Divided (12 page)

Dire’s words in my head:
They became a non-Alt, a non-person. Incompletes might be dead, but at least they don’t have to try carving out a life without an identity, sneaking resources they aren’t qualified for.

“Are you a striker?” The Alt’s eyes are bright pools of panic. “Because I’m still an idle. You must have the wrong target. I’m not—”

“I’m not a striker.” My gun wavers, making me doubt my aim, and it occurs to me that there won’t be any choice left if she doesn’t choose right now. My aim is going. I step forward and shove the muzzle hard into her temple. “Live or die? Choose! Now!” Each demand is a hoarse cry torn from my throat. “Don’t make me choose for you!”

“L-live,” she stammers. Her words are choppy, barely understandable. “Live, then, in whatever way you’re talking about. I choose that—”

I swing the gun toward her face, steady my one arm with the other, no longer daring to breathe.

Don’t let me miss.
Please.

And I shoot her in the eye.

She shrieks just once, loud and sharp, and it shakes me back to breathing. I take a step back, the Roark gun now visibly trembling against my side, as she claps a hand to her eye, the other instinctively squeezing shut.

But she doesn’t fall. She’s still on her feet. She’s not dead.

Relief is a gigantic swell that overtakes me, and I’m the one whose legs give out. I go down to one knee, breaths coming in thin gasps as I stare up at this girl who should be dead but isn’t, and I don’t know what this means anymore. It’s starting to rain again, and it mixes with the heat of tears on my cheeks, the salt in the air. My hair, dark, streaming rivulets that don’t do enough to hide my face.

“My eye. It
hurts.
What did you do?” The idle takes her hand away, finally opening the other. And where once there was a pair of eyes the color of pretty old coins is now a pair that has nearly no color at all. Just the slightest hint of their former copper, a reflection in the sun off a shiny surface.

No one in Kersh has eyes like this. No one. She’s flesh and blood and talking to me, but what does any of that matter when in the system, she is officially an incomplete? She’s alive without an Alt code, but instead of being a complete, she is a non-Alt—someone without worth, yet still alive enough to suffer the wanting of that, to know the wanting of that.

And Sabian’s first Board Alt is now a complete. One strike down.

It has to count.

I slowly get to my feet, suddenly exhausted. “You are alive, but not,” I say dully. “You are an incomplete in the system, but also a non-Alt, someone living without an Alt code. Your name is no longer yours. You have no identity anywhere in the city.
You are no longer an Alt in Kersh.
Do you understand me?”

A whole minute with the only sound the light patter of rain against the ground, on our heads. Finally she nods, but I know she doesn’t. Not really. Her eyes are alien, hard to look at—my doing—but still human with confusion, shock.

Only time will lessen that. Nothing I say can comfort, can change what I’ve done.

“Get contacts to cover your eyes,” I say to her. “You’re going to need to get fake papers, a new life. Don’t get caught—the Board
will
kill you.”

I take a deep breath.

Because I can hear Chord explaining to me all over again. How an Alt needs the new disrupter alongside the remains of their spent Alt code in order to temporarily go neutral, momentarily become a non-Alt.

And Dire’s words. How a loaded Roark gun obliterates each and every single trace of an Alt code, leaving someone permanently neutralized and no longer in danger of being burned by the barrier, disrupter no longer necessary.

Chord’s newest key-code disrupter, put together on a whim, somehow capable of doing the unthinkable. A Board-supplied Roark gun, built with the sole purpose of ending someone’s life, using vials of life-altering poison as its ammunition.

They should have very, very little in common.

But they do. One thing.

They each make it possible for someone to walk out of Kersh.

“The Surround,” I say to the girl now. “If things get really bad, you can go there. From Jethro Ward, go to the barrier off Fireton Street. The electricity there is … off and on. You may be able touch it.”

Now her eyes are truly huge, sharp with real, if fearful, understanding.

“Or dig your way out,” I continue in a voice that sounds faint to my ears. I remember that news file, the one about the guy and his tunnel, and add, “Or climb, cut, whatever. You can do it, if you’re smart about it. And fast.” I taste the bile that’s in my throat, blink away the rain that now feels cold. “You can’t tell anyone about any of this. You’ll just put them in danger, too.”

