Divided (20 page)

Twice as many Alts, in half the time.

Two chances of dying, with twice the danger.

“I choose Point of Origin,” I say quietly. “If you’re looking to get as close to a natural completion as possible, then you know odds need to be more level than what you’re giving me.”

She takes a minute to consider, then gives another elegant nod.

“Keep your cell turned on. It won’t be long before we contact you,” she says, and it’s Sabian I hear again. She bends down, looking for her gun on the floor, but Chord steps in her way.

“Go,”
he says to her, his voice low and hot and about to break from wanting to tear something apart and not being able to. “Tactical will have replacement guns for you.”

Without another word, she walks away, steps through the open patio door, and is gone.

Chord drops my gun and the blade he was holding onto the bed and takes the single step that separates us. He stops just short of touching me. Like he’s almost afraid to—as though I’m going to fight him, hate him, leave … or worst of all, stay and love him and still go through with it.

“I love you, West,” he says, each word hollow, raw with feeling. “But right now I almost hate you, too.”

“I’m sorry.” Again and again. It might never be enough.

“You don’t have to do this.” His dark hair is tumbled and chaotic, his eyes bright with insistence.

“I do. Too many people involved—”

“The only one—”

“—you, Baer, Dire, Auden—”

“—who matters to me—” Here he comes even closer.

“—even Dess, who I know might hate me now, but he can’t hate me forever.”

“—is you, West Grayer.” And now Chord does touch me. He slowly wraps his arms around me so I don’t break apart. He takes my mouth with his and doesn’t let go. He makes us fit together and breathe together until it seems even our heartbeats run together.

“We could,” he says against my lips. “We
should,
damn it.”

The traitorous salt of my tears tinges my tongue. “We should what?”

“Run together.” Chord brushes my face with his fingers. “We could just take off and not come back.”

I lean back and look at his face.
The Surround.
“No, that’s not—”

“West, I can put that key-code disrupter back together. And then once we get through, we’ll destroy it so no one over there would ever know about it. And everyone here would still be perfectly safe.”

“Don’t do this, Chord.”

“It’d be a way out.”

“Chord …” The hope in his voice is hard to listen to. It tells me of his desperation, that he’s willing to give up safety for me. “You heard Dire and Baer. It’d be like being active again, except it wouldn’t stop.”

“But we have a better chance if we just wait them out, don’t you think? If we stay here … walking into a cage match against two Board Alts …” One more kiss. “West, you might be a striker, but you’re also human.”

I press my face into his neck. The scent of him makes me hurt. “I know, but that doesn’t change anything. I have to fix this.”

He tilts my chin up so I can’t refuse to listen to the brutal truth that will not be left unheard. “
You
of all people know what it’s like to be driven by the need to survive. How it takes over you, makes you think of nothing else. These guys, they’ll have revenge on their minds, too—not only for killing Auden and Meyer, but also for what they think you took away from them. Now they think this is their right—that they deserve this fight. People can be made to do almost anything if they tell themselves they’re doing it for all the right reasons.”

His words, intentional or not, are sharp as barbs. “But that’s what I did, Chord. That’s what I was thinking when I changed those idles. I thought making their Alts completes would be enough. How is that any better than what those Alts want to do to me now?”

The buzz of my cell in my pocket and both of us freeze.

Chord pulls back so he can see me. Shakes his head, silent and already looking haunted.
No. It’s too soon.

I lift my cell to my mouth and speak, trying not to think too much.

When I hear Sabian’s voice and not his daughter’s, shock is like a single, well-aimed jab.

“Grayer.” Suppressed rage makes my name sound like a curse. “Did you really think you could get away with it?”

My hand goes to my throat; it’s so hard to breathe all of a sudden. “What are you talking about?” The most distant sensation of Chord leaning close, knowing something’s deeply wrong.

“You lied about your last contract. That last idle is still out there, weak and unworthy and of no help to this city. You will finish that completion, Grayer.” Not a request. Just fact.

“I don’t want any of it anymore,” I say to him. “None of it.” For a brief second I clench my eyes tight, making a child’s foolish wish, willing it to work, for him to say I’ve done enough, that I’m free to go.

“What you want and what you agreed to are very different things.”

“Tell me why you wanted me to believe Auden was an idle and not a complete. Then maybe we’ll talk. Because right now I’ve got just as much on you as you have on me.”

