“You’re awfully unafraid.”
“You promised you wouldn’t hurt me,” I snapped.
“Perhaps I’ve changed my mind.”
“Whatever. I don’t care.” I sighed and studied my virtual nails. I did care, of course, but Emory Specter obviously loved games, and I could play them too, when required.
“Tell me how you got out,” he barked up at me, because he sure was short in person.
“Give me a reason to and I will,” I barked back down at him, because it sure was fun to be taller than the Defense Minister. “I’m open to any and all exchanges.”
He stamped his little foot. “I’m not negotiating with you.”
“Then accept the fact that you’ll never know.” I turned on my heel and headed toward my pretty flowered prison. “Ciao!”
Emory’s footsteps followed after me. Two to my every one. “Explain yourself, now!”
I halted. “I already told you. Not unless you make it worth my while. Why do you even care? What are you so afraid of me finding out?”
Steam was rising from his neck. “I’m not afraid of anything!”
I laughed. “You should really download a Chill Pill App, Minister Specter. I’m a little worried about your virtual blood pressure.”
Tiny flames flickered in the pupils of his eyes. “What. Do. You. Know.”
I pretended to consider answering. “Gee, I’ve thought about your offer, and I don’t accept.”
Steam simmered in his shoes, the vapor filling the atmosphere like when those magicians use Dry Ice Apps to make everything they do seem mysterious. For a moment his attention seemed elsewhere, in a way that made me think he was mind-chatting. Then Emory closed his eyes and began to take long, slow breaths. His virtual skin turned a pale Caucasian 4.0 again and the fog began to fade. “Lucky for you, Ms. Ree, I’ve reconsidered my earlier comments and I’m willing to do an exchange. Your answer for your freedom.”
Excitement surged through my code. “Seriously?”
Emory cocked his head. “Yes, seriously,” he said, in a mocking tone.
If he wasn’t the Defense Minister of the App World and I wasn’t at his mercy right now, I might have smacked him. “What’s the catch? I thought you needed me for bait.”
He breathed deeply. “Plans change. This deal expires in exactly thirty seconds, so take it or leave it. No more irrelevant talk.”
I stuck out my hand. “Information about how I got out of that tasteful and comfy prison room in exchange for my freedom.”
He took it and shook. Yuck. His palm was clammy from overheating with rage. “It’s a deal. Now speak.”
I leaned against the wall behind me and crossed one ankle over the other like I had all the time in the world. I watched as his cheeks started to burn again. I was good at annoying my elders. Before he could get angry enough to take back our deal I started to talk. “I know about the holes in the atmosphere. The glitches in the fabric of our world. And I suspect they can’t be repaired or I wouldn’t have been able to see as many as I did, and I also suspect they must be related to that Death App that killed my mother and my poor friend Char.” I drew in a breath. “That’s how I got out. There was a hole in the door, big enough for me to reach a hand through.” I wiggled my virtual fingers in front of his face as demonstration. “And so here I am.”
Emory Specter nodded. Then he beckoned me back through the hallway to the elevators. He pushed the call button and soon one of them was dinging. The doors opened. He shooed me inside. “Off you go. The floor that exits onto the street is marked with a zero.” He rolled his eyes and shook his head. “I know that’s confusing, but the building was designed by a European.”
I put an arm out to stop the doors from shutting. “So that’s it? I’m free?”
He tapped his foot impatiently. “That was our deal. Hurry up.”
My hand clamped against the wall. “I’m confused. Aren’t you afraid I’ll tell people what I know? Isn’t that why you imprisoned me in my apartment in the first place?”
Emory Specter’s eyes went blank again. Someone was definitely mind-chatting him. When his attention returned he answered me. “It doesn’t matter much if you tell people at this point, Ms. Ree. I’m afraid it’s too late for that.” He sounded so fatalistic.
Alarms rattled through my code. “What do you mean it’s too late?”
