Crashed (30 page)

And then Riley was there, his fist smashing into Auden's face, and somehow it was Jude's arms beneath me, lifting me up. "You're okay, it's okay," Jude murmured, as Riley pulled his arm back, slammed it down again, Auden's head snapping back, a soft moan escaping with flecks of blood. "You're okay."

"Stop!" I screamed. Jude slapped a hand over my mouth, met my eyes, and nodded when he saw I'd gotten the point, remembered myself and where we were. Then he leaped at Riley, grabbed his waist and pulled him off Auden. Riley struggled, but Jude whispered something in his ear, and he went limp. Jude scooped the gun off the ground, holding it trained on Auden. Riley replaced him at my side, slipping his hand into mine.

"I'm fine," I whispered, and I was. I let Riley help me into a standing position, gingerly rested a little weight on the leg to see if it would hold. It did. Damaged or not, it still functioned. "It's fine."

Auden was staring at me. At us, as Riley brushed my hair out of my face, pressed his lips to my forehead. I shook him off. Back to business.

"I'm sorry," Auden said quietly. "I didn't mean--"

"Shut up," Jude barked. "You don't talk to her. In fact, you don't talk at all."

"I'm fine," I said again, louder this time.

"Of course you are," Jude snapped. "But we've still got
him
to deal with."

"This could work for us,"
I VM'd. And suddenly I saw it all clearly, how we could all win our happy ending.
"Now we have a hostage."

"I noticed," Jude said dryly. He jerked his head at Riley. "Take the org's weapon."

Riley yanked the pulsegun out of Auden's holster, looking as if he'd like to smash it into Auden's head.

"Riley,"
I VM'd.
"Just let it go. Please."
He tucked the pulsegun into his pocket and backed away, returning to my side. Auden kept looking back and forth between us, a familiar expression on his face--embittered satisfaction at solving a puzzle with the answer he'd been expecting, even if it was one he'd hoped against.

"Don't you get it?" I asked Jude. "We can use him as leverage, to get us safe passage off the property."

"We won't
need
leverage," Jude said, "because no one's going to know we're here."

"We can evacuate the building before we blow it," I said. "Tell them if they do anything to stop us, we'll kill him."

Auden shook his head slowly. "You won't do that."

"Really?"
I glanced pointedly at the wound in my thigh. He winced. "You want to test us? You're the one who said we were capable of anything." I needed him to shut up. I had to make Jude believe that I didn't care about Auden, any more than I cared about the other orgs. That this was just a smarter plan.

"Thanks for proving my point," Auden said, adopting a toughness to match my own. "This'll play great on the vids tomorrow."

"There won't be any vids," Jude said. "We're not changing the plan. If we have to, we'll take him back to the estate with us. You're right, leverage could be a good thing."

"We can make this work,
tonight
," I insisted. "We don't have to kill anyone."

"She's right," Riley said.

"She's living in a fantasy world," Jude snapped. "You think Savona cares what happens to his little puppet? You don't think he'd make a better martyr dead than alive? Poor, pathetic Auden, slaughtered by a bunch of mechs. We try to use him as leverage and give the Brotherhood
any
warning? Then that's it. We're done."

"Savona needs me," Auden said in a high, tight voice. "Listen to Lia. I don't care what you do to the building, but those people inside--let me get them out. No one will hurt you as long as you've got me."

"See?" I said.

Jude laughed. "What else is he supposed to say?"

"What if I'm right?"
I asked, switching to VM. Jude would never back down in front of Auden.
"What if this is our chance to do what we need todo, without killing anyone, and we pass it up?"

"What if you are right?"
Jude retorted.
"You want to let Savona just walk away? Along with all his researchers, their brains filled with nasty little tricks to wipe us out? What if this is our chance to stop Savona before he's unstoppable? Like killing Hitler before he turned into Hitler? Stalin? Zomabi? Ever think it's our moral obligation to stop him? Here. Now. Tonight."

"Are you crazy? You actually want to kill these people? Even if we have another option?"
Maybe I was as naive as he said. Because it wasn't until that moment that I got it. We weren't going to be able to argue him out of this.

