She clapped her hands together once. And people began to scatter.
Maya had to admire the swiftness of it. It turned out Dani was wrong—it didn’t take long to break up an orgy. No doubt the tension on the dais urged anyone with sense to run for cover. Savitri stood like a statue carved from ice, her eyes promising chilly death to anyone who crossed her. Adam and Dani were frozen in a silent battle, both fairly vibrating with the promise of sudden violence.
When the door had shut behind the final partier, Savitri resumed her seat. She crossed her legs, leaned back, and murmured one word. “Adam.”
It sounded like an instruction. “How?” he asked.
Dani released him slowly. “I recognized you.”
The set of his shoulders relaxed the tiniest bit. “Executive Security?”
She nodded. “Databases can be manipulated. But people remember.” She looked over at Savitri. “We always remember.”
“People,” Savitri said coldly, “can be made to forget.”
As threats went, it was far from idle. But all of their cards were on the table now.
Almost all of their cards.
Maya stepped forward, and for the first time met Savitri’s gaze head-on. She refused to be cowed by the power staring back at her. She had her own kind of power. “Do you remember Birgitte Skovgaard?”
Savitri’s brow furrowed. “The TechCorps VP of Behavior? Vaguely. I heard she was promoted to lead her own facility a few years back.”
“Yes, that’s the story.” Maya took a deep breath. Saying this out loud felt like handing Savitri a stick of live dynamite with a half-inch fuse. “Birgitte was the head of a reformist rebellion within the TechCorps. It spanned all seventeen departments and included everyone from VPs to janitorial staff. Tobias Richter found out about it and executed her. Personally.”
Savitri’s perfectly shaped eyebrow arched. Her gaze raked over Maya. “You’re what, twenty years old, at most? How could you possibly know that?”
“I’m twenty-four. And I signed my first executive-level contract with the TechCorps sixteen years ago.” Maya channeled the data courier Birgitte had raised. Ice cold, confident, fully aware of her precarious—but powerful—place in her world. How ironic that it was Cara who had taught her the true value of this haughty, fearless facade.
Maya didn’t care. She’d use the tools she had. “I didn’t introduce myself properly last time,” she said, the easy rhythm of Southside’s more casual speech gone. She made every word crisp and sharp enough for a boardroom on the Hill. “I am DC-031, former data courier to the vice president of Behavior and Analysis.”
Theatrical, perhaps, but Savitri rewarded her with a sharply indrawn breath—the first real reaction Maya had ever seen her make. Savitri leaned forward, eyes alight with naked avarice. “A data courier,” she whispered. “Out in the wild, and apparently no worse for the wear. Remarkable. I bet your brain is something to see.”
“No doubt it is,” Maya replied, refusing to back down. “And I’ll let you scan it until you’re thoroughly tired of looking at it. I’ll give you dirt on any TechCorps exec you want. I’ll owe you a dozen favors. But you have to come with me and try to save Gray. Now.”
“Gray?” Savitri sat back, her game face settling back into place. “The quiet one who was with you last time? What’s wrong with him?”
“Delayed implant rejection.”
“Delayed for how long?”
“Almost twenty years.”
“And his current status?”
“On life support.”
Savitri frowned. “He didn’t seem too far gone. What precipitated the abrupt decline?”
Maya dragged in a deep breath. It wouldn’t be a secret for long. Even if the TechCorps covered it up, rumors of Richter’s disappearance would tear through the criminal underworld. But speaking the words barely felt real.
“He was tortured,” she said softly. “By Tobias Richter. Gray killed him before collapsing.”
The words provoked the expected reaction. Savitri came out of her chair again, voice shivering with excitement. “Tobias Richter is dead?”
“Extremely.” Savitri’s bright-eyed anticipation only underscored the depth of Maya’s distraction. Without a doubt, this was the most pivotal turning point in Atlanta since the Flares. It was the realization of one of Birgitte’s most cherished goals. The monster from Maya’s nightmares had been slain.
But she had a new nightmare now. A worse one. Darker and real and digging loss into her heart as she laced her trembling fingers together to hide their sudden shaking. “I’ll tell you everything about it. Anything you want. Just please. Come help him.”
Savitri exchanged a look with Adam. Some sort of silent communication seemed to pass between them. Maybe it was actual silent communication. Maya wouldn’t put it past them to have subvocal comms or something even wilder. After a moment, Adam tilted his head. “Two percent.”
“Two percent,” Savitri said, turning back to Maya. “That’s the probable chance of survival for that sort of procedure, even with my considerable skills and experience. Will you still offer me brain scans and secrets and favors and anything I want for two percent, DC-031?”
Her designation left Savitri’s lips with a chilly precision that turned the query into a test. Savitri was probing for weakness, prodding to see how far she could push Maya. A political game endemic to the Hill and a sharp contrast to the blunt honesty of Southside, but Maya couldn’t be intimidated.
Not this time. Numbness had some benefits.
She lifted her chin and answered without hesitation. “If there’s even a fraction of a fraction of a percent, I’ll offer you the damn world. Just come. Now.”
Maya waited. For seconds. For years. Time had lost meaning the moment Gray started seizing. She waited as Savitri turned toward Adam again, waited as the two of them assessed risk or odds or maybe just drew out the moment for the drama of it all.
Then Savitri stepped off the dais. “Take me to him.”
TECHCORPS PROPRIETARY DATA, L2 SECURITY CLEARANCE
Recruit 66–793 is our top sniper. His marksmanship is unmatched. We are aware of Behavior’s continuing concerns about his emotional reticence, but we submit that if fourteen years of aggressive monitoring has uncovered neither troubling pathologies nor questions of loyalty, the issue should be considered resolved pending further developments.
He’s an extremely useful tool, Birgitte. Stop trying to throw him away because he creeps you out.
Recruit Analysis, May 2075
TWENTY-EIGHT
“I’ll take care of him,” Savitri promised, squeezing Maya’s shoulder briefly as Mace rolled Gray into the operating room. “You’ve given him the best chance possible.”
The best chance possible. Two percent of a chance.
“Come on.” It was Nina, warm and gentle at her side, coaxing her away. She followed because doing otherwise would require thinking, and she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t allow herself to think.
Unfortunately, it was the one thing she had never been able to avoid. Her brain, overwhelmed from the chaos of the past twenty-four hours, taunted her with endless worst-case scenarios. God knew she had enough of them shoved into her memory, an endless litany of the TechCorps’ experiments gone horribly wrong. Neurological experiments, physical augmentations, xenotransplants, tissue replacement—