Silver Eyes (13 page)

“Sorry, Angel,” Mike breathed near my ear. “But this is for your own good.” He slapped a sticky-gag over my mouth.

M
IKE WAS MY ENEMY.
I cursed myself bitterly—what had I done when I interrupted his Loyalty Induction?

Even as the thought went through my head, I fought back, getting my knees up between Mike and me and kicking. He grunted as my knee caught him in the chest, and I twisted free.

I rolled to my feet, and my leg swept out in a karate kick. I aimed for Mike's chest, but he anticipated me and grabbed my ankle. He yanked. I lost my balance, and my upper body flew backward toward the floor. I got my hands under me as if I were doing a handspring and pushed off. I tried to do a scissor kick in Mike's face, but my heels thumped against his shoulder instead.

He hung on to my foot. “The Orphanage fire.”

The words meant something to me. I remembered flames, and then the drowning memory kicked in.
Falling through cold water, my boots pulling me down
—

By the time I fought my way out of the memory, Mike had cuffed both my wrists together behind my back and had moved on to my feet.

His full body weight lay on my legs, preventing me from kicking, so I threw my body from side to side, trying to make a noise loud enough to attract the attention of the people upstairs. All I succeeded in doing was banging my head against a chair leg.

Within seconds Mike won the lopsided battle. I was immobilized, hands and feet tied, mouth gagged. I lay for a moment, breathing rapidly through my nose, saving strength for my next chance.

Always assuming I got another chance. What was Mike planning to do? Rob the house for the money he needed, or worse, kidnap Timothy again?

“Your Loyalty chip doesn't want you to remember me,” Mike said, surprising me. His face was so close to mine that his breath washed my face. “It's using negative reinforcement to encourage you not to remember. Every time you start to remember something, the Loyalty chip uploads an unpleasant memory into your brain and you drown. I'm going to overload the chip's circuit and break the pattern.
The Orphanage fire.”

I started to remember again, orange flames licking inside my mind, and then the water came, drowning me. But when it was over Mike just triggered it again. “A group of radicals set fire to the Orphanage where the violet-eyed children were being kept—” He kept talking, reciting my life. He didn't give me any respite from the memories, but
there was tenderness in the way he hauled me up, dripping, from the depths, one memory richer, before ruthlessly drowning me again.

“From the time you were three and I was four years old, we were brought up in the Historical Immersions of Canada in the 1970s and 1980s. We were told that it was the 1970s and 1980s, and we believed it. You and I lived in separate towns until 1987.

“We met down by the river. . . . Your best friend was Wendy Lindstrom. . . . Her boyfriend's name was Carl.” Nudged by Mike's voice, the memories flooded back to me. I remembered Wendy. How could I have forgotten Wendy? So tough on the outside, so fragile within. The most loyal friend anybody could hope for. I'd missed her without even knowing whom I was missing.

Best of all, Mike gave me back my parents. Originally actors who had been hired by Dr. Frankenstein to play the part of being my parents, they had soon become my real parents. I loved them, and a pang tore through me when I thought of them. I missed them, and they must be worried about me. . . .

Staring out the window at the falling snow on Christmas Eve. My first Christmas with Mike and the joy of making our own little traditions. And the sadness of my first Christmas without my parents.

“What is it?” Mike had asked. He'd put his arm around me and bent his head close to mine.

“I want—” I'd stopped, swallowed the lump in my throat, went on. “I want to phone my parents.”

“You can't. Anaximander would backtrace the call.” Mike gave me a small one-armed hug, sympathy
in his eyes, but no real understanding. His actor-parents had been horrors.

“There must be some way.”

“Even if we knew how, we couldn't chance it,” Mike said. “What's to stop your parents from telling Anaximander or the authorities our whereabouts?”

“They wouldn't do that,” I snapped.

“They took Dr. Frankenstein's pay,” Mike reminded me.

“Only because they wanted a family. They love me. I know I can't phone them—” Even if I could have risked Anaximander tracing the call, I didn't know my parents' vidphone number or where they lived. I wasn't even sure if their last name was Eastland, or if that had just been part of the role they had played for so long. “—but I miss them.”

Mike also gave me back myself, building a bridge between Shadow Angel and New Angel.

I drowned a hundred times that night, and Mike revived me every time. And each time I opened my eyes, gasping, and looked into his violet eyes, he came into sharper and sharper focus. Not Michael Vallant, accused thief, but Mike, my nemesis, my rival, my partner, my boyfriend.

My other half.

“And you won the coin toss to get captured by SilverDollar so we could try to get money and identicards,” Mike finished. He sounded tired. “If we'd known about the Loyalty chips, we would never have risked it. Do you believe me? Do you remember me now?”

