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  “Before what?” Rand asked.

  “Don’t worry about — it’s not important. There’s nothing we can do until we get rid of Crane and get Myers, but it has to be something only we know about.”

  Rand frowned. “So to beat the System, we have to ‘not plan’ something?”

  She shook her head. “No, that’s where the logic breaks down. There’s no way to do that — by definition, the System would know we’re doing it. Instead, we just have to work with the System.”

  “With the System. And how —“

  “By bringing Myers to Paris. After we kill Crane.”

  It was definitive, the way she said it. As if it was the only answer that made any sense.

  “Okay, what made you change your mind?” He thought of the argument the three of them — Rand, Lansing, and Diane — had had earlier. “You weren’t exactly for it then.”

  “I wasn’t exactly against it, either. I was married to a politician, Jonathan. And I’m a pretty good one myself. I was measuring the options, trying to decide how I felt about it all. And when I decided, the reason I wasn’t jumping up and down about it was that by leaving at that moment, we were going to get ourselves killed.”

  Rand felt an immediate pang of regret at the thought of his stupid plan to escape, and how it had gotten Lansing murdered.

  “And we can’t just leave now, if we can find Myers?”

  “The game has changed, Rand. Crane’s obviously planning something, and it’s not going to be anything good. I’m afraid that if he carries it out, we lose control, and we lose Myers. We have to finish this with Josiah Crane, move on, and get to the ICPL.”

  “But isn’t that a plan? What about the System?”

  “It’s a plan, just like ‘drive to work’ is a plan. It lacks the motive, the final intent. The System won’t know our intentions, and it won’t be able to prevent us from getting to the ICPL anyway. Besides, it can’t harm us, even if it wanted to.”

  “When I thought about bringing Myers to Paris, I was thinking he could somehow shut it down. That’s not the plan anymore?”

  Diane paused. “It might be. But it’s not the first priority after killing Crane.”

  “No? Then what is?”

  Diane looked directly at Rand, then spoke softly, almost inaudibly. “I want to talk to it.”

  RAVI

  “WHEN WERE YOU GOING TO tell me you were a badass?” Ravi asked. He and Ary had been sneaking through the edge of the Unders’ camp until they reached the first of the perimeter lines, nothing more than an absence of buildings and structures. She’d held up an arm when they neared the line, and only then did she turn to face him.

  “It’s on a need-to-know basis, I guess. Survival, and all that.”

  “Right. Well, thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it. You ready?”

  Ravi nodded. “Just run?”

  “Head for the hills. Grouse is going to be pissed that you’re not still in the tent. You’re his last bargaining chip to get Myers Asher, and he’s not going to take it lightly that you’re missing. Again. They’ve got this war with the Relics to occupy them, but Grouse will still send out a few men to look for us, to maintain the illusion.”

  “Ready when you are.”

  Ary didn’t wait for him to finish. She bolted, tearing off to full speed without almost any acceleration. He followed, forcing his legs to keep up.

  “The next perimeter checkpoint’s about 200 feet away,” she yelled. “Keep running — they’ve definitely already seen us, so don’t stop!”

  He didn’t respond, focusing instead on the two things that were most important to him right now: not dying, and running. While they ran, he tried to analyze the situation he was now in and figure out what to do next.

  He wanted out. He wanted to be gone; away from this mess, and these people, and her. He was drawn to her in the same way an addict was drawn to a fix. He knew it was unhealthy, and that being near her was only going to get him in trouble, or worse.

  But something about her compelled him. She had pulled the wool over his eyes once already, but she’d also kept him alive, and mostly out of any real danger. Solomon Merrick had paid the ultimate sacrifice, but he wasn’t sure if he could truly blame her for that.

  She was stuck, he thought. She had no choice, and she has to live with that decision.

  He tried to determine what he would have done, had their roles been switched. Would he have brought them into his camp, tricking them, only to allow one of them to be murdered in cold blood?

  The answer snuck up on him before he realized he wanted to hear it.

  Absolutely. If your life depended on it, absolutely.

  He knew it was true. He knew he’d done worse things in his life already, and this particular decision wouldn’t have even registered as a potential moral dilemma; he would have made the call immediately.

  To save my own skin.

  He wanted to run in another direction. The hills they were headed towards sprawled over their field of vision, diving over the horizon miles away. There would be plenty of good hiding spots in them, even considering the roving patrols of Unders that would be stationed around the area. He could get away from her easily, since she was so caught up in…

  No.

  He didn’t realize that his internal dialogue had asked a question until the answer, once again, snuck up on him and delivered the ultimatum.

  No. You’re not running away from this. That’s all you’ve ever done. You got yourself into this mess, now get yourself out. Without running from it.

  He wanted to argue. I didn’t get myself into this mess, she got us into this mess. Solomon Merrick is dead because of her.

  Ravi knew there was truth to the statements, but he also knew that he’d run directly to Ary in the first place. He’d led Solomon and himself here. In fact, Ravi knew deep down that he’d been the real reason behind any of his poor decisions.