“Ask yourself this,” he says. “How did I find out Auden is still alive?”

“I don’t know. Someone saw him and told you.” A wild guess, but other than Auden giving himself up in some way, intentional or not, what else can it be?

“And if that person happens to be someone you know very well?”

Someone I—And when I know the answer, I must make some kind of sound because Chord’s arm is around me, keeping me from falling.

Dess.

“I don’t believe you,” I say to Sabian. “He wouldn’t do that.”

“He would, and did. Though to be truthful, Dess did not come simply to tell us where Auden was. He came to offer to finish the job of killing him. Without further consequence to you.”

No, Dess. You are no striker. You are no killer.
And in my mind, I see two of him. The boy with hurt shock in his eyes at finding out what I once was and then started to be again and the boy who could barely control his fury at what I could no longer do, for his sake as well as mine.

“But even though he’s a complete, he’s no match for Auden,” Sabian says. “He might … get hurt.”

“Don’t let him do it, Sabian.” I’m begging and hating myself for it—my doing. My fault that Dess would even think about killing any Alt other than his own. “Because if you do, you’re not safe. For that, I’d easily kill again.” And I would, no matter what that meant for me.

“I’m assuming that I have an answer, then.”

“The whole city is going to be looking for me!” Desperation—I’m scrambling. “I don’t know if I can get to Auden.”

“Already admitting defeat? What a shame—especially when Dess seems like a very nice boy. Very loyal.”

“You were the first to lie! And then you set me up for Auden and Meyer.”

“I admit to being deceptive, but I had no real choice. Would an insincere apology make it better?”

I feel sick.

“I’m still waiting for your answer, Grayer.”

The one you knew I’d give you.
“I’ll complete the last contract and then you’ll let him go.”

“Three dead Alts and then I will let him go.”

Three dead Alts.

The phrase echoes in my head, each word vivid and sharp, and suddenly I know what I have to do. The only thing that can be done.

I need to move. Fast.

“As with any striker contract, you have twenty-four hours.” With that Sabian disconnects, leaving me listening to nothing but the details of a plan being laid out in my head.

I shove my cell into my pocket. Grab my gun and blade and bag from the bed, my jacket from the ground. I toss Chord his from where I dropped it after getting up. The urge to hurry leaves me winded, as though I’m already trying to catch up.

“Tell me what’s going on,” he says as he pulls his jacket on.

“We’ve got to go, Chord. Can you text Dire, tell him we’re on the way?” I zip up my jacket, make sure my gun and blade are still in their pockets. Where I need them to be again. And without a doubt they will be shields this time, and not weapons. Can I walk that fine line between killing and saving, know which way to lean when the time comes?

I’ll have to. Standing on the edge of that precipice again, I can’t fall. Not if Dess is to be saved.

“West, you’ve got to talk to me.”

I touch the side of Chord’s face, an apology for moving too fast again. My marks against his skin are simply there. Bearable. “Sabian’s got Dess.”

Chord’s expression, full of shock. “What? How did he—Is he okay?”

“He is, for now.” I grab his hand and pull him toward the open patio door. The thin drapes catch on us as we wind our way through them and out of the apartment.

Chord holds me back as we come to a stop right before we step onto the open sidewalk. People are walking by even this late, and I’m reminded that I’ll be an open target again out there as we make our way through the Grid and out to Leyton and headquarters.

It’s hard to keep myself from simply racing out there and do what needs to be done. But I have to talk to Auden first. It’s too risky having him leave Dire’s. Dess’s life is at stake just as much as Auden’s is, and asking Auden for tips on how to take down the best should be done in person.

“Sabian wants Auden for Dess, doesn’t he?” Chord asks. The cool evening wind tosses my hair. He traps it down into the neck of my jacket, pulls the hood over my head. So he’s remembered I’m still a target, too.

I nod. “And not alive, either.”

“So what are we going to do?” His hair is wild in the wind, matching the rising panic I can see on his face.
Who are we giving up? Because you’re not in this alone, West. We’ll be horrible together.

I didn’t miss his use of that word:
we.
But nor can I use it, no matter how much I want to. The issue of whether I do this alone might not be up to either of us anymore.

“Sabian’s not getting either one,” I say. “And I still need to find out why he wants Auden dead.”

“Will fighting Sabian’s kids give us an answer?”

