Dualed (20 page)

I breathe in, exhale deeply, roughly. It’s not going to happen again. I won’t let it.

Slowly, I ease the gun from my pocket. It’s nearly weightless in my hand now, as though it’s always been mine. I raise it with an arm that is rock steady and true. My pulse is a steady thrum along my wrists, down the front of my neck and into my chest.

The target on her back calls to me. My eyes zero in so that it’s the only thing I see.

I aim, and my finger starts to squeeze down on the trigger, curling, flexing, and then—

A flurry of movement.

My Alt is pulling out her cell again. She’s speaking into it, and this time she seems almost annoyed, agitated as she glances from side to side. Her movements are all over the place, and I swear to myself in frustration. A nonstatic target, no matter how steady the shooter’s arm, is a risk to those around it—especially in an area this clogged, this packed, where not everyone’s going to do an FDFO. I want to think I’m steady enough that I won’t hit anyone else. But I’d be lying.

My hand trembles, the gun wavering. I can feel a drop of sweat dribble down my hairline and come to rest along my jaw. It’s cold, even colder than the air around me.

She’s staring at something to her left, still speaking urgently into her cell.

Suddenly things are in motion, so quick and frantic they tumble over each other like crazed, rabid animals trying to tear one another apart.

The cell slips from my Alt’s hand and hits the ground. I watch, unable to move, as my Alt—in one smooth gesture that has her hair swirling around her in a perfect pirouette—swivels her head and stares right at me.

Our eyes meet. Her surprise borders on innocence, of someone younger than she actually is … and I see Ehm in her features. My hand jerks to the side even as my finger clenches. The bullet explodes from my gun.

And I know it’s going to be off.

It grazes her cheek, slicing it open, before smashing into
the tower of bamboo baskets behind her. Steam and bread and meat fly in every direction, and for too long I lose sight of her.

I’ve missed.

Some people are running, a few scream. There’s even a mocking cheer. Some of the younger idles actually do an FDFO. But most barely blink an eye in their need to just keep going. They’ve seen all this before.

A soft whistle streaks past me.

Trapped breath. No time to think. I know that sound all too well.

Reflex has me falling flat to the ground to avoid the next bullet. As I go down, I’m stunned by what I see—my Alt, still staring at me. But there’s a feeling other than surprise in her eyes now, written all over her face as though she can’t even begin to contain it. Satisfaction, relief, elation.

And she’s not holding a gun.

What the—

Utter confusion overtakes me.
If it’s not her, who’s shooting at me? I can’t—

Another shot: this one hits near my leg. I pull it in automatically, making my body smaller even as my brain stretches in all directions to find an answer.

Only one makes sense.

She’s got a striker on
me
.

The thought barely exists before the sound of gunfire comes again. This time the bullet hits home, driving into my left shoulder, obliterating flesh and muscle and tendon in its searing path. The pain is hot, terrible.

I don’t make a sound, because that would be the beginning
of the end. My control is beginning to slip, and that scares me most of all. I can’t die here. Not this way, on the ground and as helpless as a snared rabbit in the woods. Only a dim kind of awareness keeps my gun from slipping out of my right hand and onto the gravel. A shallow pocket of sanity beneath the welling pain.

I’m supposed to stop the bleeding. I know that. It’s instinctive, an ancient drive for survival, the first thing to do. Instead I press my shoulder hard into the wall of the building next to me.

Thick, fresh waves of agony radiate down my arm. But it works; it gets me moving; it clears my head. I’m on my hands and knees, backing up farther into the alley. Then I’m on my feet, breathing heavily, chugging air like it’s impossible to get enough. The front of my jacket is stained with blood and mud and rain. My bag perches precariously on my one good shoulder; blood flows too fast, too hot from the bad one.

I see the mark my bullet has left on her face, a thick slash of red that’s black as ink in the electric-lit night. It’s going to scar.
Good
.

My right hand lifts off my wound, moves to aim my gun again. I don’t want to see how my arm is shaking like a junkie gone cold turkey or how slow I’m moving, thrown off balance by my damage, blood loss, the huge shock to the system. My finger squeezes, dissolving the space between trigger and gun until there’s nothing left but my wanting her gone.

It doesn’t happen.

