
How long could I survive with my organs functioning purely on their own?
I felt a burning touch as my attacker turned me over. I couldn’t move. A strange sound was coming from my throat — the sound of the raw, agonizing pain I was suffering.
I could still move my eyes, and they focused on the control collar my attacker was pushing toward my neck. I knew that once he had that thing on me, my body would no longer be my own. There was nothing I could do now. At least he hadn’t gotten Bren.
Then my eyes widened as I saw, over my attacker’s shiny head, what he could not. Another one of the tall shelves began to tip. Everything was moving very slowly. I watched a box fall off the shelf, then a crate, then two boxes, and then the entire storage unit came right down on my attacker’s back, and onto my legs.
My attacker seemed jolted rather than truly disabled. I whimpered as fresh pain shot up half my body. Bren stood triumphant behind the shelves, but he started when he saw me. “Rose!” He picked his way over the rubble and began pulling me out from under my attacker.
“Come on,” Bren said, crouching at my side. “We have to get you out of here.”
“I really hurt,” I complained. I couldn’t think clearly enough for anything more coherent.
“I know,” Bren said. He slid his arm around my shoulders and hoisted me to my feet. I could barely find them to put weight on them. I actually whimpered, just like Zavier had. “You’ve been hit with a stumble stick.” He reached through the rubble and plucked the stick from the unresisting hand of the shiny man.
“We have to cell the police. You have yours with you?”
“I think it’s by my bed,” I muttered. I hadn’t really been together when I went down into stass.
“Let’s get you upstairs and away from this thing before it resets.”
“Thing? Resets?”
“Yeah, thing,” Bren said. He dragged me through the storeroom to the door of the subbasement. He pushed me through and then pulled an old- fashioned biometric key card from his pocket. A wave of nostalgia hit. I hadn’t seen one of those since before coming out of stass. He passed it through a slot beside the door. “Override, Sabah,” he said. “Lock.”
A small whine came from the slot, and a click sounded from the door.
“There,” Bren said. He took me around my shoulders again and pressed the button for the lift.
“What did you do?”
“I have a master key card,” he said. “Only my parents and I can open that door now.” The lift doors opened and he pulled me inside. I panted as the lift slowly climbed. Every part of my body hurt. As the lift stopped, my legs buckled, and I fell to the floor. “Burn it. Hold this.” Bren pushed the stumble stick into my hands and scooped me up like a child.
“Don’t,” I said, as it became clear that he meant to carry me to my door. “I’m too heavy.”
“How do you think I got you out of the basement the first time?” he asked, wrapping one arm around my shoulders and the other under my legs. “You’re only barely heavier now.”
I blinked as Bren picked me up like a new bride. “You carried me?”
“I couldn’t just leave you there,” Bren said brusquely.
The idea of him carrying my unconscious body up out of the cellar was both embarrassing and compelling. A real Prince Charming. Apparently tennis built some strength, or at least encouraged stubbornness. I closed my eyes as he cradled me, telling myself that even this, right now, meant nothing. My body wasn’t listening. I laid my head against his shirt, breathing in the smell of his sandalwood soap and of him. He smel
led like heat itself. His arms felt so strong around me, damn him. He kicked on my door. No one answered. I heard raised voices coming from inside. Were Barry and Patty having a fight?
“Open the burned door!” Bren shouted.
To my surprise it was Mrs. Sabah who opened my door, and her almond eyes opened wide at seeing me in her son’s arms. “Good God, get her inside!” she cried.
“She’s fine,” Bren said, though the strain of carrying me was beginning to show in his voice. He pushed past his mother and into the living room.
Mr. Guillory was shouting at an older, white- haired man I assumed was Bren’s grandfather. I hadn’t seen the old man since the day I came out of stass, when he was just a white blur. The argument continued as Bren lugged me into the room.
“No, I do think the feds could do the job; I just don’t think we need any more forces than the ComUnity police!” Guillory said, his voice sounding very loud in the subdued apartment.
“What if she’s no longer in ComUnity. Did that ever occur to you? We’d never find her! Ach, why am I arguing this with you? You’d just as soon we’d never found her in the first place!”
“I wish none of this had happened, true!” Guillory shouted. “It’s a logistical and public relations nightmare! It’s not going to get easier, you know. You think you’ll be able to keep all your little pet projects once she gets her hands on the board?”
“Hey!” Bren snapped, drawing their attention. “Get out of the way.”
The two men started, identical looks of surprise on their faces. Then they hurriedly stepped away from each other, clearing a path to the couch. Bren pushed between them and tenderly laid me down. “ Ro — Is she okay?” asked Bren’s grandfather.
“Cell the cops,” Bren said, ignoring the question. “She just got hit with a stumble stick.”
“Those are illegal,” said Guillory.
Bren pulled the stick from my hands and passed it to his grandfather. “Tell that to the Plastine downstairs.”
“A Plastine?”
“Yeah, someone’s trying to assassinate her.”