“From the Board?”

I nod. And I have to be sure she understands. I’m the real threat right now, here with a gun still in my hand. The Board is a shadow—large, looming, but not as immediate. “And from me.”

A heartbeat of silence.

“Where along the barrier?” she finally asks, blinking those horrible, non-Alt eyes at me.

I shiver. Suddenly recall her name from her spec sheet. I waited until she was a non-Alt to use it. It’s too late, but I’m compelled to say it, anyway.

“Look for a huge tree, Gracen Beck. It’s silver at night. I was told it’s beautiful and that the way out is clearest from there.”

So very tired.

I stare up at the house with bleary eyes that miss sleep. Sleep doesn’t come easily when all you do is dream about the dead.

I’m in front of
his
house. My next idle’s. Strike two out of three.

When Sabian’s text came earlier this evening, it was a muzzled bark along my leg, demanding my attention, making me finally look up and around.

I wasn’t sure where I was. After my first target took off, chased away by my words, I climbed onto the first outer ward train that came my way. I rode it all the way to the last stop and got off simply because I had to. It was all I could do to just walk. Put distance between myself and the idle I just made into a non-Alt. So I wandered. Reached a neighborhood I didn’t recognize. I could have been in any ward; it could have been any time; I could have been anyone. Someone else.

But opening the text brought me back with a jolt. Holding my cell tight in my hand, I forgot about the ocean wind in my hair, the salt from Gaslight still on my lips.

Specs:

His name, Shaw Finley.

His face, thinnish but with well-shaped bones, hair dyed a white-yellow—a good-looking kid.

He’s on the swim team, plays guitar for his school band, works part-time for the family farm.

I bet he’s popular in school. I bet he’s one of those rare kids who’s cool and actually still nice.

All of this information, even the fact that he’s left-handed, given to me so I know best how to strike him down, the parts to this person I’ll either have to make an incomplete or non-Alt. I can’t even give him the chance of fighting me.

And now I’m here in Calden—for him. The existence of this eighteen-year-old Alt of a Level 1 Board idle might be what finally pushed Sabian into action. With only two years left, assignment activation would happen any day. Better to head it off at the pass. What’s the point of so much power if he can’t use it to his child’s advantage? Any parent in Kersh would do the same, if they could.

A single muttered request and my watch beeps out the time:
01:39.
Late enough that he’s home.

Living in Calden means a life of seeding, growing, and harvesting. Or—in the case of this idle and his family—one of birthing, rearing, and butchering. The smell of manure drifts from the backyard to where I’m standing on the front curb, raw and pungent even in the cold air.

A small-scale farm. Chickens, most likely, given the size of the houses and the properties around here. Raise them, slaughter them, eat or sell them. It’s a bloody business, but an honest one. I have blood on my hands, too. But how honest was my work for Dire back then, or for Sabian now?

I step off the curb and cross over the soggy grass of the front yard. I lean against the side of the house and slip off my bag. Unzip the side pocket and take out Chord’s key-code disrupter, the one I’ve used time and time again.

I can never tell him how I’m using it now. And that other key-code disrupter he once put together, now safely destroyed … how would he feel about how I used what he told me about
that
?

I rub a fist over the ache in my chest and exhale. Breathe the thought of him away.

With the disrupter carefully positioned against the mark on my wrist, I press it onto the faceplate of the lock. The tumble and click of gears and I’m in.

I slide inside, shut the door quietly behind me. Against the wall, I wait for my eyes to adjust.

There’s a staircase leading upstairs.

By the time I step onto the upper landing, I have the gun in my hand, drawn and ready.

Three bedrooms and a bathroom. One of the bedrooms is a master, and the door’s open.

Silent feet carry me over. A careful peek and I know it’s empty because his parents are on night shift this week.

A spare bedroom. Very neat and also very empty.

The last must be his. The door is left open just a crack. I move closer, nudge it open a bit more with my foot, step inside.

And freeze.

He’s not alone.

Two sleeping forms in the bed. His and a girl’s. They’re wrapped around each other, enclosed in the safety of idleness, the presence of each other. Here, where danger is not expected. I blink fast so it’s not Chord and me I’m suddenly seeing instead. Not us about to be torn apart because his life will soon be altered forever, with whatever choice he makes.

