Robin Wasserman - Torn

“I believe you,” I said finally.

“Really?” he asked, surprised.

“Really?” Jude echoed, equally so.

“Really. So here’s what you’re going to do.” I channeled my mother, and the imperious way she’d treated him, like he existed only to serve her purposes. I’d seen him bend to her, to M. Poulet, to anyone with enough power. If he liked to be led so much, we could accommodate him. “You’re going to take us with you when you go to the server ship. Then it’ll be easy to prove that you’re not doing anything but helping us. Because we’ll be right there with you.”

Ben laughed, but it was a sick, frightened noise. “That’s never going to happen.”

“Try again,” Jude growled.

“Do you know how much security there is on those ships?” Ben asked. “Even to get on the launch that’s going to take us out to the ship, there are massive layers of security to get through. They’re not going to just let me walk on board with a couple of mechs. And trust me, their guns are bigger than yours.”

“So you’re not going to help us,” Jude said.

“I’ve been trying to help you,” Ben said loudly, his voice climbing the register. “Why don’t you just let me? Walk out of here, and we can pretend nothing happened. Let me stop the virus, and you can all just go back to your lives.”

“All the people at Safe Haven, they can just go home?” I said.

“Of course.”

“Because they’re just being held for their own protection, right?”

“No one’s being held, ” Ben said. “It’s like I tried to tell your mother: They’re not prisoners; they’re clients. We’re protecting them.”

“Have you been inside?” I asked.

He hesitated. “That’s not really my area.”

“So you can’t really say what’s going on inside.”

“It’s my corp,” Ben said. “I’ve been working there for twenty years. I’ve been working toward this , toward you , for twenty years. Why would any of us want to hurt you? We created you.”

“So you’re God,” I said. “Someone tell Savona. I hear he’s been hoping for an introduction.”

“I know BioMax took something from you, Lia.”

It was a tidy euphemism.

“But look what we gave you!” he continued. “A new life. Eternal life. A miracle. And this technology isn’t just about saving individual lives or winning wars—this is the preservation of human consciousness. Through any upheaval, through all our global crises, we now have the tools to endure. This is a new beginning for us, Lia. For humanity.”

The saddest part of all was that I believed him. At least, I believed that he believed it. He believed in BioMax.

He didn’t know.

“What’s the EMP generator for?” I asked.

“What generator?”

“In Safe Haven, behind the residence facilities, there’s an EMP bomb,” I said. “Useful for emitting a giant electromagnetic pulse that could wipe us out in one shot. And not much else.”

Ben shook his head. “You’re mistaken.”

“Or you are.”

“We’re wasting time,” Jude said. “Can you get us to the ship or not? Because if not, you’re not much use, are you?”

“Give him a chance,” I said. It was a little late to try good cop, bad cop, but I figured it couldn’t hurt. “I’m sure he’ll think of something.”

A bead of sweat trickled down Ben’s cheek. His hands had turned white with the pressure of gripping the blanket. “I will,” he said quickly. “I’ll think of something.”

But he didn’t. Jude was getting impatient.

“Walk us through it,” I suggested. “How do you get to the servers?”

“I have coordinates for the launch ship,” he said. “We meet and set off from there—”

“Slow down,” I said. “More details. When do you go. What do you do when you get there. You get the idea.”

“I’m due at dawn. The rest of my team will arrive by two p.m.”

“Who’s on the team?”

“Just my staff, other techs.”

“You get to decide who goes?”

He nodded. “I give the list to security; they screen us and let us onto the launch ship.”

“And why do you have to get there before everyone else?”

“There’s equipment to load,” Ben said. “This is a scheduled monthly maintenance check, so we’re replenishing equipment and supplies. I have to supervise that it’s all accounted for and loaded—”

“That’s it,” I said.

“What’s it?”

“The equipment,” Jude said. He got it too. “Shipping crates, right? Anything could be inside them.”

“Well, they screen them—”

“But you’re in charge,” I said. “You say what goes and what doesn’t. You could get around the screening.”

“Maybe.” Ben looked like he was almost as afraid of that prospect as he was of Jude shooting him down in his bed. It occurred to me that if he got caught trying to help us stow away, his ending wouldn’t be any more pleasant.

I hadn’t asked for this, I reminded myself. And I hadn’t started it. BioMax had. Call-me-Ben had chosen his side. It wasn’t my fault this was where he ended up.

Still, I was glad Jude was the one holding the gun.

“So we stow away in the crates,” Jude said. “Just one problem—what’s to stop him from screwing us over as soon as we’re inside?”

“Don’t suppose you’d just take my word for it?” Ben asked weakly.

“One of us needs to get on board with him,” I said. “To watch him.”

“That brings us right back where we started,” Jude said, disgusted. “Nowhere.”

“Not quite.”

It couldn’t be Jude, and it couldn’t be me. No one would ever believe two mechs had business on a server ship, especially under these circumstances. Auden’s face was too well known. Which left only one option.

And maybe I’d been thinking about it all along.

“Come in here, Zo,” I called.

Ben’s eyes widened as she came into the room.

“You recognize her?” I asked Ben.

“I don’t think we’ve met, but I know the name.”

Zo rolled her eyes. “Typical,” she said. “We’ve met about ten times. Don’t feel bad. No one ever notices me when big sister’s in the room.”

I didn’t argue with her, because when it came to BioMax she was right. Which was what I was hoping. “No one knows her,” I said. “She could be anyone. Even Halley.”

What little color was left in Ben’s face drained away. “What did you say?”

“Your daughter. Halley. Don’t you think she and Zo look a bit alike? I know you haven’t seen her in years, so maybe you should just trust me on this—”

“Do not bring her into this,” he said, with cold fury. So he did care about something beyond his corp and his cause. Who knew?

“No one knows Zo,” I said. “No one knows Halley. A little hair dye, some new clothes, a fake ID… There’s no reason to think that your crew would be able to tell one from the other.”

“You want—” He swallowed, hard. “You want me to pretend she’s my daughter? And convince my team—and ship security—that for some reason I need to bring her along on a maintenance trip to a highly secure server farm?”

I shrugged. “Tell them it’s a field trip. Or punishment. Or you’re trying to buy her love with a vacation on the high seas. I don’t care—you’ll think of something.”

Zo looked as uncertain as he did. “Lia, I don’t know—”

“And I suppose she’s going to, what? Hide the gun under her shirt? Or you want me to come up with an excuse for that one too? And have you thought about what happens to her if she tries anything? Surrounded by security?”