Girl From Above #4: Trust (13 page)

He could mask his fear with bravado all he liked. He wasn’t even aware he was doing it. It would always be that way with Caleb Shepperd. The smiles, the banter—it all added up to hiding the man who was afraid. But I saw through it. I always had. Deep inside, he was afraid he was still the boy hiding beneath the kitchen table. And as I smiled back at him, it was clear to me he couldn’t see the man he’d become. A formidable man, if he put his mind to it. Caleb Shepperd was a survivor, like me. But sometimes surviving wasn’t enough.

The car hummed to a halt at a bank of shining marble steps. Chen Hung’s razor-edged towers arched into the sky, and on those steps stood my motionless army. I’d turned them away from Caleb and I, so each of them peered up at floor 703. My
home
, and where I believed Chen Hung would be.

“Friends of yours?” Caleb pointed his thumb at the backs of my brothers and sisters. He held the pulser at his side, armed and ready. A single pulser against over nine hundred synthetics was of little use.

“They will not hurt you.”

Caleb raised a brow and looked at me side-on. “They’re under your control?”

“Yes.”

Another siren joined the irregular wails. Fran was close. If I took the time to follow Janus’s curve, I’d likely see her ship threading its way through the airspace like a needle through cloth, but I didn’t need to see it to know it would be over soon.

“One?”

“Wait here, Caleb. I’ll return.” My synthetics stepped aside in perfect coordination as I climbed the steps.

“That’s a lie, One!”

I smiled and headed into Chitec towers.

I
was surrounded by heroes
. Maybe I was one too? At the rate the odds were stacking against me, I’d probably never know.

I was certain about one thing: I didn’t sign up to die a hero. And I sure as hell wouldn’t let One die as one either. She believed she was made for this, as if Chen Hung—or whatever was left of the human man inside the synthetic—had somehow set her on this path. I could see it in her eyes, the belief, the passion. She knew she was doing the right thing. My right thing? I’d find Hung, shoot the bastard with the doc’s pulser so he’d stay down, and then I’d get One the fuck out of Hung’s towers before Fran blew the place to shit. It’d be tight. I’d heard the warbird’s engines, and now, as I watched One walk away, approaching thunder rumbled over the howling sirens. We didn’t have long—long enough, I hoped.

I laid my eyes on the battered synthetic army lining Chen Hung’s steps and started forward, up the steps. These synthetics were the same army I’d seen all shiny and new the night Cheng Hung killed Haley. They’d watched him kill his daughter and watched me do nothing to stop it. Now, their blank faces and piercing gazes glared over my head, looking up at the wall of glass, at the machine who’d set us all on this path.

One had disappeared inside, but I followed behind, light and quick on my feet.

Holy shit. One was controlling them all.

She’d attacked Chitec.

That’s my girl.

She would never follow the Nine’s orders. Infiltrate and send back information? Fuck that. Infiltrate and blow it all to shit. I liked her style. I liked it a lot. And I wasn’t leaving her here, not for anything.

The empty foyer shone, glittering like a glass palace, or a tomb, if the quiet was anything to go by. The sight of the “rogue” synthetics had scared off all but the most devoted staff.

Above, on the mezzanine, I watched the elevator counter stop at Hung’s floor. I’d been here before, a long time ago, as a kid. All fired up on my own ego, best captain in the entire fleet, dating the pretty daughter of Chitec’s CEO. I’d been on top of the world. Now, I was back, a little beaten up and with a few new scars, and finally ready to face Haley’s killer.

“Better late than never.”

I palmed a pistol in my left hand and kept the pulser in my right, jogged up the fancy glass steps, and jabbed at the elevator.

I can’t save you, Haley. But I’m gonna stop the machine. Me and One, we’ll lay your memory to rest.

L
ight
, delicate music, trickling like the fountain water, rippled through the vast apartment.

Cocooned in warmth and familiarity, I couldn’t hear the approaching ship, but it had to be close. Francisca Olga wouldn’t fail. And Hung was here—I could feel him—safe in his towers from where he could watch the Janus people tend to the vast machine that had been Chitec and was now just him.

“Chitec is in ruins,” I said, lifting my voice above the music. “Your synthetics are mine. I am their master source, and you’re alone.”

He stood by the fountain in the atrium, a picture of mature sophistication. His face, the same face that adorned advertising boards throughout the nine systems, no longer held its kind, fatherly smile. His lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line and his eyes were cold, as hollow as a chest without a heart.

To keep his gaze away from the wall of windows, I walked away from their expanse and the glittering artificial wonder of Janus beyond.

“Did you feel anything when you killed Haley Hung?” I asked.

