Shattered Minds Page 29

  Carina sighs. ‘I don’t know how I feel. That’s the whole goddamn problem. I feel too much, or it snaps back to nothing. You were probably right to pull away, but I can’t pretend it didn’t hurt.’ She shifts in the hovercar chair. ‘Well, we’ve shared our respective body counts. Let’s say our goodbyes, and you head back to your party. I’ll be on my way. I wish you all the best, Dax. The best in the world.’

  The words sound hollow.

  ‘You’re running away in that dress? That’s really unobtrusive.’

  She looks down at the crumpled silk emerging from her coat. Her lilac hair is falling out of its hairstyle. She shrugs.

  Dax moves from his chair and spins hers towards him. He crouches in front of her. ‘Do you really, actually want to leave before seeing Sudice take the fall for everything they’ve done?’ He wants to say more, to apologize, but the words feel clunky and stick in his mouth.

  Carina’s eyes close. ‘I don’t know. I can watch from afar.’ They both know she wouldn’t. That she’d be in a Zealot lounge before morning. Even though it would likely mean Sudice finding her, if they can find Zealot recordings. It’s a death sentence.

  Dax chances reaching out to take her hand. She does not pull away. ‘Stay.’

  Her eyes open. ‘Why?’

  ‘I want you to. I’m serious. I want you to stay if you really do, deep down. I want you to choose the harder option because I think it’s worth it.’

  ‘You’re not afraid of me?’

  He considers. ‘A little. I’m far more afraid of letting you go and never seeing you again. Of never knowing what could have happened.’

  She moves forward, the dress crinkling. He opens his mouth to ask a question, but she presses her lips to his. Dax stays still and shocked for a moment before he moves to respond, his lips opening, his hands resting first on her upper arms, before moving one arm to her waist and the other to the back of her neck. Before the kiss fully takes hold, Carina pulls back. Her cheeks are flushed. ‘I’m afraid of feeling too much.’

  ‘So am I. That’s OK.’

  ‘Or what if I can’t give you what you want? I don’t know if I can give you a relationship, that closeness. What if I can’t?’

  ‘I’m not asking for that.’

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  He pauses, considers. Emotions swirl through him, heady like wine. ‘I’m not asking for anything you do not wish to give.’

  She takes in his words, processes them. Dax says nothing, waiting for her. She leans close. He wonders what she’s thinking and what she truly wants.

  ‘It doesn’t have to be some grand gesture, does it?’

  ‘No.’ He doesn’t ask her the questions on his tongue. Are you staying? Will you want to leave again after Sudice? Will you always be playing this game – of reassuring yourself that you can leave whenever you want to, that nothing is ever permanent, because that’s too dangerous? He knows these questions. He’s asked himself the same things, so many times before. As soon as she kisses him again, he lets all those uncertainties fall away.

  Carina’s kiss deepens, and Dax’s mouth opens. He pushes the hair back from her face, holding the back of her head. All the nerves of his skin awaken, until he feels as lit up as the stars outside the window. Dax stands, taking her with him, pressing her tight against his chest. He feels the hard stays of her corset. She turns, holding her arms out from her sides. He unlaces the stays, slowly, carefully, while kissing the back of her neck. He bites her, not hard, and she arches back against him. He lets out a low groan.

  Her dress is not easy to escape from. It takes some manoeuvring, including some low laughter, before the rustling silk finally falls away.

  He already knows what she looks like naked, from his time sculpting her flesh back into health. This is entirely different. She reaches up and takes out the pins in her hair, her newly lilac hair falling around her shoulders, framing her breasts. His eyes travel over her, to the nip of her waist, the flare of her hips, her long legs. She’s pale, like marble threaded with a pink blush. He steps back, feeling her eyes on his.

  Carina reaches out, pushing his hair back from his face. She takes off his jacket, removes the bow tie. She’s close enough that he can feel the warmth of her skin, but she doesn’t touch him as she unbuttons his shirt, one button at a time. He takes an awkward moment to kick off his shoes and peel off his socks. She unzips his trousers. They stand across from each other, taking in the sight of one another. He always feels a little exposed at this moment. She’s gazing at his modded muscles. The scars from those long-ago surgeries are long erased. Does she look at him through the film of wondering what he would have looked like without flesh parlours, or does she see him, in this skin he’s suited to fit who he is?

