Unacceptable Risk

She may learn to live for love…if vengeance doesn’t kill her first. Plix spends her lonely, gritty life trying to solve...

Author: Grey Jeanette

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She may learn to live for love…if vengeance doesn’t kill her first. Plix spends her lonely, gritty life trying to solve the mysteries her father left behind. Armed with a variety of cybernetic enhancements and a talent for getting into places she shouldn’t be, she searches for clues to his murder—and who’s responsible for poisoning her city. Waking up on a street corner with her brain wiring fried to a crisp, she figures she must have gotten close this time. There’s only one man she trusts to pull her back from the brink: a tuner who can retrieve the evidence hidden deep in the recesses of her mind. A man she dares not let too close to her heart. When Edison downloads a secret SynDate schematic from Plix’s burnt-out circuitry, he knows with dreadful finality that nothing—not even the fiery kiss he’s been holding back for years—will stop her from pursuing her quest past the point of insanity. All he can do, as he helps her plan her final mission, is ease her pain, watch her back…and hope one of them doesn’t pay with their lives. Warning: Contains a heroine intent on kicking ass and taking names, a hightech dystopia, cybernetic body modifications, and emotionally charged, sensual romance.

eBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work. This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. Samhain Publishing, Ltd. 11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B Cincinnati OH 45249 Unacceptable Risk Copyright © 2011 by Jeanette Grey ISBN: 978-1-60928-584-5 Edited by Jennifer Miller Cover by Kanaxa All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: December 2011 www.samhainpublishing.com

Unacceptable Risk Jeanette Grey

Dedication

To Scott, for always believing in the strange worlds inside my head, and to Andrea, Bekah, Bri and Gin for helping me get them out of my head and onto a page.

Chapter One

From somewhere deep within the darkness, there was a scent. Rich and coppery. Wet. Warm. Smoke. As her mind began to stumble forward, lurching up through the patchy blackness she now knew entirely too well, Plix could practically feel the firing of synapses, the reforging of connections between metal and tissue as circuits rerouted around the pieces of herself that were no longer there. With every breath she took, the dead endings of nerves and memory twinged, phantom limbs within the matrix of her own being protesting against all that had been lost. Already, Plix could tell. She had lost something. Something important. Just as she was about to reach forward, mentally grasping at the spaces she could not hold, the blackness re-surged, and with a painful jolt, the final synapses reattached. Scrambling and fighting down the panic that always came with Reawakening, she held the very shape of her own existence in her mind, sensing the damage and the burned-out circuits of fading memories. Memories she could save if she just had more time. But it was already too late. Fire. Lost. Black.

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The pain was a searing, all-consuming conflagration, her entire body seizing, a rough spasm that pulled her up, her back arching and the matrix twisting, warping. Wires charred, shifting red then black then white. Ash. And then nothingness.

With a single gasping, shuddering breath, Plix snapped her eyes open. As if every circuit and nerve in her body had come alive at once, she was inundated by sensation, the lenses in her one eye whirring and spinning, her lungs shuddering. There was darkness and pain, cold and fear, and all of it sharp. So sharp it had to be real. The broken asphalt was hard beneath her spine as she lay there, staring without blinking at the impenetrable haze of the night sky—a gray expanse that failed to offer any answers. With a grunt, Plix forced her eyes down, casting her vision across her own crumpled frame. The nausea that had been growing in her stomach rushed up at the sight of blood-soaked clothes and grime, dirt and lacerated skin. There was a taste, too, of metal. Of burning circuitry and her own cauterized flesh. There was a scent of blood and gunsmoke. And above it all was a hazy fog and the most powerful sense of déjà vu. Her breath caught at the familiar sensation of knowing she should remember what had happened. But where there should be memories, there were only flashes of pain and crimson, a leering smile and the same spinning images of molecules pieced together in a shape like the crystals in snow. Teetering, Plix gagged roughly, intensifying the pain at the base of her skull as she dragged herself up to her feet. She staggered forward a few feet before

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sagging against a building, and she had to close her eyes against the movement of the world spinning around her. The darkness behind her eyelids only further inflamed the scent of blood and dirt, though, concentrating her attention on all the new loci of pain in her chest and shoulders and wrist. Her wrist… Swallowing hard, she looked down at the place on her arm where metal met flesh, peeling back the soaked edge of her sleeve to inspect it more fully. Even beyond the swaying feeling in her gut and the dizziness at the sight of raw tissue, she knew this was bad, the damage worse than usual. She must have found something. Something big. And then they’d found her. It was the only explanation. All she could do now was hope Edison could pull enough of whatever she had found out of her head to make the venture worthwhile. Infused with the spark of hope ignited by the twin thoughts of evidence and Edison, Plix curled her good hand into a fist and pushed off the wall, cradling the mess of wiring and blood at the end of her other arm against her chest as she staggered forward. Looking around, she realized, with a sagging sense of something missing in her memory, that she had no idea where she was. Her circuits cast themselves out into space, and she breathed out a silent thank you to whichever gods might still be watching over her when she was able to make a secure satellite link. Within seconds, she’d downloaded her position and superimposed it over the map of ChiGonE, spinning and panning through it until she couldn’t deny what she was seeing. Until she couldn’t deny where she was. With a groan, she panned and zoomed again, but there wasn’t any fighting it. Rather than at the SynDate Complex, or even somewhere close to it, she was right back where she had started.

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She was less than a kilometer from home. Torn between gratitude that she didn’t have far to go and misgivings about precisely how much information the corporation had on her, Plix gathered all her strength and began making her way down one of the side streets in an ambling path toward Edison’s shop. She didn’t dare try to flag down a transport—not looking the way she did—and she didn’t want to risk contacting Edison to ask him for help. It was bad enough he always got dragged into these messes indirectly, and she’d be damned if she was going to end up letting him get caught with her here, where it was possible someone was still watching. At that thought, she gritted her teeth against the pain and finally found the presence of mind to run her typical diagnostic routines. She already knew a chunk of memory was gone, but she couldn’t tell yet if there was anything malicious on her system—some foreign program to track her position or record and report any data she stored. To her relief, scan after scan turned up negative, and by the time she had made her way back to the familiar streets near Edison’s shop, she was feeling almost light. Now there was but one last matter to attend to. When she had closed to within a couple blocks of Edison’s place, she surreptitiously checked her surroundings, both visually and digitally, before switching course, plastering her back to the brick wall of the next building and willing herself to become lost amidst the shadows. For several breathless minutes, she waited like that, watching and scanning. Scanning and watching. More than once, she was sure she sensed movement, some hidden menace hanging just beyond her vision, and she willed herself closer to the wall. The longer she waited, the more the dizziness and pain consumed her, a frightening chill spreading through her limbs. Finally, she couldn’t afford to wait any longer, and with a last inhale, she activated the Shield.


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Counting down the precious seconds of digital invisibility the Shield afforded her, Plix threw herself away from the wall with as much force as she dared, diving for the manhole in the center of the street. With pain radiating from her maimed hand, it was more difficult than she had expected to remove the cover, and she cursed silently at every sound of metal screaming against pavement until finally she managed to pry it off. Seconds later, she dropped below the surface and into darkness, with only the signals from her optical implant to help her find her way. Listening for any sounds of movement beyond her own wet, echoing footsteps and the racing thunder of her heart, she traced her way through the familiar twists and turns of the tunnel. With every step, her pain and fear receded, replaced by a warmth that always accompanied thoughts of Edison—of his face and his touch and his constant willingness to save her. Clinging to that sense of hope and warmth, she staggered through the last few yards of the corridor, gripping the metal rungs of the ladder with her good hand and then hoisting herself up. When her face was even with the little porthole she’d convinced Edison to install for this very purpose, she hooked her feet into the railing and lunged for it. As the latch popped open, she threw her last few reserves of energy into pulling herself up and through the hole in the floor, keeping possession of herself for just long enough to seal everything up behind her. As she collapsed forward in exhaustion and relief, her cheek met cool tile and her aching limbs finally came to rest. Lying there, panting and smiling, she took in the familiar sights of spare wiring and blinking lights, empty coffee mugs and a single ancient incandescent bulb. She was safe. She was home.

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There on Edison’s floor, covered in drying blood and torn circuitry, she fell asleep, secure in the knowledge that he would find her soon enough. That, in spite of her appearance and his concerns, he would help her. He always had before.

The darkness this time was soft. More gray than black, it wrapped around Plix’s mind like a blanket, and for a few minutes, she allowed herself to float along on it. Memories of comfort rose up through a waking dream, feelings of being small and safe, cared for inside loving arms. She could almost hear the soft, feminine voice that haunted her very happiest dreams speaking in quiet conversation with another, deeper one. She could feel the hand in her hair and the pressing of lips against her forehead. Slowly, the voices and memories gave way, melting into more concrete sounds. Quiet tapping and the low hum of electricity. Soft music. Music she knew. Plix felt the corners of her mouth lift up into a smile, knowing exactly what she would see when she opened her eyes. She wasn’t disappointed. As she blinked, she took in the endless shelves of electronics and gadgets, tools and lights. Even the old leather couch she was sprawled out on spoke of comfort and safety, the whole place infused with a familiar glow. Or maybe it was just him. As usual, Edison was sitting in his chair, hunched over his primary screen, all of his attention bent toward it. He was a warm, inviting tangle of red-blond hair, broad shoulders, and a trim, wiry frame, hidden always behind shapeless, colorless clothes. Unflattering as they were, they draped beautifully when he


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held still, molding to the lines of muscle Plix only had occasion to appreciate in moments like this. Moments when he wasn’t looking. Moments when he was carrying her broken body from his floor up to his workshop, his chest warm beneath her fingertips as it rose and fell, his voice soft and deep in her ear. Moments when, as always, he was trying to fix her, no matter how many times she told him she was far beyond repair. As she studied the way the light fell on the edge of his face, the warm feeling returned. She smiled even wider at the sight of the brass armature that extended from behind his ear, holding a series of lenses in place in front of his eye. Unable to resist teasing him, she cleared her throat, breaking the silence with her weak, rasping voice. “You know an ocular implant would do the same job with a lot less hassle, right?” If Edison heard, the only sign of it was the slight tensing of his shoulders. Plix’s smile faded, something deep in her chest twinging in a way that was completely unrelated to the rest of the trauma she had experienced. “Edison?” With heavy, deliberate movements, he put down whatever he had been working on and raked a hand through his hair, sliding the metal contraption through the parting strands before setting it on the table beside his other instruments. At the sight of his tense posture, Plix swallowed hard, and without entirely knowing what she was doing, she lifted one arm out toward him. It only rose a few inches before the pain became too intense, a sharp spasm forcing her to drop it back down to the couch.

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Finally, he turned, his face slowly coming into view. There was the same sharp jawline and the full, serious lips she knew so well, the high cheekbones and the slight flush to his pale skin. But the lines around his eyes were new. His gaze didn’t meet hers. Instead, Edison’s eyes roamed over the length of her body. Plix gulped but looked down, too, grimacing at all the dried blood and exposed wiring. Her own white flesh stood in stark contrast against the dirty crimson and the dark fabric of her clothing, and she shivered as she recognized that her skin was paler than usual. Ashen, even. Plix remembered ash. Closing her eyes against faint memories of burning and of orange metal, smoking and hot, she sucked in a deep breath before looking up at Edison again, meeting the clear, gray eyes that always seemed to see straight through her. They were as piercing as ever as they stared at her, but they were hard, too. Pinned by the force of his gaze, Plix searched her mind for answers. Explanations. Anything, really. But she had nothing. Nothing beyond the usual. The same sad story that had haunted and driven her for her entire life. At long last, his voice pierced the silence, his tone gruff but guardedly neutral. “You could have died. Again.” For a moment, the accusation hung in the air. Plix wanted to deny it, but the truth was hard to overlook. Instead, she tried to shrug, wincing at the effort and the pain that radiated through her arm. “I didn’t,” she offered weakly, trying to force a smile that didn’t want to spread across her cheeks. Beneath the intensity of his glare, she felt it wither. His expression grew even harder, his chin jutting out and his mouth frowning. “No. Not this time.” Swiveling in his chair, he put his hand to the table


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as he rose, the other rising to rub the back of his neck as he looked away. “Guess you’ll have to try harder next time.” “Hey,” Plix said. “Hey, don’t—” “No.” He shook his head as he took a step toward her. “Don’t you. Not when you—when you keep going off on this fucking crusade of yours. When you just keep coming back here every time you need me to try to put you together again.” Her throat dry, she flexed her jaw, her mouth opening and closing, but the words refused to form. In the end, all she had was his name. “Edison…” “Damn it, Plix,” he swore, clenching his hands into fists at his sides as he stared up at the ceiling. “I’m sorry, it’s just…you never tell me anything. So I never know if you’re okay or if I’m going to come downstairs to find you bleeding out on my floor.” “You know I can’t tell you—” He snorted, his lack of patience for what she felt she could and could not do clear on his features and in his tone. But there was something deeper there too as he grumbled, “Of course you can’t.” “Hey,” she murmured, lifting a hand out toward him. She managed to get it a little higher this time, but her efforts to actually bring herself to sitting were futile. Unable to reach him with her body, she was forced to try to do so with her words. “I’m fine,” she whispered. “I promise. I’m fine.” Edison’s eyes focused on hers, the cool gray of them shining. “You’re not,” he breathed. “You’re so, so not.” There was a distance between them that was more than just physical, and it hurt to have him so far away in so many ways. Forcing her fingers to curl, she beckoned him forward again, and he sighed before moving to stand at her side, letting her hand wrap around his.

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His skin was warm and smooth. An artist’s hands, she thought. Or a tuner’s. They were shockingly unmarked, the flesh pristine beneath her fingertips, and she rubbed deep circles into the tense muscles of his palm, feeling them give beneath her touch. It was a rare pleasure to put her hands on him this way, a temptation she was usually so reluctant to give in to, for all that she loved it. She loved the reassurance and the solidity. She loved the way he let her do it and the way his eyes closed, his soft mouth forming a broken line that would have been a smile if he had only let it be. As they held on, long past the point where she would have normally retreated, Edison’s eyes drifted open, the expression in them warm. “I know,” he said gruffly, forcing a wry, sad smile as he gently squeezed her fingers. “If I’d only get some fine-motor implants these’d be better, too.” He was making fun of her and of himself, Plix realized with a start. Much like with the lenses, she often mocked Edison for being the only tuner in the world who was practically a virgin canvas of unmodified skin. The truth was, though, she liked it. She liked that he was just the way he was, perfectly imperfect flesh and all. “No,” she said quietly, shaking her head and stroking his palm with her thumb. “No?” Plix tugged on Edison’s hand weakly until he consented to bring it up toward her lips. As she brushed his skin, she felt a surge of warmth moving through her chest. Holding his gaze, she repeated herself. “No.” An infinite amount of time seemed to pass between the two of them as they stared at each other. After a while, Edison’s eyes closed, his hand tightening in its grip around hers.


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“Don’t leave me in the dark,” he whispered. And with that, the moment was broken. It was the one thing she couldn’t promise him. Instead of answering, she turned her head to the side and let her hand go limp, choking back the emotion that wanted to pour out of her in the same way that she contained the dampness threatening her eyes. It had been five years since she had first shown up on his doorstep, damaged and incomplete and begging him for help. Five years ago, she had lain on this very couch, staring at the back of his head as he tried to fix the missing wires in her mind. Five years ago, she had accepted that she would always need his help, and in the same breath, she had promised herself that she would never ask anything more of him. That whatever she felt for him she would have to push aside. That she could never allow him to follow her in the work she needed to do. Feeling the way he tensed and closed in on himself, their intimacy already fading in the wake of her silence, Plix let her gaze move around the room, settling on anything but his face. She couldn’t handle the hurt she knew she would find there. Finally, her eyes settled on the monitor he had been working at so intently before she had interrupted him. It was alive with flickering colors, spikes of activity and glaring patches of darkness. The tender spot inside her chest that always hurt whenever Edison asked her for more positively ached as she stared at the screen, recognizing it for what it was. So many times when she had come to him like this, he had threatened to cut her off—to put her back together again but nothing more. So often he had sworn that he wouldn’t encourage her insanity. But in the end, he always helped her. Always.

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This time, in spite of his entreaties, it seemed that he had started already. “Have you recovered anything yet?” she asked. He sighed loudly, and his posture grew even more defeated as he stepped toward the monitor. Plix felt the loss of his warmth acutely, but she ignored it and tried to relax into the couch, wincing at the uncomfortable twinge of the data jack at the back of her neck shifting. The screen flickered a little, and Edison glanced back at her, his gaze chastising until she stilled. “So?” Edison scowled, moving his gaze from Plix to the screen and back again, his reluctance clear on his face. “This gets harder every time, you know,” he prefaced. Plix smiled. “That’s why I come to the best tuner in town.” “I’m serious.” Standing beside the monitor, he pointed to the blank spots on the output. “There’s damage here that keeps getting worse. Every time you lose memories. Every time this happens. And when you try to hide data, you’re getting closer and closer to integral systems. If you go any deeper…” “I know.” Quick flashes of indecision flickered across Plix’s mind, fractured memories of a moment of weighing the risks—of capturing a piece of information in her matrix and then of choosing. There was a reason why she had chosen the way she had. She just didn’t know what it was. She had to know. “Edison…” With an even deeper sigh, Edison sat, rotating his chair so his body was angled more toward Plix’s as he began manipulating the display. A few quick strokes of his fingers across the interface brought an assortment of images up, splaying them across the screen. Crossing his arms, he sat back.


