But first the power tech, in case he’s dead.
“Come on,” I tell myself. “Come on.”
My body grumbles but gets its shit together. Eases into a rhythm that won’t make me implode. I straighten, brush myself off, pick a direction, and walk.
They say all roads lead to the House Archive. They’re right.
I didn’t recognize the street two blocks over, but I know this space. This empty block of sky amid a wealth of towers. A gap tooth of quarantined rubble. The city put big sliding fences up to hide the view, but everyone knows what it looks like. We saw the newsfeeds.
I felt the explosion. I was on my way home. Mom had just given me the grand tour of her lab, where she worked in House-wide data storage and manipulation, and then scent mapping on the side.
She’d been normal, as normal as I knew her to be after a month of slow lunches at cafés or in parks. Assured, concise, with that deceptively open air. She seemed confident, trustworthy, had worked her way up to being one of the lead Archivists with—she said—unparalleled security access. She’d spent most of that last night looking at me.
Then she’d given me her bracelet, cupping my hands between her cool ones to blow one hot breath into our palms.
You’ve the whole world, remember? Mom said, smiling. What will you do with it?
I opened my mouth and her smile grew.
And don’t say ‘give it back,’ she said.
I said it anyway.
She kissed my temple. The first and only time she kissed me that I remember.
Then she sent me home and bombed the datacore of our House.
Light tubes burn along the fence surrounding the space where the Archive was, bright enough to pick out the pockmarks in the street. Cast harsh shadows under the hats of the City Enactors, even as the light shows off their shiny boots. The guards walk the circumference, stopping at intervals, keeping watch.
I pull back into an alley before they get too close. Kreslyn Franks returns to the scene of her mother’s crime is not a story I want to read.
At least I know where I am.
Home lies between me and the boarding tower. I swing the extra three blocks out of the way. I need a bathroom and a shower and a change of clothes. It has to be past midnight, maybe later. Whatever has happened to the power tech will have happened by now. Another half hour won’t hurt. Just as long as I don’t sit down.
If I sit, I’ll crash.
I pass through West 1st’s shopping district with its broken windows and barred doors, and round the corner to my street. My tower slides into view. Squat and boxy, the forgotten stepchild of its taller neighbors. I haul myself up the cracked steps and press my keypass to the security panel.
The door clicks and I’m home.
I hit the stairwell. It takes forever, making my feet rise, but I manage. Five floors later and I’m at my door.
It’s ajar.
Dad.
My keypass slips from my slack fingers, and I bolt into the suite. The couch is empty, the curtains drawn, the place dark.
I told him to be here. He said he’d be here.
Which means the Brinkers got here before me. I’ve been walking in circles, but they knew where to go.
A cry from my room, a groan, a growl. The door half-closed.
Dad.
I grab one of Yonni’s empty vases from the couch side table—a sleek metal cylinder and heavy as hell—and inch toward my room on quiet feet. Press the door open with silent fingertips. Heft the vase.
Naked. They’re naked. My bed is piled with naked people. A dark-haired breasty woman—no, a dark-haired breasty Annie from level four—astride some sandy-haired guy with stringy limbs and— “That’s my girl,” says a voice I’ve known since birth.
I drop the vase. It thuds. They don’t hear.
I run.
Out the door, down the stairs, through the lobby. Out into the muggy night with its muggy air that fizzes down my throat and expands into knots.
In my bed. He was in my bed. I saw him, saw his—oh god. I rub hard at my eyes but the image won’t scrub out. Emblazoned in sweaty neon.
Oh god.
I sink, collapse onto the outer steps. Curl over my knees until my arms hang near my toes. “Bastard,” I whisper. The empty street doesn’t answer and doesn’t care. “Bastard.”
With Annie of all people. Someone from my building and whom Mrs. Divs likes. Who can’t be that much older than me. And when Dad switches from screwing to screwing her over, they’ll be two more people in the world who hate my guts. Because obviously, if I hadn’t let him in, none of this would have happened.
In my bed. In Yonni’s bed. I wouldn’t put much of anything past Dad, but hell, even I wouldn’t have thought— I laugh. Or choke.
Idiot. I am such an idiot.
My stomach wants to upend my guts, but there’s nothing to heave. I haven’t eaten since—I can’t even remember.
I knock my head against my knees.
Get up.