Crashed (31 page)

"You two are the ones with the guns and the explosives," Auden said. "You're just proving that everything we say about the skinners is true."

"Mechs,"
I said. "Not skinners."

"Whatever you say."

"You used to tell me I was just like everyone else," I said quietly, searching his eyes for something of the old Auden. "That the download technology was amazing. You said I was just as human as you."

"I said a lot of things."

"Yeah. You did."

He blushed, and I wondered if we were both thinking of the same moment. I wondered how much would have been different if I'd let the kiss continue. Then he shot a glance across the room, where Riley had given up playing with the machinery and was just sitting on the edge of a table, his back to us, his back to Jude.

"Lia, look at yourself," Auden said. "Look where you are. You really think you made the right choice? To be with them? With
him
?"

"I'm not the one who chose." I didn't mean for my voice to sound so small. "You made me walk away."

"No one makes you do anything," Auden said. "You're Lia Kahn, remember? You do what you want. Isn't that what you always told me?"

"You told me to go away," I said. Even smaller. "And never come back."

Auden's face spasmed, then went still. "And you never did."

"So that's why you did it?" I asked "Tried to turn me into a murderer?"

"You're the one with the gun."

"I'm not talking about
this
," I said in a low voice. "Syanpsis. My face in that vid."

"What about it?"

"I know the Temple was behind it," I spit out, getting angry all over again. "Savona told me everything." Surprise flickered across his face. "He didn't
tell
you that I knew?" I asked, tempted to fake a laugh, just so he would know how much his little band of brothers disgusted me. "And he told me it was your idea," I added. "To set me up. Make me a killer."

He pressed his lips together, tight, like he was holding in the answer.

Tell me I'm wrong,
I begged him silently.
Tell me Savona lied.

"So? Maybe it was my idea," he said hoarsely. Before, I would have known--whether he was admitting the truth or lying to sound tough. Whether he was proud or guilty. I would have read it on his face, because he was a horrible liar, and because I knew him. But I didn't know him anymore. He shook his head. "You think that would make us even?"

"Do
you
?"

But before he could answer, a rolling peal of thunder shook the building. The night filled with shouts and screams, and the windows blazed, illuminated by sweeping spotlights. "They're coming for me," Auden said, going pale. "Tell your friend to put the gun away. I won't let them hurt you."

"We're just machines, remember?" I said. "Nothing can hurt us."

"I'll protect you," Auden said firmly, absurdly, his ravaged body strapped to a chair. "You won't end up . . . like that." Neither of us looked at Ani; we both knew what he meant.

"Riley?" I called. "You ready? If we have to . . ."

He nodded, mouth set in a grim line, hand clutching the detonator in his pocket. We'd have to move fast to get Auden to safety.
No one dies tonight.

Except maybe us.

The thunder roared from above, drawing closer. Not thunder at all, I realized, but a helicopter swooping down on us, or, from the sound of it, a fleet of them.

"Put down your weapons!"
a voice boomed from the sky. I wondered if the ex-Faithers out there in the dark thought they were hearing the word of God.
Tough luck, psychos,
I thought.
It's not your ultimate Creator.

It's mine.

"They're not coming for you," I told Auden, hoping I was right. "They're coming for us." He looked confused and frightened and something else--something sorry and sad that we'd ended up here, with duct tape and a gun between us and an armed helicopter overhead.

The windows shattered. BioMax had arrived.

At least twenty of them in green uniforms with the BioMax logo striped across the back stormed through the shattered glass, guns raised--both the electric-pulse kind and the ones that shot real, org-piercing bullets. Riley and I flung our hands into the air, allowed the BioMax grunts to restrain us and search us while the others secured the building, insuring there were no mechs (or Faithers) hiding beneath the bulky equipment. Rough hands pinned my arms behind my back. I didn't struggle. Riley too went along quietly. He handed over his weapons voluntarily, and though they gave him a cursory pat down, they missed the most dangerous one of all: the harmless-looking detonator bulging in his coat pocket.

