Parched (16 page)

I feel a sticky flush of pride.

“Let's move on,” Ling says. “Once we're past the Quicks, we'll be outside, meaning we'll still have to get into Simutech itself. You said it was Level Six, right Tess?”

I nod. “Top floor.”

The room starts throwing around some ideas. I remember there's a kitchen window on the sixth floor that's usually left open for the fresh air, which is confirmed by the holos. After that, we land relatively quickly on roping in freehand, which is what I'd seen Benji and Lana do. It saves getting past any alarms on the ground floor or having to sneak up six flights of stairs once we're inside.

“So we have a target, and we have a way in,” Ling says. “Now we just need to make sure we're in control of any vision inside.”

“She means security streams,” Benji whispers to me helpfully. “Recording us in there.”

“This is the hardest part,” Lana adds. “None of us can risk being recorded on a stream.”

I point to the holos of the Quicks in confusion. “Isn't that the security stream?” I ask. “You already have it.”

“This is their security stream,” Achilles allows. “But I can only lurk. I can't record, copy, or cut it. What I need to do is record a certain amount of stream with no one in it, then right before you go in, loop it into the system.”

“So the security stream looks like it's recording empty corridors,” I think aloud, “when in reality, it's not. We're in there.”

Achilles nods. “To do that, I need to hack their security system. And to do that, I need to know what system they're running.”

Ling glances at me. “I doubt you know that, right, Tess?”

Tell them. You're in it now. Too late to back out. Tell them.

I bite my lip. “You could see if it's the Liamond system.”

Achilles whistles. “I hope not.” He swings around to open a new stream with an expert swoop of his hands.

“How does someone like you know so much about their security?” Naz asks me suspiciously.

“C'mon, Naz.” Ling sighs.

I shrug, affecting nonchalance. “I'm nosy.”

“You're right.” Achilles looks up from the stream. “They're running Liamond. Which sucks for us.”

“It's impossible to hack it?” Ling asks, borderline panicked.

“Hey!” Achilles looks offended. “
Impossible
is not in my vocab. With a little elbow grease and a lot of late nights, I can get you”—he swishes his fingers and squints at a run of numbers that appear—“fifteen minutes of fake stream goodness. Ladies and gentlemen, start your mission!”

Benji whoops loudly. I feel a flash of apprehension.
Am I really ready to go back there?

“Fantastic!” Ling exclaims. “How long will you need?”

“One month!” Achilles announces proudly.

“One month?” Ling looks pissed. “Are you kidding me?”

“Do you want to get nasty with Liamond, Ling?” Achilles stands up, offering her his seat. “Please, be my guest.”

“No,” she says. “It's just . . . a whole month?”

“It'd be quicker if there were ten of me and Simutech weren't
running the Liamond system,” Achilles says, almost testy. “Getting through that is like breaking through a stone wall with a toothpick.”

“But things are rough out in the Badlands right now,” Ling says, glancing at me. “The mission and the Kudzu stream are concrete ways to draw attention to that. I just thought we'd be doing this sooner.”

Achilles rubs his eyes for a second, then grimaces. “Three weeks. And that's committing myself to no sleep and no sanity, so you owe me.”

Ling socks his shoulder, grinning. “You're the best, Chilly.”

“That's right,” he says, sitting back down and bumping fists with Benji and Bo. “Chilly is the best.”

“We'll need that time to finish the stream anyway,” Gem says to Ling.

“I can't believe we're really making a stream about all this.” Kissy grins, biting her lip in excitement. “People are going to freak.”

“And it'll give us plenty of time to train Tess,” Lana adds hopefully.

“Three weeks?” I repeat uncertainly. “You sure you want me around that long?”

“Of course we do!” Lana exclaims. “You're one of us now, Tess.”

Naz coughs deliberately, and I remember what Ling said about official membership: only when everyone agrees. Still, excitement ignites in my belly at even being a guest for that long.

“So.” Ling beams. “That's it! Achilles will start hacking the Liamond system, the assault team will start training, and Gem and Kissy will keep working on the Kudzu stream. Any questions?”

