Illusive (14 page)

C
iere opens her eyes. She is curled up in the SUV’s backseat. Warm air drifts in through the car’s shattered windows, carrying the scent of trees and earth. Somewhere to her right, she can hear Devon’s soft snores. Kit sprawls in the passenger’s seat, and Magnus is nowhere to be seen.

When she peers through the car’s broken window, she sees the forest. Shockingly green trees surround the car, their canopy blocking out most of the afternoon light.

Ciere has no idea where they are. All she remembers is Kit driving farther and farther west, his eyes determinedly on the road while the car ran from the rising dawn. Eventually, he found a gravel road leading into a forested area. They spent a good half an hour jostling up and down in their seats while
Kit took the car on long-deserted dirt roads, finding the most remote location he could.

As soon as the engine clicked off, Ciere flopped onto her side and fell asleep. Devon must have clambered into the open trunk and decided to rest there. When she peers over the seat, she sees him splayed on his back, limbs pointing in all different directions, his jaw hanging open.

Kit sleeps in a more dignified manner, with his arms crossed over his chest and head nodded forward. Someone must have bandaged his wound after Ciere fell asleep. As quietly as she can, Ciere opens the back door and slides out of the car. Her bare feet touch gravel, and she carefully makes her way off the road and deeper into the forest. There is an uncomfortable weight in her bladder, and without any access to a nearby toilet, the cover of a tree will have to do. The sensation of dirt, grass, and twigs on her bare feet remind her of when she was young.

When she picks her way back to the SUV, she sees Magnus. He sits with his back to one of the larger trees. Morana’s knife and Kit’s pistol sit beside him, within easy reach. His eyes are half-lidded, but something about his posture makes Ciere think he is alert. This theory is confirmed when she steps on a twig and Magnus doesn’t so much as twitch.

“Get some sleep?” he asks.

She finds a fallen log and settles on it. “Yeah. You?”

“I’m fine.”

She gestures at the forest. “So where are we?”

“West Virginia,” Magnus says. “If you want more specifics, I have no idea.” He reaches down and picks something up: a water bottle. Silently, he holds it out to Ciere. She takes it with a grateful nod.

She feels strangely displaced, sitting on a log, drinking warm water, and trying to drown the bitter taste at the back of her throat. There is something surreal in being outdoors, with the sunlight dappling through the trees, birds chirping, and fresh, smokeless air. Last night she saw the SUV riddled with bullets; she saw buildings burning in the distance; she saw someone she thought was a friend stand by and watch as a fed chased her down. She squeezes her eyes shut, her fingers going tight around the bottle. Has it been less than a week since she and Devon were staking out a Newark bank? Everything seems to be unraveling. She takes a shuddering breath and tries to steady herself. When she reopens her eyes, Ciere finds Magnus studying her.

He’s going to say something about the raid, she just knows it. So she opens her mouth first. “What’s it like? Being a mentalist.”

That throws him. A line appears on his forehead. “What?”

“You,” she gestures at him, “reading minds. I’ve never met a mentalist before. What’s it like?”

“What’s it like being an illusionist?” he says.

Phantom pain makes her rub the heel of one hand into her temple. “Mostly, it’s a literal headache.”

That earns her a smile. “You know,” Magnus says slowly, “how when you’re watching TV and a commercial comes on, and it’s twice as loud as the show itself? You’ll jump, maybe flinch, and then hit the mute button as fast as you can.” He touches the collar of his shirt. “Now imagine that happening every time you touch someone. And there’s no mute button.”

She lets that sink in.

“What now?” she says finally.

“We wake Kit,” Magnus replies grimly, and rises to his feet. “And then we get some answers.”

Waking Kit is usually a simple matter of putting the wrong china in the dishwasher or going near his tulip bed—he has a sixth sense about these things. It doesn’t matter if he’s dead asleep or in an entirely different part of the house; he’ll come awake with a start, mumbling about disemboweling whoever is defiling his home. Rousing Kit today is a different story. The skin around his eyes is drawn tight and his usually pale skin is downright chalky. His hand shakes when he takes the proffered water bottle. “Eat this,” Magnus says, unearthing a protein bar from the backseat. Kit looks at it with distaste, but manages to take a few bites.

Ciere and Devon settle on the ground. She crosses her legs
and puts her back to a young tree with broad-shaped leaves. Devon begins fidgeting with a stick.

