He wrapped his arms around her and peered down at the package’s scattered contents. “What’s all this?”
“Birgitte’s last gift to me.” She started to sweep the credit chips back into a little pile. “A journal and her will. Apparently she left it with someone who was only supposed to bring it to me if Richter turned up dead. So … congratulations to me, I guess.”
He picked up a chip and idly turned it over in his hands. “Are you going to read it?”
“I think I have to,” she admitted reluctantly. “There might be something in there that can teach me about myself. Or help us take down the TechCorps.”
“I can do it—if you’re not up to it, I mean.” He held up the chip. “How much?”
“No idea.” She shoved the envelope with the will toward him. “It probably says in here. Will you look? I don’t know if I can.”
He released her, took the envelope, and eased open the flap. It was so old that the adhesive cracked open, yielding several folded papers. Gray straightened them and started skimming the first page. After a moment, he froze, his eyes wide. “Uhh, Maya? Scan one of those chips, would you?”
She slid her stool to the side and jerked open one of the drawers set under the table. A jumble of tech and solar batteries cluttered it, but the chip reader was right on top. She grabbed it and rolled her stool back.
It only took a second. The reader beeped, and she waited for the amount to pop up.
1,021,008.
Maya dropped the scanner.
Gray looked up at her. “Birgitte left you just over ten million credits. Clean and untraceable, according to this.”
The number stared up at her, stark and undeniable. Not quite believing her eyes or Gray’s words, she snatched up the scanner and tried again.
1,021,008.
She dropped the credit chip and grabbed another one.
978,213.
“Holy shit,” she whispered. “Holy shit.”
“I think you can afford to finish and heat the basement this winter.”
A hysterical giggle bubbled up. Maya slapped her hand over her mouth, but it escaped anyway. “Oh my God, am I rich?”
He chuckled. “You are very, very rich. Rich enough to do whatever the hell you want.”
Her mind spun with the possibilities. They could heat the basement. They could provide free meals for people struggling through the winter. Hell, they could buy a whole new building and heat that, too, and fill it with food and warmth and hope.
She could fund her revolution.
She bounced off the stool and threw her arms around his neck, laughing as he lifted her off the ground and spun her. His mouth found hers, and the kiss wove heat through her. She wrapped her legs around his hips and clung to him as the pleasure of touching him—of having him alive to touch—swept her away.
The money would be useful. But she already had her miracle, and she was never letting him go.
March 19th, 2081
Marjorie,
If you’re reading this, you survived and Richter did not.
I know because I’ve arranged for it to be delivered to you only after confirmation of his death. I couldn’t risk this journal falling into his hands, you see. In the back, I’ve recorded the truth of you. Your true aptitude test results, which are astounding. Your undoctored neurological benchmark tests, which are unprecedented. If the TechCorps saw these, they would take you apart to try and replicate you.
You are something special. I think you would have been, even without our genetic tampering. Your mind is a gift. You shouldn’t hesitate to use it to its fullest potential.
There will likely be consequences. There always are. Those you’ll have to figure out on your own, because we have no road map for this. I believe in you, though. There’s nothing you can’t do if you set your formidable mind to the task.
I shouldn’t have smothered your potential. I have done so many terrible things in my life, but there’s nothing I regret more than making you fear yourself.
You are a miracle, Marjorie. Learn everything you can. Be anything you want to be. Do it in spite of us. Do it to spite us.
Do it for yourself.
Birgitte
TESSA
Tessa Morales was growing to hate Monet.
Perhaps it was an uncharitable thought. After all, the canvas propped on her easel was going to score her twenty thousand in clean credits. She’d run herself ragged as a delivery girl in her teens and had been lucky to bring home a hundred credits a week. This? This was easy. She could paint water lilies in her sleep by now.
Which was why she hated them.
She’d never understand the fixation of the rich people on the Hill. It wasn’t as if the water lilies were even Monet’s most interesting works. He’d painted pieces that would have been a challenge and a wonder to recreate. And there were so many works that had gone missing in the chaos after the Flares. Hell, huge chunks of the Eastern Seaboard were underwater. The opportunities for miraculous “discovery” were endless.
But the boring rich people wanted Monet. They wanted water lilies.
Tessa wanted their money, so she painted her expert forgeries and tried not to resent the utter banality of their collective taste.
At least the technical aspect still held her attention. There was a science to creating the perfect forgery, and Tessa had refined it to high art. She mixed her own pigments, stretched and aged her own canvas. She’d learned to rescue antique frames and fit them seamlessly to her perfect creations. She knew how a painting recovered from the end of the world should look and feel and even smell. She made it all happen.
And then she sold it to the highest bidder.
Well, she didn’t. Tessa lived a painfully circumspect life almost entirely off the grid. She delivered her forgeries to a middleman, who passed them off to a fence, who supplied an art dealer, who sold them for millions, probably. The fact that only a fraction of the score trickled down to Tessa in return for doing the hardest part sometimes rankled, but she didn’t have the luxury of taking risks.
Rafael had given up everything to buy them their snug little life on the outskirts of Atlanta. She had no right to endanger that.
He’d be horrified to know Tessa felt the weight of that sacrifice, but how could she not? Her softhearted big brother had turned himself into a weapon, mortgaging larger bits of his soul every year. Rafael lied about it, of course. He came home with gifts for the babies and painting supplies for her and endless stacks of untraceable credits for their mother, who always hid her heartbroken tears until he was gone, because Rafael wanted them to be happy.
So they were. Or at least they pretended when he was around.
They pretended they couldn’t see the pain in his eyes, too. The shock, that they’d grown so much. The hurt that he’d missed it. The sharp sting of realization that he had at best a few hours before he had to leave them again. Every family reunion was forced cheer wrapped around grief and impending loss.
And now they couldn’t see him at all, because he was supposed to be dead.
The small fortune in credits that had come with that announcement had been enough to keep the family comfortable until even Rosa was fully grown. She was thirteen already, with a green thumb and a love of gardening that had turned their backyard into a wonderland of living things. Fifteen-year-old Antonio had finally won their mother’s permission to apprentice with the mechanic two doors down and was showing a real flair for it.