Robin Wasserman - Shattered

I didn’t say anything.

Was it guilt? As far as I could tell, my father didn’t know the meaning of the word. Guilt required acknowledgment of wrongdoing, and in the world according to my father, everything he did was right, by definition.

Except for the choice to make me, I thought, not wanting to remember.

Remembering.

Forgive me, he’d begged. If I could do it again…

I would make the right choice this time.

He felt guilty that he’d unleashed me on the world and on his family—Lia Kahn’s family, forced to pretend that the dead had come back to life, that an electronic copy could ever replace the real thing.

And yet: “These are our children. My child.”

And yet my father didn’t lie.

Maybe he was lying to himself.

But what if he just believed it?

“Your father’s been running all over the country, trying to persuade his estimable peers to ease the path for download recipients,” Ben said. “He’s become quite the crusader for mech rights. All behind closed doors, of course.”

“Of course.” It wouldn’t do for a man of his stature to be zone-hopping like a Savona-style crackpot, spilling his guts to the masses. And my father had long made clear his belief that true power acted in silence and shadow.

“He wants you to come home,” Ben said.

If he wanted that, he would have made it happen. My father didn’t do subtle, and he didn’t do voluntary.

“What’s your point?” I asked, wondering if I should reconsider the whole jumping-out-of-the-car thing. But that would prove Ben right. Like I was someone who preferred not to ask questions because I was too weak to deal with the answers.

“I think you’re a little confused about who your real friends are,” Ben said.

“I’m not—”

“It’s understandable.” His drone was maddeningly calm. “You know, Lia, as an official BioMax rep, it’s policy to remain a watchful distance from all our clients, but…” He cleared his throat. “Did I ever tell you that you were my first?”

I shook my head. Thinking: Who cares?

“It was my job to help you and your family through the transition period, and I can’t help feeling as if I’ve failed you.” He pressed his fingertips together, then tapped them against each other, one by one. “I probably shouldn’t admit that. But I feel responsible for you, Lia. I worry.”

“Good show,” I said, giving him a slow clap. “Though next time, you might want to try a single tear rolling down your cheek. Much more effective.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “You’re growing cynical in your old age.”

“Check the manual,” I said. “I don’t age.”

“Fine.” Ben leaned forward and keyed something into the nav-panel. “I’ll take you back. Obviously there’s no point in discussing this further.”

“You noticed.”

“Loyalty’s a tricky thing,” Ben said. “Just because you give it to someone doesn’t mean you get it back.”

“Funny, this feels like discussing.”

“There’s nothing to discuss,” Ben said. “You’ve made that clear. You’ll go back to the Sharpe estate. You’ll do your best to pretend the last several days never happened.”

As if I could.

“You’ll probably tell your friend Jude everything I’ve said here, just to prove to him how loyal you are. Or prove it to yourself. And then, once you’ve had time to think about it, you’ll get in touch with me and give me the name of Jude’s BioMax contact.”

“I think your fortune-telling skills are failing you,” I said. “Because there’s no way.” Not that I owed Jude anything. But I owed Ben even less.

“I’d prefer you do it because you want to,” Ben said. “I’d rather convince you that Jude’s not doing any of you favors by loading you up with untested tech.”

“Well, you can’t, and you shouldn’t—”

“I’d prefer to do it that way,” he said over me. “But since that’s not an option, we’ll resort to plan B. Reciprocation.”

“What the hell is that?”

Ben smiled. “You give me the name—and I keep quiet about your unfortunately timed presence at the Synapsis Corp-Town. I keep those records where they are. Buried. Simple reciprocity.”

“Blackmail.”

He shrugged. “Whatever. Take a couple weeks to think about it. I’m a patient man.”

He reached forward and flicked a finger across the car’s control panel and—so smoothly it was almost imperceptible, we accelerated, the landscape bleeding past in a blur of color. Even at this speed, the car cornered tightly, veering back onto the highway, flying toward home.

We were running out of time, and he hadn’t told me the one thing I needed to know. I hated to ask him for anything. “So if you’re tracking us, you must know,” I said, so quietly he had to tip his head toward me to catch the words. “You know who else was at the corp-town. Who did it.”

“Who killed all those people, you mean? Who set you up?”

Assuming it wasn’t you, I thought. “If you know, how can you just… do nothing ?”

Ben smiled thinly. “I know you were there, and I’m doing nothing about that,” he said.

“It’s not the same.”

“I already told you,” he said irritably. It was the first real emotion I’d seen from him the whole trip. At least, I assumed it was real. “It’s my job to protect you. All of you.”

“Then what the hell is the point of the tracking?” I countered. “You said it was to keep us out of trouble—what, that doesn’t include trying to kill hundreds of people?”

“You don’t think I’d do something if I could?” he shouted—then abruptly fell silent.

“Then do it,” I hissed. After everything I’d seen the last few days, I didn’t have any sympathy left. Certainly not for him.

He didn’t respond.

“You don’t know who it is, do you?” I said suddenly. Just guessing—but I saw on his face it was true. “Your precious spy gear crapped out on you.”

“No technology is foolproof,” he said steadily. “You’d do well to remember that.”

I didn’t bother to answer. He no longer had anything I needed. We drove the rest of the way in silence.

“A pleasure, as always,” Ben said as the car stopped at the southern boundary of Quinn’s estate. He reached across me to open the door. I jerked away just before his arm could brush my chest.

I got out of the car, resisting the temptation to slam the door on his fingertips.

“And remember, Lia.” He scratched the back of his head, letting his fingers rest on the spot where his skull met his neck, the spot where, somewhere inside my own head, a microscopic GPS chip was broadcasting my location to his bosses. And to my father. “We’ll be watching.”

I didn’t want to go back to the house. I wanted to stay there, in the green empty, the concrete strip of road to my left and the estate grounds to my right. I wanted to pretend that I was stranded on the side of the road, come from nowhere, with nowhere to go. No one waiting for me. No one watching me.

I hadn’t been this free since before the corp-town attack—free to wade through the overgrown grass, find the rambling path that would take me to the house, or to turn in the opposite direction, to the road, and start walking. Toward Lia Kahn’s home, Lia Kahn’s father, Lia Kahn’s past.

Or just walking toward nothing. Filling myself up with nothing, an emptiness that could blot out the faces of the dead, call-me-Ben’s voice, my father’s hands on my shoulders, his lips brushing against my hair.

I belong here, I thought, trying to convince myself to climb the grassy slope. I belong with them.