Quicksilver (28 page)

“I’m sorry,” I began, but he cut me off.

“Don’t.” He closed his eyes briefly, as though I’d given him a headache. Then he slid his glasses back on and looked at me. “Do you know what Deckard told me, when I accused him of being your stalker?”

I shook my head.

“He told me you were a pathological liar. He told me your parents were con artists who had made their money by manipulating people and that your family had Mafia connections. He told me you were good at making people like me feel sorry for you but that everything about you was fake. And he said I shouldn’t get too attached to you, because you were the kind of person who’d abandon her friends in a second to save her own skin.”

It was like looking at the truth through warped glass. But maybe that was how Deckard saw it. Maybe that was how Lara and Brendan and the others I’d left behind saw it too. I wanted to tell Milo that it wasn’t like that, but why should he believe me? Why should he believe anything I said to him now?

“There’s another thing you should know,” Milo went on. “You know when Deckard got your cell number from Jon? It wasn’t when he came into the store on Friday night and questioned everybody. He got it the next day, when Jon called him. Because Jon’s aunt owns the Cakery, and he was working in the back when you and I came in together. So that was when he realized you’d been using him all along. Just like Deckard said.”

The words wouldn’t have stung so much if they hadn’t been true. “How do you know that?” I asked. “Why would Jon tell you about—”

“He didn’t. But when I got into work on Saturday, he grabbed me and said, ‘Tell your girlfriend I hope she had fun making a fool out of me.’ Once I remembered who his aunt was, it wasn’t hard to do the math.”

Sebastian was so quiet that he might have been invisible. This wasn’t about him anymore, if it ever had been. This was between Milo and me.

“Alien, you say.” Milo let out another humorless laugh. “I guess that explains the asexual thing? Don’t want to get too close to the humans. Might get some kind of disease.”

Sebastian’s brows went up, and his eyes flicked questioningly to mine.
Asexual?

“No,” I said. “It has nothing to do with that. Milo—”

“Don’t,” he told me again. “I don’t want to hear any more of what you think is the truth. I don’t want to hear it even if it is the truth.” He turned away and added quietly, “I just can’t believe you’ve been lying to me all this time. I thought you were better than that.”

Anger surged inside me. “Oh, yeah? Well, I guess it’s easy for you to judge, seeing as you’re such an expert on being honest with the people you care about. When were you planning to tell your mom your plans for September again?”

I waited, but Milo didn’t speak. He just sat there with his back to me, shoulders stiff and his head unnaturally straight. Then he screwed his earbuds in and turned up his music so loud I could make out the lyrics from the back seat.

I knew, then, that I’d lost him.

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By the time we reached the gas station half an hour later, the silence had become toxic. Sebastian pulled up in front of the pumps and got out without saying a word. Milo disappeared around the side of the building, presumably looking for the washroom. I climbed the wooden steps to the convenience store and looked for something to fill the aching hole inside me, but the thought of putting anything sugary, salty, or chemically enhanced in my mouth made me sick. I wandered through the aisles, staring blindly at one shelf after another, until Sebastian came up behind me and said, “Never mind. We’ll get something to eat in North Bay.”

He pulled two water bottles from the fridge and went off to pay the cashier. I took out my phone and looked at it. There was reception here, so I could call my parents if I wanted. But I didn’t have the heart to talk to them right now. I felt as though a single word of rebuke or kindness would break me.

So I texted:

–Heading home. See you around 11. Love you.

Then I shut off the phone.

When I followed Sebastian outside, the truck was parked by the edge of the road, with the tank filled and the cab empty. The tarp that had covered our baggage was loose, one corner flapping in the breeze, and Milo’s pack was gone.

“Where is he?” I asked, whirling to look for him—but Sebastian put a hand on my shoulder.

“He’s not coming with us,” he said.

“But—”

“I know. But he can find his own way home from here, and maybe it’s for the best.” Sebastian sighed. “Though I’d hoped this would turn out differently.”

