Proxy (22 page)

The cat met his eyes and Syd felt it looking at him as he’d never been looked at before, considering him without envy or hatred or pity or need. It was a look from the wild, as out of place in the patrons’ zoo café as Syd was. He never wanted to look away.

But the panther turned and jumped from the table, again without a sound, and left the café, its tail swishing behind it as it went.

“You just stared that panther down,” Knox whispered into his ear, resting his hand delicately on the small of Syd’s back.

“No,” said Syd, wishing Knox hadn’t just ruined the moment and stepping away from his patron’s touch. He couldn’t explain what he’d just felt even if he wanted to. And glancing back at Knox, he was certain that he didn’t want to.

“Listen.” Knox leaned in conspiratorially. Marie had gone over to the dead woman, leaned down to check her pulse and her breathing, hoping against hope that they hadn’t just lost their way out. “Let’s just ditch Marie and get out of here. We’ll find another way for you to get to the Rebooters. We don’t need her. She’s crazy. She’ll get us all killed.”

“I don’t even know if I want to go to the Rebooters,” he said. “I don’t want anyone owning me, your father or them.”

“But what if what that old guy said is true? What if you are, like, the savior of the proxies or something?”

Syd shrugged. “Do you think I am?”

Knox didn’t answer. He only wanted Syd to go so he could hurt his father and they both knew it. The rest of it didn’t matter to Knox. He didn’t care about a cause. He hadn’t thought this through all that well. If Syd did have some kind of power in him, that’d be it for the world Knox knew. Aside from the last few days, he quite liked the world he knew. It worked for him.

“I’ll take that as a no,” said Syd.

“Let’s just say I’m a skeptic,” Knox replied. “But you’re safer with me than with her.”

“Why are you so committed to helping me?” asked Syd. “Last night you tried to beat my face in. You can’t hate your father that much.”

“Yes, I can.” Knox didn’t elaborate. Syd didn’t press him. He didn’t need to know Knox any better than he did already. He wasn’t trying to make a friend.

Syd looked over at Marie, the true believer who put her cause before everything, and then at Knox, the pretty boy who believed in nothing but himself. Syd had the EMD stick. He had the choice. Stay with them. Ditch them. It was up to him.

With the murdered woman in front of him and the chaos of the patrons’ zoo all around him, Syd smiled. It was the first time in his life that he ever had a real choice in anything.

He stepped over to Marie and stood over the patron’s body. He squatted down in front of her. Knox scuttled over to be in earshot. He didn’t want the two of them having secrets from him.

“You think I can change the world,” he said.

She nodded with her hand still resting on the dead woman’s cheek. “Someone has to.”

“If we’re going to make it to Old Detroit, I need to know that you and Knox aren’t going to kill each other,” Syd said.

She nodded again.

Syd rested his hand over hers, pulled it away from the dead woman’s cheek, and looked her in the eyes. Her purple irises contracted.

“I can’t change the world,” he told her, trying to be as clear as possible. He needed her to know he wasn’t a hero. He couldn’t carry the weight of her faith in him out of the city, across the desert, all the way to the ruins of Old Detroit. If they were going together, they needed to go as people, not as ideas. “I can’t take away your guilt. Beatrice is dead and I can’t make that right.”

She reached up and put her finger, still cold from the dead body, against the bone behind his ear. She touched the four letters of his mark. “You don’t have to believe it,” she said. “But I know it’s true. I just know it.”

“You have a serious glitch! You know that?” Knox interrupted. He threw his hands up in the air, exasperated. “Listen to Syd! He. Is. Telling. You. He isn’t a revolutionary. He’s just some—again no offense here, Syd—some swampcat running for his life. He just told me. That’s all he wants to be.”

“He’s not ‘just some swampcat’—” Marie started, when she was cut off by the sudden blast of an EMD pulse and sent reeling backward over her heels, twitching on the floor. Syd whirled around, his own EMD stick raised.

“Right-o,” said Egan, strolling across the café floor as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He gripped a dinged-up old EMD stick in one hand and his beloved antique knife in the other. The blade was wet with bright-red blood. Fresh. “He’s
my
swampcat.”

[32]

EGAN WAS IN THE same clothes he’d worn to Arcadia, trying to look lux. Knox could tell there was nothing lux about him. He didn’t belong at the patrons’ zoo. Even his EMD stick was old.

