Cutting the leash, right here and now, was the choice he’d made. Whatever the consequences.
Tilting her face, she saw his eyes were closed, his expression peaceful. She rested her cheek on his shoulder and
pressed her fingertips against his left temple. The contact made her skin tingle. She’d done this before—it felt like a lifetime ago—meddled with his chip to save his life. Then he’d been a random unknown serf, and if she’d failed then, she’d have surely forgotten him already. But now…Flashes of the man passed through her mind—his strength and loyalty, his touch, his smell, his sense of honor and fairness. If she failed, would the rest of her complicated life even matter? The children, the Fringe worlds, least of all Ardra…She couldn’t imagine any of it mattering if Finn wasn’t at her side.
If she failed, Achaiah would pay. He was on this very ship, wasn’t he? She’d find him and kill him.
She pushed aside the flush of hatred and concentrated on Finn’s chip. Its datastream washed over her, a song she knew well. She checked Corinth’s imprint again. And again. The leash appeared to have transitioned to the new input. It looked good. That was really all that could be said about it. She and Corinth were both working in unknown territory. But it looked good. It had better be good enough.
She drew a deep breath and cut the old connection.
Her breath came out in a shaky gasp.
So did Finn’s. His arms closed around her a little tighter. Then, “I can’t feel you anymore.”
No interference. The leash was cut.
And he was still very much alive. His body radiated heat that soaked through her skin as they huddled together. Her heart pounded, and though he might feel it against his chest, he would no longer sense the emotional turmoil that went with it. Edie had to clear her mind to assess why she felt so agitated. For the first time since she’d met him, his life did not depend on hers. He could leave this ship—leave her, at any time. In fact, even though he was officially still a serf, Natesa would throw him off one way or another as soon as she found out the leash was cut. Edie had to trust he could take care of himself when that happened. Her obligation to him was over.
Would he take her with him? Why should he, and risk both himself and his comrades? Natesa would never give up on tracking her down, especially if Edie stole the children…if that was even possible. More than likely, her obsession with rescuing the children would doom their entire escape plan.
She had to refocus. She had to put Finn first and not be sidetracked by what she perceived to be a tragic injustice against the children.
She realized she’d pulled away from him, and her forehead ached with tension. He didn’t need the leash to know she was troubled. He grasped her chin and turned her face toward his, until their eyes met.
“Don’t leave me behind,” she said.
“I won’t.”
“If Natesa finds out the leash is cut, she’ll make you leave.”
“Then we won’t tell her.” He made it sound like the most obvious decision in the world.
“Valari will leave me behind if there’s any chance your escape is compromised.”
“I won’t let her. I will never leave you behind.”
She believed him with a certainty that shocked her. She’d never expected to be so sure of him. But she knew him well enough to know that once the words were said, his honor depended on making them true.
He’d given up his freedom once before, because of her plan to help the Fringers. That mission was accomplished—with the crack safely distributed, the Fringe worlds didn’t need the cryptoglyph. They didn’t need her or Finn anymore. She couldn’t ask him to risk his freedom again over her emotional entanglement with the children.
“The children…Finn, we can’t risk it. I understand that now. Maybe one day, somehow, we could come back for them. But we can’t take them with us.”
His eyes narrowed. “If that’s what you want.”
“Yes, it’s what I want.” It wasn’t. But it was the best solution to her conflicting objectives. “Thanks for sticking up for me, though.”
“I want to give you what you want.”
She released a shaky sigh. “You’ve no idea how good that sounds. Nobody has ever…” Her throat closed over and she couldn’t finish.
“I know that. I’m on your side, Edie.”
Finn lay back on the hard ground, pulling her close so they were lying side by side, facing each other. He kissed her gently and she responded, and they explored each other with lips and hands—unhurriedly, like they had all the time in the world, rather than with the intention to arouse passion. After the tumultuous emotions of the past few days, his quiet embrace was exactly what she needed.
Despite Natesa’s change of heart about Edie giving a presentation to the VIPs, she hadn’t changed her mind about Edie investigating Caleb’s files. In the morning Edie found a new set of files available to her at her console in the lab—Caleb’s work over the past few months, ever since he joined the project.
