The Trials (The Red Trilogy Book 2) (14 page)

“Fuck,” Jaynie says softly. I can’t tell if she’s offended or pleased.

Flynn is less complicated. “I’ll do it!”

“I want to know more,” Harvey says, “but I’m interested.”

Moon looks around uneasily. “You know, we survived a
hell of a lot already. I mean, how long can our luck hold out?”

That’s the smartest question I’ve ever heard Moon ask—but no one pays any attention to him.

Tuttle, as usual, is looking to Nolan for guidance, while Nolan is staring at me. After a few seconds, he asks, “What are you going to do, LT?”

“Go home. For a while, anyway.”

“But you’re not saying no?”

“I’m probably saying no. Moon’s got it right. Think hard about this before you sign anything.” I stand up. “You’ve got five months of pay in your accounts. Get a room, get laid, get stoned, whatever. Get a phone or farsights—and call me. Call me in a few days. We’ll figure things out.”

I make sure they all know how to contact me. Then our packs go on. We take our helmets in hand. “We’ve started a process,” I warn them. “And there’s going to be all kinds of fallout. There are people who support Thelma Sheridan, who support what she did on Coma Day, because they’re that scared of the Red. Those people are your enemies. So be careful of who you’re with and where you go—and don’t be surprised if things get crazy when her trial starts on Monday.” I pick up the folded bones of my dead sister. “Let’s go.”

•   •   •   •

I sit by the window on the evening train to New York, my dad beside me and my uncle across the aisle. I’m on edge, watching the dark reflections of the other passengers in the window. Watching the reflection of my dad as he watches me.

“You’ve been through a lot, Jimmy,” he says. “It’s going to take time to process. It’ll take time to find a new direction.”

“Yes, sir.”

I answer absently because I’m thinking about the squad,
already second-guessing my decision to leave DC, to leave them on their own.

“Jimmy.”

I turn to look at him.

He gives me a half smile. “I never raised you to call me ‘sir,’ so don’t start now.”

I crack a smile of my own, though I’m not really feeling it. “Like you said, sir, it’ll take time to process.”

“Smartass.”

Across the aisle, my uncle nods off.

My dad tells me he’s not tired, that he’s too wired on the aftermath of adrenaline to sleep, but a few minutes later, he’s dozing too.

I stay awake and on watch. We’re in first class with just a few other passengers in our car and only the staff wandering through, so the potential risk seems minimal, but I remain alert anyway.

My dad wakes up again. He uses his tablet to answer e-mails. I watch my overlay. It’s almost time for the usual daily video upload of my life’s adventures, and I’m anxious to know what will happen now that the army’s programs are out of my head.

But nothing happens. There’s no activity—which means whatever story the Red was telling through me is over.

I should be relieved, but I’m not. I’m scared.

My dad looks up from his tablet as we pull into the station. His eyes are bright; he looks happy. “Almost there,” he assures me.

“I’m not looking forward to the crowds.”

Like I told my squad, we really do have enemies, and not just random crazies. I know Carl Vanda wants me dead and maybe the president does too, but if the Red is really gone I’ll have to handle it on my own, without the prescient warning sense that kept me alive in the past.

I never thought I’d miss the King David gig.

“You’ll be fine, Jimmy. Give it a week and it’ll feel like home again.”

I think it might take a little longer than that.

My heart races as we leave the train. The station isn’t crowded, but people are moving in so many different directions it’s hard to do a threat assessment. So I make sure we move quickly, and in just a few minutes we’re in a hired car that’s taking us through Manhattan’s midnight streets.

The city is changed. The glittering energy I remember on Saturday nights is gone. Only a few people are out and there are more bicycles than cars. “Is there a curfew?” I ask.

“No,” my dad says. “But the economy was hard hit on Coma Day.”

We say good night to my uncle, then go on to our own building, where a crowd of mediots and video stalkers waits for us at the door.

My dad sees the look on my face and shrugs. “Don’t worry too much about it. The celebrity can’t last.”

He’s right, but I still have to get past them. So I do the same thing I did in DC: pretend they’re not there. I walk through the throng with my helmet in one hand and my dead sister in the other, using the bulk of my equipment to open the way while I ignore their eager questions. I know I have to expect this. It’s going to be routine for a while to have strangers pressing around me, but I hate it. There’s no way to know if one of them has a gun or a knife, and I’m not wearing armor.

