I’m easing down to lie beside her once more, and let her skin warm mine, when I see it.
Her outflung arm is bare, and where there’s always been perfect skin before, now there’s smudged makeup concealing a hint of some design below showing through. Is it a tattoo? Or—wait. It’s a genetag. I looked for one of these on her arm that first night in Kristina’s apartment, when I realized Sofia must be from Avon. I didn’t see it then, and now I can tell why. She’s done a good job hiding it. I haven’t seen one on an actual person before—they’re used by colonies that don’t have planetary status yet, taking the place of a proper government ID. And most people from those planets never have the money to travel anywhere I’d meet them. Or anywhere at all. There’s a booming black market for selling the genetag sequences to fully fledged citizens who want to operate under the radar—I’ve got half a dozen of them myself. They’re the kinds of IDs people like Towers use when trying to disappear. But this one’s actually hers—actually tattooed into her skin.
I pull in the screen so I can see better by its dim glow, and reach out without thinking, gently brushing at the smudge with my thumb. A prickling up and down the back of my neck tells me I shouldn’t be doing this, but I can’t resist the chance to find out something about this girl who’s taken over my life. The chance, perhaps, to know who she is—to know why someone might be running her down, using my name. The digital world is mine, not hers.
If I understand who I’m defending her from, I know it’s a fight I can win.
I repeat it to myself, as if that’ll help me believe it’s the only reason I’m doing this.
The tattoo’s in a spiral design, the concealer blocking out the twist of the black lines. The number running along their curve slowly becomes visible as I drag the pad of my thumb along it. My breath stops, chest squeezed tight as the numbers register.
I’ve seen these numbers before.
Oh, no.
I roll onto my front to prop up on my elbows, bringing my lapscreen properly to life. I pull up my Towers subprogram, and there it is. My mystery ID. The war orphan who left Avon—the person whose ID Commander Towers used to make her escape. The one who can’t possibly exist, who was too unlikely. The one I…
Sofia’s voice comes back to me. He’s hunting me. For almost a year now he’s been following me.…Every time I think I’m safe, every time I think I’ve lost him this time, there he is.
There I am.
My hands are shaking. A few keystrokes bring her story to life, files and pictures filling my screen. I could have seen this all along. I could have looked and found her there, a real girl. But I was so damn arrogant, so sure Towers deserved to suffer, so sure that I was smart enough to track down LaRoux’s dirty secrets—so determined to do it at any price.
At any price. As though no price could be too high.
Every time I imagined Towers running, scrambling for safety, every time I smirked in the dark at tipping her out of another hiding place, sending her heart racing…it was this girl sleeping beside me with her lips still curved to a faint smile. It was this girl I’m crazy about. Running scared, her life destroyed by the shadow of the Knave coming after her, for reasons she couldn’t understand. Towers was probably on her quiet farm all this time, never the LaRoux conspirator I imagined, and Sofia was sacrificed in her place. I was her monster all along, and she’s run straight into my arms.
I can’t pinpoint the moment when I became this thing, and I don’t know how I managed to blind myself so completely. LaRoux killed my brother, and he set me on a path I told myself was noble. That it was all right to hurt the ones that deserved it, as long as I was a good guy the rest of the time. That it was okay to be the hound, as long as I only chased deserving quarry.
How can I convince Sofia I was never hunting her, never meant to hurt her? Will she believe me, when I say all her fear was for nothing?
Will she forgive me?
How can I even tell her?