Watt had nothing to say to that.
Leda leaned forward as Nadia’s search results populated the monitor. There was a Calliope Brown registered in the Tower, on floor 473—an older woman with a narrow smile. “No, that’s not her,” Leda said, disappointed.
Watt frowned. “Nadia, can you widen the search to the United States?” They scrolled through dozens of faces, then expanded the search internationally, but Leda just shook her head impatiently at every image that appeared.
“She’s staying at the Nuage! Can we find her that way?” Leda impatiently yanked out her ponytail to redo it.
“I’ll show you the cams at high-speed, pulling out the faces. Tell me which one she is,” Nadia offered, using snapshots of the video feed to create an instant database of all the guests. Watt could feel Nadia getting into the search a little, despite herself. There was nothing she loved more than a good puzzle.
After a few minutes of scrolling, Leda leapt off the bed, pointing to a figure in the top right. “There, you see! That’s her!”
“Nadia, can you grab her retinal scans?” Watt asked. Moments later Nadia had pulled up the information. The girl’s retinas were registered to Haroi Haniko, a woman from Kyoto who’d died seven months ago.
“Okay. She’s got a stolen retina pattern,” Leda said, clearly stunned. “She must be a criminal, right?”
Now even Watt was getting curious. “Nadia, what about facial-reg? Full international scope.” She could change her eyeballs, he thought logically, but it was much harder to drastically change her face.
The screen came up blank. “No matches.”
“Try again,” Leda asked, but Watt shook his head.
“Leda, that search included every government—national, state, province, municipal—in the entire world. If this girl existed, we would have found her.”
“What are you saying, that I made her up? She’s right there on camera, you can see for yourself!” Leda burst out, exasperated.
“I’m saying this is really weird. If she’d ever lived anywhere, she would have gotten registered, for an ID ring or a tax card or whatever.”
“Well, there’s your answer,” Leda declared. “She’s never actually lived anywhere—only visited. She never got an adult ID.”
Watt wouldn’t have thought of that, but it made sense. “Why would anyone live that way?”
“Because she’s up to something, obviously.” Leda delivered the phrase with a dramatic flair, as if she were an actress performing in an old tragic play. She frowned. “But why hasn’t anyone figured out that her retinas are wrong?”
“No one actually verifies retinal scans in public places, just cross-checks them with the criminal list. I’m guessing you haven’t seen her in any private homes,” he pointed out.
“Just Avery’s, but it was for a party,” Leda said, and Watt nodded.
“Whatever she’s up to,” he said the phrase the way Leda had, which elicited a smile, “she’s clearly an expert at it.”
They both grew quiet at the notion.
Then Leda looked up with a new idea. “What about schools? Could you run her facial-reg on school networks, not government ones? Or are they hard to crack?”
It was a good idea. Watt wished he’d thought of it first. “Nothing is too hard for Nadia,” he boasted, which wasn’t totally true, but sounded badass. “Nadia?” he prompted, but she’d already found a hit. Clare Dawson, who attended St. Mary’s boarding school in England for a single year.
“Yes! That’s her!” Leda cried out in excitement.
Another match popped up. Cicely Stone, at an American school in Hong Kong. Aliénor LeFavre, in Provence. Sophia Gonzalez, at a school in Brazil. And on and on, until Nadia’s screen was covered in at least forty aliases—all clearly linked to images of the so-called Calliope.
“Wow,” Watt said at last. This was way more intense than what he normally dealt with on H@cker Haus, which was usually just student grade-wipes and cheating spouses, the occasional ID search.
“This proves it. She’s a criminal,” Leda said triumphantly. Her dark eyes were dancing with the thrill of the chase.
“Or a sociopath, or a secret agent, or maybe her family is crazy. We can’t jump to conclusions.”
Leda moved closer to the screen and bent down. He found himself distracted by her presence. “Nadia,” he added, clearing his throat, “can you find records of any incidents at these schools? Expulsions, misdemeanors, anything unusual in her files?”
“And cross-reference all her classmates at these schools, see which of them were her friends? Maybe we can find something through them,” Leda added. Without warning she sat on Watt’s lap, laced her fingers up in his hair, pulled his head down to hers. Her mouth on his was warm and insistent.
Watt was the one to pull away first. “I thought you said that wasn’t why you came here,” he teased, though he wasn’t complaining.
“It wasn’t the only reason,” Leda corrected.
“You don’t want me to go up to your—”
“Shut up,” Leda said impatiently, and kissed him again, her arms over his shoulders. It was easy to stand, to carry Leda to the bed—she was so light—and lay her gently down, never breaking the kiss. Then his hands were on her back, the curve of her hip, and her skin was so soft, and Watt didn’t know anymore whether he liked her or detested her. Maybe he felt both, at the same time, which would explain why all his nerve endings were going haywire, like his whole body might explode at any moment.
He started to ask Nadia to turn off the lights, but the room was already dark, a deadbolt sliding firmly across the door.
LEDA
LEDA BLINKED UP into the darkness.
She was wrapped around Watt’s sleeping form, the two of them cocooned in the warmth beneath his blanket, tangled so closely that even their breath had subconsciously aligned: their inhales and exhales occurring together like in that old medieval poem about the star-crossed lovers. “Clock,” Leda whispered, as quietly as she could.
The blinking numbers in the top left corner of her vision told her it was 1:11 a.m. Crap. She hadn’t meant to stay so late—had only come over on a sudden impulse, when she saw Calliope at antigrav yoga with Risha and remembered her conversation with Avery. She’d hoped, desperately, to find something on Calliope—as if she could give it to Avery as a peace offering, and undo all the wrongs she’d inflicted on her friend.
And, she admitted, she’d wanted an excuse to see Watt.
She shifted over in the narrow bed, not especially surprised that she’d fallen asleep there. She felt so … at ease with Watt, her sleep finally free of the nightmares that normally chased her down long, endless hallways and grasped at her with phantom fingers.