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Plix wasn’t paying him any attention, though. The data jack tugging, her shoulder screaming in pain, she brought herself halfway to seated, her eyes roaming across the screen hungrily. Snow. Before her eyes, the lines and dots of the image began to assemble themselves, one after another folding in, crystals arising from the chaos—regular patterns. Molecules. “S-41,” she breathed. “Yes.” Plix’s eyes jerked to Edison’s, seeing the excitement warring with the concern now. She, on the other hand, was completely unconflicted. “We did it. We got the schematic.” The word “we” had leaped from her mouth so easily, so treacherously, that she didn’t even fully recognize it until it was already hanging on the air. When she did realize what she’d said, she was left scrambling, desperate to take it back but knowing full well that it was far too late. The slip clearly hadn’t escaped Edison’s attention either, his eyes widening. He schooled his expression quickly, though, his gaze dropping and a wry tone entering his voice. “Yeah, Plix. Yeah, you did.” “I know,” she said, faltering slightly. “I did. But you know what this means.” Edison nodded. But instead of celebration, his words were inexplicably laced with loss. “You’re almost there.” “Almost.” For years, she had been assembling her case against SynDate, meticulously scraping together every clue. This was the most damning of all—instructions for how to assemble the toxin, stolen from the computers of the very corporation she knew was to blame. It was the penultimate piece of the puzzle.

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Already, her mind was reeling, racing forward toward the last scraps she still needed to gather. The ways to prove SynDate knowingly released the contaminant that had laid so much to waste. The things she still needed to do. Her thoughts rushed forward feverishly, skipping from plan to plan, hellbent on the goals that finally seemed so close at hand. She’d need to go again soon, as soon as her body was ready. Maybe sooner. There was so much to do, so many arrangements to be made— “Plix? Plix!” Edison’s voice broke through the fog of excitement, his hand on her wrist, squeezing and pulling. Her eyes rose up to meet his, some small part of her attention returning to the present and to the anxiety on his face. Behind him, the images of the molecule had disappeared, the screen again displaying graphs and blank space. Only now all of it was shaking, lines and graphs jumping erratically. “You have to calm down, Plix. Now.” She couldn’t. How could she be calm at a time like this, when everything she had been working on for years was finally here? “Damn it, Plix. Can’t you just let it go? Just for one second…” Edison’s voice was far away now, even though his hand was still a grounding weight against her arm. More quiet curses filtered through Plix’s ears, but she didn’t really hear anything. When the needle broke through the tender skin inside her elbow, she didn’t feel that either. There was only the soft embrace of closing darkness. The darkness, this time at least, was warm.


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Chapter Two

There were sounds in the distance, whining and panting and something just to the safe side of a scream. “Shh.” Another voice. Closer. Deeper. Pleading. “It’ll be okay. I’ve almost got it. I swear it’ll be okay, Plix. Just hold on.” Plix’s throat tore open with another cry as pain flared up the length of her spine. “Please…” “I’ve got it, love. Just—” There was another sharp twinge and then a hot prick, a dizzying numbness as the anesthetic worked its way up her arm. And then everything was dark once more.

Plix’s eyes were heavy. Too heavy. In the silence that enveloped her, she tried again and again to open them, but each time they failed to yield. She wanted to panic, terrified of where she was and what was wrong with her, but then she heard his voice. “You gave me quite a scare, you know.” Feathery pressure danced lightly against her brow. A kiss. How her broken, frozen heart bloomed at the thought of a kiss. Feeling warm and safe and loved, she gave up the struggle and relaxed back down into the surface of the couch.

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His hand swept down her cheek, brushing softly at the side of her neck. “Sleep, sweetheart. Just sleep.” Smiling faintly, she did just that.

“Come on.” Plix felt a gentle shaking against her shoulder and the sweeping of fingers through her hair. Without thinking, she leaned into that touch, scarcely realizing what she was doing until the voice beside her ear devolved into a low chuckle. The struggle to open her eyes wasn’t nearly as overwhelming this time, and with a little effort, she managed to blink them apart. At first, everything was a low, golden blur, but gradually she was able to make out eyes. Lips. Edison. Smiling contentedly, Plix let her eyes drift closed again, her hand instinctively coming up to twine with his. She could faintly hear his throat as he swallowed, his voice growing gravelly as he shook her. “Oh no you don’t. Come on, Plix.” She stretched, wincing at the sharp tendrils of pain that bloomed, but the discomfort was nothing like what it had been the last time she had woken up, back…how many hours earlier? Her internal chronometer didn’t seem to be functioning correctly yet, and she found that she couldn’t quite account for the time. With a reluctant sigh and without letting go of Edison’s hand, she yawned and murmured, “How long was I out?” His low bubble of laughter was nervous this time. “Almost three days.” She could hear the worry in his words, and the usual pang of guilt sounded in her gut. “I’m sorry.”


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“As well you should be.” His other hand came up to touch her face, soft strokes across her skin. She knew that she shouldn’t allow this. She couldn’t help it, though. “Come on,” he said again. She opened her eyes to take in the soft expression on his face, the lines of worry across his brow relaxing. “You should be able to get up for a bit. I want to get you out of these clothes.” At that, Plix finally came to her senses a bit, her gaze widening and her head instinctively jerking up. Edison laughed, a hollow, empty sound. “You know what I mean.” Plix groaned as she gave in to the tug of his hand, allowing him to help her up. She moved too fast at first, and another rough surge of pain bloomed through her spine, forcing her to pause as she fought to breathe through it. “I’m sorry. I’d give you more painkillers, but I’m afraid—” “It’s fine,” she grumbled. Following his lead, she sat up more slowly this time, gradually relaxing the tension in her muscles when the dizziness and fire didn’t overwhelm her. Still, she closed her eyes for a moment as she straightened her back. “Here.” Edison disconnected the data jack and the few remaining tubes from her body before reaching out to put his arm around her. “You can lean on me.” Didn’t she always? Grumbling and chuckling, she let him help her to her feet, barely managing not to crumple beneath the weight of her own body. Somehow, they managed to get to the door and down the hall, pausing twice for her to catch her breath. Plix hated showing weakness, but she’d been humbled like this in front of Edison often enough for her to have learned to bear it, allowing him to all but carry her the last few steps to the shower. As ever, undressing was an awkward affair, but as she looked down at her tattered, bloody rags, she knew it was necessary. Sitting on the bench just out of

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the spray, she started tugging at zippers and fastenings, fumbling repeatedly until Edison knelt before her and took the fabric from between her fingers. To his credit, he never really looked at her as he did this. Still, there was no mistaking the strain on his features and the shortening of his breath as more and more of her pale flesh was revealed. She couldn’t mistake her body’s reaction, either. When she was almost naked, she caught him hazarding one long glance down her body, and her heart fell when he clenched his eyes shut tightly, his throat bobbing and his hand coming up to suddenly cover his mouth as he glanced away again. She didn’t need to look down to know why. “God, Plix.” Her hands came up to try to cover her exposed flesh. Her body was a mess of scars and blood, wiring and plastic interrupting the smooth lines of flesh that were once beautiful. She wasn’t beautiful anymore. Averting her eyes, she managed to grind out, “You don’t have to stay. If I—if you don’t—” If you can’t bear to look at me, she thought. He’d seen her before, of course. He’d stitched her wounds and worked at her grafts. But so rarely like this. So few times had he really seen all of her. “No,” he said, his voice choked. “Just—what they’ve done to you. What you’ve done to you. And for what?” For everything I care about, she wanted to answer, but she held her tongue against the tirade that was sure to come if she tried to defend her work to him again. He hated it. Hated what she felt she had to do, what she’d done and what her body had become.


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Leaning away, unable to bear his anger and revulsion, she shifted herself until she was eclipsed by the hot spray, wishing she could melt away beneath it. Wishing she didn’t need him or that she didn’t feel so ugly beneath his glare. “Plix, no…” “Please. Let me—” Strong arms folded around her unexpectedly, his body joining hers beneath the water even though he was still fully clothed. “Plix, no,” he repeated as he held her close. But he only picked up on half of her pain. “You’re still beautiful,” he whispered. “You’re so beautiful. I just can’t bear to see you hurt this way.” As she turned her face into his shoulder, sobbing hopelessly against the soaked cotton, she couldn’t find the words to comfort him or to comfort herself.

“Can’t I ever leave this room?” It didn’t matter how many times they did this or how many times he explained it to her. By the fifth day of hiding in the back of his shop, Plix was always about ready to go out of her mind. Sitting up on the old couch she knew so well, she peered at the little screen before her, scrutinizing each symbol before stroking the button on the side to place her bet. “Call,” Edison said at the same time his wager registered. “And no. No, you cannot.” Plix sighed when the display shifted to show her his hand. A full house. And she’d thought her three of a kind was such a sure thing. “Ugh,” she sighed, both in boredom and disgust. “You win.”

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“Don’t I always?” As he cleared the displays and pressed the button to begin the next hand, his eyes twinkled. Plix melted just a little at the sight. It was good to see him finally looking relaxed again. He was so handsome when he smiled. They sat in silence for a few minutes, placing their wagers and watching as the cards on their screens were revealed, but after so many days of confinement, even poker couldn’t assuage Plix’s restlessness. “You know,” she remarked idly, “you could at least drag a bed in here or something.” A cloud passed over Edison’s expression, but he quickly schooled it. His voice, when he spoke, was even, but Plix could hear the strain beneath it. “Plix, the last thing I am going to do is make your personal emergency room more inviting for you. As much as I love your little sojourns here, I see no reason to encourage you to spend more time at death’s door.” Plix didn’t miss the way his breath faltered on the word “love”. “Oh,” she huffed. Her hand came up to idly fiddle with the cord plugged into the base of her neck. On the other side of the room, the monitors were flickering, one of the many reminders that her mind and body were still both on the mend. Sighing in disappointment as her last card was dealt, Plix folded and motioned to deal out another hand. “How much longer is this subroutine going to take, anyway?” Edison sat, impassively watching the cards as they were turned over on the screen. “Another day. Maybe two.” “And then how much longer?” “How much longer till you’re well or how much longer till you decide you’re well enough and storm out of here to try to go save the world?” She couldn’t hide her sly smile. “Either.”


25

Jeanette Grey

His eyes darted up to meet hers, betraying a sadness that always seemed to be lingering about him these days. “A month for the former. Maybe a week for the latter, if I’m lucky.” “You’re lucky I come to you at all,” she said, scowling. A week? Could she really handle another week of this? Knowing what she knew now? Knowing what she had to do next? “Yeah,” he said quietly, staring at her levelly. With one hand, he reached across the little table he’d set up between them, caressing the back of her palm and curling his fingers around hers. “Yeah, Plix. I really am. Really and truly, I am.”

There was a faint beeping in the distance. As Plix opened her eyes, she found the room to be just the same as it had been before. There was the same dim lighting, the same vague flickering of a dozen monitors and screens, the same quiet, soothing music. Only this time, she was alone. For a while, she lay there listening to her own breathing and taking stock of her situation. The pain that had been nearly crippling the first few times she’d awoken was a dull ache now, her limbs and wiring all seeming to have settled back down into their proper places. Most likely, Edison had settled them back down, possibly by force. At the thought of him, Plix’s eyes scanned the room again, catching as they always did on the now-empty chair. Truly, she knew it was ridiculous to be disappointed by his absence. More than once, she’d told him he needed to go about conducting business as usual

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while she was here. But still, he was almost always with her when she awoke, and she couldn’t help but miss him this one time that he wasn’t. Plix’s attention was drawn away from the chair and from the strange feeling of absence that accompanied it by another low beep and a shifting in the display on the main monitor, another image of the S-41 molecule popping up. Instinctively, she zoomed in with her implant, the lenses whirring until she could make out the small print on the screen that announced the completion of another layer of analysis, another level of complexity emerging. Another memory recovered from the missing pieces of her mind. Sitting up carefully, her fingers came up to the back of her neck to tease at the sore flesh around her data port. The last set of programs Edison had been running on her had completed while she’d been sleeping, and she couldn’t see any others queued up to begin anytime soon. With a little wistful pang, she pulled the cable out and reveled in the pleasure of rolling the stiff muscles around her neck and shoulders. She hadn’t been free of the electrical tether in days, and it was bittersweet to remove it. While her body delighted in being unconstrained, there was something low and tender in her heart that hated to sever even that tenuous of a connection. She was eager to go, but she was also wanting for a reason to stay. She couldn’t, though—not for much longer. Her feet were stronger beneath her than she’d expected as she stood and moved slowly across the room. Under a less skillful tuner’s care, her body would have wasted away after a week or more of indolence, waiting for her matrix to be knitted back together. Plix shivered at the thought of just how skillful Edison was—how quick he was with lines of code and lines of sutures. How agile his hands were on both wiring and flesh.


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Jeanette Grey

Plix blushed, a low warmth moving across her face and through her abdomen at the thought of those hands on her, innocent touches and necessary manipulations that were always colored with something more. She had to close her eyes against the deep rush of feeling that followed memories of fingertips on skin and of his face, staring down at her with a look of concentration that was almost too intense. Almost as intense as her desire. Almost as strong as her resolve. Opening her eyes, Plix struggled to make herself focus again. The monitor on Edison’s desk was still flickering with the diagram of S-41, scrolling lines of text overlaying the edges of it. Plix didn’t think she would ever understand how Edison could possibly prefer this clumsy setup to plugging in and reviewing the information in his mind, but she had long since given up trying to argue with him. Pushing through the awkwardness of the interface, she began manipulating the display, poring over the data as quickly as she could, and before long she was lost in it. There was so much information to go through, so many possibilities. Image after image rotated through the display, the readouts almost blurring together with the speed of her movements, until finally she saw something that made her stop cold. The metal pads of her fingertips scrolled back a few pages, her eyes skimming, disbelieving. Because right there, amidst line after line of code and molecular specifications, were the two names that had driven all of her searching. Jefferson Doyle. Lucien Vicker. Her father’s name. And that of the man that both he and she had spent their lives attempting to expose.

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Lucien Vicker knew what her father had been up to. Lucien Vicker knew about her. She had to go. Layers of plans and strategies unfolded in her mind for where she would go next and what she would do. For how she would take her leave. Edison would be angry at her for abandoning her recovery so soon; she knew that he’d wanted another day or two at the very least to make sure everything was functioning correctly. But the most significant damage had been repaired or contained, and she was strong enough, she was sure. If she wasn’t, then she was just going to have to hope Edison would forgive her. Another deep pang stilled her as she realized that, even if she had more time, she couldn’t afford to allow him to harbor her any longer. She couldn’t come back to him. She couldn’t put him in that kind of risk. Blinking back the moisture threatening to blur her vision, Plix pushed herself to make her preparations, calling on the callous efficiency that had gotten her through so many sticky situations in the past. Plugging in the auxiliary data jack, she downloaded everything—all the data Edison had managed to recover— watching as it disappeared from his system, erasing it line by line. Then, without remorse, she ran her most aggressive algorithm to scrub all traces of her presence from his mainframe. All of it. Well, almost all. She left exactly one file. Masked and encrypted and hidden deep within the parts of his system that only she would think to look in, she knew it would take even Edison a while to find and decode it. But still, she left one piece of herself for him to find. In case she didn’t come back. When she didn’t come back.


29

Jeanette Grey

Plix was just finishing when she heard the sound she’d been waiting for this entire time, footsteps coming down the hall with that familiar echo and that long, loping gait. She swallowed hard and clenched her eyes shut, steeling herself for the goodbyes that had been growing more and more difficult for years now. This one would be the most difficult of all. With a silent prayer, Plix wiped the display and slipped the cable from her neck, turning quickly and forcing as neutral of an expression as she could muster. As she did, the door behind her swung open, knuckles rapping gently against plastic in a small warning. The sight of Edison’s face, broadly expectant, smiling and open, was nearly enough to crack her resolve and shatter all her plans. It only took a moment for everything to shift, though. “Hey, sleepyhead, I—” The words had barely left Edison’s mouth before his expression was falling, his features betraying how quickly he understood exactly what was happening. Plix could only hope he didn’t grasp the full extent of it. If he did, he would never let her go. “What—?” The hurt in his eyes was paralyzing, the sudden defensiveness in his posture striking so stark a contrast to the lazy smile he’d entered with. She always hurt him. Every single time. There wasn’t any point to pretending. “I’m sorry,” she started. “No.” Edison shook his head fiercely, his arms crossing as he straightened up to his full height. “You’re not sorry. You’re not sorry at all. If you were, you wouldn’t—” “I have to.” Plix couldn’t meet his eyes anymore. She couldn’t even hold her unaltered hand in front of her, it was shaking so badly.

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“You don’t. You don’t have to,” he said, pleading. “Whatever it is you think you need to do, it can wait.” As she fought back the tears that wanted to overflow, she tried to shake her head, tried to move, tried to leave. But she couldn’t. And then there were hands on her shoulders, one rising up to touch her cheek, seeking roughly to tip her head back. When she held firm, her eyes trained intently on the floor, he gave up and simply wrapped his arms around her, pressing her face against his chest. He smelled so good. “Please, Plix. Please. Just a few more days.” She’d already stayed too long. “No,” she said. The sound was muffled by his shirt, every breath and every word pulling more of his scent toward her lungs. He pushed her back, and in her surprise, she let her eyes meet his. “Then let me go with you. Let me watch out for you. If you have to do this, we can do it together.” She closed her eyes and her fists. “No.” “Please—” “No.” Sucking in a deep breath, she summoned all her strength to open her eyes and meet his gaze. “You know I have to…that I can’t…” When he lifted his hands to cup the sides of her face, she wasn’t prepared for how powerfully that unexpected tenderness would affect her. Usually, he screamed. Sometimes he broke things. He never touched her. Not quite like this. Maybe he knew after all. “Plix, I can’t…I can’t keep doing this.” She felt her expression fall, the truth of what she was saying making the words echo with the pain she wanted so desperately to hide. “You won’t have to.”


