Divided (17 page)

“How would Sabian know you saw those old notes, though?” Baer asks Auden. “Sabian must know you have this knowledge and want you stopped, just like he stopped Freya.”

Dire still seems unable to speak. Caught in the past. I watch as Innes reaches over and touches his arm.

Auden shakes his head. “I don’t know. It just doesn’t seem possible. I think it must be something else.”

“He did say the Board wanted to make sure these Level One trainees completed,” I add, picturing Sabian telling me this, back in the meeting room over in headquarters. “The ones I was contracted for. Because the Level Two Alts weren’t good enough to take over if something happened.”

“So he wants me killed just in case?” Auden asks. “I couldn’t care less about rank.”

“It’s possible Sabian sees that,” Baer says. He looks thoughtful but touched with doubt. “He always did find fault in Meyer for not caring more. He said it was an unworthy trait for a Board Alt, let alone a Level Alt.”

“Well, whatever Sabian’s reasoning, it’s not going to give us any more time,” Innes says. “For now, I can study those notes with Auden. Perhaps there’s something more to them than he told me about, that first time he came to me. Something he’s scared about someone finding out.”

“Maybe Sabian had been lying about Kersh’s origins as a prison,” Chord says. “It’s all miscoded, right? So the notes could mean almost anything.”

“No, that was no lie.” Innes eyes are very green, suddenly catlike again, and I’m reminded of her own skills in a lab. “I was there. The top Level One Operators at the time confirmed it.”

Baer utters a single command into his watch: “Time.”

13:18

“Cutting it way too close, Grayer,” Dire mutters. “Barely enough time to get back to Leyton and be where you’re supposed to be to kill Auden. Take the outer ward train, walk the same route you would have to get there, wait the same way. Sabian will be expecting that, and we can’t risk raising his suspicions as you go to him to get your marks removed.” His words are eerie echoes of many past instructions for strikes, of preparing to go under. “Time to learn how to lie—and lie
well.
Well enough to fool even yourself.”

I stand up straight. Heartbeat amped, pulse skipping. My hand reaches for Chord to settle me. “What about Auden? Where will he go?”

“Pull this off first. He can stay here for now.”

“The Board knows about this place, though. I just didn’t know where else to go.”

“Sabian has no reason to believe you won’t kill Auden, Grayer,” Baer says to me. “He doesn’t know you suspect anything. We’ll deal with that after you get back from headquarters.”

Headquarters. The idea of going back there sends new chills through me. But Sabian agreed to erase my marks; changing my mind all of a sudden, for something that I pushed so hard for, would be a huge red flag.

I have to go. No simple text to confirm completion this time. The first time I’m to break striker protocol and meet a client in person after I’ve killed for them. The first time I’ll walk in and be more afraid of them than they are of me.

“Remember,” Dire says. “Get in, finish the job, get out. It’s as simple as that.”

I take a deep breath.
Slip in and out. Leave no memory. Leave no footprint.
The last strike I’ll ever do and the one that carries the most significance. No target, no gun, no blade, just my weak words and transparent face.

At least I won’t need the Roark anymore.

“Dire, wait.” I pick up my bag from the ground and unzip it. Pull out the gun and hold it out. “I don’t want to take this,” I say to him. Auden’s off to my side, and I feel the weight of his emotions as he watches what would have been his instant death be passed from his striker to her recruiter—disbelief, embarrassment at having to be saved, gratitude.

Dire only shakes his head at the gun. Pushes it back at me. “It’ll set off alarm bells if you don’t have it on you when Sabian asks for it back. And also … well, just keep it on you for as long as you can.”

“Just in case, you mean.” I still have one vial. Am I to finally use it on Sabian the way it’s meant to be used? Does Dire
want
me to make it meant for Sabian?

His eyes are hard but worried, and I know I’m wrong. “Just in case.”
To take care of you, not to take care of Sabian.

