Revolution (Replica) (3 page)

A needy little sound escaped Nadia’s throat, and she buried her fingers in Dante’s hair, clinging to him as if she would never let go. Her skin felt hot and tingly all over, and the touch of his hands sent her heart racing. She wanted to know what his skin felt like next to hers, wanted to get their shirts out of the way so she could find out, and from Dante’s greedy kisses, she could tell he wanted the same.

Her hands drifted down his back, tucking into the hem of his shirt and dragging it upward. He showed no inclination to protest as she dragged the hem up his back, all the way to his shoulders.

They had to break the kiss so Nadia could pull the shirt off over his head, but the sacrifice was worth it. Nadia admired the sculpted muscles of his chest with the tips of her fingers, loving how his skin peppered with goose bumps at her touch.

“We don’t know how long the others will be gone,” he reminded her breathlessly. But his hands were reaching for the bottom of her tattered and stained tunic top.

“We have at least a few minutes, surely,” she said, lifting her arms over her head so that Dante could pull the tunic off.

“Definitely not enough time,” he said.

Nadia was left in nothing but her bra and the shapeless pants she’d been issued at the retreat. Having never undressed in front of a guy before, she was surprised by the wave of self-consciousness that crashed over her as his eyes examined the expanse of flesh that had been revealed. Were her breasts too small for his liking? She’d never had many curves, and based on the rest of the women of her family, she was pretty sure she wouldn’t be developing any. She had to fight the urge to cover herself with her arms, and her cheeks glowed with heat. And yet for all her nerves, she couldn’t deny the thrill of excitement that coursed through her.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, reaching out to touch her shoulders in a gesture that was almost reverent.

“You, too,” she managed to choke out, then realized what she’d said and felt the glow in her cheeks grow hotter.

Dante’s eyes twinkled with a mixture of desire and humor, his lips turned up in a tempting smile. He was clearly not insulted. His fingers traced down the edges of her collarbone, drifting lower.

Nadia made an appreciative, encouraging sound in her throat and saw how he swallowed hard, his eyes huge and dark.

They both stiffened in a hurry when they heard the sound of footsteps pounding in the hall outside. Nadia let out a little gasp and lunged for her tunic, while Dante cursed under his breath and pulled on his T-shirt. Inside out.

Nadia struggled into the tunic, and as she tugged it into place, the footsteps kept right on pounding—all the way past the door. She and Dante both let out little laughs of relief, and he fixed his T-shirt. There was no way they could start back up where they’d left off—they’d both have half their attention focused on the hallway outside, listening for a sign that their friends were about to walk in on them.

“It’s kinda hot in here,” Nadia said, fanning her face. She knew perfectly well the heat was coming from inside her, but she climbed to her feet anyway. “Let’s open a window.”

“Sure,” Dante said, sounding resigned. “Only let me kill the lights first so no one can see your face.”

She grimaced, realizing she’d been about to do something stupid and careless. Standing in front of a window with the lights on and showing her face to anyone who cared to look up was not the best plan for someone who was supposed to be in hiding. She waited until Dante flipped the lights off, then opened the window.

The air that wafted in from the open window probably wasn’t any cooler than the air inside the apartment, but there was a pleasant breeze blowing. She propped her forearms on the windowsill and gazed out at the teeming streets of the Basement. At first, all she saw was a sea of color, the denizens of the Basement vying with each other to be the most eye-catching. Then she started noticing individuals, the women dressed in clothes that left little to the imagination, the drug dealers peddling their wares out in the open because laws weren’t enforced here, the thieves and pickpockets trolling the “tourists” for easy prey.

“I used to think my life sucked,” Dante said, joining her at the window and looking down at the crowd. “There’s not a lot of perks to being the son of a couple of sanitation workers. I’ve been to the Basement before, but it wasn’t until lately that I realized how good I had it growing up.”

Nadia nodded, but made no comment. She had often envied Employees the freedom of their lives—the freedom to choose their own careers and their own spouses—but she had never felt that way about Basement-dwellers. Their choices were limited at best from the moment of their birth, just like Executives, and yet they didn’t have the safe and comfortable living conditions to make up for it. All of the downsides of being an Executive, with none of the perks.