Edie’s thoughts were on the planned escape, which was scheduled for late in the evening. She could’ve postponed looking at the files, claimed she was too busy, and then by tomorrow she’d be gone. But in truth she was curious. Exactly what was Caleb hiding? Her innate feeling about the situation on Prisca bore little resemblance to the glowing reports Caleb was handing Natesa every day.
She went straight to the most recent sims of Prisca’s BRATs. She was used to dealing with the error logs that Caleb generated from this data, so with those fresh in her mind, any discrepancies should stick out.
It didn’t take long to find an unusual command in his code—an instruction to ignore a certain persistent glitch in the datastream before generating the daily error logs. Edie followed the glitch back through time, but she already knew what it was before she traced it to its source. She knew exactly what Caleb had done, and why.
Natesa proved impossible to track down, as she was too
busy entertaining her guests. Edie wrote her a quick report and then called Caleb on the planet’s surface. He was outraged to learn she’d been going through his files.
“I’ve spent years building my databases,” he spat out, wild-haired and red-faced. “Don’t you dare trawl through them to pilfer my subroutines. My professional reputation depends on the innovations I’ve developed, and I don’t need the so-called top cypherteck in the galaxy stealing my ideas.”
“I’m not interested in your secrets. Not those secrets, anyway.” Edie kept speaking over his next barrage of accusations. “I found a rogue protein in the mix. It was introduced only days after the BRATs came online.”
“Contamination? That’s unlikely. We were very careful.”
“You can never be careful enough. You have equipment and workers on this project from a dozen worlds. Any one of them could have carried exotic DNA with them and contaminated the ecosystem.”
“And what if they did? A certain level of contamination is acceptable, and irrelevant to the biocyph calculations.”
“On a regular terraforming project with primitive lifeforms and low biomass, maybe. When things are going slowly, the biocyph has time to code around a hiccup like this. It self-corrects. But thanks to that regulator code you installed, everything is evolving too fast. The biocyph was unable to integrate this protein into the Terran ideal. It went rogue, established its own path of evolution, and the error snowballed. And you deleted it from the error logs.”
“Because it’s irrelevant!” he said between gritted teeth, like she was an upstart with no right to challenge his superiority. “The point is that the process
is
working on Scarabaeus, where the pace of evolution is even faster. You walked around on that planet without e-shields, contaminating everything, yet it shows no signs of ecological degradation.”
“I can’t explain it. Yes, there must be something different on Scarabaeus, a control mechanism that Prisca’s missing.”
“I’m telling you, there’s nothing wrong with Prisca’s
control mechanisms.” He pushed his fingers through his tangled hair. “Have you told Natesa about this?”
“Of course.”
Caleb groaned. Well, if he wouldn’t accept there was a contamination problem, Edie wasn’t going to push the issue. Let Natesa sort it out. With luck, Edie wouldn’t be around to see the rubble bounce.
“I don’t see the point of keeping this from her,” Edie continued. “And what about the VIP tour of the compound? You can’t hide what’s going on forever.”
“We have severe storms blowing in. I’m working on Natesa right now to cancel the dirtside tour. And keep your mouth shut tonight at that function. Theron’s bound to have sent his spies to dig up dirt.”
“I’ve already had this speech from Natesa. I don’t—” Her palmet beeped with a message from Finn. “I have to go,” she said abruptly, and cut the link. Thoughts of Prisca and Scarabaeus fled as she read a room number on Deck E and a brief text message:
Good news.
The room was Valari’s, in the meckies’ quarters. Valari sat at the console and Finn stood over her, leaning on the desk with one hand. As Edie approached, he slipped his free hand into hers and squeezed it. She smiled, marveling at how she could manage such a normal expression considering the way his unexpected touch jolted her.
On the holoviz was Cat’s grinning face, distorted by the scrambler.
“It’s a recorded message,” Finn said, giving Valari a quick nod.
Valari replayed the message.