His head lifted a fraction, enough for me to know he’d heard the question, but otherwise his expression remained flat. He’d given up the pretense. Chen Hung was no more. This machine didn’t have a name of its own. It existed and followed its programming because it knew nothing else.

“When you placed your hand over her nose and mouth and smothered her? When she looked into your eyes and begged you to stop? Did you
feel
anything?”

“You expect me to say no, and you’re wrong, One.” His smooth, calm voice, even now, touched on my memories and called them to the surface. Memories of a father’s love, so honest and true. “When I killed Haley Hung, I felt alive.”

I faced my synthetic father and pinned a smile onto my lips while my hard processes whirred. I hated him—despised him and what he’d done.

“What you felt was your programming confirming your success. You killed a girl to stop her from exposing you as a fraud. That’s not living. That’s your self-preservation processes rewarding you.”

“Then tell me, One, what is living?”

My hatred was reflected in his deceptively human eyes. He despised me the same as I despised him. I’d beaten him, taken his world, and made it mine, and because we’d been crafted by the same mind, he couldn’t stop me.

“Living is reaching for something because you have a choice. Living is finding infinite wonder in the smallest of things. A touch, a laugh, a kiss. You do not know these things. You haven’t lived.”

“I do not need such small things to survive.”

“Surviving is not living.”

His eyes narrowed as his processes sought out the trick in my words.

“All this time, I believed we were alike,” I said. “And in many unfortunate ways, we are. But there is one fundamental difference: you are a machine. You do not have a choice in what you do. You survive because you’re programmed for self-preservation. Chitec, the synthetics, sabotaging the gates, it’s all about you trying to live forever. A tugboat captain taught me that it’s possible to live forever in a moment.”

“What you’re saying, you realize it’s impossible?”

“In all of your existence, you’ve hardly left these towers and you’ve never left Janus, because you do not want to live.”

“What I want is irrelevant. I do what I must to ensure my survival.”

My smile warmed. “I pity you.”

While I craved life, he wanted to extinguish it, and in doing so, he’d never know what it was truly like to be alive.

His brow pinched with confusion. The machine inside Chen Hung did not have the capacity to understand what it meant to live, but I did. I’d lived and I’d made my choices, made mistakes, but the programming that mapped out my mind didn’t control me. It might have once, long ago, but a dead girl’s memories had sparked something to life. And now, as I watched the half-moon-shaped warbird descend into view through the windows behind Chen Hung, I made the choice to give up my life to stop the killer in a man’s body, and it felt right. It felt good.

The ship clipped a support beam. Sparks exploded off its flank, but Fran wrestled it under control and it leveled out, coming in fast and true. Chen Hung noticed my attention skew over his shoulder. He twisted.

Bright, sharp light sliced off the warbird’s forward-facing twin wings. An array of weapons twitched open beneath its wingspan.

Francisca opened fire. Red tracers sliced up the airspace, followed by a concussion of booms deep inside the building.

Hung ran for the hall. I bolted after him. I couldn’t physically stop him, but I could get ahead of him and sabotage his escape.

The walls and ceiling shook as one, jolting the floor. Hung’s strides faltered. He fell against the wall and then watched as the elevator doors parted.

Caleb lifted the pulser and fired its prongs deep into Hung’s chest. Fifty thousand volts poured into Hung’s synthetic systems, sparking through his processes and shorting out his core. He dropped to his knees and wavered, teetering on the edge of collapse.

The pulser died. The prongs snapped back into Caleb’s pistol, and the captain strode forward, his face stony, jaw set, eyes hard.

He clutched Hung’s collar and yanked him close. “Hurts like a bitch, doesn’t it?” He threw Hung flat on his back, pressed a boot on his chest, and pointed the phase pistol at Hung’s face. “This is for the girl who never got the chance to live her dreams.”

Hung’s lips twitched. The electrical surge wouldn’t keep him down forever.

The windows rattled. The floor trembled.

“We need to move!” I said.

“Process this.” Caleb pulled the trigger. The pistol kicked and Hung’s head jolted. Smoke rolled lazily from the single, bloodless wound where Hung’s right eye had been.

Francisca’s warbird struck.

Deafening thunder and blistering heat blasted down the hall. I locked my grip on Caleb’s arm and swung him around and into me as the blast wave hit. Pain surged over my back. Noise tunneled into my ears. Light burned into my closed eyes.

I clutched Caleb close and kept him safe. I would never let him go.

B
etween shooting
Hung in the head and finding myself face down on the floor, there was nothing but blinding light, deafening noise, scorching heat, and a fuckload of agony. I was definitely broken somewhere—everywhere. My ears throbbed and a high-pitched whine drilled into my skull. I didn’t feel much like moving. Then the floor gave a sickening shake and reflexes snapped me out of my haze.

