“Why are you helping me?” I asked quietly.
He triggered the locking mechanism and heaved the door open, gesturing me inside. “Keep out of sight. I’ll check on Zo.”
The room was loud and cold. Computer servers were lined up like dominos from wall to wall. I didn’t know whether it was the refrigeration system or the servers themselves, but there was a low, constant thrum, a vibration. It almost felt like I was shaking.
Ben swept down the central aisle, his eyes pinned on the numbers marking each row. It was a room built for hide-and-seek, and I tucked myself into one of the narrow alleys between server rows, padding softly down the aisle as I shadowed Ben through the room. He threaded through the rows and I slipped behind him, always keeping the thick, towering computers between us, though he never turned back to look. Finally, he stopped. One row away, so did I.
Kiri was waiting for him, with two BioMax techs. One had a hand clamped around Zo’s wrist.
“Learn anything interesting?” Ben asked his “daughter.”
“She didn’t,” Kiri said. “But I think it’s safe to say that I did.”
Ben’s expression didn’t give anything away. “Problem?” he asked mildly.
“You tell me.” I’d seen Kiri Napoor in a variety of moods—conciliatory, wheedling, triumphant, frustrated, distraught—but I’d never seen her like this. There was no mood, no emotion, just: cold. “Why am I standing here with Lia Kahn’s little sister? And why are you trying to pass her off as your daughter?”
I cursed myself for not taking Jude up on his offer. If I had the gun, I would… what? Burst out from behind the servers, guns blazing, shooting wildly? Save the day?
Ben sighed. “You knew.”
“Of course I knew.” Kiri scowled. “It’s my job to know. I’ve never understood why you thought so little of me. So you want to tell me what she’s doing here?”
The situation could still be salvaged, I told myself. As long as no one panicked.
“Well?” Kiri pressed, when Ben didn’t answer.
“What is that?” he said, turning his attention to a small pile of equipment and mess of wiring at the base of the server bank.
“You’re asking me questions?”
“You’re just here to observe,” Ben said. “So what are you hooking up?”
“What’s she doing here?”
“Is that an uplink device?” Ben said, approaching it. Kiri blocked his path. “Zo’s here as a favor to a friend,” Ben said. “Nothing to worry about.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Kiri said. And with the same jaunty grin she’d always given me when talking me into yet another tiresome BioMax PR chore, she pulled out a gun.
The two BioMax techs did the same.
Zo yanked her arm out of the tech’s grasp. She brandished the remote over her head. “Don’t!” she shouted. “If I press this button, he blows up.”
Kiri turned to Ben, eyebrows arching toward her forehead. “Is that true?”
“Afraid so.”
“A hostage,” Kiri said to Zo. “Impressive. And now everything makes sense. I can see why he’d do whatever you said.”
“Exactly,” Zo said. Her voice was shaking, but her hands weren’t.
If I showed myself now, would I make things better or worse?
“It’s an untenable situation,” Kiri said. “We’ll have to fix that.”
She raised the gun.
Zo screamed.
A spot of red bloomed on Ben’s forehead, and he dropped backward, arms splayed, eyes open. Dead.
I was halfway out of my hiding place—halfway to Zo—when I realized that she was still on her feet, unharmed.
I stopped.
I hid.
It was the smart move; we were outnumbered, and throwing myself at two men with guns trained on my sister could only make things worse. If Kiri had intended to shoot her, she would have done it already. Probably. Still, I felt like a coward. And I hated myself for it.
Ben was dead.
Ben had kept his mouth shut about me, about Jude and Auden. He’d picked a side, our side. And now he was dead.
Without taking my eyes off my sister, I reached for my ViM. If I could get through to Jude, if I could call in a rescue—
“Where are the rest of them?” Kiri asked Zo.
“The rest of who?” She was staring at Ben, eyes wide and watery.
“You’re not here alone.”
Just tell her, I thought.
Or maybe, Don’t tell her. Information was leverage, Riley had once reminded us. Secrets were power. If Kiri got what she wanted out of Zo, what need would there be to keep her alive?
On the other hand, if I showed myself, gave Kiri what she really wanted, maybe she’d just let Zo walk away.
“It’s just me,” Zo said, and I could tell she was trying to regain some semblance of spunk. It wasn’t working. “Sorry to disappoint.”
Something buzzed at Kiri’s waist. She lifted her ViM to her ear and nodded. “Good. Bring them in.” Then she turned back to Zo, with that eerily familiar smile. “I see you’re just as big a liar as your sister.”
I didn’t have to call Jude. He was here, with Auden by his side, both of them frog-marched into the room by four BioMax techs, techs carrying guns—a real one for Auden, a pulse one for Jude, both of them deadly.
“Any problems?” Kiri asked.
“Not a one,” the tallest one said. “They fell for it all the way.”
“Good job.” She waved a hand toward the nearest wall. “Put them over there.”
The techs shoved them into the wall, along with Zo, lining them up, their hands out at their sides, fingers outstretched, palms empty, nothing up their sleeves, so to speak. Nothing left to stop this… except me.
“So where is she?” Kiri asked.
“Who?” That was Jude, eyes wide, expression clueless. Unconvincing.
Kiri just laughed. “I know she’s here, somewhere, lurking about.” She raised her voice. “Are you here, Lia?” she shouted. “Hiding? Typical. Most people would want to help their friends—their sister. But not you, Lia, right? Nothing changes. All that matters is you.”
“How long have you been talking to yourself?” Jude asked. “You may want to see someone about that.”
Kiri ignored him, and gestured to the two techs who’d been there with her the whole time. “What are you staring at? Get back to work.”
They put their weapons away and knelt at the base of the nearest server bank, where they began fiddling with a web of wires spiraling out of the exposed circuitry. They were hooking up a device and clipping it to the wires.
Seven of them. Three of us, backs against the wall.
And then there was me. Hiding. Waiting. Watching.
In other words, doing nothing.
“That’s an uplink jack,” Auden said suddenly, loudly—far more loudly than he needed to, unless he was hoping to be heard by someone who might be all the way across the room, invisible. “I’ve seen one of those before.”
Ben had pointed it out too—just as loudly.
“Smart kid,” Kiri said, sounding distinctly unimpressed.
“So you’re uploading something into the network?”
I flashed on the data banks we’d discovered in the BioMax basement, the neural patterns they had filed away for a rainy day, for whatever machine they deemed ready for an obedient human brain to guide its movements, its actions at the beck and call of BioMax, mechanical slaves.
What would happen if they uploaded one of those obedient cybernetic slaves to the network? How much would they control? Maybe the AI, the war machines, had all just been practice—maybe BioMax wanted more than money. Maybe they wanted everything.