So I slip the gun back inside my bag, slide the straps over my shoulders. Horrible to admit that the renewed weight is a relief. Completely empty of weapons, my bag had felt too light.

Dire and Innes head upstairs, and I’m left looking after them. Wishing they would stay, if only so time could stop.

Auden gets to his feet. “West, I …” His gaze moves from me to Chord and then back to me. “I don’t really know what to say. Except thank you for not killing me, back in the training arena. I know you could have, easily, from what I saw.”

“I wasn’t going to kill you,” I say to him. “Not exactly.”

“Thanks for that, too, then.” He nods, exhales. “Don’t get killed.” And then he follows Dire and Innes up the stairs.

Baer walks over to me and I’m careful to not look too closely at him. I don’t want to see traces of that earlier doubt because if I do, I know it can only be doubt for my survival.

“Not all weapons are made of metal,” he says. “It’s not just a gun or blade that makes you capable, Grayer. You’re a complete, and you have earned it.”

I
have
earned it, haven’t I? All of it, all of this.
The possibility of everything going wrong.

“Chord,” Baer says, “I know you want to go with her.”

Chord’s shoulders stiffen. “And?”

“That’s all I’m going to say. You both know what to do. We’ll be waiting upstairs. Make it fast.”

Chord and I, alone. I turn to face him.

“You think that’s Baer’s way of telling me I should go with you?” Chord asks. His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. They’re carefully shuttered, all emotion banked down so the fire of what he’s feeling won’t escape, burning both of us.

Because I have to go, and he has to stay, and that is not something that can be argued.

Still I nod and smile, wanting to pretend for just a bit longer. “Yes.” Our shared lie on my lips.

He sighs. “Yes.” Comes closer, puts his hands on the sides of my face. “I know you’ll be okay, West,” he says, his voice rough yet soft enough to make my chest ache. “You will be okay.” His desperation won’t let me believe otherwise.

“I know,” I say.

“Lie like you’ve never lied before.” A hint of a smile on his lips. “Better than you ever did with me, okay?”

“I will.” I force a small laugh. “Even though I swear I’ve never lied to you.”

Too many memories of too many close calls flicker across his face, and I know he’s haunted by her, my Alt who won’t stay dead. She’s only ever one blink away, that one degree separating who she was from who I am. How to tell him she can’t go quiet yet? That it’s she who makes that part of me work, kill, lie?

“I can go out there with you,” he says suddenly, fiercely. “He won’t even see me. I’ll be—”

I shake my head. “You can’t do that, Chord. You can’t do any of this. Only I can. If Sabian even—”

“He won’t. I
swear
he—”

I kiss his words away. Absorb his fear with my hands in his hair, draw it from his skin with mine. Like sickness threatening to cloud his judgment, a thorn pricked with good intention … a drug to make him vulnerable.

Not this time.

“West,” he says against my temple, my ear, my neck. “Please.” And I know it’s not a plea to change my mind, but for me to come back.

I wrap my arms around him, make a new memory of how he feels against me, a different kind of mark than those around my wrists.

A soft trill of my watch—felt against my arm more than heard—and my pulse, already racing, speeds up even more.

“I have to go, Chord.” The words are wrenched from me. The last thing I want to say—the only thing I can say.

One final hard embrace and he’s the one who lets go first. It’s right and what has to be done, but it hurts just the same.

Chord’s lips on mine. The last parts of us left touching now because it’s good-bye and it’s so very hard, so excruciatingly painful. “The faster you go, the faster you get back,” he whispers against my skin. “Just remember that I love you.”

I’m rushing out the front entrance—
cutting it way too close, Grayer
—so I run right past him at first. Only the sound of my name has me coming to a stop.

I recognize that voice.

I turn around and see Dess sitting on the curb, waiting. His face shows the impatience of an eleven-year-old who’s found himself waiting much longer than expected.

I walk over to him, force my face to look normal, however normal it can get right now. “Dess? What are you doing here?”

He gets up, swipes at the street grime on his clothes from sitting on the ground.

