Dualed (19 page)

The girl’s still unsure, but I’m prepared. It’s rare for an active to do anything for free. I flash the rest of Chord’s money in my hand. “Here, look,” I say to her. “It’s yours. You can get something to eat if you do this for me.”

Her eyes go wide as she considers. Hunger clings to her like a smell, coming off in waves. But still she hesitates, and I know it’s because she’s suddenly realized who has the upper hand here. “That won’t buy me much …” She deliberately lets her voice trail off. What else needs to be said?

Not nearly as gullible as I thought. My stomach hollows out, and I can’t even really blame her for asking—not when I would do the exact same thing.

After a long minute, I slowly work Luc’s watch off my wrist. Only the knowledge that he would kick my butt for
not
doing it lets me speak. “This, too, okay?” I say stiffly as I hand it to her. There’s a sharp hitch in my chest, and I breathe it away. “There’s a place you can hock it around the corner. It’s not worth much, but better than nothing.”

She stuffs it into a pocket. “Okay, I’ll do it.” Her voice is almost surprised, as if she didn’t expect to get more, didn’t even know she was capable of asking for it. “Wait here, I’ll be right back.”

I rub the newly exposed skin on my wrist as I watch her enter the terminal. It’s wonderful and horrible all at the same time because her risk is my gain. It seems Chord was mistaken when he said I wasn’t cold, after all. She might have gone in on her own, yes … but she might not have, either.

The girl’s back within minutes. She thrusts a printout at me. On it is a series of dates and times, and even though I’m reading it all too fast, I can feel my heart start to race.

Yes
.

My Alt’s been at the terminal, off and on, over this past week. My eyes fall to the most recent entries at the bottom half of the page, where a pattern begins to take shape.

From three days ago:

Two days ago:

One day ago:

Then just this earlier today:

She’s been crashing here for the past three nights. Maybe nothing definitive, but it’s
something
. Since my life’s been winnowed down to less than 168 hours, it could be
everything
.

The girl startles me when she speaks. I forgot her in my growing excitement. “Um, you were going to pay me?”

I stuff the printout into my bag before handing over the last of my bills. Only loose change left now, rolling around in the bottom of my bag. It’s pretty stupid of me not to have kept more for myself, but I have to do this. Part of it is guilt for using the girl and her naïveté, despite my happiness at her awakening survival instincts. The rest of it is grim acceptance that I’ve stepped over some invisible line.

Her fingers are careful not to touch mine as they take my money. Her nails have been gnawed to the quick. There are still crescent moons of candy apple polish on them.

“Cool. Thanks.” She folds the money into her jeans pocket. Starts to turn around to leave, then stops, takes a deep breath, and holds something out to me. “Here. I think you need it more than I do.”

Stunned, I slowly take Luc’s watch from her hand. “Are you sure?” I ask through numb lips. That hitch in my chest is back.

“I
know
you need it more than I do, actually.”

So what if I do?
“I think you’re wrong,” I say quietly as I put the watch back on and feel armored again. Just a watch, metal and plastic and micro bits. But, logical or not, so much more.

The girl shrugs. The look in her eyes is of pity, close enough to what I was feeling for her, and it makes me uneasy. “It’s okay, I’ll manage,” she says. With that she disappears into the rushing crowd, leaving me to stare after her.

She reminds me a bit of Ehm, if only because she has a bit of the childish innocence that Ehm had, that Dess still had in spades before he left. But whatever I sense of that in this girl is already dying, mostly gone. It has to. It has to give way to whatever cruel steel she can find within her if she wants to live any longer than Ehm did, to eventually complete her assignment.

That’s why I want to think she reminds me a bit of myself, too.

Except that I wouldn’t have given the watch back.

I turn around and start walking again, getting ready for the best chance to kill my Alt yet. There’s hope now … though it hinges on little more than numbers and letters on a piece of paper, a sample size so minuscule it should mean nothing.
Would
mean nothing if it weren’t for my desperation making its importance grow by the minute, hour, day.

More rain.

The wetness combines with the chill in the air to penetrate through my jacket and sweater and undershirt and right into my skin. Hours of waiting, and I’ve never felt so cold before.

Nearly eleven at night, and my Alt is not doing what she’s supposed to be doing. A break in her pattern.

Sitting beneath the awning of a cell repair shop across the street from the terminal, I shiver and sink farther into my jacket. People walk by without a second glance, a continuous wave of human traffic that hasn’t yet shown signs of letting up, despite the hour or the darkness. Gritty from exhaustion, my eyes begin searching for what could be my bed tonight. It has to be close by. I can’t risk missing her. Not for something as insignificant as sleep.

Not the alleyway beside me. Though the location is ideal, with a clear view of the terminal entrance, it’s simply too open. Someone else might consider staying there alongside me.

None of the store entrances, either. They go deep enough
so I wouldn’t be on the sidewalk, but are way too vulnerable to anyone passing—

My train of thought stops dead, and the next second has my breath catching in my throat. My eyes narrow into slits, and I draw farther back beneath the sodden droop of my hood.

I see her.

My Alt’s path is unwavering as she cuts through the tightly packed sidewalk. Her profile—so familiar to me—is carved out against the light of the terminal. I watch as she makes her way inside.

Through the window I can see the front counter. Seated behind it is the same attendant I talked to that morning. I watch her face as my Alt speaks to her, as she holds out the eye scanner. There is nothing odd about her expression, no indication that anything is off. If anything, she comes across as even more tired and bored than the last time I saw her. Is it possible she doesn’t remember our conversation? Who was I but another Alt with a desperate request and even more desperate eyes?