The sound of a loudspeaker, distant enough that she couldn’t make out any words, caught Nadia’s attention, and she glanced around looking for its source. She didn’t see anything, but Dante nudged her arm with his elbow and pointed upward.

A blimp was hovering above the Basement, and on its side was a huge video screen. The voice Nadia had heard was Dorothy, gazing sternly out from the screen as she spoke into a bank of microphones. It was some kind of press conference, but it appeared to be finishing up. The scene quickly shifted to slightly grainy surveillance footage. Footage that showed Nate pointing a gun at his father’s head and calmly pulling the trigger while Dorothy lay unconscious on the floor and Nadia stood by, a gun in her hand and a smirk on her face.

“Christ!” Dante said beside her, and he held tighter to her hand. “That looks completely real.”

“It isn’t,” Nadia said, a little too emphatically. She knew Dante believed her and Nate’s version of the story, but she knew she herself would have doubts if she hadn’t been there to see what really happened in person. The video was a complete fabrication. Nadia supposed that if Thea was able to create perfect Replicas of human beings in the flesh, it wasn’t hard to imagine she could create digital images of them, complete with voices.

The scene shifted again as the blimp made its lazy way through the sky, this time showing Paxco’s new chief of security offering a reward for information leading to Nate and Nadia’s capture. The scene shifted one more time, and Nadia clapped her hand over her mouth to try to contain a cry of dismay.

A mob of reporters, snapping pictures and shouting questions, were being held back by security officers as Gerald and Esmeralda Lake, Nadia’s parents, were dragged out of the Lake Towers in handcuffs. Her father’s face was white, his eyes glazed with shock, and her mother was openly sobbing. As if that weren’t bad enough, Gerri’s husband was being dragged along right behind them. He must have gone over to their apartment to share in their grief over Gerri’s death, thereby making it easy for Dorothy to round up everyone together. Gerri’s two kids, Corinne and Rory, were both howling with tears as members of Child Protective Services carried them out of the building.

“No,” Nadia gasped, shaking her head as if she could make the horrifying images go away. She had tried so hard to protect her family, especially her little niece and nephew. Thanks to Nadia’s decisions, Gerri was dead. Now their parents and Gerri’s husband were in custody, and her children about to disappear into the foster care system. It was more than Nadia could take.

Dante wrapped his arms around her and held her tight. Nadia’s eyes remained dry, but her heart was hammering and she could hardly draw in a full breath. Her skin felt cold and clammy, and the floor beneath her seemed to be moving. A detached part of her mind wondered if she was having a full-fledged panic attack. As scared as she was for herself and her friends, it couldn’t compare to the fear she felt for her family, who had no idea what was going on and who were helpless to defend themselves against Thea’s cruelty.

Dante slammed the window shut with more force than necessary while Nadia stood paralyzed by mute horror. He gently guided her away from the window and toward their makeshift sofa.

*   *   *

“So
to sum up,” Nate said, when he, Kurt, and Agnes returned to the apartment after their failed attempt to get a phone signal, “we can’t get out of the Basement. We can’t call anyone. Some number of Basement-dwellers will be eager to turn us in because they hate us for being Execs or they just want the reward money. And we don’t have enough money to keep a roof over our heads and food in our mouths for more than about a week.”

As bad as everything about their situation seemed, it was that last part that was the most immediate concern. Money didn’t solve all the world’s problems, but it sure could be helpful.

“There are ways we can earn money,” Kurt said tentatively, watching closely for Nate’s reaction. Nate might not even have realized what he was suggesting if it weren’t for the way he was looking at him.

“No,” Nate said, proud of himself for keeping his voice calm and level, even if his blood pressure did go through the roof. “You are not working ever again. Period.”

Agnes blushed a deep, dark red when she figured out the implications of the exchange, and even Dante looked uncomfortable, pointedly looking away. Only Nadia seemed unfazed by Kurt’s suggestion.

“I agree with Nate,” she said. “You’re taking enough risks for us as it is.”

“And if it’s the only way we can get money?” Kurt challenged.

