Elite (Citizen Saga, Book 1) (14 page)

I pulled the casing off using my knife, then looked at the multiple coloured wires inside. None of it made any sense. I powered on my PDA, waited for it to light up, and then searched for instructions on network wiring, finding a labelled diagram, which although in greyscale, was explained in detail, allowing me to single out the correctly coloured wire I needed to hack. I stripped it, attached it to the PDA after removing its back, and waited to gain access.

The PDA ran a basic programme, trying to identify the new information it was receiving, sort through it and seek entry to at least one aspect of the network it was attempting to hack. And for a long suspended moment I thought it wouldn't succeed. Then a screen came up, still in greyscale, there wasn't much an ancient PDA could do about that, but clear enough to decipher sufficient detail.

A room, viewed through security cameras. My little handheld device had accessed the video footage being filmed throughout the building. No sound, unfortunately, but enough to let me know I'd stumbled into something big.

A whole wall was covered in vid-screens. A man with inappropriate length hair sat before them. Beside him, leaning against the desk and talking heatedly, was Trent. I switched to another camera angle and came up with a man at the back of the room with headphones on, what appeared a communications board sat before him and he was toggling switches; listening in on frequencies at a guess.

Who were these people?

They were the only occupants in that room, but a quick flick through all the cameras came up with eight more in areas covered by the system. I was betting those were the common areas, bedrooms seemed exempt from surveillance. I returned the device to the view featuring Trent, in the room that looked like a command centre.

I could almost hear what he was saying to the guy sitting down in front of all those screens.

"Where the hell is she?"

I smiled. My finger hovered over the PDA and several options ran through my head. Virus. Power outage. A systematic release of all the locks throughout the building.

I settled on the least invasive. These people meant business, what business I didn't yet know. But part of me was intrigued. It was because of the unknown that I chose caution over destruction, even if that destruction would have been fairly benign and short-lived.

I had a feeling Trent and his team of non-model Citizens held all the answers, and my goal hadn't shifted from that. My PDA lacked the power to delve deeper, hacking only those parts of the network that sat on its surface. Power. Internal security. Cameras. If they had files with their secrets they were buried too deep.

I'd have to gain them another way.

For now, I entered my command, and sat back to watch the cards fall where they may.

"What do you mean you can't find her?" I asked Si, getting up to pace at his back.

"She lasered the cameras in the hall outside your room and disappeared before Alan arrived."

He sounded impressed. I glared at the back of his head.

"She won't have gone far," he added. "External doors are all locked. Cameras everywhere are back online. She's hunkered down somewhere and biding her time."

"For what?" I asked and he shrugged.

"How should I know. She's definitely the most adventurous Elite I've ever seen."

I couldn't argue with that fact. Time and again she surprised me. I'd almost hoped she would do something like this, just to prove to me how reckless she is and how stupid I was to bring her here, of all places.

But then, we really needed those codes.

I ran a frustrated hand through my hair about to command every single person in the hub to start searching, and wouldn't that have let the cat out of the bag; their boss unable to control one Elite woman. But Si straightened in his seat, sucked in a breath of air, and then laughed.

"Oh, she is good," he whispered, half in love, half in awe, and a whole lot wrapped around Lena's little finger already.

I moved to look over his shoulder and stared at the words flashing in time with my heartbeat on the screen.

"In a sea of uncertainty, Wánměi is an island. Are you the bridge that leads to another world?" I read the words aloud, hearing more than their meaning. Feeling like I was looking into her very soul.

"She's hacked our system," Si pointed out, but my mind had stalled on her message, my eyes glued to the screen. "What did you guys leave on her?" he persisted. "A fucking handheld computer?"

That got my attention. I shifted uncomfortably, sure she probably had something like that but I'd failed to search her, and obviously Alan had too. What was with this woman? She stole all reason.

She really was an excellent thief.

"Can you trace her?" I asked Si instead of voicing those disconcerting thoughts.

"Already have. The spare room down the hall from yours. Wanna reply?"

How did you answer such an open and honest question? I couldn't understand why she had exposed herself to that degree. In what she must have considered enemy territory, she'd bared her belly to the big bad wolf. Why?

Nothing this woman did was without thought.

And despite that realisation, I couldn't answer her here. On a screen. In front of Si and Kevin, where anyone could walk in.