Thoughts race through my mind, sprung from being caught utterly by surprise.
I can’t do it,
I think frantically.
I’ll come back in a few hours. Maybe she’ll be gone and I’ll be ready to force a choice from him with no witnesses.

And maybe she won’t be. Either way, he is the unworthy one. His training is nothing compared to his Alt’s. Whether you let him choose now or later changes nothing, and whatever his choice, he will still be lost to her. And she’ll keep quiet, if she doesn’t want him gone before he has to go.

I press the gun against his temple.

Whatever training he already has can’t be that poor because he wakes up instantly.

For a long moment, we simply stare at each other.

“I’m sorry,” I finally say out loud. I need the girl to wake up now. She needs to understand, too.

She stirs at the sound of my voice, and the way her breath catches tells me she also sees the gun in my hand.

“What do you want?” he asks. His voice, halting and hoarse with both sleep and disbelief. The smell of fear in the air mixes with that of sleep.

I move the gun toward his eye. “Listen carefully.”

I slide the gun back in my pocket and head down the stairs. The sound behind me is low, muffled, but unmistakable. Her crying, him consoling her.

Better than the sound of her crying alone.

Full-fledged rain has finally broken out. Heavy on the hood of my rain jacket and soaking into my sneakers as I walk down the street. Half of me is blind to everything but the need to keep going, seeking relief with distance. The other half is watchful of my surroundings, trying to decide which direction to go. Where to wait for Sabian’s next text.

I should be able to find a room for the night, somewhere that isn’t home. Much too close to Chord there. I hop on an inner ward train headed toward the Calden Ward’s business core.

Just a few others on the train with me. I sit in the back so I can watch them. Though I know there’s no way my marks can be seen from beneath my bandages and sleeves, they still feel obvious, dark cuffs proclaiming what I’ve done. My eyes touch on each passenger. How can they act so normal with me here?

The motel room I end up at is … fine. Neither run-down nor luxurious. In some ways, it feels like just another empty, one I might have stayed at when I was on the run from my Alt.

“Time,” I whisper, my voice a rough croak as I slip off my bag and place it next to one of the pillows on the bed. Another habit that’s come back to life. There is no reason to be worried about having to leave in a hurry, but here I am. Falling back on skills I thought long behind me.

03:17.

I collapse on top of the bed, thoroughly exhausted.

Chord.

The thought of him is painful, but I don’t push it away. I wonder if I should turn off my cell so he simply can’t reach me. But Sabian will be sending me the last spec sheet any time now. It’s nearly over.

Still, I owe Chord
some
kind of explanation. He won’t accept a dead cell this time.

I fall asleep while still debating.

And am woken by the buzz of my cell in what feels like only seconds.

Morning light filters through the drapes into the room. I dig into my jeans pocket with groggy fingers and pull out my cell.

I’m already tapping the screen to answer when I realize it’s not a text but a call.

Only one person would be calling me at this time of day, right before class starts, to see if I’d like a ride.

Cell to my ear, a hollowness in my gut. I’m wide awake now and at a total loss of what to say. Caught between the words to bring him here and the words to keep him away.

“West.” Chord’s voice, soft and wary. “Where are you?”

I take a deep breath. “Where are you?”

“Where do you
think
I am?” The image of him, sitting on my bed. My note at his side, my weapons in his lap.

It hits me. “The key I gave you …” My eyes blur. It took something like this for him to finally use it.

“When you didn’t answer your door, I got worried.”

“Did you find my note?”

“I did.” That’s all.

“Chord, I was really hoping you’d call before coming over.”

“I’m sure as hell glad I didn’t,” he says flatly. “What lie would it have been? That you weren’t feeling well and would skip school for the day?”

I say nothing. Confusion slices through me. That would have been an easy way out, buying myself more time. Why can’t I realize it’s no longer simple to cut him out and still expect everything to be fine?

Chord’s low sigh is full of worry and defeat, making my throat close up. “You left your gun here,” he says. “Your knives, too. So if you’re not working for Dire again, what are you doing?”

“I’m not working for Dire.” A nonanswer, a West answer. But I already know it won’t be enough anymore.

