Jenna Black - Resistance

“The guy I was before would have been selfish enough to do it,” he said. “Maybe something got lost in translation when I was made into a Replica, but I feel like that guy, the original Nate, is a total stranger to me. I can’t put you in danger just because I’m lonely. I won’t. ”

“You’re the same guy,” Kurt countered. “You’re so much the same I keep forgetting you’re a Replica. You were never selfish. You were just … careless, sometimes.”

“Careless” didn’t sound much better to Nate, but he wasn’t going to argue about word choice.

“Everything that’s happened … It’s kinda opened your eyes. So you’re different, but you’re still the same guy.”

Nate allowed himself a little snort of laughter. Maybe Kurt was right. Maybe the changes in him had nothing to do with being a Replica and everything to do with the crap life had thrown at him recently.

“Does it ever weird you out?” Nate asked, unable to look into Kurt’s face for fear of the answer. “Me being a Replica?”

He saw Kurt’s shrug out of the corner of his eye. “Yeah, if I think about it. But I don’t think about it unless you make me.”

Nate supposed that was one way to handle it.

“So anyway,” Kurt said in an unsubtle change of subject, “Dante’s seeing Nadia every night, and I can meet with Dante without either of us being watched. Dante thought you might want us to pass a message to her.”

Nate thought he heard a hint of disapproval in Kurt’s voice, but he chose to ignore it. “So he told her about Agnes?”

“Yeah.”

Nate made a conscious effort to relax his tight jaw muscles before he ground his teeth into dust. Nadia should have heard the news from him, or at least from her family. Not from some resistance double agent with questionable motives.

“You okay?” Kurt asked, laying a hand on Nate’s shoulder.

Nate rested his head in his hands, hating the feeling of helplessness that had plagued him from the moment his father told him the news.

“No,” he said hoarsely. “I’m not okay. My father’s going to force me to marry a girl with the looks and personality of a wet sponge, and Nadia’s whole life is being ruined because of me.”

“It sucks. But you could have been born in Debasement. So could she. How many Basement-dwellers do you suppose would kill to have your problems?”

Nate almost lashed out, stung by Kurt’s apparent lack of sympathy. Neither his problems nor Nadia’s were petty, and even a Basement-dweller might not be so eager to take them on if they knew what was really at stake, if they knew just what kind of threat hovered over their heads. But of course, Kurt didn’t know, and Nate wasn’t planning to tell him.

It wasn’t until he saw the searching look in Kurt’s eyes that he wondered if the comment was meant to annoy Nate into telling him more. There was a time when Nate had felt he could tell Kurt anything, but those days were past.

Kurt sighed, perhaps disappointed with the failure of his fishing mission. He leaned over the side of the bed and rooted around in the heap of clothes he’d left there. Nate took a moment to admire the curve of his hip and the Chinese calligraphy tattooed right above his butt. Kurt had told him the characters said the equivalent of fuck you, though he’d had to take the tattoo artist’s word for it. Who knew that crude words could look so elegant?

Kurt made a sound of satisfaction and rolled back over, a phone in his hand. “I know Dante gave you a secure phone already, but if you want to call me, use this one.”

Nate gave a humorless laugh. “You mean your resistance buddies won’t be listening in on this one?” Despite the little flare of bitterness, he took the phone, relieved that he would finally have a way to get in touch with Kurt rather than having to wait for him to drop by in the dead of night.

“Don’t be a dick. What did you expect Dante to do? Go buy you a black market secure phone with his own money and no strings attached? He convinced the resistance to provide two fucking expensive phones. You’d better cough up some good information for it and quit complaining.”

Nate rubbed his eyes. He’d almost allowed himself to forget that he’d promised information in return for the phone. He’d also forgotten what it was like to be with someone who didn’t hesitate to tell him when he was being an asshole.

“Message received,” he said, though he still found it hard to be all that grateful for a bugged phone. “How much do I owe you? Oh, wait. You bought it with my money, didn’t you?”

“Smart-ass,” Kurt said, punching him on the shoulder. “Now it’s time to spill. And if you’re tempted to screw Dante because you don’t like him, remember, he’s your path to Nadia. You need to get a message to her without making her use her phone and maybe lose it, you give me a call, and I’ll get it to her through Dante.”

Nate didn’t need the reminder. No, he didn’t like Dante, but he needed him, and he knew it. He wasn’t stupid enough to antagonize someone he needed.

Hoping he wasn’t making a big mistake, starting some kind of trouble that would come back to bite him, Nate told Kurt that he was talking to the last Replica that would ever be made.

Thenews hit the net first thing Friday morning. The resistance works fast, Nate thought sourly as he flipped from story to story. It seemed every member of the media, plus a host of online “personalities,” had rushed to share their opinions and their predictions of doom.

None of them had any real facts. Nate had told Kurt only that there would be no more backup scans performed or Replicas created. He had steadfastly refused to explain why. He hadn’t liked keeping secrets from Kurt, but the media frenzy was clear evidence he had done the right thing. Stock prices had already plummeted, and he imagined there would be demonstrations all around the state as opponents of the Replica technology declared victory and those who feared for their livelihoods took offense. Nate didn’t want to imagine the shock wave that would rip through the state if people knew what the true cost of the Replica technology had been.

The news hadn’t been out for more than an hour before the Chairman held a press conference during which he assured the people of Paxco and the world that the Replica program was not, in fact, defunct, but was merely on a temporary hiatus while some technical difficulties were resolved. He accused the press of exaggeration and sensationalism. Funny how, afterward, the members of the Paxco press corps bought the Chairman’s story hook, line, and sinker, while the foreign press remained skeptical.

The Chairman’s statement had gone a long way toward slowing the bleeding, although stock prices were bound to be depressed for a while. But he couldn’t pretend the situation was temporary forever, and if today’s preview was anything to go by, the day of reckoning was going to suck. Nate might have felt bad about leaking the news, except it had to come out eventually.

Still in his robe and slippers, Nate got off the net about thirty minutes after he had planned to arrive at work. As usual, he had an endless series of meetings he was supposed to sit in on, but his role in those meetings was always just to sit there and listen quietly. He had no official job duties—at least none of even moderate importance—and his participation was all part of one long training exercise for when he would be Chairman someday. He was trying to be more responsible about his training, he really was, but setting foot within ten miles of Headquarters today was probably a terrible idea.

There was one consequence of sharing state secrets with the resistance that he had anticipated—and dreaded—from the very beginning. The number of people who knew that the Replica program was now defunct could be counted on one hand, and with Nadia hidden away in her retreat with no access to the outside world, the only person the Chairman could possibly suspect of leaking the information was Nate. Somehow, Nate didn’t think his father would take it very well, even if the Paxco PR machine convinced everyone the situation was only temporary.