So had I. I’d hoped that Milo would understand why I’d lied to him, that he’d give me a second chance. But he’d reacted just the way I feared my parents would, if I ever told them. Shock, disappointment and, finally, rejection. I pressed my fingertips against my eyes, warding off the sting of tears. Then I opened the door to the truck’s front seat and climbed in.

“All right then,” I said in a cool, brittle voice that hardly seemed my own. “Alien road trip it is. Let’s go.”

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We stopped only once after that, for coffee and sandwiches. Sebastian drove fast and decisively, as though he were as impatient to get home as I was—except, I reminded myself, he didn’t really have a home. And the closest thing he had to a family, on this planet anyway, was me.

Not that we were blood relatives, or at least I hoped not. We certainly looked nothing alike. But then, I had no idea who my biological parents were, except that one of them had been a technician. Or so Faraday thought. But what did that mean?

“Just what it sounds like,” said Sebastian, when I asked him. He glanced over his shoulder, making sure the eighteen-wheeler lumbering up behind us wasn’t too close, and merged into the fast lane. We were on the 400 now, heading south toward Toronto, and the traffic was flowing smoothly: with luck I’d be home in under two hours. “Technicians are bred to excel at building and repairing equipment. When a scientist or some other senior member of the Meritocracy requires a particular piece of machinery, the engineers design it and the technicians make it to their specifications.”

Like I’d done for Sebastian, with the transceiver. “What if they decide to build it differently?” I asked. “Or get their own ideas about how to make it run better?”

“That doesn’t happen,” said Sebastian. “Or if it ever has, the Meritocracy made sure to quash the story—and probably the technicians involved—before anyone else found out. Technicians aren’t bred for initiative. They’re bred for dedication, endurance, and doglike obedience to their superiors. When there’s a crisis, you can always tell who the technicians are, because they’re the ones running
toward
the danger instead of away from it.”

That description wasn’t entirely me, thank God. But even so, parts of it hit uncomfortably close to home. “Doglike obedience,” I echoed, making a face. “What a lovely way to describe it. Is that how my birth mother ended up pregnant? Because some engineer slapped his thigh and whistled, and she came running?”

“Possibly,” said Sebastian. “But it could have been your mother who was the engineer, and it’s also possible that your biological parents’ affair was mutual. I don’t mean that technicians have no will or initiative of their own. Only that they find it difficult to disobey a direct order.”

One simple phrase, so casually spoken—and yet it hit me with the force of a bullet. No wonder I’d worked so hard to please my parents and do whatever they told me. No wonder I’d needed Milo to carry me into the makerspace that first time and choked up when I’d tried to tell him my secret. I had enough engineer in me to disagree with my parents and even argue with them at times, but when it came down to it I was still a good little technician inside.

And Sebastian was a scientist, which meant he outranked me. Was that why I’d gone along with his plan so readily? I’d grumbled at him and acted like I was doing him a favor, all the while telling myself I was building the transceiver for my own sake rather than his. But deep down I’d suspected—no, I’d
known—
that his idea wasn’t going to work. Yet I hadn’t tried to come up with an alternative.

Was any part of myself my own? Or was I just dancing to the tune of my manipulated DNA , and all the so-called choices I’d made in my life were an illusion?

“Tori?” said Sebastian. “Are you all right?”

As though he cared. As though it mattered, now. I thought about Milo, hitchhiking home from the middle of nowhere because he couldn’t stand to be with me one minute longer. I thought about my parents, waiting anxiously for a daughter who was so much more than they’d expected and so much less than they deserved. And when I thought of telling them about the relay, I wanted to fling the door open and hurl myself into the oncoming traffic.

But I had to tell them something. Rightly or wrongly, they cared about me. And if I vanished again without warning or explanation, it would kill them.

“The relay,” I said to Sebastian. “Do you think it followed us, after we left the observatory? Could it catch up to us now?”

