“Gray—”
“I got this, man.” It wasn’t even a lie.
Rafe roared his frustration and heaved a final time, driving the door open for the few precious seconds it took to dive through it. The soldiers fired after him, but he vanished as the blast doors slammed home.
Gray raised his hands and locked his fingers behind his head. It was the only way to still their shaking as he stared at the closed blast door.
Maybe he was wrong. Maybe fear had driven him to the wrong conclusion. Richter was after most of them, after all. He might not have realized what—who—he really had within his grasp.
But Gray hadn’t lived this long by lying to himself, and brutal honesty said otherwise. Expect the worst, it crooned, and you’ll never be wrong.
“On your knees!” someone bellowed.
He dropped, fingers still interlaced behind his head. “I won’t fight you. Richter and I have business.”
He had to get to Maya. And the only way to do that now was to go through Richter.
June 3rd, 2079
I suspect the relationship developing between Marjorie and Simon is inappropriate, at the very least. I should discourage it, for both of their sakes.
But he does seem to have distracted her from that troublesome friendship with DC-025.
The Recovered Journal of Birgitte Skovgaard
TWENTY-THREE
Maya couldn’t tell if she was awake.
So many of her nightmares started this way. The darkness, the disorientation. The zip ties digging into her wrists. The hard back of a chair digging into her shoulders every time she tried to move. If she struggled too much, the plastic binding her wrists to the chair would cut off circulation.
She’d done that, last time. Twisted until numbness claimed her hands, then focused on the painful prickling as they came back to life. Discomfort was a distraction. It was an escape, the only one she’d had. They couldn’t deliver her real physical pain—her brain would short out and shut down long before they broke her will. Though that reality never seemed to matter in her nightmares. In her nightmares, they hurt her.
Please let this be a nightmare. Please.
Her head swam. Groggy, like she’d been given drugs. Her breath came faster, stale and warm against her face with every exhale. This wasn’t a natural darkness—there was something covering her eyes. Not a blindfold, something large enough to cover her whole face.
Panic jacked her heart rate higher. She twisted her wrists again, hard enough for the plastic to cut into her skin. Her other senses clamored for her attention, a dizzying press of chaos battering her fragile self-control. Memories—nightmares?—surfaced in overlapping sensory flashes.
The crash of the door to the van flying open.
The crack of gunfire.
The metallic scent of Conall’s blood. The sound of his flesh tearing.
Oh God, oh fuck—no—
A sting in her neck. Tobias Richter’s smug face.
Darkness.
She dragged in a frantic breath, then another. It was the smell that convinced her she wasn’t dreaming. Subtle, but undeniable as she hauled in another shaky breath. Lilac. Vanilla. A subtle musk. Expensive perfume, achingly familiar.
But not from her nightmares.
Maya stopped struggling. She flexed each finger, working stiffness out of them, and forced herself to listen. An industrial air conditioner rumbled in the distance. The quiet hiss of cool air through the vent came from somewhere to her left. After a moment, she heard a soft whisper. Not a voice. Fabric. Silk, brushing against silk as someone moved. Then a barely audible metallic creak. A near-silent exhale.
Gray had been right. She knew what so many things sounded like. Now that she knew how it felt to make the connection between memory and her senses, it was effortless.
She straightened and turned her head three inches to the left. She envisioned what she knew was there. A pale woman with her long, red hair twisted into a tight bun atop her head. Brown eyes. Freckles across her nose. Professional makeup. Expertly tailored silk. Seated in a metal chair. Her legs crossed.
The perfect mental picture stripped away the fear of the unknown. Maya’s voice didn’t even tremble. “Hello, Cara.”
The chair creaked again, then the fabric on her head vanished. Maya blinked at the sudden light, squinting at the woman who resumed her position, her soft, brown eyes gazing on Maya with such tender sadness you’d think she was the one tied to a chair.
Cara Kennedy. DC-025. Maya’s first friend.
Tobias Richter’s data courier.
“Maya.” Cara leaned forward, that familiar floral perfume evoking such a violent sense memory that for a moment, time overlapped.
She was fourteen, sitting cross-legged and still on the end of her bed as a nineteen-year-old Cara held her chin in one hand. “Your skin is flawless,” Cara murmured, using a steady hand to apply eyeliner to Maya’s lash line. “You don’t need makeup. But sometimes it can be fun. Just because we’re silent doesn’t mean we have to be invisible.”
Maya squeezed her nails into her palm, grounding her in the present. Cara’s makeup was still perfect. Effortless and elegant, as it should be when she could afford the best of literally everything. Her expensive perfume was a custom blend. Her silk blouse was unbuttoned to reveal a massive emerald on a chain at her throat. Emeralds studded with diamonds sparkled at her ears. Her pants were clearly tailored to her narrow hips and long legs, ending perfectly before the heels of her sensible but fashionable boots.
As a display of wealth, it was meant to awe. Maya mostly wondered how many people in Five Points she could feed by fencing those earrings.
“I grieved for you, you know.” Cara’s voice remained soft and sad. “When they found you dead, I wept for days. I’d begged Tobias to let me talk to you after Birgitte’s treason was uncovered. I told him you couldn’t be blamed. I know you, Maya. I know you better than anyone. You would never hurt people.”
“I was hurting people,” Maya countered, her voice scratchy. Her mouth tasted like cotton gone bad, thanks to the drugs. “Every day on the Hill, I was hurting people. You’re hurting people. That’s all the TechCorps does. You of all people know that. You know his secrets.”
“Oh, Maya.” Cara lifted a hand, and Maya jerked her head back before her fingers could make contact with her cheek. The wounded pain in Cara’s eyes deepened as she let her hand hang there for a moment before settling back in her lap. “Birgitte damaged you so badly with her lies. I wish I’d seen how she was abusing you. I should have done something.”
It was like falling backward into a mirror reality. The fervent conviction in Cara’s eyes was so earnest. She was a true believer because she’d never been given a chance to be anything else. Tobias Richter had been manipulating her from the age of five, patting her on the head like a puppy when she performed, showering her in affection and then terrifying her with the threat of its removal to make her work even harder.
Cara probably thought it was love. Maya had, for all the years they’d been friends. Even knowing what she knew about Richter, even knowing he was evil, part of her had always thought, At least he loves Cara.
Tobias Richter didn’t love anyone.
“Let me go.” Maya leaned forward, locking gazes with Cara. “Do you know what he did to me? Did he tell you how he tied me to a chair for twenty-three days? How he cut pieces off of Simon and then healed him so he could do it again?”