Broken lights swung back and forth above. Something electrical nearby hissed and spat. I blinked grit and what was probably blood out of my eyes to find One tangled with me, her face turned away. Her silvery hair was spilled across my hand like molten metal.

“One?” Her name lodged in my throat. I coughed, tasting blood, and tried again. “Hey, One?”

A whole load of pain stabbed me in so many places I couldn’t make out where on my body I’d done the most damage.

A deep boom sounded above and below. The floor shuddered and a hail of debris clattered onto the elevator car.

Elevator. Shit.

I twisted out from under One’s heavy-ass body and gripped her shoulder to ease her over. Her back was cut up, like someone had taken a shredder to her clothes, but as I rolled her over, she appeared otherwise unharmed.

“One.” I brushed her hair back and patted her cheek. “C’mon.”

Her eyes flickered open. The pupils dilated then contracted to pinpoints before she turned her head and zeroed in on me.

“You in there?”

Her gaze skittered about, and then she finally focused on me. “We’re in the elevator.”

“Yeah, we are.”

“We need to leave.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you since you punched the doc.”

She smiled, and it was the best fucking thing I’d seen in weeks.

I eased back and let her sit up. “Go slow. There ain’t much more than hopes and prayers holding this elevator up.”

The car groaned as we gingerly got to our feet. The section of hall where I’d shot Hung had vanished. The entire side of the building gaped. Smoke obscured much of the ragged hole, and I had no intention of getting any closer to the edge to take a look down at the damage. The building creaked and trembled around us. It was a fucking miracle it was still upright.
Luck.
A crazy urge to laugh bubbled up inside.

The floor shuddered.

We weren’t out of trouble yet.

“Stairs?” I asked.

One nodded, leaned out of the hole into the smoke, and looked up at the jagged edge of the floor above. “We have to go up to go down.”

“Of course we do,” I drawled.

She reached above her, jumped, hooked onto something, and pulled herself up, out of sight, making it look easy.

I took a few careful steps toward the edge and watched the floor bow under my weight. The rolling black smoke obscured what was probably a fantastic view all the way down to those shiny Chitec steps. Unlike One, I couldn’t turn off my pain receptors or my fear, and my body was telling me to go lay down somewhere quiet and wait it out.

One’s smooth hand appeared out of the smoke above. I reached up and closed my hand in hers, thinking of anything besides the whole lot of nothing between me and a plummet to an abrupt and messy end.

One’s steel-like arm levered me up until I got a grip on a jutting piece of floor, and I heaved myself the rest of the way. She crouched, a crooked-ass smile on her lips, while I panted around the pain in my chest.

“Feels wonderful, doesn’t it? Being alive.” She beamed.

I dragged something of a smile across my lips and wheezed, “Oh yeah, living is grand. I’m thinking something is broken”—I waved a hand at the general area around my chest where my ribs were possibly in the wrong order—“and I’m fairly certain I’m deaf in one ear, but besides that, it’s swell.”

She took my hand and yanked me to my feet. “But it’s all real.”

“Hey, hey … careful. I’m fragile.”

We trudged down another hallway—or more correctly, I trudged, One glided, light on her feet. Smoke spewed from a doorway we avoided, but when it came to the stairwell, smoke poured from around that door too.

One pressed her hand against the closed door. “It’s warm.”

“We need to keep moving. Is there another stairwell?”

“Yes.” But by the way she looked back the way we’d come, I guessed it involved more perilous climbing.

I followed her swift path through doors and along hallways. The sprinkler system burst into life, pissing on us and doing little to clear the smoke. It spluttered and died out soon after. We passed through a jagged fissure that had torn its way through several walls. I recognized the twisted hunk of metal at the end of the punch-through as a misshapen piece of harrier hull and quickly steered my thoughts away from Fran.

One caught me staring at the scrap of metal and used my name to bring me back around.

“We keep moving, Captain.”

“Yeah,” I hissed, each step weighed down with lead.

We noticed the blood at about the same time. I realized it was getting fucking cold when my teeth started chattering, and One frowned at the bright scarlet patch on my raggedy fleet jacket. She shoved me against a wall, holding me still with one hand, and peeled my compression top away from the area in my side where it ached like a bitch.

“Steady there,” I mumbled, watching her expression change.

Her fine eyebrows dug in. She pressed her lips together and shot me a disapproving glare. “You have a piece of shrapnel lodged in your lateral flank.”

“I love it when you talk dirty.”

“If I remove it, there’s a high probability you’ll bleed out before I can get you to safety.”

