Where are you?
Avery hesitated. She didn’t know what had prompted it, but the message was enough to make her step away—like a cosmic stroke of fate, protecting her from doing something with Cord that she could never turn back from.
Cord looked startled. He knew her so well. Avery wondered if he could read her right now, could see how hurt she was, how close she’d almost come to kissing him again.
“I’m sorry, but I need to go,” she whispered, and ran toward the elevator bank without looking back.
RYLIN
WHAT A FANTASTIC night it had been, Rylin reflected as she walked through the enormous entrance to the hotel lobby. She couldn’t decide which part had been her favorite. She’d listened to the music for a while, and wandered across the beautiful bridges. She and Leda had perched at a table to eat three full martini glasses of the bacon risotto. She’d even danced with a few of her classmates, the girls from English class she sometimes ate lunch with. Truthfully, the whole night had been perfect, except for the fact that she’d never found Cord. She wondered if for some reason he hadn’t come, after all.
Rylin didn’t feel too disappointed, though. They would see each other again soon enough, when they were both back in the Tower.
She’d started toward the hotel’s private elevator bank when a shadow moved in her peripheral vision, and something about it gave her pause.
It was Cord. He was over by the windows with Avery Fuller; the two of them alone in the dimly lit, deserted lobby. Of course she would see Cord when she was least expecting it. Rylin swayed in her heels, debating whether to go say hi—
And then her body went cold all over as Avery leaned up to kiss him.
They stood there, their faces pressed together, clinging to each other. Rylin wanted desperately to look away but she couldn’t; some cruel masochistic instinct forced her to watch. Her blood pounded through her body, close to the surface of her skin, like liquid fire. Or maybe liquid pain.
Then Rylin realized how she looked, just standing there watching Cord and Avery like a complete fool; and what if they glanced up to see her? She had the presence of mind to dart toward the elevator bank, where she began hitting the button furiously, blinking back tears.
How funny hearts were, Rylin thought, that she wasn’t dating Cord—had no claim on him anymore—yet this hurt her as much as ever. More so, even, now that she knew the girl he’d chosen over her.
She’d been stupid to think that she could ever truly belong in this world. Oh, they let her attend their school, show up at their parties, but she wasn’t one of them. Rylin realized with a startling clarity that she never would be. No matter how hard she tried.
Why would a boy like Cord ever pick a girl like Rylin, when he could have Avery Fuller?
LEDA
LEDA SCREAMED AND kept running down the corridor. It went on and on, no doors or end in sight, just the jagged floor beneath her and the shadows chasing her, flapping their great dusty wings above her face. They looked like harpies, scratching her with her claws, cackling maliciously. Leda recognized them for what they were.
They were all her secrets.
Her cruelty to Avery, her bitterness toward her father, the things she’d done to Watt … every last one of her misdeeds, her years of meddling and spying and plotting all coming home to roost at last … and foremost among them was what she’d done to Eris.
The harpies came closer, scratching at her face. They drew blood. Leda fell to her knees, wailing, and threw her hands up—
A sudden wetness on her face jostled her awake. She rubbed at her eyes. They stung a little. She put her hands below her, feeling the unfamiliar, lumpy surface. She was on a couch somewhere.
“Leda! You’re awake!”
Watt’s face appeared before her, his strong jaw dusted with a shadow of stubble. “You’ve been out for hours. What happened? Nadia hacked a med-bot, got it to deliver adrenaline, which we’ve been feeding you in small doses—she thought you might be getting close to waking just now, which is why I threw the water on you—”
Poor Watt, Leda thought drowsily, he always rambled when he got anxious. It was so endearing.
And then her mind flagged to sudden, violent alert as she remembered. Watt couldn’t be trusted—Watt was the enemy.
“Let me go!” she shouted, though it came out raspy and broken. She tried to stand up only to tumble toward the floor instead. Watt swooped down and caught her.
“Shh, Leda, it’s okay,” he murmured, settling her back on the cushions, but not before she’d gotten a look at their surroundings. They were in their hotel room in the Moon Tower. She regretted not booking Watt his own room, the way she’d done for rehab. Where could she escape now?
“What happened?” he asked again.
Leda reached deep within herself, gathering every last shred of her strength. It wasn’t much, because she felt as though she’d been crunched beneath the weight of the Tower itself. But she managed to lean back, her eyes half closed; and then in a quick, sudden motion she shot her fist upward toward Watt’s head.
It hit his skull with a satisfying, resounding crack, right where she’d been aiming—at the spot where Nadia was implanted.
Watt yelped, momentarily blinded by pain. Leda took advantage of his confusion, pushing herself up and trying to run away—she staggered a few steps but the world spun off-kilter, the ground veering dangerously upward, and she fell heavily back to the carpet.
“What the hell, Leda! Next time your head might hit a table, okay?”
This time Watt kept his distance, crouching a few meters from where she lay on her side. He seemed to know better than to try to help her.
Slowly Leda sat up. Her head was pounding, and her mouth felt dry. The brightness hurt her eyes, and she lifted a hand to shade them, but the room was already growing dimmer. She looked sharply at Watt—she hadn’t seen him make any motions for the room comp—then realized that, of course, his damned supercomputer had done it.
“I hate you,” she managed to say, through her pain and her violent, rending grief. “Go to hell, Watt.”
“Whatever happened to you, I didn’t do it. What do you remember?” he asked urgently.
Leda pulled her knees to her chest. She didn’t care that her gorgeous white gown was ruined, ripped at the hem, smudged with dirt and blood. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she was here, still breathing, still alive. That bitch left her for dead—wanted her to fall into the ocean and drown—yet she’d survived.
“Have you sent me to jail yet, or were you waiting till I was awake?” she snapped. “Don’t lie to me anymore, Watt. I know your computer is in your brain. You were recording me earlier, when I told you about Eris. Weren’t you?”
Watt stared at her in evident shock, the color draining from his face. He reached unconsciously up to that same spot on his head, as if to check whether Nadia was still there. “How did you know?”