  It occurs to Dax that he could be afraid of her. She’s admitted to killing, to loving it. She could be looking at him and mapping the bones beneath his skin, deciding how best she’d murder him. Yet he doesn’t think his death is on her mind.

  Pushing him down on the chair in the hovercar cockpit, she straddles him. As she kisses him, he grabs her waist, fingers tight against her flesh. Her lips move to his neck, and his hands travel lower, between her legs. He trails his fingers gently, almost tickling, before pressing the heel of his hand against her. She rocks against him, lips parting as her head tilts back. She drags her nails along his chest and he gasps. Her hands move between his legs, mirroring his moves. Kissing him even deeper, she lowers herself onto him.

  Carina moves, agonizingly slowly, rubbing herself against him. Her long hair tickles his shoulders. He grabs her waist again, helping her move. They speed up, finding that perfect rhythm. Carina’s eyes are open, unblinking, pupils wide as she focuses within. She licks her lips, just once, and it nearly undoes him. She shudders, tightening against him, and Dax lets her set the pace, pulsing faster and faster, keeping his fingers between their bodies so she hits them each time she shifts, until she kisses him and moans against his mouth in release.

  ‘The back,’ she says, angling her chin to the room where Dax had been transported to the hospital. He stands, carrying and putting her down on the bench seats. She positions herself on her hands and knees and they begin again, and this time he sets the pace, reaching around and again helping her with his fingers. Her back muscles clench, her shoulder blades pressing together like wings. He makes sure she comes again.

  They take their time. Different positions, different rhythms. Exploring expanses of skin with tongues or fingertips, murmuring instructions to each other. She’s under him, hands on his back. The tension builds and they move together, fast and frantic. Carina bites his shoulder, hard enough to draw blood, and he finds his own release. His head tilts forward and he closes his eyes. He loves that moment of pure pleasure, when all thought leaves and he just exists, in his body, in this moment.

  Dax moves off her and lies against her side, wrapping his arms around her in a hug, and she hugs back. There’s only just enough room for them on the seats. They don’t speak. They don’t lie there and cuddle for ages, and whisper sweet nothings. Something between them has changed, even if they do not put a name to it. A crack in their defences that lets in a bit of light in the dark.

  They pull on their now sadly crumpled finery. Their hair is a sight, and they try to smooth each other into a veneer of propriety. The devilish smiles that pass between them mar any pretense of that.

  They leave the hovercraft and walk back to the glowing house in the stars. They do not touch, but that new awareness crackles between them, a promise that it may very well happen again.

  FORTY ONE

  CARINA

  The Apex, above Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, Pacifica

  They don’t have enough time to prepare before Sudice rolls out Pythia to everyone in Pacifica.

  The Trust do as much as they can. Kivon fills them in on everything he saw from the database. He’s a wanted man – there are posters asking citizens to keep an eye out for him, flashing through tho
usands of ocular implants throughout the city. The police claim he’s a spy, thought to be armed and dangerous.

  ‘Fucking bullshit,’ Kivon mutters. They’re in the room Clavell gave them, with no cameras or networks. All planning still takes place on old tablets that link to Raf’s stored intel.

  ‘They’re making it seem like you sold state secrets to a rival government or something,’ Raf says. He’s swapping out Kivon’s VeriChip, lifting it from below the skin of his wrist with tweezers. He drops it into the replicator to be destroyed. ‘Technically you are a spy, though.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  Carina still doesn’t know Kivon particularly well, but he’s seemed especially grumpy. Understandable. She has been deliberately not looking at the small cut on his wrist, but almost imagines she can smell the blood even from the other side of the room. Dax knocks his knee against hers, lending wordless comfort.

  ‘Don’t be rude when I have sharp implements near you,’ Raf says, waving the scalpel. Carina flinches.

  Carina has not left the Trust, though the urge to flee is still there, lurking behind her thoughts. In her tiny bit of spare time, she puzzles with the neuro code to try and undo some of Roz’s damage, but it’s still a long way from being safe enough to run. In the meantime, she has to try and keep herself together.

