Dualed (27 page)

When I get to the front yard, I stop, lean against the corner of the house, and silently count to fifty. Still no movement—no sign of anything at all. I can hear the constant rumbling hiss of the inner ward trains in the near distance as they cut through the suburban streets of Jethro. The low clank of the factories working the graveyard shift.

It’s no more than thirty feet to the end of my yard from here, where a row of hedges separates the property from the public sidewalk just beyond it. When I reach the yard’s edge, I crouch down behind the hedges, keeping low and flat, and try to let some of the tension seep from my muscles, to let my spine go loose and soft. I count to fifty again before slowly turning to look back at my house, still staying as low to the ground as possible.

It appears the same as it always has, but I know it’s been changed by her touch. Will I ever be able to fall asleep in my own bed again without dreaming about being hunted, chased by someone who is too much of me?

The dull glint of the steel garage door. Concrete front steps lined with wooden railings. The large picture window on the main floor, two more on the upper level. They’re black and silent, their drapes drawn all the way across. In the moonlight, they look like funeral shrouds, as if the house is in mourning.

From here, I can almost see Chord’s house. Five houses down.

I was so close to texting him about what I heard while at my Alt’s house. I sat on the outer ward train with my cell shaking in my hand, my chest pounding with dread and pure, cold fear for him. I punched in the message, was about to hit SEND, when it hit me that telling Chord he was in danger might only set things in motion. Down paths I didn’t want to go.

It played out in my head, the worst that could happen, whichever way he might react. He could charge after her without thought, blinded to everything but the knowledge that my
Alt is coming for him. If he knows there is even a chance he could somehow get to her before she gets to me, he will take it in a heartbeat.

Or he could try his very hardest to act like nothing has changed—that he isn’t aware of the fact that he is holding a grenade primed to blow—if only to keep her from suspecting that he knows. But if he fails, she could slip away, the hunt beginning all over again … and with less than five days left.

So I did the only thing I could do—nothing. My Alt is using him to get to me, after all. It is me she wants, not him. I trashed the unsent text, tucked my cell away, and waited for the excruciatingly long train ride to come to an end. By the time I got off the train and hit the ground running—in the direction of my house—I was a mass of nerves, every system in my body sizzling and at the ready.

Now as I near Chord’s house, I crouch down low against one of the cars lined up along the curb and reach for my cell to call Chord’s number. It rings more times than usual for him, but it’s late. And I don’t feel the least bit guilty for waking him up. I can’t wait till morning to see him. To see for myself that he’s really okay.

“West? What’s wrong?” His voice is husky with sleep. Relief flows through me. He’s fine. He’s safe.

“I’m right outside,” I hiss into the phone. “Open the door, okay?”

“What? You’re where?”

“Chord, I’m at your front door.” I say the words slowly, trying to be patient. “Open it.”

“Okay, I’m there.” A click as he hangs up.

I take a deep breath and move away from the car. I’m at the door within seconds, and even as I step onto the landing, Chord’s waiting for me. He pulls me in with an arm around my waist, and as he slams the door shut behind us, I can’t help but let him close the space between us. It feels good to lean against him, if only for a moment.

His thick hair is wild, brown-black curls everywhere. The look in his eyes is a combination of pleasure, worry, and exasperation. “Hey” is all he says.

Needing an excuse to not move just yet, I let myself simply absorb the fact that I’m finally here. Where we’re both safe … for now.

The front room is neater than it might have been, considering how much Chord would rather do anything else than clean. Couch, two armchairs, a television. A coffee table covered with what’s probably Chord’s homework. A colossal stereo system Chord and Luc pieced together. The heavy iron-framed mirror my mother found for Chord and Taje at a vintage sale a few summers ago placed over the fireplace. A worn patterned rug strewn over the pitted wood floor.

Then the kitchen and eating area on the other side of the house, with the stairs in between. All the details are a comfort to me, a solace, an extension of Chord himself.

I lean my head back so I can see his face. “There’s something you need to know,” I begin. “My Alt. She’s been—”

“Watching me,” he finishes. “I know. I told you, I’ve been watching her, too.”

My mouth drops open. Of course he knows. “Why didn’t you say any—”

“I said I wanted to talk, didn’t I?” he replies. “When you were coming back from Leyton, remember?”