"All clear!" one of the men shouted. Only then did call-me-Ben deign to enter, his gray heart-pulsing suit as smooth and unrumpled as his hair and face.

"Quite a mess of things you've made here, Lia," he said, jerking his head in my direction. The man holding me let go.

"Once you see what they're up to in this lab, you'll thank me," I told him, joining Riley, putting my arms around his waist, my head against his shoulder. Still tied to the chair, pearls of sweat beading on his face, Auden pretended not to watch.
It's over,
I thought.

Ben himself slit the tape binding Auden to the chair. Auden tried to stand, and one of his legs buckled. A BioMax guy swooped in to hold him up, but Auden shook off his help, then limped toward the nearest wall, leaning against it for support, chest heaving.

Two of the men lined the three of us up against the wall, weapons loosely trained on us. The others swarmed the hangar, examining equipment and beginning to load it onto a series of large dollies. Ben just watched us for a moment, hands on hips, head cocked in amusement. He nudged a toe into Jude's body and raised an eyebrow. "Tell me, Lia, does betraying your friends get easier the more you do it?"

Riley glanced quickly between me and Ben. I kept my face blank, knew that even Riley wouldn't be able to read anything from it. But I didn't like what I'd seen flickering in his eyes for that brief moment. The questions.

"I trust you won't mind sticking around for a bit?" Ben said, as if we had any choice. "I'm sure we'll have a few questions."

"I haven't done anything wrong!" Auden protested.

Ben did a slow turn in place, taking in the machinery, the mechs on their gurneys, then faced Auden again. "You'll stick around," he said, not a question this time. "You'll answer for what you've done."

So the three of us stood there, watching and waiting, as the BioMax men bustled around us as if we were invisible, examining the equipment, studiously adjusting the machinery that monitored Ani and the others. Riley wrapped an arm around my shoulders, and I let him. Auden kept a foot of space between us, watching the BioMax men go to work on our damaged friends.

"Will they be okay?" I asked as one by one the mechs were carried out of the building, their lips still moving in nearly soundless nonsense.

"One way or another," call-me-Ben said.

Life as a mech: One way or another, we would always be fine.

We waited as a BioMax medic examined Auden to be sure we'd done no permanent damage, as she forced Auden to sit, to breathe into a mask that would infuse his weakened lungs with a supply of oxygen. "I'm okay," he choked out, knocking the mask away. Standing up again on wobbling legs.

"We'll get you a wheelchair," the medic said.

Auden shook his head furiously, eyes meeting mine. "I have another hour, at least," he insisted.

"The nerve-impulse electrodes give you four hours of mobility under
optimal
conditions," the medic said. "This much physical and emotional stress, it's not unusual your system would be overwhelmed, need a rest. You have to remember that for someone in your condition--"

"I'm
fine
!" he snapped, pushing the woman away. One foot dragged noticeably behind as he limped back to his place beside us. "Contact Rai Savona," he ordered Ben. "He can explain to you what all this is--"

"I'm afraid your friend Savona has disappeared," call-meBen said serenely. "Slipped off the property as soon as you were taken hostage. Seems he didn't want to stick around to see how things played out. So why don't
you
tell me what it is the Brotherhood was doing out here?"

"I don't have to explain anything to you," Auden said. "This is private property. BioMax has no authority here."

"And yet here I am," Ben said. "And here you are. Your loyal followers have all been encouraged, strongly encouraged, to go home for the night. Your loyal partner has fled the scene. It seems like it's just the two of us."

Auden pointed a shaky finger at Riley and me. "They broke into a private facility, tried to blow it up, and when
that
didn't work, they took an innocent human being hostage. And you want to interrogate
me
?"

Ben smiled. "Apparently."

"You can't do this," Auden said, furious. He was already starting to sound less like the boy I'd known and more like the man I'd seen up on that stage, preaching to his masses. "By this time tomorrow, I'll make sure the whole network knows that you and your corp have chosen the skinners over the welfare of fellow humans."

"Tomorrow's tomorrow," Ben said flatly. "I don't deal in predictions. Tonight, your welfare is in
my
hands, and I'll make whatever choices I want."

