The Drafter (56 page)

“You'll never lose me, Peri. But go ahead and try. You're more fun when you're fighting.” Smirking, he sat on the raised hearth, patting the stone beside him.

“You were trying to break the loop,” Silas said as he put a log on the fire—which promptly collapsed. “The sooner we get this done, the better.”

“You think?” Anxious, Peri took the brown plastic footstool from Allen and set it clunking down before a straight-back chair pulled before the fireplace. Jack snickered when she sat on the low stool, her knees almost up to her elbows.

The silver threads in Jack's black shirt glinted as he crouched beside her, whispering in her ear. “So many bad things we did, you and me. I'm going to be here, babe,” he said, tapping his temple. “Reminding you of every single one of them, because you
enjoyed
it. And you think you're going to let it go? Never. Not my girl. Bill is right. You're the best, and you don't let your best go. Ever.”

Allen sat down behind her and tucked close. Shifting awkwardly, Silas edged toward the bar. “Ah, I'll just be over here.”

“No one needs you, piano man,” Jack said loudly, and Peri flushed. He was getting aggressive. He'd vanish for good if they did this right, and the illusion seemed to know it, her subconscious fighting her, lying about who she was.
It's a lie. It has to be
.

Peri bowed her head as Allen's fingers landed on her shoulders,
pushing deep into exactly the right places. It was hard to relax with Jack staring at her.
I don't need you anymore
, she thought as she closed her eyes, and finally she began to relax.

“Little whore,” Jack muttered.

Tension slammed into her. Sensing it, Allen sent his fingers to scrub at her scalp. “I'm sorry, Peri,” he said softly. “The last thing you need is more holes in your memories, but the only way to be rid of him is to destroy both timelines. I promise you'll get the straight story, but any direct memories will be gone, along with Jack.”

“Never . . . ,” Jack whispered, and she shivered.

“You're fighting,” Allen complained. “Let me do this, or Silas will never let me hear the end of it.”

That brought a smile to her. True, Silas was more talented, but Allen had firsthand knowledge of what to remove, and she leaned back into him, even as she pondered the wisdom of letting him into her head. She'd shot at him, beaten him, left him for dead, berated him. Why should he help her?

“You're blocking again,” Allen said wearily. “I don't hold you to actions done in the name of closing Opti down. It was your job. We all volunteered for it.”

Crouched with his breath tickling her ear, Jack whispered, “But you hold yourself to them, don't you, babe. Because you enjoyed it. Even Africa. Admit it,” he whispered. “You liked who you were—or it wouldn't have taken three years to figure out. Don't let them steal that from you. You're alive when you're bad. Don't let them kill your soul.”

Peri's pulse quickened. She hadn't enjoyed the ugly things she'd done while at Opti. The people she'd hurt or killed were real. The wrongs she'd done were real. To have enjoyed it would make her foul. She hadn't.

“You did,” Jack whispered, and her eye twitched.

“I'm trying,” she whispered, and as Allen's fingers eased her into a light trance, a flash of Jack lying on a yellow floor, a blood-soaked scarf pressed to his middle, rose up.

Oh, God, he'd been dying, shot in the gut. Jack had lied to protect her.
Bill was corrupt. Sandy and Frank. . . . They'd fought. She had thrown a knife at Sandy and missed
.

“That's the one, Peri,” Allen said, his presence in her mind becoming clearer. “Remember everything. I'll take it away.”

Jack's breath seemed to brush her cheek. “It never goes away. You're a bad person. You like who you were, and you miss it already.”

He was giving voice to her deepest fear. Flashes of that night came fast and without order. Blood on her hands. Her scarf pressed against Jack's middle. The sound of breaking glass. Sandy's long hair flying before her as she fell back to break the bar's mirror. Peri couldn't make sense of the disjointed images. Allen scrambled to catch them, but they were too fast and she wasn't letting him in deep enough to destroy any of them.

“Peri,” he pleaded. “Please. I need to do this.”

Maybe I deserve to be left in the chaos of my own creating
, she thought.

“You do,” Jack whispered, his breath sending her hair to tickle her neck. “I'm going to take you there. Right now.”