I should do something about that.

We make it into the lobby.

Overhead, a huge plastic banner greets me:
Welcome
home, James Shelley! You have the thanks of a grateful nation.
Fortunately, no one’s around, so I don’t have to think of anything to say.

I press the button to call the elevator, but nothing happens. Apparently, my fingerprints are no longer in the system.

“We’ll get your biometrics reactivated tomorrow,” my dad says, pushing the button himself.

As we’re riding up, I tell him, “I want to go into the apartment first. Alone.”

“Why?”

“Just to check on things.”

Things like bombs rigged to go off on our arrival, or waiting assassins.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of, Jimmy.”

I know he’s wrong.

We arrive at our floor. I want to rig up in my dead sister before we go any farther.

“Look, let me show you something,” my dad says. He puts down his suitcase and takes out his tablet. On its screen are feeds from security cameras inside the apartment. There is of course no one in any of the rooms. “An AI monitors the apartment at all times. No one’s been inside.”

“What if the AI’s been subverted?”

He gives me a dark look—“You can’t live your whole life being paranoid”—and picking up his suitcase he heads down the hall. The apartment door recognizes him and opens. No bombs go off. “Come on in,” he calls over his shoulder. “You’re home.”

My dad is no sentimentalist. He had my room redecorated after I left, new furniture brought in. But the bed is still the same one I shared with Lissa when she stayed over on Saturday nights. It feels like I’m trespassing on someone else’s life when I lie there in the dark, remembering how it used to be. Melancholy grows until the flickering of the skullnet icon distracts me, reminds me there is no point in brooding. Why think on the past? I can’t change any of it.
Why think at all? Better to sleep. The skullnet helps me with that. I don’t wake up again until past noon.

Then I wake in a panic, sweat-soaked, heart hammering. I’m out of bed and on my titanium feet before I know where I am.

I hear my dad talking, happy and relaxed in the living room, while in my head I hear a ghost voice shouting an urgent alarm:
Rig up! Armor and bones!

What the hell is wrong with me?

I cross to the window and cautiously pull aside the heavy curtain, blinking into bright sunlight, studying the building across the street, wondering if there’s a sniper out there looking for me. I think about opening the curtain all the way, because I hate being afraid, and anyway, with the proper equipment, a shooter could see through the curtain and through the tinted window glass.

I open it and flood the room with sunlight.

But I stay well back from the window.

•   •   •   •

That afternoon, Sunday, I go through my e-mail and my phone log. I have my phone set to put live calls through only from select people. Everything else gets logged. I clear the log and after a quick scan I dump most of the e-mail, knowing I’ll never catch up. When I check the phone log again, there are twenty-four new calls. I recognize only one name: Joby Nakagawa, the brat engineer who made my legs.

Curiosity wins, and I call him back.

He links right away. A little image slides into sight on the periphery of my vision and I’m looking at his pale face framed in white-blond hair. “Hey, Joby.” Then, because he’s sensitive about his work and I have a bad habit of baiting him, I add, “I haven’t managed to break the legs yet. Still working on that.”

“You can’t fucking break the legs.”

I sure as hell hope he’s right.

He adds, “I can’t believe the fucking army gave them to you without consulting me.”

“Sorry about that.”

“I told them I have a program running on your overlay—”

“You do?”

“Of course I do. I have to track performance data on the legs. You didn’t erase it, did you?”

“I don’t think so, but the army wiped all their stuff.”

“I don’t put my data where Command can access it.”

He talks me through the file tree. It turns out he knows his way around my overlay better than I do.

“You see it?” he asks.

“‘Bonedance’?”

I hear a heartfelt sigh of relief. “So it’s still there. Okay. Find the settings.”

“Why? What do you want?”

“I want my data. It hasn’t been able to upload in months, and now the army has cut off my access.”

It’s nice to have confirmation that the army really is out of my head.

Joby and I have had our differences, but he did a damn fine job on my legs and I don’t see any reason to deny him his data. “Tell me what to do.”

We set up his access, and the first data package uploads. “Got it,” he confirms. “Okay . . . I’m setting the program to upload once a day.”