The Defense Minister of the App World began to pick my fingers away from the frame of the elevator one by one. When only my pinky remained he looked me straight in the eyes. “You’ll know soon enough, Ree.” Soon my pinky was peeled away too and the doors began to close. Before they shut he said one last thing. “Everyone will.”
25
Skylar
ruins
I STEPPED OUT of Trader’s house.
Kit had gone ahead and pulled his motorcycle from wherever he’d hidden it. His hand was on the back of the seat, keeping the bike steady. He looked up at me. “You’re coming with me, right?” he asked, then eyed the car I’d parked along the edge of the grass, on the old broken and potholed street.
It was Rain’s car and Kit knew this.
I wanted to get on the bike with him and drive off, like we used to.
But the very second I’d seen Kit, it sent everything in me off-kilter. My lungs couldn’t get enough air, my skin was flushed and tingly, my heart pounded so hard it made me dizzy, I was sure I could hear the blood pumping through my body. Kit made me feel out of control, and I hated feeling out of control. Plus, I needed to be steady. There were things to be done.
“I’ll drive the car,” I told him, glad for the shelter of the dark.
The ocean had grown angrier during our time inside the house. The waves roared as they slapped against the rocks. Kit looked away, staring off into the black of the night. Then he climbed onto the seat of his bike and the motor roared to life.
I got in the car and waited until he pulled in front of me and took off.
He didn’t look back. Not once. Not even to see if I was following.
The lights in New Port City were dark.
It was late, the sidewalks deserted. Kit navigated the shadowy cobbled streets with me doing my best to keep up behind him. He knew them better than I did.
We’d already driven past the Water Tower and the library, still with the glowing white banner across the entrance that read, REFUGEES GO HOME. I rolled down the window of the car and breathed in the salty air. If the App World was truly dying, then this place would have to be everyone’s home soon, like it or not. With the moon and stars glowing above, it didn’t seem like such a terrible fate. The Real World held a certain kind of decadent beauty that virtual living could never duplicate.
Kit veered left and soon we were pulling up alongside a decrepit building.
The Body Market rose in front of us like a gray ghost against the night. It looked empty.
I turned off the ignition and the car went silent.
Kit slid off the seat of his bike and stood there next to it, back toward me, waiting.
I got out and went to him.
We stood close.
I wanted to touch him.
He looked like he wanted to speak. Words on his lips he refused to say.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked.
His eyes landed on mine, a hardness in them I hadn’t seen since we’d first met and he’d grabbed me away from this very sidewalk and imprisoned me in his house. “What is it that you aren’t telling me, Skylar?”
“I’ve told you everything I know. The dead bodies. The Death App. The rumors of viruses and the App World dying. I told you what I needed from you, your help.”
“That’s not what I meant.” His voice was as cold as the chilly night air.
I looked at Kit. Took him in. The tension in his stance, the angularity of his jawbone, nothing about him relaxed. Everything about him unhappy. I was pushing him even further away than he already was. It took everything in me not to take my hands and p
lace them on either side of his beautiful, anguished face. To pull him close and kiss him like I’d dreamed of doing every night since we’d last been together. But I couldn’t. Now wasn’t the time. “Then what is it that you want me to say?” I asked, though of course I already knew.
Kit just shook his head. Then he shrugged. “Follow me.”
The Body Market was in disarray.
“What happened here?” I asked, my voice hushed.
It looked like a storm had struck. A tornado, with gusts of wind knocking down displays and ripping up the once lush red carpet, leaving it torn and frayed. The doors weren’t even locked—we walked right in. A bolt hung broken and twisted from the handle.
“You happened. And your friends,” Kit said.
“This is all from us?”
Kit shined a flashlight he’d taken from the pocket of his jacket over everything. “I gather you haven’t been here in a while.”
