Resistance (Replica) (34 page)

Agnes looked just as puzzled as Nate did. “But he still has a backup of the original Nathaniel Hayes, and that backup scan was done before you learned any of his secrets. Why couldn’t he just create a new Replica and start from scratch? I mean, it would be really expensive and all, but…”

Nate squirmed a little in his seat. “I know you’ve heard that the hiatus in the Replica program is temporary, but that’s a lie. There won’t be any more backups or Replicas. Ever.”

Agnes’s eyes went wide, and her mouth dropped open in shock. Nadia could only imagine the girl’s dismay at discovering how she and her father had been played. With Paxco’s chief source of revenue gone, Nate as its Chairman Heir became a considerably less appealing marriage prospect. Would Chairman Belinski really have wanted his daughter tied to a state on the verge of economic collapse? Nadia was quite certain Chairman Hayes had never mentioned that little issue during the marriage negotiations.

Agnes opened and closed her mouth a few times with false starts before she took a deep breath and shook her head. “There’s obviously been a lot of lying going on. More than you know about, apparently. Remember I said there was something fishy going on?”

She was talking to Nate—she’d had no such conversation with Nadia—but a lump of dread was steadily rising in Nadia’s throat.

Nate nodded cautiously.

“Well, the first fishy thing that happened was the announcement about the Replica program.”

Nate grinned wryly. “You mean you don’t believe my father when he says the press was exaggerating and it’s just a temporary glitch?”

Agnes shook her head. “It’s not that. At least not exactly. My father and I were sworn to secrecy—for obvious reasons—but part of the appeal of the marriage agreement was that my father and I would both have backup scans. We freaked out when we heard the news, but your father assured us the Replica program is still up and running. It’s just that he’s running low on storage space for all the backups so he’s picking and choosing who he’ll use it for.”

Nate shook his head. “That’s not true. It
can’t
be true.”

Nadia found she was gripping the seat in front of her so hard her fingers were going numb. She hadn’t even realized she’d reached out to grab it. “He’s just stringing you along,” she said with more hope than conviction. “After you sign the agreement, he’ll regretfully tell you—”

“My father and I had our scans done on Friday.”

“No,” Nate said again, as if denying what he didn’t want to hear could make it not true.

“Maybe it’s all a scam,” Nadia said. “Maybe he just pretended to make backups.” But she didn’t believe her own theory.

“That
has
to be it!” Nate said.

Somehow, without meaning for it to happen, Nadia’s hand had found Nate’s, and their fingers twined together. Whatever else kept them apart, in this they were together.

“What is it?” Agnes asked. “Why is this … upsetting you so much?”

Still holding on to Nate’s hand, Nadia let herself think back to that dreadful day when she had been arrested. Thought back to the deal she’d made with the Chairman. She remembered Thea somehow messing with the electronic lock so that they couldn’t get into her vault. Remembered the Chairman going back to the other room to retrieve a key from Dirk Mosely’s dead body. Remembered him walking back to the vault with blood on his hands.

And remembered the moment before he’d finally gotten the vault door open, when all the lights had suddenly dimmed.

Just like they did when a Replica was created.

“Thea’s not dead,” Nadia murmured in horror. “She made a Replica of herself before the Chairman destroyed her.”

And if Thea was still alive, that meant that everything Nate and Nadia had gone through had been for nothing.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Nadia
had been so shocked by the realization that Thea was still alive and kicking that she didn’t immediately realize she had spoken aloud. Not until Dante and Agnes asked, “Who’s Thea?” in concert.

Nadia blinked and shook her head as her mind continued to reel. Chairman Hayes had tricked her. All this time, she’d been comforting herself with the knowledge that no matter what bad things had happened to her, she had made a difference in the world by destroying the monstrous machine/creature that was Thea. She thought she had saved lives. She thought her own sacrifices were worth it. And all along, the Chairman had been laughing at her behind her back, biding his time until he located the blackmail recordings so he could do away with the pesky little threat she offered him and return to business as usual.

“Nadia?” Dante prompted. “Who’s Thea?”

“Someone who shouldn’t be alive,” Nate answered for her. “And that’s all we can say about the subject, so don’t ask any questions.”

