Chapter 4
The blackout covers the city like a wool blanket. It’s oppressive and stifling after only a few moments.
I carefully glance from side to side before stepping from my apartment.
With Nonna next door, I have to be careful.
I can’t risk her seeing—or worse, recognizing—me.
I look different than before. I’m three years older, and after the car crash, several parts of me had to be reconstructed. But I still worry.
I gesture, activating my ringware. My visor’s apps boot up, screen flickering into view.
As an extra layer of disguise, I type in a command to my smart-dye app.
Every other week, I use a specialized conditioner that hooks up to my visor via the Wi-Fi.
My hair has been an inky black since San Francisco, but now I choose something that the old me would never have worn: a hot pink.
The pigment shifts at the roots and descends until every strand is the same cotton-candy hue.
Now I look even less like myself.
“All right,” I murmur, striding toward the stairs. “Here’s the plan: We break into the mail room first. Nonna still gets some paper mail.”
Edgar buzzes overhead. “Doesn’t that cost extra?”
“She’s old-fashioned,” I say. “Likes to keep her bills and stuff. She says computer files are too easily deleted.”
The expansive sweep of the lobby is dominated by the pool.
The faux-marble floor is illuminated by reflected sunlight, and the scent of chlorine and water hangs in the air.
The scent throws me back into childhood: summer days at a community pool, fingers sticky from holding a lime snow cone, the shrieks of other kids.
The same security guard from last night sits behind a desk.
Now that I’m more awake, I commit his appearance to memory—late middle age, dark hair, fair skin tanned along his face and forearms from years without sun protection, and a comfortably paunchy belly.
I give him a bright smile as I walk by, and he acknowledges me with a tip of his chin.
There is a girl in the pool, splashing under the watchful eye of a young man that looks like her older brother. He sits on a pool chair, absentmindedly scratching at his left hand while the girl attempts a backstroke.
As I walk by the pool, a splatter of water hits my visor. I flinch and take half a step back.
The boy’s gaze flashes to me. “Sorry,” he calls.
I use the edge of my sleeve to clean my visor. “It’s fine.”
He offers me an apologetic smile. “I’m trying to teach my sister a combat side stroke without actually getting in the water. Splashing around is the best she can manage.”
“Hey!” says the girl, offended.
Once my visor is clear, I get a better look at him. He’s about my age. His skin is lightly tanned and his dark hair swept back behind one ear. He’s disarmingly attractive and I’m glad for my opaque visor; he can’t see me staring.
His electron-ink tattoo gleams bright silver against his left hand. My visor snags on the barcode of slender lines, and the ID software appears at the corner of my vision.
Eames Ahlberg. Age 18. Graduated from high school in June. Address is the Waterfront Jewel at—
I flick the app away. Looking at this boy’s identity and history feels like an invasion of privacy. He’s not my target.
“It’s fine,” I say again, trying to regain my verbal footing. “Younger sisters, right?”
Eames studies me. “You want to swim? We can move over to the other side of the pool.”
“Oh, no.” A horrified laugh escapes me. “I don’t swim. Just here to check my mail.” Hopefully he doesn’t know the other residents well enough to realize that I don’t live here.
He nods. His sister is flapping around with all the grace of a half-drowned cat, but she’s staying afloat. Good for her. “Not too far into the deep end,” calls Eames.
The girl sticks out her tongue at him, accidentally gets a mouthful of water, and makes a gagging sound.
A wave of longing washes over me. That casual protectiveness, the easy conversation—I miss that. I miss belonging to a place, to a group of people.
“Good luck with the swim lessons,” I say, turning toward the mail room.
The door is half-propped open and I don’t shut it behind me. That would be suspicious. Instead, I make sure that I’m in no one’s line of sight.
Nonna’s mailbox is on the second row near the far-left corner. I kneel beside it, glancing at the door.
“Edgar,” I murmur, “keep a lookout. If anyone comes near, tell me.”
“Of course,” he replies.
I dig into my pocket for a ring of wholly illegal bump keys.
Only for official assignments, Prefect told me when he handed me the lock-picking kit.
Intelligent criminals still use old-fashioned locks, instead of ones keyed to their ringware or tattoos.
They don’t want their biometrics associated with a crime.
I ease the bump key into Nonna’s mailbox, careful not to get it stuck.
I press my ear to the cool metal of the boxes.
Closing my eyes, I try to focus on the sound of the lock tumblers rather than the uneven thump of my heart.