They talk for a moment longer, and as it goes on, I can feel myself starting to flail.

What do I want to do? What do I want
her
to do? Am I ready for this? Or do I just want her to stay inside so I can have more time, just a little bit more time?
Then I swear I will be ready, more than ready to kill her and complete my assignment
.

She’s turning in her bag to the attendant to be checked, and pushing the front doors open again, and I have no more time to not be ready.

My Alt’s leaving the terminal. And she’s headed straight toward me.

Before my heart can beat normally again, she abruptly stops walking and says something out loud to herself, probably checking the time. Then her cell is in her hand, and she is speaking into it as she spins on her heel and turns down the street, away from me.

I take a deep breath, brace myself for the pain, and bite down hard enough on my tongue to draw blood. Fully awake now, the taste of old pennies and human weakness filling my mouth. I never want to know the feeling again.

So I follow her.

Both my hands are sunk deep in my jacket pockets. In my left, my switchblade; in my right, my gun, the tip of it digging reassuringly into my stomach.

She keeps going straight for another four blocks, then turns right for another three. Left again for another five or six. Who is my Alt talking to all this time? But I push the question aside, extinguish it into nothing. It can’t make any difference to me, and as much as the idea of this person hearing her die over the phone is horrible, it wouldn’t be enough to stop me.

Minutes later she’s finished talking and her cell disappears from view, leaving us truly alone in the crowd. Jostling bodies surround us, and I have to be careful I don’t let them drive us apart.

We’ve cut west straight through Jethro and are in Gaslight now, the most run-down of Kersh’s four wards. It houses the city’s water processing plants, and we walk past multiple lots of glassed-in solar distillation centers. Rainwater harvesting operations cover most roofs, from businesses to residential. Dotting the western edge of Gaslight is the sheen of desalination
factory domes, where seawater from the Pacific is continuously piped in.

My Alt’s pace slows to a lope. Whether it’s because she’s unfamiliar with these surroundings or because she senses me in some way, I have no way to tell. I have no choice but to pull back on my speed a bit and put more distance between us, despite everything in my gut screaming at me to stay close. Here within this congested crowd, she should be more difficult to track. But somehow she isn’t. Her stride, the way her hair swings and sways with each step … I can’t help but know it deeply.

I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the sky darkens even further, becoming a true solid black. The hissing steam grates that line Gaslight’s sidewalks fight for attention with the bright neon lights strung above doorways and windows. They illuminate the faces of the passersby, the lights’ gaudiness flashing off the half sheets of galvanized metal rolled down to protect the worn storefronts along the street. Most businesses here can’t afford even the poorest grade of bulletproof glass.

Here
is the Quad. If places could have Alts, this would be the Grid’s. As the Grid centers Jethro Ward, the Quad does the same for Gaslight. A mixture of residential homes and family-run businesses, the Quad was originally carved out by immigrants from four distinct nationalities, now long forgotten. All these years later, the lines between those groups have melted away, leaving a blurred mosaic of all shades and tones. What was once a few small blocks is now nearly half a square mile in size.

The Quad runs on its own unique pulse—not one of
constrained violence and hard-edged desires, but of age-old traditions and sprawling, multigenerational families that make up the heart of the neighborhood. When we were little, my brothers and I explored the Quad almost as much as the Grid. Buying flimsy toys that we kept in our desks at school, ready for a trade or a bribe: splintery finger puzzles; rolls of plastic poker chips; stink powder and fart bombs. We’d stuff ourselves with cheap street food—from the vendors who sold to idles, anyway—buns and pastries, fried bits of shellfish scavenged from the beach, right where the iron barrier runs alongside the ocean in Gaslight Ward.

None of this is new to me, but I can see that my Alt is fascinated. Her pace is even slower now; she’s distracted by the calls of vendors, the electric lanterns strung everywhere. A few times something fully catches my Alt’s attention, and when she turns her head to look, the familiarity of her profile is both fitting and strange.

Space is at a premium here, too, and people have to walk single file to fit between the vendor stalls and the parked cars on the road. It’s the ultimate bottleneck, and it makes me nervous. I’m naked without the cover of the crowd, both sides of me open and vulnerable. But I have no other choice except to stay with her. All I can hope is that she doesn’t turn around to look back. I’m more than aware that
I’m
the one who stands out here. My cheaply dyed blond hair poking out from beneath my hood is like a weed in a garden of dark orchids. I reach up to push back a strand that’s tickling my cheek. I still haven’t gotten used to how it looks. It’s so short now. Yet another way in which I feel naked.

I’m about ninety feet behind her when she stops at one of the open food stalls. From the sight of the bamboo baskets, I know she’s buying something to eat. My stomach growls, and I press into it with the tip of my gun to shut it up.

Move. Now.

While her back is turned to me, I dart across the street and duck into the narrow alley that intersects a multilevel office building. It’s past office hours, all the windows shuttered and without movement.

I slide into the empty quiet of the alley’s darkness, dropping immediately into a crouch. For cover, it’s more than adequate.

My Alt is directly across from me. I can see the black silk of her hair, the compact build of her shoulders above the line of parked cars on the street behind her. It’s not much, but it’ll do. I’ve hit my mark with less of a target before.

To have gotten this far, it seems almost anticlimactic. Has it all come down to this, then? To finally extricate her from my life like yanking out a nagging thorn? I think back to when I first saw her—when the sight of her froze me in my tracks and reduced me to nothing more than useless, second-best, unworthy.