“Listen up,” Cat said, “the crack worked! It’s only been a few hours, but Fairbairn reported that their BRATs came back online with no sign of the biocyph lock remaining. Amazing! You guys are gonna be heroes. Well, not quite.” She grinned again. “Couldn’t name names, see. So, basically, I’m the hero. I got the okay from the captain here to
transmit the crack through the commsat network, so I’m just waiting on your word.”
“I’ve already sent the message to go ahead,” Valari told Edie. “I hope that’s all right by you,” she added quickly.
“Yes, of course.” Edie exchanged smiles with Finn, entwining her fingers with his. She wasn’t going to let Valari’s arch tone dampen her elation. This was what she and Finn had hoped for, ever since that night they’d huddled together inside a cold BRAT on Scarabaeus, when she had dared to hope she could take on the Crib with a single piece of code.
“Our navpilot Navin Ganesh on board the
Molly Mei
is a comms expert. He’ll ensure the transmission gets out, and that no one can trace it back,” Valari was saying. She sat back in her seat, her gaze falling briefly to Finn’s and Edie’s interlocked hands before drifting away. “I think we have reason to celebrate. And there’s even a party tonight—well timed!”
“The meckies are invited to that?” Edie had assumed the VIP function was only for admin and technical staff.
“Yes. We were warned to dress up and behave ourselves,” Valari said. “Celebrations aside, tonight we make our exit. The
Molly Mei
is about to make the jump into this system as soon as Cat has sent that transmission.”
“We’re ready,” Finn said. “Until then, we carry on as normal. I need to get back to work. My boss has assigned my team to clean up the workshops in case there’s an inspection.”
“I have a few things to do as well.” Edie started to follow him out. One thing she needed to do was visit Ken’s store and see if he had anything she could wear for the function.
“Edie, wait,” Valari said. “A word?”
Edie hesitated at the hatch, wondering what Valari would have to say to her that she didn’t want Finn to hear. Finn left without comment.
As soon as they were alone, Valari said, “Assuming the
Learo Dochais
’s captain allows our ship to dock, the only remaining problem is these children you insist on rescuing.”
So that was all. Edie wondered why Finn hadn’t already told Valari of her decision. “It’s okay. I realize now it’s unrealistic to take them. And I’m okay with it.”
Valari looked surprised but quickly recovered her poise. “I appreciate your change of heart. I failed to persuade Finn to take a stand, so I thought I had a real job ahead of me persuading you.”
Edie wondered exactly what means of persuasion Valari had intended to use. Emotional blackmail? It didn’t matter now. She’d decided to put Finn’s freedom first, as she should have done from the start.
“I’m glad I made things easy for you,” she said.
“You’re very close to him, aren’t you?”
The question took Edie by surprise and she stammered a response. “Y-Yes…well, not exactly. I mean, we’ve been through a lot together.”
That sounded so weak. Finn and Valari had no doubt been through much more. She felt awkward discussing this with Valari, who was so much more alluring and self-assured than she’d ever be. Especially when her relationship with Finn was at a crossroads. They’d never directly discussed how they felt. They’d never made love. They’d never talked about a future together. And once they were free, it was likely their lives would head in different directions. He had the Saeth to return to. She had to make her own life out there, and the single skill she possessed was so powerful, so sought after on the Fringe, she’d have to hide it if she didn’t want to be hunted for it.
“Listen to me, Edie. He is very attached to you. For some reason…well, I don’t know. He’s not the same young man I used to know. He feels very protective of you. More than that, he would do anything for you. I hope you won’t take advantage of that.”
Edie drew a deep breath, preparing to tell Valari it was none of her damn business. Then she breathed out in a rush, her protest dying on her lips, because Valari was right. She had already taken advantage of Finn by convincing him to
kidnap the children—not because he thought it was a good idea, but only because she wanted it.
Well, that was over. She and Valari had both made Finn sign up to their causes. Whatever happened to them or to the children, she wouldn’t do it again.
Edie had once made a promise to Finn—that she’d wear a dress for him if he grew out his buzz cut and combed his hair. Well, the buzz cut was gone. Now that she knew Finn was going to be at the function, maybe it was time to wear the dress. She’d be pandering to Natesa’s request at the same time.