Chapter 18
Well, the good news is I’m not dead.
The bad news … I’m trapped. In a basement. And the not-terrorists are running free. Hannah Vale didn’t even do me the courtesy of trying to shoot me through the doors because I’m no longer a threat.
“Cool, cool, cool,” I say. “So as far as plans go, not my best one.”
“Not your worst, either,” says Edgar.
“True,” I agree. The bumblebee remains cradled in my hand. One of his wings was crushed and he looks unbearably fragile without it. He scoots along my thumb with wounded determination. “How are you doing, Edgar?”
“My external hardware is damaged,” he says. “You’re going to have to fix it.”
“I will.” As the adrenaline ebbs from my body, I shudder. That was so close. Too close. I’ve brushed up against death a few times, but it never gets easier. I give in to an impulse and stroke Edgar’s fuzzy little body. “Thank you.”
“For what?” he says.
“You saved me,” I say. “You didn’t have to.
I ordered you to keep my family safe, not me.
” It was a stupid order to give, and I can only blame the drugs.
I pretty much gave a sociopathic AI free rein.
I imagine a bumblebee catching a ride on a plane to the East Coast to hack computers and give my sisters whatever they want, and I’m not sure whether I should laugh or shiver.
Edgar makes a derisive noise. “Last time I checked, your family included you.”
Oh. I never really thought about it that way. For the last three years, I’ve considered myself a separate entity from my family. “My family includes you, too,” I say softly. “Just so you know.”
His functional wing buzzes. “Oh. Well. Good?” He sounds bewildered.
He saved my life. The gesture may mean little to him, but it matters to me.
I’m not sure I ever make the decision to sit down. One moment I’m standing in the hallway, and then the next my back is to the wall and my legs press against the cold concrete floor.
Edgar’s good wing flutters against my palm. “You are … functional?” he asks.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you sounded concerned.” With my free hand, I push back my sweaty hair. I’m a mess—bloody and bruised, fighting off the effects of a tranq dart, and the exhaustion is impossible to keep at bay.
“What are we doing now?” asks Edgar.
I look down at my hands. “I don’t know. I don’t know what the terrorists are looking for. Well, not-terrorists. Vale’s just another hacker/thief.”
“Let’s review,” says Edgar. “They came here looking for something called ‘Project Persephone.’ Persephone was the Greek vegetation deity, right?”
I press a hand to my mouth. “I think ‘goddess of growth and flowers’ sounds better.”
“If this Vale is going to sell infrastructure hacks to foreign powers, perhaps she needs to round out her collection with some kind of farming hack.”
I sit up straighter. “That’s … actually not a terrible theory. I hadn’t thought the name might be significant. Usually the feds just pick something pretentious. But what kind of farming hack could be valuable enough to take an entire building hostage?”
“Hacking irrigation could do irreparable damage to farmland,” says Edgar. “Or perhaps she’s after a patented GMO formula.”
“Either way, I don’t think we’ll find it,” I say. “Not trapped down here.”
Some part of me is screaming to stand up, to begin looking for a way out of here.
But that voice is distant and muted. The quiet and the stillness is addictive as a drug, soothing me into inaction.
All I want is to close my eyes and blot out the chaos and the danger.
I want rest. I want to eat a good meal. I want Prefect to storm through those doors and rescue me.
I want to have stayed in that stupid motel with the dead raccoon. I want—
I know how dangerous wanting can be. The seductive lure of it, the whisper of desire to take the easier path, to take something or change something. Or not change something.
We all want things we shouldn’t.
It’s how I ended up here. I wanted a weekend near Nonna. And look where that got me.
I can’t do this alone.
And I feel very, very alone.
I’m one person. I can’t save a building of people from a killer like Hannah Vale. She scares me. Here, alone in the dark, I can admit that to myself. She’s better than I am.
“Augusta?”
“I’m fine,” I say. The lie is partly for him but mostly for me. I let my head fall forward, resting on my knees.
“You look terrible.”
I snort and that hurts so badly that a soft sound of pain escapes me. My stupid nose.
“What now?” asks Edgar.
It’s a fair question but I don’t have an answer for him. “I should never have come here,” I say wearily.
Edgar crawls through my fingers and alights on my leg. “Why?”
“Maybe I made things worse,” I say. “By being here. Maybe Vale and Radiogastration would’ve found Project Persephone and left before they hurt anyone else.
I mean, Security Guy Matthew would still be dead, but maybe…
” I sigh. “I feel like I’m fumbling around in the dark, trying to find something, and I don’t even know what the something is.
I probably helped save Piper and Eames, but maybe they’d have managed on their own.
Aunt Connie would’ve come for them. As for Nonna… ”
I can’t finish that. I don’t know what Nonna would be doing. I don’t know her life, not anymore.
“Why did we come here?” asks Edgar.
“I,” I begin to say, and still I can’t finish.
Three years. Three years and I still feel the loss of my family like a hollow ache.
Does Nonna miss me? I know my sisters do.
I think of my younger sister taking driver’s ed so she won’t have to rely on autopilot.
I think of my older sister, who has gone to college out of state because she couldn’t stand to be near the painful memories.
I know less about my parents—neither of whom sends emails to my old account.
They’re still married, I know that much.
There are no court documents mentioning divorce.
I wonder if they blame themselves for raising such a careless daughter.
I wonder if they are furious at me for killing someone, even if I didn’t mean to.
I wonder if Dad still paints in his spare time—not paper or canvas but birdhouses.
He liked to donate them to a local botanical garden to raise funds.
I wonder if Mom still hates the smell of garlic and refuses to come into the kitchen if anyone has cooked it in the last day.
I wonder if they still have family game nights—all of them crowded around an old coffee table, beaten-up board games and sour candies and whatever potato chips were on sale at the nearby corner store.
I miss my family with a bone-deep loneliness.
But the thought of seeing them again is terrifying. I’m not sure if I can ever be the person they remember. I don’t know if I can fit myself into the shape and life of the person I was before.
Being Augusta Pine is easier.
The truth is, I didn’t become a wraith just for a chance at penance. I did it because it was simpler to run. To slip the bounds of my guilt, to walk away from the horror of my actions. It was an escape.
“I wanted to see her,” I whisper. “Being away from my family, it hurts.”
“Does seeing her lessen the pain?” asks Edgar. He sounds genuinely curious.
“No,” I admit. “It makes it worse. Like … I don’t know how to explain to an AI. Imagine if you needed a battery recharge and you could see the outlet but you couldn’t plug in.”
Edgar seems to consider that for a moment. “I operate on solar power.”
“Then imagine if the sun went away,” I say. “If you were separated from the one thing you knew you loved. And if you … if you weren’t certain they would want you back.”
My throat is so tight it hurts to say those words. Because that is the truth of it—I came here because I don’t know what kind of welcome I will receive when I finally return.
If I finally return.
“I don’t understand,” says Edgar, sounding a little irritated. “Why don’t you simply find a new family? New people?”
“Because my family—they’re part of me,” I say. “They’re … they’re the soil I grew up in. They’re the programming that coded me. They’re my greatest strength and my greatest weakness.”
“And ISD took you away from them,” says Edgar.
“Sort of.” I bit at my thumbnail, fraying the skin. It’s part of the reason I resent ISD so much. They gave me the option to run—and I took it. Sometimes I think becoming a wraith was a weakness, a way of escaping the consequences of what I did.
All I can do is hope that they’ll still want to see me when I finally return.