Through the Static (18 page)

“We can take this out now. If you want to.”

God. To not have the proof of what he was on his skin. “Yeah. I do.”

“And this?” She touched the ink beneath his ear.

He hesitated. That wasn't as easy to discard. His own hand rose, his fingertips replacing hers over the pentacle that had been etched into his skin before he'd woken to this life.

“I don't know.” He brushed over the inked-in lines of it, uncertain as to why he felt an attachment. “It's been with me all this time.” The LED was connected to the circuitry that had made him a slave, and this had branded him as one as well. But it was different. “It's part of who I am.”

The words bubbled up inside her, her endless counterpoint to what he'd said, but before the words could spill forth, he grabbed her hand and brought it to his lips.

“I know I'm not part of a Three anymore. But having been part of one will always be a piece of me.”

Curse and Charm had been witness to everything he'd done. Every shameful, violent act. They'd held him apart. Punished him when he dared to assert his will. And he'd hated them, sometimes.

So many other times, they'd been the only voices in the darkness. The only figures standing between him and a loneliness too deep to fathom. He'd cared for them. He cared for them still. And the tattoo symbolized all those years he'd spent with them. It was a reminder of who he'd been.

He brought their joined hands back up to his neck to trace over the mark. “I don't think I can get it removed. But maybe I could add to it.”

Her eyes widened at the image in his head. “Oh?”

“Yes.” Sliding their fingertips along his skin, he brought them to rest just a few inches lower. Where he envisioned a new mark. “After all, I may not be part of a Three anymore.” He leaned in to kiss her. Against her lips, he whispered, “But I am a part of so much more.”

Epilogue

Two weeks later

For the second time Jinx sat in a chair, his mind eerily silent and his senses paralyzed. The drugs coursing through his system kept his brain isolated, the wires cut off from those they craved to tangle with. But this time, there was no panic. The isolation was only in his mind.

His lover, his everything, his Aurelia sat right beside him, her hand entwined with his.

And his mother's hands were in his head, giving him life much the way she had in a past he still couldn't remember, but which he now believed.

“Almost there,” Isabel said.

Aurelia nodded and smiled. It was, in theory, a simple procedure, and Isabel was one of the best. Now that he knew more about these kinds of connections, he was shocked Aurelia had managed to pull off the kind of sever she had without surgical intervention, simply by hacking into the wires in his head. There had been stray strands, though, latent vulnerabilities, and after careful consideration, the three of them had decided it was worth the risk to close them up. To make his mind safe for himself and for the ones he loved.

In that way, he was part of a trio again, he and his mother and Aurelia forming a unit that stood as one against the world. But it was a group he'd chosen, one bound by love and family instead of by command. That lone distinction had made all the difference. He had the opportunity to start his life anew.

No way he was wasting his second chance.

While Aurelia threw herself back into her work, poring through the data she'd been able to collect with the remnants of two liberated Threes banging around her safe house, Jinx had turned his gaze toward his future.

He was starting on as a grunt with an ambulance squad next week. Turned out what his hands remembered from his medical training was enough to get him through the door, and he was itching for it. Ready to get his boots on the ground, ready to get right into the thick of it.

He was ready to help—to stitch lives back together instead of tearing them apart.

Just as soon as his own cranium was back in one piece.

Aurelia squeezed his hand, and through the fog, there was a clink. Keeping his head absolutely still within the brace that held it steady, Jinx glanced down to see a little green nub of plastic attached to a wire hit the metal basin next to Isabel's instruments. Unlit and dull, it looked so unassuming but for the blood still clinging to the edges of it.

There was a strange tugging in the numb skin beneath his ear as Isabel closed the incision. When it healed, she'd promised there wouldn't even be a scar to show where the LED had been taken from.

“That's the last of it,” Isabel said, her words swimming up to him, as if spoken from underwater. “Just sewing you up now.”

A few minutes later, the last of her tools fell to the tray as well, followed by her gloves.

“Aurelia?”

“I got it.” Aurelia took her hand from his. The emptiness at the lack of contact was a hollow sound in the back of his still-dull mind. She snapped on gloves of her own and stood. “You'll feel pins and needles, at first.”

Jinx fought the instinct to nod.

It began as a pinprick of warmth at the base of his skull. Within seconds, it spread, bringing the tingling Aurelia had promised. His hands twitched, wanting to scratch at the itch, but he kept them balled in fists. Pain followed, a dim throbbing, still muted by anesthetic. But the skin was alive again. His nerves were alive again.

