The Fox Inheritance (Jenna Fox Chronicles 2)

Can't say I blame you, Cole. I'm just glad I work in the kitchen and don't have to sleep here. They both make my skin crawl.

Is that how everyone at the estate felt when they looked at me and Kara? Repulsed? I had tried to slough off Greta's and Cole's comments. I told myself they were just blowing off steam, and I didn't tell Kara what I overheard. But she had to know--she had to see it in their eyes the same way I did. We made their skin crawl.

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, Locke. Don't look ...

My parents sobbed in the hospital room when they thought I was dying. Their voices were watery echoes trying to reach me. I couldn't put all their words together, but I didn't have to. I knew what they were saying. Don't leave. Don't leave. What would they have thought if they'd found out I never did? I got a second chance. A gift horse, Dad. I got a gift horse. Are they listening? Do they know? Is there any kind of afterworld like my mom believed? A place where minds and thoughts never cease to exist? How could that be their heaven but my hell?

I close my eyes, leaning my seat back as far as it will go. I wonder if I can adjust the pain inside my head so it disappears too. Push a few buttons? Can I make every painful memory cease to matter? I rub my temples. I already know the answer. Gatsbro may have given me a new body with a few surprises, but I still have my old mind.

"Why us, Miesha?"

"What?"

I open my eyes and stare at the dimpled plastic ceiling of our train car. "Why didn't Gatsbro just scan his own brain and make a body for it? Or one of his willing goons? If all he wanted was floor samples, wouldn't that have been easier?"

"Most definitely easier, but not nearly as valuable. You and Kara have something to offer that no one else on the entire planet has."

Us? I almost want to laugh. I roll my head to the side to look at her. "What's that?"

"Two hundred sixty years. No one else has had a test run like that. The biggest concern of potential clients is what will happen to their minds after y

ears of storage. These people don't plan on utilizing Gatsbro's services right away. Unless there's a sudden accident, it might be years before they need a new body. With you, Gatsbro had time-tested proof that their minds would be intact decades later."

"Sounds like you knew way more about what was going on than you admitted."

There's a long pause as she assesses the bitterness in my voice. She pulls the floppy hat from her head and stuffs it between our seats. "Okay. I knew more. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

I look away, but she grabs my arm, forcing me to look back at her.

"Locke, it's not what you think."

"I don't know what I think, Miesha. How could I? I'm not sure I've gotten a straight answer from anyone since Gatsbro flipped the switch on his little Frankensteins."

Her shoulders sag, and she lets go of my arm. She leans back in her seat, shaking her head almost imperceptibly. "I didn't know his plans. Not at first. And that's a straight answer. When Gatsbro hired me, he just told me he had made a scientific breakthrough that required complete confidentiality. You see, I had ... a past. He knew that. I think he thought it gave him something over me, and maybe it did. I knew about the mind uploads and your new bodies, but I didn't know what his real intentions were until just a few months ago. By then I--" She stops and squints. "Let's just say, I was invested. But I had no resources. So I've been saving, and planning, and waiting for just the right timing to get you out of there. But you and Kara had different timing, and I had to go to plan B--also known as Plan Half-Assed-Backward."

She was planning to get us out? "Why didn't you just tell me?"

"So you could do what? Something impulsive? You have no resources, either. And I knew you would go straight to Kara and tell her, and that would lead to disaster--and in that regard, I was dead right."

"I didn't figure it out. She's the one who told me. Jafari was looking at us like we were diamonds he was going to wear on his fingers."

"Well, he won't be wearing them now. He's probably halfway back to Tunisar already." She hesitates, then leans closer to me and whispers, "That's what we should be doing, Locke. Going somewhere far and remote. It's not a smart idea to go see your friend Jenna. What good will it do? Sometimes the past needs to stay in the past."

I look into her eyes without blinking. "It's where Kara is going, so that means it's where I'm going. No matter what. I'm not changing my mind on that. And Jenna's not just my past, Miesha. She's my present too. Not a day goes by that I don't think about her and wonder. She and Kara are the only two people on the face of this planet who remember the old Locke. Without my past, all I am is a clever creation cooked up in Gatsbro's lab. I have to hold on to the past--even if you choose not to."

I watch her pupils contract, knowing her heart is beating faster, knowing she is considering her own past and weighing the risk of sharing it. It's still a barrier between us. I see the faint twitches around her lips, the strain in her eyes. In just a split second, I see the slow-motion unveiling of something I didn't expect to see--pain as raw as my own. I look away, feeling like a peeping Tom, like my BioPerfect has revealed something to me that I had no right to see.

She clears her throat. I hear her breaths, deep and heavy, like she is pushing at a barrier that's heavier than she can bear, and finally her voice, slow and deliberate.

"Karden Sanders was a leader in the underground Non-pact Resistance. Not just a leader. The leader. He became a symbol of hope for those who were forced to live on the fringes with no rights and no future. He gave them hope for a future. His methods were forceful and clever and all illegal. Money would disappear from corporate accounts and appear on money cards that were distributed to Non-pacts. Strategic bridges were exploded as messages that the Fancy Pants could be isolated too. They could be forced to live on the margins of society, scrabbling for every morsel that came to them." Her voice is flat, rehearsed, like she is repeating a long-forgotten mission statement. "The human race has always found a group to marginalize--every culture, every time, every race. Karden Sanders took up the cause of the disenfranchised who were shunted off to the side like garbage and labeled as Non-pacts."

"And he was your husband. So you're Miesha Sanders?"

"No. Miesha Derring. I kept my surname. Most women do, not to mention that citizens aren't allowed to take the names of Non-pacts. But I wanted to take his name. I wanted to take in everything about him."

Her eyes narrow like she is focusing on an image of him. "I was only eighteen when I met him. He was dark and dangerous and committed. My parents were people of position, and when I ran off with him, they disowned me. Marrying a Non-pact was unthinkable, especially one with a price on his head. I learned about the Resistance and helped with organizing efforts, but it wasn't long before I was pregnant. Our little girl was born just a year after we married. We had to move often, assuming new identities and always trying to stay ahead of authorities."

"But they caught up with you."