  He made a silent vow to never again excuse himself from his actions. He’d step up, starting now, and take control of the situations he found himself in, for better or worse.

  Ary veered off to the left, and Ravi knew she was heading for the line of rocks that split two of the larger hills down the middle. It was a natural spot to ascend the hill, and, while difficult to navigate, it would provide them ample cover. Years of erosion and landslides had spilled rocks and boulders out onto the open desert plain, and they started twisting and turning around the largest of the boulders even before they began the incline.

  Ravi was continually amazed at Ary’s perseverance. He had no idea if she was tired, but judging by the way she handled herself, springing over small stones and launching herself over gaps and crevices, he had to assume that she was only at the beginning of her energy reserve.

  He wondered if she had the Cardio-Ventricular Enlargement enhancement installed. It had been a trendy enhancement when it first arrived on the market a few years ago, but it was still massively expensive. Besides the few thousand people the System had assigned as test subjects, just about the only people who could afford it were the brokers — people who dealt with the computers that ran the Current markets, ensuring the bandwidth-trading systems were online and fully operational. Like most tech-focused jobs these days, Current brokers were nothing more than well-trained monkeys. The System managed the Current markets and the computers they ran on without so much as a second of downtime, but since it had to maintain the illusion of a vast, powerful network of human-run machines, it had assigned a few lucky individuals in every major city the esteemed position of watching the computers whir and hum every day.

  Aside from those two groups, the only others Ravi knew about who had the prohibitively expensive CVE procedure were Hunters.

  The small group of localized, independent Hunters that surrounded all of the deactivated areas of the world were people who had chosen to operate outside of the realm of society, but still wanted the interconnectivity the System and its Grid provided. These people
were fringe-dwellers, the types of people who weren’t quite dangerous enough to warrant a scraping, not quite passive enough to warrant a reassignment, and not quite rebel enough to become an Under.

  Ravi didn’t understand them. Hunters operated exclusive to any governing body, had no interaction with other Hunters — much less any internal hierarchy among them — and yet still wanted the benefits the Boards, Current, and other bandwidth-trading markets could provide. They drifted into metropolitan areas when the need arose, but mostly stayed within the confines of deactivated areas and abandoned cities, as that was where the System deposited its recently-scraped Relics.

  Solomon Merrick was one Hunter, and Ravi never had the chance to ask him why he’d chosen that life. The man was a successful corporate executive in another life, and he was clearly providing for a family somewhere, but they’d not broached the subject of Sol’s personal life during the time they’d been together.

  He regretted it now. He actually missed the guy, a feeling Ravi was sure he would never feel again.

  There was the hole inside him that he reserved for his family, the ghosts of their faces imprinted into his BSE memory device, and there a few wisps of emotion floating around somewhere as well, but he didn’t miss them.

  He couldn’t, in this world. He knew that. It wasn’t against any rules, and there was no way for the System to know about it anyway, but he’d made the decision long ago to forget about what he could of the old world, the one everyone around him was always reaching for, crying out for. Things were different now, and “missing them” wasn’t a productive use of his time.

  And yet, Sol’s memory was more than just a longing to talk with him. It was more than just a youthful adoration for a mentor. In the brief time they’d spent together, Ravi knew that Sol had secrets. He knew that the man had far more information about all of this than he was letting on.

  From the way Sol had calmly and quietly explained that he’d been tortured back at the Unders camp, and how it hadn’t seemed to phase him in the slightest, to the way he carried himself, even when confronted with the reality that a person they’d trusted had betrayed them, Ravi envied the man. He wanted whatever it was that drove the man to succeed, and he wanted to feel whatever it was Solomon Merrick felt.

  Ary had reached a perch high above the valley floor, where she stopped and waited for Ravi to join her. She was breathing more heavily than normal, but he couldn’t see a drop of sweat on her. Unbelievable, he thought. His own legs felt like rubber, and it was all he could do to not drop to the rocky ground and heave bursts of air in and out until he passed out.

  “We’ll stop here for a minute. I need a break,” she said.

  You have got to be kidding me. “Right, okay, well take your time,” he said between deep gasping breaths.

  They rested in silence for a moment, until Ary stood again.

  “We need to keep moving,” she said.

  But before she started, the popping sound of far-off gunfire reached their ears. The gunshots were interrupted by larger, deeper explosions. As the explosions faded, even more automatic rifle fire reverberated up the canyon.

  “What’s that?” Ravi asked.

  “That,” Ary said, “is Grouse’s war on the Relics.”

  MYERS

  HE’D ALMOST CAUGHT UP WITH Crane at the edge of one of the city blocks, right as the first of the gunshots started ringing out through the air. They were far away, drifting over the rooftops and down into the city’s streets.

  Myers had seen Josiah Crane, three of his personal guards in tow — including a broken-jawed Red-hair, a white wrap tied completely around his chin and on top of his head — jogging through Relica, as he turned the corner around the last of the buildings erected on this block. Crane’s jog was slow and lilting, his leg limping from a wound it seemed had never fully healed, but he was still waddling along quickly enough. Myers had a hard time keeping up himself. It was hard enough that he was still exhausted, the night’s sleep not doing nearly enough to fully refresh him, but he had to fight through the disorienting feeling of stumbling forward as well.