"Cut her off from the cameras," I instructed. "Or, better yet, blank them for just two minutes."

"Why?"

"I'm going to her."

"Boss," Si warned.

"If she truly wished us harm she would have uploaded a virus," I pointed out, then paused. "Right?" I checked.

"Yeah, right," he confirmed reluctantly. "Are you gonna at least take Alan with you?" he pushed.

Only Si could get away with pushing me.

"No need. I have something she wants."

"Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of," he muttered as I walked out of the room.

It took a little over two minutes to reach her closed door and ten seconds to determine she'd changed the lock code and I couldn't gain access that way. I waved up at the closest camera, sure she'd be watching, if Si had gone with plan B, but still the door remained shut.

I knocked, but no one answered. If she wanted me to dance a jig to get her attention, she was shit out of luck.

I considered her question. She wanted an answer. I walked back to my room for inspiration and looked at the state of the desk, sure it was tidier than I had left it. I glanced around the small space I called home and tried to see it from an Elite's eyes. The door had swung shut at my back and I stared at the image of
Lunnon
for a moment, realising she must have seen it too.

Was it the first time her eyes had taken in another city, even if only in a poster? What had she thought? I wanted to know. I wanted to see the questions in those pale blues that had plagued me since I found all of this in my father's locked chest. A treasure trove of history that was punishable by death.

I liked to think I was brave having it out on display in my room. But the reality was if we were ever searched by the Cardinals we would already be heading for a wipe. So the risk was pitiful.

And I suddenly realised how small it was compared to what she did. We had proof another world existed. We dreamed aloud. We knew. She didn't. Raised by an Elite, left in the care of the Chief Overseer at the age of fifteen; such an impressionable age and yet she broke Wánměi rules. Why?

She couldn't have suspected, could she? Was it just a fantasy that we were not alone? Or was it more? What had her father taught her before he died that made her disobey her guardian, General Chew-wen, the man who made Wánměi what it is?

She was an enigma I found fascinating for so many reasons. She was danger to my sanity and our safety, and yet I felt compelled to take her hand and show her what we knew, lead her on this path we were already walking.

Danger.

She was such a risk.

And yet I found myself peeling the poster off the door and placing it face up on the desk, then writing my answer across its surface.

I strode out of the room before I could change my mind, sure I was making the biggest mistake of my miserable life so far.

An Elite. Practically the daughter of the Chief Overseer. And I was about to cross a line in the sand for her, and part of me couldn't say why.

Another part knew, as I bent down and slipped the poster under the door to the room she'd locked herself into, that I'd crossed that line the day I watched her somersault off Wántel's roof.

She represented everything I thought Wánměi could be. Composed, yet rebellious. Beautiful and mesmerising. A challenge, but fuck me, the reward would be worth it.

I realised I thought
she
was worth it. This woman who had hair the colour of a zebra and the heart of a lioness.

Yeah, I was pretty much officially in deep, deep shit.

I watched on my PDA screen as he came back out of his bedroom with something in his hand. I couldn't tell what, the greyscale made deciphering minute details difficult. But when he bent, and went to place the object under my door, I stopped breathing. My head spun toward the sound of paper against carpet and I sat stunned as the poster from behind his door slipped through the small gap.

It slid a little way inside the room, then stopped and waited for me to pick it up. He'd written across it in bold, black ink. I stared at the upside down words for several seconds, then reached out and turned the poster right way up for me to read.

It really does exist. And it's called
Lunnon
.

"
Lunnon
," I whispered, feeling strangely like crying. It had a name and Trent had given it to me.

It was bizarrely the best gift I had received in my entire life. The name of a distant city that existed outside of Wánměi's walls.

I frowned, looking around the small room I had commandeered. I hadn't intended to stay here, I'd been planning to move on and find out something else. But the cameras had gone dark just after Trent had left that room and I took that as a message. I may have been able to crack keypad codes, tamper with camera lenses temporarily, but that command centre they had set up was where I really needed to be. And to get there, I needed Trent to trust me.

So I'd waited for him to play his hand.

And this was it.

I looked back at the poster and for a moment I really didn't know what to do. All my life I've had my path laid out for me. I've played on the grass verge occasionally, even jumped over the curb with reckless abandon, but I'd always returned to that path carved out by someone else. I am Elite. I was born into it.