Chord’s words play again in my head, and I push a hand against his chest as I drop my bag down on the floor. “You should have made me—”

“Listen? I tried, West. But you still needed to figure some things out. So I thought maybe you shouldn’t come near here until you were sure you were ready.” He blows out a sigh. Reaches over my shoulder and hits the light switch. Yellow gold from the overhead lamp shines down on us. “Besides, I knew that as long as she was close to me here, she couldn’t be near you. After all, you’ve been doing your best to stay far away from me.”

I can’t help but wince at the bluntness of his words. He’s right. I wasn’t ready to see him. Not then, at least. Though I wanted to, badly.

A recollection of what happened after our last cell conversation flashes in my head. The striker she hired crashing into the apartment. The body on the bed that endured a second death. The gun in my hand, the bullet in Glade’s head.

Chord must see something in my face because his eyes narrow. “Where were you, West?”

No point in lying. “Calden,” I say cautiously.

“Calden.” Instantly, he’s suspicious. “It wasn’t a job, was it?”

I shake my head. “I wanted to see where she lives.”

I can see the shock go through him. “Are you crazy?”

“I know, it was stupid. And risky and dangerous and I’m an idiot. I know all that. But I had to go. And that’s how I found out what she—that she’s been—”

“Using me to get to you.” He doesn’t sound scared so much as still pissed off at what I did.

I nod, my throat suddenly too tight to speak, because I have more than enough fear for both of us. I’ve been so wrapped up in the idea of Chord getting hurt simply for being too close. Caught in the middle, a senseless PK. Never would I have guessed she’d think to use him directly—the last person I have left whom I can call family.

Chord’s hand grabs mine. Like a reflex, I squeeze back. How long before it’s not so strange anymore? To feel someone else’s skin next to mine, someone who’s not there to hurt me … or for me to hurt them?

“She’s coming tomorrow,” I say, my voice raspy, the words hard to say out loud. “I found that out, too. Here or my place, I don’t know which.”

He pulls me back until I’m close again, his arms around me, and I don’t fight it … or him.

“So we have until tomorrow,” he says quietly. “But right now you’re tired. Let’s go get some sleep.”

But now we’re both too wired from a sense of things starting to wind down. However things are going to unfold, it has to be soon.

And I’m starving. So Chord passes me what’s left of his dinner from the fridge—half of a sub, still wrapped up, and a container of pasta salad.

I lift off the top half of the sandwich (the bread’s made from wheat, speckled throughout with grains, and still soft) to see what’s inside. Actual vegetables, real mayo, meat that wasn’t
extruded through a machine and then mashed into sheets. I stir the salad with a fork, noticing the herbs, chopped-up bacon, a dressing that doesn’t smell just slightly off.

“Pass inspection?” Chord asks. He’s sitting next to me, instead of across the table as I would have expected.

Way too aware of his nearness, my nerves still scrubbed raw from everything that’s been happening, I take my time to swallow. Use the action to pretend I’m too focused on the food to notice anything else.

“How could it not, right?” I say to him with a shrug, concentrating on spearing the last of the bacon. It’d be easier to see if we turned on the kitchen lights, but neither of us has bothered. There’s something oddly soothing about sitting in the half dark together, with only one lamp in the hall turned on, wrapping us up in its cocoonlike glow.

“If you were around more, I’d get stuff like this for you all the time,” he says.

I know he would. Even at the risk of getting reprimanded by the Board. “It’s not worth getting in trouble for, Chord.”

“I think it would be,” he says, mildly enough but not quite able to cover the steel beneath. Not fed up with the rule but with me, if I had to guess. One more example of West refusing to give.

Disgust at my own inability to bend kills the rest of my appetite.

“I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant,” I say to him. I ball up the sub wrapper, snap the salad container shut. Nothing else to do with my hands, so I sit on them. Finally peek over at his face.
“I really did just mean that. About you not getting in trouble.” I take a deep breath, slowly let it out. “Not about not wanting to be around here … more … with you,” I finish haltingly.

Chord keeps his gaze on me. “I knew that was what you meant, West,” he says in a low voice. “So you didn’t have to explain yourself.”