“You weren’t answering your cell.” The sharp edge of accusation in his words, and something that runs much deeper than plain annoyance at having to wait for me. I stare at his face. See what I missed earlier, maybe even made myself miss on purpose so I could keep moving and not feel guilty. His eyes are rimmed with red, his mouth small and set with anger.

A queasy feeling in my gut.

“Where were you, West?”

“I told you.” The cell’s easy enough to explain—I ignored all incoming calls apart from Sabian’s spec sheets. The one from Chord that slipped through caught me off guard. But I’m scrabbling for the other details, barely able to remember what lie I told him. Lie on top of lie and I can’t find the one I want when I need it. “I was … busy.”

A stream of bodies cuts between us, giving me a few seconds to try to remember. Was it only two days ago that I talked to Dess? A lifetime between then and now.

I narrow my eyes at him. “How did you know where to find me?”

“I followed that teacher from your school here. I know you work for him.”

“Baer?”

“Whatever. I don’t care what his name is.” A huge scowl on Dess’s face, a thousand times worse than what I’d ever seen on Ehm’s face when she’d gotten angry with me, and it’s like being sideswiped from two directions. Old memories, new anger. “But I followed him inside that music store,” Dess says.

Queasiness turns to full-blown nausea. “You went inside?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s fine, Dess,” I say quickly. “It’s just a store, anyway. Did you find something to buy—”

“That worker Hestor told me you were downstairs. He said I could wait for you.”

Stunned, then the bitter film of rage on my tongue. Tinged, of course, with fear. Of all the Alts I’ve killed … I could gather them together now, each and every one of them, and the emotion I would feel still wouldn’t come close to touching the depths of what’s in my heart for Hestor. Sheer hate that it’s Dess he’s toyed with now.

“Where did you wait for me, Dess?” I ask him.
What did you hear?

Fresh tears trickle down his cheeks. “You’re striking again, West.”

I cringe at the hurt. It’s all over him, like a giant bruise. “Dess, I—”

“You said you wouldn’t anymore.”

“I know, I—”

“And you saved
him.
”

“Who?”

“That guy. Your brother’s Alt. Who you were supposed to kill.”

Auden. How to explain that I was supposed to assassinate a complete, the one, the worthy? “Hold on a second, let—”

“West.” Dess swipes at his nose with an arm. “You could still do it, you know.”

I shake my head. Denial turns my voice hollow, the passing of crucial minutes relentless and unforgiving and somehow muffled now. “What are you talking about?”

He glares at me. “Finish the job. You’re too close to getting what you wanted. Then you’ll be done, and things will be normal again.”

More people cut across, and I can’t see him anymore, and I don’t want to believe this is the Dess I know. But when the path clears again, nothing’s changed.

“Dess, I can’t. I can’t do that.”

“Why? He’s not your brother! He’s just his Alt. He would have done it, if he had the chance and your brother wasn’t already dead.”

“But he didn’t, Dess,” I whisper harshly to him.

“So if you aren’t going to do it, why is he still here?” Dess’s eyes are dry now, bright and hot.

“Dess, Auden’s not—he’s just another complete, all right?” The words are awkward. It’s still not easy for me to talk out loud about things that matter. Auden is more than another complete; he has pieces of my brother that are still here, alive.

“Are you and Chord going to start hanging out with him?”

“I don’t—No, he’s not family.” Lie, not a lie, I don’t even know anymore.

And it’s time to move.

“The Board’s not going to stop looking for you if you don’t do it,” Dess says. “You have to or they’ll come after you. And what they said about your kids not having Alts? Why
wouldn’t
you do that if you have the chance?” Dess blinks, caught in the past. “I’ll never forget what it was like. Having to kill him. I would
never
want my own kids to go through that, if I could do anything to stop it.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t do it,” I say. Just those simple words and they resonate inside my head like clarity, like waking, the breathing in of new air, and I know I’m done. No more. “I just can’t—”

“You said that before, and you lied. So what’s one more?”