Only after Kit has finished eating the protein bar does Magnus speak up. “So,” he says, in an all-too-casual tone. “A hacking conglomerate?”

Kit glances up. “What?”

Magnus’s face is frozen in a neutral expression. “Our employers. You said they were a hacking conglomerate.”

Kit runs his thumb over his mouth, brushing away crumbs. “Maybe I altered the truth a bit.”

“A hacking conglomerate?” Magnus repeats. His voice hardens, and for once there is real emotion in it. “That was TATE. Your so-called client, Frieda Fuller, is an operative of TATE.”

“Tate?” Ciere asks. It’s the same name Morana said last night, and Ciere still has no idea what it means.

Magnus throws a narrow-eyed look her way, like he suspects she might have been part of this. “You led me to believe we were working for an individual,” he says to Kit, “not a terrorist cell.”

Devon chokes.

“They’re not a terrorist cell,” Kit retorts. “They’re… a resistance group.”

“A fanatical organization,” says Magnus.

“Freedom fighters,” says Kit.

“Cyberterrorists,” says Magnus.

“Aggressive computer experts,” says Kit.

“Semantics,” Magnus snarls. “You lied to me, Kit. Again.”

“I didn’t so much lie,” Kit says evasively, “as not tell you everything.”

“You lied.”

“I misled.”

“You misinformed.”

This time it is Kit who says, “Semantics. Whatever I did—it’s not important now. We’ve got much bigger things to worry about.”

“Bigger than the fact we contracted out to terrorists?” Devon croaks.

Ciere catches on first. “The feds took down TATE,” she says. “Why?”

“Other than the fact they’re terrorists?” Devon says.

Ciere shakes her head. “No—I mean, why now? Why did the feds move now? Why was it so important that they used local cops, as well as both the feds and the UAI?” She swallows. “What were they looking for?”

“Yes, Kit,” Magnus says evenly, “what were they looking for?”

“What makes you think I know?” Kit says.

“Because you’ve been holding out on us this whole time.”

Kit replies, “I haven’t been holding out so much as—”

“Concealing?” Magnus says darkly.

“Fucking hell,” says Devon. “If either one of you says ‘semantics’ one more time…”

This is getting nowhere. Ciere shoves her index finger and thumb between her lips. A loud whistle cracks the air and everyone winces, turning to look at her.

“Everybody needs to shut up for a second,” she says. “Calm down.” She doesn’t mention the fact she’s trembling, and she clasps her sweaty hands behind her back.

“She’s right,” Magnus says. “We need to be calm. Logical.” For a moment, everyone just stares at one another. Then Magnus adds, “Kit, you are going to tell us everything or so help me I will pin you to the ground and listen to your thoughts until I know everything you do.”

Oh, well. The calmness lasted a second longer than Ciere expected it to.

Magnus looks like he might be making good on his threat—he starts pulling at his gloves.

Devon cracks his knuckles. “I’ll get his left arm. Magnus, you get his legs.”

“Now, now,” Kit protests. He turns a beseeching expression on Ciere. She still remembers the cold touch of the dauthus’s fingers on her, the sting of the Taser’s barbs when they bit into her flesh, the running, the smell of smoke, and the taste of her own terror.

“I’ll get his right arm,” she volunteers.

“The will,” Kit says abruptly. “All right? They must have found out about the will. They probably thought that we’d already delivered the will to TATE.”

A pause. Ciere and Devon share a confused glance before she understands. The will. The whole point of this job.

“The will we just stole?” Ciere says slowly.

Devon gets it. “The will I have permanently stuck in my brain?”

“No, some other will,” Kit snaps. “Of course
that
will!”

“Kit,” Magnus says, and there is that deadly calm in his voice. “Exactly whose will did we steal?”

Another pause. Kit seems to be steeling himself, bracing for their reactions.

“Marie Louis was an alias,” he says.

Devon leans forward. He is staining the knees of his designer jeans with dirt and moss, but he doesn’t seem to care. “For…?”

Ciere swallows. The air has a new quality to it. It feels like the moment before a lightning strike, when everything goes quiet and dark, only to be set alight.

“Richelle Fiacre,” Kit says.

The words hit Ciere like a blow. Richelle Fiacre. A Fiacre. Why in the world would Kit send them after the last Fiacre’s will?

