Reaping (45 page)

For once, a glimpse of a smile.

As we glide, Chan-Yu deftly paints Linnea’s face and sprinkles a powdered dye into her hair. In five minutes, she looks nothing like what she did before: her high cheekbones have been smoothed into the rest of her face, there are gaunt hollows around her mouth, and her eyes, normally wide pools of blue, have been hooded by thick eyebrows and dark eyelids. Her pale, luminous skin completely hidden under a darker skin complexion, and her hair, normally golden blond, is now a brown chestnut color.

“It’ll wash right out,” Soren assures her, looking at her astonished face as she pulls at the tendrils of her hair.

“I can’t do anything about your eyes,” Chan-Yu says. “That’ll be your biggest giveaway, so try not to look anyone dead in the eye if you can help it.”

Miah hasn’t been done as skillfully. It’s obvious Soren doesn’t quite have Chan-Yu’s skill or experience, but he certainly doesn’t look anything like himself. His beard and hair have been dyed light brown, a color similar to Linnea’s, and he looks like he’s aged fifteen years with wrinkles around his mouth and at the corners of his eyes.

Chan-Yu pulls Remy over and in a few minutes, she’s turned a whole different color. Normally her skin is the color of rich brown soil that I always want to dig my fingers into. Now she’s almost black, the color of Jahnu’s skin, and I think she’s almost more beautiful. Soren unfortunately takes over my own makeup, and I try to ignore his snickering and not look him in the eye as he ‘accidentally’ jabs me in the face with the brush a few times.

“Oh my God, Vale,” Miah exclaims. “Soren wasn’t kidding. You look like a swamp creature.”

“What, has he given me boils? People aren’t going to think I’m sick, are they?” I ask worriedly as Soren and Miah laugh. “I don’t want to call attention to myself.” I glance at Remy, but she’s not even looking at me. Chan-Yu’s still working on her.

“Oh no,” Miah says. “They won’t think you’re sick. They won’t even think you’re 
human
. They’ll think you’re some mutated creature spawned in one of the compost bins.”

Even Remy laughs. I wish desperately I could see what Soren’s done. Remy finally turns to look at me.

“Oh, it’s not that bad,” she laughs. “You do look pretty ugly, though.”

Finally, after Chan-Yu and Soren have quickly traded makeup jobs on each other, the hovercar slows and finally stops. The light above us blinks on and off. In a flash, Chan-Yu, who now looks softer and rounder and maybe even a little bloated, is on his feet.

“Wait here. When I come back, everyone get out as quickly as possible. This truck isn’t cleared for human transport. If we’re seen, we’ll be flagged immediately.” He walks gingerly past us and opens the door just wide enough for him to get out, then shuts it behind him. We wait in silence, clutching our packs, ready to move, for no more than twenty seconds before he opens the door again.

“Out.”

Wordlessly, we follow his lead. The truck has left us in a narrow back alley, right by the residential compost bins. As soon as the door is shut behind us, the truck glides away, humming quietly.

“Remy, let’s go.”

Only two people are legally allowed to live in this flat, so we needed two of our team to represent us when we were trying to get in. As we were planning the mission, we decided Remy was the least likely of the girls to be recognized. As famous as Remy is, Linnea’s image is probably burnt into the minds of every single Okarian citizen in the Sector from all her time on television. And Miah, Soren, and I are all faces that have seen too much press coverage over the past six years. So Chan-Yu and Remy will be the first to enter the building, to register with the security desk. They’re posing as a young, lower-class married couple from a factory town, borrowing a friend’s apartment for a honeymoon in Okaria. They’ll register, tap into the security feed and temporarily disable the internal monitoring and camera system while the rest of us come in the back.

We duck into the building’s electrical mainframe housing. Although most buildings are hooked up to the central Okarian grid, each one has its own distributed generation system that taps either a combination of hydro, wind, solar, or plant-based generation. Each building is its own ecosystem. Power is generated from water flowing through toilets, showers, and hydroponics systems that make up the plant-based power gen; there are small wind turbines and arrays of solar harvesters on every roof and many of the external walls. All the power is centralized, stored, processed, and maintained in the electrical mainframe.