Someone comes to stand next to her. A boy, about the same age as me, as her. His face is an eerie moon beneath the neon lights—blondish hair, light eyes, a strong nose and cleft chin—and he’s pointing a gun right back at me. The black eye of it is huge and yawning.

But then—

Something down the street has my Alt turning to look. Her face flickers in panic, and she turns to the boy, yelling at him, pulling at him to move,
move!

And they’re gone, weaving into the hustling crowd like sylphs into thin air.

It takes me a whole minute to fully realize this. Or maybe it just feels that long. Maybe it’s really only seconds. Time blurs in and out, distorted and off-kilter. And beneath the haze of it my complete bewilderment … why they took off … what saved me … why I feel relief as well as disappointment.

I stumble back even farther into the alley. The gun dangles from my fingers before slipping. I don’t even hear the sound of it hitting the ground. Suddenly dizzy, I know I need to sit down somewhere, anywhere. Just for a few seconds. Then I’ll find a place for the night and fix up my shoulder with whatever supplies I can find. A hospital is not an option. They would scan my eyes, and I can’t let that happen.

My back and shoulders hit the chain-link fence. It’s a dead end. There’s nowhere else to go except up the steel mesh, and I know I can’t climb with my arm the way it is. Maybe if I just rest it for a bit. Maybe then I’ll be able to do it.

I slide down until I’m sitting on the dusty gravel. Leaning
over to rest my face against the side of the building, I let my eyes fall shut. Just for a few minutes, I tell myself. That’s all I need.

When a hand gently probes my shoulder, I swear under my breath and make a motion to push it away. It hurts so bad and I’ve only just closed my eyes. It hasn’t been long enough. Not nearly.

I hear a low, ragged oath full of worry.

This time when the hand returns, I let it stay. Because I know it can only be one person.

Slowly I open my eyes. They feel swollen and entirely too heavy, but I struggle to not go under again.

Crouched in front of me is Chord. In the shadowed darkness of the alley, I recognize his familiar figure immediately.

“At least it’s not my shooting arm, right?” I croak out. I can’t deny the fact that I’m happy to see him.

For a minute, he doesn’t even speak. Then softly, “You really think this is funny, West?”

I inhale. Exhale. “No. I know it’s not funny. But I don’t feel so hot, and even less like arguing with you again.”

“I’m not the one doing the arguing,” he says. “What happened?”

I begin to shrug, but wince at the pain. “Um, I got shot?”

“Yeah, I figured that part out myself.” His hand is still on the wound. As hot as the injury is, his skin is even hotter. I can feel it through my clothes, through the chilled air that swirls around us.

“Chord, it wasn’t her.” The words are out before I know it. “My Alt, I mean.”

A pause. “I know.”

“What do you mean, you know?” I ask slowly.

“I saw him, West. Just as clearly as I’m seeing you now.” In the dark his eyes go flat. “The striker she has on you.”

I shake my head, getting rid of the last of the cobwebs. Something is not right.

“But she wasn’t even searching for me when I found her,” I tell him. “I caught her totally off guard. Why would she even know to have her striker ready? Why was she even with him? Strikers aren’t supposed to meet their clients. It gets messy.” I frown, considering, weighing, thinking out loud. “But she was on her cell almost the whole time. Maybe she was telling him where she was.…”

Now Chord’s shaking his head. “I don’t know. What I do know is that he was trying to kill you, and he was with your Alt. Unless you’ve got a whole bunch of people wanting you dead that you never told me about, it only makes sense. They ran off together, you know—when I came after them.”

“So it was you who scared them off.” I should have known. “How did you … know? To be there?”
That I needed you?

Chord looks away for a long second, as if debating something, before meeting my eyes. Blunt stubbornness there, without a sign of regret. “You know the cells I’ve been leaving for you?” he asks quietly.

I nod, a new kind of knot in my stomach. “Yeah, what about them?”

“They’re chipped. Connected to my computer at home. To my own cell, too.”

I suck in my breath. “You’ve been tracking me!”

“Yeah, I have,” he says, his voice rough. His eyes are as dark as onyx, brilliant even with the lack of light, and beneath the anger I see pain. “And I would do it all over again if it keeps you alive, West.”

Just like that, I’m deflated. Defeated. Because if it were him on the run, I would have done the same.

