Xavier’s voice shakes as he explains that sometimes it doesn’t matter. Sometimes they just want to send a warning message. Is it lawful? No. But who are Non-pacts going to complain to? Security?
I lean back against a gatepost, dazed, trying to make sense of it. “Is this because of me going down into the green tunnel?”
He says that may have triggered it, but that it’s not the first time it’s happened and it won’t be the last. They do it periodically just to demonstrate that they’re in charge. “And with the deadline drawing so near, the Secretary is probably breathing down the necks of every man on the Security Force. It’s all about pecking order, and we’re on the bottom.”
“How long will they keep her?”
Xavier shakes his head, looking down at his feet, a mountain of restraint heaving in his chest. “They might let her go. The scare of the raid might be warning enough. Or she might already be on her way to the desert.”
I can barely think, picturing Livvy and … “She’s got kids,” I whisper.
“You think I don’t know she’s got kids?” he hisses. “But she’s already been tagged twice, if they count this as the third…”
Three strikes and you’re out. Tagged like a dog. I search for the same restraint Xavier is able to dredge up on cue. “We’ll get her back,” I tell him. “Some way.”
Xavier pushes his face within inches of mine. “Stay the course,” he says in a slow growl. “Her kids are who Livvy is doing this for. Now’s not the time to do something impulsive.”
Like I did when I went down into the tunnel. He doesn’t have to say it. I still hear him loud and clear. But sometimes staying the course can mean maintaining the status quo too, and look where that’s gotten them. Nowhere.
I try to walk around him but he sidesteps in front of me. His eyes have gone from troubled to sympathetic. It makes my stomach tighten. “There’s something else,” he says.
He sighs, only making my gut squeeze tighter. “This probably isn’t the best time to tell you this, but we gave you our word. We have some news about Manchester.”
I thought they forgot about that. I had almost forgotten myself. “Did you find something?”
He nods. “They got into the labs. They had to burn the whole place down to cover their tracks, but they found something.”
I close my eyes. I know what the something is. I’m not sure I can take any more bad news right now, not one more complication. “Are they bringing it to me?”
“It’s here. Right now.” He tilts his head gesturing behind him. “Over there.”
A beat-up plumber’s truck is parked outside the apartment. Jake stands next to it. I take a couple of deep breaths. Hold it together, Locke. “Have him bring it up.”
“He can’t.” Xavier signals him and Jake rolls up the back door of the truck.
I’m not sure how long I stand there before I start hearing again; how long before I start seeing again. Xavi
er grabs my injured arm where a deep wound is still healing and the shooting pain brings me back to the present.
“They’re labeled with two names,” he says. “Kara Manning and Locke Jenkins. About a hundred of each.”
Row after row of six-inch cubes all attached to battery docks, like houses on a city block. A whole city of nothing but Kara and myself.
“What should we do with them?”
A hundred possible Karas. Maybe one who is whole, or maybe a hundred who are the wreckage of an experiment gone wrong. A hundred Lockes, each one still trapped in a world of endless black corridors that have no beginnings or endings, still begging for a way out. A hundred Lockes listening to the tortured screams of Kara. But maybe one Locke who is more than me. Better than me. A whole city of uploaded minds—spares—that might have been forgotten for another two centuries on a storage shelf, or used as floor models all over the world. Hari still had dollar signs in his eyes even after Gatsbro’s death.
“What do you want us to do with them?” he repeats.
I look at him, trying to understand his words. Do with them?
I always thought I knew what I would do. But a hundred. Maybe one that is—
I shake my head. I can’t think. “You’re right. This is a bad time.”
Right now all I can manage to do is to stay the course.
Suspects