"There is no other option," Jude said aloud. "And I'm not going to let you risk everything on some childish wish that things were different." He held out his hand. "Give me the detonator. Let's just get this done."

Riley shook his head. "No."

"What?"
Jude looked back and forth between us. "We all agreed this was the only way."

Riley watched him carefully. "And now there's another way."

"Don't do this," Jude said, and it sounded half like a threat and half like a plea. "Don't choose her."

"This is for you," Riley said, and then, as I stood frozen between them, everything fell apart. It happened fast and slow at the same time--so fast I could barely understand what was happening; slow, like a series of freeze frames, flashes of action trapped in amber.

Jude lunging at Riley.

Riley grabbing the electric pulsegun from its holster. Riley saying, "I'm sorry." Pulling the trigger.

Jude screaming in rage.

Jude screaming in pain.

Jude on the ground, body twitching.

Body still.

"Get the orgs out," Riley told me, kneeling at Jude's body, looking like a frightened child. "We'll blow the lab and get out of here before--"

A siren cut through the night.

Auden's hand was in his pocket.

Riley seized the gun from Jude's limp grip and held it pointed at Auden. "Hands up!" he shouted.

Auden gave us a faint smile. "Too late," he said, holding out his ViM. "The Brotherhood knows you're here. This is over."

"You fucking idiot!" Riley growled.

"Now what?" I shouted over the alarm.

"Make the call!" Riley shouted back.

But it was simpler than that--I just skimmed a finger across my nanoViM, linking in and sending the message, all in one motion. Call-me-Ben and the BioMax reinforcements were waiting for my signal. I'd told call-me-Ben we were going to blow something up. I'd told him orgs were going to die. And I'd told him if he acted quickly, did his job right, and kept the operation in house with BioMax secops whose discretion he could trust, he might learn something about the Synapsis Corp-Town attack that could change everything.

I just hadn't told him the where and the when, and thanks to Jude's GPS jamming patch, he had no way of knowing.

Until now.

BioMax had been unwilling to stage a rescue operation, but I'd guessed they would be willing to do anything to protect their image, which had taken a huge blow after Synapsis. And Ben had proved me right, eager to strike a deal that would prevent his precious mechs from committing a mass murder that the public would never forgive and for which, I reminded him, BioMax could ultimately be held to blame. Maybe they
were
partly to blame--but I was gambling on the chance that, whatever role BioMax may have played in all this, Ben wasn't a part of it.

He couldn't be trusted to be on our side, but he would get us away from the Brotherhood, one way or another. If he showed up in time.

"Get him inside!" Riley shouted, forcing Auden at gun-point toward the laboratory.

He didn't have to explain. Now that the Brotherhood knew we were here, we had two options: Blow the lab with ourselves inside. Or barricade ourselves inside the hangar with Auden as a hostage, keeping ourselves safe until BioMax arrived.

If call-me-Ben was true to his word.

And if Savona and his people really cared enough about Auden to keep him alive.

A river of people streamed out, screaming, as Riley held a gun to Auden's left temple and shouted over the chaos, urging them to run if they wanted their precious martyr to live. I grabbed Jude's wrist, struggling to drag his body into the hangar, but it was heavy, too heavy. Riley shoved the gun at me, and I trained it on Auden.
They should be shaking,
I thought, staring at my hands.

But they didn't do that anymore.

I expected Auden to lunge at me again, take advantage of the chaos to escape and leave us at the Brotherhood's mercy, but he kept his head down and trudged through the snow as I pressed the muzzle to the back of his neck, safety on, knowing that if I was tested, I'd drop the weapon and let him go. Knowing that was the only thing that kept me moving forward, one foot in front of the other.

Riley hoisted Jude's body off the ground and cradled it in his arms, Jude's head resting on his chest, Jude's eyes open and sightless. And somehow we made it inside the laboratory, safe behind a locked door and shaded windows, alone with the damaged mechs, with Jude's still body, alone with Auden.

"Tell them to leave us alone if they want you to stay alive," Riley ordered Auden. We had retreated to the far corner of the hangar, putting as much space between us and the entrance as we could, just in case.

