The hologram blinks out, leaving Abel standing alone in the dark. For the first time, he understands how humans can be shocked into immobility, an animal instinct from deep within the limbic system, an instinct Abel had thought he didn’t have until now.
With Noemi’s life on the line, Mansfield is changing the terms. He’s not happy about it. His creator is afraid—afraid of something besides his own death—and this unknown variable destroys all of Abel’s plans and calculations. He has no way of knowing how to rescue Noemi—
—besides accepting Burton Mansfield’s bargain.
9
WHEN ABEL’S HOLOGRAM GOES DARK, NOEMI CHOKES back a sob. That’s the last time she’ll talk to him, or to anyone she’s ever cared about. It feels like her farewell to life itself.
Noemi expects to die here, in Mansfield’s laboratory. She hopes to. That will mean Abel’s not only safe but doing everything he can to help Genesis. Her death is a small price to pay for that.
But it’s one thing to know that. Another to hang in the prickly heat of a force field, to smell the ozone, with no action to take and no one to talk to and nothing to think about except the horror that’s coming.
The basement door opens, and multiple feet thump on the stairs. Instantly Noemi can imagine the rescue—but the people coming downstairs aren’t police or soldiers or even Abel. It’s Mansfield, a couple of his mechs, and a red-haired woman whose face is thin and drawn.
“You couldn’t convince them to wait?” Mansfield’s demanding of her as he leans on her arm. “Couldn’t get them to give us a couple more hours?”
“I tried.” She bows her head, as though she can’t bear to disappoint him. “It was impossible. We have to go, now.”
“Gillian—I’m so close—”
“Abel will find us. We’ll make sure of it.”
“What’s happening?” Noemi doesn’t expect an answer, but she’s not going to hang here like a painting on the wall. “Go where?”
“Does it matter?” Gillian says, then nods toward the Tare mech. “Get Miss Vidal ready for transport.”
Transport?
As the Tare mech moves toward another syringe, Noemi sees Mansfield sit down in front of a holo-recording device. “We’ll have to encode this, you know,” he says to Gillian. “So nobody but Abel can get it. If we’re so close to being discovered that they’re pushing up our launch, the authorities could get here at any time.”
Gillian nods and kneels by Mansfield’s side. Gently she says, “I’ll start the encryption now, Papa.”
His daughter—Noemi thinks, but then the Tare’s hand seizes her arm, another needle pierces her flesh, and the world swirls away into darkness.
Noemi’s asleep, but not asleep. Aware, but unaware. Everything shifts and gyrates around her as though she were tumbling over and over in a bubble in a waterfall.
Abel appears before her again as he did in the hologram—shadowy, half-transparent, yet more real to her in this moment than anything else. Whenever she’d imagined seeing him again, she’d imagined it being so sweet. So joyful. Instead it’s only anguish and fear so intense they strip her nerves raw.
She tries to think about the more distant past, about her journey with Abel through the stars. The haze from the drugs makes memory feel as real as experience, and soon she’s caught up in the exhilarating rush of it all—racing together through a lunar spaceport, staying up at night on Cray and talking about faith while they sat under twinkling string lights, pretending to be husband and wife on Stronghold, watching Casablanca, their one kiss in zero-G, and the moment they met, when Abel stopped firing at her and handed her his weapon instead.
When they met, they tried to kill each other. Now they want to die for each other.
I’m going to win, Noemi thinks blurrily. I’m going to be the one who dies. It has to be me.
It has to.
She awakens lying down, on what feels like a comfortable couch. The pinkness of her eyelids reveals that whatever space she’s in now is extremely bright. Only a few soft murmurs and the low hum of electronics are audible. Noemi lies very still, keeping her eyes shut, to maintain the illusion of unconsciousness as long as possible.
Mansfield’s voice is reedy and ragged, his breathing labored. “You remembered to bring your mother’s box, didn’t you?”
Gillian has a rich voice, deep for a woman, one that would sound more natural giving commands than deferring to her father. “Of course. I’d never forget that. You’re only nervous.”
Mansfield: “Why wouldn’t I be? This is damned irregular business.”
Gillian: “We always knew this could happen. We’re no more than a few holo messages from total chaos.”
None of this makes any sense to Noemi yet, but she listens intently to every word. Soon, hopefully, she’ll have enough pieces to put the puzzle together.
As the soporific fog of the drugs wears off, she notices more details of her new surroundings. The few footsteps she hears fall on soft carpet. Faint vibration suggests they’re in a vehicle, and since Gillian and Mansfield were talking about a “launch,” it’s probably a spaceship. Someone seems to have slipped clothing on over what she already wore; whatever it is feels soft against her skin. Yet the thought of lying there limply while somebody put clothes on her—it feels like almost as big a violation as if they’d taken them off her.
It occurs to her that a mech was probably the one to clothe her, a mech that couldn’t have cared whether it was dressing a human or a turkey. That helps a little. But her heart can’t stop pounding in her chest. She’s always