“I don’t know—I hope so. By the end of it, I’ll have to make Sabian think he has no choice but to tell me.”

Chord’s eyes narrow just the slightest. “Tell me how and we’ll make it happen.”

“I’m going to give him something more important than three dead Alts or Auden dead. More important than the integrity of the Board.” I press a kiss on his lips, fast and light. “I’m going to give him back his kids—alive.”

Dire locks the front door behind us as we walk in.

Strange to see the place actually empty. Like a lot of the businesses in the Grid, Dire Nation keeps long hours. It can’t afford to rest in a place where sleep doesn’t come easy or stay for long. That the store is closed means we’re right in the middle of the short lull that separates one day from the next.

With a bleary glare he motions us downstairs. “Figures Sabian would make this as difficult as he can. Auden’s downstairs, sleeping.”

I think of Dire’s basement. The concrete floor, metal table, hard chairs. “I know a motel wasn’t a good idea, but I hope you gave him a pillow or something, at least.”

Dire slides behind the front counter. Pulls out a tablet and yawns. “Hey, I’ve been sitting here all night, waiting for news. Can’t even go home without worrying about him busting out to get to headquarters.”

“How’s Innes doing with Freya’s notes?”

“Made her shut down her workstations and leave to get some sleep. You don’t want to see her when she’s running on nothing but fumes, trust me.”

Downstairs, Auden’s not sleeping. He’s at one of Dire’s computers, staring at the screen.

Sitting there like that, with the shimmery light of the screen turning him ghostly, he looks so very much like Luc that beside me, I feel Chord tense up. Between the two of us it’s hard to keep Luc at rest—so many years and memories.

Auden turns around as we come in. His eyes are red beneath the flimsy bulbs strung across the ceiling. Not only from fatigue but because Meyer was killed just hours ago. I recognize all too well the signs of guilt over a death you couldn’t prevent but still feel responsible for. It lingers, bites, haunts. Sympathy gnaws at me, but I set it aside. No time for that.

“You guys here to break me out of this place?” he asks, his voice a croak from lack of sleep, and from crying, most likely. “Between Baer and Dire, I’m wondering if I’m ever going to see daylight again.”

Chord pulls out a chair, but I just stay standing. Too wired. “Tell me about Sabian’s two kids,” I say to Auden.

He blinks at me. “Bryn and Hollis? What about them?”

Bryn and Hollis. I roll their names through my mind, the names of those I already saved once and am forced to save again. For a second I think of Bryn’s reaction to Auden’s death, and wonder if he’s even aware of how she feels. “If you were their Alts, how would you kill them?”

His exhausted glance turns into a glare of suspicion. “What kind of question is that?”

“The only one that matters, if you want to get out of this alive.”

“You fighting Sabian’s kids is going to save me?”

“Yes.” My impatience is a living thing, steamrolling his confusion, but I can’t help it. “So tell me. I don’t have their spec—”

“How does that even make sense?”

“It just does!”

“No, it—”

“Hey,” Chord says mildly. His voice cuts right through Auden’s and mine, and my chest goes all hot inside. Because for a second I
believed.
I believed wholly and thoroughly that Luc was here again, and we were arguing like we always used to, and Chord was having to break us up like he always used to as well.

Auden looks stunned as he takes in my face. I blink fast and look away. Not so much wishing he was Luc, but that he was some other Alt altogether, so none of this was happening.

“Auden, listen.” Chord saying what I can’t say, again. “You don’t know him, but there’s a kid out there named Dess. He’s kind of like family for us now, especially to West. He was here yesterday and he overheard us talking about what was going on. He caught up with West when she went to meet Sabian and didn’t understand why she wouldn’t finish the job.”

“You mean kill me.”

“Dess doesn’t know you. You’re just the Alt of West’s brother who he never even met. He also knew it meant she’d be giving up whatever Sabian was offering her.”

Auden gives me a look, knowing if he were anyone but Luc’s Alt, he wouldn’t be here right now, but he says nothing.

Chord goes on. “And he knew the Board wasn’t going to let her go, you know? He just … lost it. So he went to headquarters to talk to Sabian.”

“To give me up.”

“No—to offer to kill you himself.”

“A lot of people wouldn’t mind seeing me dead, it seems,” Auden says quietly.