“It’s not just one more, Dess. It’s—when does it stop?”

“Then you’re already dead, West. Just like my Alt, like your Alt, like your brother!”

Before I can say another word, he’s running down the sidewalk, along the street. Getting lost in the crowds, trying to hide from me.

I swear under my breath and chase after him. The wind is surprisingly cold and whips my hair against my face. I know time is ticking away, and I have to catch the train
right now
if I’m to even have a chance of making it out to Leyton to kill a phantom Auden. But I’m going in the wrong direction for that and my mind’s eye can’t see past Dess’s face.

The cell in my pocket goes off, and I swear even louder as Dess disappears between the lines of cars.

I yank my cell free and without glancing at who it could be, speak into it. Only half paying attention as I try to catch sight of him again. “Hello?”

The voice on the other end hits me like a slap.

“Grayer,” Sabian says flatly. “What is the status of the last assignment?”

I’m standing on the sidewalk, watching life in the Grid happen—cars, bodies, thin hisses of black factory exhaust being bellowed into the darkening sky—and seeing none of it.

He’s early. And catching me off guard.

“Why are you calling me?” I ask through numb lips.

“After this you will be done. Are you where you need to be.” Steel in that last sentence. Not a question.

The stink of soot in the air, the chaos of movement all around, broken brick and cracked pavement. I take in the Grid and answer, “I’m in Leyton, yes.”

“Be ready,” Sabian says. And the blunt command in his voice, the satisfaction at being so close to getting all that he wants—idles of the Level 1 Operators made complete and Auden dead, all by my hand—takes me by the throat. It leaves me both cold and hot with fury. Fair or not, whether I came to be here willingly or not, I see all too clearly the gun that’s still in my bag. Feel all too easily that small yet heavy weight in my hand. If I were to waver even once from the absoluteness of knowing I never want to strike again it would be now.

The stark need to be finished with Sabian engulfs, overwhelms. It drives away all else.

Including reason.

“It’s already done,” I say into my cell. My lie, out before I can spin it perfectly. “He’s dead.”

A pause. “It’s not quite time. He’s not supposed to be there yet.”

“Good thing I got here early and waited, then.” Auden said he would be leaving from school at this time, usually with no contact with any of the Operators on the way out. Please let him not be wrong, or exaggerating. It should work. It should make perfect sense.

More silence coming through my cell, each second stretched out.

“I believe there was a … glitch while sending out this particular spec sheet to your cell, West,” Sabian says, sounding friendly now. “Please confirm the Alt’s physical appearance so we can be sure there’s no mistake.”

Of course. He needs to confirm Auden’s death since he doesn’t have the benefit of an active assignment number to pop up on their Alt log. My answer, and how I answer, is the very last thing to stand between my escape or running forever.

No point in trying to pull up a spec sheet that was automatically erased after my first download. I shut my eyes, picture Luc in my head as I remember him. My description is of both him and Auden.

“He was tall, nearly six feet,” I say evenly. “On the thin side with broad shoulders, probably from training or playing sports in school. Between a hundred and seventy to a hundred and eighty pounds. Dark brown eyes, and dark brown hair that was nearly black.”

“Anything else?”

I open my eyes. See Auden now. “He wore his hair smooth on the top so it hung a bit over his forehead. Shorter in the back and along the sides.”

A briefer pause this time.

“Completion confirmed, Grayer,” Sabian says.

Relief is a visceral thing. It makes my eyes sting, my guts unclench, my marks burn. They are the last link in what chains me to the Board; the faster they are gone, the faster I will be home.

I wonder if he’s forgotten our deal, even as I wish
I
could forget. But forgetting would be suspicious, and giving Sabian even the smallest reason to be suspicious is too much.

