Jenna Black - Resistance

“Getting you out of an Executive retreat is one thing,” Dante argued. “Going up against the Chairman is another.”

“Isn’t that what your resistance is all about?”

Dante gave her a pointed look and jerked his head toward Agnes. Nadia would bet her right foot that Agnes had already figured out Dante was involved in some kind of resistance movement, but even if she hadn’t …

“She’s in the same boat as the rest of us,” Nadia said. “Who’s she going to tell? Now how do we sign up?”

“What?” Dante asked, his voice just short of a yelp.

Nadia had been hesitant to dub the resistance the good guys in the past, afraid of their plans and their motives. But that was before she’d known Thea was still alive. Even if the resistance hoped to spark a civil war, it might be worth it if that’s what it took to stop Thea. The A.I. had no moral compass and no regard for human life. She was a menace to society, and the longer her research was allowed to continue, the more dangerous—and more powerful—she would become.

“The resistance,” Nadia said. “I want to do something instead of running away and hiding. So how do we sign up?”

Dante shook his head. “You don’t.”

Nadia opened her mouth to protest, but he wasn’t done.

“They’ll kick me out on my ass once they know what I’ve done. They don’t like loose canons. And there’s no way in hell they’d want anything to do with the Chairman Heir or either of his supposed fiancées.”

“But we know things—” Nadia started.

“Doesn’t matter,” Nate interrupted. “I already had this conversation with Bishop a while back. Executives are the enemy to them, and the three of us are as Executive as you get.”

“So they’ve never heard of the enemy of my enemy is my friend ?”

“Even if they believed you were their friends, they wouldn’t have you,” Dante said. “You’re all way too high-profile. Too dangerous to touch.”

Nadia wanted to hurl her bowl of cooling, congealing stew across the room. “So that’s it? We’re just going to cower in the Basement and hope for the best?”

“No,” Nate said. “You’re right: we have to fight back somehow. If the resistance won’t have us, then screw them! We can be our own resistance movement, just the four of us—and Bishop, if he wants in.”

Dante gaped at him. “You can’t be serious.”

“Why not?” Nate asked. “We’re all smart, and resourceful, and highly motivated. Nadia and I managed to beat Dirk Mosely against all odds. And Nadia escaped the retreat after surviving a murder attempt. We’re not pushovers, no matter what my father may think.”

Something fierce and proud stirred in Nadia’s heart. They were not going to accept defeat. They were going to do something more than run for their lives. And she was personally going to make the Chairman pay for what he’d done to her sister.

Dante still looked skeptical. “That all sounds great, but I don’t think—”

“You were so committed to your cause you joined the Paxco security department to spy on them,” Nate interrupted. “You were ready to take a cyanide pill to keep from being captured. Are you seriously telling me you’re too chicken to keep fighting?”

Dante bristled, clenching his fists. “I am not chicken! And I didn’t say I didn’t think we should keep fighting.”

Nadia suppressed a smile. Nate had always been a skilled manipulator. Just this once, she was glad for it.

“So who’s with me?” Nate asked. He thunked down his bowl of stew and held out his hand, palm down, fixing Dante with a challenging glare.

Nadia quickly crossed the distance and put her hand on top of his. Dante made a low growling sound in the back of his throat, but he followed suit.

Nadia expected Agnes to balk. After all, she couldn’t have had a clue what she was getting into when she left the theater with Nate last night, and never in her wildest dreams would she have considered she might be joining some half-baked Paxco teen resistance movement. But she raised her chin high and stuck her hand in the circle with barely a hesitation.

“We are a force to be reckoned with,” Nate said with conviction, “and we’re going to win.”

And for that moment, Nadia allowed herself to believe it.

Theplan to spend the daylight hours sleeping made perfect sense. They were all exhausted, and if anyone had slept at all on the ride back from the Sanctuary, it had been for scant minutes at a time.

Nadia and Agnes shared the bed that had once belonged to Dante’s parents, while Dante slept in his own bed and left the couch for Nate. If Dante was trying to needle Nate by relegating him to the couch, it didn’t work. Nadia felt oddly proud of him for his lack of reaction.

It was actually Agnes who felt the most obvious discomfort at their surroundings, looking at the double bed she was to share with Nadia with distaste.

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Nadia told her as she pulled back the covers. “And right now, we’re beggars.”

“I know,” Agnes said, chewing her lip. “But … I’ve never slept in someone else’s bed before. I mean, in a guest room, sure, but, you know…”

“There’s a first time for everything,” Nadia said, because apparently she was too tired to speak in anything other than clichés. She couldn’t think of a time when she’d slept in another person’s bed before, either, but that didn’t stop her from sliding under the covers and laying her head on the lumpy pillow with a groan of relief. She hoped she was tired enough for sleep to overwhelm her quickly, rather than leaving her trapped with her own thoughts.

Agnes clearly wasn’t as adaptable. She took off her shoes and earrings, and she took down the elaborate updo she’d worn for the opera, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to get into the bed, so she merely lay on top of the covers instead. In her strapless evening gown, which likely had hard metal stays in its bodice. How was the girl going to survive the hardships of the Basement? She had been remarkably brave and cool last night, but she had been raised to slavishly follow the rules of Executive society, and to say she was now a fish out of water was an understatement.

Then again, Nadia had been raised the same way, had long lived in dread of taking a single misstep. Defying authority was hardly in her blood, but necessity had changed her. Maybe it would change Agnes, too.

Discomfort from the evening gown aside, Agnes seemed to fall asleep about five seconds after she lay down, her breathing growing deep and even while Nadia found she couldn’t even keep her eyes closed. Instead, she lay on her side and stared at a hairline crack in the paint of the far wall. And with no immediate threat bearing down on her, with no decisions to be made right this moment, she couldn’t stop herself from thinking about Gerri.

Tears ran sideways down her face and soaked into the pillow, pain wrenching her heart. Gerri had died because she’d wanted to save Nadia from a lifetime in the Sanctuary. And because Nadia had refused to tell her the truth about what was on those recordings. Because Nadia hadn’t trusted her own sister to do the right thing.

Nadia’s shoulders started shaking, and she stifled a sob. The last thing she wanted to do was wake Agnes and have to deal with a near-stranger’s pity. Unfair, perhaps, when that near-stranger had very possibly destroyed her whole life in an effort to help her, but feelings don’t care whether they’re fair or not.

Swallowing convulsively, trying not to gasp too loudly for air that suddenly seemed thin and inadequate, Nadia slipped out of the bed. The pain of guilt and loss doubled her over, and she put her hand over her mouth to try to hold it all in. Agnes didn’t stir, but Nadia knew it was only a matter of time. She staggered out into the hall, planning to lock herself in the bathroom and sob her heart out, but when she turned to close the door, she saw Nate draped awkwardly over the living room couch.