Suspicion kicks in. “Hold on. Is this going to include location data?”

“Is there
anything
you don’t complain about?”

“I’m not complaining. I’m asking a question.”

He must really want this to happen, because he bites back on his temper. “For the data to be meaningful, I need to know the environment you’re operating in.”

“Yeah? And what if I don’t want to be tracked all over the globe?”

“Why? What have you got to hide? Are you going to work for Carl Vanda?”

This is so out of context, I’m at a loss for words.

“Because I heard you played the hero and saved his life—”

“Ah,
shit
.”

“—that you fucking got in the way after somebody set up a guaranteed kill.”

“Somebody?”

“Yeah.”

I inventory my memory of Joby’s menagerie of robot toys . . . and decide not to ask any more questions. “You’re right, Joby. I did get in the way, and I’m sorry for it. I really am.”

Several seconds pass in silence while he tries to decide if my apology is sincere.

It’s totally sincere.

“Yeah, all right. If you’re off on some secret mission, you can turn off the geopositioning. It’s just a check box.”

“Okay. I’ll do that if I need to.”

“Don’t forget to turn it on again.”

“Yeah.”

“Or I’ll reach in and do it for you. And if the legs ever do break? No one works on them but me. You got that?”

“Understood.”

•   •   •   •

I go through the closet and the drawers, pulling out my old civilian clothes, the leftovers of another life, from before I went into the army. I put all the slacks in a pile to be donated because my robot legs are two inches longer than my organic ones used to be. Most of the shirts still fit, though I discard a few that I must have purchased in a state of teenage euphoria.

Then I decide I’m going out.

I pull on a pair of knee-length athletic shorts and a running shirt, no shoes on my gray titanium feet because I don’t need them. My heart is thudding at the thought of going outside—which is why I have to go.

“Dad!”

“Yeah?”

I find him in the living room. “I’m going running.” I head straight for the door, not giving him a chance to object.

He doesn’t try. Just like last night, he’s braver than I am. “Don’t run over any mediots,” he advises me as I step into the hall.

It’s not the mediots who scare me. I’m used to being watched. It’s the potential for a bullet in my brain that’s got my heart racing.

The elevator stops twice to pick up people. Both times, the new arrivals do a double take on my legs before they realize who I am. Then it’s all smiles and welcome-homes. I want to be polite, but “Thank you” is all I can manage.

The skullnet icon is glowing steadily by the time I cross the lobby, but I still feel afraid. Outside the door there’s a gauntlet of at least fifteen mediots. They’ve caught sight of me and already their farsights are blinking in recording mode.

Face your fears, right? I step outside. A mob of strangers closes in, shouting questions. I shoulder through them. Feedback from my legs is a jumble of sharp sensation, hard to parse, but I think it’s telling me I’m stepping on feet, kicking ankles. I don’t care because I’m on the edge of panic, sure that someone in this crowd is not what they seem and that I’m about to take a knife in the ribs or feel the cold muzzle of a gun hard against the back of my neck, my last sensation. Then the sidewalk opens in front of me and I take off at a hard run.

The corner light cooperates with my escape, letting me cross the street. I turn right, then left, cross another street, and put another block behind me before I slow to a walk. I’m sucking for air; my heart’s hammering. Despite my daily workouts, the five months I spent in prison have wrecked my aerobic conditioning. I need to start training again, today. But for now I just walk.

The sidewalk is not crowded, but there are people coming and going, some in masks. It makes me uneasy, not seeing their faces. Anonymity shifts the power balance, which is why we always patrolled with our visors opaque.

I try not to make eye contact, but I notice anyway when gazes linger on my legs. Some people even stop and stare, their farsights blinking in recording mode. A few try to stop me, to get me to talk, but I just keep going.

In my logical mind I know it’s a beautiful afternoon, sunny and cool, but it’s not my logical mind that’s in control and I hate everything about being out on the street. I hate the touch of the breeze against my skin and the absurd lightness of my clothes that offer no protection against anything but sunburn; I hate that I don’t have the assistance of the squad drone and that I can’t tap into its angel vision to look around corners and assess hazards in the surrounding terrain. I hate that I have to turn around to know what’s behind me.