Jay Budgett: The Indigo Thief

Her lips curled into smile. “It’s quite possible, obviously,” she said, “because I’m still here. Indigo must have saved me.”

I balled my hand into a fist. “Indigo has never saved anyone—not a single soul. All it does is kill people. Exterminate them, and the truth.”

The woman cocked her head to the side, like a bird that’s spotted prey. I noticed the cleft in her chin, and then I was sure. She was the woman from the Morier Mansion’s picture frame. The one with the sisters. She was the one in the middle.

“You were in the Morier Mansion,” I said.

Fear flashed in the woman’s eyes before being replaced with something more sinister: desperation. She didn’t want to be recognized.

I stepped toward her. “You were in the Morier family portrait. I recognize your eyes and the cleft in your chin. You were the one in the middle. Your name is… Miranda.” I stepped closer. “Those were old pictures,” I said. “The colors were bleeding and everything. How is it possible that you were alive for those pictures?”

Miranda cleared her throat. “For a minute there, I thought I was feeling something. Was it—dare I say it—mercy? But now, well, now it’s gone. I suppose mercy is like love.” She flashed her eyes toward Charlie and then back to me. “Ephemeral. Fleeting. In the palm of your hand one moment—gone in the next.”

She was close to me. Close enough that I could reach out and touch her. I stepped closer again, but my shoe caught on its laces and I fell forward. I threw my hands out—and slid right through her. My face hit the ground.

Miranda stood above me, looking down. My arms had plowed through her nonexistent torso.

Charlie sucked in a breath. “Oh—oh my god.”

Miranda wasn’t real—at least not really there . She was a ghost, a projection, a hologram, like the ones shouting jingles from Newla’s skyscraper balconies. But she was a damned good one.

She stepped over my fallen body and smoothed the creases of her black and green jumpsuit. “This was not supposed to happen. This was not a part of the plan. You’ve doomed yourself, now. HACKNER!” she called. “HACKNER! GET IN HERE!”

“You’re not real,” I said slowly. Charlie pulled me off the ground. “You’re not really standing here. You’re not really alive.”

Her eyes spun in their sockets. She threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, I’m real all right. I’m more real than anything you could ever imagine.”

“No, you’re not. You’re an illusion—a hologram. You’re nothing.”

Something in her gray eyes had been set on fire. “Just because something is an illusion, doesn’t mean it’s nothing. You have no idea what nothing is, boy—but in a minute, I’m going to teach you.”

The door flew open, and the chancellor entered with a revolver in his hand. He pointed it in my direction, but Miranda shook her head. “The girl.” Hackner’s lips twisted into his Cheshire grin.

Miranda circled us, disappearing and reappearing in the room’s corners. “I’ve been in love before,” she said. I wrapped Charlie’s hands in mine. Something told me to kiss her—right now before I lost my chance.

“Years ago,” Miranda continued. “I felt the thickness—the drunkenness it brought to my blood. The way your heart boils in your chest. It was intoxicating—like good wine. But it was too intoxicating. Drink too much wine and it becomes a poison. Too much wine kills you.”

“I’m not drinking wine,” I said. “I’m not drinking poison.”

The chancellor lowered his gun.

“Love,” said Miranda, “is a poison. Too much love kills you.”

I thought of how far I’d come: the places I’d seen, the friends I’d met, Mom’s death. The way my life had changed in an instant. Charlie was still shaking, but when she squeezed my hand, my heart was warm—I wasn’t afraid of anything.

I stared at Miranda. “It saves your life, too.”

She laughed hysterically. So hysterically that even Hackner seemed alarmed. “You think I can’t get to you?” she said. “You think I don’t know how to take everything from you? Make you feel like nothing? Make you become nothing? You think I don’t know how to stop your pathetic heart, you little shit?” She glanced at Hackner. “I could have him shoot you in the chest right now, Kai Bradbury.”

“Go ahead,” I said. “I’d still be standing.”

Hackner scratched his head. “How’s that?”

“Because,” said Miranda, her voice shrill and mocking, “ his heart —everything that matters to him—isn’t in his chest at all. Isn’t that right, darling?” Her body shook with laughter. “Your heart beats outside a body that’s all your own. It doesn’t beat in your chest at all anymore, does it?” She pointed to Charlie. “It beats in hers—in the girl you tore up half the Federation trying to save.

“But I’m afraid you’ll soon realize that from the moment you brought her on the Pacific Northwestern Tube, you doomed her. You,” she spat, “not us, you are the one who has done this to her. You are the one who will be responsible—perhaps the only one responsible—for the death of Charlie Minos. You’re the one who killed her. Aim at the girl, Hackner. Aim at the girl and fire.”

I moved to block the bullet, but I was too late. Hackner pulled the trigger.

Sage heard the gun go off before the others, and knew instantly where the sound had come from. She turned and ran back down the hall toward the chancellor’s chambers.

She smashed right into Chancellor Hackner, coming the other way down the hall. “Outta my way,” he growled as he pushed past her.

Sage heard screeching wheels roll by—a trunk, she thought—and a familiar voice. “Bye, darling,” Miranda’s voice called to her.

“Miranda? Where are you going?”

Miranda laughed, her voice echoing back down the hall. “Ah, darling,” she said. “You really were a dumb bitch.”

Sage curled her hands into fists. She knew now, for certain, that she’d been lied to all these years. Manipulated by a heartless woman who dribbled out feeble acts of affection. And she’d foolishly gobbled it up. After all, it was the only affection she had known for a long time—until recently.

Sage had figured out some time ago that Miranda wasn’t really there. It had taken her a while, granted, but eventually she’d deduced why the woman never touched her, why she kept her distance. Why the woman needed her help mixing the antidote in the first place. Why, no matter how close Miranda got to her, Sage never felt her breath, her body heat.

The blindness had actually helped her with this. Since she couldn’t see, she had grown accustomed to feeling a person’s presence—their heat, their smell, the subtle air currents as they moved. But with Miranda, she’d never felt anything but coldness.

Miranda was a ghost in a box.

Sage had never said anything, of course. She didn’t want to invoke Miranda’s wrath. And it was useful to her that Miranda think her stupid. But she knew far more than Miranda could have imagined.

She’d even figured out where Miranda’s consciousness was housed: in the globe on the chancellor’s desk. Sage had gone out of her way to touch the globe from time to time, and noted Miranda’s irritated reaction. Yes, she was pretty sure. And she was willing to bet that if that globe ran out of energy—even for a split second—then Miranda’s consciousness would be lost.

She’d heard the people, too—the ones that went wailing into the chambers and came out, weeks later, in bags. Strong and husky when they went in, thin when their corpse came out, their life energy burned away. The machine sapped their souls like lamps sapped electricity. Sage had a feeling there’d been a body in the trunk Hackner dragged as he ran by. Food for Miranda.