With a sudden twist, the entire night came back in a flash. Both timelines sparkled in irreconcilable clarity. She gasped, jumping to a stand. Her pulse thundered as she spun to Allen, his mouth gaping as he stared at her from his chair. He wasn't supposed to be in a chair. He'd been by the bar, throwing Frank's rifle to her.

“I shot him!” she cried out, staring at the stage where Jack had fallen, his belly punctured. Slick blood covered the floor, smeared where he'd gotten up. Terrified, she looked at her blood-covered hands. But her chest had a hole in it, and she staggered. The mirror was broken, and Sandy's soft sobs rose from behind the bar.

Scared, Jack ran for the door. In her mind, she lifted the rifle to her unblemished shoulder and blew a hole in his back.

“He's dead!” she groaned as the memory of Jack slid to the floor, unhelped and uncared for. No one was moving to save him. Not even her.

“Allen! What the hell are you doing! You
want
her in MEP?” Silas shouted.

“She used the framework you left to twist control from me! What did you do to her?”

Peri turned to the bar. Panic joined her confusion when the mirror was unbroken and Silas stood there instead of Frank. She backed up, eyes darting for a way out.

“Easy now,” Allen called, and she spun. Silas moved, and her eyes flicked to him. Both men were between her and the door. She was trapped.

“Stay back,” she warned, fixated on the space on the floor where Jack had died. “Where's my rifle? I had a rifle!” Spinning, Peri looked at the door, shocked to see it clean and unblemished. Her heart thudded as she whirled to the stage. There was no blood. But she had shot Jack. “Someone tell me where Jack is!” she screamed.

Silas came forward, hands raised in placation. She kept moving, looking for a way out.

A tiny, rational part of her knew she needed to stop, but instinct kept her backing up almost into the fireplace. She could go no farther, and she grabbed a fire poker.

“Peri, relax,” Silas said calmly, and she jabbed the poker at him to keep him away.

“He's dead, isn't he,” she said, iron held tight. “Is Jack dead?”

Angry, she took a step forward, and Silas shifted. “I'm sorry about this,” he said, and then she swung at him. Swearing, he blocked it, twisting the iron from her grip. She screamed, furious when he grabbed her wrist and spun her into a submission hold as they went down and hit the floor together.

“Call Fran,” Silas said to Allen as he wrapped his legs around Peri in a wrestler hold, and she howled, flinging her head back. He leaned out of the way and she hit nothing.

“Hold still,” he grunted, binding her with his own arms and legs. “Just. Hold. Still,” he panted, gripping her tight. “It's okay. Allen fucked up your defragment, but it's my fault. I never should have done what I did. Remember me. Remember me, Peri, and let me in! I'm your anchor! Trust me, damn it!” he shouted, angry. “Be still and let me
fix this
!”

“Let go . . . ,” she wheezed, gasping when he reached into her mind as if it were his own and pulled up an image of Jack standing before the door, his gun smoking. It was aimed at her, and her chest felt as if it was being squeezed to a singularity. “Jack!” she screamed, and froze as she felt the memory burn to ash, the edges of it folding in on itself until it was gone. Under it was the memory of Jack running for the door, leaving her as if the last three years together had meant nothing. Then her, blowing a hole in his back.

“Oh, God, no,” she moaned, knowing it was true. She had gone to Opti to find the corruption, but she hadn't been able to break from it and had become the tool she'd gone in to expose. He'd never loved her, not really, and she sobbed as Silas crumbled the memory in the fist of his mind and it was gone. But the pain remained, staining the folds of her brain.

Silas has done this before
, and then a flash of insight poured through her, flooding the very gaps that Silas had just made. Allen had been in Opti to protect her, playing the part of the corrupt Opti agent to keep her safe. He'd been there to allay Bill's concerns at her lapses as she balanced on a knife's edge. Only now did she realize why he'd never tried to defragment anything. She
knew
him, and he'd been afraid he'd missed something when she'd agreed to let him erase all memories of him . . . and Silas.