I am prepared for someone to press the point of
why
—why the Trust is so interested in artilects. It seems so strange to me. But the next question doesn't deal with that at all. It's worse.

“What happened to your mom?”

I freeze.

“Naz,” hisses Ling.

“What?” Naz challenges, leaning forward. “This artilect thing killed Rockwood's mom. That's no secret—it's on the streams. If we're going up against the same thing, we should at least know what happened.”

Ling glances at me uneasily. It's obvious that while she feels uneasy with Naz's bold line of questioning, she agrees.

“Magnus,” I say his name uncomfortably. “Magnus . . .” I squeeze my eyes shut, feeling light-headed.

I remember waiting for her in the dark, snarling out the words as soon as the front door chimed shut.

“Where were you?”

“Tess!” Mom's hand flew to her chest, gasping. “You scared me. Why are you sitting in the dark?”

I stared at her hatefully, still stuffed into my frilly Elizabethan costume. “Where. Were. You?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Macbeth?
Ring a bell?” I spat. “I was Lady Macbeth! I've been telling you about it for months!”

“Stop yelling, Tess. Don't be such a baby.”

“Oh, because the only baby you care about is a machine? The only thing in the world you have time for anymore is a damn robot!”

“He's not a robot, Tess, he's an artilect
—”

“Shut up, just shut up!” I screamed. “You're the worst mother in the whole world!”

“Tess?” Ling's arm on mine whisks me back to the present. “You don't have to tell us if you don't want to.”

“It—he—was still in a testing phase,” I say stiffly. “My mom thought he was more emotionally advanced than he was. She set up a test, at our house.”

“What kind of test?” Ling asks.

I swallow, and repeat the lie I'd invented for the stunned Simutech scientists who had stood pale-faced in our kitchen, one year ago. “She told Magnus to hurt her. She was convinced he cared about her enough to refuse, despite being ordered to. That he could tell right from wrong. But she was wrong.”

The room is silent. I feel cold and hard, like I'm made from stone.

Ling narrows her eyes in confusion. “Why did your mom bring Magnus home in the first place? Why didn't she just do the test at Simutech?”

I lift my head and look Ling square in the eye. I don't want to lie. But I have to. “I don't know.”

I
get home late, but Abel has dinner waiting for me. As we eat, I tell him that I spent the day at a nearby Longevity Hub. “I think I'm just going to focus on getting healthy,” I tell him. “The people who work there are all really nice. Really into it.” He seems surprised, but not disapproving. After I go to bed, my dreams are a frustrating mess of me trying to get into a house with no windows or doors while being scrutinized by Kudzu, who are all wearing white lab coats.

The next morning, I catch an airtrain to the filtration plant using a fake ID Achilles hooked me up with yesterday. This time, Ling's waiting for me.

“Can't wait to see me kill it at training, huh?” I say by way of a greeting.

She snorts amusement. “Or see you get your ass kicked.”

I eye her with genuine surprise. “Aren't you supposed to be team leader? The one who motivates?”

“Just calling it how I see it,” she says with a shrug.

“Well, get ready, Ping.” I swing myself onto the floater to sit behind her, and speak directly into her left ear. “I got some serious skills, girl.”

Ling's answering laugh is drowned out by the floater's engine sputtering to life.

In the dappled sunlight of Milkwood's big backyard, my training begins under the tutelage of the genetically blessed Benji and Lana. They're going to teach me what I saw them do yesterday: fast-roping, which is, according to Ling, “really hard” and therefore “really fun.”

I've had some experience with climbing in the Badlands, to hunt the fat prairie chickens who like to nest in sneaky, high-up crevices. I'd never done it with a rope before, but to be honest, I'm feeling relatively confident. Up and down a rope. How hard can it be?

“Fast-roping is all about control and landing safely,” Benji begins. “You want to brake with your hands, not your feet.”

“Climbing isn't about upper-body strength,” Lana adds. “It's all about technique. You want to know the secret?”

“Be born a monkey?” I guess.

She laughs, exposing perfectly straight white teeth. “A good foot lock.”