“Why does it seem like I’m always thanking you, when you’re always driving me crazy?” I mutter. “How were you doing it, anyway? I never found a shadowing system in any of the cells.”

“They were wiped clean by the time me and Luc got our hands on them. Not that I had time to load a system on the first cell I gave you. When I realized you’d probably think of that, I went with a chip instead.”

“Well, it worked. I never thought you’d go old-school.”

“Sometimes simpler is better.” He shrugs, then smiles. “And you don’t have to thank me. Just … know that I’m here, okay?”

I nod. Unsure how far I can let this go before I have to start lying.

“Maybe the next time you run into her, you could just ask her about her new friend,” Chord says lightly.

I smile. It feels misshapen on my face. “Maybe. But not today. I’m not really up for seeing her again so soon.”

My eyes are used to the darkness now, and I can make him out clearly. His face with the high cheekbones and sharply defined jaw, the large, dark eyes framed by slashing brows,
suddenly softening as he touches a lock of my newly blond hair. “Can I be honest and say I like your old hair better?”

I’m startled enough to laugh outright, and it leaves me wincing. I grab his hand, the one covering the bullet wound. “Help me up, okay? I need to get inside somewhere, clean off this mess before it gets worse.”

Careful to not press down on my shoulder, Chord pulls me to my feet with his arm around my waist.

The world sways, and my teeth start to chatter from the freezing air. Maybe also from something creeping at the edges of a different kind of fear—the first twinges of fever, spreading inward from my shoulder. He tightens his arm around me to keep me steady.

“I’m coming with you,” Chord tells me, “and don’t bother saying no. You can barely stand, let alone walk.”

I’m too tired to argue. And he’s warm, and whole, and I think I can let myself be weak this one time. “Fine. Just until I get inside somewhere. I wouldn’t want to shake up your routine or anything. I mean, how are you going to follow me if I’m already with you, right?”

“You just don’t stop, do you, West?” he murmurs. But there’s relief in his voice, not annoyance.

We start walking down the street, his arm around my waist as support.

The Quad is crowded, but the sidewalks are thinning out, traffic slowing, people starting to head home for the night. The sensation of having actual room around us is almost sinister. Like we’re being left out in the open, with no bodies to swallow us up.

“We’ve got to hurry and get inside,” I tell him, my voice low and uneven. “It’s too late to be out here.” I’m moving as fast as I can, feeling like I’m walking on stilts, clumsy and in danger of falling. I’m being stupid, asking for even more damage by trying to push myself. But panic mode’s kicked in for me, and the voice inside my head is urging me to hurry.

Suddenly Chord’s arms sweep me up. He shifts my weight until I’m settled against his chest.

“Chord, let go.” I cross my arms in front of me, both flustered and mortified. “Seriously.”

“It’s faster this way, admit it. So
you
let go for once.” Chord’s voice is surprisingly serious, and I frown. I don’t really know what to say, not quite sure what I want. Still unsure, I force myself to relax a fraction.

We’re both quiet. Only the sound of our breathing can be heard, and the cadence of it is soothing. Before long, my eyes are begging to close, my head is jerking forward, and my arms are wrapped around his neck. The pain in my shoulder and along my arm has become a dull, steady burn.

“It’s okay, West. Sleep, if you need to. We’ll be there soon.” His voice lulls me to rest my head against his chest, and his clean scent fills my nose and my mind.

It’s the first time in a long time that I fall asleep without feeling alone.

The half moon winks at us through the window, revealing the misery of our surroundings. The dirt and age of the tiny studio apartment, the sagging of the bed in the middle of it. On
which we’re both sitting now, simply because with the power supply cut, it’s where the light is strongest. We’re going to need as much light as we can get, if we’re going to do what needs doing.

I’ve never felt more embarrassed and nervous in my life. The fact that Chord has gone strangely quiet tells me he might be feeling the same way, too.

At least I’ve got the benefit of a hefty dose of painkillers coursing through my system—already I can feel them starting to kick in. There was a bottle in the med kit Chord found beneath the bathroom sink, and I was happy enough to take a bunch in preparation for having the bullet removed from my shoulder. If it makes me feel groggy and say something really stupid, I’ll have no qualms laying blame.