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Jeanette Grey

For a long moment, their eyes held, and she was left with no doubt as to whether he grasped her meaning. “Please.” Plix didn’t know how their faces had gotten so close, his breath warm on her face as he whispered, “For me.” Her eyes fell closed again, the lashes brushing his cheek, and as she parted her lips to speak, she could feel the warmth of his skin. For the first time in all these years, she felt his mouth. His kiss. It was chaste. Simple. Just pressure and lips, and it was everything she had ever wanted but never dared to ask for. It was everything she couldn’t have. Plix gave herself just a few seconds to memorize the feeling of his lips, full and soft against hers as she let her mouth open, a brief caress, damp and perfect. And then she pulled away, her palm coming up to stroke the rough plane of his cheek as she said quietly, smiling brokenly, “Of course it’s for you.” With an ache building inside her chest, she uncurled his hands from around her face, kissing the knuckles of each just once before placing them against his heart. His glassy eyes remained on hers the entire time, his lips still parted. Edison didn’t say anything, though. Not when she stepped back or when she placed her hand on the door. Not even when she rasped out a choked, “Goodbye.” It wasn’t until she was almost gone, the thick plastic of the door already swinging closed, that he finally spoke. His words were muffled. Quiet. Still, it hurt her more than she could have imagined to think that the last words he’d ever say to her would be, “For now.”

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Chapter Three

The trip back passed in a blur. Somehow, Plix managed to stumble her way down into the tunnels under Edison’s shop, emerging into the permanent gloom that passed for daylight these days before signaling for a transport. The car was dirty, the seats sticky with who knew what, but that was nothing new. The kinds of transports that didn’t scan ID chips weren’t the kinds of transports that provided a comfortable ride, and she had seen much worse than this. Throughout the short ride, Plix struggled to keep it together, just barely holding on to her control. But the minute the door to her quarters was closed behind her, she sank to the floor, pressing her face to her knees. The force of her sobs shocked even her, the thin walls shuddering along with the trembling of her body as she allowed her emotions to finally break free. The pain and the healing. The loss. She’d lost so much. And the only good thing she still had, she’d just left behind. The cold reality of it hit her all over again, that perfect, shining memory of his lips on hers, his arms around her. It brought on a fresh wave of grief, her heart screaming at that past version of herself to just give in. To take what she wanted for once in her life and to hold it close. To feel something good instead of pain and sacrifice. But the damage was done. She’d made her choice. She’d made it so many years before and she made it again today.

Jeanette Grey

Little by little, the broken pieces of herself began to exhaust themselves and her tears waned. Giving in was cathartic, the sharpest edges of her anger and misery dulling down until her hurt was a containable thing, a low ache that she could push back into the soft, dark places inside her. At long last, she lifted her head and glanced around at the small one-room efficiency where she spent her nights and days planning and watching, biding her time until she could finish the work that had become her life. It wasn’t much. Nothing, really. Four white walls and a basic data terminal. A mattress and a rations dispenser. An alcove in which to bathe. There was no music or soft lighting—no pointless, idiosyncratic collection of incandescent bulbs. With a deep sigh and a swipe of her hand across her eyes and cheeks, Plix picked herself up off the floor. While it was tempting to just plug into her terminal and lose herself in a virtual world of coconspirators and informants, she bypassed the little spot on the floor beside the monitor and walked instead to the built-in set of drawers in the corner of the room. The top drawer was still ajar, just the way she had left it on her way out a couple of weeks ago. She remembered opening it, remembered sifting through the scraps of clothing to pull out the metal box that contained all her reasons and reminders. All the things that kept her tied to the path she had chosen so many years before. She needed them now. That reassurance and that connection. The box was cool in her hands, her gait unsteady as she retreated to the mattress and sank down onto it, folding her legs beneath her and leaning against the wall. The latch opened easily beneath her hands, the hinges on the lid groaning. Another rough tumble of emotion threatened to claim her as she looked inside, a wrenching feeling nearly as intense as the one she’d just given in to

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moments before. She let a few stray tears slide down her face, too exhausted to hold it all in. She was so tired. So, so tired. As always, she spent a long time just staring at the image on the top of the pile, searching it and indulging that low ache in her chest that had never healed, even after so many years. Her father was young in the picture. In his face, she could see all the strength and resolve that he had carried with him to his grave, but there was none of the anger—none of the rough shadows that had slowly come to cling to the edges of his eyes. Then again, his wife had still been alive back then. Plix’s eyes drifted to the image of her mother, and she let a few more tears spill over at the obvious life and vitality in all her features. They looked at one other as if each thought the other was the most perfect creature in the world. Especially with the vibrant blue sky behind them, the whole scene looked idyllic. Like a dream. There weren’t many dreams left in ChiGonE. Not anymore. By the time Plix was born, the sky had already mostly clouded over, and before her sixth birthday, her mother’s smile had faded to a thin, brittle line, while her father’s eyes had become dark with worry. Over the next five years, his face had grown even more haggard as the woman they both adored had wasted away until finally there was nothing left. He’d held Plix’s hand as they’d laid Maryann Doyle to rest, watching the deep flare inside the ovens and then walking back out into a world devoid of color and love. A world sewn through with poison. Plix hadn’t learned the nature—or the name—of the poison until much later. S-41. A chemical that seeped through the river and into the water. Into susceptible bodies and into her mother’s blood.


35

Jeanette Grey

With a shudder, she placed the image of her parents on the mattress beside her and dug through the other contents of the box. There were a few trinkets from her childhood, the things she’d been able to save after her father had begun to move them around so erratically. These she removed without fanfare or reverence, having no interest in reliving that time in her life right now. Finally, she pulled out the two items she was really looking for—his personal effects. The things he’d been carrying the day he died. She was taken aback, as always, by the meager weight of the titanium wedding band as she slipped it over her thumb. In his last years, her father had grown so thin that the metal circle had barely stayed on his finger, and as she spun it, sliding it against her skin, she wondered if it had felt much like this to him—like a reminder of a life that had slipped away. Of a life that used to fit but which was now too distant and too big. She kept it on her hand as she began to page through the other piece of his life he had left her. The little pocket journal had largely been wiped before the morgue had handed it over to her, of course, and she couldn’t help but sweep her fingertips over the empty expanses of white as she scrolled through its pages. Every now and again, the little screen would leap to life, short snippets of text in his elegant hand sweeping out across the blankness. They hadn’t told her much; really, all that had been left for her had been tiny snapshots into her father’s life. But it had been enough. Enough to tell her to run to their home terminal before anyone could come and wipe that, too. It had taken her years to begin to decrypt the backup copy of his journal he’d kept on his own personal data space, but when she finally had, the tale she’d found there had changed her life. For weeks, she’d pored through his notes and scribbles, devouring the pieces that were written in a clear narrative and

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puzzling endlessly over the disjointed hints and references, the veiled clues that would propel her forward into this half-life. The only things she’d known for certain back then were that her father had been hunting for the people who had poisoned their world and, in so doing, killed his wife. That he had been able to draw a myriad of implicit connections to SynDate, but had never been able to prove their guilt. And that a man named Lucien Vicker had come to be her father’s obsession. Each word she’d read in the little journal had fueled Plix’s heartbreak and her resolve. Unable to satisfactorily mourn the loss of either her mother or her father, she’d set herself to honoring them the only way she knew how. She’d learned from her father’s mistakes, though. At age fifteen, she’d gotten her first cybernetic implant. The wires in her brain had made her faster and smarter, and the data port directly connected into the nerves of her spinal column had made her into her own terminal, fully functioning and portable in the extreme. With the introduction of the optical implant at seventeen, she’d become capable of storing images and evidence simply by looking at something. Then, on her nineteenth birthday, she’d gone looking for something more. And that something more had led her to Edison. The particular sorts of modifications she’d decided she needed for her hand had been new and tricky to work with at the time, and Edison’s work had come highly recommended. It hadn’t mattered that he had only been an apprentice at the time; everyone knew he’d long ago upstaged his boss with his finesse and his delicate touch. Only his loose hold on his own composure had kept him under another man’s thumb until that point, and even that hadn’t held him back for long.


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Jeanette Grey

With a broken little laugh, Plix remembered the arguments they had gotten into—her sharp insistence that he help her with the alterations she needed, and his demands for rationales as the changes grew increasingly drastic. More than once, she had stormed out and threatened to find another tuner who would do whatever she asked of him. Each time, he’d pulled her back, swaying her with articles and industry reports or charming her with warm words shared over coffee in the back of his workspace. Still, she hadn’t revealed the true nature of what she was doing. Not until that first night she’d found something big and lost something bigger. The night she’d lost more than just her mind. Plix’s eyes blurred as she finished scrolling through both her father’s journal and her memories, smiling a cracking, trembling sort of smile that was half tears and half happy remembrance. Kissing the now-warm metal ring around her thumb, Plix said a silent prayer for all of them. For her mother and her father. For Edison. For herself. And for all their sakes, she prayed that she could finish this, once and for all. With a heavy sigh, she began to tuck everything back into the box, replacing the journal at the very bottom and layering the other items on top of it. When it came time to pull her father’s wedding ring from her thumb, she hesitated, staring at the silvery circle for a long moment as she spun it with her fingertip. For reasons she couldn’t entirely explain, she couldn’t seem to put it back in the box, and in the end, she slid it back down to the base of her thumb before placing the image of her parents over everything else and closing the lid. Once the box had been safely returned to its drawer, Plix made her way over to the terminal, sitting on the floor beside it and checking the security logs. Satisfied that her access had not been compromised in her absence, she plugged

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in and sank with relief into the world of sources and connections, speculation and fact. Today she had facts. Lots of them. As she began to scan through the messages she had missed over the past few weeks, she felt herself becoming reenergized, the twinging feelings of anger and regret fading in the face of the work before her. Before long, she had completely immersed herself, reassuming her usual rhythm and reestablishing contact with her invisible collaborators, assuring them all that she was at least alive, if not entirely well. Her eyes were soon beginning to cross, her limbs aching with fatigue as she settled into the tedious, painstaking work of uploading everything she had lifted from Edison’s mainframe. There was such a huge quantity of data there, so many layers of information, and the still-healing networks in her matrix were straining to try to take it all in. Over and over again, she kept staring at the same numbers, the same files. Those same two names. Jefferson Doyle. Lucien Vicker. But she still couldn’t understand why they’d be here or why they’d be connected in SynDate’s own records to the chemical that had laid so much to waste. When the exhaustion became too much, she finally began closing down processes, completing her typical routines of obfuscation and redundancy, encrypting and resaving, scattering her work on as many different secure servers as possible, just in case. Just in case something happened to her, she needed to know that someone else would be able to pick up where she’d left off.


39

Jeanette Grey

She was about to disconnect, her hand already poised above the little dip at the base of her neck where skin gave way to plastic and metal, when she saw the alert sweep through her vision. She fully intended to ignore the request, her body screaming at her to give in and rest. But then she saw who it was from. Gritting her teeth, she accepted the request and sank back down against the wall. A moment later, the familiar mental presence flooded her matrix. She greeted him curtly in her mind. “Bean.” “I’m relieved to see you, Plix. Survived the last encounter, I see.” “Barely,” she responded. “I hate to be short, but—” “I won’t take much of your time.” Plix closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. Bean had been a good contact over the years. Perhaps her best. His information always came with a price, though. A silence had settled on the connection, and she sighed. “I’m listening.” “Tomorrow night. Around twenty-one hundred hours. East Complex.” Plix’s eyes snapped open, her chronometer flashing. Dumps happened at around twenty-one hundred. Drawing out his words, Bean continued, “LV is rumored to be planning on dropping by.” Plix sat up even straighter. “You’re sure?” “This is what they tell me.” “They?” She could practically hear his discomfort through the tenor of his thoughts. “I said I’d be brief.” Knowing he would terminate the conversation momentarily, Plix tried to head him off. “And what do I owe you?” “You think me so uncharitable?”

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“I don’t think it. I know it.” Bean’s laughter rang out. “Another time, my dear.” Plix barely contained her mental curse within her own head. Being in his debt was always the worst. “Just let me know.” “You know I shall. Until then, Plix.” Before he could sever the connection, a desperate hope sprung up in her mind, and she blurted out, “Wait. One other thing.” “Yes?” It was risky, telling Bean anything more. But if anyone would know, it would be him. Through her exhaustion, she struggled to phrase her question carefully. “I ran across some files recently. Stuff on S-41. I saw a name I didn’t expect in there.” At Bean’s answering hum, she plowed on, fighting to hide her anxiety as words she never spoke aloud passed through her lips. “Jefferson Doyle.” In the ensuing silence, dim pops of static echoed on the line. When she was ready to give up, certain that Bean would leave her hanging, his voice broke through. “Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. It stuck out to you, did it?” Plix gritted her teeth to keep her calm. She had no idea if Bean knew her family, but she certainly wasn’t about to confirm whatever suspicions he might be harboring. “Just curious why it would be in there. Especially mixed up with LV’s.” “My dear girl,” Bean answered, chuckling. “LV keeps track of everyone who keeps track of him. There’s a reason Doyle ended up dead.” He paused before continuing. “Now what was this file about?” “S-41.” Plix shut her eyes and braced herself against the ache in her chest born of both loss and pride. “He was close, wasn’t he? Before he died.”


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Jeanette Grey

“Closer than anyone has ever gotten. Save you.” The implication was clear. She was close to the proof she needed. She was close to discovery and ruin. “Thanks,” she said quietly. It was all she needed to know. She was as much of a threat to those she loved as she’d thought she was. They exchanged a few more words of parting, and then her headspace crackled as the connection ended. This time she wasted no time in releasing the cable from her neck and securing the terminal. Disconnected, she slumped against the wall, trying to process everything she’d heard and everything she still had to do. Alone. Plix could scarcely move by the time she washed up and dragged herself onto her mattress. Yet still her mind was restless. It felt wrong to be so comfortable and yet so lacking as she curled up on her side and dimmed the lights. It wasn’t until she laid her arm across her face that she caught the scent of Edison’s shop still lingering in the fibers of her clothes. Relaxing her muscles, she breathed in deeply. She was asleep within seconds.

There were few things Plix hated more than waiting. Maybe it was the years of buildup—the anticipation and the meticulous reconstruction of a shadowy world from only whispers and glimpses. Maybe it was the gratification she’d denied her own selfish heart. But she hated it. Desperately. For the better part of an hour, she’d been circling the East Complex of SynDate headquarters, sizing up the gates and fences she’d been watching for years now and steeling her nerves. This was the most carefully guarded of all the

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corporation’s properties, its boundaries forming the final lines she had yet to cross in this long, exhausting search. Finally, at twenty forty-five, she decided it was time. Knowing her shield would never last long enough to cover her for the hour or more that she might need to spend inside, Plix activated a less complete but less resource-intensive algorithm to scramble her signature before slipping through the shadows toward the weakest part of the perimeter. The fingers of her right hand made quick work of the bars and the field that surrounded them, and within seconds she was inside, the gate showing no sign of her entry. Within these walls, she was a ghost. Much like her father on the night he died, Plix carried with her only two possessions. The first hung from a chain around her neck, the hot metal circle of it practically burning through her skin with every movement, reminding her of who she was and why she did this. The second—a small package she’d tucked inside the inner pocket of her scatter cloak—burned into her in a different way entirely. In spite of all his dissembling, it hadn’t taken Bean long to decide on the price for his information. A few hours before she’d been scheduled to leave for SynDate, she’d been surprised to hear a knock at her door. For a moment, she’d thought it might be Edison, her heart leaping and all her resolutions melting. The false hope had made her disappointment and her trepidation all the more cutting when instead she’d beheld the courier. Bean had sent nothing but a box and a note, the thin paper bearing instructions to leave the package at specific coordinates within the complex’s gate. She hadn’t dared to ask questions. Plix’s breath quickened as she darted between buildings, her every step bringing her closer to the specified location. Her rapid pulse only intensified


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when she realized where it was. Superimposing her carefully constructed map of the area over her own vision, she recognized the office buildings and the laboratory. The medical supply facility that stood at the coordinates Bean had given her. She paused a few meters away from the drop-off point, checking and rechecking her map, but there was no room for doubt. In an antiquated, ridiculous gesture she hadn’t made in years, she crossed herself and reached into her pocket to withdraw Bean’s parcel, grasping it tightly before letting it go. The package hit the ground without a sound, dead-centered over the location she’d been given. And then she was off. With barely a minute to spare, Plix made her way into the heart of the complex. At long last, she could see and smell the river that formed its easternmost boundary, the waste disposal plant that was at the center of so many secret investigations and speculations. For the first time, she viewed it with her own eyes. The scene laid out before her was much like those she’d seen in photographs and videos. There was the dock and the huge columns of machinery, the skiff approaching on silent wheels. Between the guards and the workers, Plix counted seven people assembling on the platform around a foreman, and she watched with carefully held breath as bursts of flame erupted from the skiff, the trash returning to ash before the long arms of the chemical probes descended down. It was standard procedure, she knew. Every time they dumped their waste, the higher-ups at SynDate made a show of following all the letters of the law. There was an analysis of contents. A perfunctory signature. A record that would be lost and never found.