“Now,” Kit says, “answer me this. What information
would the feds kill for? What information would a cyberterrorist group hire thieves to go after? And what’s the only thing the Fiacre family is famous for?”

“You cannot be serious,” Devon says, but he sounds more terrified than unconvinced.

“The formula,” Ciere whispers.

Kit’s crew has completed a few big jobs. They’ve fenced a genuine Manet, forged a Jacques-Louis David, and stolen one of Thomas Cole’s collections from a museum. They’ve lifted diamonds from a crooked cop’s vault. They once ran a con on the head of a crime family. Ciere is used to high-stakes games, to playing her part, and hoping no one gets caught.

But nothing compares to this.

“But,” Devon says, and he sounds younger. “Why?”

“You know what immune individuals are to the government,” Kit says quietly. “We kill. We evade. We levitate. We make people see things that don’t exist. We listen to their thoughts. It’s no wonder the feds want to control us—we’re worse than any weapon they could have knowingly devised. And you know what the Praevenir formula could do? Create more of us. Create armies. Right now they can’t make more of us—Brenton Fiacre made sure of that. The vaccine is impossible to duplicate—the MK virus wiped itself out with its mortality rate. Today, there are only about six samples of virus for the entire world to experiment on. That’s why the armament
race stalled. But Richelle Fiacre’s will, if it does hold the key to the formula, could change all that.”

“And you were going to sell it to a terrorist group,” Magnus replies.

Kit shakes his head. “For the last time, TATE is no more a terrorist group than we are. They’re hackers, and I thought they were going to publish the will for everyone to see.”

That makes Ciere blink. “What?”

“According to the TATE manifesto, they’re dedicated to freedom of the press,” Kit says. “It made sense that they’d want to publish something like this.”

“They wanted to end the armament race,” Magnus breathes. “But that…”

“Would let anyone in the world have access to the formula,” Kit says. “The European Union. The Chinese Republic. Our former allies and our current enemies. It’s no wonder the feds came down so hard. They can’t have information like this leak out.”

“And you wanted that information,” Ciere says. “Because it would be worth a fortune.”

“I figured we could make a few disposable copies of the will,” Kit says. “In case TATE didn’t leak the information too quickly, we could sell it.”

Devon blinks. “Disposable? One of those copies is in my head.”

Kit looks unruffled.

“You son of a—”

“Fiacre,” Magnus breaks in. “Are you sure that this belonged to Richelle Fiacre and not some impostor?”

Kit nods. “Yes. Daniel worked for TATE and Frieda Fuller on a number of occasions, and she trusted him. She sent him to verify Marie Louis’s identity, and when he did, she gave him the job of retrieving the will. Daniel called and left me a message the night before he vanished. He thought the will would be a trinket, a rarity. Something he could profit off of. I don’t think he truly knew what he was getting into. After talking to Frieda Fuller, I understood a bit better what the risks were. And what could be gained.”

“Daniel?” Magnus asks.

“One of my protégés.”

“Daniel’s not missing,” Ciere says, and three pairs of eyes turn to her. She quickly lays out exactly what happened when she was separated from the others, beginning with her search for Kit and ending with Magnus’s rescue. As she speaks, the last remnants of color drain from Kit’s face.

“Daniel is in the hands of the UAI,” Kit says.

“Not just the UAI,” Magnus murmurs. He repeats the name he said last night: “Aristeus.”

“Okay, I’ll bite.” Devon taps the ground with his foot. “Who’s Aristeus?”

Magnus hesitates before saying, “Aristeus is one of the highest-ranked operative agents of the UAI.”

Ciere’s stomach tightens with anxiety. “What is his immunity?”

Magnus and Kit exchange a long look. “Dominus,” Kit finally says.

Devon makes a disbelieving noise. “No. That’s impossible. The feds can’t have a dominus—people would know.”

“Why?” Kit asks. “Because the government is so free with information these days?”

Devon opens his mouth and then closes it again. He looks at a loss for words, and Ciere is reminded that Devon grew up as a straight. He was raised believing in the government—first in the UK and then in America. While Devon could be skeptical, he wasn’t raised with instinctive distrust.

Ciere holds up a hand, trying to ward off any argument. “Wait… dominus. So they’re real? That whole mind-controlling thing exists?”