“Twenty.”
“So after twenty years of everyone in America trying to hack this broadcast, you people show up”—her voice trembles and begins to rise—“smash into our homes, take control of our city, and while you’re at it, you go ahead and grab the Holy Grail? The only unjammed frequency in the whole country?” She shakes her head. “How?”
I remember that brief interruption I observed on the bar’s TV. Security footage of the pitchmen’s assistants in some strange, dark chamber. A slow knock on the door in my head, tap . . . tap . . . tap . . .
“It’s in the stadium,” I blurt.
All eyes fall on me except Abram’s.
“The source of the Feed is in the stadium.” I see a trace of a bitter smile on Abram’s face, and I look right at him. “It’s what you really came for.”
He shrugs. “Well, we didn’t come for the nightlife.”
“Bullshit,” Julie says, squinting at him like this is some inscrutable joke. “People have been living in Citi for over a decade. We’ve turned the place inside out. You’re saying we were sitting on the LOTUS broadcast station that whole time and no one knew about it?”
“Someone knew about it.”
Julie’s indignation freezes. Her demeanor shifts. “What do you mean?” she says in a low voice.
Abram sighs. “Look, I’m not Executive. I’m not even Management, I just fly cargo and watch prisoners, so it’s not like I’m invited to the smoky room where the plots are hatched. But from what I’ve heard, about two months ago someone spliced a new message into the Feed.”
Julie stares at him.
“It was crude, obviously rushed, but whoever sent it knew the code, and so did we.”
“What did it say?” she asks quietly.
“That your stadium was under attack and we should come here to protect it. Because you had what we wanted.”
Julie closes her eyes. She takes the realization like a martyr taking a bullet, barely flinching, and I suppose after watching her father try to kill her and then surrender himself to be eaten, this desperate final act may come as no surprise. But the betrayal that preceded it . . . the years of knowing what they had and choosing not to share it . . . that part cuts through. I can see it digging deeper the longer she contemplates it.
Nora notices this and tries to change the subject. “By the way, Abram Kelvin”—she taps his headrest—“since you seem so eager to get to know us . . . my name’s Nora.”
Abram smiles dryly. “Right. Names. We don’t use them much where I’m from.” He glances at Julie, but she’s looking out the window, traveling dark paths in her mind, so Nora fills in for her.
“That’s Julie. She and your brother were a thing.”
Abram’s smile fades into a distant blankness. He seems oddly uninterested in pursuing that topic, so I take my turn in the introductions.
“I’m R.”
“Art?”
“R. Just the letter.”
He glances me up and down as if having an unusual name suggests physical defects. “Who has a letter for a name?”
I shrug. “I do.”
He holds my gaze for a moment in some kind of trust-testing ritual, then grunts and returns his eyes to the road.
“Who names their kid ‘Sprout’?” Nora says, and we all jump a little when Sprout herself answers:
“I do.”
It’s the first time we’ve heard her voice.
“We named her Murasaki,” Abram sighs. “Then one day I said she was growing like a bean sprout and for some reason she latched onto it.”
Sprout’s face flickers into a grin, showing both rows of teeth and a few gaps, then lapses back into worry.
“Where’s her mom?” I ask, and Julie emerges from her brooding to shoot me a stern glance. I recall a lesson she taught me early in my rehumanization: if a family member is conspicuously absent, never ask where they are. You know damn well where they are.
To my relief, Abram ignores me.
“Thank you, by the way,” Julie says to him, still subdued but recovering. “Never got a chance to say that.”
Abram looks back at her. “Thank you? For what?”
“For getting us out of Goldman. Considering this was happening by our third day”—she flashes her bandaged stump—“I’m guessing we wouldn’t have lasted much longer.”
He turns back to the road, shaking his head, but Julie continues.
“I know you said you had other reasons for ditching Axiom, but you still took a big risk to break us out. If you’d just left quietly you might not be a fugitive right now, so . . . thanks.”
“I didn’t do it for you,” he says with a note of disgust. “Why would I risk my life for some strangers in a jail cell? You had information about my family, Management was about to kill you, it was a good time to make my move.”
Julie lowers her brows. “Hey asshole. I’m not saying you’re a hero. I’m just saying thanks.”