Fox Forever (26 page)

“Ten minutes,” she whispers. “That’s all.”

I release her and she turns to face me. I motion to the seat beneath the ivy-covered arbor. “I’ll stand,” she says.

“Fair enough.” I walk over and take the seat myself, dropping my pack at my feet.

She stands there, waiting and rigid, but even in the dark I can see her eyes fighting to maintain distance. She’s still walking a tightrope, trying to keep her balance in her safe little rooftop world. I wonder which way the truth will push her.

“Why are you wearing that coat?” she asks, her voice dripping with disdain. “You look like one of those—”

“You said you wanted the truth—here it is. This is me, Raine.” I pull the collar up around my neck to drive the point home, the way the land pirates would. The way I imagine Karden would too. “This is the
real
me. Warts and all. And this is only a fraction of what I was afraid to tell you. I hope you can handle all of it.”

She looks at me, unresponsive, still waiting in her usual defensive style like nothing can penetrate her armor. We’ll see.

“You were right. I’m a spy. A Non-pact. One of those animals you’re afraid of. I was sent here by an underground Resistance movement to get information. Everything about me is fake. My background. My family. That apartment isn’t even mine. All a ruse to get in good with you because your father has information the Network needs.”

“You used me.”

“Yes, I did. And I’m not proud of it. But I had a good reason.”

“A good reason?”
she snaps. Her top lip lifts in disgust. “The things you said and did. You use someone like that and—”

“My ten minutes!”
I snap right back at her. “The truth is hard to hear,
a bitter pill
, right? Do you want to hear it or not?”

She lifts her chin and is silent. I continue. “I had good reason because there’s a man the Secretary has imprisoned—”

“My father’s sent a lot of people to prison. He’s the Secretary of Security in case you haven’t heard.”

“This man’s in a secret prison, Raine. He stole some money.
A lot
of money. Not for himself but to fund the Resistance. And there are a lot of people who want that money, including the Secretary and LeGru. But the money all disappeared into a foreign account before anyone could get their hands on it, and with half the account numbers missing, no one can find it.
That’s
why they’re keeping him. They’re still trying to get it out of him. He’s been in that secret prison for
sixteen
years. It’s an unofficial one hidden beneath the city that the Secretary—”

“Why do you keep calling him the Secretary? The Secretary! He’s my father, for God’s sake!”

I stand and step toward her. “No, he isn’t! And you know he’s not! Not even in the loosest sense. And that’s another truth I didn’t want to tell you. He’s your captor, Raine. Your warden. You weren’t a piece of trash. You never were. He didn’t save you—he stole you. You once had two parents who loved you. He threw them both in prison, burned down their house, and then took you like you were a piece of confiscated property because he thought you might have information he needed. That’s what all those scans have been about. He wants the account numbers just like the Resistance does.”

She puts her hands over her ears. “You’re lying! Stop! It’s all lies!”

I grab her hands and force them down. “You’re going to listen, and you’re going to listen to it all.”

Her hands tremble.

“Your mother’s name is Miesha. She has scars all across her arms from where she shoved them through a window trying to save you from the fire. They told her you were dead and threw her in prison for eleven years for being part of the Resistance.

“Your father’s name is Karden. Everyone thinks he’s dead too. He’s the one who’s being held by the Secretary in a secret location. That’s how I was hurt. Not cats and stairs. I went looking for him, but there are animals down in those tunnels that the Secretary counts on to keep people away. They nearly killed me. That’s what I was looking for in his office. A safer way in.

“Your father—” I shake my head, not sure she can even fathom the importance of what I’m about to tell her. “
Your real father
was the leader of the Resistance. Without him to lead it, the Resistance died. People need him. Like all those Non-pacts you visited. Non-pact children who laugh and play and cry and have dreams and hopes just like any other child. Children just like the child
you
would have been.”

I watch everything in her struggling to maintain control, from the faint tremor of her fists, to her frozen pinpoint pupils. “Rebecca,” I whisper. “Your real name is Rebecca.”