Ben drove his foot into Jude's side. The body didn't move. "I can wake him up now," he offered us. "Or wait until you're long gone if you'd prefer. Avoid the messy meet-and-greet?"

Later,
I wanted to say.

"Now," Riley said, before I could.

Ben did it himself, accessing a panel beneath Jude's armpit. Whatever he did next, he made sure to shield it from our view--preserving his trade secrets, the functions of our bodies that we weren't allowed to know about. Jude's eyes closed, then opened again, aware. He sat up slowly, shaking away the fog, gingerly testing first his arms, then his legs, then climbing to his feet and staring at us, indictment plain on his face. He took in the scene calmly, without question, as if there could be no doubt as to how events had played out while he was down.

"Take him," Ben ordered two of his men.

It had been part of the deal. I had saved myself and Riley, but I couldn't save Jude. "We can't have him running wild anymore," Ben had told me. "Now that you know what he's capable of, you should understand that."

We didn't have a choice,
I reminded myself.
We waited until the last possible minute
.
We tried.

"Let me just say good-bye to my friends," Jude said, imperious, as if he were still in charge.

Ben nodded, and Jude was released, allowed to approach us, as Ben remained a short distance away, making an ostentatious show of turning his back, leaving us to say our good-byes among ourselves.

Riley disengaged from my arms, stepping away, meeting Jude alone. For a long moment, they didn't speak.

Riley began. "We didn't want to."

"Don't," Jude said quietly. He leaned in close, folded Riley into a loose embrace, whispered something in his ear. Riley glanced at me, his eyes narrowed, then backed away, down the wall, to the other side of Auden and as far as the BioMax men would let him go without raising their weapons again in warning.

He just feels guilty,
I thought.
He doesn't want me comforting him.

I told myself that was it, and that it had nothing to do with the way he'd looked at me before, when Ben started needling me about betrayals.

"What did you say to him?" I asked Jude.

"Just the truth," Jude said.

Just lies,
I thought.
And whatever Jude said about me, Riley wouldn't believe it.

"I'm not apologizing," I said.

"Good. Because I'm not forgiving. Or forgetting."

Jude stepped toward me, grabbed my wrist, hard. The BioMax guys approached, but I waved them away. "I was trying to do the right thing," he said. "One day you'll figure that out."

"You stole my line," I said, trying to pull my arm away, but he held fast. His voice was angry, but his face was something else. Lost, like I'd stolen something from him, the thing at his center that told him what he was. He yanked me toward him, until his lips brushed my ear.

"You want to save your precious orgs?" he whispered. "Three minutes, starting now." Then he dropped my arm and stepped away. "You can do whatever you want with me now," he called out. "Just get me away from these
skinners.
" Flanked by an entourage of BioMax thugs, call-me-Ben took Jude's arm, personally escorting him away. Of course: Riley and I were toys, fun to play with while he had nothing better to do. Jude was the real point, the grand prize.

One minute passed as a security cadre walked Jude out of the building, as I let his words play through my brain, as, without processing what I was doing, I glanced at Riley--at Riley's pocket, checking for the telltale bulge of the detonator. It was gone.

And that's when I screamed.

"Everybody get out!" I shouted. "Explosives!"

Riley shoved a hand in his pocket. Then he started shouting too.

The BioMax guys took off running for the exit. Riley ran. I ran. And Auden ran--but only a few steps. Then he stumbled and crashed to the floor.

One minute left.

I turned back for him, screaming his name, feeling like I'd been thrown back in time, like the air was water and I was swimming toward him again, the current carrying him away, and somewhere, dimly, I heard Riley shouting for me, and I grabbed Auden's hands and hauled him to his feet, forcing his arm around my shoulder, forcing him to lean on me, as Riley ran in the wrong direction, not toward the door, but toward me, and then everything got very loud--then very silent.

Time's up.

The explosions were like gunshots, close range, and in their wake the world fell quiet, and the building shook.

The building shook, and a chunk of the wall blew out, slamming into Riley, knocking him down in a cloud of plaster and twisted steel.