“I’ve been by, but I haven’t ventured inside.” My face was reflected in a pane of glass, cracked down the middle. One of the coffins, once gleaming, now empty. “Not since the day that we woke everyone up.” I ran my hand against the jagged edge. “I knew there was chaos, but I’d assumed that everything had been fixed up by now.”
Kit stepped over a broken piece of marble that had fallen and smashed. “It was never the same again.”
“But I thought it was up and running. At least part of it.”
He continued down the aisle. “It was. Not anymore, though. It died a slow and painful death.”
I wound my way through the now cluttered space. Only a few plugs remained, and those that did appeared damaged, useless for their original purpose. They were cracked, some reduced to a series of sharp spikes, a series of bent and misshapen spiders sticking up from the bottom of the coffins. I kept going until I arrived at the very center of the Body Market, a place that had sent shivers of disgust over my skin as I waited in line to see my best friend, Inara, for sale and on display as punishment from my sister. The coffin where she once lay was gone, the dais reduced to rubble, the carpet shorn from the ground.
“Skylar,” Kit beckoned.
I joined him, the flashlight shining a bright ray ahead of us, until we reached the opposite-side entrance.
The hotel stood tall against the night. Not a single light on in any of its windows. The dirty and tattered remnants of flags and banners hung limply from their posts. A pang of guilt pinched me at the sight of my sister’s hopes and dreams so thoroughly destroyed, even though it was me who led their destruction. Jude had once been so fearsome, but there was something painful about the most arrogant and terrible among us when they were laid low.
“This way,” Kit said, and waved me toward the door.
I didn’t move. The entrance looked ominous. And beyond it, deserted like everything else. “Inside here?”
He nodded and pushed through the door.
Reluctantly, I followed him into the darkness.
Kit went straight to the staircase and started to climb. He didn’t stop or hesitate. He obviously knew his way around. I suspected he didn’t even need the flashlight that swung this way and that with each step, illuminating our way up. We must have gone five or six flights—I’d lost count—before he led us onto one of the floors and down a long hallway.
At the end of it was a room.
From here I could see the glow of a chandelier. Make out the soft murmuring of voices.
I halted. “You’re sure that this is a good idea?”
“You said that you need my help pulling everyone together. Even the former New Capitalists. Your sister might not be here running things anymore, but there are still plenty of them left in this city.” In the darkness it was difficult to read Kit’s face. “I’m not going to leave you alone, Skylar. Not for a second. Trust me,” he added.
I looked away from him now, toward the end of the long hall. “Okay.”
He started toward the room. I joined him and the glow grew brighter as we got closer. Kit didn’t wait or stop before the doorway.
Three people were bent over a series of screens and notebooks and strange machines set up across a long black table.
“Hello, Jag,” Kit said.
I winced. Jag was my sister’s second-in-command. The man Kit had betrayed me to.
Jag turned, surprise crossing his face at the sight of me. “I haven’t seen you in a while,” he said to Kit.
Of the two others in the room, one was unfamiliar.
At first, neither one of them looked up from their work. But then, the one on the right, the one I knew as intimately as the sight of my own eyes in a mirror, turned to see the guests who had arrived so late into the night.
“Mom?”
26
Rain
discord
“YOU’RE THICKER THAN I thought,” Trader said.
He was glaring at me.
Zeera was looking between the two of us, uncertain.
Parvda was standing there with panic raging on her face.
Lacy stood off in the corner, trying to seem inconspicuous, playing on her tablet.
The five of us were in the weapons room, for the first time in ages.
“We need to at least listen to what he’s saying, Rain,” Zeera said. “It’s potentially disastrous. What if the App World really is dying?”
I looked at each one of them. “I just think we need to be careful.”
Zeera’s face filled with sympathy. “I know you’re worried about Skylar feeling she needs to go back, how dangerous it would be.”
A strangled sound emerged from Lacy’s throat.
Was I worried about Skylar? I suppose I always would. Regardless of Lacy. And even though Skylar had left without telling me what’s going on or what she’s doing. Yet again.