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It was the signature she needed now—that and a glimpse at the analysis. As steam rose from the pile inside the skiff, Plix knew that her moment was nearly at hand, and with a deep breath, she threw up her Shield and prayed that it would last. She needed to get closer. Just a little closer. The lenses in her optical implant whirred, her zoom pushing as far as it could go as her attention focused in on the Digipad in the foreman’s hand. The display was tipped toward her, a trembling, flickering series of words and images flying across it. She only cared about one of them, though. One molecule. One toxin. So intently focused was she that she barely noticed the change. The shift in body language and the gathering silence around the platform was almost imperceptible, but it slowly dawned on her that something even bigger was transpiring. Plix kept her implant trained in on the scrolling display of the Digipad, but she let the rest of her attention broaden until she could see everything else going on. She saw the car silently pull up. And she saw the man. Dressed in the light colors that were common only among society’s most well-to-do, Lucien Vicker cut an imposing figure. Plix’s hand shook at the sight of him, so out of place against this gritty night with his long gray hair and his smooth, arrogant stride. It was almost obscene that he should make himself so visible, she thought. As the shadowy hand behind so much ruin, it seemed he should be circumspect enough to hide, to cling to the shadows as she was always forced to do. Instead, he made his way onto the platform without a hint of hesitation, one dark-clad figure hovering just behind him as he approached the foreman. Plix


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watched raptly, her attention moving between the still-flickering display on the Digipad, the shapes of the two men and her internal clock. She didn’t have time for this. But she couldn’t turn away. Not now. Low, measured words drifted to her from where the two men stood on the platform. There was anger in the muted voices but nothing that ever rose above a normal tone of speech. Until it did. Plix barely managed to choke back her gasp of surprise when the man beside Vicker stepped from the aura of shadow that surrounded him, unfurling to a height Plix had not anticipated. Two broad arms came down around the foreman’s neck. Then too many things happened at once, all faster than seemed possible. The foreman rising from the ground. A muffled scream. A body flying into the still smoldering pile on the skiff. And the Digipad falling. With S-41 clearly displayed on its screen. She had just enough time to grab the image of it and store it someplace safe inside her matrix before Vicker was dusting his hands, unsullied as they were, his bodyguard shrinking back down inside the shadows. Plix’s heart seemed to stop for a few beats when she swore she felt eyes connect with hers, as impossible as it was. She needed to hurry. The stillness around the platform only lasted for a few seconds, the murder too small of a thing to be worthy of inspection, and soon the area was humming with activity again. A small, nervous-looking man approached Vicker first, his eyes never looking up as he ducked down to grab the tablet from the ground and

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held it up with shaking hands. Vicker scarcely afforded it a glance as he pressed his thumb to the bottom corner of it. As he signed it. Plix checked the feed from her implant three times before she breathed again. It was there. Everything she had worked for all these years. It was here. But so was she. And she was out of time. The crackling, hissing failure of her Shield was always a tangible thing. Plix could feel it in her spine and through the maze of circuitry leading into the center of her cranium. She could feel it now. At the first shiver through her matrix, she looked up, scanning for eyes that no longer skimmed over her so easily as they surveyed the scene. At the second, a sizzling crack of electronics overheating and dying, she stood. On the map that was always hovering just above the periphery of her vision, she could see her own signature reappearing, and with a shuddering hiccup of her heart, she knew she was exposed. Without another thought, she turned, scrambling to reengage backup protocols even as her legs pushed off. She ran. But it was much too late. They were on to her in seconds. All over the grid of the complex, she could make out the bright crimson signatures of sentries, and it was much, much too late. The first shot narrowly grazed her leg, little fissures of electricity and flame, but she knew that those were just the beginnings of the damage. Still she ran, the


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weakness in her limbs from the last encounter slowing her more than she’d imagined possible, her lungs burning. Everything in her being was intent on the gate. If she could only— If she could just— The second shot hit closer to home. Before she could even fully register the shock of it, a bright pulse of staggering pain erupted from her shoulder and sped down, licking and screaming toward her spine, sending her falling. But she wasn’t lost. Not yet. She only had seconds, but she would use them well. With the first breath, she collected all the feeds—the images and the memories. With the second, even as heavy boots were falling on pavement so close to her ringing ears, she was searching. With the third, she heard Edison’s voice. “And when you try to hide data, you’re getting closer and closer to integral systems. If you go any deeper…” Deeper. She had to go deeper. A hand closed around her throat, and she coughed, choking and spitting. She wanted to spit in his smug face. To scream her mother’s name until he heard nothing else. To hold up her father’s wedding band and take vengeance with her own murderous hands. She wanted blood. Instead, she sought circuits and her own destruction. And this time, she would complete it. The systems weren’t difficult to find, really. Following Edison’s signature inside her matrix, all the places his hands and subroutines had touched in an ill-

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fated effort to save her from herself, she felt out the walls that had been built around her very life—her very person. She broke them down. Deep within the most hidden, most vital pieces of herself, she tore the matrix of her own being apart. And there, amidst the tattered shreds of digital fiber and wire, she placed the fruits of her labor. After dying a hundred deaths at her own hands, after sacrificing everything, she laid one last plane of herself to waste. She could feel it the moment the connections were severed, foreign data interrupting the flickering, humming synapses that made up a life. So much of her body seemed to fall away, her control tenuous. But she knew it was safe. Her life’s work was safe. The hand closed around her throat more tightly, but all she could do was laugh as she tightened the gaps in her matrix, erasing her signature from her own mind. There would be no footprints inside her network. No sign. She would leave no trace of herself for anyone else to find. A cold face hovered above her as the prickles began to move through her system. There were so many loci of disambiguation. The black, spreading fire on her leg and shoulder. The screaming hole inside the boundaries where wires met nerves. The darkness of the eyes that peered into hers. “Well, well, well.” The voice burned along the wires running up and down her spine, cold and flooding. “What have we here?” She flinched as a frozen touch passed over the back of her neck. “Oh, my. Not again, Alice.” She tried to shake her head, but it was held too tightly. Alice Doyle was a name she had forsaken. No one used it anymore.


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And yet she remembered it. She remembered it being spoken in precisely these tones. Not again. The intrusion in her data port crackled in a reminder that her thoughts were not safe. “Yes, Alice. You heard me right.” The eyes before her grew darker, retreating until she could make out the face that had haunted her all these years. Ever since she’d seen his name written painstakingly in her father’s hand. “Poor Alice. Just like her father. Curious. Foolish.” Plix heard an echo in her skull. Dead. “Where did you hide it, little girl?” Plix’s back arched as the damage she had done to herself met the violation in her mind. It was like hands beneath her skin, tendrils of electricity licking out through her matrix, touching everything. Everywhere. Burning. She could feel the fire begin to grow. “I know it’s here somewhere.” The twisting hands inside her mind tightened, and she could smell the smoke and taste lightning on her tongue. Something was holding her down as her body writhed, everything still just beyond her control. Everything but her silence. That she would hold. Even though she could scarcely remember why. The fire burned as someone just above her kept speaking. Plix could almost see the hole and the red-hot gleam of metal burning to ash. She could feel the gaps beginning to appear. It felt like dying.

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It felt like she was alive. “I don’t think she caught anything.” “Nosy little bitch.” Even with everything falling away, she could feel the slap of a hand across her cheek and smell the blood soaking through the open wounds where she’d been hit. Edison would be so angry with her. So angry. Maybe he’d be less angry if she died. “Why?” she asked. Behind her eyes she could see him. If she concentrated hard enough, she swore that she could smell him. He smelled like home. Edison. Choking on her own blood, she whispered, “Why keep putting me back together? Why not let me die?” There was laughter in the air, bright and low through the darkness. “Because, my dear. People notice that sort of thing. When snooping little girls like you disappear.” The voice got closer, a whisper as violent as it was seductive. “But no one says a thing when they end up broken. Lying by the side of the road.” The jolting pain in her wrist made Plix’s eyes pop open. And that’s how she was looking when it happened. Even through the static in her mind and despite the way the lenses in her implant were failing and groaning, Plix could see the waste skiff hit the water. Three seconds later, fire erupted from a building just beyond her vision—a place she couldn’t quite remember but one she felt certain she should know. One she knew she could figure out if she could only put her mind to it. But she couldn’t. Not through the inferno in her skull and the roar of the blast.


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Blinking hard against the smoke, she saw the shadowy figure of the man who had been standing over her go flying and felt a rush of air and heat across her skin. And then she watched as the world rained down around her in ash.

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Time swam past in trickles and rushes. Nothing was connected. Severed wires and holes. A bright white spot of something that threatened to burst straight through her cranium with every pulse and throb, and the still-trickling heat of sweat and blood. Static. Smoke. The smoke was from more than burnt wire this time. Plix smelled it in her nostrils and in her skull and in the air. A sky that should have been a darkened, hazy gray lit up with flame and billows of white, cinders falling like chemical, crystalline snow. For hours or days, she lay there, a fine covering of ash settling over her skin. It clung to her even as she twisted in pain and horror, the unshakable, sickening feeling of loss forcing spasms through her muscles. She didn’t know where she was—or who. All she understood was that everything was wrong and she wasn’t safe here. But that although she felt like dying, she had won. At some point she turned, her body caught in a fit of shaking so violent it rustled a shower of ash from her skin, only to find the end of a MediVac transport parked a few feet from her side. Her laugh was choked, her throat tasting of blood as she saw just how close. It hadn’t seen her of course—not with her signal scrambled the way it was. Nothing should have been able to see her.

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But somehow that man had. Plix’s head swam with broken, crumbling memories of unkind eyes staring down at her, a vivid flashback of feeling hot and vulnerable. And there was pain at the spot where her neck met her spine. Someone had been there. Someone who shouldn’t have. Exhausted and desperate for sleep—even for the floating oblivion of Reawakening—Plix closed her eyes. Only when she did, she didn’t see a cruel face. She saw a kind one. With one trembling, bloody hand she reached out for it, but instead of warm skin, she found metal. A rail. Her eyes snapped open, the tantalizing vision of Edison’s intense, gray eyes giving way to the reality of a scarred cityscape set aflame and soft with smoke. And her hand was on a rail. A rail that led to the MediVac. She let her eyes fall closed again, chasing the warm comfort of the face that was always glad to see her. But all she could see was the pleading in his eyes. She could hear him whispering. “Don’t leave me in the dark.” Instead of the darkness behind her eyes, she sought out the burning, smoking gray of reality again. She reached. Each centimeter was torturous. The shuddering she’d known lying prone on the ground was nothing compared to the excruciating experience of moving. Every muscle screamed, sparks staunched by blood as signals tried to travel their way through her matrix from brain to limb. Feeling every severed connection and every splintering, frayed wire, Plix pulled herself along the rail. Her wrist

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screamed and her leg and shoulder teetered between hot, sharp pain and frightening numbness. But she moved. Finally, lying just beneath the transport, she reached out with her broken wrist and wrapped the metal surface of her fingertips around frigid piping, hoisting herself up in one of the most wrenchingly painful efforts of her life. Twice, she heaved bile over the side of the car. Still, somehow, she lifted her hips and legs up off the ground. Somehow, she held on. Finally, after what felt like hours of holding herself to the underside of the MediVac, she was rocked from her desperate clinging by a shudder of a different kind. Over frozen asphalt, she felt the metal world she hung from surge forward, lurching sickeningly as the transport began to move. Minutes later, she passed through a gate she knew but couldn’t name. She let herself ride half a kilometer more before giving in to the crushing pressure and the need to make the pain in her arms finally cease. With a terrifying and yet oddly satisfying thud, she rolled and dropped. Summoning just enough presence of mind to pull her shattered body a few feet forward, she crawled toward the reassuring rise of the curb. And there she curled into a ball and stared up at a blackened, brilliant sky.

Realization and morning both dawned at the same time for Plix. It was only as those first weak streams of light began to drift over the smoggy haze of the horizon that she felt the chill rise up inside her body, the sort of shiver born of more than just the cold. She was going to die.


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She stifled the laugh that threatened to bubble past her lips, coughing violently and lying her head back down against the ground. The notion should have bothered her, but the only trouble in her soul was the echoing, hollow place where a memory should be—the sense that there was still something she had to do. With her last remaining wisps of energy and breath, she tried to trace her own steps through the tangled mess of her brain, examining the holes and singed remnants that indicated someone had been there. Then she started explicitly looking for holes. For places that were too untouched. Places that had been covered up. Places she had covered up. She found the covered footprints deep within the blackest, most restricted pieces of herself. The very brushstrokes of subterfuge were clearly cast in her own distinctive hand, all indications pointing to a single point of entry and to damage lying just beyond a barrier that was never meant to be crossed. She crossed it again. There she found a softly glowing ball of her own making, a parcel so lovingly bundled in layer after layer of protection that it made her scorched eyes tear. She wished she could remember what she’d placed inside. She wished she could remember hiding it. But more than anything, she wished she would get to see his face when Edison unwrapped it. Tightening her whole body against the pain of electricity humming through the circuits of her brain, she laughed one last time at what she was about to do. For so many years, she had denied herself so much, keeping her silence and her confidences and sticking to her own four lonely walls. All of it had been in the name of keeping him safe.

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It wasn’t safe to send this to him. But if she had to die, she wasn’t about to let everything she’d ever worked for die along with her. She couldn’t die without contacting him again. Carefully hiding any information that would lead him back to her, she completed the uplink to her most trusted, most secure satellite, draining herself with the effort of the transmission. Exhausted, she found the strength to tack on just two words. I’m sorry. She was so, so sorry.

It was too much. Just the grazing of skin on skin. It was too much. “Shh.” At the warm voice in her ear, Plix convulsed, pressure at her waist and something hot flickering just inside her chest, a scent of ozone in her brain. There were more words, more quiet reassurances and so much touch. As she was lifted from the earth, each jostling step set off more bursts of flame down the length of her spine, and she tasted blood, biting down to try to contain the sounds that wanted to escape. Warmth. Her head and back were gently fit to soft leather as she was set down, and she didn’t know if her eyes were open or closed. All she knew was that there were hands on her. Fingertips brushed her cheeks, spreading dampness, and for once she didn’t think that it was blood.


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“Shh, Plix. It’ll be okay. It’ll all be okay.” His voice was choked with sobs, and he was touching her. She felt his lips against her brow and the crackling of circuitry. It was too much. And even if it lasted forever, it would never, ever be enough.

“What have you done?” Plix tried in vain to turn her head, the numb more terrifying now than the pain. For a moment, amidst all the fog, she focused enough to make out the dim shape of an incandescent lightbulb. Amidst everything, it alone was warm. Golden. Safe. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so safe. “My God, Plix,” came another choked gasp. A clattering of metal against tile. “What did you do, Plix? What did you do?”

For ages, Plix floated. Lights turned on and off and music changed. The breaths near her head came and went, and sometimes, somewhere in the distance, she could hear a voice, so warm and tender. So afraid. At some point, she became aware of more. There was pressure against her skin that began to give over to textures and temperatures. Each time, the sensation was overwhelming, painful and yet perfect, the comfort so tactile that it brought tears to her desiccated eyes. When she first managed to move again, it was a heady, terrifying, exhilarating thing, but she learned quickly that there was no controlling it.

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Muscles twitched and limbs shot one way and then the next. The sounds of shouting sobered her, but she couldn’t help the sobs pouring unchecked from her lungs. The leather straps that tied her down didn’t stop them either. But at least they kept her from moving. Still twitching, she let herself be dragged back under, feeling nothing but the brushing of fingertips across her cheek and brow. There was nothing else she needed to feel.

Slowly, Plix began to stir. Where she’d been held down, she could still feel the faint rawness of friction burns against her skin, but there was nothing hampering her now. Her muscles were quiet, even if her bones were aching. And she was still so sensitive. Just the pressure of the leather underneath her was more stimuli than she knew what to do with. Add to that the warmth inside her palm… Plix’s eyes opened, her head lifting slightly, but it was too difficult to do much else. Still, she saw enough. Enough to make her eyes well with tears until she could scarcely see anything. So many times, after finding him passed out at his data terminal, she had laughed at Edison for being able to fall asleep anywhere, in any position. Staring at him now, though, his whole body slumped over the side of the couch, his hand gripped around hers and his neck at the most awkward angle, his face flush with the seat… She wasn’t laughing now. How could she?


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With her eyes still leaking and with a fragile smile twisting her lips up almost painfully, she shifted to intertwine their fingers. Then, so slowly, so carefully, she lifted the hand that wasn’t locked with his and brought it to his face. Sighing raggedly at the sensation of soft hair sliding between her fingers, she touched him. It sparked and it ached, and she didn’t care that it hurt—that the place where metal implants met bone was groaning at the pressure. She needed to touch him. She’d thought she’d never get to touch him again. After a few soft strokes, Plix felt him stir, a quiet sigh echoing from his lips as he grimaced, his neck turning. Sleepily, he shifted until he could look up at her, and she froze, her chest panging at the dead expression in his eyes. Gulping, she met his vacant stare and tried to tell him without words that she was here. That while she wasn’t fine, maybe someday she would be. Letting her fingertips move once more against his scalp, she could tell the exact moment he realized where he was and what was happening. The expression on his face shifted rapidly, registering relief and surprise before settling into something so broken that it made her heart ache. “Plix?” “Shh,” she said, her voice raspy and pained. She pushed the words out anyway. “It’s all right.” So many times, he had reassured her in just that fashion, with just those words. The way his face crumpled, she thought maybe he realized that, too, but then his whole head was falling, his forehead coming to rest against the couch as his shoulders spasmed. She had to make this right. “Come here,” she breathed. She wanted to open her arms to him, but it ended up being little more than a twitch of shoulders and wrists. “Please.”