It took Knox a moment to see the wet blade in his other hand.

“Egan,” said Syd, so shocked to see his friend that he didn’t check if Marie was okay.

“Girl was trying to strangle you.” Egan pointed at Marie with the stick.

“No.” Syd shook his head. “She wasn’t.”

“Oops.” Egan shrugged and giggled, his pupils wide as the sky.

Syd started to wonder if he were back in a nightmare. The bloody knife, the body on the floor, the impossibility of Egan . . . he wished it were all in his head. He saw the rise and fall of Marie’s chest and felt a little better about the reality he was trapped in. She was breathing. Egan hadn’t killed her. One lucky break for the day.

Syd rushed over to his friend.

Knox seethed. Egan had done this, all this. He was the one who had approached Nine about the fake ID. He was the one who brought Syd to Arcadia. If it weren’t for Egan, Knox never would have met his proxy. He never would have found out that Marie was still alive. He’d have dealt with his guilt and his father’s disappointment and moved on. His life would be . . . well, not
this
anyway.

“What are you doing here?” Syd asked.

“Looking out for my best friend,” Egan answered. “Like I always said I would. Now let’s get out of here. Extinct animals freak me out.”

Knox had to strain to listen to Syd and Egan talking. His alliance with Syd, fragile as it had been, was now in danger of shattering completely. He had to know what Egan was up to.

“You killed that woman.” Syd pointed at the dead patron on the floor.

“She was going to send you straight to Sterling,” Egan told him. “You can’t trust these Upper City people.”

“Mr. Baram sent her!” Syd objected.

“Trust me, brother. She was going to sell you out. I know things.”

“Did you let the animals go?” Syd asked.

“You think I could do that?”

“That’s not an answer,” Knox interjected. Egan looked him up and down, then turned back to Syd.

“Can’t believe you ran off with . . .
him,
” said Egan.

“How did you even find me here?” Syd demanded.

“I had some help. I can’t explain now.” Egan wiped the blade of his knife on his pants leg and tucked it into his belt. He tapped Syd on the shoulder with the EMD stick—it wasn’t turned on anymore—and nodded at Knox. “Want me to fry this knockoff loser?”

Knox stepped back. He spread his hands with open palms, in a gesture he thought looked open and trusting without looking too much like surrender. It was, however, surrender.

For some reason, his mother’s face passed through his mind. It was hazy, like a bad transmission. He hardly remembered what she looked like, she’d been gone so long. If Egan killed him right now, maybe he’d get to see her again.

He held his breath, braced for the pain. He didn’t know what an EMD pulse felt like, but it looked agonizing. He hoped he could handle it without embarrassing himself. He felt an anxious pressure on his bladder.

“No.” Syd pushed Egan’s EMD stick down. He was not going to let anyone else die because of him. Not even Knox.

Egan grunted. “Fine. If you want to take your patron, I get it. A little revenge? Maybe something else . . .” Egan smirked and Knox cringed. “But the girl? What possible use could
you
have for
her
?”

Syd rolled his eyes. “It’s not that. At all.”

“Well, let me know if you change your mind.” He smiled widely at Knox and waved the EMD stick in his direction. “I can play matchmaker . . .”

“Don’t even joke,” said Syd.

“You used to be more fun,” said Egan.

“I didn’t used to have the whole city trying to kill me,” said Syd. “Anyway, Knox stays with me. They both do.”

“Fine,” Egan grumbled. “But he tries anything, I get to fry him, okay?”

Syd nodded and Knox realized he’d gone from accomplice pretending to be a hostage to an actual hostage. He was unarmed and at Egan’s mercy.

Knox had heard about the kids who lived in the Valve since he was little. The ones who survived into adulthood were mostly criminals, unrepentant debtors or worse. They didn’t respect contracts or property; they all took knockoff syntholene and expired biode patches. They’d all quite happily watch the Upper City burn if they were allowed to. Egan was about as typical a Valve kid as Knox could imagine, even in his knockoff Upper City clubbing outfit.

“The Valve is going crazy.” Egan leaned in to Syd. “Tearing itself apart looking for you. There’s a reward—dead or alive—it’s insane. Enough to pay off five lifetimes of debt. They even came for Baram.”

“Yeah,” said Syd. “I know.”