Lacy’s eyes found me. They were full of anger. And pain. She was waiting for me to contradict Zeera. “You’ll never let her go, will you,” she said. Her words formed a question but they sounded like a statement. Then she marched out, heels storming along the ground.
Zeera glanced at the doorway. “Rain?”
“I’ll talk to Lacy after we settle this,” I said. Lacy might never believe Skylar would leave my heart, but she seemed to have no idea how big a place she already occupied. And for how long she’d been there.
Trader sighed and crossed his arms. “You can’t live without the drama, can you? You court it. Yet the drama that really matters, you refuse to acknowledge.”
I returned his glare from earlier. “I’m here, aren’t I? Listening to you.”
“Yeah, but not taking in a word I’ve said.”
“You’re wrong. I’ve heard all of it. You said that Skylar shifted and came back—”
Trader snickered. “Of course that’s all you heard.”
“—she saw Adam,” I went on. “People are dying on the plugs, there’s likely a virus, the App World is deteriorating.”
“—dying,” Parvda said, voice full of fear. “He said dying.”
I put a hand on her arm. “I know you’re afraid for Adam, but for now it’s just a rumor.”
“And what if it isn’t?” she asked, yanking her arm away. “I’m going to check on him. I can’t take this anymore,” she added, running out like Lacy.
I shook my head. “We can’t allow things to fall into chaos.”
“They already are, Rain,” Zeera said. “We need to pull together. This is not the time to be divided.”
“And by pull together you mean do whatever reckless thing Skylar wants?” I could hear the bitterness in my voice.
Trader’s eyes were cold. “She’s not yours to protect or control. You’ve decided what she did was reckless because she did it against your wishes. What Skylar did was brave. At least now we have information.”
“I never wanted to control her,” I spat.
Zeera banged the table with her fist. “Everybody, stop fighting!”
Trader closed his mouth. The two of us turned to
her.
“We need to call everyone together. Rumors or not, it’s time to tell people what we believe is going on and form a plan.” Zeera grabbed her tablet and began punching the screen with her fingers. “There. It’s done. I sent a message to everyone at Briarwood. We’re meeting bright and early tomorrow in the training gym. Meanwhile, I’ll see what I can find out about the App World from here.” She busied herself powering up the screens that had lain dormant since February.
“And how are we going to let Skylar know about this?” I said to Zeera’s back. “You said it yourself—we need to pull together and figure out a plan. She never checks her tablet.”
Trader’s eyes slid from mine. He pulled out his own device from his pocket, razor thin and glowing, and began to tap the screen. “I know how to find her.”
I went to see Lacy.
She answered her door without a word, without a glance, turned her back on me, and climbed onto her bed, pulling her knees tight into her chest. When I sat next to her, she edged away. She seemed so fragile, so unlike the fierce and fiery girl I was used to.
“Lacy, please.” I reached out to her.
“Don’t touch me,” she snapped.
I sighed. “What about our conversation from earlier?”
“Exactly,” she said. “What about it? What did it really matter, since it will always, always, always be Skylar. Everything is about Skylar.”
I placed a hand on her shoulder and she jumped up from the bed and went to stand across the room. Her eyes were bright and angry. “Lacy—”
“—she cares about you,” she interrupted. “But not like you want her to. When are you going to accept that? Skylar is in love with someone else and you can’t see it. You refuse to.”
A sharp pain spread beneath my rib cage. I breathed slowly, willing it to subside. “I know,” I said quietly. “I’ve known for a while.”
Lacy stilled, as though if she moved even slightly, my admission might break apart and disappear forever.
“I need you to hear me.” Carefully, I got up from the bed. I didn’t want to send Lacy fleeing from me again. “It’s true, I care about Skylar. I worry about her taking risks—any more than she already has. It’s taken a toll on her and we both know it. She’s not the same as when she first woke up in this world and I . . . I feel responsible.”
The Mind Virus Page 17