  Clavell helps them with the last of their supplies. They pack everything into their hovercar, and then it’s time to go. The sun is just beginning to set, outlining the clouds in soft golden and pink light. By the time they arrive at Sudice in San Francisco, it will be the dead of night.

  Clavell shakes each of their hands solemnly, though he gives Charlie a long, lingering hug. Something has passed between them. An old love or an old attraction rekindled. Is it difficult for Charlie to say goodbye, knowing she might never return?

  ‘Thank you for hiding us, Isaac,’ Charlie says.

  ‘I was happy to have you somewhere safe. I hope you enjoyed your time at my humble abode.’ He gives them all his far-too-perfect smile, tinged with a bit of self-deprecation. He knows exactly how incredible his home is. If he’s nervous about the fact that he hid them from Sudice, that he opened his home to strangers, it doesn’t show. The perfect actor.

  ‘We’ll always be in your debt,’ Charlie says, her eyes a little wet.

  ‘No, my dear. No. I’ll be far more in yours when you are all successful tonight. The world is about to change. I, for one, am looking forward to having a front-row seat.’

  Carina still isn’t quite sure what to make of one of the most well-known celebrities in the world. They’ve stayed with him for about two weeks, and she is sure he never dropped the role of Isaac Clavell, ultra-celebrity, to reveal whoever he is underneath. As Charlie says, they are in his debt; but she still hopes they’ve covered their tracks, just in case.

  Clavell stands in front of his mansion. The wind of the hovercar taking off ruffles his immaculate suit and hair. He lifts his arm, in either a wave or a salute. Then they’re gone, weaving their way back through the other mansions of the Apex.

  ‘All these people up in Tinsel,’ Kivon says, using the slang term for the floating neighbourhood. ‘How their lives will change if we actually pull this off.’

  ‘A lot of them will go tumbling down, to live with the rest of us on ground level,’ Charlie replies. ‘Maybe it’ll be better for them.’ Her smile is sad. She’s turning against her own family once again, bringing the Mantels down into total ruin. It must in a way be hardest for her, out of all of them.

  The Trust fall into silence. They’re all tense, nervous. They should have had weeks longer to plan, and instead it’s been a hasty, last-ditch effort to send out information before it’s too late. Dax reaches out and takes Carina’s hand and squeezes it. She keeps it for a moment, then pulls her hand away.

  ‘When are you two going to stop pretending you haven’t fucked?’ Raf asks bluntly.

  Dax clears his throat.

  ‘Really?’ Charlie asks. ‘That’s interesting. When?’

  ‘Ah. The night of the party.’ Dax sounds sheepish.

  ‘Where?’ she continues her investigation.

  An awkward silence. They both glance at Kivon’s seat, then away.

  ‘Augh,’ Kivon says, jumping up.

  It startles everyone into a laugh, breaking the tension at least a little.

  They fly to San Francisco, eyes on the horizon. Sometimes there are random sky checks, where a driver has to pull over and present their credentials to a police bot. They have false papers, just in case, and they’re wearing scrambler masks to boot, but it’s still a worry. Yet with every mile they travel away from the city of Hollywood and the urban sprawl, Carina finds she breathes a little easier. No matter what, they are doing something. They’re flying over the coast. Carina looks out at the dark patches of forest, the zigzag of the coast. It’s so dark compared to the ever-lit sprawl of Los Angeles. Down below, people sleep, unaware that tomorrow morning everything might be different.

  Raf and Charlie murmur in the corner, going over the last details for the umpteenth time, and the rest of the Trust half-listen to their conversation.

  ‘There’s no going back,’ Carina says, softly.

  ‘No. There’s not,’ Charlie agrees. ‘We have no idea what will happen tonight.’

  ‘Either this will work or we will all die spectacularly,’ Raf says, remarkably cheerful.

  ‘Not the best angle for a pep talk, Raf,’ Kivon says.

  They’ve discussed the potential consequences many times. Sudice is tied into so many elements of Pacifica, its fall could mean an unravelling of society. Or other companies, just as corrupt, could sprout up in its place.

  ‘We can’t do it all,’ Charlie says. ‘It’s not up to us to fix everything that’s wrong with Pacifica and the rest of the world. We do what we can, and hope everyone else steps up.’