“My marks,” I say to him. “When can I come in and get them erased? And I want a written guarantee about my children with the signatures of each of the Level One Operators and a stamp bearing the official symbol of the Board.” I’m pushing it with these demands. But it’s what I need to do to make him believe—that I’m a striker done with her contracts who is now collecting payment. Normal.

“Yes, there is the matter of payment, isn’t there,” Sabian says. I imagine him sitting at that table, drumming his fingers in thought, working out how best to fit me in, exact my silence, and then get me out. “How soon can you come back to headquarters?”

Never is too soon. “Give me an hour to clean up.” It’ll take almost as long to get to Leyton from here, but any longer would be strange. Better to just arrive late if I have to. “It got messy.”

“Fine. I’ll be in touch.” He disconnects and I’m left with dead air pressed to my ear, held in my clenched hand.

Tucking my cell back into my pocket, I step off the sidewalk and cross the street to the outer ward train station. I hope hard that the next one is going to be here soon, to take me from wild safety and back into the cage.

Standing in the middle of the waiting crowd, my cell buzzes again. A low, almost soothing purr passing through my jeans so I can feel the rumble of it against my leg.

It’s a sound that can only mean one thing. Not a normal text or call. But the Board, sending out a Kersh-wide news file.

My mind whirls. I’m back standing in my kitchen, watching the television with Chord and listening to the Board talk about the Alt who got caught.

A black contract for someone who has overstepped.

Rebels.

Strikers.

Like me.

A splinter of ice threads itself through my veins, leaving me frozen to the spot.

My hand clumsily pulls out my cell, taps the screen awake, and opens the file. I read it, and I almost don’t believe it. Except that I can feel dozens of eyes—watching me, boring into me, matching my face to the one that’s on the screens of their cells.

The picture is clear; there is no mistake. It’s me. The camera in that meeting room at Board headquarters was a good one.

Who: West Grayer

Why: Confirmed Assassinations of
(1) Level 2 Board Operator, Meyer Parrish and
(2) Level 2 Board Operator, Trainee, Auden Parrish.

Meyer, dead? I don’t—

Can barely grasp that, what it means, when I realize there’s more at the bottom of the news file. This is wrong. Every black contract I’ve ever heard about, it was already over. Level 2 Operators already took care of it, and whatever we learn of the results is up to the Board.

But not for me. For me the black contract continues.

Offering: One (1) Unlimited Pass to all offered Alternate Training Sessions, Elite Level, held at select facilities throughout Leyton Ward. Valid until Assignment of Pass-holder is rendered Complete (or Incomplete).

In Exchange For: Confirmed Death of West Grayer

It’s all I can do to simply start walking. I’m careful to look at nothing, face no one, knowing only that I have to escape.

I turn the corner and run.

I’m an active again, my Alt every single idle in Kersh who could ever want for extra training.

It’s fully dark out now and what was once bone-deep fear has morphed back to anger.

Sabian.

I scowl deeply at the thought of him, this person who has already taken so much at the expense of those I know. And now the successful killings of those Alts, the purity of the Board nicely secured for the future, and me—scrubbed away like an ugly, telling stain.

The rolling blare from a clearing truck a few streets down startles me, and I pull my hood down even farther over my head. Keeping my eyes on my feet, I walk down the street. I’m neither in the Grid proper nor in the actual suburbs of Jethro now, but somewhere in between, straddling a blurred middle ground. It’s still crowded here, but the stream of people makes it easier to disappear.

Why kill Meyer?
Who
killed him? The questions fill my head.

That Meyer was assassinated makes me believe Sabian is in this alone. No way would the Board turn against one of its own so blatantly. But I can’t be sure.

What I
do
know for sure is that I was never meant to get out of this alive. My fault for not listening to the warnings until it was too late.

There’s a shout from someone on the sidewalk behind me and I jump. I’m strung too tight. The Roark is still in my bag. But I have nothing else on me, not even a blade.

It takes me a handful of seconds to come back down and realize the shout has nothing to do with me. That not everyone out here is an Alt looking for what most will consider a sure path to completion.