With a trembling finger, Auden activated his ViM and spoke into it. "They want me to say they'll kill me if you move on them. Just wait for my signal. And tell Savona--"

Riley snatched the ViM out of his hands and threw it across the room. "Enough." He forced Auden down into a chair and sent me on a hunt for something that could be used to tie him up. There was a roll of duct tape in one of the cabinets. I tossed it to Riley. With a cool competency, Riley bound Auden's wrists behind his back, then lashed him to the chair at his waist and ankles.

"Do you have to?"
I VM'd. I knew how it felt to be bound. Riley didn't answer, just kept going until the job was done. It scared me, how good he was, his movements sure and efficient, his expression determined and free of doubt. It scared me most because this was still, plainly, the Riley I knew, not some alien part of himself that he'd kept hidden from me. This was a strength, a ruthlessness that had been beneath the surface all along. But I understood now that I'd always known it was there.

Jude lay on the floor beside them, faceup, arms splayed.

And when Auden was secured, Riley stood over Jude's body, hands clenched into fists, nothing left to do but wait. I touched his shoulder lightly. "I can't believe I did it," he whispered.

"You had no choice," I reminded him.

"There's always a choice," Riley said. "I was supposed to choose him."

He turned away from me. "I'm going to take a look around," he said, voice rough. "Keep an eye on him and"--he nodded at the four gurneys--"them."

"Okay."

The hangar had been cleared of anything left over from its aeronautic days, and much of it was still empty. The walls were lined with screens and the far side of the room was littered with unidentifiable spare parts and long, empty tables--waiting for more experimental subjects to fill them up?

Only a few feet away from us, four mechs lay prostrate on four gurneys, surrounded by unwieldy equipment I recognized from my early days in the BioMax rehab unit, when I'd lain in a hospital bed, frozen, wires like tentacles hooking me to the machines, their sensors feeding into my exposed brain. Ani's gurney was the closest, and as I drew near, I could hear her murmuring something. A ceaseless string of incomprehensible babble, like a baby testing its tongue. Her head was shaved, tangles of wires connected to a series of monitors disappear-ing into her open skull. I brushed the back of my hand against her cheek. Her eyes were open, staring past me. And her lips kept moving, spilling out the stream of whispered nonsense syllables.

"How could you do this to yourself?" I murmured. Then forced myself to look past her to Sloane, to Ty, to Brahm, the three of them in the same or worse condition. The fingers of Sloane's right hand twitched uncontrollably. The skin on Brahm's chest had been flayed, the wiring left exposed. His eyes roamed wildly, randomly, skidding from one side to the other, pupils contracting to a point, then periodically expanding in a flush of black that flooded his irises. Ty just moaned. At least her eyes were closed. "How could you do this to
them
?"

"What's wrong with them?" Auden asked, straining to see.

"You tell us," I said. "You did it. You and your
Brothers.
"

"I don't know anything about this," Auden said. "Tonight was the first I even heard about this place."

"Right."

"I was on my way here to find out what was going on. I never thought . . ." Auden scowled. "Believe whatever you want."

He twisted around in his chair, watching the door. Outside, everything was quiet. For all I knew, the Brotherhood had us surrounded, their pulseguns drawn. If they called our bluff and broke down the door, what then? We could end up on those gurneys too, right next to Ani. Or we could finish this right now. Send Auden outside and blow the place up--blow ourselves up with it.

It's not death,
I reminded myself.

And it was infinitely better than whatever lifeless madness awaited us on those gurneys.

"They'll come for you, you know," Auden said. "Holding me hostage isn't going to get you out of here. You'll never get off the property."

"We're not worried about that," I lied.

"Will they be okay?" Auden asked. "Your friends?"

"What do you care?"

"Will they?"

"They're just machines, right?" I said. Hating him for the fact that I
couldn't
hate him, even here, surrounded by the fruits of what he'd accomplished. "No souls, no consciences. Not alive. So honestly, what do you care?"

"This was never about anyone getting hurt," Auden said, his eyes involuntarily flickering to the hole his bullet had torn through my thigh.

"Tell that to your partner," I said. Then pointed to Ani. "Tell that to her."