Sebastian shifted restlessly, flexing his back and shoulders. “Well, it doesn’t have to follow the road, so it can move faster and more directly than we can. But its scanning range isn’t great enough to detect you at more than twenty kilometers’ distance, which could slow it down considerably.” He checked the rearview mirror and changed lanes again. “On the other hand, it did go into stealth mode after Milo threw it away. So it could be hiding anywhere right now. The back of the truck, for instance.”

The idea made me shudder, but it only took me a second to dismiss it. Mathis wanted to locate me and beam me back to his lab as soon as possible. So if the relay was following me that closely, I’d be gone already…

But I wasn’t.

Hope kindled inside me. Without a quicksilver chip in my arm telling the relay where to find me, it would have to scan in every direction to pick up my trail—and that would take time. Enough time, perhaps, that I could come up with a new and better way to protect myself. My own plan and no one else’s, a plan that would actually work. I took a sip of my tepid coffee and felt the knot in my stomach loosen a little.

Sebastian hadn’t relaxed, though. If anything he seemed to be getting more uptight with every kilometer. His hands were knotted around the steering wheel, and he kept hunching his shoulders as though they hurt him.

“Do you want me to drive?” I asked.

“You have your license?”

“Not yet, but I know what I’m doing. I won’t tell if you won’t.”

Sebastian’s mouth twitched. “Thank you. But I’ll be fine.”

And now he looked even more unhappy than before. Was it the shame of having his plan to stop Mathis fall to pieces? The disappointment of losing Milo? Fear for Alison’s safety, now that the relay was out of his control?

Or was there something else on his mind that I didn’t know about?

“Come on, Faraday,” I said. “I know we’re not exactly best friends, but I’m willing to call a truce if you are. What’s going on?”

I made my voice gentle, even put a hand on his shoulder, but it didn’t help. Sebastian flinched away from my touch as though I’d stung him. “Stop that.”

So my charms were as wasted on him as his were on me. Well, nobody could say I hadn’t tried. I sat back, folding my arms, and we drove the rest of the way home in cold silence.

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I’d thought Sebastian was going to drop me off at my house. But when we reached the corner of Ross Street he turned the opposite way, into the graveyard. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“I think it’ll be better to let you off here. For discretion’s sake.” He drove slowly up the cemetery lane and braked under a spreading maple, then jumped out, leaving the engine running. I was opening the passenger door to get out when he came around the back of the truck to meet me, carrying my bag.

I took it, ignoring the hand he offered, and climbed down onto the pavement. My legs felt weak from sitting so long, and I flexed them to get the circulation working. “It’s been a trip,” I said dryly. “Thanks.”

Sebastian stood still, looking down at me. In the moonlight his face looked grey, and his eyes were tired and sad. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I never wanted it to end this way.” And he held his hand out for me to shake.

I sighed. Swinging the duffel bag to my left hand, I reached out with my right—

And Sebastian’s fingers clamped around my wrist like a manacle. Before I could even cry out, he whipped his left hand out of his pocket and slapped something onto the inside of my forearm.

There was no pain. Only a millisecond of cold numbness, and the electric buzz of terror as I realized what it meant. I yanked my hand from Sebastian’s and turned it over—to see the last shining drop of quicksilver, tiny as a pinhead, vanish under the surface of my skin.

I screamed, clawing at my arm in a desperate attempt to dig the stuff out. But my nails were too short, and it was too late. I could feel the liquid metal squirming into its preprogrammed shape, tendrils branching off in every direction as it tapped into nerves and muscles, arteries and veins. Learning my body’s secrets, so it could transmit that information back to the relay—and to Mathis.

My knees buckled, and I crashed to the pavement. I hunched beneath the maple, sobbing and clutching my right hand to my chest. There was a chip inside me and the relay knew where I was and there was nothing I could do to protect myself now, nowhere in the world where I would be safe—

“I don’t know how much time you have left,” said Sebastian, so quietly I could barely hear him. “I hope it’s enough. Good-bye, Tori.”

Then he climbed back into his truck and drove away.

INTERLUDE: Deterministic Jitter

(A slight movement of a transmission signal in time or phase that can cause errors and loss of synchronization, and is reproducible under controlled conditions )