Robin Wasserman - Shattered

And we agreed there was no way we could accomplish those tasks without getting caught, not if we gave the Brotherhood any kind of warning.

We agreed that time was running out. Maybe they were closing in on the answer they needed, the way to destroy us all. Maybe they weren’t and they were just torturing their prisoners, every day, every night. Either way, it had to end.

But I couldn’t turn myself into a murderer.

Jude took the plane back to the estate, agreeing to send it back for us later, so that we could have time alone in the snow to think. Time alone for me to pretend I didn’t care who Riley used to be or whatever lurked in the silence between him and his best friend.

“He wants us to agree he’s right,” Riley said. “But he really will do it himself if he has to.”

We couldn’t talk him out of it. And we couldn’t warn the Brotherhood ahead of time. Or the secops.

“ I can’t,” Riley said. “I can’t do that to him. And there’s always a chance…”

A chance he might change his mind. Innocent until proven guilty, until his finger slipped onto a detonator, until someone died. So we would go along with him—until we couldn’t go along with him anymore. We would find a way to get the hostages out, blow up the lab, save the day, without more bloodshed. And if that didn’t work, we would call in reinforcements.

Would there be time, between thought and action, time to stop him—to talk him out of it, or to do whatever else, anything else it took?

We decided to bet there would.

But we weren’t betting with our own lives.

“I’ve never gone against him,” Riley said. He hugged me from behind, his chin resting on my shoulder. “Never thought I would.”

“Are you sure—?”

“I can’t let him do this. I owe him too much.”

I twisted to face him, without breaking free of his embrace. Our faces were almost touching. “What is it?” I asked. “What do you owe him?”

He let go. Looked away. Sank back into the snow. “It scared you. What he said.”

I shook my head. No.

All I did anymore was lie.

“It should have,” he said. “It would, if you knew.”

I didn’t want to know.

“Then you tell me,” I said. “Go ahead. Scare me.”

He didn’t speak, just stared down at the snow. Sleet spattered down on us, streaking our faces like the tears we couldn’t cry. I reached out, touched his cheek. He grabbed my wrist. “Just tell me,” I said. “Why do you owe him? What did you do?”

“I told you what happened to Jude, how he got hurt,” Riley began. He wouldn’t look at me. I put my hands over his. Cold, I thought, registering the thin layer of ice crystals coating our skin, without caring.

I nodded. “Some kids beat him up.”

“Because of something I did,” Riley said, so quietly I almost didn’t hear him. “I stole this kid’s chillers. That was back when there were still some b-mods floating around. But it was tough to get your hands on them. I didn’t even like that crap. I was going to sell them. But…”

“They caught you.”

“They caught Jude. There were five of them. Older than us, and bigger. They came looking for me, and Jude told them he was the one who stole the chillers. They believed him. And they—” He choked down the words.

I squeezed his hand. “You didn’t make them do anything.”

“I didn’t stop them either. I was there. Hiding.”

“You were smaller. You were outnumbered.”

“So was Jude,” he said, his face twisting in self-disgust. “But he didn’t tell them where I was hiding. Or that I was the one. He just let it happen. Like I let it happen. I… I just watched.”

“You were a kid!”

He ripped his hands away. “Why are you making excuses?”

“Because… I…” But if he didn’t already know, I couldn’t say it out loud. “So now you owe him. That’s why you took care of him all those years.”

He scowled, angry that I didn’t understand. “I told you, we looked out for each other . And when he wasn’t there—when they took him away for all those tests or whatever—”

“BioMax?” I said.

He nodded. “I told you, he’s smart.”

“You’re smart.”

“Not like Jude. He knew how to get stuff, how to get out of stuff. And when he wasn’t around…” Riley finally met my eyes. “You really want to hear it? All of it?”

No. “Yes.”

He recited it in a calm, flat voice, like a kid giving a history report, a kid describing a scene long past, holding no interest for him, bearing no relevance. “That guy Wynn you met in the city, the one that took you. He’s one of the ones that did it to Jude. When we were kids,” he said. “And after Jude disappeared, I got mad. Guess I freaked out. And I decided to get him some payback.”

“But you changed your mind,” I said hopefully. I’d seen Wynn alive. Healthy. At least before the secops showed up.

“Didn’t change my mind,” Riley said mechanically. “Missed. Hit someone else instead. Wynn’s brother. Little kid, eight or nine.”

I stood up. I didn’t even know I was doing it. I was barely aware of my legs in motion, rising, pushing me away from the ground, away from him. I just needed to be upright, feet planted on something stable. “What happened? To the kid?”

“What do you think happened?” Riley said harshly. “Blood loss. Infection. Took a couple days, I think. But then he died. That’s what I hear.”

“You weren’t around anymore.”

He shook his head.

“Because you got shot.”

He nodded.

“For revenge.”

He nodded again, still on the ground. I felt like I was looking down at him from very far away. “It’s why Wynn was so angry. He thinks I won. That Jude and I get to live forever, and his kid brother’s dead.”

“He thinks that because it’s true,” I said flatly.

“Yeah. So that’s why he took you,” Riley said. “That’s my fault too. It all is.”

I shouldn’t judge him, I thought, staring down at this boy I’d thought I knew. I wasn’t there, I didn’t live like that. I don’t know what it took to survive .

But maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe death was death.

“I didn’t want you to know,” Riley said. “I wanted to start clean.”

Because we were different now.

People change, I thought. Auden had changed, more than I wanted to admit. Zo had changed, and changed again.

But then, they were people; we were mechs. Our brains were frozen, sliced, scanned, downloaded.

Maybe everything was frozen.

Stand up, I begged him silently. Convince me. Make me understand.

But he didn’t move. He was looking past me, maybe thinking about the kid. I wondered what he had looked like. What his name was. Whether he’d seen it coming.

How much it had hurt.

“It’s why I can’t let Jude do this,” he said.

I’d almost forgotten why we were here, why we’d started talking about this. The present had receded into the background, pale and colorless. While the past was bleeding red over the snow.

“I promised,” he said. “Never again.”

“Promised who?”

“Myself.” He whispered. “The kid.”

This is still Riley, I thought.

Jude was wrong: The past wasn’t irrelevant.

But it was past.

I let myself drop into the snow beside him.

“I told you I deserved it,” he said, rubbing his fingers against his arm, against the artificial skin. “And it’s still not enough.”

I couldn’t picture him holding a gun, lining up a target. Pulling a trigger. Any more than I could picture him watching his best friend get kicked and pummeled, Jude’s body broken, flopping helplessly on the ground, while Riley hid, safe and scared. I couldn’t picture him scared or vengeful or anything but what he’d been to me—solid, bold, kind. Riley.