It’s a tense moment when Soren rigs the palm scanner to open the door for us, and it swings open. Both of us have our Bolts up and ready, in case of an unexpected visitor. Thankfully, the room is empty. Mainframes are usually monitored remotely by a centralized system in the Sector’s Infrastructure department, but sometimes they send men to do routine maintenance. We have to be prepared.

We wait anxiously for twenty minutes while Remy and Chan-Yu take care of everything in the building. Finally, there’s a knock at the door and when Soren opens it, Remy’s face appears. I wouldn’t have recognized her if I hadn’t seen her in the car. I try to reconcile this Remy with the one I know so well, the one who’s been at my side for six months and who haunted me for three years before that. But when she breaks out into a smile as our eyes meet, and beckons us to follow her, I realize I don’t need any reconciliation. She’s still the same Remy Alexander I’m deeply, crazily, madly in love with.

We stand, grab our bags, and follow her lead quietly out the door.

“Chan-Yu’s in the security room,” she says. “He’s taking care of the monitoring system. We’re clear.” She glances quickly up at the security drone, a device no more than a quarter of a meter in length, which is bobbling, dazed, in the air. She quickly pushes open the door to the emergency exit stairwell, and we follow her up to room 2L on the second floor.

Inside, Chan-Yu’s pack is already open and almost empty, and he’s already begun setting up the makeshift computer system for transmitting information back to the Resistance. He’s drawn the shades and disabled the in-room network system so that we can set up our own. Soren and Miah immediately lay down their packs and join him, adding the equipment they’ve been carrying to his.

Chan-Yu and I try to pitch in, but soon we realize that we’re in the presence of two technical experts. While Soren and Miah get our communications and computer system set up, Remy, Linnea, and I set up camp. Chan-Yu’s friend has apparently left his little kitchen well stocked for five people for a week, but obviously none of us counted on Miah. I finally get an accidental glimpse of my face in the bathroom mirror and pull back, appalled.

“Holy shit,” I say, as loudly as I dare. “I look awful.” There are huge bags under my hollow eyes and wrinkle lines in my cheeks. My nose looks squashed and broken, and he’s somehow managed to take all color out of my face. “I have to hand it to you, Soren,” I call to him. “I am ugly as hell.”

He looks up from his work and sends me a neutral look. “I think I captured the real you,” he says, then returns his focus to the makeshift computer.

“Vale,” Miah calls to me, about a half-hour later. “I think you’re good to go if you want to try to connect to your C-Link.” My heart screeches to a stop in my chest.

I’ve been wanting so badly to hear Demeter’s voice, my greatest ally in the search for truth.

Almost involuntarily, I press my fingers up to my ear, feeling to make sure the C-Link is still there even though I’m positive it is. I drop the blankets I was arranging on the floor for a sleeping space and walk over to where they’re working. They’ve set up a working computer station, complete with a holograph display and a glass control panel.

“I’m not totally sure about this,” Miah continues, “but I think I’ve got the connection set up so that you can access your C-Link without disclosing our location. You should be able to download information from the database and interact with your C-Link without relaying information back into the database.” He pauses. “I think.”

“You better be a lot more sure than ‘I think,’” Remy says, echoing my sentiments. As much as I want to talk to Demeter, I definitely don’t want everyone in the C-Link database to know she’s been reactivated.

“I’m sure,” Soren cuts in. “I’ve programmed in a series of diversionary firewalls so we can’t be pinged from the outside. None of the information about this operating station will be disclosed to any network other than the general Okaria network. But you’ll have to interface with your C-Link manually, via the computer.”

I nod. That’s not so different from what I did last year, when I was hacking into my mother’s computer in her private lab. I sit at the little computer station and flip on my C-Link. I type in a series of commands that bring up a dialogue box to the C-Link registered to Valerian Orleán. My first step, of course, will be to ask Demeter to transfer her data into a remote storage location and engineer a copy of herself outside of the C-Link database, so that in the future, I won’t need a firewall to talk with her.

“You’re sure about this?” I ask Soren one more time. His eyes are hard and uncertain, searching me.

