Robin Wasserman - Shattered

“I didn’t mean to question your integrity, M. Kahn,” she said tightly, each word clipped and precise.

“Much as I appreciate that heartfelt sentiment, your superiors aren’t relying on my word,” he said. “They’re acting on the records of BioMax Corp.”

“Just a coincidence that you sit on the board,” she mumbled.

“What’s that?” my father snapped. “Speak up.”

Her shoulders slumped. “Nothing.”

“Fortunately for all of us, I suppose, the decision is out of your hands,” my father said. “Your superiors haven’t seen fit to question the material supplied by BioMax, so unless there’s something else…?”

Detective Ayer turned to me, and her defeated expression regained a little of its spark. “You didn’t know, did you?” she asked.

“Didn’t know what?”

“That your alibi was out there, ready and waiting. That you could have ended this farce before it started.”

“Maybe I just enjoyed your company,” I said, pride overcoming curiosity.

She shook her head. I could see from her expression that she knew she’d be crazy to push the issue—and she was going to do it anyway. Her last stand. “I don’t think so. You asked how we tracked you down. Don’t you want to know?”

“Lia, we’re leaving,” my father said. Like I was still his perfect, darling daughter, who lived in the bedroom down the hall, said please and thank you and of course, yes, whatever you want, Daddy, like I hadn’t seen him on his knees praying to a God he’d never believed in, wishing that he’d had the strength to let me die.

He’d done me a favor, convincing me once and for all that I wasn’t the same person anymore, no matter how much we both might have wanted it. I’d done him a favor in return: I left.

“No. I want to hear this.” Knowing that he was my only option, that if he changed his mind about rescuing me and left me here, here is where I’d rot. Knowing that if I said one more yes and walked out the door with him, I’d keep walking, straight to the car, then to the house, to the old bedroom and the old life, the one that didn’t fit me any better than all the old clothes in Lia Kahn’s closet, custom-tailored to a body that was now a pile of ashes in some biowaste landfill.

“BioMax is tracking you,” Detective Ayer said. “BioMax knows where all you mechs are, every minute of every day. Took a couple days to get them to release the data, but once they did, we would have found you anywhere.”

Relief, that was first. No one had turned me in. Riley hadn’t betrayed me. Relief, and then disgust—with BioMax, and with myself for not figuring it out.

My father’s face was as blank as mine.

“That’s your big secret?” I said coolly. “You think I didn’t know that?”

As an org, I’d been good at bluffing; as a mech, I was a pro. Empty expression, inflection-free voice—Ayer would never know how much she’d thrown me. “Seems like you’re the one who’s been wasting time. All that data and you still can’t figure out who attacked the corp-town? What kind of detective are you anyway?”

Judging from her expression, the kind that wanted to violate the Human Rights Covenant and throw me into the wall. But she behaved. “BioMax doesn’t archive its tracking data,” she said tightly. Apparently my father wasn’t the only one who could release his bottled-up anger word by bitter word. “They can only tell us where you are , not where you were. ”

Lie, I thought. BioMax would never collect the information just to throw it out. Ayer didn’t seem dumb enough to believe the line, but maybe she was smart enough to know it was all she’d get.

What else was BioMax lying about? Was it just a GPS tracker, or could they see what I saw, hear what I heard? Could they somehow know what I was thinking? My brain was a computer, after all—a computer they’d built. Shouldn’t it have occurred to me that they could read it as easily as I could read the network? That maybe they could write over it as easily as I could update my zone?

“Did you want to hear the rest?” Ayer asked, giving herself away with an inadvertent glance at my father. Because he’d given the secops something they didn’t have, I realized. Evidence that had convinced them to let me go—evidence that shouldn’t have existed.

“BioMax feeds the tracking data to my father,” I said flatly, confirming the guess with one look at Ayer’s face. My father remained unreadable. “They may not archive it, but he does.”

The detective looked disappointed that I wasn’t freaking out. She didn’t know him like I did. You didn’t say no to my father—if the information existed in the world, it was only a matter of time before he claimed it for himself.

“And according to him, you’ve spent the last several days at home with your family.” Detective Ayer smiled coldly. “I just can’t understand why you wouldn’t have mentioned that yourself, saved us both all this trouble.”

“I’m sure there are lots of things you don’t understand,” I said. “You must be used to it by now.” I could feel my father’s eyes on me, sense his approval.

“Unless there’s anything else, we’ll be going now,” my father said. “Once you apologize to my daughter for wasting her time.”

Detective Ayer looked like she’d rather die. “If you come across any information about the attack, I hope you’ll come to me,” she said. “We do intend to solve this case.”

“I hope you can,” I said. “Oh, and apology accepted.”

The clothes felt wrong, like they belonged to someone else. Which they did. They’d come from a dead girl’s closet. But I put them on anyway, grateful to trash the city rags. I laced up the dead girl’s sneakers. And let the dead girl’s father take me away.

My BioMax rep was waiting for us in the parking lot. Just as repulsively handsome as I remembered, even in his tacky suit with its thermo-pulse lapels and gold net-links at each cuff. The first time I met Ben, I’d fixed on the dimpled chin and the full lips, instinctively turning on the flirt even though I was stuck in a hospital bed unable to do anything but blink—and even though, at the time, my skull was stripped bare to expose the tangled mess of circuitry that lay beneath. That was back when I thought we were on the same team, still members of the same species. Before he leaned in close, gave me that sickly fake grin, and said, “Call me Ben,” my first tip-off that he wasn’t a doctor or a savior but just some guy who wanted to sucker me into trusting him. Even though I saw him every time I went into BioMax for a checkup or repair, I could never be bothered to remember his last name. Call-me-Ben it was. And now, apparently, we were on the same team again.

“Good to see you again, Lia,” he said. “Though not under these circumstances.”

“Seems like you’ve been seeing me nonstop,” I snapped. “So you like to watch? Seen anything you like?”

Ben raised his eyebrows at my father. “She knows?”

“She knows,” I said.

“We don’t watch ,” Ben told me. “We keep track of where you go, but that’s it. No spying.”

I rolled my eyes. “Right. That’s not spying at all.”

“It’s precautionary,” he said. “To make sure none of you get into any trouble. Like, say, wandering into a corp-town that’s about to become the site of biological warfare.”

“What’d you do?” I asked my father. “Pay him off to give the cops fake information?”

“BioMax is not in the business of violating its clients’ privacy,” Ben said stiffly.

“Especially not if it would prove your clients are a bunch of terrorists,” I guessed. “You know who attacked that corp-town, don’t you? And you’re protecting them.”