Even a low-budget security system came with silent alarm switches that could be conveniently positioned around the house. Maybe Ben had just meant to turn on the light, or reach for his ViM. But there was no point in taking the chance. “I’d listen to him,” I said.
Ben did.
“What are you doing here, Lia? What are you doing with that?”
“You think he’s talking about the gun, or about me?” Jude asked.
Ben wore a set of checkered flannel pajamas. His quilt was navy, with a thick black trim. For so long he’d been this BioMax boogeyman, always one step ahead of me, ready to cajole or blackmail or smarm his way into getting whatever he wanted. But now he was just a guy. And kind of a sad, small one.
“What’s phase three?” I asked.
“What?”
“You’re going to the server ship on Sunday. What are you doing there?”
“I told you before, we’re dealing with the virus—Look, is this about Riley?” He sounded almost impatient. “Because if it is, I was just trying to help. I didn’t know about the stored file until recently, and this really isn’t necessary; I can—”
“Shut up. This isn’t about Riley. What’s phase three?”
Ben swung his legs toward the side of the bed like he was about to climb out.
“Don’t move,” I said.
He shook his head. “You’re not going to shoot me, Lia.”
“You’re so sure?”
“I know you,” he said, the same old Ben, sure he knew me better than I knew myself. “This isn’t you. Him, maybe, but not you.”
“I’m choosing to take that as a compliment,” I said. “But I’m guessing he will too.” Never taking my eyes—or the muzzle—off of Ben, I handed the gun over to Jude. Just once, I’d wanted to see how it felt to have the power over Ben, the control, to know he had to do what I wanted. But I couldn’t have pulled the trigger. I knew that, and he knew that.
For this to work we needed someone who could.
“Get back in bed,” Jude said. Ben did as he was told. “You want to tell me this isn’t me?” Jude sneered. “You want to tell me I don’t have it in me?”
Ben was a good liar, but apparently not that good. He gripped the edge of the blanket, tugging it around himself like it was bulletproof. “What do you want?”
“Phase three,” I said again.
“You keep saying that, and I’m telling you, I have no idea.”
We went back and forth several times, until it was made clear that Ben was either far more courageous or more clueless than we’d given him credit for, because even with a gun in his face—wielded by a mech who would have loved nothing more than to pull the trigger on the man who’d delivered the news of Riley’s death—he gave us nothing. I’d suspected all along that Ben wasn’t behind BioMax’s planned eradication of the mechs. He was too impassioned about the technology, too grossly sincere in his desire to help us, in his need to be liked. So maybe they’d kept him in the dark. It didn’t mean he couldn’t help us, willingly or not.
“I believe you,” I said finally.
“Really?” he asked, surprised.
“Really?” Jude echoed, equally so.
“Really. So here’s what you’re going to do.” I channeled my mother, and the imperious way she’d treated him, like he existed only to serve her purposes. I’d seen him bend to her, to M. Poulet, to anyone with enough power. If he liked to be led so much, we could accommodate him. “You’re going to take us with you when you go to the server ship. Then it’ll be easy to prove that you’re not doing anything but helping us. Because we’ll be right there with you.”
Ben laughed, but it was a sick, frightened noise. “That’s never going to happen.”
“Try again,” Jude growled.
“Do you know how much security there is on those ships?” Ben asked. “Even to get on the launch that’s going to take us out to the ship, there are massive layers of security to get through. They’re not going to just let me walk on board with a couple of mechs. And trust me, their guns are bigger than yours.”
“So you’re not going to help us,” Jude said.
“I’ve been trying to help you,” Ben said loudly, his voice climbing the register. “Why don’t you just let me? Walk out of here, and we can pretend nothing happened. Let me stop the virus, and you can all just go back to your lives.”
“All the people at Safe Haven, they can just go home?” I said.
“Of course.”
“Because they’re just being held for their own protection, right?”
“No one’s being held,” Ben said. “It’s like I tried to tell your mother: They’re not prisoners; they’re clients. We’re protecting them.”
“Have you been inside?” I asked.
He hesitated. “That’s not really my area.”
“So you can’t really say what’s going on inside.”
“It’s my corp,” Ben said. “I’ve been working there for twenty years. I’ve been working toward this, toward you, for twenty years. Why would any of us want to hurt you? We created you.”
“So you’re God,” I said. “Someone tell Savona. I hear he’s been hoping for an introduction.”
“I know BioMax took something from you, Lia.”
It was a tidy euphemism.
“But look what we gave you!” he continued. “A new life. Eternal life. A miracle. And this technology isn’t just about saving individual lives or winning wars—this is the preservation of human consciousness. Through any upheaval, through all our global crises, we now have the tools to endure. This is a new beginning for us, Lia. For humanity.”
The saddest part of all was that I believed him. At least, I believed that he believed it. He believed in BioMax.
He didn’t know.
“What’s the EMP generator for?” I asked.
“What generator?”
“In Safe Haven, behind the residence facilities, there’s an EMP bomb,” I said. “Useful for emitting a giant electromagnetic pulse that could wipe us out in one shot. And not much else.”
Ben shook his head. “You’re mistaken.”
“Or you are.”
“We’re wasting time,” Jude said. “Can you get us to the ship or not? Because if not, you’re not much use, are you?”
“Give him a chance,” I said. It was a little late to try good cop, bad cop, but I figured it couldn’t hurt. “I’m sure he’ll think of something.”
A bead of sweat trickled down Ben’s cheek. His hands had turned white with the pressure of gripping the blanket. “I will,” he said quickly. “I’ll think of something.”
But he didn’t. Jude was getting impatient.
“Walk us through it,” I suggested. “How do you get to the servers?”
“I have coordinates for the launch ship,” he said. “We meet and set off from there—”
“Slow down,” I said. “More details. When do you go. What do you do when you get there. You get the idea.”
“I’m due at dawn. The rest of my team will arrive by two p.m.”
“Who’s on the team?”
“Just my staff, other techs.”
“You get to decide who goes?”
He nodded. “I give the list to security; they screen us and let us onto the launch ship.”
“And why do you have to get there before everyone else?”
“There’s equipment to load,” Ben said. “This is a scheduled monthly maintenance check, so we’re replenishing equipment and supplies. I have to supervise that it’s all accounted for and loaded—”
“That’s it,” I said.
“What’s it?”
“The equipment,” Jude said. He got it too. “Shipping crates, right? Anything could be inside them.”