Dualed (14 page)

“How about why you’re still taking striker contracts now that you’re an active?” he says. He doesn’t even sound angry. Just confused, almost hurt. “It can’t be the money. No way you’re getting paid in straight cash instead of direct cell deposits—even
I
know strikers don’t make personal contact with their clients. Besides, if you ever needed more, you know you can ask—”

“I don’t need your money, so stop giving it to me.” Aware of the other shoppers and the sales clerks roaming around, I hold the bra up higher for him to inspect.

Chord swats it away irritably. “You need food, don’t you?”

“That’s not your problem.” Then I hesitate, thinking of all the actives forced to eat from Board-endorsed kiosks, where an eye scan buys not only discounted food but also an automatic
Alt log entry. I think of myself buying food from friendlier places, where an extra bill of Chord’s money helps grease the wheels, where my eyes are conveniently overlooked. “But you’re right. I do need it. So, thank you, okay?”

A pause, then he asks, “What about the cells? Any problems using them?”

I shake my head. There’s tension in his voice, and I’m assuming it’s because he knows I’ve been mostly using the cells to make contact with Dire and striker clients. Anyone other than him. “No, they’ve been fine,” I tell him. I hold up something that is especially flimsy, deliberately swinging it through the air.

I don’t think he even notices; he’s too intent on watching my face. “So, can you tell me why you’re still taking contracts, then? I thought once you got your assignment … once you were able to deal with what happened to Luc … you’d feel differently about being a striker.”

I take a couple of steps away from him and make a show of going through a stack of lacy and completely impractical panties. My hands are shaking, thick and clumsy in clouds of diaphanous fabric. “It’s exactly what Baer said, that’s all. This is the best kind of training I could ever ask for. Why would I turn it away now?”

“C’mon, West,” he retorts. “It’s been long enough; you’ve
learned
enough. It’s your own Alt you need to kill now, so stop running!”

“I’m not running; I’m just trying to keep going!”

“How does being an assassin keep you going?” The sound of his voice has me finally meeting his eyes.

The look in them is heartbreaking, a mix of utter bewilderment,
anger, hurt. It gnaws at me to know that I’m the one who’s put all that there—that both of us have made such a thing possible. Like everything that’s happened since Luc’s death has forced us to meet each other for the first time again, strangers starting completely from scratch.

“Because I don’t want to think about anything else,” I whisper. There’s a dull roar in my head. My hands are fists, too rough for the delicate fabric. “You know, if I’d become a striker earlier, I could have handled them all. Your Alt, too. Then Luc wouldn’t have died that way.”

Chord untangles my hands and takes them in his own. He glances down at my sleeves, pulled low over my wrists, my thumbs sticking out from the holes I’ve poked out with the tip of a blade.

“It’s you now,” he says quietly, “not them, and not me. You always said that when it was your turn, you wouldn’t run or hide. I would have thought that of anyone—with you doing what you do—you’d know that you’re almost out of time.” He tilts his head down as he lifts my chin up. “Ten days, West. That’s all.”

It doesn’t surprise me that he’s been counting, too.

“Won’t you be able to deal with me for just ten days?” Chord asks. Low and soft, weakening me.

Then my eyes are drawn to the mirror against the far wall, and I can see my face staring back at me, as well as Chord’s head, his wide shoulders, the slope of his back. In a single blink, I’m not me anymore but my Alt … so close to him, close enough to hurt, to kill.

I can’t make that mistake again.

I pull away. “I—I’ve gotta go,” I stammer.

Frustration tightens his jaw. “West—”

“I can’t.” My hands shoot out to ward him off as I back away. I don’t want him touching me. I’m glass right now. I can feel myself starting to break. “I’ve gotta go,” I say again. “Good-bye, Chord.”

I stumble out the door and down the street, instantly dissolving into the crowd and trying to not hear the echo of his voice in my head, pulling me back. Not that the next little while will be any less difficult. The empty hours of waiting between strikes are the loudest, the most likely to wake the memories lurking just beneath the surface.