Benji hands me a pair of black roping gloves. “Ready?”

After grabbing the rope, I'm to get it on the outside of one leg, then under that foot, then up over my other foot. I keep it in place by pinching my feet together. Surprisingly, I'm able to support all of my body weight that way.

“Now, stand up,” Lana instructs. “Bend at the waist, and move your feet up a little and get the same footing.”

Following her instructions, I'm able to slowly inch myself up the rope. Stand up, bend at the waist to get a new foot lock a few more inches up the rope, pull myself up, repeat. With the foot lock, I'm not hauling my body weight up the rope with my arms. Instead I can balance myself, as long as I have the rope looped between my feet.

“Got it?” Benji's just a couple feet below me, holding the rope steady.

“Absolutely.” I catch Tomm's eye, on his hands and knees in the veggie garden, pulling out a handful of carrots. He gives me a friendly wave and I try to grin back, feeling like bait on a hook as I dangle in the middle of the backyard.

“Then we'll time you,” Lana says, pulling out a stopwatch. “See how long it takes you to get to the top.”

I glance up. “The top, as in, the top that's a million miles away?” The rope's fastened to a branch that's easily thirty feet up.

“It's closer than it looks,” Benji assures me.

I see Ling and Naz over by the weapons shed, arms crossed and watching me. “Ready when you are.”

Lana eyes the stopwatch. “And . . . go!”

The fact that I'm being timed makes me more nervous than I should be. I bend at the waist, grab rope that's higher up, then haul myself up in a quick movement.

“Find your foot lock!” Lana calls. I try to look down to guide my legs in the right place but I don't have a clear line of sight.

“Just do it by feel,” Benji suggests.

I twist and turn with the rope, my forehead growing hot and sticky.
There. A foot lock. I know it from Benji's and Lana's encouraging cheers. I make sure it's firm and am once again able to get a little farther up the rope. I manage to repeat this four times in a row. My breathing becomes panting. My strength is ebbing. I must be near the top by now? But when I look up, the branch is still just as far away.

“How long has it been?” I call.

Benji's voice is a lot closer than I thought it'd be. “Just over a minute.”

There's literally no way I am getting to the top of that tree without developing the ability to fly. “I'm coming down!”

“But, you've hardly even—”

The rest of Lana's words are lost in a short, sharp whizzing sound as I loosen my grip on the rope. I fall on my butt, hard. “Oof.” I wince. My face feels red all over. My hands throb and sting at the same time.

I stumble to my feet, brushing leaves off my pants. “That wasn't too bad. Obviously with a couple more days of training . . .”

Benji and Lana are having a conversation with their eyes, then turn to give me a sympathetic, worried look.

“What?” I ask. “Well, how long will we have at Simutech?”

They speak as one. “One minute.”

“One minute?” I repeat incredulously. “To get all the way to the top?”

“I think Simutech is even taller than—” begins Benji, but Lana shushes him.

“We'll get there,” Lana says, putting an extremely toned arm around me.

I'm about to tell her that unequivocally, no, I really don't think so and maybe I'd be better on the ground and out of the way of the rope completely when I catch sight of Ling. Watching me with a grin, she mouths something to me across the backyard.
Skills
. My pride bristles and bucks back up. “Absolutely we'll get there. No question about it.”

It's decided that we'll start with getting me into shape
generally
. I had been laboring under the impression I was pretty fit, but apparently a year of living off cheap millet and raw nerves doesn't actually produce the healthiest of human forms. Benji and Lana hit upon the idea of a multiskilled obstacle course in and around Milkwood that'll build muscle, stamina, and strength. Henny is instructed to put me on a protein-rich diet, a challenge she accepts with gusto.

While Benji and Lana get busy creating the obstacle course, I wander inside the house.

The meeting room is completely devoid of natural light. The front windows all look permanently blackened, I assume for security. The only light comes from the greenish streams Achilles is awash in. Endless yellow and black numbers fall like heavy rain in five separate security streams. Achilles orchestrates them with complex wiggles of his fingers, his tongue protruding from his mouth in concentration.