Chapter Text
How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be
When there’s no help in truth! I knew this well,
But did not act on it; else I should not have come.
Sophocles, Oedipus Rex (1.101)
Leon> thank you again for everything. yao never would have said a thing
Leon> anyways im sorry i need to get it together
> It’s okay.
Leon> if chrys or anyone finds out anything please forward it
> Of course. We’ll handle it, stay low.
Chrys> Please make sure you wipe tracers and nonessentials
Chrys> I will see you soon.
> Caught. Thank you for your help, and for the meal.
M> Linh, where are you?
This user is not available.
The inside of Aditya’s saferoom looks almost nothing like the barren hidden corridor that Linh remembers; there’s real furniture now, for one. Mugs and pots and a hotplate fill up the table, intricate vintage rugs blanket the floor, and the bed and loveseat are draped with brightly-patterned throws, tasseled and distinctly handmade. Warm, sweet incense hangs in the air. Even the concrete walls are now paneled with beige insulation. The only recognizable thing left is the narrow, angular shape of the room, that short wall in front of the toilet and sink still guarding the far corner.
It’s been years since I was here, since I was first on the run from Disposition, she realizes. I’ve been an unperson for so long.
“Like what I’ve done with the place?” Aditya says, closing the door and stepping up to stand next to her.
“It’s nicer,” Linh replies, and she can’t help huffing out a laugh, glancing over at him. “Where was all of this when I was here?”
“Oh, you were so fen from all of it.” He waves a bejeweled hand, his stack of bracelets jangling merrily. “I figured you’d be overwhelmed by anything beyond a cot. Also, I’ve had to spend more time here lately—”
Linh can’t help cutting in. “And it was so unbearably drab, I’m sure—”
“Using my own words against me! I told you I didn’t know the jacket was yours!” Aditya fake-gasps, swats at her arm, his expression the very picture of innocence. “And for your information, it really was. You know I need to cultivate my space. I need to have my tea, my slippers, my incense…”
“ You’re what hasn’t changed here,” she says, all too fondly. “Thank you for doing this again.”
He hasn’t, not really— his hair’s longer now, dark glossy curls tied half-up and half-brushing his shoulders, and there’s a gleam in his eye that wasn’t there before— but he still smiles the same and talks the same, warm and reflective and solid in front of her. He’s still dressed up in a flowy something of a garment that straddles luxurious and impractical. There’s still shimmering, glitzy jewelry all over him, from his intricate gold hoop earrings to the delicate chain around his ankle. It all makes her feel…
Like things will be alright. Maybe it’s because he saved me, that I can look so carelessly past everything people say, everything he’s done. To me, he’s always just been Aditya.
“Anything for you,” he says with a big wink. “You haven’t owed me a favor in so long. I’m more than happy to put you in my debt again.”
Linh shakes her head and looks down at the plush carpet, fighting the smile bobbing up on her face, her chest full with humor and gratitude alike. I can always count on Aditya to save my life, make me laugh, and hold it over my head, all while my whole world is falling apart.
It really isn’t the first time. She thinks back to the weeks she spent here, hovering above catatonia, her head always throbbing… and those constant dreams: of their blinding flashlights when she was first caught, trapped in endless hallways under a sedative haze, cold electrodes on her temples and the way her bare feet stumbled under her above that tile the way the door opened she turned and that man was there her hands twisted hot charring—
“Linh.” A burning hand on her shoulder, a burning voice. “Linh?”
She blinks, and she’s back, breathing heavy and slow, Aditya looking right at her with an indecipherable expression.
Push it down. Push it down.
“Sorry,” she mumbles. “I was—”
“Aditya?” Someone’s voice rings out from behind the door, and he lets go of her in a flash, head whipping around.
Is that…
“Yao?” Aditya calls back.
Cold bolts of shock rush through her, and any warm-and-fuzziness left disappears in a snap. What the hell is going on? He knows this place now?
Linh’s already tucking herself in the shadowy corner of the room before she knows it, pressed flat against the wall and peeking over a file cabinet that’s a little too short— Aditya holds up a finger to her, clearing his throat with a raised eyebrow.