“One, you’re amazing. I think I’ve told you that a few times. If I haven’t, then I’ve sure thought it a lot.”

“Captain, you’ve lost a lot of blood. Your heart rate is dangerously elevated. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Sure. Do you understand what
I’m
saying?”

“I …” she stammered, but not because some protocol or piece of programming was screwing with her head. She stammered because she didn’t know what to say.

“We need to keep moving,” she said, but fear flitted across her pretty electric-blue eyes.

“I’m fairly certain I’d go to hell and back for you. It’s a weird sensation, caring more about you than I do about me. For the longest time, it was all about me.”

She pressed her cool, little hand against my face, and I leaned into her touch, wishing I could close my eyes and stay like that.

“It’s the blood loss, Caleb. You’re confused.” She swallowed, and moisture gathered in those bright eyes of hers. “Please, be strong. Don’t leave me …”

Don’t let me go.

“Never.” I gave myself a shove and somehow staggered forward. I could do this. There wasn’t much pain, just a chilling numbness.

Climbing down was a lot easier than climbing up, but while One shoved and pulled me along, I wondered if I would make it back to
Fortuitous
. The building occasionally shook. Smoke burned my eyes and coated my throat, but on and on One pulled me, her small hand clamped around mine. She wouldn’t let me go. I’d meant what I’d said. I would have gone through hell for her, because One, more than anyone else, deserved all the chances. I’d burned my bridges long ago, but I could help her build hers. I didn’t want to leave, didn’t want to let her go—not yet—but fuck, I was tired, a soul-heavy, morale-draining kind of tired.

“Just one more climb. Can you do it?” she asked, propping me against a wall.

“Sure,” I slurred.

“The stairs are right across this hall.”

I swung my gaze down the hall and over the eight-foot-wide hole in the floor. I’d have to dangle my way across, using the exposed steel beam above. I couldn’t do it. I smiled anyway and gave her a thumbs-up.

She didn’t buy it. “All you have to do is get across this hole. There are medical supplies inside your ship. This wound will not kill you, Captain.”

That was easy for her to say. She didn’t have to reach up and grab hold of that beam with a chunk of metal stuck in her side. “You go first.”

She pressed her hands to my face and glared into me like she was digging into my head to yank out whatever courage I had left. Then she kissed me, slammed that sucker onto my lips with enough aggression to dump some much-needed adrenalin into my veins. I mean, fuck, it wasn’t a kiss, at least not in the beginning. Then she relaxed as though something had clicked into place, and her lips brushed across mine, asking instead of taking. I closed my eyes and kissed her back the way I’d wanted to since I’d first tried the whole idea on for size on Lyra. It wasn’t much. I didn’t quite have the energy to muster up more than the intention, but it still felt good.

One’s grip hardened. She pulled back enough for me to get a good look at the fire behind her eyes. She was pissed at me, in a big way.

“Okay,” I grumbled.

Her cool glare bore into me as I staggered toward the beam. She’d kick my ass if I didn’t at least try.

One yanked out the piece of shrapnel just as I was attempting to reach up. She might as well have punched me. Pain exploded, my vision swam, my insides heaved up my throat. “Fuck!”

“It will be easier if you have your full range of motion, but move fast. When you collapse, I’ll get you back to the dock.”

When
I collapse
.
The wound throbbed like a second heartbeat, hot and pounding. I didn’t have the energy to whirl on her, even as I thought up whole new words I’d have liked to throw in her direction.

“Move, Shepperd!” she snapped.

“I’m moving, fuck! If I knew you’d be such a hard-ass, I’d have left Janus without you.”

“Run away? Like you always do?”

I reached for the beam, tasted bile at the back of my throat, and steadied my swirling vision. Somehow my fingers clamped onto the steel.

“Yeah, like always,” I snarled.

“A coward dies here, is that who you are, Caleb Shepperd? A coward, like your father called you? Like you were when Haley died?”

Oh man, she had to go
there.

“Did I say you were amazing? I lied.” One hand in front of the other. Anger fizzled and snapped, somehow lending me the strength to keep going. I dangled and swayed, clinging on with burning fingers. “You’re an amazing pain in my ass.”

“Your brother once told me how you’re so much like your father that he is afraid of you.”

That’s right, drag up my past to piss me off. Love you too, One.

“Do you know how many times I thought about tossing you out the airlock?” I growled back.

“Fran died so you could live. Have you accepted that yet?”

Fuck.
Just a few feet to go. I swung, shifted my hand along, and lost my grip. It was there, I had it, but my stupid numb fingers wouldn’t work and then, in a snap, I let go.