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His Adam’s apple bobbed with the heavy motion of his throat as he looked up at her, the eyes she loved shot through with red. “I— How—?” “Just come here.” She wanted him beside her. So badly. Even as he was sitting up straighter, shifting closer, he shook his head, protest and fear on every plane of his face. “I don’t want to hurt you.” With her eyes, she begged, praying that he wouldn’t ask her to out loud. Scanning down the length of her, his voice took on a shakier quality. “There’s no room.” Plix knew there was. Heaving her whole body, she tried to shift back and away from the edge, but her limbs were still not entirely hers to command, and in frustration, she weakly pulled at his hand. “Make room.” Edison regarded her silently for a few moments. She wondered if he even knew how his thumb was drawing circles against hers—if he could see the emptiness of her other hand, outstretched and reaching for him. Just when she was about to give up, something in her chest instinctively curling in on itself, he stood, weariness clear in every line of him. Plix closed her eyes as arms tenderly wrapped around her, sliding her back. Each point of contact buzzed, the friction almost painful in its intensity. But she didn’t care. Settling on the couch beside her, Edison’s body was solid and warm, the lean length of him pressing against her. One arm snuck beneath her neck, and with both strength and care, he held her against him. His face was hidden from her, his brow pressed tightly to her shoulder. There was still something shaky to him, but he was there. Ignoring the crackling and buzzing, the overcharged rush of sensation that came with every touch, Plix sank into his embrace, struggling to wind her arms


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around him, her hand screaming as it grazed his cheek. At the touch, he trembled more roughly, dampness seeping through the loose clothes he must have changed her into. A pang of insecurity sank through her at the thought of him undressing her, a memory of hot water and of his lips on her neck, breathing words about beauty that she could never believe. But none of that mattered. Not now. Letting him sob, she held him close, every centimeter that she tightened her arms echoed in a reciprocal pull of his around her. “Fuck, Plix. It’s just… You…” “Shh. It’s okay. It’s all okay.” For once he didn’t argue with her. Instead, he simply pulled his face back from her chest, those red, broken eyes looking at her so plaintively, and he was so close. In the end, Plix didn’t know if she moved or if he did, or if they both felt the same call. Somehow, though, they met in the middle. And while it only lasted for a moment, the way his lips touched hers, the soft promise of their kiss was the sort of contact that Plix knew would touch her for all her life. Releasing her lips, Edison settled back down onto the couch, letting his head rest on the pillow and pulling her body against his chest. Rubbing her arm and back, he held her. And while no real words had been exchanged, Plix felt in that moment that the two of them had never understood each other so plainly.

She was wrong. Waking slowly to the sound of beeping in the distance, Plix rose up into a consciousness that was too sharp—too bright.

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Too cold. The ache in her hand and chest both intensified as she reached out, the pain redoubling when her fingers closed around nothing but air. With a little start, she shivered and opened her eyes to take in the lonely expanse of the couch beside her broken body. The empty chair. Behind her, the terminal kept sounding out its alerts, but she didn’t have the will to do more than cast the monitor the most cursory of looks. Curling back into her pillow, she ignored the noise the best she could. She’d woken up alone.


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“This is going to hurt.” Plix didn’t react to his whispered voice except to open her eyes. Edison hovered over her, half his face obscured by a mask, his gaze pointed down at her side. She glanced down just in time to see the point of a needle disappear beneath her skin, a sharp flame shooting up her arm before bursting across her spine. At the sudden conflagration, her back arched, and she bit her tongue to stifle a scream as her arm jerked against his grip. “I’m sorry,” he breathed, his brow furrowed and his eyes pained. “Don’t leave me,” she begged. Not like you did before. “I won’t.” “Promise?” “Promise. Not until it’s over.” As the drug took effect, Edison kept to his word, sitting by her side and holding her twitching, sweating hand. Even when she thought there could be nothing left, the very wires and sinews of her body so charred as to seem beyond hope, he sat with her. He stayed until the worst of it faded—until the exhaustion overtook the pain. Just as she was falling asleep, though, she heard his quiet sigh and felt their fingers disentangle. The last thing she heard was the door as it closed.

Unacceptable Risk

“Three of a kind.” Edison set down his display and grinned. With a weary sigh, Plix watched the tokens disappear from her dwindling pile as his stack grew. Closing her eyes, she lowered her head to the table between them and let the little screen fall. At this point, she didn’t even know how many games she’d lost or how it felt to not taste anesthetic on her tongue. Even with the drugs and the sleep and the constant, unending intrusion of probes and protocols, microsurgeries and deep grafts, everything hurt. She didn’t know what it felt like not to hurt. She did know that it had been seven days since Edison had met her gaze. Seven days since he’d held her. Just thinking of it, remembering his arms around her and the pressure of his lips made her heart tighten inside her chest. After so much time alone, holding all the world at bay, that one soft brush with intimacy had been shocking. Returning to a world devoid of touch, confined by her own stubbornness, was even more shocking. At first, the very loneliness of it had stolen her breath away, and even now, her lungs ached with the effort it took to inhale and exhale. “You want to keep playing?” There was a nervous edge to Edison’s question, and Plix rolled her eyes. So many times he’d asked her if she was okay, trying to break through the silence she was living in now. Finally she’d stopped answering, and he’d started finding new ways to phrase the question. Still, she rarely responded. Talking hurt. Nodding hurt. Looking at him, only to have him not look back at her…it hurt.


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Braced against the pain, Plix nodded and reached for her screen. The program had already dealt out a new hand, and she sighed as she made her wager, predicting how it would go. By the time the next to last card was turned over, she was resigned. Against the deep ache in her throat, she forced out the words, “I fold,” and set the display down once more. Everything in her wanted to fold. She sat there in silence for a few minutes. It was long enough for even the sensation of the plastic table against her cheek to begin to overwhelm her, all her nerves still saturated and too sensitive, all her neurons still misfiring at once. “We don’t have to play,” he said quietly. “If you don’t want to.” “Whatever you want to do.” She didn’t even know why he was here. After another long pause, she felt the vibration through the table as he set his screen down, and she swore she could feel his stare. “What’s wrong? Does something hurt? Are you—?” “Like anything doesn’t hurt.” “Damn it, Plix, you have to tell me these things.” She could hear the rustling and feel the motion through the floor as he pushed his chair back, but she shook her head, her stomach lurching with the pain of it. “No. No more drugs.” She thought she’d be sick if another chemical touched her blood. “You don’t have to suffer.” “Why not? It’s my own fault, right?” At his failure to answer, she felt her chest tighten. “You can admit it.” He sighed, and she could picture the way his hands would come up to rake through his hair and slide down his face. “There’s no point to blaming anyone. If

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you wanted to, you could blame me. I should have found you sooner. Or not let you leave.” “Like you could have stopped me.” “I could’ve tried.” Silence fell over them again, but it was different this time. His leg was bouncing beneath the table, a steady vibration that she felt in every millimeter of nerve and bone inside her. Finally, Edison cleared his throat and set his hand back down on the table. “Is there something else?” Plix’s insides twisted. Of course there was something else, but she couldn’t… She didn’t even know how. Her eyes prickling with the tears her new nervous system didn’t seem to be able to contain, she looked ahead of her at the blank expanse of wall. Before she could think to stop herself, she caught her own voice whispering, “I miss you.” She heard the tightly restrained emotion as he said, “I’m right here.” She heard the lie. “No.” Pushing past the sharp crackles of pain, she slid her hand across the table. Her gaze darted up for just long enough to register where his hand lay, curled in a fist beside his discarded screen. Then with an anguish she didn’t quite know how to express, she laid her own palm over the top of it, reveling in the warm prickles of skin against skin. Her voice shook as she repeated, “I miss you.” He didn’t turn his hand over or rub his thumb across her knuckles. He didn’t speak. He didn’t move. His rejection was hotter than the pain. Automatically, she let the new sting creep into her heart and loosened her grip, already sliding her hand away as she choked out, “Never mind. I must have—I thought—”


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His grip was sudden and startling, the feel of it so intense it burned. Plix’s throat constricted with a silent sob as he took her hand in both of his, massaging the skin and bones and holding it tightly. Still, it took a few seconds before he could speak; when he did, she barely recognized the sound, it was so pained. “I missed you, Plix. Every day. Every fucking day. I missed you.” One hand retreated from her skin, and she looked up to see him dragging it across the skin below his eyes, everything blotchy and damp. Her eyes were damp, too. “Just,” she began, suddenly wondering if everything she’d thought was wrong. “You haven’t…” “You haven’t. You haven’t shown me that anything’s changed. The last time I kissed you, you left me five minutes later, and this time…if you hadn’t been too weak to move…you’d have done the same.” “I wouldn’t. I—” “Nothing’s changed!” “I’ve changed!” she yelled. It was only a second later that she realized it was true. “Things…” she continued slowly, staring at him levelly, “things have changed.” Maybe it had been the expectation of death or the relief of touching what she’d thought she’d never touch again. Maybe it was her nerves that felt so frayed and her heart that could no longer seem to let go of what it wanted. Maybe it was the feeling that, even though she couldn’t remember how, she’d won and lost, at all once. But still, somehow…some way…she didn’t feel like she could lose any more.

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His eyes were warm and open, hopeful even, but his mouth was a grim line, the soft fullness of his lips quivering. “Then tell me you’ll stay. Promise me. That no matter what comes out of that terminal, you’ll stay.” So many times he’d asked her. So many times, she’d failed to say the words he needed to hear. And for all that she wanted to, she still didn’t know if she could. Without her leave, Plix’s eyes darted over to the monitor—to the stillflickering, shifting display. Ever since she’d emerged from danger, Edison’s mainframe had been pushing through the data she’d nearly killed herself trying to hide. Her memories, while safe, had proven more difficult to recover than ever before, and yet in all this time, she hadn’t asked him about them. While she was desperate to know what lay inside the fragments of her mind, she hadn’t wanted to have this conversation. Not again. He didn’t wait for her answer, his gaze turning to follow hers before his head fell, his shoulders collapsing. “You can’t,” he said quietly and yet with an edge behind the words. “You still can’t.” “I—” His hand was already pulling away, though, his body rising as he pushed back from the table. The scraping of the chair against the floor was sandpaper on Plix’s nerves, but she didn’t care. Standing was almost impossible. She did it anyway. “Edison…” “What you’re asking of me…” He shook his head and stepped away, his voice too tight. He didn’t even seem to have the energy to tell her to sit back down. Instead, he simply kept retreating. “To wait for you, hoping you’ll come


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back when you won’t even let me help. When you won’t tell me what you’re doing.” His eyes met hers as he stepped across the threshold, away from her. “It’s too much.” The slamming of the door behind him was a deep flame in the back of Plix’s skull. For a few seconds, she teetered on unsteady feet, her arm still lifted as if to summon him back. Her throat closed against the pleading words rising up toward her tongue. She wanted nothing more than for him to walk back through that door—to sit with her and to kiss her. The harsh burn of realization pushed her, staggering, down into her chair. She wanted him to come back. She wanted it more than anything.

Plix got her chronometer and her core processes back three days later. Sitting on the couch that was a prison to her now, the data cable firmly tethered to her neck, she mentally paged through the list of programs she hadn’t run in what felt like ages. She startled when her chronometer told her exactly how long. Three weeks. Gulping at the rough surge of gratitude and sympathy that flooded her, she glanced up quickly at Edison. All she could see was the back of his head, but in her memory, she could see his face, bleary and defeated as he had stared at her in those first few minutes after she’d awoken. She’d hurt him so much. Unable to look at him anymore, Plix went back to exploring her matrix, crawling through it tentatively. Every step was shaky, the holes and gaps between her life and her network perilous. It was like learning her body and her

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systems all over again, only instead of a fifteen-year-old novice, she was a twenty-four-year-old who’d been living a life in code and wires for as long as she could remember. The frustration was beginning to mount when she stumbled upon the diagnostics she typically ran after a Reawakening. Except this time, in spite of whatever had happened, she hadn’t gone through one; her matrix hadn’t entirely shut down, and she was left with all these fragments of whatever she had lost. She closed her eyes only to be assaulted by faint images of cold eyes and a sensation of pain at the back of her neck. Violation. Snow. And then, warm atop the layers of memories that seemed so raw and cold, there was just one more. It was clearer, less obfuscated by damage. It was of arms, holding her. After sending a message that shouldn’t have been able to be traced. Her gaze darted up to Edison again as her pulse raced. “How?” she croaked. “Hmm?” “How did you find me?” Edison’s hands stilled on the screen before him, the animations slowing, but he didn’t turn. From where Plix was sitting, she could only see the edge of his face, his jaw tense and his eyes directed down. “Edison?” “Check your positioning systems.” His hands began to move again, his motions seemingly casual, but he was still tense. For a minute, Plix stared at him, but when it was clear he had no plans of being more forthcoming, she slowly lowered her gaze and returned her attention


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inward. Her satellite uplinks hadn’t come back online yet, the systems too intensive, but the base programs were still there. As was something new. A stub of a program she hadn’t put there. “You put a tracer on me,” she breathed. “I didn’t see it… I… Why didn’t you tell me?” “Would you have deleted it if I had?” Her silence was answer enough. Plix’s eyes glazed as she held the list of programs in her mind, that one hidden subroutine blazing amidst all the others. For the longest time, she hovered over it, thinking of what it meant for him to always be able to know where she was. Knowing he was always looking out for her. “When?” “Last time.” His back was still turned to her, his jaw clenched. Slowly, his posture softened as he dropped his head to brace his temple on his hand. “I never used it. Not until I…” His voice paused with a soft choking sound. “Not until I got that…that message.” He said it like a dirty word. It was, really—what she had done to him. The way she’d tried to say goodbye. For another minute, she sat there, staring at the sign of his intrusion and protection, uncertain whether to be grateful or incensed. A dozen times, she considered deleting it. In the end, though, she couldn’t. With a sigh, she closed the list and moved on to the next set of subroutines. Moments later, she heard Edison’s deep exhale, the tension in the room easing slightly as his shoulders relaxed. He mumbled something beneath his breath, his voice so low that Plix couldn’t quite be sure what he’d said.

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But it sounded like, “Thank you.”

“This is going to hurt.” Plix nodded and braced herself, knowing better than to look this time. Instead, she stared at his eyes, soaking in the warmth of his hands on her skin for those few short moments before pain bloomed anew. Only it didn’t. For a couple beats too long, Edison stood beside her, her arm held gently in his grip as he regarded her, his expression soft. It was one of a few tender moments they had shared in the past few days—a moment when his guard was down. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I hate hurting you.” She forced a small, wry smile. “I know.” Then she closed her eyes, and in the faintest whisper possible, she breathed, “I’m sorry I hurt you, too.” She didn’t have to make him promise to stay with her this time, or to hold her hand. Through it all, he did. Even when she fell asleep, he stayed.

“Ugh. I fold. Again.” Plix rolled her eyes as she pressed the button on the screen to deal another set of cards. As she did, she couldn’t help letting her gaze shift once again across the room to the display on Edison’s monitor. Lines of text were still scrolling across it at their normal, steady rate, inexorably sliding toward the answers she both needed and feared. Answers that were finally close at hand. When he’d come in that morning to check on her, he’d done his usual puttering around on the system, checking on the progress of the analysis they’d


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both been waiting on but which neither of them had been able to bring themselves to talk about. Not in weeks. Finally, his shoulders had slumped as he’d flicked his fingertips across the screen a few last times and turned to her. Tersely, he’d said, “It’s almost done.” She hadn’t known how to respond or how to process the twin feelings of anticipation and dread. She needed to know what she had found—what piece of data could have been so important as to make her do what she had done. What could have been worth the agony she was still in. With steady hands, Edison had coaxed almost all of her systems back into health, but the effects of her own recklessness were still clear. As time had gone by, Plix had resigned herself to the fact that they probably always would be. The painful sensitivity of her skin and the weakness that had plagued her were almost a part of her now—physical, tangible evidence of the lengths she had been willing to go in her quest. In the wake of her silence, Edison had continued on, but his eyes had fallen to the floor, unwilling or unable to meet hers. “It’s good timing, I suppose.” “For?” “For…” His nervous swallow had been as loud as his defeat. “You’re almost well enough. Well enough to…to go.” “Oh.” Plix’s eyes darted back to the game in front of her again, but in her periphery, she could see how Edison’s gaze seemed just as drawn to the progress on the monitor as hers. As they played out another couple hands, the flickering of text was the only marker of the time. It marked how long they had left. And it was only as it finally stopped, the single low beep the only sound in the room, that Plix realized she couldn’t bear for their time to be over.

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She couldn’t bear to do this on her own. When Edison placed his screen down on the table and moved to stand, Plix reached out, scarcely thinking in her panic, shocked by the tightness in her chest at the weight of her realization. What if she didn’t have to hurt him anymore? What if leaving was only one of many ways to keep him safe? “What if—” she finally said out loud, holding his wrist and reveling in the sensations of both warmth and pain. “What if it doesn’t matter?” Edison’s head whipped around, his expression near-comical in its confusion. “If—?” Her voice grew fervent, her heart suddenly bursting now that a decision had been made. “It doesn’t matter,” she repeated. “How—Plix, you risked your life for this. It has to—” “What if I stayed?” It scarcely seemed possible for his jaw to drop any farther, but still it did. He recovered quickly, though, his mouth closing and gaze narrowing, but even his attempt at a neutral expression couldn’t hide the spark that had appeared in eyes that had seemed so dead. “What do you mean?” “What if I didn’t want to go?” She backtracked as quickly as she’d begun, knowing she was oversimplifying—knowing she would never abandon her work. But she didn’t backtrack far. “I might have to, of course. I might have to go. But what if…what if I did it differently this time?” Her grip tightened on his arm, forcing a harsh shiver through her nerves as she pushed through. “What if I didn’t leave you in the dark?” “Plix…” She could see his doubt. After everything she had done, of course he doubted her.