“Give me just one second, pretty boy,” he says loudly. “I’ll be right there.”
Linh can’t help making a face— does that actually work on him?
“I am a grown man,” Yao grumbles, “and I know Linh Nguyen is in there. Now, I have something important, and I don’t plan on killing her in your little hideout, so let me in before I open this door myself.”
Don’t worry, Aditya mouths at her, which does not make any sense given her current situation.
What are you doing, she mouths back. He gives her a thumbs-up and something resembling a reassuring grin. And then he inexplicably unlocks the door, an unfortunate reminder that as much as she likes him for some odd reason, he is usually nothing short of insane.
Linh stands up straight and steels herself to run as Yao stalks in, head immediately snapping to her with a death glare.
“You,” he grits out. “Hiding as always.”
S omething flares up hard in her stomach, some awful mixture of every thought and feeling and memory she’s stuffed away in the last six hours alone, and any calm words evaporate from her mouth. “You don’t—”
“Hey, hey,” Aditya cuts in. “Hey. Let’s calm it. We agreed on no murdering in the saferoom.”
“You’re the one who just let him in,” Linh says, astounded.
“I received a message you need to see,” Yao says icily, “about my sister, who is gone, no thanks to whatever business you’ve been dragging her into.”
She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out. How could you say that— it’s not—
Stop. Stop it. Don’t react. Don’t give him what he wants.
“That’s what I thought,” Yao snorts. “You even recruited him, ” and he jerks his head at Aditya, “and his big mouth.”
Huh. So they really do know each other like that.
“Hey! I never said anything about her being here,” Aditya says defensively. “And what’s that supposed to mean? Since when have I ever—”
“Never mind, I apologize,” Yao mutters, slow and sarcastic.
“We’re talking about this later.”
“Whatever you say.”
“You are so —”
“What,” Linh interrupts, her heart pounding in her ears, “was that message about? Yao?”
He fixes his gaze on her again. It’s a stare any stranger would parse as bored, maybe tired; Linh has seen it enough times to know the seething vitriol behind those dark eyes, the low eyebrows, the hard line of his mouth.
Silence snaps over the room. A ping from Yao slides across her skims, and she flicks it open to see a forwarded message to her and Aditya:
> Deleted user> Linh Nguyen alive for Xiaomei Wang alive 0200 N1.2249A32.1416
Linh’s mind slows to a stop.
Not a question, not a demand, but a statement of fact. No. This is crackle. Francis and his people want to trade for…
Me?
“City coordinates,” Aditya says, frowning, eyes flicking back and forth behind his skims. “It’s… an empty lot under construction? Not too far from here.”
“Who,” Linh chokes out, and her voice sounds so small in her ears, so helpless. “They…”
Linh Nguyen alive
Xiaomei Wang alive
“You should be grateful I’m even informing you of this in advance,” Yao says lowly. How benevolent. “But I want my sister back.” The rest of the sentence trails through the air in front of her: And I want you gone, if that’s what it takes.
Her head starts to ache, and it feels like her brain is shrinking and collapsing into a single point, the nausea returning full force. None of it makes sense. Someone out there wants her for some reason, someone willing to run all these gates to pursue her, tail her, track her down, take the one person she would surrender for.
It’s impossible. It’s insane.
What other choice do I have?
Push it all down. Leave it all behind. Do what you need to do.
“You can’t expect her to…” Aditya sighs.
“No,” Linh says, the word numb in her mouth. The warmth and color around her all blurs together, any tactile sensation melting away, her head spinning, shrinking out of control. “I’ll go.”
He blinks, shooting her a quizzical side-eye. “ What? You really believe them?”
“What the hell else would she do?” Yao demands.
“Yao is right,” Linh says quietly. I can’t believe I’m really saying that sentence, but he is. I have to go. “Going along, at least right now, is the most rational option. They obviously care about keeping both of us alive, whoever they are… I’m still here. Mei was captured, not killed. There are plenty of reasons someone would want me dead, and plenty of ways they could have gone about it, but they chose this way.”
Exactly. Keep going, and be logical.
“It would be illogical to lie about that part, especially to you,” she continues. “Thus, the odds of the trade being legitimate and Mei actually being alive are high.”
