Overhead, the pigeons are circling, their cries as deafening as hail on a roof, but I still manage to catch a low whistle cutting the air. Three sharp notes that yank at my memory. My head snaps up, scanning the trees. That’s the signal we used as children, when we called to one another. I know the reply – a two-note echo. I whistle it without thinking, and somebody behind me lets out a gasp.
I spin round to see Leoben stepping out of the forest, carrying a rifle and a mud-smeared backpack. Dirt and ash are caked into the lines of his face. His shirt is torn open, revealing the scars and thick black tattoos covering his chest. His arms are scratched and bandaged, crisscrossed with smears of dried blood. When his brown eyes meet mine, they hold me frozen in place.
He still doesn’t trust me. I have the face of the man who tortured him, who cut him open to see what he looked like on the inside. He said there was nothing so dangerous as an Agatta’s best intentions.
But I am no Agatta.
‘Lee,’ I breathe. Fresh memories rise like tiny fireworks, crackling inside my mind. I see Leoben, small and skinny, playing a game in the hallway. I feel him huddled with me, shaking with pain. I see him screaming and running from the nurses, a trail of blood behind him, a shard of broken glass clutched in one small fist.
He’s my friend, my brother. We’ve known each other since we were babies. How could I not have seen it before?
Leoben narrows his eyes, but as I hold his gaze, his expression drops into disbelief. He looks back into the jeep, where the folders are scattered on the floor. ‘No …’ he says, backing away. ‘No, it’s not possible.’
‘It is,’ Cole says. ‘It’s her, Lee. It’s Jun Bei.’
‘It can’t be.’
‘Lee,’ I say again, staring at the tattoos that cover his arms. Suddenly I can read the story etched into his skin.
An eagle, bear, wolf, scorpion and mountain lion trace their way across his arms, one animal for each of the Zarathustra children. Mine is the little mountain lion – small but fierce – and its story ends in a circle tattooed on Leoben’s chest.
‘You put Jun Bei over your heart,’ I whisper.
‘Of course I did,’ he says. ‘She was my sister.’
‘It’s beautiful,’ I murmur, reaching out to brush the ink-stained skin with my fingers. ‘But I must have told you a hundred times, Lee. Mountain lions don’t have spots.’
My words hang in the air for a moment, and then the wind is knocked from my lungs as Leoben slams into me, lifting me from my feet. His arms crush my sides, his face pressed into my hair as he spins me through the air.
‘Ow!’ I say, laughing. ‘Lee, my shoulder.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ He puts me down but keeps his hands locked on my arms, shaking me as if he’s trying to convince himself that I’m real. ‘I still can’t believe it. Jesus, why did he do this to you?’
I touch his face, his chest, his scars. The affection I feel for him is like a light inside me blinking on. ‘I don’t know why he did any of this, Lee. I can’t remember.’
He swallows, pressing my hand to his heart, tears filling his eyes. He looks between me and Cole. ‘Then let’s go and ask him.’ His voice trembles. ‘I picked up a heartbeat in the lab. I can’t wait any longer. I want him dead.’
CHAPTER 45
‘Nightstick could work,’ Cole says. ‘One of us sets it off, and the other comes in blazing.’
Leoben shakes his head. ‘He’ll be ready for code. We need to come in with steel.’
The two of them are in the front of Leoben’s jeep, with Cole’s following behind on its own. I’m sitting in the back, listening to them make plans, a black holster around my waist and a handgun at my side. We’re going to face Lachlan in the lab. We talked about calling Cartaxus or the Skies, or sending in a fleet of drones, but decided it was too dangerous. Lachlan’s too smart for that. He’ll be watching every blip of communication, waiting for any hint of an attack. If he feels threatened, he can turn on the orange panels anywhere in the world, just like he did in Sunnyvale.
He has the whole world hostage. We don’t have a choice. We have to convince him to let us get close to him, and then we have to kill him.
The thought is like the shadow of a hurricane on the horizon. I know it’s coming, but I can still turn my eyes away. I can pretend for just a few minutes longer that we’re not planning the murder of the man I called Father until a few hours ago.
If I let myself think about it too long, I might lose the nerve to follow through on the plan I’m formulating.
Cole and Leoben keep talking as we drive, speaking in military shorthand, noting firing angles, guns, traps and contingencies. Their anger ripples in the air like heat, growing more focused by the second. It’s something to behold, seeing them work together. Two majestic, crafted weapons thrumming with power, planning an assault I know they’ll execute with surgical precision.
At least they would be able to execute it, if it wasn’t an attack on Lachlan Agatta.
I stare through the jeep’s rear windows at the three-peaked mountains in the distance. If Lachlan is in the lab we’re driving to, that means he’s been here all along. This is where he told us to go in the note he left in Cole’s panel, and I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if Novak hadn’t forced us to go to Sunnyvale.
Would we have driven here and found him waiting? Would he have told me the truth about my past?
Somehow, I don’t think so. Lachlan’s plan is more complex than that. I still don’t know what his endgame is, but I think he wanted everything to happen exactly as it did.
While we were at Sunnyvale, Novak said she’d received an anonymous tip-off – that I would be travelling across the country with the vaccine. At the time I thought it was Agnes, but she wouldn’t have known where we were going. It could have been Dax or Leoben, but something tells me it wasn’t.
That leaves Lachlan.
I’m starting to think he wanted us to end up at Sunnyvale. He wanted Novak in charge, unable to stop herself from broadcasting the decryption live and rushing the vaccine’s testing. He wanted me in a vat with a cable in my spine, and my body acting as a conduit for the four million lines of his daemon code.
If that’s true, then the whole plan is brilliant, and he’s played us like a song. I shouldn’t expect anything else from a man like Lachlan, and that’s why I’m terrified.
Because if he’s planned everything that’s happened until now, that means he’s still in control.
A light rain starts to fall, echoed by a roll of thunder. Cole turns round in his seat to look back at me. ‘You ready for this? We’re going to drive straight up to the lab and go in there unarmed. The more normal we act, the closer he’ll let us get.’
‘Yeah, that sounds smart,’ I say, still looking out the window, fiddling nervously with the zipper of one of the bags beside me. Both Leoben’s and Dax’s sleeping bags and gear are still piled in the jeep from when they were travelling together.
‘You don’t even need to come in with us,’ Cole says.
That makes me look up. ‘Are you kidding? I have more reason than anyone to want to see him dead.’