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“What if I promised?” Her eyes were damp as she stared at him. He said nothing but slid his arm from her grip, slowly bringing his hand back to entwine with hers, tugging on it so gently that it scarcely hurt as he moved to stand. Pulling the cable from her data jack, she let him guide her to her feet. He kept holding her hand as he pressed the series of keys on the mainframe’s monitor, his gaze connecting with hers as he completed the last command. And when the images began assaulting her, one picture after another depicting direct proof of SynDate’s knowledge that they were pouring poison in the river, he held her even more firmly. As the tears welled up in her eyes at a vision of the man her father had always blamed stepping forward and personally accepting responsibility, Edison held her up, his arm moving to support her by her waist when she thought her failing limbs might collapse beneath her. The final image swept past the screen, but Plix could hardly see it through the wetness in her eyes. Swiping a hand beneath them, she turned to Edison only to find his eyes already on her, his gaze intense. Staring right back at him, she let the relief wash over her. It was over. Everything she’d worked for her entire life…it was done. Too overcome, Plix couldn’t control her reaction. Sobbing and smiling, she threw her arms around Edison’s neck and buried her face against his chest. When his arms came around her as well, she cried even harder, swaying and squeezing, and it didn’t matter that it hurt. It was over and they’d won. She was free. Edison’s voice cracked as he breathed, “You did it. God, what you did, Plix. I never knew. This is—”

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“Huge.” “Huger than huge.” He looked down at her with his eyes so open. “You’re so brave. So strong.” “No.” Wiping her face on her own forearm, she pulled away enough to stare up at him. “We did it. We were strong. I couldn’t…Edison, I couldn’t have done it. Never. Not without—” But then her words were stolen from her. There were no congratulations or blame. Instead, there was only his mouth. Unlike the desperation of their first kiss or the relief of their second, this kiss was want and love and everything they’d denied. It was parting lips and soft tongues, entrance and entreaty and something more. He pulled back just far enough to stare at her and whisper, “You really mean it.” “I do. I—” Pressing his lips to hers again, Edison smiled and laughed, the sound of it deep and reverberating inside her lungs as she tried to breathe him in. Grasping her more tightly, he lifted her off her feet, spinning their bodies and tasting her mouth, and even she had to laugh, a sound so high and squealing that she hardly recognized it. Her voice had forgotten what it was like to be happy. Ungrounded as she was, twirling swiftly in his arms, she grinned and kissed and tangled her fingers in his hair. Eventually, they slowed, the motions of their mouths becoming more serious, and Plix shuddered when he let out a soft groan as she sucked his bottom lip between her own. At that, the laughter and smiling seemed to evaporate, replaced with something almost too intense and which showed no sign of abating. Slowly, their


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kisses grew deeper, their bodies not close enough, and she needed to be closer. She needed to feel him beneath her skin—beneath the wires and the ruin. She needed to be whole because she was with him. “Please,” she whispered. Somehow, the pain that accompanied sensation had shifted, becoming more and more like pleasure as her arousal grew, and she suddenly found herself feeling wild and needy, wanting more—more touch, more skin, more teeth and tongue and breath. With an unexpected burst of strength, she wrapped her legs around him, something deep and neglected inside of her tightening when she felt him pressed against her and heard his rough intake of air. “Please.” He met her every advance, kissing even harder and opening more deeply, his body shifting until he leaned her back against the edge of the desk so his hands could touch her more intimately, his palm hot against the side of her breast. Until he suddenly withdrew. Panting, he dropped his forehead to her shoulder, his hands holding tightly to her hips. “I—” he began, but he didn’t seem to be able to finish. Plix swallowed hard, tasting rejection but trying hard to push it down as she closed her eyes and placed her elbows on either side of his neck, surrounding his head with her arms. Her body still felt wildly sensitive, the pain now an ache, and she wanted. God, how she wanted. He’d seemed to want her, too. In her distraction, she let her fingertips roam across his scalp as she tried to calm herself down and not give voice to her disappointment. “It’s okay,” she said quietly, but there was no hiding the low rasp to her words. “We don’t…if you don’t…”

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He shook his head and let out a strangled sound before lifting his gaze back to meet hers. His eyes were intense and dark, his lips parted as he pressed them again to hers. “Not here,” he breathed. With the word “here”, his eyes darted over to the low couch that had been the site of so many of her convalescences over the years, and a hint of a shadow passed over his features. Through his eyes, she could almost see it. She could see her body rent and broken. “Not here,” she echoed. Edison slowly withdrew his arms, unwrapping her legs from around him and setting her down on the edge of the desk. Pain crackled through her ribs as her stomach dropped with another rough surge of disappointment. But then he held out his hand, and huskily he urged her, “Come.” Plix’s legs were unsteady beneath her as she rose, but she managed to stand, teetering forward and letting him intertwine their fingers. Together, they moved beyond the room that had borne witness to so much of their history and out into a space that, at least for Plix, was entirely new territory. In all the twisted years of their relationship, Edison had never invited her beyond the bottom two floors of the building. She’d seen his shop and his workroom, and in a way they felt like home to her. But she had never seen his home. Slipping through darkened, unfamiliar corridors, she followed him, trusting him for once to lead. And at the point where she couldn’t follow, staring up at a flight of stairs so steep they made the muscles in her legs pant and scream, he simply lifted her into his arms. So many times Edison had carried her, his body strong as he picked the shattered remnants of hers up off the floor. Always, she had sunk into him, hating the show of weakness and yet dependent on his help. Always, it had been a secret pleasure to be held. This time was no exception.


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She was so caught up in absorbing the fact that both she and he had finally given in that she scarcely noticed as they ascended the flight of stairs and emerged out into a narrow hallway. At the end, Edison pushed open a door and held her closer to his chest as he paused just inside of it. His indecision was clear, hesitation making the tendons in his neck strain as he ground his teeth. Plix ran her hand through his hair and turned into him even farther, pressing her lips softly to his throat and sliding them up toward his ear. “Whatever you want,” she whispered. His answer was a rough groan, his eyes clenching shut and his arms tightening. “Are you—I want—” “Please.” Within seconds, Edison had crossed the room, laying her down and collapsing over her, his arms tense on either side of her body and his knees just to the side of her hips. “I—” he tried again, but then he was kissing her, deep and wet, his voice rough as he hovered above her lips. “God, I’ve wanted this for so long.” Plix’s chest was fit to burst as she cupped his cheek and lifted his face from hers, smiling as she whispered, “I know. I know.” Their lips met again, softer this time as her hands ghosted over his face and neck, rubbing across his back until his arms gave in and he let himself relax against her, chest to chest, their thighs touching. He seemed to hesitate as he slid his fingertips along her skin to the place where her borrowed clothes had gathered at her collarbones. “Anything,” she promised, kissing down to his jaw. His hands moved slowly to her waist, dipping beneath fabric to tease at skin. He looked up at her, his gaze vulnerable as he asked simply, “You’ll stay?” Plix nodded tightly, her smile cracking beneath stray tears. “I’ll stay.”

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Edison stared at her for another moment before dipping his head to press warm lips to her cheek and throat and then down her chest over her shirt before meeting the bare skin at her waist. His uncertainty seemed to slowly melt away as he pushed the fabric up her torso, his eyes soft and glassy again, his mouth reverent as he kissed every line of metal—every scar. Her insecurity wanted to rise up inside her chest, but somehow it couldn’t. Not when with every press of lips to ruined flesh he whispered, “You’re beautiful. You’re so beautiful.” When it came time to gaze upon his unblemished, unbroken skin, she found herself saying the very same thing. Slowly, they bared each other until finally they lay naked on his bed with everything exposed. As he rolled to lie atop her, his body hard against her thigh, she shuddered violently at the way the sensation went all the way into her bones, her too-sensitive skin flushing hotter than seemed possible, want and love both aching deeply in the very center of her. He paused, his mouth wet against her breast, his voice tight with need. “Did I hurt you? Are you—?” “I’m perfect,” she breathed. She was. “Please.” His brow pressed to her temple as he shifted between her thighs, her body cradling his as he kissed her jaw and pushed inside. Full and held, she wrapped her arms around him more tightly, everything tensing at the sound of his gruff moan and his whispers of pleasure. Slowly, carefully, he moved within her, his hands and lips never straying from her skin, and she realized in that moment that she had never felt so whole before. So loved. Moving faster, he pushed his pelvis against her, sending forth sparks of pleasure more intense than any she’d experienced, the combination of sensitized


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skin and desire driving everything deeper and harder, her body and heart both opening. And when she crested, flying and tightening, her body wrapped around him and her mind lost to the kind of connection she had never known, she finally knew what she was fighting for. She didn’t need to fight for those she’d lost. Instead she could fight for what she loved.

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“Are you cold?” Plix shuddered again and curled more tightly against his side, pressing her palm and face to warm, naked skin. In the wake of passion, the pain of touch had returned to her, but not to the point where she had stopped craving his. Like her broken nerves were now attuned to him, she felt his body pressed to hers within her bones, as if the severed circuits had rerouted themselves through him. As if she were literally complete with him. “No,” she ground out, but still she acquiesced to his insistence that he cover her, the blanket soft as it draped across their skin. For a few minutes, they lay there in silence, her fingertips tracing swirling patterns on his chest as her thigh curled around his, her mind idle but for thoughts of how she could ever have thought she could deny them this. After a while, her breathing began to even out, the world fading into a haze of warmth and skin, her eyelids heavy. They had just begun to close when she felt him shift beneath her, his lips coming up to press against her temple and his arms tightening as he exhaled slowly. “Plix?” Through the fog, she managed to murmur, “Yeah?” “What changed?” “Hmm?”

Jeanette Grey

Plix felt his hand come up to stroke her face, smooth fingertips brushing her hair back from her eyes before sliding in between their bodies to touch her heart. “What changed?” With a yawn, she shrugged and kissed his chest. “Nothing. Everything.” “I just… After all this time… I didn’t think you saw me like that.” His hand traced up and down her arm. “Like this… Or if you did care for me, it wasn’t enough.” Plix hummed and frowned, but her eyes stayed closed, the veil of sleep too heavy to push back now. “You didn’t know?” she mumbled. If she hadn’t cared, she never would have pushed him away. “No. Never.” Realization tingled in the back of her mind, a memory and an expectation that she’d all but forgotten. “You didn’t see it.” “See what?” Her lips loose with sleep, she sighed, “The file. The one I left you last time.” “You didn’t leave me anything,” he said quietly, hurt still lingering in the words. “Of course I did.” If he pushed the issue any further, she didn’t hear it. For the second time in her life, she fell asleep, warm and safe inside his arms.

For the second time, Plix unexpectedly woke alone. Her hands reached across the expanse of the bed, seeking warmth and skin but finding only fabric and a bone-deep chill. Try as she might, it was hard to suppress the panic that longed to gnaw at her, remembering the last time she’d

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found herself this way—the long weeks of silence and the distance that had grown in his eyes. Carefully, she sat up, blinking against the darkness and looking around the room she hadn’t had eyes for the night before. With the input from the implant, she was able to pierce the darkness to catch glimpses of art and books, bits of wiring and a single beautiful, ancient lamp. In spite of her worry, she couldn’t help but smile as she took everything in. Apparently, Edison was Edison, in his workroom and in his home. Rising on stiff legs and feeling a soreness she hadn’t experienced in ages, she found her own clothes without difficulty, but could not ignore the pull of the other pieces of fabric that lay beside them. Covering scars and metal, she drew Edison’s shirt over her skin and breathed deeply of him and of an intimacy she hadn’t understood she longed for. Not until now. Padding through the corridors she hadn’t ever explored before, she was unsurprised to find each door closed with the lights all off. Still, when she reached the landing for the stairs, she hesitated. While she felt strong enough to descend them, she didn’t know that she’d be able to climb them again if Edison wasn’t where she thought he was. The prospect of spending another night on the old couch in his workroom was not appealing, but neither was remaining upstairs alone. Her progress down the stairs was slow and unsteady, but before long she found herself just outside the room she’d always been confined to, only to find it aglow. Stealing forward, Plix pushed the door open as quietly as she could, hovering just beyond the threshold as she peered inside. Within, she found exactly what she’d expected to, and yet something entirely foreign. After all this time, she was accustomed to the sight of Edison sitting at his chair, eyes intent on his monitor as one hand flew across the screen.


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She wasn’t accustomed to seeing him with the corner of his fist in his mouth, his shoulders shaking. The floor creaked beneath her as she finally entered the room, and Edison’s head jerked up immediately, his face intensely open as he gazed at her. Behind him, Plix could now see the contents of the monitor. The single file. Her file. All of her memories from the last five years. Her throat tightened, and she felt more naked than she had without her clothes. The sense of vulnerability only grew as Edison rose and faced her, his voice silent and his posture rigid. She had no idea what he must think of her. Somehow, she summoned the strength to meet his wide, wet eyes. “So now you know.” He knew everything. He knew about her anger at the father who had abandoned her when she had needed him most and her sense of outraged loss. Her single-minded focus on finishing what he had started and her desperate hope that it would make things right, even though they could never be anything but wrong. He knew her sacrifice. Her terror. Her need to make safe the things she loved. Above all else, he knew her love. For what felt like an age, she stood before him, waiting for a reaction that seemed like it would never come. Until it did. Her lungs constricted with the force of his embrace as he squeezed her to his chest. A bright line of pain flared, but she didn’t care, because it was accompanied by the relief of his touch and of his words as over and over again he breathed, “I love you.”

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He only stopped long enough to set her down and clutch her face between his hands. “If you ever try to take yourself away from me again… If you try to protect me…” “I know,” she whispered, pulling his mouth back down to kiss him. “I know.”

Plix’s eyes snapped open, surprised to find the world gray with dawning light. She was even more surprised when arms surrounded her, pulling her back against a naked chest. “Go back to sleep,” Edison grumbled, kissing the soft skin just above her dataport. It was her turn to ask, “Will you stay?” “Of course.”

“What are you looking at?” Edison entered the workroom and came to stand behind her, peering down at the monitor as she flipped through a series of files. On one level, their positioning was incredibly familiar, and on another it was entirely new. In the past, he never would have wrapped his arms around her. After finally rising and making their way downstairs, they had retreated back more or less into their normal routines. He’d run his typical diagnostics on her matrix and set up a couple more programs to try to shore up the patchy places in her network, then left her to return to his shop, kissing her slowly as he stood to take his leave.


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Alone amidst his monitors and terminals, her focus had quickly returned to the work she was now even more intent on finishing. For hours she had peered through the files they’d recovered the night before, trying desperately to bring the memories back to the surface, but all she’d gotten were flashes as sensor data mingled with ghost impressions in her circuitry. There was pain and ash and snow. Lucien Vicker’s face and unseen hands inside her mind, probing and twisting. A dot on the grid of her mental map and an image of the medical supply facility where she’d left Bean’s package exploding into flames that lit the night. Vicker’s body on the ground, still breathing but nearly as bloodied as her own. Edison hummed and pressed his lips to the side of her neck, bringing her back to the present. It was clear the moment that he recognized what she was working on as he stiffened slightly behind her. His voice was neutral as he asked, “Have you decided what to do next?” Plix was unaccustomed to speaking about her work, so many years of secrecy and subterfuge having taught her to keep her own counsel. Her collaborators had always been invisible presences on the network, and any information she had fed them had been in isolated chunks, the whole of her vision always obfuscated for the safety of everyone involved. Nothing about what she was preparing to do was safe, but she would tell Edison about it anyway. He deserved that much. Flicking the metal tips of her fingers over the display a few times, she laid out the array of files sequentially. Her mouth grew dry as she worked, the weight of his expectation pressing against her. “It’s all…it’s all in pieces, you see? Only none of them tell the story on their own. I need to put it all together.” Edison studied the screen in silence, and Plix paused to let him think. Nervousness coiled inside of her as she waited for his judgment, a hundred

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arguments already forming in her head for when he tried to convince her it wasn’t worth it. When he spoke at last, his voice was quiet and determined, and there was no hint of the dismissal she was so accustomed to. “Dissemination. You need to get it out there.” “Yes. Exactly.” Lighter now, daring to hope that he truly understood, she flipped through to the next set of figures. “I need to make it small, but without compressing it too far. It has to be easy to authenticate but still something I can get uploaded fast. Before…” Before they stop me. The minute any of the data hit the network, she knew they would try. He looked at her calculations thoughtfully before glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, something conspiratorial to the slant of his mouth. “This isn’t going to be easy.” “Saving the world never is.” That’s what he had always jokingly called it, her idea that she could do this. Her crusade. At her twisting of his words, he smiled, but there was a deeper level of devotion to it, too. A commitment that was new. “That’s what you’re doing, isn’t? You really are.” “I’m trying.” His eyes softened as he looked down at her. “And I don’t tell you often enough how much I admire you for that.” He brushed her cheek and then stepped back, his tone and expression both serious as his hand moved to touch some of the cabling from his mainframe. “I have the capacity, I think. Or if not, we can upgrade the connection. I’m sure—” Plix shook her head and placed her hand over his. “No. Not from here. It’s too dangerous.”