Aditya’s frown shifts deeper, and his voice is low, pleading. “Linh. It’s only 23:40. You have time.”
“Oh, come on,” Yao rolls his eyes. “Time for what, more investigative analysis?”
“Yao, stop that,” Aditya snaps.
“Or what?” (He says it with a smirk. It’s all entirely too confusing for Linh to process right now.)
Aditya juts his chin forward with burning eyes. “Enough. We’re talking about this later,” he repeats, enunciating slowly, pointing a finger like he’s about to jab it in Yao’s eye. “Linh, you need a plan.”
“I’ll,” she starts, flicking up that terrible message again and pulling the full packet. “I’m pinging the message data to Chrys—” Yao snorts at this— “and we’ll see if he can figure out anything. I’ll take a crack at it too.”
She takes a few steps toward the couch and snags the old computer kitt out of her bag, taking a seat and flipping it open, everything running on automatic. Just work. Dig. Fix it.
The room is silent. She glances up to see both Yao and Aditya still hovering where they were, Yao staring at Aditya with some strained mixture of challenge and exhaustion, Aditya staring back with haughty contempt, at each others’ throats without even a word or a subvoc. There’s too much to think about right now. She glances back down at her hands on the keyboard. They are pale and trembling and do not move when she asks them to. The room is silent and her head still hurts and it’s still not sinking in, what’s going on, what she’s about to do.
Chrys> Thank you
Chrys> Their fingerprint is quite legible.
> That’s odd, it was sent to Yao.
Chrys> I can see that. His kitt’s rudimentary scrambler makes the data easier to piece together, strangely enough. I don’t think they accounted for that in their encryption. Give me 30 minutes
Everything is still shrinking away from her. Linh closes her eyes for a bit, which feels worse, so she opens them and stares at the pattern of the blanket next to her instead. The computer whirrs in her lap. There’s some other noises in the background she can’t quite parse. She keeps looking at the pattern, zigzagged and geometric, scattered with little pink and red and yellow squares that swirl in her vision. Her head feels both dense and hollow. The pattern keeps spinning, spinning, spinning.
A set of coordinates flashes up on her skims, followed by two messages:
Chrys> Cracked the location metadata of where the user was wiped
Chrys> It’s a vacant private residence located half a mile away from the exchange point.
Linh blinks at the ping, looks around her— her skims say it’s been 34 minutes since her last message to Chrys, and the room is empty, Yao and Aditya’s voices a faint back-and-forth from behind the door.
I… what was I even doing?
She stumbles to her feet, hastily stowing away the computer— of course I didn’t manage to get anything done— and empties her bag out, picking through and taking what she needs.
Jacket. Balaclava. Karambit knife in its sheath. Signal jammer.
> Thank you.
Chrys>…
Chrys>…
Chrys> Good luck.
Linh slips on the jacket, slides the knife onto her belt, and takes a deep breath. The room is no longer spinning or shrinking away, and the tremor is mostly gone; she’s as ready as she’ll ever be.
If I’m going to hell already, might as well do some of that investigative analysis.
She approaches the metal door to the entryway (“the foyer”, according to Aditya) and stops, because:
“-inconsiderate,” Aditya’s voice is saying, “and so stricking stubborn, for what?”
“Shut up. I knew you were a bastard from the start,” Yao’s voice hisses.
Aditya snorts. “And you’re crazy about it, aren’t you.”
A long, heavy pause.
“Don’t start that with me again, not when she’s in there.”
“Ha. Now you’re all shy. What, are you scared?”
“I will skin you ali—” Yao’s voice cuts off, and there’s a thump, one of them whispering something she can’t quite make out.
Linh grimaces, because she would rather set herself on fire than get involved in… whatever this is, and smacks her knuckles on the door a couple times.
Knocking so I can leave. That’s a new one.
“Chrys sent me some coordinates, half a mile from the ones you were sent,” she calls. “I’m going to go look around.”
“You’re—” The door swings out, and there’s Aditya, looking a little red— “It was unlocked. You’re leaving?”