I watch her eyes change, her pupils growing to large black circles, like she’s been drugged by the memory of another time when that name was whispered in her ear. A sound that’s vaguely familiar. She shakes her head and brushes past me, stopping at the arbor, almost hanging on to it, and then she turns, slowly sliding to the seat as if her legs will no longer support her.

I step back, wondering how I’ll tell her the rest, but it all has to be said.

She looks up at me, defiantly, waiting, like she’s regained her footing, found her way back to the old Raine who believes in nothing but distance, who has found a way to survive by not believing in anything at all. “Your time’s almost up,” she says.

“You wanted truth, Raine. And this is the rest of it. I don’t want you to say anything. I don’t want you to respond. I just need you to listen, because I may not get another chance to say it. I’m telling you all of this because—

“Because something went wrong. Something happened. Something I never planned or anticipated. I was only traveling from one side of the country to the other trying to find a life. Trying to rebuild a life that was stolen from me. Because there’s another secret about myself that you need to know, maybe the biggest reason I never told you the truth, the thing I’ve always been terrified to reveal because I was afraid it would change your feelings about me.”

I pull the Swiss knife from my pack and pull out the largest blade. It’s the only way she’ll ever really believe what I’m about to tell her. I yank up my sleeve and swipe it across my arm, first blood, and then blue BioPerfect trickles from the wound. I hear her gasp. “This is the real me, Raine. Illegal in every possible way.”

Her mouth opens but she doesn’t speak. I tell her the whole story, my prior life, my years trapped in limbo, my new body, Kara, Jenna, being on the run, and Dot, who had more humanity in her than most humans I know. I tell her how I was trying to come to grips with my old life that had vanished, and understand the new one I had to live, the life I was trying to find here, until I finally come full circle, back to where I started. “But something went wrong.” I go well beyond my allotted ten minutes and she never moves, never blinks. I wonder if she’s even hearing me anymore, but when I finish she closes her eyes like she’s blocking me and the world out.

“Raine,” I whisper. I step closer, like I’m pleading for my life, pleading for
us
. “I didn’t plan it. I didn’t even want it. It was the worst possible thing that could happen, but it did happen. I fell in love. With you. That part of me was never fake. That’s probably the only real thing I have. I love you, Raine.
I love you.
”

She opens her eyes. I look at her face, every angle, every eyelash, every muscle struggling to hide what she’s feeling, but I still see it, so much pain, so much anger and fear, such a whirlwind of emotions that I can’t tell if there’s anything left in her for me. Her eyes glisten. I step toward her but she puts up her hand to stop me and shakes her head, unable to speak. Like if I take one more step she will crumble.

“I know I blew it. That’s a phrase from my time that means that I ruined the best chance I ever had of being happy, but that’s because even though I have BioPerfect beneath my skin, I’m still not perfect, just like I never was, and never will be. But if I could do everything over again, I would. Almost everything. Some things I’d want to stay exactly the same.”

I stare at her, waiting, hoping. Her eyes are fixed on mine, seconds passing, a tightrope, a lifetime of decisions churning in them.

She looks away, and my throat swells. It wasn’t the answer I wanted.

I walk over and grab my pack from the ground. “I’m still committed to what needs to be done. I’m not going to live my entire life on the run. I’m going down in that tunnel tomorrow night, with or without the information I need, with or without your help.”

“You might be killed.”

“That’s right. But time’s running out and there’s a man down there who believes in the same thing I do. We all have to believe in
something,
Raine. Even if it means there’s a risk. But our risks have to matter. If the only risk you ever want to take is walking on the ledges of rooftops, I guess that’s your choice.”

“How do I know everything you’re saying right now isn’t a lie too? Just to get what you need from me? Like before?”

I look in her eyes and shake my head, hoping she’ll look long enough and deep enough to see something in me that isn’t artificial and manufactured. More than anyone else in the world, I need her to see that. “I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know how you can know anything for sure. It’s a risk. Something only you can figure out. If you don’t believe me, call the Secretary. Turn me in. Maybe I won’t even make it off this rooftop tonight. But at least I tried. I gave something I believed in a shot.”