“Old bastard fought off a dozen Guardians.” Egan laughed. “Gave ’em all the slip.”

Syd felt a weight lift off his chest. Mr. Baram was okay. For now.

“Speaking of giving them the slip,” Egan added. “It’s time to go.”

“We’ve got to wake Marie,” Syd told him.

“Better do it fast.” Knox pointed out through the glass doors of the café. Just on the other side, a security guard led a line of weary penguins back toward their exhibit. Past the penguins, a half-dozen Guardians were walking in a V formation through the zoo, straight for the café. Behind them, three Arak9 bots clattered across the floor.

Egan cursed.

The boys rushed to rouse Marie.

“Sorry I zapped you, sweetheart.” Egan smiled down at her. “I was looking after my boy here. But now, we gotta go.”

Marie rubbed her eyes and shook herself awake. Now she knew what the proxies went through with every EMD hit. It wasn’t the most pleasant knowledge in the world. She pushed herself off the floor. Her left leg kept vibrating and Knox watched her try—and fail—to put weight on it.

“I guess I could find a use for that one.” Egan winked.

“Knock it off.” Syd cuffed Egan on the ear. Marie looked up at him with hellfire in her bright purple eyes. Pure hate.

Syd wanted to let her know that Egan talked big, but he was really harmless. Then he glanced at the dead body on the floor, the chaos of the zoo, and it struck him that that wasn’t true anymore. Egan was far from harmless.

“Follow me, kiddies,” Egan said and guided Syd to the far corner of the room. They stood beside a plexi wall with a commanding view of the canyon land beyond the city. It stretched on, desolate and lifeless, all the way to the horizon. It was the land of drought and earthquakes, volcanic surges and flash floods. It was a land that humans had long ago abandoned.

It was where they were going.

“You’ll never get out this way,” Marie said, but Egan tapped his hand on the wall and a projection popped up. A few taps and a service door in the wall slid open without a sound. Egan gave Marie a cocky smile and pulled Syd through.

“We can’t go with this guy,” Marie whispered. “I don’t trust him.”

“I don’t trust you either,” Knox whispered back from the corner of his mouth.

“He’s a murderer,” she said.

“He’s Syd’s friend,” answered Knox, as if that explained anything at all.

A sudden crash as the glass entrance to the café exploded. The Guardians rushed in, the bots blocked the exits.

“Stop,” one of the Guardians commanded and Knox met her eyes. He felt a tug in his stomach. He wanted to obey, wanted to surrender to her authority and put all this behind him.

“Snap out of it!” Marie pulled him back through the service door, which slid shut in his face. He gave her a meek nod of thanks and they turned to sprint after Egan and Syd.

Knox had never seen the working areas behind the zoo exhibits before. This was for staff, security, and their bots only. There was no reason a patron would ever need to know what went on behind the scenes. Now they were racing through the inner workings and it wasn’t quite what Knox had imagined.

The walls were brown concrete, dripping with moisture from the tangle of pipes and conduits that ran along the ceiling. Raw LED lighting made the hallways shine like day. And the light revealed all the grime and dirt on the floor.

They caught up to Egan and Syd at an intersection of tunnels. Egan looked down at his feet and then turned left.

Knox realized that Egan had augmented-reality lenses in. He was getting the layout of these tunnels from a datastream that only he could see. How would some slum rat get access to a plan of the tunnels at the zoo? Knox wanted to signal Syd somehow.

At the next junction, Egan turned around. “Hurry up!” he said. “We’re not waiting for these patrons if they fall behind.”

“You two,” Syd told Knox and Marie. “Go in front of me. Now.”

Marie nodded and stepped past him. Knox stepped up too, making sure to brush against Syd as he went past.

“Be careful,” he whispered into Syd’s ear. He wanted Syd to remember who warned him first if things went wrong.

Then they were running again.

They ran past embryonic tanks where new animals were grown. Half-formed penguins and lions and shapeless blobs that hadn’t been given their stem cells yet. Life without a program. It was kind of how Knox felt right now too.

They ran past transformers and solar batteries, network servers blinking and humming, a row of huge cooling fans that blasted hot air away from the exhibits and down the corridor. Knox was soaked with sweat. He was in good shape, but felt like he could barely breathe. There was no climate control back here, just heat and damp.