‘I heard everything,’ he says. ‘He wanted me to hear. He patched your conversation through to me, but I think part of me knew even before he told you. It’s going to be OK, Cat. We’ll get through this.’
‘But … Jun Bei,’ I say. ‘If what Lachlan said is true, then she’s gone, and you loved her, you –’
He cuts me off with a kiss. ‘I did love her,’ he says when he pulls away, ‘and I still do. That’s something I need to figure out, but we’ll figure it out together. People change, and they still love each other. You’ve just changed a little more than normal.’
‘A little?’
He cups my cheek with one hand, his ice-blue eyes roaming over my face. ‘You’re not as different as you might think. I see a lot of her in you. Her spark, her determination.’ He grins. ‘Her continual attempts to kill me.’
I roll my eyes.
‘But seriously, I see good parts of Lachlan in you too, and there were good parts. You know that. He was brilliant, just like you. But you’re not him, no matter what he said. You’re your own person, Catarina.’
‘Cole –’ I start, then bite my lip, turning away as tears fill my eyes. Cole pulls my face to his chest, stroking my neck as I cry. He doesn’t know how much I needed to hear that. I don’t know the girl I was, and I don’t know who I’ll become, but for right now I’m Catarina. I think I can live with that.
After the tears slow, we lie together silently as the fire crackles and a flock of pigeons swoop and cry above us. Cole’s stomach grumbles, and he presses his lips to my ear. ‘You hungry?’
I nod, my face still pressed to his chest.
‘Well, so am I, and I’d cook,’ he says, ‘but I’m an invalid and all …’
‘You don’t want my cooking. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had food poison–’ I pause as an icon pops up in the edge of my vision. It’s my comm-link app coming back online. The icon spins as it boots up, hooking into the new joint network Dax and Novak set up for the broadcast. ‘Comm-link is back,’ I say. Thousands of messages flood my vision, their text completely covering my field of view. All my old texts are downloading from the network to my new panel. I rub my eyes, fumbling mentally for a way to make them disappear. ‘Ugh, I think I’m downloading every comm-link message I ever got.’
Cole laughs. ‘You’re strobing out.’
‘Is that what you call it?’ I blink again, shaking my head as the words flash and spin. ‘This is making me seasick, it’s …’ I trail off as Agnes’s name pops up. All her messages from the last two years are downloading, scrolling across my eyes so fast I only catch snatches of words.
Got soup … You cold? … Cartaxus drones … up on the highway …
‘You OK?’ Cole asks.
I swallow, nodding. ‘Yeah, I just saw some old messages from Agnes. I wonder where she is, if she’s OK.’
A handful of messages scroll by from my contacts in the Skies about the vaccine, and then I see Agnes’s name pop up again.
Bobcat, I’m tracking your father.
I freeze, searching for the message, but it’s gone. More words flash up so fast I can only catch snippets, but they’re enough to send a jolt through me.
… in Nevada … near the solar farms … follow the pigeons … plan must be stopped … Bobcat, don’t trust Lachlan …
‘What the hell?’ I whisper.
‘What is it?’
‘She’s in Nevada. These messages are from the last couple of days. She’s been sending texts to my comm, but my panel wasn’t working. She’s fine, she’s alive.’
‘See,’ Cole says, rubbing my arm. ‘I told you I didn’t kill her.’
I should be relieved, but my stomach is clenching. If Agnes was tracking Lachlan, then what is she doing down in Nevada?
‘I … I need to check something,’ I say, pushing myself to my feet. I hurry to the lab, limping on my bad knee.
Cole sits up slowly. ‘Wait,’ he calls after me. ‘Where are you going?’
Part of me wants to stop and explain, but the rest of me is already gone. I push open the lab’s heavy steel door and weave through the chairs in the waiting room. The ceiling lights flicker on automatically, triangular fluorescents blinking as I limp down the hallway. The doors to the lab are bloodstained, one swinging from a broken hinge. I draw in a breath, steeling myself, and step into the room.
The shrapnel-riddled body of the man I once called Father sits slumped lifelessly in the dentist’s chair. He sat there the whole time we were talking, barely moving even when I hacked the genkit. He could have tackled me and ripped the wire out of my arm. I know he was wounded, but he still made it to the lab somehow. It wasn’t like he was paralysed.
So why didn’t he get out of his chair?
I replay the moment in my mind, the skin on the back of my neck prickling. For a man who had such complex plans, this suddenly seems too simple.
Something is wrong.
I step closer, reaching for his hand, tracing my fingers across his cold, burned skin. Every line of his face is familiar. His eyelashes, his fingernails, his teeth are all those of a man I once fiercely loved.
But today I learned that looks can be deceiving.
I slide my knife from the sheath at my thigh and jerk it up his trousers, splitting the grey fabric open to his knees. The burns around his feet stop a few inches up his calf, and above that his skin is a clean olive. No blisters, and no burns. No injuries at all except for the shrapnel from the genkit I blew up.
This doesn’t look like a man who was burned so badly that he couldn’t get out of his chair.
I stand, swaying, my pulse thudding in my ears. I look over his face again.
‘No,’ I breathe. ‘It can’t be.’
‘Cat?’ Cole calls out. ‘Where are you?’
My stomach heaves. I spin round, covering my mouth with my hand, and shoulder my way back through the lab’s doors. My eyes well with tears as I run down the hallway.
‘Cat, what’s wrong?’ Cole asks when I burst into the waiting room. He reaches for my arm, but I shove past him and push through the front door.
I stumble out into the grass and double over, my hands braced on my thighs, fighting the nausea rolling through me. Cole’s footsteps sound behind me. The lab’s door screeches open, and he runs to me, his eyes wide.
‘What happened? Are you OK?’
I draw in a ragged breath. ‘It was too easy. I should have guessed.’
‘What do you mean? Cat, you’re scaring me.’
‘It wasn’t him,’ I say, my voice shaking. ‘It was a puppet.’
He stands and steps back. ‘No, it couldn’t be …’
I swallow, the dead man’s face filling my mind. Once I realized what Lachlan had done, the differences were sickeningly obvious. The man’s eyes were set too far apart; his Adam’s apple was too big. The point of his chin wasn’t as pronounced as mine. I should have noticed, but he’d been so artfully burned and bandaged that my mind skipped over those minor details.
I blew up those genkits and killed an innocent man – someone with a panel full of code designed to make him look like Lachlan Agatta. A helpless puppet forced to sit there, trapped in his own body.