  What’s the plan? he asked himself. He wasn’t sure at all what he would do when he reached Crane, not to mention what the men with him would do to him. He just knew he needed to get there. Wherever ‘there’ is.

  There was also the helicopter-like flying vehicle at the center of the Relics’ city. A ‘Tracer,’ if he remembered correctly. No way he could fly it, but he might be able to find Lansing.

  So many ideas ran through his head.

  Where is Lansing? Where is Crane headed?

  Who is Josiah Crane?

  A snippet of a memory, another piece to the puzzle, flashed in front of his eyes. He couldn’t see it long enough to understand it, but it seemed familiar. He shook his head, pushing his mind back to the present.

  Crane wasn’t one of them — he wasn’t a Relic, at least not in the same way Myers was. He hadn’t been through the ‘scraping,’ like Myers had. He still had his memory, his personality, his desires. Myers, on the other hand, was no more than a lost, helpless puppy.

  No.

  He forced himself to regroup. His mind wanted to wander, back to the memories — he wanted to just lie down and forget about everything. He wanted to forget about the gunfire, now growing louder by the second as more and more people out there found guns and started shooting back at whomever had started the attack. He wanted to forget about the fact that he already had forgotten everything. Diane, his wife and the mother of his children, was with another man, running from the same thing he was chasing, and he couldn’t remember why.

  He wanted to forget about the fact that the System had caused all of this, and that most people now thought he was the person to blame for it. Jonathan Rand seemed to know a bit more about Myers’ role in all of this, and he’d told Myers to talk with Solomon Merrick when he got a chance. ‘Sol will tell you everything,’ he’d said.

  The drunkenness was coming back, with a vengeance. He continued to fight it, forcing the weariness and blurry vision back as much as possible, but it was a losing battle.

  He stumbled forward, each step more out of control than the last. He swore the ground was right there, but every step he took seemed to fall slightly to the side, or too far forward, or not far enough.

  Crane was directly in front of him. He recognized the men that followed just behind him, and when one moved to the right, Myers saw the lilting, limited run of the larger man. No one else was around — all of the Relics in the city must have fled when the shooting began out in the desert.

  Or they were fighting back, as hopeless as he thought that would be.

  On a normal day, Myers knew he wouldn’t have had trouble catching up. The misty, out-of-focus lens over his eyes cast the entire world around him in a strange, otherworldly glow, and it made speeding up far more of a chore than it should have been. To his advantage, however, none of the men had seen him running behind them.

  Thirty seconds, he told himself. Thirty seconds, and I’m on him. That was all it would take. Thirty seconds of focused, organized breathing, one foot in front of the other, and —

  One of the men turned around and looked directly at Myers, reaching for something at his side…

  “Crane!” he shouted. Josiah Crane stopped and turned, not sure what the commotion was about.

  The man pointed at Myers, but Myers continued running. One foot in front of the other, just keep running.

  The two other men also turned, and all three started walking toward Myers.

  “Wait,” Crane said. His voice was strained, tired, but still held the deep, purposeful drawl. “Let him get closer.”

  They stopped short of Myers, and Myers ran — at least he thought he ran — directly toward them.

  Again, what’s the plan, Myers?

  He had no idea.

  So he ran.

  He stuck his head down, not sure if it would be considered a “proper” tackle or not, or if he’d eve
n make it to Crane. The three men stood in front of their boss, protecting him. Myers aimed for the man directly in front of Crane. Red-hair. He planned to hit the man where it would hurt the most — right on the chin.

  He pumped his legs, now unsure of how fast he was even moving. Hopefully fast enough to —

  Red-hair pushed Myers’ head straight down and he fell, face-first, onto the hard dirt. He heaved, the wind knocked out of him, completely out of breath, then rolled sideways.

  Myers clutched his sides, then heard the laughter.

  “Great effort, Myers Asher,” Crane said, his thick Southern accent disguising the words. “We were just on our way to find you. Turns out, you were here all along.”

  The other men laughed along.

  “Get up, Myers.”

  Myers heard the voices, but his mind was a swirling mess of memories.

  The desk. Signing papers. The huge, antique desk. More papers.

  They came and went, darting in and out seemingly at random.

  Not random.

  They were trying to tell him something.

  Someone else was in the room. He couldn’t remember the memory itself, but he remembered remembering it. His mind was playing tricks on him, dangling the full memory — and its meaning — just out of reach.

  “Myers, get up,” Josiah Crane said again. Myers looked up to see the walking stick’s tip aimed directly at his head.

  He tried to stand, but his legs had given up. One of Crane’s men decided to help him up, and Myers felt himself forced abruptly to his feet. He swayed in place, but stood his ground.

  The desk has papers on it, and I’m signing them. I’m… handing them… to someone.