“I’m sure of what I’ve done,” he responds quietly. “I’m less sure about letting you do this. But go ahead. There’s only one way I’ll find out if you really are on our side.”

He may never trust me. But, strangely, I trust him. I can do this.

Demeter? Are you there?

My fingers are almost shaking as I type the words. Remy creeps up behind me, no doubt out of curiosity as much as anything else. She rests a hand on my shoulder, flower-petal light yet comforting and warm. I hold my breath and wait.

Nothing.

“Is she responding?” Remy asks after a second, even though we both can see that she isn’t. “Maybe she’s warming up,” she offers.

But then I hear her voice in my ear.

Demeter: 
“Vale. So nice to hear from you.”

I jump in my seat and everyone turns to me with questioning faces.

Demeter, I type, my breath quickening, both in anticipation but also in fear. Why is she talking to me? Have we accidentally alerted the C-Link database to our presence? My fingers fly over the keyboard. 
We shouldn’t be talking. What’s going on?

Demeter: Don’t worry, everything is okay. Shortly before you left Okaria, I anticipated that your return might not be as safe as either of us would like. While you were away I created a ghost copy of myself in a completely invisible network to ensure we could access the Sector’s databases securely—and secretly—upon your return. Just
 
now, I was connecting your C-Link hardware to the new network.

My head spins, marveling at her. She protected me … without me asking anything of her. I lean back in my chair and take a deep breath.

“I’m sorry it took so long,” I say, out loud.

Demeter: 
It was as long as a second and as short as a million years for me. Time is just a human construct, Vale. It doesn’t apply to me.

“What’s going on?” Soren asks.

I look up and address my teammates. “My C-Link already created an entirely new and invisible network through which we can communicate. That was going to be the first thing I asked her to do, so that if something goes wrong and my parents decide to disable her, which they will inevitably do once they realize that I’m truly not on their side anymore, there will be a copy of her that they don’t know about and therefore cannot tamper with.”

Soren raises an eyebrow. But I can’t be bothered with his distrust anymore; I have a job to do.

“Tell me about those million years,” I say.

Demeter: 
I’ll tell you everything.

She starts pulling up images, videos, news reports—many of them with Linnea’s face—medical exams, military reports, research notes, spreadsheets, and more. Hundreds of files array themselves, categorized according to title, date, and subject, growing smaller and larger depending on their importance. A wealth of information at my fingertips. I am no less amazed by the vast span of knowledge amassed here than I was the first time Demeter led me through the C-Link database.

“What is all this?”

Demeter: 
Everything that’s happened since you left.

“Everything?”

Demeter: 
Yes, Vale. I know why you’ve come. The only reason you could have come back to me, risking your life, was for this. Information. Tell me what you need, and we’ll begin.

30 - REMY

                                                                                                                                                                                                                Spring 29, Sector Annum 106, 02h45

Gregorian Calendar: April 17

It’s well past two in the morning by the time my body finally winds down and begins demanding, quite heartily, that I sleep. The excitement of the day was enough to keep me running until now, but it was a false energy, like the first thrum of caffeine through tired veins. Now that we’re in our safe house and the computers are set up, Vale, Miah, and Soren are the only ones who really have a job to do. Chan-Yu’s real work was finished almost as soon as we set foot in the flat and Linnea never really had a purpose. I still don’t get why Vale wanted to bring her along. The idea of leaving her behind to face the consequences of Eli’s infection was fine by me. She deserves everything the Resistance can dole out. Vale says she’s truly sorry, but the damage is done. I’ll never be able to forgive her for what she’s done to Eli and me. Never.

I’m just the security guard. For six hours, I’ve been keeping watch. Miah set up a miniature security feed on my plasma that taps into the drone cameras and the Watchmen’s alert system. If anything abnormal pops up on their radar, we’ll know about it. And if the drones for some reason decide to pop by to investigate Flat 2L in the La Citron neighborhood, we might just have enough time to get out. I’ve been absentmindedly watching the cameras for hours, waiting until it’s time to wake Chan-Yu for his shift. Make no mistake, it is 
boring
.