Robin Wasserman - Torn

“And why would she want that?” Jude said.

“She won’t get into the server room without my help. And without me, I highly doubt if she’ll be able to figure out if anything’s not as it’s supposed to be.”

“Right,” Jude snarled. “And with you she’s got an excellent probability of being turned in to the first security team you pass.”

“Ben comes with me,” I said.

“You trust him ?” Auden asked incredulously.

“We should lock him in a crate,” Jude said. “Just to be safe.”

“He’s right,” I said. “He can get me to the servers.”

“And he’ll do that because he’s so eager to help us? Much less get up close and personal again with the girl who can turn his pretty face into modern art?”

“I got you on the ship,” Ben said. “You’re going to get caught eventually—I don’t need to do anything to speed that along. And in the meantime I’m as curious as you are about what the corp is doing. So I’ll keep my mouth shut, and I’ll get Lia to the servers, and, well, if you don’t want to take me up on it, that’s your choice. Doesn’t seem like you’ve got a lot of options right now.”

He was sounding like himself again, which was almost as infuriating as it was comforting.

“Let’s go,” I said. “We’ll come find you in twenty minutes.”

Jude tucked the gun into his waistband. “If we’re wrong, and something’s happening in the server room, or if you need me—”

“I’ll call.”

“Be careful,” Auden said.

“You too.”

Jude grabbed my hand. “We can do this.”

It sounded too much like a question.

“We can do this,” I echoed him, no doubt in my voice.

Jude shook his head, and smiled.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing.”

“Let me guess, you’re wondering how to admit, without sounding like an idiot, that all this time you were totally wrong about me.”

He was still holding on. “Actually, I’m thinking—as usual—I was right.”

Ben led me through endless corridors punctuated by locked doors and ID panels, the walls striped with logos making it clear that the mid-decks were filled with server farms for every major corp. Without him I would have been wandering blindly through what seemed like miles of hallway, searching for BioMax; with him I had only his word that he was taking me to the right place. The ship was larger than any building I’d ever been in, and aside from the almost imperceptible thrum of the engines, several decks down, it was hard to imagine we were actually moving through the water. Its size did offer us one advantage: It felt like a ghost town. I caught glimpses of security guards, from a distance, but we made it much of the way without catching their attention.

It had to happen eventually: Footsteps approached. Ben grabbed my wrist and dragged me down the corridor, jiggling door handles while he went until one gave. He shoved me inside.

I waited in the dark, ear pressed against the wall, fists balled, ready to fight.

“BioMax,” I heard Ben say. “Here’s my ID.”

There was a mumbled response.

“Headed to the server room now, sir,” Ben said loudly. “Just getting my bearings. Easy to get lost here.”

Another mumbled response, and then they both laughed. A moment later the door opened, letting in a shaft of light. Ben’s face appeared in the crack. “Clear,” he said. “Let’s go. Fast.”

Zo’s ViM relay had gone dead, but I told myself not to worry. No doubt all the computer equipment was just jamming the signal. Not to mention the fact that we were in the middle of the Atlantic in a high-security zone; no reason to think that wouldn’t interfere with network communications. Still, I started moving faster. We wound down long, featureless corridors, turning corners seemingly at random, but Ben seemed confident he knew where we were going, and I was starting to trust that, if nothing else, he was determined to get us to the server room intact. Both of us. It was clear I never would have found my way here without him. And when we reached the giant steel door with the BioMax logo painted across it, I knew that without Ben, there was no way I would have been able to break my way in.

“Why are you helping me?” I asked quietly.

He triggered the locking mechanism and heaved the door open, gesturing me inside. “Keep out of sight. I’ll check on Zo.”

The room was loud and cold. Computer servers were lined up like dominos from wall to wall. I didn’t know whether it was the refrigeration system or the servers themselves, but there was a low, constant thrum, a vibration. It almost felt like I was shaking.

Ben swept down the central aisle, his eyes pinned on the numbers marking each row. It was a room built for hide-and-seek, and I tucked myself into one of the narrow alleys between server rows, padding softly down the aisle as I shadowed Ben through the room. He threaded through the rows and I slipped behind him, always keeping the thick, towering computers between us, though he never turned back to look. Finally, he stopped. One row away, so did I.

Kiri was waiting for him, with two BioMax techs. One had a hand clamped around Zo’s wrist.

“Learn anything interesting?” Ben asked his “daughter.”

“She didn’t,” Kiri said. “But I think it’s safe to say that I did.”

Ben’s expression didn’t give anything away. “Problem?” he asked mildly.

“You tell me.” I’d seen Kiri Napoor in a variety of moods—conciliatory, wheedling, triumphant, frustrated, distraught—but I’d never seen her like this. There was no mood, no emotion, just: cold. “Why am I standing here with Lia Kahn’s little sister? And why are you trying to pass her off as your daughter?”

I cursed myself for not taking Jude up on his offer. If I had the gun, I would… what? Burst out from behind the servers, guns blazing, shooting wildly? Save the day?

Ben sighed. “You knew.”

“Of course I knew.” Kiri scowled. “It’s my job to know. I’ve never understood why you thought so little of me. So you want to tell me what she’s doing here?”

The situation could still be salvaged, I told myself. As long as no one panicked.

“Well?” Kiri pressed, when Ben didn’t answer.

“What is that?” he said, turning his attention to a small pile of equipment and mess of wiring at the base of the server bank.

“You’re asking me questions?”

“You’re just here to observe,” Ben said. “So what are you hooking up?”

“What’s she doing here?”

“Is that an uplink device?” Ben said, approaching it. Kiri blocked his path. “Zo’s here as a favor to a friend,” Ben said. “Nothing to worry about.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Kiri said. And with the same jaunty grin she’d always given me when talking me into yet another tiresome BioMax PR chore, she pulled out a gun.

The two BioMax techs did the same.

Zo yanked her arm out of the tech’s grasp. She brandished the remote over her head. “Don’t!” she shouted. “If I press this button, he blows up.”

Kiri turned to Ben, eyebrows arching toward her forehead. “Is that true?”

“Afraid so.”

“A hostage,” Kiri said to Zo. “Impressive. And now everything makes sense. I can see why he’d do whatever you said.”

“Exactly,” Zo said. Her voice was shaking, but her hands weren’t.

If I showed myself now, would I make things better or worse?

“It’s an untenable situation,” Kiri said. “We’ll have to fix that.”

She raised the gun.

Zo screamed.

A spot of red bloomed on Ben’s forehead, and he dropped backward, arms splayed, eyes open. Dead.

I was halfway out of my hiding place—halfway to Zo—when I realized that she was still on her feet, unharmed.