Silence. I can’t stand it. “Chord, I’m sorry,” I say in a rush. I’ve apologized more in the last two days than I have in my entire lifetime. My hand, a fist on the strange bedspread. “I don’t know … I
want
to tell you—”

“Tell me.”

“—except I’m scared.”

“Of what? Are you in danger?” His voice goes hard, and in my head I can see his expression go dark, his eyes narrow. “West,
are
you in danger?” he asks again.

Yes.
The reply is on my lips, wanting to be said. But if I say yes, then he’ll be in danger, too.

“What are you scared of?” he asks.

You. Hating me. That my reasons for doing what I’m doing won’t be enough for you to not walk away.

“Just … scared,” I finally say. I flip onto my side, curl into a ball. The weave of the blanket is rough against my skin. I shut my eyes.

“Wherever you are, I can be there fast. You know that, don’t you? Just say the word and I’m there, West.”

No, I can’t. Not now, when I’m not done yet—

“I don’t want you to be scared, all right? Why can’t you—”

“Chord.” His name is a plea on my lips. “The Motel Ten on Moss Street. In Calden Ward. Room twenty-seven.”

He barely even pauses. “Don’t leave. I’m heading there now.” And with that he hangs up, as though afraid I’ll take it back if given the chance.

Outside the sun continues to lift. I lie on the bed and through closed eyelids watch the room lighten. The sun could blaze bright enough to blind me, but I’ll still know the ghosts are there.

Seeing Chord again is what finally breaks me. I open the door at his knock and lunge at him. Feel tears rush to my eyes as he grabs me and holds me tight. My name in my hair as he presses his mouth there, full of relief, anger. Questions.

Without thinking about it, I’m already shaking my head. Keeping my arms locked around his waist, I shove my face against his chest. Let everything else fade away—the bland strangeness of the room, the weight of the gun not my own in my bag, the faces of the two idles I’ve essentially killed.

Chord kicks the door shut behind him. My arms go around his neck as he picks me up and walks us over to the bed. We drop down onto it, Chord sliding over until he’s sitting up with his back against the headboard and I’m in his lap. I stare at his chin, steeling myself.

He tilts my face up and over so he can see me. Wipes off my tears with his fingers. Gives me one gentle kiss on my mouth. Sighs and says, “West. Talk.”

“It’s never as simple as I think it will be,” I say to him, my voice hoarse from crying. Nowhere to hide as we look at each other. His eyes are very dark and very tired and lit with the unmistakable sheen of frustration.

“And sometimes not as complicated as you think it is,” he says.

I lean against him, let out a breath. It does nothing for the storm of nerves in my stomach. “Sometimes.”

“That was a pretty cryptic note you left for me, don’t you think?” Chord’s voice is almost casual enough to fool me.

I place my hand on his chest, feel his drumming pulse. “I know. I didn’t … I just …” I take another breath, try to make some sense. “I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t come to hear you say you’re sorry, West,” Chord says. “I don’t even know what you’re apologizing for.” His fingers in my hair to soften his words. “I
don’t
think it’s because of what you’re doing. Only that I’m in your face about it now.”

I shake my head. “I told you where I was, didn’t I?”

“True.”

“If I didn’t want you here, I could have left. I didn’t have to wait.” Though I would have—I would have waited and waited and waited. To see him, to make time stop, to keep all of this from happening.

“Hmm.” Chord brushes my hair from my face, lingers gently on my scar. “You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

He sends me a pointed look. “Answering without answering.”

How to say it? Like trying to disarm a bomb with a hundred different wires and no clue which one to cut. He’s here now, though, and I need him, and I have to believe that his knowing won’t be enough to make him stop loving me.

“Remember when I asked you about kids … about whether you thought you’d be able to handle them becoming incompletes?” I ask him.

Confusion clouds Chord’s face. My question comes from nowhere, and I have to back up.

“And you said if there was a way to protect them that was
right,
you’d do it?” I press.

“Actually, right now I’m remembering what you were asking me before
that,
” he says.

I wait, already braced.

“You were talking about having to kill again.” Too soft, his voice sounds dangerous. “When we’re already complete.” His arms are stiff around me, and his hands are unmoving on my skin. “What does that have to do with us and kids we don’t have and what I can or cannot handle?”