The low wings slope forward, barely clear my head as I walk under. I tap the keypass’s emblem again, because that’s what they do on the feedshows.
It works. A tall panel in the wing’s side slides into itself. A compact metal ladder slides out below and uncurls. I half expect some uniformed orderly to jump out and bow with a reverent “my lady.”
Somebody will notice this missing, probably the Prime, and the first person he’ll look to will be the last one in my company.
Stupid, so stupid. The boy will get himself killed.
I climb the ladder. It retreats in on itself, the door closing without any help from me. I’m in a brushed silver hall, narrow and packed with sliding doors on each side, labeled in digiscreens. Restroom, storage, bunk, icer. I follow the hall right, step through the open arch to the cockpit. Two seats, and a wide console with three data-filled screens and shiny lights.
Double shit.
I take a chair and say, as all the feedshow flyers do, “Engine on.”
The wing hums to life, dim lights rising. The data in the central screen disappears, replaced by a pretty woman in a purple flight cap.
“Welcome to the Greypiper 400. I am Pali, the lead connector to your interface.” Her nod is almost a bow, dark curls brushing her ears. “Shall I perform a preflight check before we get under way?”
“Uh, sure?”
The screen freezes a beat, Pali caught open-mouthed, then she blinks and smiles. “Preflight check initiated. Estimated completion time, fifteen minutes.”
Well, that was easy.
I dig through Niles’s pack for the box. It’s light, fits in my palm with room to spare, old wood with old hinges. I pop the lid.
Inside beats Yonni’s heart.
Snug in a bed of cushioned black. Probably Decker’s doing. Beside it lies a cheap audio note tag, small and square with Listen! emblazoned on one side. We used them all the time at work, to identify lockers or belongings. I press my thumb to the letters and hold until the note plays.
“I found this with the bracelet.” Niles. Clipped, rushed. “I hope it’s the right one. The pendant? Your grandmother’s? I didn’t realize you meant a heart heart. If you’re listening to this, Dad has you now, or had you, so you know about me. And the bracelet. I had to give him something. You were becoming too interesting to him, he needed a—” He hesitates and grinds out the words, “a different toy. I’ll have everything ready. Reds, ID, a wing—you have to leave the city. You cannot stay on-planet. Dad will find you, and I can’t get you out a second time. No one fools Dad twice. Not even me.” Silence. Seconds of it, tinny and static, building under my skin. “Not that I wouldn’t try. I would. Be safe, Kit,” he says, and the message clicks off.
Safe? Safe? As if he wasn’t my safety. The only thing that felt real in this whole week of hell.
I bite my lip, but I still feel him. Everywhere. The memory, the lack. The Prime’s son who’s playing martyr to save my life.
Or else just playing.
I am not a toy. The Prime never looked at me like a person.
It’s a damn dangerous game. Assuming Niles’s dad doesn’t suss him out, the Brinkers will. And with me gone and not mapped, the Brinkers will have a field day with my family. Hell, with me gone, the Prime might jump on that, too—map Dad and Dee just for the hell of it.
The countdown on the central console screen reaches ten.
Don’t think I don’t know what her digivirus is doing, the Prime had said. Why she chose the Archive.
The Archive held the central data structure of our House, the core network all other networks fed into. A virus begun in the Archive could leech into every data feed House-wide. Networks, public feed stations, secure databases, personal and corporate information stores. Everything.
Mom’s smiling face in the pet shop window, red lips blowing into cupped hands. The question is a matter of heart.
I didn’t realize you meant a heart heart, Niles had said.
I lift Yonni’s pendant out of the box. It dangles from my fingers, pulses soft between its vines as I twist it back and forth. It’s seamless but for the soft glow of the circuits. No buttons to push or spring to pop.
You’re a smart girl, it’s not hard.
“Mom?” I ask. “Millie Oen?”
Nothing.
“If you think I’m busting the last of Yonni open for you, you are so wrong.”
The glow doesn’t rise or the pulse skip. It is as it always was, and suddenly I know.
“But I don’t have to, do I?”
Scent maps require air-freshener sticks, so I steal some. Pali flew me to the closest store, and breaking in wasn’t an issue with the power-out.
After, we head into North 8th—which is to East 5th what East 5th is to Low South, only less populated. A day’s walk that takes us all of ten minutes. I tell Pali to power down her lights flying in, and she docks us in an empty public lot. At least, the map on the screen says it’s a public lot. I can’t see shit.