Claudia Gabel - Elusion

“No!” I yell. “You’re wrong!”

There’s a faint murmur in the audience.

Oh. My. God. Did I just jump out of my seat and scream that out loud?

I peer toward the stage. Patrick grins and nods toward someone beside him. Before I know it, a man dressed in black approaches me and clips a mike to my shirt collar. I shoot Patrick a discouraging look, hoping that he’ll step in and carry on this confrontation with Avery. But he just bows his head and smirks.

He’s giving me the floor. In front of thousands of reporters. On a day where I look like something stuck on the bottom of someone’s shoe.

“The serotonin and dopamine aren’t released,” I say, my words now reverberating throughout the entire auditorium. “That makes it sound like they’re coming from another source, which they’re not. All Elusion does is stimulate the body’s production of certain chemicals that are already in the brain.”

Avery crosses her arms over her chest and glowers at me like I just slapped her face, but that doesn’t deter me at all. In fact, it motivates me to press on.

“The sensors in the visor and the wristband both have safety controls that are monitored by a special server that keeps tabs on every single Equip. If the levels are too high, the signal is cut off. End of story.”

Patrick is practically beaming with approval when the audience claps for me. “I’ll take one more question. Yes, you in the green sweater.”

I sigh in relief as I unclip my mike and give it back to an Orexis staff member. I catch sight of Avery out of the corner of my eye. She’s being escorted toward the auditorium doors by two burly guards. Her mike has obviously been turned off, but her mouth is still moving and her face is red with rage. I think about following Avery outside and giving her an even bigger piece of my mind. How dare she throw accusations at Patrick like that, and give Dad’s prized work a bad name?

But before I can grab my bag or come up with any insults to sling, my tablet buzzes. I pull my tab from my back pocket and unfold it. A note has popped up on the screen.

Damn. If I don’t leave now, I’ll be late for yet another commitment, and Patrick is fielding a scandalous question about Elusion’s rising “virtual hookup” rate, which I definitely want to hear about. I’ve never had one of my own, but at school the rumor is that making out with someone in an Escape is way more intense than the real thing. Still, as much as I want to listen to all the details, I don’t have the heart to keep Mom waiting. I’m going to have to sneak away and text Patrick why I had to leave.

For a moment, I feel bad that I won’t be able to tell him in person what a fantastic job he did today, but from the adoring looks he’s receiving from everyone in the room, I figure he’ll get to hear it.

Maybe even a few thousand times.

Where is she?

I’m pacing inside the lobby of Morton & Wexley, Detroit’s largest and most prestigious depository. Every thirty seconds I look at the automatic doors, hoping to see Mom walk through them. I barely made it here on time—there were more Traxx delays, of course—but when I arrived, the clients’ lounge was filled with people who were hooked up to their Equips, zip-tripping in Elusion, and my mother was nowhere in sight. I scoped out the clerk area to see if the meeting had already started, but all the employees were either on their tablets or conducting business with their customers in the confines of their glass-walled cubicles.

I check my watch. I have been waiting for nearly a half hour, and the building is about to close down. I tap on my tablet to see if I can get a phone signal, but the reception is completely blocked, probably because the depositories in this sector are steel-enforced and take strict security measures so that people can’t coordinate a heist from inside the building with the help of their handheld devices.

After another minute ticks by, I throw up my hands in frustration and perch myself on the last empty chair, which looks more like a metallic sculpture than a place to rest. The Morton & Wexley waiting room is decorated in deep jewel tones and bathed in streams of light emanating from the rectangular, exposed-fluorescent-bulb chandeliers. A black uniformed maintenance man stands in the corner, ready to wipe the Florapetro grime off the marble tiled floors whenever a customer enters.

I drum my fingers impatiently against the curled armrest, praying that nothing bad has happened to my mom. Expecting the worst in a situation like this is pretty understandable, given what we’ve both been through, but I can’t afford to latch on to those kind of negative thoughts. Not here anyway.

“Ms. Welch?” A bald-headed man with a mustache is now standing in front of me, wearing a badge that reads Mr. Xavier Burton. “Are you and your mother ready to recover your father’s items?”

“I need a few more minutes, please. My mom still isn’t here.”

When he inspects his watch, his lips press together in a way that is all too familiar. My English teacher, Mrs. Thackeroy, has the same annoyed expression on her face when I’m late to her class, which is pretty often, considering that it’s the first one of the day. With Mom at home to look after, I never seem to make it out of the house on time in the morning.

“We’re only open for another ten minutes. You’ll have to come back tomorrow if she doesn’t arrive by then,” Mr. Burton says, straightening his suit jacket with a harsh tug at the sleeves.

“Is there any way I could claim the contents of the security box myself?” I ask.

“No, I’m afraid not. The ledger states that pursuant to his will, Mr. Welch’s wife becomes the principal owner of the contents. I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay. I’m sure she’ll be here soon.” I give him a somewhat insincere, halfhearted smile.

Mr. Burton issues me a curt nod and ducks behind a glass cubicle with a ribbon-like image scrolling around the middle with the words “Assistant Manager” in square-block digital lettering, and an update of the stock market.

I look at my watch again. In seven minutes, the staff of Morton & Wexley is going to kick me to the curb. True, Mom and I could always come back another day, but then we’d have to spend more sleepless nights wondering what was so important to my father that he kept it locked up here, without anyone else knowing until his lawyer executed his will.

Did Dad have some kind of dark secret? If he did, it would definitely make dealing with his loss even more unbearable, especially for my mother.

“Hey, Ree.”

Patrick is walking toward me, a sympathetic smile on his face. I’m so happy and surprised to see him I hop off my seat and give him a big hug.

“What are you doing here?” I ask, my head pressed against his chest.

“Just wanted to see if you needed any help. I tried calling, but then I remembered my dad and all of the security rules at his trust company.” He pulls back a little as he grabs hold of my hands. “I hope I’m not intruding.”

“No, not at all,” I say, grinning. “But don’t you have stuff you need to do? What about the conference?”

“Once I left the stage, my job was over.”

“Yeah, right,” I say with a laugh. I know he’s just saying that to make me feel better, and I appreciate it. “I don’t know how you managed to sneak away, but you just scored major best-friend points for showing up here.”