And he’d watched.
There was nothing personal in a location, I reminded myself. GPS coordinates weren’t diary entries. They only told him where I was, not who, not why.
But it was my choice whether or not to tell him anything.
And he’d taken that away.
I didn’t run. I didn’t turn around, skid down the hill of green, back to the road to nowhere.
“You can’t tell anyone,” Jude said. Nearly pleaded.
“Oh, I’m pretty sure I can.” Even if it means mass panic? I thought. Even if Jude’s right and we might need this later, when it really counts?
“I’m not going to try to convince you I’m right—”
“Good.”
“I’m going to bribe you,” he said, regaining a little of his composure. “You keep your mouth shut, and I’ll jam your tracker too. I’ll feed BioMax a false stream—no one will know where you go, not BioMax. Not me.”
Not my father. Not anyone.
“And let everyone else keep getting spied on?” I asked. “Turn myself into as big a liar as you are?”
“That’s right,” he said. “That’s the plan. Or tell whoever the hell you want and spend the rest of your life with the fine folks of BioMax crawling up your ass, watching your every move.”
I wasn’t the same self-centered bitch I’d been before the download. But I guess I was close enough. “Okay,” I said finally. Hating myself.
At least he didn’t smile.
“You really think you’ll be able to keep this to yourself?” he said.
I nodded.
He rolled his eyes. “You’ll last five minutes. Tops. So here’s the deaclass="underline" You’ve got such a burning need to spill your guts, spill to Riley. You two are so tight now, so into your little secrets. I’m sure he won’t mind keeping another one. Especially for me.”
“You’re so sure he’ll just do whatever you tell him?”
Jude didn’t answer; he didn’t have to.
“All that time we were in the city, you knew,” I realized. “And when those orgs grabbed me, you—” I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to ground myself in the present, to shut out the sickening sensation that I was still tied to a chair, waiting, just imagining that I’d escaped. “You claim we should have called for help, but you knew where we were the whole time—and you did nothing.”
Jude stood up, brushing the grime off his jeans, starting into the house. “Not all of us do everything we want, whenever we want.”
I recognized the insult. But there was something else buried in there too. I just didn’t get it. If he’d wanted to rescue me, what had stopped him?
What’s the difference? I thought, disgusted with myself for even entertaining the idea of Jude rescuing me like I was some helpless maiden waiting for her noble prince.
He is not your friend.
“What are we really doing here, Jude?” I asked. “What’s the point of all this? What do you want?”
“At least you’re finally starting to ask the right questions.” And he turned his back on me and went inside.
I told Riley that night. We sat in my bedroom with the door closed, both of us on the floor, our backs propped against the wall, our knees drawn to our chests, a foot of space between us.
He didn’t react when I told him what had happened to Mika and Sari, at least what little I knew. And he didn’t react when I told him about the trackers. He didn’t say anything until I told him that Jude had known all along.
“He must have a good reason,” he said then.
I almost laughed. “Why? Because he’s Jude, giver of all knowledge and wisdom, keeper of the peace?”
“Because he’s Jude,” Riley said, and he wasn’t joking. “I trust him. I wish you did. Maybe then we wouldn’t have…”
“You blame me.” I shouldn’t have been surprised. And I shouldn’t have cared so much. “I made you take me to the city. I didn’t let you voice Jude. I screwed everything up. Is that about right?”
Riley looked down. He crushed his hands into fists, then brought them together, knuckle to knuckle. “I screwed up,” he growled. “I shouldn’t have taken you there.”
“You didn’t have a choice.”
“They wanted a trade,” he said. “You for Jude. And for me.”
“I know that,” I said. “You want to tell me why?”
“Wynn thinks we owe him something.”
“What?” I figured I deserved to know.
“A life,” he said. “Among other things. It doesn’t matter. I’m sorry you got involved.”
“And when they took me, you went to Jude.”
He nodded. “Jude freaked. He swore we’d find you. But by the time we did…”
“Secops showed up,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Except it was all a lie,” I pointed out. Couldn’t he see? “If he’s tracking us, he knew where I was the whole time. Just like always.”
Riley didn’t answer. He tilted his head back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling. “Never thought I’d be living in a place like this,” he said.
“Did you hear what I said? Jude lied to you.” I wanted to shake him. “He was probably going to let me rot there.”
Riley shook his head. “We were going to get you out. He would have done anything.”
“So he told you.”
“And I trust him.”
“Even though he sent us to that corp-town? Come on, you’re telling me that you don’t even suspect, just a little, that—”
Riley stood up. “Jude wouldn’t do that. Not to me.”
“And not to the orgs,” I prompted him. “You know, the ones who died. You forgot to say he wouldn’t have hurt them. Doesn’t have it in him or something like that.”
“Why are you here?” Riley asked.
“What? I live here.”
“But why? If you think Jude could do something like that.”
“I’m not here because of him,” I snapped. And maybe, deep down, I didn’t believe Jude was capable of something so terrible; maybe I wanted to believe in him as much as anyone else. Or I just needed an excuse to stay, because I had nowhere else to go. “He’s watching all of us,” I said finally. “Maybe I just think someone should be watching him.”
“You don’t know him,” Riley said, and he was already at the door, leaving me. “I do.”
“Are you sure?” But I said it under my breath. Quietly, so it belonged to me.
Riley hesitated in the doorway, drumming his fingers against the frame. It was strange—I wouldn’t have thought him the type to emulate org shifts and twitches, pretending that his body was anything other than what it was. But there he was, playing out a pantomime of org fidgeting. Jude had encouraged us to embrace our body’s natural stillness, its dissociation from feverish thoughts, yet another way to maintain control, another point scored in our game against the orgs. I’d bought it; Riley apparently hadn’t. “You okay?” he finally asked.
I thought about my father then, the tightened line of his lips holding back a tidal wave. I’d never thought about what it must have been like to live behind his colorless expression. Caged by self-control, and in that cage, with him, my body after the accident, ravaged first by fire then by BioMax, my body now, the one he’d purchased, the one he’d willed into existence, the mistake.
In that cage, with me: my reflection in his eyes. And their eyes, the eyes of the dead, bloody and sightless. Auden’s eyes, staring into a camera, staring out at me, believing I could do anything after what I’d done to him. Mika’s eyes, shut tight, as we stepped over him, another body in another hall.
I could lock it all away. Even if it meant locking myself in with it.