And if what Chord says is right, then I’ve already been in the same spot for far too long. It’s time to disappear again, to no longer be West Grayer but someone else.

You need to get out of the Grid
.

A sudden spurt of anger at Chord, building with each step I take until I’m walking blindly, not entirely paying attention to where I’m going. I don’t want to know that my Alt is here. I’ve already left home once, and now he’s telling me I have to leave it again. The Grid is what I know—for her to chase me out could be the end of me.

When I finally realize where I am, it’s too late to avoid it. It looms in front of me, a building as large as a whole city block, wanting to draw me in.

Kersh’s terminal station. The brainchild of some old Level 1 Operators, it’s supposed to be a safe house for active Alts. Food, beds, shelter. But because you can’t get in without an eye scan, the building itself can be a death trap. It offers sight lines and
collision points, potential meeting areas. The danger of running into your Alt skyrockets when inside the terminal; nearly half of all assignments are completed within its walls.

Alts of two extremes come here. Those who finally break and accept they’re going to die, no matter what they do. And those who know nothing but confidence—being worthy is a given. A small part of me is sure that if my Alt
has
been at the terminal—or even is there right now, as I’m standing across the street from it—it is because she is one of these. One without doubt and without fear.

Since the activation of my assignment, this is the closest I’ve dared to come to the terminal.

For a few minutes more, I linger. It’s interesting in a morbid kind of way, the same way a car accident can be interesting. Many active Alts—made just as obvious by their furtive steps and haunted, backward glances as by their encoded eyes—scuttle past the terminal’s front doors. Only a handful go inside.

My stomach growls, and I find a sandwich bar two blocks from the main street. I sit down in a booth that faces out so I can see the street, the sight wavering just enough that I don’t forget I’m sitting behind bulletproof glass for a reason. I wash my lunch down with tea that’s both bitter and weak, stretched through oversteeping. Making a silent, grudging toast to Chord with each sip, I try not to imagine him sitting with me.

At one point, a group of students from the university art campus comes in. They sit at a table right behind the large glass window and eat without a care in the world.

It’s always these kinds of completes—the ones who aren’t
that much older than me—who have the power to make me jealous. I drink them in, a life just beyond my reach. The way they sit there with their leather bags from the campus store hanging over their chairs, filled with textbooks and novels and flexi-readers with neat lines of knowledge. The way they smell of another world altogether—of being complete and finally allowed to start living, of never again having to look over their shoulders for their own murderous faces bearing down on them.

My leather bag would be brown, a soft camel. It would always be full. Not just with art and technique books and assigned novels that just happen to be by my favorite authors, but with thick tablets of painter’s paper. Tins of soft pastel sticks, tubes of bright pigment and paint. The lingering sharpness of thinner throughout. No knife bundle. No balls of soiled clothing kept just in case. No cell with assignment specs. No gun. No scent of desperation, spent smoke, dried blood.

It never takes long anymore for envy to become laced with hate—for them, for myself. Even if I survive and become a complete, it won’t erase my striker marks. It can’t undo my choice.

When I’m done eating, I can’t avoid the fact that it’s time to go on a supply run. The store is three blocks down, around the corner, then one block over. I need more bullets.

The glass sign overhead is only half-lit. Most of its letters are shattered into near nothingness, with just enough remaining to still be legible. Barely. But I know it just the same. Dire directed me to it—not only for what they sell, but for what they let slide. I slipped once, accidentally revealing my marks, and
when no one seemed to care, I knew that at least in this store, I could move freely.

Except this time, I’m going in not just as a striker, but as an active as well.

It’s just as dreary inside as I remember. Like the air’s been sucked away, and most of the light, too. It takes a special type of store to cater to those who require guns, I think, one with a certain kind of brutality, because there is no denying the purpose its goods serve.

The worker is the same old man. I can’t tell for sure if he recognizes me, but I think he does, just as the best dealers come to know their junkies when they return for more. And it’s almost unheard of for a striker to be as young as I am.

Without meeting his eyes, I point to the wall behind him. “Two boxes. Those: two rows in, three down.” Saying nothing, he turns, wiggles the boxes of bullets free, and places them on the counter between us.