Slowly, ever so slowly, I pull the key back until I hear the last pin click into place.
I turn the key and get lucky on the first try. The mailbox comes open.
Inside are two bills—one for health care and one for her car insurance.
I shouldn’t open the envelopes; I don’t have an easy way to reseal them. But my fingers linger on the medical bill. If Nonna isn’t well, if she’s sick—
I bite down on my lip. Even if she is sick, there’s nothing I can do. I can’t send her money or groceries or even a get-well card. This is the closest I can get to my family: stolen glimpses and picked locks.
Replacing the bills and closing the mailbox, I rise from my crouch and walk out of the room. The lobby is still shadowed by the blackout. The security guard has retreated to his office—I can see him through the open door. Eames is calling instructions to his sister.
But before I make it to the stairs, a flicker of movement catches my eye. There’s someone at the front doors.
She waves her hand at the door sensor, then raps on the glass with her knuckles. She has long blond hair and wears dark jeans and a matching jacket—but that isn’t what draws my attention. Her hands are oddly pale. She wears light gloves that almost—but not quite—match her skin tone.
Why’s she wearing gloves, some distant part of my brain notes, when she’s trying to use her tattoo to open a door?
From this distance, I can’t hear what she is saying. She points at the door and waves at the security guard.
The security guard heaves himself upright and ambles toward the front entrance. “Hold on, hold on! Must not be working,” he says. “I’ll let you in.”
A squirm of panic clenches in my stomach. Something’s wrong. “Wait,” I call. I’m not sure what I would have said—and in the end, it doesn’t matter.
The guard pulls the door open, then heads toward his office.
The woman steps inside. And before I can so much as gasp, she reaches inside her jacket and pulls out a gun.
There are moments when you can feel your life taking an abrupt, unforeseen turn.
Some people like that feeling. They seek it out.
But for me, the unforeseen has always felt like the jerk and weightlessness of a car crash.
The gun goes off. The security guard staggers and falls.
My brain is taking in everything even as my body reacts. I throw myself to the ground, behind one of the overlarge potted succulents. I have to stay out of sight.
A whisper of movement comes from the pool.
Oh no. No, no, no.
The girl.
My mind whirls—perhaps I can get to the pool and drag her from the water. But I hate water and I’m a terrible swimmer. Or maybe—
But before my brain can come up with a truly terrible plan, Eames crashes to the floor beside me. He has his sister in his arms and his tanned face has gone mushroom pale.
He must have yanked his sister from the pool the moment the killer went for her gun. That’s faster than most people would react. Good for him.
We share a glance, Eames and me. We’re perhaps three feet from one another, using the succulents as cover. There’s nowhere else to hide.
I press my forehead to the ceramic planter. It’s a childish impulse—if I can’t see the danger, the danger can’t see me.
“Edgar,” I whisper, hoping the microphone in my visor will catch the near-silent words. “Show me the lobby.”
Edgar’s voice sounds low in my ear. “Connecting to your visor now.”
At once, Edgar’s feed boots up and I see from his point of view. The lobby falls away, and suddenly I’m forty feet above myself.
My stomach swoops. Even if my brain is aware that I’m firmly on the ground, my body reacts as though I’ve been plucked into the air by a giant.
The blond woman—my adrenaline-drunk brain immediately dubs her Goldie Glocks—has her gun pointed at the ground, finger off the trigger. Not her first time using a firearm, then. She watches the security guard for any sign of movement. Then she walks toward the front doors.
This is it. The only moment I may have to escape.
I flick my hand, disconnecting my visor from Edgar’s view.
My gaze goes toward the stairs. There’s a pool between me and the best escape route. I should run. Prefect would tell me to run, to leave the others behind. After all the money they spent on me, ISD would be very irritated to find out I was killed in a random shooting.
But I can’t leave them. I just can’t.
“Hey,” I whisper, barely moving my lips. “We need to move now. Follow me. Don’t look back, okay? No matter what happens, keep low and keep quiet.”
Eames gives me a jerky nod.
I twitch my fingers to connect to Edgar. “Find me a way out of here. Now.”
“And here I was going to take my time,” says Edgar in my ear.
My back molars grind together, but before I can come up with a suitably scalding retort, he adds, “The potted plant to your left. Run to it now.”
I scamper toward the succulent. Eames half crawls, half shuffles behind me. He hasn’t released the girl; she’s pressed against him as tightly as a barnacle on a whale.