“Maybe it isn’t,” Nadia said. “I know the resistance doesn’t want to help us or shelter us or anything like that. But maybe they’d be willing to pay us for information.”

Kurt scowled at her. “You mean information like the stuff I already know about Dorothy and Thea? Stuff I would tell them for free? You know I
am
still a member of the resistance, least as far as I know. I haven’t disobeyed any orders.”

“Only because you haven’t talked to anyone yet,” Dante countered. “You know they’re going to order you to stay away from Nate and Nadia the second you check in. You’re going to have to choose between their resistance and ours.” His glance flicked quickly to Nate and back. “I’m going to take a wild guess and say you’ll choose ours. And if that’s the case, getting them to pay us for information is a good idea.”

Kurt did not look at all happy with the idea, and Nate couldn’t blame him. He supposed in Kurt’s shoes, he’d feel pretty disloyal if he tried to squeeze money out of a resistance movement he’d been involved with for so long. But all indications were that the resistance had money, and using some of it to fund a new auxiliary resistance movement didn’t seem like it was that bad an idea to him.

“They’re not going to like it,” Kurt said.

“We’ll put the money to good use,” Nate said. “They might not want anything to do with us, but it seems to me having a second resistance movement in place could be to their advantage. We’ll be attracting a lot of attention from Dorothy and from the security department, and who knows what the resistance will be able to accomplish while the government’s attention is focused elsewhere.”

Nate was making things up as he went along, but he actually thought his argument made pretty good sense. Maybe calling five teenagers hiding out in the Basement a “resistance movement” was overstating things a bit, but the longer they all stayed alive and free, the longer Dorothy would be distracted by them.

“I’ll take it to my cell leader,” Kurt said. “It’ll be up to him.”

*   *   *

It
was after midnight by the time Bishop returned from his meeting with his cell leader, and Nadia was still sunk deep in her pool of misery. She knew Thea was broadcasting the footage of her family’s arrest because she hoped Nadia would give herself up to save them. Nadia had put aside her conscience and her personal safety on more than one occasion to protect her family, and she ached to do that now. The thought that her parents were now in Rikers Island and that Corinne and Rory had been robbed of both of their parents and relegated to the foster care system, all because of Nadia’s actions, made her want to throw up.

If she’d had any reason to hope Thea would release her family, Nadia might have considered giving herself up. But with Thea’s callous disregard for human life, it was possible the only reason Nadia’s family were still alive was because of their potential usefulness as hostages. If Nadia turned herself in, her parents and brother-in-law would most likely be found guilty of some trumped-up treason charge and executed. And Nadia would be tortured until she told Thea everything she knew about the resistance and the location of her friends.

So logic told her keeping hidden was the right thing to do. But logic couldn’t soothe her guilt every time the blimp passed near enough for her to hear the broadcast. She wondered if it was going to hover over the Basement all night and dreamed of arming herself with a rocket launcher to bring it down.

Nadia dragged herself away from her brooding thoughts when Bishop finally returned. Nate, who had been pacing across the living room and generally driving everyone crazy, came to a stop and let out a dramatic sigh of relief as Bishop closed the door and worked his way through all the locks.

“I was beginning to worry about you,” Nate said, and Nadia smiled ruefully to herself. Nate had started worrying the second Bishop had set foot outside the building, and he hadn’t let up in the hours since.

Because it was an unseasonably warm night and everyone appreciated the fresh air, they had left the living room window open and kept the lights off inside, so no one got a good look at Bishop until he’d turned away from the door and taken a couple of limping steps in their direction. Then Nate let out a gasp of dismay and quickly crossed the distance between them, and Nadia jumped to her feet. Dante cursed, and Agnes covered her mouth to stifle a gasp.

“Don’t panic,” Bishop said, putting his arms in front of him to stop Nate from hugging him. “I’m fine.”

“The hell you are!” Nate shouted.

Nadia had to agree with him. Bishop’s left eye was blackened and swollen, and he had a fat lip that had obviously bled on him, leaving dark blotches on the lime-green mesh shirt he wore to show off his tattoos. And then there was that limp.