“He said… he said, ‘This is where you’ll find him.’”
“Riley,” Jude said. “They stored a copy of him.”
The paper floated to the floor, and Jude looked down at his hands, as if his fingers had acted of their own accord. He didn’t move to pick it up; he didn’t move at all. “He’s still out there, somewhere.”
I nodded.
Somewhere a circuit board, an electronic file, bits and bytes, somewhere ones and zeros, flipped in a precise order, the billions and trillions of quantum qubits that made a life, trapped inside a computer, trapped underground, trapped.
But alive.
15. RIGHTEOUS
We couldn’t save him.
Not yet.
Riley was the one variable in all of this that wasn’t teetering on the edge of catastrophe. Safe—or relatively so, in a database, free-floating in the ether—Riley could wait. I didn’t want to let myself believe it was true, because if Ben was lying, if I let myself hope and then had to lose him all over again…
But once the idea was in my head, I couldn’t get rid of it. The idea of Riley being gone forever had been the impossibility; this last-minute reprieve felt inevitable. His death had never been real.
This had to be.
“You think he’s aware?” I said. “His mind’s all there. How do we know he’s not trapped in there, afraid and alone? How do we know it doesn’t hurt?”
“It doesn’t,” Jude said. “He’s not.”
“But how do we know?”
“We have to believe it,” Jude said, sounding like a deranged Faither. “Because if we don’t…”
Then we wouldn’t be able to leave him there. For just a little longer, I promised him. Until we fix everything.
Like there was much chance of that happening while we were locked up in my bedroom behind bulletproof windows and network jammers. If my mother didn’t want us out, we weren’t getting out. My father had spent years turning the Kahn house into a fortress. I’d always taken his word for our security and its necessity, never worrying that the barbarians would break down the gates, never chafing against his boundaries from my side of the wall. I’d been the good girl, and good girls didn’t know how to break out of bedroom prisons.
They left that to bratty little sisters.
I pounded my fists against the door, again and again, harder each time, knowing that my mother would lose any game of wills she tried to play, because she was only human, and I was not. I could bang on that door for the rest of eternity.
It took less than an hour to wear her down.
“I’m not letting you out,” she said, from the other side of the steel door. “This is for your own good.”
“I know. I was just thinking, maybe if you let me get in touch with—”
“We don’t need any more of your helpful little mech friends swarming around here,” she said. “I think one is enough, don’t you?”
Jude, who was trying to break through the window despite my assurances it was virtually impossible, stopped his useless tinkering long enough to give the door a dirty look.
“It’s not that.” I rested my weight against the door, letting my forehead kiss the cool steel. When was the last time my mother had come up to my bedroom? When I was seven? Eight, maybe? However old I was before I’d gotten “too old” for bedtime stories and tucking in. Stop babying her, my father had said, and then I’d jumped on board with I’m no baby, and my mother had blushed, and that had been it: no more night-lights, no more stories, no more sweet-dreams kisses. My bedroom became my property, and I got my bedtime stories off the network; my mother retreated to the estate’s other wing. “I’m thinking about Zo.”
“What about her?” came the slow, careful response from the other side of the door.
“I’m worried about her.”
“Have you talked to her?” she asked.
“No. Have you?”
No answer.
“If she knew that I was here, maybe she would… you know.”
“Forgive me?” My mother’s voice twisted on the word. Proving again, she was no fool.
“She doesn’t have to forgive you,” I said. “She just has to come home. And maybe she will, if she thinks I was willing to.”
“Why would you want her to think that?”
Good question. “It’s not safe for her out there on her own,” I said.
“What are you doing?” Jude whispered. I waved him off. My house, my mother, my sister: my game.
“But it’s safe for you?” my mother said.
“I’m different,” I said. “Zo’s still a kid. And besides, I’m stuck here, right? So maybe something good can come out of it. Maybe if Zo knew the truth about you, if you gave her a chance to know what was actually going on—”
“I stayed with your father,” she said. “That’s what’s going on. I let him do whatever he wanted. No one’s wrong about that. It’s just the truth.”
“It’s not the whole truth. She deserves to know that.”
There was a long pause. “I’ll think about it,” she said.
I wasn’t ready for her to leave. “Mom.”
She didn’t say anything. For all I knew, she was already gone. I didn’t know her anymore; I didn’t know what to expect.
“Thanks,” I said finally. I meant it to help the lie.
Or maybe I just meant it.
There was another eternal pause. Then, “For what?”
“For trying.”
It was past midnight when the door eased open. “Shut up and let’s go,” Zo hissed, before Jude could open his big mouth and wake the house.
She brandished a slim silver cylinder that I assumed she’d used to pick the electronic lock. “You are so lucky you’re not an only child,” she whispered, as we crept out of the bedroom and down the hall toward Zo’s old room.
“And you are so lucky that Mom still knocks herself out on chillers every night, or your big, clomping feet would get us both thrown back into Kahn jail.”
She grinned. “You’re welcome.”
Zo’s bedroom was better equipped for a breakout than mine. “Nothing I haven’t done before,” she whispered, grabbing a compressible wire ladder from under her mattress and hooking it to the window frame. She swept out a gallant hand. “Ladies first.”
It had been a strange year. But there’d been nothing stranger than scaling the side of my own house, dim moonglow lighting the ladder rungs as I climbed, hand over hand, three stories down. Feeling like a criminal, stealing into the night with the Kahn family valuables, and our father might have pointed out that was exactly what I was doing—my most valuable possessions, he called us when we were little, and I’d taken it as a compliment, proud to be valued more highly than the new car. His to protect; his to destroy. Mine to creep through the darkness, following Zo as she darted in and out of the motion detectors’ sweep, avoided the cameras, deactivated the electronic gate, led us to freedom—freedom in the form of a beat-up two-door Chevrelle, Auden at the wheel.
“How’d you know?” Jude asked, as we piled into the car.
“Got the call from Mommy dearest.” Zo snorted. “Like I was supposed to believe Lia came crawling home, and wanted me for one big family reunion? Big sis is stupid—”
I jabbed her in the side.
“—but not that stupid,” Zo allowed, grinning at me. “And clearly, you’re lucky to have such a proficient juvenile delinquent for a sister.”
“Yeah. I guess I am.”