“Yes,” she says, keeping her voice level and clear, a feat that feels far too easy for what she’s saying. “There’s still so much we don’t know about this. Whatever happens to me, I don’t want to… Look, it just seems like a potential base for them, so I’ll scope it out and drum over any info I find. It shouldn’t take too long.”
“And I assume you’ll be at the rendezvous point at 0200.” Yao is leaning against the concrete wall of the “foyer”, and she’s struck with how sunken his eyes seem, lines starting to show in his frown.
I’ll figure it out. I’ll fix it.
“I will,” Linh nods.
“Do not ,” he intones, “do not fuck this up.”
Yes, dad, her inner Aditya whispers— Aditya himself glances toward Yao, then back at Linh.
“Are you sure about all of this?” he asks.
“There’s something going on here,” Linh says, swallowing hard. “I don’t want it to destroy anyone else. All the info from the case I was working before this is saved on my computer; there might be a connection between that and this current situation, looking at the timeline, so I’ll leave that to you and Chrys…”
She trails off, throat closing up. Aditya looks at her for a long moment. There’s something in his face that she can’t quite read, sitting between deep thought and rigid willpower, his usual warmth running cold.
“Ping me everything,” he says at last. “No matter what. Promise me.”
Linh blinks, nods. “I will.”
She doesn’t want to say goodbye— she doesn’t want to think about what will happen. So she pops open the door, holds up a hand in farewell, and leaves it all behind.
Linh squeezes through the maintenance closet that conceals the saferoom entrance, grabbing her bike and making her way into the empty garage. She yanks up her balaclava. Does the usual passive netbug wipe. That empty, dazed feeling isn’t gone, she realizes— the world isn’t spinning and shrinking anymore, she’s not mentally dangling above her own body, but her head is still blank, nothing left. There’s no fear or anticipation, nothing holding her down.
Keep pushing it down. Keep going.
She gets on her bike, coasting down through each level of the complex with only the buzzing lights above to keep her company. Pulling onto the street, it’s strangely empty at this hour; there are only a few cars and bikes swerving around her. Linh swipes Chrys’s sent coordinates through her skims, the map directing her to make a right, as if this is any other destination, any other day. Everything’s normal. It’s all blank.
Linh’s getting closer. Cutting through an alley, there’s a loud pop behind her— probably a car from the main road. Nothing in her mirrors.
Another loud pop. Another. A hot burst floods through her legs, and she tries to breathe through it, but she’s on the concrete now, the bike sprawled next to her.
Already, she thinks. I probably scraped my arm pretty bad, falling like that. Her right calf is soaking wet and warm.
Someone steps up, looms over her, their face obscured in the darkness. She knows him. It all makes sense.
“Francis,” Linh wheezes. “You again.”
Pain finally starts to bloom in her leg, loud and screaming. It all makes sense. It doesn’t make sense, not at all.
“Why Mei,” she gasps out, head spinning once again, “why me?”
“Be quiet,” he says, and slams a kick into her jaw. It hurts— he’s still holding the gun.
“Don’t move. It’ll just be a minute.” It’s Francis, alright. It doesn’t make sense. Her vision’s going dark around the edges.
“Try me,” Linh slurs out— a mad rush of adrenaline overtakes her in an instant, and she throws all her weight forward and into his shins, latching on limply— to the ground he goes.
He won’t kill me. He can’t. He wants me alive.
But I’m free.
Now they’re both down on cold asphalt. Another loud pop, so close to her this time, deafening one ear with ringing static. All Linh can see is the blurry adstream. He’s strong, but she writhes out of his attempts to grab her head, his elbow against her swelling jaw, the gun clattering away somewhere. There’s nothing beyond a thunderous roar in her skull and blood running hot into her shoe. Now the heel of her palm makes hard contact with what feels like a chin, fuzzy with stubble. They roll over. Francis Bonnefoy is saying something but it’s too late for him, because her fingers are already slipping around the karambit’s handle, its curved blade easy against her hand. A terrible something grips her wrist, pulling it through the fog in her head. Everything vanishes into the singularity of her hands, her arms, her pounding pulse.
It’s quiet. Linh slumps against the wall. Her skims are dirty.
> To Aditya you need to come get me right now
Making good on her promise.