“I’m the one with the car, asshole,” Dante retorted. “You in the mood for a walk?”

“Cut it out,” Agnes said to the boys before they could escalate hostilities. She turned to Nadia with both worry and sympathy in her eyes. “So this Thea person being alive is bad, isn’t it?”

Nadia nodded. “Very, very bad.”

“And you and Nate weren’t supposed to know about it, because Chairman Hayes thought you’d release your blackmail recordings if you did.”

This time, Nadia didn’t respond, as if by now going silent, she could stop Agnes’s agile mind from putting more puzzle pieces together and figuring out stuff she had no business knowing.

“And I tipped you off that she was alive by letting you know the Replica program is still active,” Agnes continued.

Nate muttered a curse under his breath. “You can shut up now, Agnes.”

But the lid was already off Pandora’s box.

“Which means the Replica program isn’t possible without Thea,” Dante said, taking over the chain of thought. “Which means Thea is the person who invented it—and she’s the only one who knows how it works.”

“But how can that be?” Agnes asked. “Surely Chairman Hayes isn’t stupid enough to let the entire program hinge on a single person. I mean, she could get hit by a bus and then poof! It’s all gone.”

Nadia’s gaze locked with Nate’s. Agnes had figured out so much already. And the truly incendiary truth about Thea, the truth that they
had
to keep hidden from the public if they didn’t want to risk a violent uprising, was her human experimentation—and the Chairman’s willingness to provide her with test subjects.

Nate’s mind seemed to travel the same direction as Nadia’s, for he nodded slightly, and she knew without exchanging any words that he was giving her the go-ahead to tell Dante and Agnes a little more about Thea.

“Thea’s not a person,” Nadia said. “She’s an A.I., an artificial intelligence. She’s this bizarre mixture of biological … stuff and machinery. And she’s smart enough to know that she can use her unique ability to take scans and create Replicas as leverage. I don’t know if a human mind can comprehend whatever it is she does, but she isn’t about to explain it to anyone even if it can.”

“Maybe
especially
if it can,” Nate said. “As long as she’s the only one who can do it, she’s invaluable, one of a kind.”

“But you think it’s better for her to be dead and the Replica program with her than for her to still be alive,” Agnes said.

“Yes,” Nate replied. “She is very, very bad news. And she has my father twisted around her little finger. Even though she doesn’t technically
have
a little finger.”

There was a long silence, which Agnes eventually broke with a long, low whistle.

“I knew there was some cloak-and-dagger stuff going on, but nothing like this. Wow.”

“Yeah, but as creepy and disturbing as this all is,” Dante said, glancing at them quickly in the rearview mirror, “we have a more immediate problem. Like, where the hell am I going to take you guys? I can’t just drive around indefinitely. And you can’t go home.”

“Not even me?” Agnes asked in a small voice, tears shimmering in her eyes. Her expression was bleak, suggesting she already knew the answer. Nate had explained why he’d brought Agnes along—Nadia wished she could have seen the boys’ faces when meek little Agnes had pulled a gun on them—but she wished there had been some alternative.

“I’m sorry, Agnes,” Nadia said gently. “But no, not even you.”

Agnes closed her eyes and nodded, her lower lip quivering.

“I wish you hadn’t dragged her into this,” Nadia said to Nate, though it wasn’t fair of her to blame him.

“It was that or let her shoot Dante,” he responded. “It was kind of a tough decision, actually.”

Dante took a hand off the wheel to make a rude gesture that he probably thought Nadia and Agnes couldn’t see.

“It’s my own fault,” Agnes said. “They tried to tell me how dangerous it was, but I wouldn’t listen.” She plucked at the ruffles on her gown. “I wanted to feel brave, just this once.” Her eyes flicked briefly to Nate then away, and Nadia read between the lines easily. Agnes had been trying to impress Nate, fighting against the contempt her future husband had shown her from the moment they’d met.

Impulsively, Nadia leaned over and gave Agnes a quick hug. “You
were
brave,” she said. “I just wish you hadn’t gotten sucked in with the rest of us.”

