“We put a stop to it,” Nate said, reminding himself as much as Kurt. “Nadia and me.” He made a face. “Well, mostly Nadia. But I did what I could.”
Kurt whistled. “Kinda wish I could have been there to see it. Never thought the little mouse would have it in her.” He smiled crookedly, and there was something that looked a lot like admiration in his eyes.
“She was never a mouse,” Nate said, though he knew Kurt had always seen her that way, as someone timid and fragile and maybe even weak-willed. But then Kurt couldn’t understand the burden she’d been carrying since she was four years old and promised to him. Nate had never truly understood it, either, not until everything had started to crumble. “She was amazing. And now she’s paying for it while you and I go on with our lives.”
“Most times doing the right thing means taking risks,” Kurt said. “You gotta be prepared for those risks to turn around and bite you. If you’re not willing to face the consequences, you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” He reached out and squeezed Nate’s shoulder. “I’m sorry Nadia got bit, but at least it’s not fatal. It coulda been a lot worse.”
“It still could be, if the Chairman ever finds those recordings.”
Kurt acknowledged that with a nod. Nate didn’t want to dwell on all the terrible things that could still happen, so he used the opening Kurt had inadvertently given him to broach a subject he hadn’t been sure how to broach.
“So you’re still … doing stuff for the resistance?”
Kurt gave him a puzzled look. “You know I am. I can’t be their inside man anymore, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make myself useful.”
“Like how?”
Kurt looked even more puzzled. “What do you mean, ‘how’?”
“What kind of stuff do you do for the resistance?”
“Why do you want to know?” The puzzlement was replaced by something that looked more like suspicion.
Nate looked down at his hands, which he noticed he’d curled into tense fists. He forced his fingers to relax, not sure why he was suddenly feeling so vulnerable. “I’ve told you before I was going to change things in Paxco when I became Chairman.” He had always noticed a hint of polite skepticism in Kurt’s face when he’d done so, but he’d chosen to ignore it. “The stuff that’s happened lately has made me realize that I shouldn’t wait that long. I may be Chairman Heir, but I don’t really have any power. Even if I were the perfect heir, with a keen mind for politics and a cool head, no one would listen to me because they think I’m just a kid. And forget about anyone listening to me now, after I’ve made everyone think of me as an irresponsible playboy.”
“Where are you going with this?”
Nate cleared his throat. “I can’t make any changes through official channels, but I can’t just keep sitting on my ass and waiting for some mythical future where I have the power to make a difference. Especially since that future may no longer exist. I want to make a difference now, so I thought maybe I could do something to help out your resistance movement.”
“The resistance movement you know squat about,” Kurt pointed out.
“I know you believe in it. And I believe in you.”
Kurt cupped Nate’s face in his hands and planted a sweet, gentle kiss on his lips before shaking his head fondly.
“You know I love you, Nate,” he said with a smile that was no doubt meant to ease the sting, “but the resistance is not for you.”
Nate sat up a little straighter. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re the Chairman Heir, dumbass,” Kurt answered, still smiling, making the insult sound affectionate. “You’re the enemy.”
“I’m not—”
“Not in my eyes. I know you. But the resistance is almost all Basement-dwellers and Employees. We’re the have-nots, and you’re most definitely one of the haves. When you say you want to make a difference, I believe you. But I don’t have much more power in the resistance than you do in the government. I’m just a kid, too, and no one’s going to take my word for it that you’re one of the good guys.”
He understood Kurt’s point, but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow. “If every Executive in Paxco were to drop dead, would anyone in the resistance shed a tear?”
Kurt winced and drew back, answering the question without words. It seemed the resistance was every bit as class-conscious as the government they opposed. Nate shouldn’t have been surprised. His education had been heavily weighted toward economics, political science, and history. He’d never been a great student, but he hadn’t been a bad one, either.
“You know, when resistance movements like yours manage to topple the government they oppose, they tend to kill the opposition. I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of the French Revolution, but when the revolutionaries took over, they made being born to the aristocracy a crime punishable by death. And being seen as part of the ‘establishment’ wasn’t too good for a lot of the Chinese during the Cultural Revolution, either. Is that the kind of regime change your resistance is hoping for?”
Kurt shook his head. “I don’t know anything about those revolutions. We just want a voice in our government. The way we live in Debasement … It’s not right. Not when Executives have everything they want just because they were born. We want a government that gives a shit about us. That doesn’t mean we want to see a bunch of Executives’ heads on pikes.”
“And yet someone like me isn’t welcome,” Nate countered, trying not to sound bitter. His father was going to disinherit him; the resistance wanted nothing to do with him. What was he supposed to do with his life now? Go to parties and look pretty while being of absolutely no use to society?
“You’re as welcome in the resistance as I would be in the board room. It’s no lie: life sucks sometimes.”
Nate swallowed a snappish response. If the resistance wouldn’t have him, then he’d just have to find some other way to work against his father and Dorothy. He wasn’t going to lie down and let them win!
“I won’t tell anyone about Thea,” Kurt continued. “It won’t do anyone any good, and it could do a lot of harm.”
Nate couldn’t resist issuing a challenge. “If your resistance is so peaceful, what harm could it possibly do?”
Kurt met his challenging gaze head-on. “I don’t know the people who are in charge, but if they’re Basement-dwellers, they’re bound to have known and maybe even loved someone who disappeared. Probably had nothing to do with Thea. Probably they either disappeared themselves on purpose or are somewhere on the bottom of the East River. But once people get to wondering…”
Kurt let his voice trail off, and Nate couldn’t help but get the message. The subject of Thea was too incendiary, too likely to hit nerves. He relaxed his shoulders, not having realized how much he had tensed up. Kurt might not be educated, but Nate had known from the moment he’d met him that he was smart. He understood just how dangerous the information about Thea could be if released into the wrong hands.
“You’re sure Thea is dead, right?” Kurt asked with a shudder.
Nate remembered the sights and sounds and smells of his father destroying the living machine that was Thea. Remembered the shattering of the jars that had held Thea’s biological components, blood-like fluid splashing onto the floor. Remembered the lumps of what looked like brain tissue those jars had concealed. Remembered the stink of blood and chemicals and gunpowder as his father had shot the jars one by one. Remembered the lights on Thea’s nonbiological components going out as the world’s first and only true artificial intelligence gave up the ghost.