  As the hovercar slices through the sky, they draw ever closer to Sudice. They enter San Francisco from the south on the San Mateo flight path. In front of them, the city glitters and glows. The bay is its signature luminescent green, the orchard towers reach towards the starred sky, flanked by apartment blocks. There’s the TransAm Pyramid. There’s the Bank of Pacifica Center. The usual clouds have fled, and all is cool and clear.

  They park the hovercar a few blocks away from the Sudice headquarters on the Embarcadero. Kivon has been listening on all the subfrequencies, and there’s nothing from the police that hints they’re on alert. The Trust have been locked out of Sudice’s servers for the most part since the silo, though, unable to risk another Viper to try and get in. Raf’s been able to get enough scraps that they’re fairly certain there’s been no emergency changeover of all their procedures, especially not at the San Francisco office.

  Carina glances in the direction of the Omni Hotel, where Sudice are having their press dinner to announce the upgrade and several other products – banal things like a new type of replicator and hovercar. Harmless and designed to distract from the real threat.

  It’ll be an evening of tuxedos and ball gowns, real champagne and wallscreens screening carefully curated versions of what they want Pacifica to think Pythia will do. Roz will be there, decked in her finery, hopefully nice and distracted from what is about to happen right beneath her nose. Kim and Aliyah will be there, ready to record watching it all fall. If the Trust make it that far.

  The monolith of the Sudice headquarters towers above them. Even the building looks evil – all black glass and chrome. Up near the top, in those state-of-the-art labs, Carina nearly killed two people. She chose to leave her work, her career, to run away from her problems. Now she must try to stop a woman from pushing the limits of humanity, and hopefully gain a little redemption for herself.

  Dax has mapped Aliyah’s cornea and fingerprints onto Charlie. Her eyes are now darker, but you can’t tell a thing from her fingertips, of course. It’s still strange to think that her identity, in a way, has shifted. It’s what all the celebrities in
Hollywood like Clavell fear: someone taking pieces of them, becoming them, right down to the cellular level. It’s not easy to do that detailed level of flesh work. Dax made it look easy.

  Time for the first step. They’re all dressed in military-grade Kalar suits, which even Clavell struggled to secure for them. With the hoods pulled up, they’ll be cloaked from the infrared sensors. Kivon still has his extra ocular implants, and he’s able to see in the dark. They all have weapons – guns, knives, small hand-held tranq dart guns.

  With any luck, they won’t need them.

  They wait. Security drones make their occasional rounds of the perimeter, in a seemingly random pattern. Raf has cracked it. If they enter from that direction in two minutes, they’ll have a two-minute-thirty-six-second window.

  ‘Go,’ Raf whispers. They dart forward under the cover of night. Kivon carries most of their kit slung across his back. The Trust move like shadows. Carina feels alive. Her fingers tingle. It’s not the same as hunting a person, but it’s still thrilling. She’s killing a company. An idea. She’s going to watch it all bleed out.

  They make it through the first ring of security. Now it’s getting into the building itself. The Trust make their way towards the entrance to the underground parking structure. They go to a side entrance. Kivon unhooks his backpack from his shoulders and passes Raf a piece of kit, which he places over the controls. He can’t quite jimmy the lock, but he can prep it for Charlie. Raf spends a few minutes entering his meticulously created code. The Trust wait, eyes constantly roving, keeping a sharp eye out for Waspbots, camera drones or anyone else. Carina rests her hand lightly on her gun. It comforts her.

  Raf gives a muted ‘Yes!’ Raf notices that all of the internal systems and bots are synchronized to a Network Time Protocol Server. NTP keeps clocks aligned over various data networks. Sudice has the NTP servers linked to cesium atomic clocks that are precice to the millisecond. Raf finds a flaw in security – they did not cryptographically sign the NTP packets for authentication. It is a fairly simply matter to spoof the NTP message and flip the clock on all systems from PM to AM. They can enter and security will think it’s normal working hours and not sound the alarm. He’s made a few other modifications to the system, too – motion detection within the building is now turned off, along with heat sensors, just in case they have to take off their hoods for any reason. Raf is nothing if not thorough.