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“For who?” A low spark of defiance flashed in his eyes. Swallowing down the part of her temperament whose first reaction was to rise to his challenge, she took a few deep breaths before speaking. “Everyone,” she said quietly. She squeezed his hand in a silent entreaty for the chance to explain. “Too dangerous for you, of course. When they traced it back here, you’d lose everything. Everything.” “I don’t—” She spoke over him. “And too dangerous for me. For what I need to do. We’re too indirect here. The second it hits a relay station, they’ll start scrubbing. Maybe some copies will make it through, but not enough.” His eyes widened, his arm falling as he pulled his hand from her grip. “You’re going to hack the city matrix. You’re going to the Hub.” Plix met his gaze levelly, challenging him to tell her she couldn’t. He crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his head. “You know I’m not going to be okay with you trying a stunt like that alone.” “Can you think of a better solution?” The severity of his expression held for a moment, and Plix was starting to worry about how their new arrangement could possibly work. But then the tense line of his mouth cracked, one side of his lips shifting up to form a wry grin as he relaxed his arms and placed a hand on her waist. “Yeah, Plix. Yeah, I can.”

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No matter how many times she’d prepared for a raid, Plix still felt the same rough surge of adrenaline, the same tingling of nerves and excitement. As she drew the scatter cloak around her shoulders, she could barely force her hands to work the fastenings. The nerve pain that had plagued her since the night she’d infiltrated SynDate nearly eight weeks ago made her fingers tremble, and they slipped more than once over one of the buckles. “Here, let me.” The contrast between her ruined skin and Edison’s could not have been more clear as he brushed her hands away and set his own to the work of securing the protective garment around her. She took advantage of his preoccupation to stare at him, searching his face for any signs of doubt and finding none. Slowly, her eyes began to make their way down his form, admiring the way the tight, black fabric moved with his body. So unlike his usual attire, the brand-new scatter cloak made him look dangerous, like a spy or an assassin. He looked like he was up to no good. He looked like her. Clipping the last of the bindings, Edison let his hands linger on her, sliding them to rest on her hips and ducking down to kiss her mouth. She kissed him back without reservation, still secretly delighting in the easy intimacy that had grown between them now that the walls they’d each erected had been lowered. Only instead of letting things escalate the way they often did, she pulled back

Jeanette Grey

just when she most wanted to press forward, tugging at his lip with her teeth before releasing it and looking up. She could hear the uncertainty in her voice as she asked, “You’re sure?” Edison laughed and insisted on kissing her again. “I’ve been in this thing since the first time you showed up on my doorstep. I know you’ve been trying to keep me out for just as long, but…” He paused as she opened her mouth, brushing a finger across her lips in a silent request that she hear him out. “Now that I really understand what you’re doing, and why… I’m in, love. I’m sure.” With a sigh, she nodded and stepped away from him, grabbing the bag that contained what supplies she thought she might need before turning for the door. Before she could get too far, he reached out to grab her hand, squeezing it once and moving to follow her. Each time she’d set out on a raid, it had always been with a spike of adrenaline, but it had also been with a low pang of isolation, knowing that she did what she did in the name of those she’d lost. Always, in the past she had acted alone. Heading out with Edison’s hand held securely in her own felt strange. It felt new. It felt right.

As she stepped into the black car, she couldn’t help shivering, thinking about what it must have cost Edison to hire not one but two transports for the evening. One had been left here while the other waited for them in an inconspicuous location half a block away from the city Hub. Just in case. Both were driverless and scannerless, illegal in the worst possible way. Both had been contracted with no questions asked.

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That had been the expensive part. The sharing of resources had been one of many points of contention in their negotiations, both as partners in crime and partners in life. Plix’s operating funds were comprised almost exclusively of what her parents had left her, and while it was more than ample for her Spartan lifestyle, it was nothing compared to the income Edison made turning people into machinated works of human art. “Let me,” he’d argued. “Let me make this as safe as I can.” Eventually, she’d relented. Behind his back, she’d done what she could to make this safer for them, too. Without a word, Edison got in beside her and began steering them on a roundabout, meandering path through the city. Both of them were on high alert, looking out for anyone who might be paying them too much attention, and Plix’s virtual eyes were everywhere on the grid, tracking the locations of sentries and listening carefully for any alarms. They left the transport just a little ways from the Hub, continuing their winding path toward it on foot, hand in hand. When the building came into view, Plix squeezed him slightly. He drew her close against his side, his arm warm around her waist as she located the jack in his coat and connected it to the cable from hers. “Remember,” she breathed. “Don’t let go.” “Never.” She didn’t dare to activate anything more than a basic masking algorithm to scramble their signatures. Shielding two people was taxing and tricky, and it didn’t take long for her to start to feel the drain. Edison’s lack of a data port hadn’t left them with many options, though. “You okay?” The strain on her matrix was omnipresent. But it was manageable.


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“Fine.” No more words were exchanged as they approached the access point. Plix inspected the area one last time, optically and digitally, before nodding. Edison hovered over her, his hand always in contact with some part of her, as the metal tips of her fingers flew across the security screen. She had to try three times before she reached a point where she was confident she’d disabled the alarms and cameras, and that she had managed it all without detection. Finally, with a quick glance up to see that Edison was ready, she pressed the short series of keys to open the door. Inside, it was dark but for the glow of diodes and the occasional line of exposed fiber optics. Edison gripped her hand harder as she led them forward, relying on her optical implant as the corridor narrowed, the space between racks of relays and servers tightening and the scent of ozone and electricity intensifying. Slowly, the darkness began to recede, pushed back by a faint glow ahead. It grew brighter and brighter with every step until Plix could finally see the soft green rectangle of light at the entryway into the Hub. She stopped just before it, turning to Edison and reaching up with her other hand to trace his cheek. Uncertain how to possibly explain to him what it meant for him to be here with her, just on the cusp of the end of everything she’d worked for, she simply stared at him, holding his gaze as she whispered, “Thank you,” and pulled him down to kiss him. “I wouldn’t be anywhere else.” At the emotion in his eyes, she had to look away. After atrophying for years, the parts of her heart that had grown so full over the last few weeks wanted nothing more than to pull him with her, back through the corridor and out into a world where the skies weren’t ruined and the waters weren’t poisoned. Part of her wanted to give up on it all.

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But she couldn’t make a world devoid of fear without facing it herself. She had one last thing she had to do. With one hand wrapped firmly around Edison’s and with the other bringing her father’s ring to her lips, Plix stepped forward. Together, they emerged into light. The Hub was a broad cylinder of circuitry rising up to a false sky of blinking lights and plastic. The circular room around it was lined in wiring and terminals, the living, crackling walls of it illuminated by bars of green light that gave the whole place an otherworldly glow. But all Plix had eyes for were the input monitors located at regular intervals around the central column. Too quickly, she began to stride toward them, only to have Edison grab her hand and pull her back. “Shouldn’t there be guards?” he hissed. She shook her head. “No. Not yet.” She knew there would be. Soon. Assuming a defensive posture, Edison let Plix lead him out into the center of the room. She didn’t miss the way his other hand went to the holster at the side of his cloak or the way his eyes kept scanning, relentlessly seeking out the danger they were about to call down on themselves. She got to work quickly. With Edison grasping her arm through her coat, she turned her back to the room and focused intently on the monitor, securing the cable she’d brought with her to the data port in the back of her neck and then to the terminal. And then she watched the entire world open up before her. Plix had plugged into complicated systems before, but she was still unprepared for the veritable onslaught of data, ones and zeroes, images and text. It all rushed past in a vast stream that threatened to wash her away, forcing her to fight the tide just to keep her footing. With all her concentration, she focused


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on the image of poison and a world destroyed, on her mother’s dying face and her father’s vacant one. Still, she teetered, the frayed net of her matrix faltering. “I’m right here.” Edison’s voice pierced through, like a hand plunging through the darkness. “You can do this.” She could. Grasping his hand, she refused to let go. Standing still amidst the crushing tide, she envisioned the place where she needed to go. Only once she had it firmly in her mind did she begin to wade outward. “Focus, love. I’ve got you.” Before her eyes, numbers merged and melded, byte by byte coalescing into the raw skeleton of a city. She could see it. And then she was there. Deep inside the city’s matrix, she could feel data flowing past her fingertips, malleable to her very touch. She could see the flowing conduits of energy streaming in and out. She could taste the poison in the water. With an even deeper resolve, she plunged forward and placed her hand straight into the flow. And then she began to speak. In ones and zeroes, she told the city her story, pouring out the pieces she’d collected over a lifetime of relentless pursuit, carefully crafted from images and documents, schematics and analyses. It was a story she and Edison had knit together with painstaking attention, drawing all of the essential elements into their simplest forms, picking out just the pieces that most directly pointed to the culprit. She told the city how SynDate had stained their world.

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And the instant the city heard her, she knew. All around her, as she continued to upload the evidence she’d nearly died for, she could feel the waters churning, the very walls of the virtual city closing in. With her physical senses, she could feel the presence of intruders. Sentries. “They’re coming,” she managed to grunt out, feeling Edison’s grip on her tighten, but then she was lost again. It took so much of her concentration to not be thrown by the increasing violence of the surf. Mentally, she could feel the flimsy fiber of her network being slammed against rocks she knew had not been there before. In the distance, she could hear noises now, everything coming closer. Still spilling data as fast as she could, she struggled to hold the duality of the virtual and physical worlds within her grasp, as with her body, she tried to turn, needing to see what was coming at them. “No. I’ve got it. Just go, Plix. Go.” She went. Faster and faster, the story came tumbling out of her, all her will bent on adding it to the knowledge of her wasted world. She was so intently focused that she barely noticed the first shots. In those initial seconds, they were just sounds somewhere beyond the tumble of information and the violent rocking of the digital space she inhabited, but then they came closer, and Edison’s hand shifted as he turned. Energy bloomed all around her, brilliant sparks firing even within her matrix. She could feel it when he fired. She could feel the way the recoil rocked them both. “Go, go, go, Plix. Go.” Faster and faster, she pushed the data out and onto the network, but it wouldn’t go fast enough. She knew they were out of time.


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“No,” she breathed. She’d been wrong. This didn’t need to be finished today, and everything she’d thought as she’d lain there, broken on a street corner, had been wrong. She wasn’t ready to die. Or for Edison to. Moving as quickly as she could, she calculated what she’d already delivered and what was left, racing at a breakneck pace and pulling out only the most vital images, the most critical pieces of the puzzle. One by one she fed them into the datastream, watching each piece as it was carried forward by the inexorable flow, shaking with every sound going off around her. Finally, as the last few pieces began to stream forward, she collected herself enough to open her senses to the physical world again. The bursts of lights that had rocketed across her vision deep within the city matrix came slowly into focus in the here and now, sparks flying from terminals all around her, wires laid open and exposed the way her body had once been. Beside her, she heard the telltale staccato of sound as Edison fired off another series of rounds, and she turned to place one hand on his back, staring forward only to meet the cracking wall of the energy barrier he’d erected before them. Already, she could tell it wouldn’t hold for long. “We have to go,” she begged. “Are you done?” “Close enough. It doesn’t matter.” “What?” He jerked his head, looking down at her for the briefest moment before turning back to the wall of sound and exploding light. On her grid, Plix could tell that more sentries were pouring in, approaching from the other side. They had no time.

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At just that instant, the last image transferred into the city datastream, and she couldn’t even bring herself to look back as she yanked the plug from her neck. “It doesn’t matter.” “But—” “I’ve sent enough. We have to go.” He hesitated for a moment, letting loose another burst of fire before nodding and beginning to back them away. Plix kept even with his body and concentrated on maintaining the masking algorithm that would at least make them more difficult to hit, if not completely invisible. She could sense the back entrance to the Hub closing in, and she quickly ran the calculations to try to determine their best odds for escape. Every route was risky now, every corridor guarded. “Which way?” Edison hissed. “I—I don’t know. I—” A sound to her left interrupted her analysis, and she turned, the lenses in her implant shifting just in time to take in the burst of purple light—the crack as the barrier around them failed. Edison saw it, too. His eyes caught hers for a split second, terror and a fierce protectiveness clear on every line of his expression, and Plix knew what he was going to do. She screamed as he leaped. The scream became a roar as she watched the capsule burst against his skin, the angry black barbs of metal probes embedding themselves inside his arm. Even as she was catching him, crashing against the tower of circuitry behind her with the force of his weight, she reached into her bag, popping the energy cell to erect another wall around them. The spasms wracking Edison’s body were


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a near-physical pain in her chest, and she had to look away, her head whipping around, searching for options. She needed options. And with a sinking realization, she accepted that she had only one. After yanking hard at the buckle on Edison’s arm to try to sequester the toxin there, she reached into her bag one last time. For such a powerful thing, the charge was shockingly light in her hand, and she grasped it briefly, taking just a second to say a silent prayer. And then, to the accompaniment of a hundred blasts all hitting her barrier in succession, she threw the charge at a precisely calculated position on the floor, bracing herself and Edison’s convulsing form against the column of electronics as the world around them exploded.

The tunnels beneath the Hub were black and fetid, a cacophony of noise still raining in from above as smoke and rubble poured down on them. Taking time only to throw the remainder of her energy barrier across the hole above them, Plix dragged Edison with her through the dank space. With every step, she thought her legs might fail, but after a few meters, he seemed to come to himself a little, still spasming and shivering, but at least helping to move his feet forward. “Come on,” she breathed. “You can do it. You have to. Please.” All he could do was flop his head toward her and stumble along. Without breaking stride or looking back, Plix reached out in her mind, flailing about until she found a secure satellite. “Bean,” she begged. “Bean, are you there?” “Plix?” “Plan C. We’re on Plan C.”

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“I understand.” She didn’t wait for any further confirmation. As soon as the connection was severed, Plix took a deep breath and braced herself for the shock of it as she threw up her Shield around both of them. Still, the sudden burn of exertion flaring across her circuitry nearly felled her, and she staggered forward unsteadily for a few feet before regaining her footing. Her heart pounding and every muscle screaming against the strain, she managed to pull herself and Edison just a little farther, making it through the twists and turns in the tunnel leading toward their rendezvous. Ahead of her, she saw light. If she could just— She had to. Stumbling the last few meters, she saw a form step out of the light—a tall, thin man of about twice her age peering through the darkness at her. She held her breath as she waited for the man to speak. “Plix? Is that you?” She knew that voice. Already feeling the low crackle of her Shield’s impending failure, she downgraded to a lesser algorithm and watched as two shadowy, nameless dots reappeared on the city grid at precisely their location. She could recognize the way Bean’s countenance changed as he registered their appearance before him. With a grin, he held out his hand, helping to ease Edison’s dead weight from her shoulder. “Not exactly how I’d hoped we would meet,” Bean said with a little laugh. She’d really hoped she would never have to meet him, and she shivered involuntarily as she imagined what a favor like this would cost her. “No, me


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neither,” she agreed wryly, placing a hand on Edison’s head to protect him as Bean roughly hefted him into the waiting skiff. “Is he…?” Bean asked. “He’ll be fine.” He would be. He had to be. “Anybody following?” Plix scanned the map again, shaking her head when she saw the area around them clear of sentries, the bright red smattering of dots still centered on the Hub. “No. Not so far.” “Good.” She and Bean both piled in, him in the driver’s seat and her in the back beside Edison. He was slumped over, shaking and pale, his eyes closed and his features tight. As she smoothed her hand over his face, trying to be comforting, she could feel the smooth motion of the skiff pushing off, fleeing quickly. She just had to hope that it would be quick enough. “Looks like you two caused quite the scene back there.” Plix turned to face front, catching Bean watching her in the mirror. She checked her expression and struggled for calm. “Nothing that wasn’t necessary.” Bean chuckled. “No doubt.” The skiff grew quiet, the only sound the occasional grunt from Edison and the rustling of his cloak with his more violent tremors. Each one made Plix’s chest tight and her mouth dry with terror, but there was nothing she could do. Her only hope was to get him safe passage. “So,” she said cautiously, glancing forward at Bean’s reflection again. “What’s this going to cost me?” Bean’s mouth lifted up into a twitching smile. “Always so suspicious, aren’t you?”

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“With you? Yes.” “Tut tut,” he said in mock chastisement, but then his expression shifted, and Plix couldn’t help but feel somewhat disarmed. “From what I saw appearing on the city grid before you called, I’d say that this one is on me.” Plix’s eyes widened. “You could see it?” “All of it,” he agreed. “You’ve done good work tonight, Plix. I’m…pleased.” “It wasn’t for you.” “Of course not,” he said as he steered the skiff through a quick series of turns. “But that doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t benefit.” Somewhat reassured, Plix shifted her attention back to Edison. He was looking worse with every second, and her panic was growing. If she only knew which toxin had been in the capsule or what to do to contain it. With her heart hammering, she started to pull back the sleeve of his cloak, her throat choking at the sight of the purplish bruise spreading across his arm, making the flesh look black. Her eyes darted up to his face, his jaw clenched tightly and sweat pouring off of him as he shook. “You’d know what to do,” she breathed, letting a single sob escape. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.” She didn’t think he was entirely with her, so she was shocked when his lips parted, his teeth still grinding together as he grunted, “Was worth it.” And then she watched as his eyes cracked open, his other hand reaching to squeeze hers. When his lips twisted up into a thin, pained smile, she let herself collapse over him, hugging him tightly to her chest and pressing her lips to his brow. All she could do was hope that he was right. That some way, somehow, it would be.