All I've been doing is stretching the binds that contain me, testing their limits. Not truly breaking them, because I always returned. I had a suspicion that those in this building broke them. Severed them. Turned Wánměi back on itself.

Who were they? I had to know.

But even as I walked to the door and entered the lock code, making it click open with a buzz, I wasn't sure how far I'd go to find out. I wasn't sure if I could return if I walked too far down this particular path; a path not made for me by General Chew-wen.

Trent stood on the other side, hands in pockets, leaning back against the far wall, waiting patiently. As though he knew I'd come to him once I read his words. It angered me slightly, but right then I didn't have the heart to let the anger out.

"I'm not sure what to say," I admitted.

"It's a lot to take in," he agreed.

I searched his eyes and saw understanding there, compassion for what I must be going through. It made my stomach flip delightfully, and then plummet with the confusion I was drowning in.

"Do others know, or just those living here?" I asked.

"I'm sure those born and raised before General Chew-wen came to power remember. You can't erase history with drugs, you can only dim the memory."

"And place fear in their hearts if they dared to breathe a word of what they know," I offered.

"Exactly."

"We're not meant to want for more," I murmured.

"But you want more, don't you, Lena?" I wished I'd never told him my nickname. It made it all so much harder. A caress across my skin. Waking a need I didn't know existed. I pushed those imagined sensations aside. They only added to the confusion.

"I've always wanted more." A truth that he would have already recognised.

"You're not alone," he whispered. "You could help us."

"Who is us?"

"Everyone here. Some dotted throughout the city. But we need more. Many were culled during the Uprising."

Oh, I had been blind.
So
blind. This was the revolutionaries' base and I'd stumbled into it. How ironic. My father had spent the last few years of his life obsessed with finding them. I was sure General Chew-wen demanded the same from his Cardinals today.

I forced myself to keep breathing. I ordered the tears I felt welling to stay away. My heart breaking, even as I wrapped it up in steel and looked Trent in his deep blue eyes.

I was staring at their leader, the man who would have taken over from Mason Waters; who had killed my father.

It took everything in me not to step back. To show the pain I was feeling as this knowledge cleaved me in two. I thought the revolutionaries destroyed. Had I known...

"I have little to offer," I pointed out, relieved to hear the normality of my voice.

"You have skills," Trent argued. "You're related to the Chief Overseer. Access that could prove beneficial."

"Beneficial how?"

He shook his head, unwilling to share his plans with me yet.

"Are you ready to meet everyone?" he asked instead.

"Are they ready to meet me?" I replied. His answering smile almost made me stumble.

How did he do that? Have such an effect over me. I couldn't trust him. He was involved with those who ruined my life. I should hate him. But my body hadn't caught up with my mind.

"First," he said, pushing off from the wall with casual grace. I understood now why he seemed that way. A revolutionary who could fight and move with the shadows and dance through the underworld of Wánměi. "Leave your handbag in the room."

I glanced down at my bag, still slung over my shoulder like a shield.

"And any other little tricks you may have under that dress," he added.

My eyes flicked up to his in time to see him scanning the sundress. Or my body beneath it, he seemed a little entranced.

"I'd prefer to keep it with me," I answered coolly, reaching for the familiar tone of voice. "Never know who would go through it when my back is turned."

"Lena," he chastised, and damn it! Why did he have to say my name that way? It held power it shouldn't. "This is your room now, you've already claimed it. The code is unknown to my men."

My men
. Proof he was the one in charge. Proof he'd stepped into Mason Waters' shoes.

"They could crack it," I stubbornly argued, my backbone strengthening with every bantered word.

He let a laugh out, half frustrated, half amused.

"They don't wander around with decoders like you do." It was a lie, I knew it. Besides, that command centre would break the code in seconds if the long haired guy wanted to. Trent was humouring me, trying to talk me down from a ledge.

I wasn't sure if I should be flattered or angered. But in the end, I realised there was no way he'd show me their base if I was armed. And technically, what I had stashed in this bag was definitely weaponry of a sort.

At least the flash-drive was still in my bra.

I turned back into the small space, that seemed to be mine now, and placed the handbag on the bed in full view. If they did break in, at least they wouldn't destroy the place trying to find it. I turned and found Trent right behind me, watching my every move. It was strangely a relief that he didn't fully trust me. It made it easier to not trust him in return.

I raised an eyebrow at him.

"If this is now my room, you're in here uninvited," I announced with Elite civility.