I was silent out of necessity.

“I guess there's only one way to find out,” Mike
said grimly. He removed my gag and handcuffs and waited, his body as tense as a metal spring.

My throat was too choked with emotion to make talking easy so I kissed him in answer.

“Angel!” He kissed me back, his arms coming around me in an ecstatic hug. “I was afraid I'd lost you,” he admitted a little while later. We were lying side by side on the carpet.

I shuddered. “I lost myself for a little while, but I'm back now.”

Rage vibrated in Mike's voice. “I'm going to get those bastards for what they did to you. SilverDollar will pay. Before I'm done with them, they'll throw money at us just to make us go away.”

Coldness shafted through my bones like an arrow. “Don't say that,” I said urgently. “Take it back.” Without permission, my hand stealthily reached out and picked up the Knockout medi-patch that Mike had dropped on the floor earlier.

Mike didn't notice.

“No.” His voice was hard. “I thought what Dr. Frankenstein did to us was bad, but this . . . I'm going to smash them until there's nothing left but shards, and then I'm going to smash the shards, too.”

“Shut up!” I was frantic now. “You can't say that!”

“Sure I can—” Mike stopped, suddenly wary. “What is it? If the room was bugged, Anaximander would have burst in and stopped me while I was breaking your memory block.”

“There's no bug,” I said, throat dry. “Just me.” I fingered the medi-patch behind my back, peeled off the protective film.

Mike didn't get it.

“Tell me you were kidding,” I said fiercely. “Tell me it was anger talking, that you didn't really threaten SilverDollar. Tell me!” My nails dug into my palms, still holding the Knockout patch.

After the briefest hesitation, Mike said soothingly, “I was just mouthing off. I didn't mean it. How could someone like me hurt a giant corporation like SilverDollar? It's ridiculous. I'd have to be crazy to even try.”

I held my breath, seeing if his denial would work. No go. “You're lying,” I said. There were tears on my cheeks as my Loyalty chip made me hit him with a Knockout patch.

The ten seconds until Mike lost consciousness were the longest in my life. The wounded look in his eyes . . .

I had betrayed Mike again. The thought hammered into me, even as I used his own handcuffs to attach him to a heavy piece of furniture.

The thought of what Eddy would do to him, force him to go through Induction all over again and install a working chip, made me want to retch. The consequences for me were hardly less scary— at the very least, my memory would be wiped again, and this time there would be no notes to bring back Shadow Angel—but I still found myself starting up the basement stairs to call Anaximander.

Helplessly, I watched my foot settle on the bottom stair step—

No!
I grabbed my ankles and yanked. My feet kept moving, but the awkward bent-over position made me fall sideways against the wall.

There had to be a way out of this, a way to satisfy my chip and save Mike at the same time, if I could just think of it.

Against my will, I began to climb the stairs again, but more slowly, placing both feet on each step, my hands still holding my ankles. One step. Two. Three. I had to think quickly before it was too late.

I had foiled the chip once before. When I tried to release Mike it hadn't wanted me to, but I'd convinced myself and it that I wasn't being disloyal to SilverDollar, that I was trying to save SilverDollar from an overzealous employee.

Okay then. Perhaps Mike had only meant that he wanted to punish the person who had installed my Loyalty chip. I tested out the rationale, loosening my grip slightly.

I climbed two steps before I caught myself again. I was almost at the top of the stairs.

Obviously, that wasn't going to work; I no longer believed the chip had been installed without Eddy's full knowledge.

Nothing less than Mike swearing absolute loyalty to SilverDollar was going to satisfy my chip, and even then it probably wouldn't believe him.

Unless . . .

I released my ankles and went upstairs. I tiptoed into the bedroom Rianne and I shared—she kept sleeping, thankfully—and took out a small kit from a hidden compartment in my palmtop's carrying case.

Mike had regained consciousness by the time I got back. I turned the lights on, set to low. The stony look on his face made me close my eyes against tears.

“I'm sorry,” I apologized helplessly. “The Loyalty chip is making me do this.”

The accusation in his eyes lightened but did not totally disappear. I winced. Mike had never trusted easily, and now I had betrayed him twice.

“The only way the chip will let me release you is if you swear that you'll be a loyal SilverDollar employee from now on. You have to,” I said fiercely, “it's our only chance.”

“I swear I'll be a loyal employee from now on,” Mike said.

I could read nothing from his face, his expression opaque. “The words alone aren't good enough. You have to mean it.”

Mike watched warily, as I ripped open the plastic pack of medi-patches soaked with TrueFalse and pulled off the plastic film. “What's that?” he asked.