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Chapter Eight

“They’re not going to tell you anything you don’t already know.” Plix tore her eyes from the glowing screen in the corner of the room, looking up to see Jensen standing in the doorway, watching her. After Bean had dropped them off, Edison had managed to stay conscious and moving for long enough to guide them to his old boss’s shop. Jensen had taken them in without any questions, but the way he kept looking at her, Plix couldn’t help but think he knew exactly how they had ended up in the shape they were in. Her gaze darted back to the image on the screen, watching for the hundredth time as Lucien Vicker’s arrest was replayed for the world to see. In the background, commentators rambled at length about the significance of the event and the revelations that had come along with it—about the known leak of the S41 toxin into the water supply and the fortune SynDate had made selling medicines to cure it. They spoke too about the shocking infiltration of the city Hub that had brought the wrongdoers to light, but Plix didn’t have ears for their analysis. On some level, the scene playing out before her was the culmination of everything she had been working toward her entire life. But it didn’t feel right to celebrate it. Not without the man who had held her hand at every step along the way. Sighing heavily, Plix turned off the screen and faced back toward the center of the room. In a general sense, it wasn’t unlike Edison’s workspace, though in

Unacceptable Risk

the particulars, it was completely unfamiliar. There was nothing about the place that filled her with warmth or a feeling of safety. Nothing but the man sleeping on a cot against the wall. “Any change?” Jensen asked quietly. She nodded. “He’s resting easier now. I think the toxin’s mostly gone.” “It’s not going to be an easy recovery.” “I know.” Of course she knew. She’d been through it enough times herself. Edison didn’t respond as Jensen moved to check his vitals, and Plix’s stomach turned slightly at the sight of him, still and ashen against the mattress. He’d awoken a few times in the three days they had been here, but Plix still couldn’t fight back her fears that she’d been too late—that the toxin had spread too deep. She scarcely noticed Jensen moving until she felt his hand pat her shoulder. “He’ll be fine, sweetheart.” “I know,” she said. “I just… It’s hard.” “It always is,” Jensen agreed, his tone meaningful as he added, “watching the people you love in pain.” Plix nodded but didn’t respond, keeping her gaze trained on Edison’s face. She missed his smile. She missed his eyes. With a sigh, Jensen squeezed her arm and retreated to the door. “I’m heading up for the night. Wake me if anything changes.” “Good night.” When the door closed behind him, Plix rose, moving slowly across the room to sit on the edge of the cot. She didn’t know if Edison was aware of her, but she hoped her touch calmed him as much as it did her. The slow, steady thumping of his pulse was reassuring beneath her fingers, the flutter of his breath her grounding to the world.


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She didn’t know how he had done this, all these years. Caressing softly, her hands made their way across his face and neck, brushing over his chest and back up again before sliding down the length of his arm. When warm skin gave way to cold metal, she could scarcely contain the low whine of pain building in her lungs. Still, she caressed that, too. After all, it was part of him now. The poison had laid waste to the majority of the flesh of his arm, and Jensen said they’d been lucky to be able to salvage the bone and most of his hand. She’d always loved his hands. Moving so gently over the still-healing juncture between flesh and metal, she lined her fingers up with his, gasping in surprise when they curled around hers. Her head jerked up, her breath catching when she saw half-lidded gray eyes staring back at her and a weak smile on pale, dry lips. “Do I really look that bad?” he breathed, his voice raspy and the words swallowed with a quiet cough that racked his body. “No,” she replied, smiling and tearing up all at once as she squeezed his hand before releasing it, leaning in closer so she could stroke her fingertips through his hair. “Not at all.” They regarded each other in silence for a moment before she bent to kiss him. “You had me so worried. How do you feel?” “Like I got shot in the arm.” “Yeah,” she said, laughing. “I would imagine so.” With obvious effort, he lifted his arm from the mattress a couple of inches, rotating it a few degrees and staring at it. His expression was unreadable, almost detached as he took in the alterations.

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“I’m sorry,” Plix choked out, feeling all of the emotion and fear begin to spill out of her in the wake of her relief. “I know…I know you never wanted any of this…” “Shh.” His other hand came up to brush her cheek, tugging lightly on her neck until she leaned down to press her lips to his again. “It’s worth it.” “Is it?” He regarded her levelly. “Did you make it out alive?” She nodded. “Did you do what needed to be done? To make things right?” Plix’s mind went back to the news reports she’d been watching—to stories about the anonymous parties that had hacked the grid and laid out SynDate’s guilt in images and schematics. To Lucien Vicker being taken into custody and the corporation’s waste operations being suspended. To plans for the future and visions of a ChiGonE made safe for people to live in again. She thought about the chain around her neck and the ring that had felt just a little bit lighter these past few days. “I did.” “Could you have done it without me? Without this?” He gestured roughly at his new arm. “No.” Edison’s expression softened, his eyes warm and glassy. “Are you going to stay with me?” Plix could barely answer through the tears and the way she was kissing him, their lips tangling and her hands gripping his face so tightly. “Always, Edison. Always.” “Then it was worth it, for me,” he breathed. “Was it for you?”


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She gazed into his eyes and ran her fingertips back down to the place where skin gave way to metal. Remembering the promise she’d made to herself the first time they’d made love—her promise to fight for what she loved—she looked at his scars and thought of her own. Of everything she’d lost and everything she’d gained. Wrapping her hand around his, she whispered, simply, “Completely.”

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About the Author

After brief, unsatisfying careers in advertising, teaching, computers and homemaking, Jeanette Grey has returned to her two first loves: romance and writing. Nothing makes her happier than creating new characters and exploring the emotional and physical connections between them. When she isn’t writing, Jeanette enjoys making pottery, playing board games, and spending time with her husband and her pet frog. She lives, loves and writes in North Carolina. You can find Jeanette online at www.jeanettegrey.com or on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jeanettelgrey.

He finds love on the eve of a war he doesn’t plan on surviving.

Gridlock

© 2011 Nathalie Gray A Cybershock Story Dante knows the price of rebellion. The Grid created him in its likeness, turning him into a killing machine—tested, modified and enhanced to be a “better citizen”. Years may have passed since he escaped that freak show, but the scars are still fresh. Without the mandatory implant, Steel scrapes by, living free of the Grid’s control. When a job goes bad, everyone around her dies, their minds crushed by the notorious Cardinal. But he doesn’t kill her. He takes her to a secret lair filled with fascinating, forbidden pre-Grid knowledge. Who is this man—ruthless murderer or eccentric loner? Bad-mannered as she is, Dante can’t bring himself to silence the abrasive, cigarette-addicted Steel. Something about her calls to him, though trusting her could be a mistake. Should she betray him, it would wipe out years of patient waiting. Waiting while the Grid hunts him for the priceless information he carries within his living data vault. Waiting while his dish of revenge turns ice cold. For Dante intends to go back. And this time, he intends to be the only one left standing. Warning: Contains violence, offensive language, a tattooed woman, a man who’s ready to light a few fuses, several variants of the F-word, machines behaving badly, thugs and PVC fashion. But no ninjas. That’s for the next book. Enjoy the following excerpt for Gridlock:

Forcing her gaze on his face was hard when he turned and displayed a fine network of lean muscles that knotted and played under the pale skin. She wasn’t fast enough to stop the gasp in time when she got a good look at his front. What the fuck? “Science,” he whispered, “can be a sharp instrument in the hand of the unsympathetic.” “Scientists did that?” Steel indicated with her chin the collection of scars crisscrossing Dante’s chest, snaking up his biceps, pock-marking his throat and slashing his belly in neat ten-centimeter partitions. As though someone had sliced him open, sewed him back up then did it again lower. She’d seen scars and what people could do to one another, but never something like this. Never this. “Up there, in the bunker? They did that?” “Scientific objectives, unfettered by humanity, yes.” He pointed to one thick scar that ran diagonally along his left pectoral. “How long does a man have without a functioning heart? Or how fast can a synthetic replica beat before the rest of the body begins to shut down? My heart will outlast the rest of me by a millennium.” Steel hid the shiver with a shrug, unable to take her gaze from the awful mark. “That’s just demented. Who gives a shit?” She cursed, shook her head. “It needs to know everything about us. Information is the new gold.” “Who’s it?” “The new golden ratio, the alpha and omega, the all and the void. Gods used to fill this space. Even they were supplanted. The Grid took it all. And its thirst for knowledge is insatiable. It needs to know us to better control us. Everything, even the most sordid or inconsequential detail. We created it, and it has since then recreated us in its image. Men born of data.”

“The Grid and its data can kiss my ass,” Steel blurted. She froze out of habit. No one in their right mind would talk that way. But he wasn’t anyone regular, was he. He’d already shared how he wanted to blow the thing up. Ordinarily, should a passerby or roving bot pick up such dangerous words, they’d be standing at the closest relay and alert security. She half-expected to have a squad of security responders descend on the room and take her in for evaluation. She’d tasted that sauce before and didn’t like it one bit. Pigs. But then again, there weren’t comms relays anywhere near, not visible ones anyway. They were completely off the waves in this place. No one would hear them. No one would hear her. Dante’s mouth quivered at one corner, as if he were unused to smiling. “A dangerous position to share with anyone. I could turn you in and reap a handsome reward.” “Says the guy who’s planning to drop a train on top of the bunker. Yeah, well…” She shoved her hands in her pockets. He drew near, which forced her to fight the urge to take a step back. As if she had proximity alerts built in, every nerve ending fired flight-or-fight responses. Maybe if she hit him hard enough, fast enough, she’d stand a chance. But then again, where the fuck could she go? She didn’t even know where the door was. Any door. By the time she stumbled onto one, he’d have caught her. Timing was, indeed, everything, and now wasn’t the time for silly heroics. She willed her body to relax. Almost succeeded. This Dante guy had killed people without touching them. She should keep that in mind instead of fantasizing about the fireworks his stunt would cause should it work. “Do you fear me?” he whispered. “Yes. I saw what you did.”

His blond eyebrows shot straight up, as though he hadn’t expected the response. Or the honesty. “Have I not treated you with respect and the utmost civility?” “Is that before or after you shot me with my own gun then dragged me out of my home to keep me a prisoner in yours?” This time, Dante smiled wide. “You are right, and I apologize for resorting to such drastic measures. I am usually more circumspect. And expedient.” “What do you mean?” She couldn’t focus much. He smelled of soap. She hadn’t had a soap-smelling man near her in…ever. He leaned closer. She stopped breathing. “I usually just kill people outright,” he whispered right into her ear. His words triggered another slew of instinctive reactions. Kick. Punch. Bite. Breathe in his clean scent. “Then why didn’t you, huh? Want to play with me first?”

His mark could bind her forever—or finally set her free.

Demon Bait

© 2011 Moira Rogers Children of the Undying, Book 1 Fifty years after a demon apocalypse devastated the world, summoners still bear the bulk of the blame. Marci lives in secret, hiding the gifts that could cost her a secure spot in one of humanity’s underground cities, and access to their virtual world. After all, her chances of avoiding the genetic-testing lotto are better than her chances of surviving topside. The bastard son of a terrifying incubus, lust heats Gabe’s blood and sex fuels his magic. Innate charm and charisma help him navigate the cultural gap between the outcast town he calls home and the human settlements he infiltrates for trade. His latest mission nets him an unexpected asset—a summoner strong enough to soothe his darkest needs. Trust a half demon, especially one who uses a lockdown to trap them together? Not in this lifetime. Yet Marci can’t resist Gabe’s offer to see her safely to a selective outcast settlement where she can live without fear. The journey alone is as dangerous as the way Gabe makes her heart race, but it could be her one hope of a real life. If only she could be sure Gabe’s telling her the whole truth… Warning: Contains a virtual world where humans flee to escape the demon-infested earth, a dangerously seductive half demon with sex magic to burn and a network-hacking summoner brave enough to make herself vulnerable to him. Enjoy the following excerpt for Demon Bait:

His senses were more alive, his own voice like gravel in his ears. “What do you know about binding?” Her lips parted, and her gaze locked with his. “I know I’d be powerless. Completely at someone’s mercy. Is that what happens in Rochester?” Flushed cheeks, glazed eyes, short little breaths… She was nervous and aroused, and his pants were too fucking tight. “It’s always what happens. A literal deal with the devil. The mark keeps you safe from every other demon.” Her brows drew together, though the desire pulsing through the room didn’t abate. “I don’t like not having a choice.” “Who said you don’t have a choice?” It took everything in him not to reach across the table and touch her. “You give your partner the power. They don’t take it.” “You can’t tell me no one would hassle an unbound summoner.” “They wouldn’t do it twice.” That broke the spell—mostly. “So the alternative is to get someone killed for trying to convince me? No, thanks.” He felt his eyebrows trying to climb again. “If all they were doing was trying to convince you, they wouldn’t get killed. We’re not savages. Halfbloods would try to get to know you, and try to prove their worth. It’s courtship, not a hassle. But if it became known that you weren’t interested, they wouldn’t hassle you, because it’s against the rules.” “Okay.” She leaned toward him, her eyes alight with challenge. “I’m not interested. Now is it against the rules for you to put the whammy on me? ’Cause that’s what you were doing a minute ago, right?” It took effort not to back down and apologize. “Yeah. If you come back to Rochester with me, you can get my ass in serious trouble. Good enough reason, huh?”

She met his volley with silence, then shook her head. “You’re a tricky one.” “Sometimes.” Gabe let himself smile as he leaned back in his chair. “I slipped. It happens when we’ve gone too long without taking care of business, but that doesn’t let us off the hook for it. Halfbloods are expected to behave themselves or get help.” “Taking care of business.” Marci pushed away her mug. “Do you mean sex in reality, sex in the network, or plain old self-supplied orgasms?” Somewhere, the gods—or demons—were laughing at him. “Honey, if jerking off solved that little problem, I’d have spent the last two hours with my hand around my dick.” She blushed—hard—but didn’t look away. “And virtual sex?” “Only makes the itch worse.” The urge to tease her rode him hard, but the need to make her understand the truth was even more important. “It’s not just about sex, though. If you’d been trained, you could wrap me around your little finger.” Her tension didn’t ease, but the corner of her mouth kicked up. “Now that’s a mental picture.” Her amusement faded, and she gave him a thoughtful look. “I’m willing to try it, you know. On the off-chance that it works.” His mouth went dry. The demon purred. “It’s—” He had to clear his throat and shift positions in his chair in a hopeless attempt to ease the uncomfortable pressure of arousal. “I wouldn’t know how to explain it. They fold magic around us somehow. Like a blanket.” “I have—I don’t know how to explain it, either,” she said helplessly. “But I think I know how. It’s a…a sort of gathering. A force. I can feel it a little already.” He’d been gone from Rochester for more than a week. Eight days without sex or soothing contact of any kind, and he didn’t know which need was going to

swallow him first. “It feels different to everyone. For me it’s…sharp edges and water.” Marci rose and rounded the table with determination, stopping to stand behind him. After a single long moment, she laid her hands on his shoulders. When she spoke, her breath stirred his hair. “Do you have to let me in?” He was going to blow. Come in his pants like a teenager who’d hacked his way into an adult sector and discovered naked women. Just the touch of her hands set his pulse to pounding, half of the struggle tied up in how hard it was not to let her feel it. Trust was so fragile… Too fragile for anything but honesty. “If I do, I can’t promise you won’t feel everything I’m holding back.” Her breath hitched. “I thought you said this didn’t have to be about sex.” “It’s not,” he whispered, closing his eyes. “Soothing the itch isn’t about sex, but the original condition sure as hell is. You might feel it before it goes away.” Her breath caught again, her hands shook—and he realized she was laughing. “You mean I’m going to feel like a voyeur?” She stroked her thumb over his shoulder. “You’ll feel—” The words choked off as magic pounded into him. Not slow or subtle, but an uncontrolled, glorious wave. She wasn’t a babbling brook, smoothing away edges over time. Marci was the ocean, powerful and wild, smashing rocks into sand. He shuddered and closed his eyes, tasting her aura as it spun around him in dizzy circles. She was smart, but he’d known that. Cunning too—again, no surprise. She’d hidden herself amongst humans, had blended in until no one suspected she wasn’t one of them. And beneath that…

Hunger. Passion. Wild curiosity and a sensuality that was pure in a way that made him wonder if a man had ever touched her outside the network. Sex in the Global was clean. Sterile, which was the point, but it left the wildest orgies a fleeting dream that might never have happened at all. His demon half was putty in her clumsy hands. His cock was hard as steel. Her lips brushed his ear, so quickly he could have imagined it, and then her touch vanished entirely. “Uh, no,” she whispered huskily. “That is one hundred percent about sex.” He took a deep breath. Another. “Did you want it to be?” “That matters?” If he hadn’t been turned on to the point of pain, he would have laughed. “Yes, Marci. That matters.” She crossed her arms over her chest and took a step back. “I think I’m going to get a shower and turn in.” It would be so easy to follow her. She’d let him. He could see it in her eyes, in the flush in her skin, the trembling in her hands. No need to lean, because she’d open for him and he could show her the sort of pleasure a man with sex in his genes could bring. Soon, he promised himself. Knowing the advantages of a slow hunt was in his genes too. She was soft, but not melting. Not yet. “Thank you for helping.” “Sure.” She nodded to a door on the far wall. “That’s the bathroom. The showers are through the—past the bunks.” Then she fled, turning on one heel to hurry away. The urge to follow brought him to his feet, but self-control kept him from moving. Instead he rubbed his hand over his aching erection and eyed the door to the bathroom.

If Trip didn’t find his chip signal soon, Gabe was going to get awful familiar with that room. And the shower. And his own hand. At least the thought of water sliding over Marci’s naked curves gave him plenty of inspiration.

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An Unacceptable Offer

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An Unacceptable Death

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Risk

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Risk Assessment and Risk Management

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Traders Risk

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Risk Assessment

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