Arthur doesn’t look at the body. Instead, he fumbles for the old-fashioned cigarette tin and matches he knows are in the left front pocket, shoving them in his jacket and standing.
“I’m taking a walk,” he says. “Fernandez, you’re on photographs and evidence. I want a timeline. de Vries, confirm our ID and get the bag.”
“Yes sir,” de Vries says. Fernandez nods, crouching down with a flashlight that’s too bright, illuminating entirely too much of the scene. Neither of them spare so much as a glance at Arthur, who turns and takes the tin out of his pocket to examine it.
As it should be. They know better than to push me.
The steel tin looks far too normal to him, as if he’s just picked it up off the nightstand, just big enough for five or six of Francis’s stupid, primitive cigarettes.
“Oh, you and your brutish tastes can’t possibly be accounted for.”
“I’m assuming you’re included under that umbrella,” Arthur mutters, popping open the tin as he starts to walk— it’s mostly full. Five left. He takes one, tucking the tin away again, fishing out the packet of matches. The routine is almost… soothing, in its normalcy.
He lights the cigarette in his mouth, inhales, breathes it in, exhales. It tastes like crackle as always— it smells awful, familiar. His mind churns, floating up with that ugly, ugly smoke. The body’s eyes are still following him. So, so normal. The alleyway twists ahead, and he follows, shoes quiet on the cracked pavement.
It was bound to happen sooner or later. The Movement does not center survival in its operations, and Francis has never been the most cautious, following through to a fault. Arthur, for all he’s given them over the years, can’t relinquish himself the way Francis has.
It all tracks. It was only a matter of time.
“Of course,” he mutters, “the moment you quit your paper-pushing and go out to do real work, you get yourself killed for no reason.”
“You wouldn’t understand. I made a promise to the Movement, and I am not, contrary to popular belief, a complete liar.”
“That doesn’t matter. It didn’t need to happen,” Arthur says, flicking cigarette ash behind him. “You didn’t have to intercept her, not there, not alone. No greater cause, no matter how… passionate, can justify that.”
“Always the pessimist. Where is your drive, Arthur? Your hope? What happened?”
“You’re dead now,” Arthur snarls. “That’s what happened.”
Silence. He stops and looks up at the wires and cables crisscrossing the adstream, taking another drag. His head starts to spin, the alley dark and shutting him in—
It’s late, the room warm around Arthur, sheets and blankets snowing them in. Rustling and a quiet shifting pulls him out of his half-asleep haze.
“Another cigarette?” Arthur mutters.
“I’m happy,” Francis says, humor coloring his voice. “Let me enjoy myself.”
“As you so dearly love to do.”
The sharp, lingering smell of smoke returns anew. Arthur cannot, no matter how much he despises it, feel disgusted by the way it clings to him and his clothes and his bed. He can’t hate the way Francis smiles at him, not when the smile is so simple in its kindness. He can’t hate this horrible web he’s been sucked into, the double-crossing of every allegiance he’s made for the Movement, the years spent climbing toward some hazy black hole, not when it all goes back to his own promise made years ago.
“Will you help me? Us?” The words swim back to him through their ocean of memories.
Contrary to popular belief, Arthur is not a liar either, not where it matters.
“I will.”
They don’t talk about it much, but he knows: Francis loves nothing more than love, and to him, the Movement is the ultimate expression of love for everything, everybody. An unattainable, perfect, shining beacon of utopia. It is a spiral he will inevitably drown in. Arthur knows there’s a finite amount of time left, a finite amount of cigarette stubs in the ashtray on his nightstand. He can see the spiral, the descent, the last gasp, and yet he’s still here, because:
Francis is sitting up next to him, silently smoking in his bed. He is the only tether Arthur has to this world.
Arthur stumbles to the ground and retches. Nothing comes out.
“Damn it,” he coughs out, hot ash smeared under his palm, then louder, “damn it all, I—”
The alley remains empty, echoing. A seed of fury buries itself in his chest as he scrabbles away from the still-glowing cigarette tossed away carelessly, a sliver that hooks on and squirms, a festering wound of…
Humiliation. Helplessness. Overwhelm. Grief. And rage, so much rage, rocking him back and forth and back again. He wrenches his eyes shut. Nothing else comes forth. Francis’s voice is gone and he is alone again, on his hands and knees in some alley, gasping for air.
