Honor Among Thieves (The Honors #1)(18)

After some juggling, we found my head doctor in the crowd. “Already wishing you well, Zara. Take care of yourself.” His sincerity touched me, but I couldn’t show it.

That’s it. I’m out of here. We walked out into the large, grassy exercise yard and headed for the gates. They cranked open. The guards actually clapped.

Once we were outside, Marko turned and held up his hands as the camera drones pressed in closer. “Okay, okay, enough,” he said. “Let Zara have a little time, all right? You know how much of a shock it can be. You remember me when I was picked?”

He gave them a slack-jawed expression of surprise, and some of the media types behind us laughed. The drones hissed away, nearly silent in the open air. I was sure at least one or two were still tagging us from a distance, and the people with head-cams were probably taking long-range vid, but it felt like I had some privacy again.

Marko tapped the door of a long, sleek e-car parked nearby, and it opened for us. “Get in,” he told me.

“Where are we going?”

“The terminal,” he said. “We have a rail car standing by to New York. You’re the last one on the list. The official announcement is tomorrow. I thought the train would be best. You can rest, and it’s . . . private, don’t worry.”

Like he understood how exposed I felt, how turned inside out. Maybe he really did. I sank into the luxury of the e-car; the seats adjusted to my body, and the safety straps clicked in as a rush of warmth came over me. Commercial relaxers—not enough to get me high, enough to take the edge off. The car must have read my blood pressure and heart rate.

Biotech from the stars. Gift from the Leviathan—they’d changed the world, a hundred years ago, way before my time. I lived in the pretty, sterile bubble of the After, but every chance I got, I ran to the old-school struggle of the Lower Eight. Flaw in my code; that was what I always thought. Only Yu now had me thinking it was something different, the way my old man made me instead of faulty DNA. Not that it changed anything, but it did lighten the load a little.

Marko got in the other side and approved the route, and the car set out smoothly on the drive. I paid attention, because being in an e-car this nice was a whole new experience. Self-drivers were common, but this was top-model stuff. Conde would drool all over himself for the parts, I thought, but then I remembered that Conde was a brittle tangle of bones in a smoking hole.

“You all right?” Marko asked me again. I nodded slowly. “It is hard to take in, I know. I felt wrong for days, after.”

The laugh that got away from me had buzz-saw edges. “Look, Marko, we don’t have anything in common.”

“Don’t we?”

“I saw your special. You’re not like me.”

“No. And I don’t know why the Leviathan asked for you. I’ve read your file. You have brains, but no control. Thief, vandal, troublemaker—”

“Is this how you chat up girls? Because I’ve heard better.” He could’ve added killer to the list. But that wasn’t in the file.

I could almost see him considering saying something rude, but he just shook his head. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s just that you are . . . so unexpected, for an Honor.” I was used to being checked out, but Marko wasn’t doing that. He appraised me with curious, unemotional eyes.

I was the first Honors pick straight out of rehab. Maybe I’ll be the first to disappear too. Until we left Earth, I’d be seeing Deluca in every shadow.

“Why do you think they chose me?”

Marko shrugged. “They are Leviathan. A hundred years after the arrival, we still don’t understand them entirely. Don’t doubt that there is a reason, though.”

“If you say so.” I wriggled in my seat to get my spine relaxed. My pulse was slow and lazy now, and I felt ever so light in my skin. Good stuff, what these e-cars pushed. I must have needed it.

“You’re the youngest Honor ever chosen. The media will make much of that.”

“Let ’em,” I said. “Don’t care.”

“You don’t care about much, I can see that,” he said.

He wasn’t wrong.

Marko faced forward as the e-car took a left turn and accelerated into a lane, along with a smoothly flowing river of vehicles. The city rose up around us, vast and resurrected and full of wonders. Beyond the edges I glimpsed the darker, jagged line of the Lower Eight, with the outline of the dump, a harsh feature in the middle. Not so many lights out there. And not many wonders.

“I don’t have anybody,” I blurted. I didn’t mean to say it, but there it was, out in the open, before I could think better. Damn relaxers. “I mean, for the ceremony.”

Watching the lead-up coverage, I’d seen last year’s ceremony, and Marko standing with the happy, proud circle of his family. All the Honors had family, seemed like. Derry couldn’t afford a ticket, Mom and Kiz were on Mars, and I’d rather not see my old man.

“You do, actually. Your mother and sister will be landing tomorrow. They were both so excited when I spoke to them.”

The smile cracked my face wide open before I could stop it. “Really?”

It wasn’t that I didn’t love my mom, even though I’d cut formal ties when I’d had her sign me into adulthood. No, that was exactly why I did it. I didn’t want her weighed down with me anymore. If she’d known I felt that way, she would’ve fought even harder for me. But she’d suffered enough for me, and I wanted her to live in peace while I handled my own business. She had to get Kiz raised right. Away from him. And me.