Chord shakes his head. “Do you honestly think Sabian would trust an eleven-year-old to assassinate a Board-level Alt? Think, man. If he can’t use Dess—this kid who Sabian knows means something to West—as a striker, how else would he be useful?”

Auden swears under his breath, his face going grim. “So Sabian’s got him and won’t let him go until West kills me.”

“Exactly,” Chord says, and the harsh edge to his voice gives away just how much this is tearing him up.

“I guess the fact that you haven’t done it yet means you’re not going to,” Auden says to me, his words careful and measured, as though one slip could set me off. He looks vaguely sick, and for one shameful moment, I’m glad to see it. Why does he have to be who he is? Why should I even care about him living?

“I’m not going to kill you, all right?” I mutter. “But I do need your help.” Where Auden’s words were careful, mine are stilted and awkward. Still hard to admit out loud that I can’t do it alone. I doubt I’ve ever said those particular words before:
I do need your help.

Auden nods. “Go.”

“Your friends Bryn and Hollis are pissed off at me for completing their assignments for them,” I begin. No point in stringing things out. “So in exchange for getting Sabian to lift the contract he has out on me, and to avoid having Chord somehow end up a PK, I have to fight them. So they can prove their worthiness. Just like a real assignment.”

“You can’t, West,” Auden says, pale and stricken beneath his tan. “You can’t just kill them. Bryn …” Her name on his lips and I wonder again whether he feels the same for her as she does for him; it’s clear he feels
something.
“She and Hollis wouldn’t—”

“I’m not going to kill them, Auden—though they can’t know that until it’s over. I just have to hurt them enough—”

“Hurt them?”

“—to make them shut up and listen to me. Because they’re going to be my way out. The way to get you out. And the way to get Dess back.”

“You’re going to use Sabian’s own kids against him?” His eyes go wide with astonishment, then flat with defeat. “It’s not going to work.”

I glare at him despite the twinges of doubt that are starting to flex in my gut. “Unless you can tell us why he wants you dead in the first place, then there is no other way. If I die and he gets away with all of this, you know he’s not going to stop. He’ll find someone else to come after you. So tell me what I need to know to do everything
but
kill Bryn and Hollis.”

He looks at me, his expression hard. “Is that a guarantee?”

“There are no guarantees,” I tell him, “but I’m still going to say yes. Because it can’t end any other way.”

Auden exhales. Looks drained but starts anyway. “They’re both trained to the hilt since they’re Alts of the Board.
Level
Alts. But they’re still human. Bryn’s weakest at one-on-one combat and close-range blade handling.” Talking about Bryn has Auden’s voice going rough, as though the words themselves are betrayals of what they might mean to each other. “She’s got an adequate eye with her gun, but it’s her throwing arm that’s the strongest.”

“And her brother?” Chord asks.

“Hollis.” The change in Auden’s tone has the hair rising on the back of my neck. “He’s Sabian’s son through and through. There’s never really been any doubt, even from the beginning, that he’s the stronger half, the worthier Alt. His skills always measure high, clear across the board.”

“What’s his best technical skill?” Chord asks. “If you had to pick one.”

“He’s very strong with a gun. Better than a lot of the Level Two tactical Operators already.”

“If he’s so strong, why didn’t Sabian just let him complete on his own? Chances are he would have won.”

“Because it’s Sabian. He doesn’t take chances. Not when he’s thinking about the Board and Kersh’s future at large.”

“And he’s not just coming at this as a Level One Operator but as a dad,” I say. “Wouldn’t any parent with his kind of power do the same?”

Chord’s eyes meet mine, and I know he wants to deny it but can’t. Because haven’t I done the same thing?

I turn to Auden. “Being outnumbered, I get to pick the Point of Origin. You know them—you all went through the same training. Tell me what they’re expecting me to pick.”

“I think you already know,” Auden says slowly. “You’re not that different from us, West, Board training or not. You don’t know how to try to
not
win.”

“I’m nothing like any of you.” Yet another lie. I wanted more, just like Bryn and Hollis. It wasn’t enough to be complete. And if winning means killing, then he’s right about that, too. It’s what I know, and who I am.

Because I
do
know what they would pick.

“They expect me to pick a place I’m familiar with, that I think will give me the best chance,” I say.

Where else but the one place I still hold a gun or swing a blade on a daily basis? Where I know what’s around each corner, what’s held within its spaces and walls?