Arthur picks up his pathetic head and staggers to his feet.
He brushes the dirt off his palms, stomps out the cigarette. The seed is starting to sprout. Slowly but firmly pushing his organs aside and his pulse to the surface, it threatens to burst through, to leave him open and bloody, its claws ripping against him with each breath.
Get back there. Get started.
Arthur does just that— it only takes a few minutes to find his way back to where the other two are, de Vries zipping up the body bag and Fernandez snapping a few photos of the bloody concrete. They both turn to glance at him.
“Hey,” Fernandez says, making a face he must think is very sympathetic, “you all good?”
“Fine,” Arthur replies. “Verdict?”
“Pretty obvious,” says Fernandez, sighing, holding up an evidence baggie with two empty cartridges in it. “He ambushed her, shot a couple times, but there was a tussle… and he didn’t bring a knife to the gun fight.”
Wonderful. Francis is dead, and Antonio Fernandez is being, well, himself.
They’re still staring at him, so he clears his throat, forces something out.
“I see.” Just those two words pry at the barrier between the snarling rage in his throat and the cool night air, a barrier Arthur is somehow still keeping a tight hand on— somehow.
“So what are we reporting?” de Vries says with a raised eyebrow.
“Let the man breathe, Jan,” Fernandez huffs, crossing his arms. “One thing at a time.”
“No, he’s right,” Arthur cuts in. “The Movement requires her. We can’t put a bounty on her head and let net go at it; they need to be fed a different version of events.”
No matter how much I want to— no matter how much I want to seek out this person and slit her throat myself, tear the body into a million pieces, for all the crackle she’s put us through. It’d set the Movement back years. They’d put a bounty on me in an instant.
“Net does trust us,” Fernandez muses. “They trust our work. I think I can swing something, if there’s something we can plant to indicate someone else? Something we can drop to point the finger in a different direction.”
de Vries nods, glancing left and right, then back at their van blocking the alley’s entrance.
“A motive,” Arthur mutters under his breath. “A story. We need a prime suspect.”
Francis puts out his cigarette, taking a sip of water from the glass next to the ashtray. Arthur’s a little more awake, peering out of his blankets to gaze at the shadowy person next to him, everything gray and warm in the dark.
“It’s been a good run in audcom,” Francis says.
“Has it.”
“All thanks to your help, of course.”
Arthur snorts. “What, doing my job while you did yours?”
“Oh, come on now,” Francis says, reaching out and lightly shoving his shoulder. “Let me love you for once. You made it all bearable.”
Arthur can’t formulate a good response for that one. He shifts so he’s lying on his back again, staring at the grainy ceiling, the fog of sleep still blanketing his head.
“I try,” he eventually says.
“You are always, always trying,” Francis replies. “It’s who you are. And now I’m free from audcom, you can leave the conglomerate behind soon— we can keep trying.”
“Somehow.”
“Yes. Somehow.”
A shadow flits across Arthur’s mind, quenching that rage for a moment, bringing a perfect moment of clarity. He has the answer.
It’s been a good week for Amelia.
Work has been fantastic; progress is being made faster than she expected, her new duties are a piece of cake, and the pushback has been minimal. Every day is so exciting, somehow. I just feel like life is perfect. She resolves to spend the weekend enjoying herself— and she refuses to let anything ruin this moment for her.
Not even Meg, standing there frozen next to her bike, staring at Amelia as she pulls into her spot.
Strick. We really haven’t seen each other since… everything. I don’t think she’s been sleeping at home all week. I don’t even know what…
Amelia swallows down the apprehension in her throat, powering her bike down and glancing over with a nod.
“Hey,” she says. “Heading out?”
Meg is still frozen, helmet in her hands, her shoulders hunched and her eyes still on Amelia— she doesn’t know what to say to me, Amelia thinks.
She doesn’t want to set me off again.
“It’s okay,” Amelia blurts out before she can catch herself. “I’ll just go inside now.”
