Blick was unfazed. “Better get ready for round two,” she told Cervantez as she turned away back down the hall. “It isn’t going to go as well for you.”
“Probably not,” muttered Cervantez.
Cassandra’s mind spun. She realized the implications of Blick’s news immediately and understood now the serious tenor in Forrest’s eyes.
“They believed her,” she said, a hint of wonder in her voice.
Forrest nodded. “We better hope the problem was with the polygraph interface and not our calculations, or Powell is going to fry a circuit.”
“What’s wrong?” asked Cervantez.
“Ammie lied,” said Cassandra.
“No,” said Cervantez. “I’m shocked.”
“You don’t understand,” said Forrest. “The Surrogates believed her. They’re supposed to be able to accurately assess degrees of veracity, but they thought she was telling the truth.”
“Maybe they aren’t actually soulless then,” said Cervantez. “Or she’s one hell of a liar.”
“This is no joke,” snapped Forrest. “This could undermine confidence in the entire program and mean the end of our careers.” He turned to Cassandra. “I’m going to test the polygraph equipment first if you’ll start looking at the data points—”
Cassandra received a pulse. It was the hospice nurse.
“I have to go,” she said.
The room seemed larger without the hospital bed. Otherwise nothing had been moved. Jarius’s books were still stacked on every available surface. A reproduction of Edmonia Lewis’s famous sculpture Forever Free remained on its shelf below a Horace Pippin print of an African American family saying grace before a meal. One entire wall was covered in framed black-and-white photographs Jarius had taken of the city’s neighborhoods over the decades. Despite being surrounded by her father’s belongings, Cassandra felt the room swollen with absence.
The funeral was well attended, and she had been gratified to see so many of her father’s colleagues and former students. She now sat in the quiet of the room, letting her thoughts whirl and settle. She had a conference call with Forrest and Powell scheduled in an hour to discuss Forrest’s report that the polygraph readings had been distorted by unanticipated high levels of khem in the witness’s system. Powell was furious with the oversight and was threatening to reassign Cassandra and Forrest if they couldn’t come up with a work-around.
Nothing had been heard or seen of Ammie Moore since she walked out of the courthouse, and Cassandra was able to admit she hoped the girl had gone somewhere far away where she could live low and stay safe. There had been a flare of defiance in the girl’s eyes at the end that led Cassandra to believe it was possible, though she knew Ammie’s khem addiction gave her only an outside chance.
The silence of the house gathered around Cassandra as the shadows of evening lengthened. Baedeker wandered the upstairs rooms, unsettled and mewing questioningly. If Cassandra had felt isolated and apart at times as a child after her mother’s death and later away from home as a Black student at Carnegie Mellon, she now experienced loneliness deeper even than she had dreaded since her father’s diagnosis.
She couldn’t abide it.
As Cassandra opened her iGlass to launch the Surrogate program, the home security system bell rang before announcing, “Forrest Latham is at the door.”
Cassandra exhaled her frustration at the interruption. Forrest had attended her father’s funeral, and she appreciated his concern and sympathy, but now his presence was just getting in the way.
“Doorman,” she said, calling up the security system’s audio. “Forrest, what is it?”
“I wanted to see you.” Forrest’s voice came from speakers wired into the room’s molding.
“Our meeting with Powell isn’t for another hour,” said Cassandra.
“I wanted to see you before the meeting.”
“I’m busy right now.”
“Cassandra, please. It’s important.”
Cassandra sighed and snapped shut the iGlass. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
Even looking as if he hadn’t slept in forty-eight hours, Cassandra couldn’t deny Forrest carried a rumpled attractiveness. His tired eyes took in the living room as he unbuttoned his coat.
“So this is where you grew up,” he said.
“This is it,” said Cassandra. “What do you want?”
“How are you doing?” He studied her face with an incisive concern that made her uncomfortable.
“I’m fine, Forrest,” she said. “What do you want? I have things to do.”
He gave a short, rueful grin. “Ever the inscrutable Cassandra,” he said. “Never letting anyone get too close.”
“Forrest, I don’t have time—”
“I know.” He held up a hand. “I’m sorry. Listen, I know what you’re doing, Cassandra, and you do not want to do it.”
“Really? And what am I doing?”
“Come on, Cassie. This is serious.”
“No, Forrest, what am I supposed to be doing? Tell me.” Cassandra crossed her arms, waiting, presenting challenge and defiance, but she knew she was exposed and her mind was whirling to find plausible cover.
“I know you’re running Surrogate off your home cluster, okay? I found the download time stamps when I was checking the analytics on the polygraph interface.”
Cassandra started to protest, but Forrest cut her off.
“Don’t,” he said. “You covered your tracks pretty well, but if I found them in the audit logs, it’s only a matter of time before Powell finds them. And he’s going to trace the hack back to either you or me... and it wasn’t me.”
Cassandra stared at Forrest. She’d known the audit logs were a risk, but she took the chance, thinking no one would have cause to look. She saw only one out now.
“No one would have to know if you helped me scrub the audit file,” she said.
Forrest shook his head. “I’d do a lot of things for you, Cassandra, but not that. You’re jeopardizing everything. Your entire career.”
“No one would know.”
“Someone would eventually. And I’m not risking my career for you.”
Cassandra turned away. “You should go then, Forrest.”
“Look, I know you hacked Surrogate around the time of your father’s diagnosis, and I understand why you did it, but your father wouldn’t want this. You know that.”
“You didn’t know my father.” She refused to cry, but she felt her throat constrict and it made her voice sound harsh. “You have no idea what he’d want.”
“No, you’re right. I didn’t. But I do know he wouldn’t want you to throw away everything you’ve worked so hard for. And you know it, too.”
“I want you to go.” She placed a hand on his shoulder to move him toward the door.
“Cassandra, please,” begged Forrest. “Wipe Surrogate from your home cluster. You still have time to not completely ruin your life.”
Cassandra’s face was closed off, her mouth set firmly as she reached to open the door.
“It won’t be him,” said Forrest in a desperate rush. “It’ll look like him and talk like him and think like him, but it won’t be your father. You can’t bring him back.”
Cassandra inhaled sharply.
“I can try,” she said.
“But at what cost?”
Cassandra closed her eyes and clenched her jaw to fight tears. “I would give anything to have him back,” she said.
“I know,” said Forrest softly. “But he wouldn’t want you to.”
“I don’t want to be alone.”
Forrest reached for her hand. “You don’t have to be,” he said.
Cassandra switched on the hologram projector in her father’s room and linked it to the lone identity profile on her personal drive. Forrest watched from the doorway, his brow wrinkled in concentration and concern.