“She’s dead,” I say, and he snorts.
Because of course the brilliant Millie Oen—Archivist, data-technologist, and now murderous bomber—couldn’t possibly have died in the explosion she caused. She was too smart for that. The rescue teams couldn’t find her body.
Though with the extent of the explosion, they couldn’t find her lab, her office, or any of the sublevel libraries and record-storage floors, either. They melted into each other. The Archive was our digital core, the central data structure all networks fed into and out of. Reports, power-grids, birth records, histories, and finances from mundane to high clearance, the Archive held it all—and Mom erased it in a night.
Our House is running on backups.
“So what was this?” The power technician asks, waving at the ledge, the street. “Atonement?”
“I didn’t set the bomb,” I say.
“You didn’t stop it,” he says, and there’s no fighting that. I didn’t know doesn’t change anything.
I should have known. I was in her lab that night. I should have known.
I move to the stairwell.
“Where the hell are you going?” the man calls.
“Somewhere less populated,” I say and slam the door.
Everywhere’s populated. The predawn cleaning crews own the streets, their man-size sweeper bugs flashing lights and whirring low. I could step out in front of one, but all I’d get is scrubbed raw. The woman walking with the nearest sweeper glares. She’s either read my mind or I’m in the way.
Or else she’s registered my face and added two and two together, like the power technician.
Freakin’ newsfeeds. They ran a report on Mom, her history, and her surviving relatives. The obligatory this is how you grow a crazed murderer special. The lack of real information was a testament in itself—either to bad reporting or Mom’s skill in masking truth—but there’s one thing they did get right.
Me.
A whole five-minute segment with my face front and center. Not that they had much on me, either. Kreslyn Franks, eighteen, youngest tour guide on record for the Gilken Museum Foundation. I’m wearing the uniform in the picture, which they must have pulled from the museum’s feedpage on the general network. No mention of Yonni or Dad, or a life outside work. Yonni was a master at keeping her private life private—a prerequisite for anyone working nights in other people’s beds. And Dad? The newscasters’ guess is as good as mine.
As far as the life part, well, that’s none of their business.
The glaring street cleaner waves over another of the crew, then leans in and whispers in his ear. His gaze locks with mine. Surprise, anger, a touch terrified at the edges.
Lovely.
I duck into an alley and sprint to the next street over. More cleaners and traffic. At this rate, the only point of isolation would be home. So I walk. Barefoot.
The skytowers block most of their namesake, but some light leaks through—changing from pitch to pale, skipping soft. The pavement simmers and dirt coats my soles in the patches the sweepers missed. Low South blends into South Central, age-old towers butting against color and height, and then morphs into the respectable West 6th district, and finally into the haggard-but-standing West 1st.
West 1st used to be deeply monied and highly sought after, until fifty-story cloudsuites became the thing. None of our suitetowers have over fifteen. Mine has ten. A squat, little stone-and-steel number with more windows than wall space. Wide paved steps, still austere despite their cracks, lead up to an ornate glass door. I’m halfway across the street before the deeper shadows by the entryway register as human form.
Dee, Dad’s sister.
She’s in her favorite black jacket with the pink studs, dangling a cigarette and blowing smoke rings. Perfect circles that expand the higher they get, to entrap the sky.
If there was any justice, they’d slip around her throat and squeeze.
“Where you been?” she calls.
I climb the steps and pull my keypass out of my pocket, keeping as far from her as possible. “What’s it to you?”
“Don’t be like that.” She all but drips sugar, even as her next smoke ring hits my ear. “Thought you’d be happy to see me.”
Yeah, six months ago, when it might have made a difference for Yonni. When it might have made a difference for everything.
I slap my keypass to the hidden security reader in the wall, melded in to look like stone. Its tiny light flashes green, and I push through the heavy glass door. The ancient lobby arcs with wide brown carpet before narrowing to a resident hall, and ending at the rickety elevator. No furniture anymore, not even a desk.
Dee slips in before I can stop her, flicking her cigarette away as the door closes.
If she thinks I’m letting her into Yonni’s suite, she has another think coming. I plant my feet and cross my arms.
“God, you look like Ricky when you do that,” says Dee.
Which probably beats looking like Mom, but not by much. At least Dad never killed anyone. That I know of.
“What do you want, Dee?”