Her sister nods slowly, putting her helmet on as Amelia takes hers off, their usual ritual flipped and reversed in such a detached way—
Don’t think about that. Don’t let this ruin your week, everything you’ve accomplished, just because one thing isn’t quite right. She’ll come around. She has to.
“See ya,” Amelia says, keeping it casual, putting on her usual smile.
Miraculously, Meg gives her a little smile back.
Amelia turns to the elevator— and then her head feels like it’s imploding, an impossibly sharp screeching noise blasts through her rings. The ground rushes up to meet her with a thump that she distantly realizes is her body, and that terrible noise continues to tear her brain apart, shredding her consciousness, agony reverberating through her.
“Stay on the ground,” a man yells, the sound somehow cutting through. “You! Hands up!”
His voice keeps ringing out, but it’s nothing she can parse. Amelia can’t think beyond her own shrieking head, writhing on the ground, batting at her luxes and flicking through setting menus that hurt her eyes— turn it off turn it off turn it off—
A cool hand touches hers, hits a button on her luxes. Something is porting over. Amelia can’t quite decipher the program through the wall of crackle in her brain, and then she blinks and looks up because… it’s over?
Meg?
Her ears are still hot, echoing, but the screaming is gone. Meg is yanking her upright with an iron grip.
“Step away from her,” the man’s voice thunders again.
Amelia blinks, breathing fast and shallow. “What—”
“We need to get out of here,” Meg hisses, and before Amelia can really comprehend what’s happening, she’s dragged onto Meg’s bike, barely wrapping her arms around Meg before it roars to life and screeches off through the garage. Amelia glances behind them and can’t quite put it together:
Four, five agents, piling into a car, one of them taking aim right at them.
Things just… don’t make sense. The revving engine under her, the loud bangs of the bullets flying at them, the voices shouting behind her and Meg’s muttering in front of her, it’s all noises on noises. All of it is intelligible for a brief second before dissolving into that background wail that still rattles her head. I just need to wake up. Wake up.
“My,” Amelia stammers out, “my ears, I…”
Meg shakes her head and takes a sharp left. “Just hang on tight,” she says, “and keep your head down.”
The sound of bullets continues to ring through the air as Meg swerves around another corner. The garage exit is up ahead now, the evening light and traffic just visible. Amelia does hang on tight— just as the bike flies over a speed bump, a second of weightlessness making her stomach flip, and they hit the ground again with a jerk.
“Strick,” Meg hisses, pulling into the street. “We need to lose them.”
“Since when were you such a badass?” Amelia mumbles into her back.
Meg just snorts, head on a swivel as she weaves through the rush-hour crowd of honking, sputtering bikes. “This isn’t over yet. They’re still on us, for whatever reason, and the netblock I ported to you won’t last long. We need to get to a safe place and get your kitt dessed.”
“Dessed?”
“The…” Meg swears again under her breath, zigzagging into another lane and taking a right, the car lagging further and further behind them every time Amelia looks. “They sent a disabling frequency through your kitt— your rings. I temporarily turned it off, so they can’t track you through it, but if we want to remove you entirely from the, uh, net system. Well.”
“You’re saying you need to wipe me,” Amelia says slowly, everything unfolding in front of her. “Are you…?”
“Dessed?” Meg says. “I had a cloak installed to give the superficial impression otherwise, but yes.”
Amelia glances behind them again— no car in sight. “But you don’t need to… I mean, I don’t even know what…”
Meg swerves into an apartment’s bikeport and brakes quickly, gets to her feet, turns to Amelia with big, desperate eyes.
“Amelia,” she says, “look. I assume you couldn’t hear what he was saying back there. That agent has an arrest warrant, with your name on it, for the murder of Francis Bonnefoy.”
What?
No. What?
Amelia gapes, stumbling off the bike, her legs swaying under her. This can’t be real. This can’t be real. “You don’t think I actually— I actually did something like that?”
“That’s not— no. Of course not,” Meg sighs, gesturing at the stairwell in the corner. “Come on. Whoever set you up like this, I don’t know. But if we don’t dess you, you won’t be finding out.”
“Okay,” Amelia whispers. "Okay." She follows.