“Stop them! Keep her safe.”
And then Jude was behind me, pulling me away, calming me down, reminding me that there was nothing to be done; he’d been listening to the same conversation I had, and Zo had played along, just as she should have. Kiri was harmless; Zo was safe.
“Get it together,” he said, giving me a rough shake.
I shrugged him off. “I’m together.”
Zo was safe with Kiri, I told myself. Probably. I could still hear them through my earpiece, Kiri prattling on about server architecture and the ins and outs of spin, Zo offering the occasional monosyllabic grunt, as they drew further and further out of my reach.
“So, you believe us now?” Jude asked Ben. “Or you want to tell me your precious corp hasn’t turned shady on you?”
Ben looked shell-shocked.
“I got you on board,” he said finally. “Now what?”
Jude was still holding the gun. “You heard them,” he said—not to Ben, but to us. “Something’s happening at the COMCEN, whatever that is.”
“Communications center,” Auden said. He’d proved himself an expert on server farms, or as much of an expert as anyone could be—a convenient holdover from his conspiracy-theorist days. “Probably up by the bridge.”
“Right,” Jude said. “That. So we find it. We stop them.”
They were right. It made sense. Phase three was real, and it was about to happen here, above us, unless we acted.
“You go,” I said.
Jude wheeled on me. “What?”
“You follow the techs,” I told him. “I’m going after Zo.”
“I can check on your sister,” Ben said.
I didn’t know why he’d want to be anywhere near her, unless he’d figured out that the explosive was a fake. Either way, even if he’d proved himself to be as much of a dupe as I’d suspected, I couldn’t trust him with this.
“We don’t know what’s happening up there,” I told Jude. “It could just be a coincidence. You follow the techs, I’ll go to the server room, check things out there, and if everything’s good, I can grab Zo and we can meet you.”
“And if it’s not good?” Jude said. “What are you going to do then?”
“I…”
“Take the gun,” he said.
“What?” I’d been expecting more argument. “No.”
“You’re right. We should split up. We only have one weapon. So if you’re going to insist on going off on your own, you take it.”
“I can go with Lia,” Auden suggested.
“No,” Jude and I said together.
“The important thing is stopping phase three,” I said. “That’s where you need to be.”
Maybe that’s where I needed to be too. Maybe it was selfish to go after Zo instead—whatever I said, I didn’t actually believe there was any reason to check out the server room, not after what we’d heard. But I couldn’t let her disappear into the ship without any backup. If something went wrong, she expected me to be there. I’d let her believe I would be. If Jude and Auden went after the techs at the COMCEN and they managed to sound some kind of alarm, the ship would be crawling with security, and Zo would, most likely, be screwed. Right now, with any luck, the worst threat she faced would be Kiri boring her to death with a history of BioMax. In which case I’d find a way to get her alone, and we’d go above deck together. Who knew, maybe Kiri could even be an asset. If not, I’d deal.
But I wasn’t going to let Jude and Auden risk everything out of some misplaced sense of chivalry. As I suspected Zo would be quick to point out, one of us being stupid was more than enough.
“I’ll go with Lia,” Ben said.
“And why would she want that?” Jude said.
“She won’t get into the server room without my help. And without me, I highly doubt if she’ll be able to figure out if anything’s not as it’s supposed to be.”
“Right,” Jude snarled. “And with you she’s got an excellent probability of being turned in to the first security team you pass.”
“Ben comes with me,” I said.
“You trust him?” Auden asked incredulously.
“We should lock him in a crate,” Jude said. “Just to be safe.”
“He’s right,” I said. “He can get me to the servers.”
“And he’ll do that because he’s so eager to help us? Much less get up close and personal again with the girl who can turn his pretty face into modern art?”
“I got you on the ship,” Ben said. “You’re going to get caught eventually—I don’t need to do anything to speed that along. And in the meantime I’m as curious as you are about what the corp is doing. So I’ll keep my mouth shut, and I’ll get Lia to the servers, and, well, if you don’t want to take me up on it, that’s your choice. Doesn’t seem like you’ve got a lot of options right now.”
He was sounding like himself again, which was almost as infuriating as it was comforting.
“Let’s go,” I said. “We’ll come find you in twenty minutes.”
Jude tucked the gun into his waistband. “If we’re wrong, and something’s happening in the server room, or if you need me—”
“I’ll call.”
“Be careful,” Auden said.
“You too.”
Jude grabbed my hand. “We can do this.”
It sounded too much like a question.
“We can do this,” I echoed him, no doubt in my voice.
Jude shook his head, and smiled.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing.”
“Let me guess, you’re wondering how to admit, without sounding like an idiot, that all this time you were totally wrong about me.”
He was still holding on. “Actually, I’m thinking—as usual—I was right.”
Ben led me through endless corridors punctuated by locked doors and ID panels, the walls striped with logos making it clear that the mid-decks were filled with server farms for every major corp. Without him I would have been wandering blindly through what seemed like miles of hallway, searching for BioMax; with him I had only his word that he was taking me to the right place. The ship was larger than any building I’d ever been in, and aside from the almost imperceptible thrum of the engines, several decks down, it was hard to imagine we were actually moving through the water. Its size did offer us one advantage: It felt like a ghost town. I caught glimpses of security guards, from a distance, but we made it much of the way without catching their attention.
It had to happen eventually: Footsteps approached. Ben grabbed my wrist and dragged me down the corridor, jiggling door handles while he went until one gave. He shoved me inside.
I waited in the dark, ear pressed against the wall, fists balled, ready to fight.
“BioMax,” I heard Ben say. “Here’s my ID.”
There was a mumbled response.
“Headed to the server room now, sir,” Ben said loudly. “Just getting my bearings. Easy to get lost here.”
Another mumbled response, and then they both laughed. A moment later the door opened, letting in a shaft of light. Ben’s face appeared in the crack. “Clear,” he said. “Let’s go. Fast.”
Zo’s ViM relay had gone dead, but I told myself not to worry. No doubt all the computer equipment was just jamming the signal. Not to mention the fact that we were in the middle of the Atlantic in a high-security zone; no reason to think that wouldn’t interfere with network communications. Still, I started moving faster. We wound down long, featureless corridors, turning corners seemingly at random, but Ben seemed confident he knew where we were going, and I was starting to trust that, if nothing else, he was determined to get us to the server room intact. Both of us. It was clear I never would have found my way here without him. And when we reached the giant steel door with the BioMax logo painted across it, I knew that without Ben, there was no way I would have been able to break my way in.