When he’s done, I finally look him in the eye and reveal my active status.

A single flicker in there. That’s all. When he doesn’t do or say anything else, I slowly hand over two bills—one that covers the cost of the items, and a bigger one that I saved for this.

He takes the cash, pushes the boxes toward me. Still doesn’t say a word.

My hand is shaking as I push the door open.

Thinking to the night ahead, I realize I still need to figure out where I’m going to sleep. With my Alt now in the Grid, I grit my teeth and hop on an inner ward train bound for Jethro’s suburbs. I pay the full fare, ignoring the free bypass for actives
that’s offered in exchange for an eye scan. I want to think it’s Chord who’s making me leave, not my Alt, but I can’t hide that it’s my fear, too. I’m being chased, when I should be chasing.

Getting off the train is like stepping into a paler, less vibrant world. The noise out here in the suburbs is muffled, quiet, a whisper compared to the constant shout that is the Grid. There’s more space to move, space to breathe in air that’s not someone else’s still-warm exhalation.

I haven’t returned since the day I first got my assignment. When I ran from home, from Chord. Now that I’m back, I feel almost like a stranger … and more vulnerable here in the open than I ever have in the mad chaos that is the Grid.

Roaming, watching the sun slowly sink, I come to a ravine along one of the back roads. I make my way down; it’s deeper than it appears, evergreens still fragrant. I’m far from the first to discover this hidden spot—strewn along the path are snapped branches, flattened flora, and bits of litter—but for now I’m alone.

Down at the bottom the canopy is thickest—the perfect place to wait for the cover of darkness.

I open my bag and pull out my knife roll. Select a switchblade. Shake out my wrist.

Even from the beginning of my training, Aave could tell I didn’t have a natural skill for throwing. Both he and Luc did their best to make me better. And it worked … somewhat.

An image of my very first strike, that girl running from me, flashes in my head. I was off with my blade; those few inches were the difference between a fast, clean death and her neighbor having to tell me that I didn’t do what I was supposed to do, that I wasn’t worthy.

I’ve only dared to use a blade for close-contact kills since then. Unless I get near enough each time, I know it’s going to fail me.
I’m
going to fail me.

So I throw, one after the other. Soon the face of the tree trunk I’ve chosen as my target can barely hold the blade, it’s so soft and shredded, and my fingers are sore from twisting the metal free over and over again.

The repetitive thwack of steel against a target and the squeak of the blade being removed bring me back.

“C’mon, West!” Aave wiggled the switchblade free and passed it to me, handle out. “What do you call that? Do it again, all right? And maybe you could, you know,
aim
this time.”

I swore at him. Kicked an empty beer bottle across the concrete and sent it careening down the alley. It kept rolling, out onto a street in the Grid. “Shut up, Aave. I
did
aim.”

“Someone’s got to bug you about it. If it were up to you, it’d be all about the gun. But learning how to use a blade is important, too. Blades won’t ever run out of bullets on you.”

“I
know
that.” I fingered the blade, careful not to slice myself. I did know Aave was right—not that it made it any easier to hear from him how much I sucked. But Aave was so good with a blade that sometimes I just felt like I was wasting his time. And mine. And hitting the same bull’s-eye over and over again—taped to a compost bag this time, just one of many that towered along the back wall of the restaurant—was harder than it looked. Some days were better than others. Today was not a good day.

Stupid bull’s-eye. Usually it wasn’t so hard to see it, to feel
it out. Today it might as well have been miles away, a sly bird fleeting through the trees. I wanted to blame the traitorous turn of the blade on a gust of wind, a hateful speck of dirt in my eye, a twitch of my muscles at the wrong moment.

But none of that would be true.

I hissed through my teeth. I was four for nine on this round. Major suckage. One last shot to go.

Curling my right arm back and over, I waited until it was in direct line with the target before letting the blade go. Pulled back just in time so I wouldn’t do any damage to my arm muscles by overextending. Made sure not to let my wrist snap, the telltale sign I’ve held on to the blade one millisecond too long and was about to send it wheeling out of control.