Silas?
she thought, feeling his stark determination as he manhandled her memory of the night back to the forefront of their joined thoughts, but she refused, seeing within him a faint image of a wind-calmed boat stuck in the middle of a lake, of laughter and music—and a toast to a future success. In a sudden wash, she realized it was Silas's memories she was seeing, a shadow of their joined past during the year they'd spent together preparing to take Opti down. They'd both been there, Allen and Silas, countless nights spent over take-out and schematics and personnel files, of flirting banter at the rifle range, and the keen bite of testing each other's dexterity skills in the gym. Allen had been there too, but she'd agreed to the year-long preparation because of Silas. She'd loved him, but he hadn't loved her back, and she had no reason to say no when the year of preparation was over and the game
was ready to be played. She had loved Silas, and she'd agreed to let that die. Wanted it to, maybe, when he hadn't noticed that she'd fallen in love.

You loved me?
Silas thought desperately, and she groaned when he wrenched her thoughts back to Overdraft, flipping through them with a frighteningly cold intensity, burning everything to ash. Memories of the night at Overdraft flared into short-lived, doomed existence, ugly emotions feeding them as oxygen fuels a flame. And though the memories were destroyed, the emotions lingered to coat her mind like smoke on the ceiling. It should have been cleansing, but all that grew from the fading memory of the night was a heavy depression. She'd done this to herself. She had forgotten love. And for what? Glory?

Jack was right. She was a bad person.

Her fight to be free collapsed into a soft trembling.

“Is she okay?” Allen whispered, and Silas's hold on her eased, both the arms he had wrapped around her and the mind he had entwined with hers. Her heart ached as he let go. She was alone. She'd done it to herself.

“That depends,” Silas said, and the cool air of a deserted bar touched her skin where there'd once been warmth. His arms slipped away, and she huddled on the floor where he left her. The scrape of his shoes on the yellow floor serrated through her as he went to get her coat and draped it over her. “Give her a minute to catch up.”

Catch up. That was a good idea. She felt as if she'd been away for a long time and had come home to find everything changed. She was the one who was different, the truth making her feel ugly and ashamed. Forehead on her knees, she wondered what she was going to do now.

Tilting her face, she saw Allen and Silas sitting on the hearth. Silas's back was bowed in fatigue or sorrow, or maybe both, she couldn't quite tell. Allen looked guilty. Did he know she remembered him? Did he know she knew about the year they'd been together, the three of them planning and agreeing to this? That she'd asked him to destroy all memory of it?

“Thank you,” Allen said raggedly. “That construct you put in her felt self-aware.”

“It was.” Silas didn't look at her. “There were enough latent memories of Jack for it to be fully realized. It had to be for it to be flexible enough to keep her sane until the memory could be defragmented. It's gone now.”

What kind of monster am I that I could have given up on love so easily? For glory?
They remembered her, and all she had was disjointed images. But if not for them, she'd still be Opti. She would have continued to accept the lies she'd molded about herself, be what Opti said she was. She was the sum of what she'd done, and she'd done so much that was ugly and wrong.

Exhaling, she pulled her head up, knowing she must look hideous with her hair mussed and her eyes red. “Jack is gone,” she said, edging up to sit on the low hearth, feeling his absence to her core, shivering as she recalled his breath on her neck, the way he made her feel powerful, dangerous—alluring.

Peri was at a loss, not knowing what to do next—not today, tomorrow, next week, or even five minutes from now. When she'd known nothing, she'd had goals and ideas. Now that she knew the truth, she was detached, distant, drifting aimlessly. Numb. Not remembering love.

Silas poked at the fire, and she flushed as she remembered hitting him with the iron.
Peri, you're better at this than me. You want to take a go at it?
Had there been firelit nights between them? She didn't remember any.

“You never would have done any of those things if you'd known the truth,” he said, and a lump filled her throat. It was hollow psychobabble bull. She didn't believe a word, and anger began to edge out the numb feeling. She had blinded herself. Jack had been right. She'd enjoyed it.

Allen handed her a drink, his phone pressed against his ear. She took it by rote, uncaring. “Yes, she's fine. A little depressed, but what did you expect?” he was saying, talking to Fran maybe? She'd been the one to okay this long-running, deep-undercover op. Peri still didn't believe she'd ever been alliance. She must have been someone else five years ago. Naive. Stupid, certainly.