Heat flames up along my cheeks and ears even as I freeze inside. My mind has gone absolutely, completely blank.

“But thank you for doing it, anyway.” A hint of a smile now, lurking at the corners of his mouth.

I blink at him, then glare at the grin that breaks out on his face. “So great of you to let me finish, really.”

He touches my shoulder and I’m grateful he knows me well enough to change the subject without me having to ask. “You need some more pain meds for this? I could help you change the bandage, if you want.”

Memories of his hands on me, the look on his face as he leaned over me on that bed.

“No, it’s okay, I’ll be fine,” I say quietly.

Chord shakes his head. “So you’d rather do it one-handed instead of letting me—”

“No to the pain meds, Chord,” I interrupt him, trying not to rush the words. “I don’t want to risk being groggy right now. But yes to your help with my shoulder, all right?”

A flash of surprise in his eyes, then something hotter, and all he says is “Okay.”

“But I need a shower first.”

“Okay.”

“And can I borrow a T-shirt or something? This one’s pretty much had it.”

“Okay.”

Small steps. Take enough of them and they add up.

“Do you think she’ll find someone else?” Chord asks from where he’s sitting behind me on the couch. He cuts off more tape and lays the strip over the edge of the fresh gauze pad that’s covering my wound.

I roll up the sleeve of my shirt higher over my shoulder—Chord’s shirt, to replace the one I’ve already tossed in the garbage. Getting dressed, I could still smell him on it, even beneath the heavier scent of laundry detergent.

“You mean hire another striker?” I ask him. His hands are cool this time, my skin still heated from my shower.

“Yeah. Because it won’t be long before she finds out Glade is dead. What’s stopping her from getting another, right?”

“I guess it’s possible.” I do my best to ignore how close he is to me. “But I don’t think so. I think … I think she
wants
to finish this herself, now. Like, it’s
supposed
to come to an end this way.”

Chord gently presses another strip of tape down. “Do you want that, too?”

I slowly shake my head. Unable to tell him that everything I’ve learned about her tells me she’s meant to be the one, not me. “I don’t know.”

“Either way, it’s a huge risk to assume she’s going at you alone from here on out. You could be walking into anything.”

I have to laugh. “Same goes for you, the way you keep wanting to hang around me.”

“It’s not me she needs to eliminate,” Chord says. He snips off yet another piece of tape, smooths it down. “I would just be an accident. Collateral damage. A classic PK.”

A chill at his words. “I shouldn’t even be here right now. She would never have noticed you if I’d just stayed away.”

“You did stay away. I was the one following you, that day she saw me. If you have to blame someone, blame me.” From behind, I can hear him put the scissors and the rest of the tape back in the med kit. He leans forward and places it on the coffee table. Sits back on the couch, just as close to me as he was before. Begins to roll down my sleeve for me.

I snort. “Fine. I blame you for being there to save my life.”

“I don’t want to have to save your life,” Chord says softly. “Not when you can do it.”

For a long moment I don’t speak. I’m thinking of my shoulder, which still sings its pain all too easily, my Alt’s cold eyes, and fresh doubt steamrolls through me. “I could have bled to death, Chord.” My voice is miserable, defeated. The sudden need to see his face has me turning around. “I blew it, didn’t I?”

His eyes flash, the glint sharp beneath the lamplight. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Talk like you’re the one who should die.”

“Well, I
could
,” I snap at him. “I’m human, aren’t I?”

“And a striker,” he retorts. Suddenly he’s moving back just the slightest, his shoulders stiff. “If there’s any good that’s going to come from you being one, it’s now.”

“If I’d done it sooner, then who knows how things might have turned out.
Who
might still be here.”

“You don’t know if you could have saved them, West. And they wouldn’t have let you fight for them, anyway.”

I bring my knees up and hug them, protection against his frustration, my own thoughts. “I hated your Alt for what happened to Luc,” I say. “I even hated
you
a little bit, too, at first. But it wasn’t just your Alt that killed Luc. If I hadn’t walked into that house … if I’d just stayed in the car like he’d asked me to … he’d still be here.” My breath hitches dangerously. “No matter how many ways I want to pick it apart, it all comes back together the same way.”