“Well, she has,” Dante said, sounding like he was pretty fed up with all the touchy-feely stuff. “And the only place I can imagine you being able to hide for any length of time is in the Basement.”

Nadia shuddered at the thought. The Basement wasn’t safe for adult gangbangers with years of experience on the gritty streets. It certainly wasn’t a safe place for a handful of Executive teenagers and a Paxco security spy. However, it
was
the one place where it was possible to live entirely off the grid. Not only that, but the Basement “dress code” meant they could easily disguise themselves to the point of being unrecognizable. Wigs, masks, face paint … All were used in abundance in the Basement.

“Somehow, I don’t see us wandering into the Basement with me in this tux and Agnes in her evening gown,” Nate said. “Not if we want to make it in one piece, that is.”

“We’ll make a pit stop first. The apartment I grew up in is in one of the crappy fringe neighborhoods. I moved my folks out as soon as I could afford to, and I haven’t set foot in the place since I got my first assignment. We ought to be able to hole up there for a little while. I’ll put in a call to Bishop and see if he can meet us there with some new wardrobe options.”

“
I’ll
call him,” Nate corrected.

Nadia didn’t much care for this plan. It would be daylight by the time they reached their destination, and she and Nate and Agnes were hardly inconspicuous. And if anyone in Nate’s household realized Dante was missing and told the authorities, they might guess that Dante and Nate were together and check out Dante’s apartment. Even if everything went right and they made it safely to the Basement, how were they going to survive there?

But the fact was, with the kind of enemies Nate and Nadia—and their friends by extension—had gathered, they had very few options. So for now, hiding out in the Basement was the best they could do.

*   *   *

Dante’s
apartment was in a seedy neighborhood within sight of the first line of identical concrete high-rises of the Basement. Everything was dingy and run-down, and there wasn’t a ground-floor window in sight that didn’t have bars or metal mesh protecting it. There was graffiti on the scaffolding leading up to the elevated train. The scaffolding was a dreary shade of green, but lighter patches gave testament to the neighborhood’s ongoing attempts to combat the graffiti.

The apartment itself was cramped, and its aging fixtures looked like they would fall apart if someone breathed on them. There was a coating of dust on everything, and the air smelled stale.

“You said you moved your folks to a better place,” Nadia commented as she looked around the dismal living room with its faded wallpaper and threadbare couch. “Why didn’t you go with them?” Dante was eighteen and striking out on his own, but it was hardly unusual for an eighteen-year-old to still live with his parents. Not that Dante really seemed to be
living
in this apartment, at least not while he was posing as a live-in servant.

Dante hunched his shoulders. “They don’t approve of my career choice. My dad especially. People ’round here don’t think too highly of Paxco security goons.”

“So they don’t know…?”

Dante glanced over his shoulder at Agnes, who had a dazed expression on her face as she looked around and didn’t seem to be listening to them. He lowered his voice anyway. “That I’m with the resistance? Hell no. The less they know, the safer they’ll be if I ever get caught. Not that that’s too likely anymore. I doubt the resistance will have much use for me after I disobeyed direct orders. And used one of their cars to do it.”

“I’m sorry,” Nadia said, reaching out to touch Dante’s arm. Everyone had given up so much to try to help her. “I—”

“Shh,” he said, putting a finger to her lips and stepping closer. “It was my decision to make. And I wouldn’t change a thing.”

Nadia wanted to wrap her arms around him, hold him tight, maybe even kiss him. But she couldn’t do that with Nate and Agnes around. She didn’t have a reputation or status left to protect, but a lifetime’s worth of caution and propriety didn’t evaporate overnight, so instead she gave him a brief squeeze and a peck on the cheek. Even that had her blushing as she stepped back and put proper distance between them.

*   *   *

Nadia
paced the length of the living room while Dante scrounged in the cupboards of the kitchen in search of some canned food that hadn’t expired. He came up with two large tins of beef stew and dumped them into a pot. Nadia had never eaten canned beef stew in her life. It would make a spectacularly unappetizing breakfast, but who knew when their next meal would come?

Nadia suspected hers wasn’t the only stomach to do a backflip when Dante distributed four bowls of brown slop. It smelled like dog food, and looked like … Well, never mind what it looked like.