Jenna Black - Resistance

Dante let out a frustrated grunt and shook his head. “What is it you want me to do, exactly?”

Nate allowed himself to breathe again. “I was hoping you have or could get a contact inside the Tranquility Retreat. Someone who could get a phone to Nadia. I need a way to contact her, a way to warn her if … something goes wrong.”

Dante stared at him as if he was trying to read all of Nate’s secrets in his face. Nate kept his expression as bland as he could and made no effort to avoid eye contact. Sure, he was hiding things, but he had a good reason, and he didn’t feel guilty or apologetic about it. Ten to one Dante was hiding secrets of his own.

“I’m pretty sure I can get a phone to her,” Dante said after a long, silent standoff. “But you need to tell me what’s going on. What really happened when Nadia was arrested? How did she end up free and Mosely end up dead?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Then I can’t help you.”

Nate had hurt his own hand far more than he’d hurt Dante’s face when he’d punched him, but the memory did nothing to quell his desire to do it again. “You’d abandon Nadia to the wolves because there’s nothing in it for you? You’ll make a great spokesman for freedom and democracy, or whatever it is your resistance is hoping for.”

“I don’t personally know anyone at Tranquility,” Dante said patiently. “I’m sure the resistance leadership has someone there, what with all those Executives feeling relaxed and talkative out of the public eye, but they’re not going to help Nadia out of the goodness of their hearts. And believe me, they’re already far from happy about me having revealed our existence to the two of you. They won’t be looking to do you any favors. Unless doing you favors turns out to be beneficial to them. Like, for instance, if you give me some good inside information in return.”

Nate hated to admit it, but it made sense. Still, there was no way he was telling Dante and the rest of the resistance what he and Nadia had learned. It sure as hell wasn’t because he was protecting his father, but if news about Thea and the Basement experimentation program got out, there would be rioting at the very least, and very possibly a civil war. The government of Paxco needed an overhaul, big time, but that wasn’t the way to go about it. Still, there were plenty of things Nate knew that the resistance didn’t. There was a reason they’d planted a spy in his household, after all.

Nate wished the resistance weren’t so damn shadowy so he could know more about them—like who was in charge. Kurt seemed to think they were the good guys, and Nate trusted Kurt … But Kurt, like Dante, was just a foot soldier, and if the leaders of the resistance were preparing for some bloody coup, he wouldn’t necessarily know about it. And helping them in any way would be a bad idea. Not that that would stop him if it was the only way he could help Nadia.

“I can’t tell you what happened when Nadia was arrested,” he said, “but I do have information I’m sure your leaders would want. Give me proof that you’ve gotten a phone to Nadia, and I’ll make it worth your while. Their while.”

“You’re the Chairman Heir,” Dante said, regarding him suspiciously. “You’re really going to inform on the government you’re going to inherit someday?”

Nate searched inside of himself for moral qualms. This was out-and-out treason he was talking about. Surely it should bother him, at least a little bit. But how could he possibly feel bad about betraying his father when the man had had the original Nate Hayes killed? “You have no idea how much I hate my father right now. Anything I can do to make his life difficult is all right by me. If I thought your resistance would have me, I’d sign up in a heartbeat.”

Gee, he was just full of exaggerations today. He’d never been the most cautious person in the world, but that didn’t mean he was about to run out and join a resistance movement he knew so little about. But at least it sounded good, and Dante seemed satisfied with the response.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do. But you’d better have something good for me.”

Or what? Nate wanted to ask, but for once he managed to keep the smart-ass comment to himself. He knew exactly what inside information he would give Dante if he succeeded in getting a phone to Nadia. Since Nadia had strong-armed his father into destroying Thea, there would be no more backup scans performed or Replicas made. Thanks to the exorbitant fees Paxco charged for the service that was available nowhere else in the world, the entire state was dependent on the income from the Replica technology. Eventually, the Chairman would have to go public with the news that the state’s primary source of income had dried up forever, but he was going to put it off as long as he could. Nate had no clue what the resistance would do with the information once they had it, but he was damn sure they would want it. And if his conscience woke up and gave him a hard time, Nate could console himself that the information would have gone public eventually anyway.

“Work fast,” Nate said out loud. “Please,” he amended when he saw Dante’s annoyance at what had come out sounding like an order. “You have no idea what she’s had to endure already, and she doesn’t deserve any of this.”

“She’s the only Executive I’ve met who I’ve actually liked,” Dante said. “I don’t want her to get hurt any more than you do.”

Nate swallowed a caustic remark, wondering if all this restraint was going to give him an ulcer. He might not have a romantic interest in Nadia, but he’d been unofficially engaged to her since he was six, and she had always been his best friend. There was no way Dante, who had known her for about a week, was even half as committed to her safety as Nate was.

“Don’t contact me again,” Dante continued. “You probably got away with the stunt this afternoon, but I wouldn’t count on getting away with it again.”

“If I can’t contact you, then how am I supposed to know when Nadia has the phone? Or to tell you state secrets?”

“Let me take care of that. I’m a professional.”

Nate couldn’t hold back a soft snort. Dante might be a professional spy, but he was no older than Nate, and if he had a year’s worth of experience at the job, Nate would be shocked.

Dante made a face. “I don’t know what the hell Bishop sees in you,” he muttered.

Nate tried not to squirm or otherwise look uncomfortable. There was no reason to assume from that comment that Dante knew more than he should about Nate’s relationship with Kurt. He could easily have said the same thing under the assumption that they were just friends. If Dante knew about them, then Nate would expect him to have played the blackmail card by now. But it wouldn’t be good to have him suspect it, either, even if he didn’t know.

Dante paused a beat, likely waiting for a comeback, but Nate didn’t have one.

Fourdays at the Tranquility Retreat, and Nadia was climbing the walls. There were numerous ways she could occupy her time, but seriously, how many spa treatments could one person have? And Nadia considered playing bingo to be a form of slow torture, despite the retreat’s great fondness for the game. She wondered if the men’s retreats—of which there were considerably fewer—were equally boring.

The majority of the inmates were matronly women whose children were grown and who didn’t feel like they had a place in Executive society anymore. There were a few younger women suffering from some social disgrace or other, but there was no one even close to Nadia’s age. It wasn’t unheard of for teens to spend time in retreats, but it wasn’t all that common, either. Not that Nadia related that well to girls her age anyway, not having a great fondness for sycophants who were outwardly nice while secretly hating her for her exalted status.