I reach in my pack and throw her the eye of Liberty. Her reflexes are still fast, like the trained athlete she is, and she catches it. “Keep it,” I say. “It’s yours. I don’t want to find the other one without you.”

She doesn’t say anything, just grips the piece of glass in her fist.

“I guess my ten minutes are up,” I say.

“Yes,” she agrees. “They are.”

I leave, taking my rope from the chimney, her eyes following my every move, and I scale down her ladder, wondering if the truth is what she really wanted to hear at all.

The Smallest Things

Jenna looks up at the sky. “I wish I could stay. I actually miss the snow terribly. It’s one of those things you don’t realize you’ll miss until you can’t have it.” She looks back at me. “I’m sorry I have to go. I know it’s bad timing for—”

“You need to leave. I want you to. We all have our limitations. You have your Bio Gel, and I’m … I’m missing that magic ten percent of original human goo that would make me legal. We have to deal with what we have.”

She squeezes my hand and pulls me closer. “The world will change, Locke. Laws change …
people
change.”

I hear the inflection in her voice. I told her about Raine. She knows what’s eating at me more than anything else.
People change
. But sometimes not in the ways we had hoped.

“I’ll be okay,” I tell her.

This time it’s me leaving her at the train station. A low-pressure depression is sending an unseasonal arctic blast to Boston in two days. She called me early this morning. She has to leave before it comes.

“I wish you’d take Miesha with you. It’s not safe for her to be here.”

“She won’t leave, Locke. I can’t force her. Besides, you need to tell her about Rebecca. She deserves that much. It’s her right.”

It may be her right but it’s also a connection that could kill her. “Not yet. It’s too dangerous for her right now. In a few days the account will expire and then the Secretary won’t have any use for Miesha. I’ll call for her to come back then, but if she should find out about Raine before that—”

“She’ll stay put at the apartment. I told her she’d jeopardize your Favor and maybe your life if she didn’t. She doesn’t give a hoot about the Favor but she does care about you.”

She’d give a hoot about the Favor if she knew what it was all about. But I do wonder, if I’m even able to get Karden out of that hellhole, after so many years apart, will he and Miesha only be strangers? Will there be any love left between them? How long can … I take a deep breath.
Raine
. How many years does it take to stop loving someone?

“I’m sorry, Locke. I know how much this hurts. But maybe she’ll—”

I put my hand up in the same way Raine did last night to stop Jenna from saying more.

“I told you, I’m okay,” I say firmly, and I smile, determined not to let thoughts of Raine show on my face again. “Say hello to Allys and Kayla for me. I’ll call as soon as I can.”

“Be careful,” she says.

I nod. “Always.”

She kisses my cheek and turns to leave but I stop her one last time. I hesitate, feeling foolish, maybe even afraid to hear her answer, but she’s the only one I can ask. “Do you ever get used to it, Jenna?”

“What’s that?”

“Not being who you once were … not being like everyone else?”

She looks at me, staring for the longest time, and finally reaches up, raking her fingers through my hair and then pulling a strand over my eye, exactly where my cowlick used to be. She frowns. “Being like everyone else is highly overrated.”

She turns and leaves. I watch her walk down the stairs to meet her train, my eyes never leaving her until she’s swallowed up by other travelers, and I wonder when and if I’ll ever see her again.

* * *

It’s still early, barely past breakfast, and I stroll through Quincy Market, most of the shops still closed, again wishing I could fast-forward the clock, wondering how I’ll fill the whole day waiting for night to come. But everything I told Raine last night was true. With or without her help, I’m going down tonight, down before Xavier and Carver think it’s time to implement Plan B, down before LeGru uses a scan on Karden that he might not survive. Down because if I can’t get any more information from the Secretary, there’s no reason to wait. All I’m doing is giving him more time to beat me to what we both want. I’ll have to use the little information I was able to get and trust my instincts for the rest.

I pass a bakery and am caught off guard when the shopkeeper waves me down, remembering me from my visit with Livvy.