He smiled again. He really shouldn't. "It may be my only chance, I thought it prudent to take it while I could."

"A wasted effort," I replied, but the words felt hollow. Much like my heart.

"Lena," he said softly, reaching up as I went to walk past. His fingers wrapped around a strand of my hair that had come loose, his fascination with its colouring blatant in his fixed gaze, in the tender way he threaded it around his hand.

"Yes?" I asked, my throat suddenly dry. His proximity was perhaps the most dangerous thing in this place.

"We're not the enemy," he whispered, moving closer, letting his heated breath wash my cheek.

"I never said you were."

"Zebra," he chastised almost playfully. "You're planning something. You don't trust me."

"
You
don't trust
me
," I pointed out, feeling alarmed that he'd seen through me and vaguely impressed at the same time. I'd hidden a lot from people in the past. From Chew-wen. From Wang Chao. I'd grown used to being good at it and here was Trent, my nemesis, seeing right through the act in a flash.

An act I hadn't even consciously chosen to perform; old habits, though, did die hard.

"But I'm not planning to steal anything from you, Elite," he murmured, his fingers still stroking my hair.

"You're wrong," I choked out. "You're stealing everything."

He stilled. His body so close I could feel his heat. His breaths rougher than before, puffs of air against my chilled skin.

Then he let go of my hair suddenly and stepped back, holding out an arm for me to precede him out of the room.

I walked stiffly, head high, chin up, shoulders back. That last comment had been unintentional, and a little too close to the truth. I cursed myself inwardly, wishing I understood why he made me feel so out of sorts. Why he made me feel anything at all.

The door to my new room clicked shut at our backs, momentarily sealing all that I now possessed inside. I raised my gaze to the nearest camera and hoped the guy in that command centre could read the challenge in my eyes.
You take what's mine and I'll retaliate
.

The fact that Trent had already called me out on that sat heavily in my heart. The goal was still knowledge, though; finding out what these people had planned. What I would do with it, I didn't yet know. But I had to look out for myself. More so now than ever. There would come a time when that information would be useful, and worth something to someone else.

It was the only defence I had, and right now with my world turning upside down around me and a dangerous man walking too close to my side, I needed every protection I could find.

"I'll show you the dining hall first," Trent said.

"I'm not hungry."

"You'll need to know where it is," he pointed out.

"Am I really going to be walking these corridors unattended?"

Silence for a moment.

Then, "I'm not placing a guard on your door."

"You don't need to, you have cameras."

He sighed. Was probably running a hand through his already messed up hair.

"OK," he conceded. "I guess you want to see the tech room."

"Is that where the wall of vid-screens are and the guy listening in on frequencies is?"

He came alongside me, directing me down a corridor at the next branch, a small smile curving his lips.

"Anything else you saw while you hacked us?" he asked casually.

"That would be giving away my advantage."

"Lena," he said, almost in a purr. "You don't have an advantage here. You're still an Elite."

The heaviness in my heart doubled.

"And that is so bad?"

"If you act like one, yes. You're likely to piss a few people off. And at the moment every syllable out of those lovely lips is dripping in Elitisms."

They were?

"It's who I am," I admitted, but truthfully I wasn't certain who I was anymore.

"I don't believe that," he said softly.

"Then you're misguided." My heart wasn't in it, the words were whispered not flung. "I was born Elite. Raised Elite. I'll die Elite."

He stopped us, just outside what was obviously the doorway to their command centre. I could see the wall of vid-screens out of the corner of my eye. The long haired man who sat before them. And, surprisingly or not, a small group of avidly watching people.

Revolutionaries
, I told myself. Feeling my throat close up and struggling to contain my wretched tears.

Trent watched me, his face devoid of obvious emotions, his body moving to shield me from view out of the room.

"You're in the wilds now, little zebra," he whispered. Not reaching for me. Not showing his hand. "Let it all go."

I lifted my face up to his and fell into all that deep blue. Wanting nothing more than to be floating in an ocean of that colour. To be free of everything I felt and everything I had just learned.

"And give it all to you?" I asked, wondering if that would be a good thing or not.

He stared at me, frozen for a second, and then cleared his throat and looked over his shoulder into what he'd called the tech room. When he looked back at me he had that hard mask on his face again, and I realised he hadn't been devoid of emotion before. He'd been drowning in it.

Much like me.