The haze and static lifted in slow waves. Stripping off her gloves, Aurelia sat back down beside him, eyes level with his as she ran her fingers over his knuckles. Each glancing brush was a low fire.

He was
alive
again.

“Can you hear me?”

There was no relief like that of Aurelia's voice inside his mind after he'd been robbed of it, even for a fraction of a second. After hours of silence, even the faint whisper of her thoughts was like falling into cool water. His eyes burned, and his smile cracked his face.

“I can,”
he answered.

She took his hands in hers and held them tightly, grinning back.
“I missed you.”

“Not as much as I missed you.”

But he knew. Improbable as it always seemed, she felt him just as keenly. Felt his absence just as hard.

“I'll be upstairs if you need me.” Isabel moved to where Jinx could see her. “Give yourself about half an hour to get fully up to speed again. Aurelia has something for the pain, when you need it. Every eight hours for the first few days. Keep the incisions clean, and you should be fine.”

“Thank you,” he said, throat tight, hesitating for just a few seconds before adding, “Mom.”

She faltered in her step, but caught herself quickly. “You're welcome.”

Once they were alone together, Aurelia slid one hand up Jinx's arm to his shoulder, gentle fingers touching the side of his neck. “It looks so strange without it.”

“Can I see?”

She nodded, then rose and got a mirror. “Isabel did a great job.”

Jinx took the glass from her, bracing himself before looking. The most striking thing right off the bat was the sight of his own shaved head. He ran a palm over the smooth top of it, well away from the incision site. “That's going to take some getting used to.”

“It'll grow back soon enough.” In her head, she was half wishing it wouldn't, though.
“You're sexy bald.”

He filed that away for future reference, smirking before refocusing. He shifted the angle of the mirror lower, to his ear and then to the skin just below. Sure enough, the green LED that had glowed at him from the day he'd first opened his eyes to this life was gone, the only sign of it a single black X of stitching.

For a few seconds, all he could do was stare. Aurelia's fingertips against his shoulder brought him back to himself.

“What do you think?” A nervous edge underlay her thoughts.

Placing his hand over hers, he gazed at the excision site, then lifted his eyes to connect with hers over his shoulder in the glass. “They really can't get back in my head now, right? All the gaps are closed up?”

“All of them. You're safe.”

“You're mine,”
her thoughts echoed.

“Entirely.”

He studied the stitching again, wanting to touch it, to run his hands over the skin to prove to himself that it was really gone. “It's strange.”

Her confidence was still wavering, her lip tucking itself between her teeth as she reached out for reassurance. “Good strange or bad strange?”

“Good.” He summoned all his conviction. “It's good.”

It was more than good; it was what he'd wanted for so long. And yet, somewhere deep beneath rational thought, it felt like another thing he'd lost. Only he hadn't. Not entirely.

Shifting the mirror, he steadied himself with the reflection of the two tattoos gracing the side of his throat. The pentacle that symbolized his time as a Three. And then the tight line of runic symbols beneath it, spelling out the word
trust
. Following his thread of thought, Aurelia pressed her fingers to the matching characters on the side of her own neck, sweeping her hair out of the way so he could see them.

He'd lost, but he had gained. He had gained so, so much, and the unit he was part of now was one he'd chosen. One that wasn't killing him. One he'd keep.

With Aurelia's hand in his, he'd pushed through the static. And into the life he was meant to lead.

About the Author

Jeanette Grey started out with degrees in physics and painting, which she dutifully applied to stunted careers in teaching, technical support and advertising. When none of that panned out, she started writing.

In her spare time, Jeanette enjoys making pottery, playing board games and spending time with her husband and her pet frog. She lives, loves and writes in upstate New York. You can find Jeanette online at
www.jeanettegrey.com
, on Twitter at
@jeanettelgrey
, or on
Facebook
. She is also a regular blogger at
Bad Girlz Write
.

Look for these titles by Jeanette Grey

Now Available:

Unacceptable Risk

Take What You Want

When It's Right

Get What You Need

She may learn to live for love…if vengeance doesn't kill her first.

Unacceptable Risk

© 2011 Jeanette Grey

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 high-tech dystopia, cybernetic body modifications, and emotionally charged, sensual romance.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Unacceptable Risk:

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.

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.

“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.”

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.”