Chapter 6 Sirena
“Well?” I asked as I got into my car and turned it on.
There was no way Nex hadn’t spent the past fifteen minutes working on what the hell that weird code meant.
“Well, what?” he asked through my car’s speakers. “When you had that ornamental downspout crush my earpiece, I assumed you wanted total comms blackout.”
I backed out of the space with a snort. “Oh my God, Nex—you’re such a shitty liar.”
Nex gave me a nanosecond before responding. “Okay. Fine. There were two cameras in the room—turned off, but I could’ve easily turned them on—plus Thorne was wearing a comms device and, of course, there was a camera and an audio pickup inside the pendant I gave you.”
“Which means you got to hear me make him say your name, right?” I asked, flashing the rearview mirror—another place where I knew he had cameras—a glance.
“I did.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“How did that make you feel?”
This time the silence before he answered was less pouty and more profound. “I believe I enjoyed it.”
“A feeling!” I crowed. “At long last!”
“Not so much a feeling as an interpretation of one.”
“Ugh, give me one moment of triumph, Nexium,” I teased him—and then did a double take as the car’s map changed on the screen.
“Regarding that code,” he continued. “I have good news, and I have bad news. Would you like to eat a burger first? If I’ve calculated localized driver intents correctly, there’ll be a lull at Valencia Burger’s drive-through in five minutes.
I’ve already added your order to their queue, so you can bring it home with you—along with the tracker I want to see. ”
Which explained why the car’s map had jumped. “Only if you start talking—now.”
“Done,” he promised, as I took the next right-hand turn.
On the drive to the burger joint, Nex explained to me that he had no idea what the code inside Sophia’s mind meant.
“What’s the good news part of this?” I asked, fishing piping-hot fries out of the bag.
“That it’s nothing terrible, either. Yet.”
“How very glass-half-full of you,” I said, licking salt off my fingers before sipping my soda. “But she wasn’t born like that, Nex.”
There was a pause as I assumed he was reading all of my previous personnel files. “How many people with altered minds have you tried to read?”
“Well, that one weekend at the PCP factory was a bad scene,” I teased, still thinking.
“Ha.” Nex’s voice came loud and clear through the speakers. “Wait. That was a joke, right?”
“Depends,” I said. “Was that . . . a laugh?”
“Depends,” he countered. “Did it sound like one?”
I fought not to grin as my lips puckered around my straw. “Do you want constructive criticism or head pats?”
An even longer silence. “Both?” His tone got the question mark on the end right, at least.
“It was fantastic,” I said, pulling into the garage beneath the Monster Security Agency building. “Your timing was spot on, and your irony was on point. Just—make the sound a little warmer next time.”
“Logged,” he said as I slid the car into its berth.
I patted the dash with slightly greasy fingers. “Just be patient. We’ll get there.”
I took the elevator inside the MSA building to the thirty-third floor, where Nex’s lab was, and the door opened for me the second my feet hit the hall.
Nex weaving himself into the MSA hadn’t been easy—more than a few agents felt like Thorne did and didn’t want the potential for surveillance all the time.
We’d lost some good ones, but Nex had gained trust over time—especially when he overrode the fire doors for me at the Dogpatch warehouse fire and, during the South Bay train derailment he’d managed to thwart, rerouting all of the morning commuter trains so that none of them drove over the bomb some psychopath had left on the tracks.
His room smelled faintly of ozone, and he started directing me through speakers hidden in its walls.
“I’ve prepared a clean tray,” he said, and lights along server racks blinked like a runway, directing me farther in.
“I know where your arms live, Nex.” I set my burger and what fries remained on the counter next to what looked like a petri dish, underneath a nest of differently sized dangling armatures, waiting for me to present the tracker.
I reached into my pocket, blind, and despite the fact that I’d put it in an evidence bag, one stray wire was jutting out. It pricked my finger beneath my fingernail like a thorn. “Ow!” I yelped, pulling my hand out.
A metal hand grabbed my wrist, interrupting my finger’s arc toward my mouth. “Sirena? Are you all right?”
Lights strobed overhead, and several more arms readied themselves for use.
“Yeah, no, I’m fine—just a pinprick.” I could hear fans attached to machinery winding up, and Nex hadn’t let go of my hand yet.
Instead, the arm that had me was pulling me closer, and several bright lights shone down from above, like my hand was about to be abducted by aliens. “Nex? What’s happening?”
“She could’ve had any number of blood-borne ailments—” he started.
“I’m only half-human, Nex,” I complained, pulling my arm away from him. I couldn’t, though—I was half-siren strong, but I wasn’t bolted to the ceiling.
“No. Let me see,” he demanded, before adding, “Please.”
I unfurled my fingers so that we could both see a tiny red dot. “It’s only one little drop.”
“Do not pretend that the things you are made of are not precious.”
I bit my lips, pulling them into a line. We’d had conversations before about the “nature” of humanity, and Nex had always been curious about what humans were made of on the inside. It seemed like we were puzzles to him—just like he was to me.
“I’m fine. Blood’s not that exciting once you get used to it.”
“Stay here,” he commanded, letting go, several of his arms retracting into the ceiling—before returning with a tiny cotton ball.
“Is there a secret drugstore up there?”
“It’s spider-silk. I had Nia’n’an give me some so that I could run tests on it,” he answered as delicate mechanical tools portioned it out—and then started wrapping it around my fingertip, weaving it snug.
My wound definitely did not rate a bandage—but I was fascinated by how he worked, especially seeing as I got to see him so infrequently.
Most of Nex’s brain was contained in the server racks on this floor and the one above.
He was everywhere in many ways—in our computers, on our phones—but he was also mostly intangible.
“Are you done yet?” I said, embarrassed by the show he was making over me.
Then again, he’d watched helplessly as many agents had bled before. Working for the MSA was a dangerous job, and not even he could save everyone.
And saving people was satisfying—it was the main reason I was here.
“Yes,” he pronounced—and then the same arm that’d wrapped my finger carefully reached into my pocket, pulled the evidence bag out, and spilled its contents on the tray.