Endgame (Voluntary Eradicators) (13 page)

Ariel raises her eyebrows. “I don't think that's quite what Tash meant, Vol.”

Tash laughs, but has the grace to look embarrassed when Ariel shoots her a dirty look. “Nope, definitely not. What I meant. Not at all. Guess I'll be leaving now. Bye, Princess. Vol.”

Princess?
“I'm sorry.” Vol rubs at her forehead. It feels too hot. “I'm not myself.”

Ariel's face thaws a little. “It's fine. Very convenient timing on your part, I must say.”

“
I was on the second floor and saw you from the window.”

Ariel stiffens. Vol laughs a little, uncomfortably.

“
That totally makes me sound like a stalker. I'm not, really. I was pacing, and I guess I saw you — ” she breaks off. Ariel is blushing. “Are you and Tash … together?”

“
It's not official.” Ariel purses her lips. “Activate voice command. Second floor.”

“
I won't tell a soul.”

“
I'd appreciate that.”

An awkward silence spans between them.

“
I finally found out his name,” Vol says.

“
Hmm?”

“
The name of the man who's following me.”

“
Oh.” Without looking at Vol, Ariel says, “What is it?”

“
Catan Vareth.” Ariel starts. “Isn't that the name of one of the new God Mods you mentioned?”

Ariel turns, putting her hands on her hips. “Catan Vareth is your stalker?”

“
I'm pretty sure.”

“
I know him.” Before Vol can press her for details, she says, “He lives on my floor. I've spoken to him several times while we were filling out the forms for Suryan. He seems nice.”

'Nice' is not the word that leaps to mind when Vol thinks of Catan Vareth. Dangerous, yes. Cunning, yes. Frustrating, yes. Nice, no. She speculates that there may perhaps be two of them, but the thought is too horrible for her to dwell upon. One is enough.

“
What do you talk about?”

“
Nothing about you, if that's what you're wondering.”

That's exactly what she's wondering. Vol bristles at the shortness in her voice. “What, then?”

“
Work. The games. How crappy the food is. Nothing suspicious.”

No, she doesn't suppose he would do anything so foolish. Catan doesn't strike her as a foolish man.

They are almost at the reception desk. It occurs to Vol that if Ariel is on break and Suryan is no longer permitted to work independently, they run a risk of encountering Catan in the parlor. She opens her mouth and gets as far as the the first syllable of his name before Ariel stomps on her foot.

“
Ouch,” Vol finishes instead, hopping on the other foot.
You bitch
.
You enjoyed that, didn't you?

“
Ariel? Now this is a surprise. I was under the impression that you were on break.”

“
I am.”

Catan is regarding the two of them, one arm wrapped around the back of the chair he's sitting on. “I hope this visit isn't for my benefit.”

You wish, you bastard
. Ariel glances at Vol in warning. “Nope. Vol forgot something. She needed me to get it for her.” She pauses. “So I'm going to need the keys.”

“
I really shouldn't give them out to you when you're not on shift,” Catan says, sliding the keys from his belt. He jangles them, extending one finger to point at Ariel. “I'm surprised she asked you instead of coming to see me. I would have been delighted to help.”

Sure. Right into the grave you'll help me.

Ariel shrugs her shoulders. “She got to me first.”

“
Is that right? I wonder.” He props his feet up on the desk. “Well, make sure you return the keys.”

And he tosses them at her in a neat, underhanded arc. Ariel catches them in midair. “Right,” she murmurs, sifting through the ring. “Let's get to the bottom of this.”

They pass several cubicle doors. Ariel halts outside a door in the back, the other side of which Vol has never glimpsed. It is the God Mod cubicle, and has access to every single console in addition to the game code itself. Ariel unlocks it and walks up to a massive computer, which wraps around a single chair like a metal trifold.

Vol looks away as she enters her password and then watches impatiently as the brown-haired girl scans through several pages' worth of code at a gruelingly slow pace. She knows better than to interrupt, though. Game codes are a labyrinth of addendum after addendum, with new additions frequently left hanging incomplete like a half-finished sentence ending on a preposition.

“
Hmm,” Ariel murmurs.

Vol twitches and shoves her hands into her pockets. She looks around, trying to take an interest in the room. It is unlikely that she will ever be in here again, and it might be interesting to dispel some of the myths tower residents have about the enigmatic God Mods. But while studying the sensory equipment and additions that enable God Mods to contact all the players and teleport anywhere at will within the game, Vol can only dredge up mild curiosity at best. Her ear is turned to Ariel's vocalizations.

“
Now that's not right,” she mutters.

Vol is at her side in an instant. “What is it? What's wrong?”

Ariel gives her an annoyed glance. “Hush.” She turns back to the computer and hits a series of keys. The readout changes. “I don't get it. Hmm. I wonder …”

Vol is ready to explode. She wonders if Ariel is torturing her.

Ariel's frown deepens as she continues to process the data. “Hang on, Vol. It'll just take one more array. I've just about figured it out.” She hits more keys, and then her fingers freeze. “What?”

“
Did the tracing algorithm work?”

Ariel hesitates. “Yes.”

“
Did Catan make any modifications?”

“
Only a bit of routine maintenance.” Ariel turns around. Her expression betrays nothing. “I'm not quite sure how to say this, so I'm going to be blunt. According to the tracer, Catan didn't make those additions.”

Vol blinks. “He didn't?”