“The school,” I say to Auden and Chord. “Torth. Where I teach weaponry.”

“Makes sense,” Auden says. “Though I also know it’s where you
won’t
be going.”

I look at him. Nod. “If I move fast enough, I can get to the last place they’ll be expecting me.”

Chord stands up. “Board headquarters?” His face, stricken with denial. “West, you can’t. Somewhere in the middle, at least.”

“That won’t be enough, Chord. You know that.” I already have the worst of odds. Not one Alt but two, in half the time, no spec sheets to work from.

“I know there’s three of us and two of them,” Chord says. “Why does it matter who takes them down, as long we get them to Sabian for Dess?”

“Chord, didn’t you see how she looked at me?
I’m
the one who cheated them. It’s not just them beating anyone—it’s me they need to fight to prove they’re worthy.”

“You made them completes. It should be enough!”

“But it’s not!”

“Chord, she’s right,” Auden says. “Bryn, Hollis, me—
how
we become completes is just as important as being one.”

“So Sabian is the one who should be dealing with this,” Chord says. He gives me a look that leaves me hollow inside. “Not us.”

Auden nods. “If this works, he’ll have the Board to deal with.”

And that’s it.

I place my bag on the table. I’m done with it; this will end quickly enough. I take out my key-code disrupter and slip it into the back pocket of my jeans. Then I pull out the Roark gun and pass it to Auden. “Bryn’s been tracking this, ever since she found out what Sabian planned. It doesn’t matter anymore—she might as well think I’m stuck here for the next little while. But I need you to give this back to Dire after I leave. I think if I tried to do it, he’d make me take it. I can’t use it now.”

He takes it. “Not even for Sabian?” He’s not joking. Despite the person Auden knows Sabian to be—a long-serving Level 1 Operator, the father of Bryn—he can’t forget he’s also the killer of his father.

To use the gun on Sabian … I have to believe I can’t be pushed that far. Only failing to get Dess would do that. And failure can’t be an option.

“Not today,” I say to Auden, putting my bag back on. Tell myself the odd lightness of it is not why I feel defenseless.

Auden starts to head for the stairs but stops after a step. Turns back. “West, you’re sure you’ll know when to pull back?” Fresh desperation in his voice, on top of what sounds nearly like anger.

“Yes. I’ll have to, won’t I?” His anger has me curious, and I look at him carefully so he can’t miss my wondering.

“I saw my Alt once, years ago,” he says to me. “Your brother.”

Luc.

My insides go cold.

“You didn’t kill him,” I say slowly. Early Kills, the rarest of all unnatural completions. Gated city or not, Kersh is large enough that the chance of running into your Alt before your assignment goes active is slim to none. But a chance is still a chance. Luc had been close to death, and none of us had even known it.

Auden shakes his head. “I was here in Jethro, checking on a training facility for my dad because the regular tactical Operator was … I don’t know, gone that day. And I was just … I looked across the street and there he was. With his friends, walking into a café.” His eyes are distant, remembering what it was like to see himself so close, the person he’d either have to kill or be killed by. “I guess I could have tried to complete. I mean, the Board wouldn’t have excused me just because of who I was, but maybe a part of me wondered about that. It wouldn’t have been too hard to convince myself it was possible.”

“So why didn’t you?” I ask him. Seeing Auden in a new light now. That he let Luc live.

“Because I didn’t want my life to be over, that’s why. I know how EKs are punished.” Auden’s anger flares up again. “And because he wasn’t ready, and taking him down then and there wouldn’t have been any kind of challenge at all. It would have proved nothing—not to myself, to the Board, or to Kersh.”

“Prepared or not,” Chord says, “Luc wouldn’t have been an easy completion. Far from it.”

“The point is, I didn’t try to kill him,” Auden says. He looks at me, his face drawn with both fear and helplessness for his friends. “I let your brother live when I didn’t have to. Keep that in mind when you’re looking at Bryn and Hollis through the sight of your gun and instinct is telling you not to hold back.”

I look at the reason why Luc lived as long as he did and I can only nod. I would have done my best not to kill Bryn and Hollis anyway. Now there’s debt on top of that, and it’s harder to breathe through its weight.

Auden nods back at me, shoulders slumped. “Thank you.”

“Auden?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry about your dad.”

His shoulders slump even more, and he nods again. He turns and disappears up the stairs.