“
No.”

“
Who did?”

“
You.”

Vol flinches as if she's been struck. “What? But that's impossible.”

“
That's not what the computer says, Vol.”

“
I couldn't have made those changes. I would have — ”

I would have remembered
is what she was going to say.

“
Look, I don't know what's going on. I don't want to know.” She shoos Vol out of the cubicle and locks the door carefully behind her. “But I must say, this doesn't look good for you.”

“
You think I set the whole thing up?” Vol demands.

“
It's a distinct possibility.”

“
Why? Why would I do that?”

“
I don't know. Attention?”

Vol is now certain that Ariel doesn't like her. “But — ”

“
If you hadn't asked me to do the tracer in the first place, I'd turn you in. But since you did, I'm assuming that means you're telling the truth — or believe you are, anyway — and didn't actually modify the program. And that means someone around here is going about fiddling with things they shouldn't be, under a false name.” She sighs. “Which means I'm going to get my ass handed to me.”

A sour taste coats the back of Vol's mouth. The tables have turned so fast that her head is spinning. “What are you doing to do? Am I going to be fired?”

“
No. I'm not going to do anything. I have no proof, one way or the other. And neither do you. After what happened to Suryan, I don't think pointing random fingers is going to do anybody any good, least of all you. In the meantime, I suggest you lay off Catan unless you not only catch him in the act of tampering with the code files, but also manage to catch it on film.”

Yeah, and the odds of that happening are strictly zero. Vol is reading Ariel's message loud and clear. She is on her own now. Ariel isn't being mean about it, despite her ambivalence. In fact, she seems to be trying quite hard to be nice. But Vol can't help but wonder how far that niceness goes?

“
Thanks,” she says at last. At least she isn't fired.

Ariel nods in a brisk, business-like way. “Tash thinks very highly of you, you know. For that reason alone, I hope you didn't do it.”

Guilt pierces through Vol like an arrow, though she isn't sure why. “I didn't.”

“
Good,” Ariel says. Which isn't as comforting as an “I believe you,” but it's better than nothing.

“
Did you find what you were looking for?” Catan asks idly as Ariel hands him back the keys. He's reading a book.
A History of the Regency
, it's called. Too bad it isn't
A History of Hacking into Computers and Making People's Lives Miserable
.

“
No. It appears someone ran off with it.”

“
How unfortunate.” Catan fixes the keys back to his belt and turns a page of his book. “Some people are so dishonest.”

The irony of that statement. Vol wants to leap over the desk and strangle him. She forces herself to remain composed, politely dismisses both Gods Mods, and takes the elevator back to her room where she promptly begins to scream into her pillow.

The man sitting at the bar possesses the same fierce countenance as a wolf. He has dressed himself like the others, in a casual display of unassuming wealth, but holds himself with the rigid discipline of a soldier. She can feel his eyes on her as she slips in and out of the crowd. Eyes the color of the drink he hasn't touched. She wonders what he is running away from.

He raises an eyebrow when she sits on the empty stool beside him, but this is the only indication he gives of being aware of her presence. She pretends not to notice and orders a drink spiked with Bliss. Maybe happiness, like so much else, is something that can be mass-produced and bottled-up.

She suspects not, though, and the drink confirms this.

She is aware of the man watching her — staring at her, to be honest — and the patina of emotions surrounding him is headier than the stink of the bar. Disgust, curiosity, sadness, hatred, lust.
Here
, she thinks
, is a man just as twisted as I am.
Unexpectedly, her stomach begins to flutter with something too dark to be butterflies.

“
Are you waiting for someone?” she asks offhandedly, “Or are you alone?”

“
Alone.” His eyes lock with hers and she feels his emotions sharpen. “I enjoy my solitude.”

“
Liar,” she whispers. “Nobody enjoys being alone.”

He stares at her incredulously — then laughs. It is a harsh laugh, devoid of any humor, but attractive all the same. “I don't know who you think you are, but you've just propositioned the most fucked-up man in this bar.”

She stares at her drink. The rejection stings, though this isn't what she wants.

As if sensing her conflict, he says, dryly, “That wasn't necessarily a 'no.'”

She glances at him. “Then what was it?”

“
A warning. When mothers warn their daughters about all the cold, nasty men out there who will only break their tender little hearts, I'm the one they've got in mind because I'm the one who broke
their
hearts when
their
mothers were warning
them
.”

“
I don't have a mother,” she says. “And my heart's already broken.”

“
Then you're just as fucked-up as I am,” he says, taking a swig of his melted drink. “Go home.”

“
I don't have a home to go to.”

“
If you get me feeling sorry for you, darling, then neither of us has a chance tonight.” The man shakes his head, and she realizes he is younger than she thought. Maybe only a couple of years older than she is. “You're not exactly my type, you know,” he says after a moment. “I don't really have a thing for blondes.”

She studies a strand of her hair. The fibers are yellow. This comes as a surprise. She has forgotten what she looks like. In her head, she is amorphous, shapeless — a haze of emotions and nightmares that happens to be self-conscious and bundled up in skin.

She looks at the man. His hair is black and his dark skin is burnished to a resinous gold beneath the lights of the bar, just a few shades darker than the honeyed glow of his eyes. The collar of his shirt is unbuttoned, and she can see a crust of curly dark hair on his muscular chest. He catches her looking, and says, “I'm giving you until I finish my drink to change your mind.”

“
And then?”