Perfect Gravity (Wanted and Wired #2)(75)

Vallejo went white beneath his olive skin. “The mech-clone attempted violence?”

“Bet yer ass-bone it did,” Kellen said. His voice was rolling, but the angrier he got, the sharper his voice got, the thinner his accent. He was still deep in dialect, but his voice was hard as diamonds. “Haired out and tried to murder her. Just like you programmed it to do.”

Vallejo opened his mouth, closed it. Then opened it again. “I can say nothing to disprove your theory, but I will swear on everything sacred that I have worked my entire career to eliminate out-of-control mechs. I would never use one as an assassin.”

Which, actually, Angela could believe. Vallejo didn’t have the body language of someone who was lying. At least not this time. And also, there was a thing that Kellen didn’t know. About how—and why—she’d acquired mech-Daniel to begin with.

“Yeah, well, you—”

“Kellen,” she interrupted before he could foolishly defend a woman who didn’t deserve it. “When I left Daniel, Zeke gave me the mech-clone, kind of as a stopgap, so I wouldn’t file for divorce. I’d found out some…things and was pretty off the rails. I don’t know how he convinced Daniel to maintain the ruse, and I didn’t ask. The mech unit was meant to make things right. Zeke transferred it to me, had it programmed with all sorts of government security subroutines. To keep me safe, he said. It was meant to protect me. He said.”

Really to keep her trapped, though. Even without Daniel and his horrible lies, to keep her under the consortium’s thumb.

Zeke knew how much she had come to rely on mech-Daniel, how easy it would be for her to assign any flaw in the mech’s programming to malicious intent on the part of its creator, on the part of Vallejo himself. Scapegoat the mad scientist. How easy for Zeke, how gullible of her.

He totally would have named his secret backdoor Ashe.

She had been played like a game.

“To control you, more likely,” Vallejo said, echoing her thoughts. Strange, though; he wasn’t crowing. His voice was surprisingly gentle. “Once more, I wish I had never begun the mech-clone project. They have been no end of evil for me, and now apparently for others as well.”

Angela thought of the polling boost Zeke got first from Daniel’s death and then later from her own demise. She thought of the president’s alligator tears during his acceptance speech on election night. He never had returned her messages after the Riu. Why was that, exactly? Because she was no longer useful to him? Because she had worked herself free, on her own terms?

Because he’d found out how untenable the whole situation was for her and was done with her rebellion?

He’d told her to stay put in the ruined hotel, covered in bits of bomb. So his drones could come finish the job.

That night, the night of the Riu attack, mech-Daniel had given her a drink, but maybe his intention had not been to relax her, as she’d assumed. Maybe it had been to delay her from going up to wait for her transport. Or to drug her so that if she did die a horrible flaming death, at least it wouldn’t hurt. In hindsight, it was clear mech-Daniel had known the attack was coming. Regardless of his orders or intentions, he had kept her in the room, in the hotel, on purpose.

And he had contacted Zeke even before she regained consciousness. To report in? To request additional orders?

Poor mech-Daniel, he must have been pummeled with instructions coming from all sides. No wonder his artificial neural ultimately couldn’t take it. No wonder he was a junk heap in the Pentarc right now.

She thought of Zeke’s unusually close relationship with Daniel, both of whom had spoken at length of human immortality and a golden age. Both of whom were hooked in deep with the consortium. Both of whom had sought to control her.

The child we make together will live forever. Best of the best. You were born for this. Now, smile for the cameras, Ange. That’s my good girl. Best.

She’d thought Zeke was better somehow, because he said he wanted all the successes for her, on her behalf, but that had been a lie. The wants were still all his. He never once asked her what she wanted. It just never mattered.

Oh, God. Her entire existence was a series of manipulations stacked one on top of the other, a melting sandcastle of a life, and all in service to the aims of others. She had spent years honing her will, learning to shape it and share it, but it wasn’t real. It was the will of her handlers. Fucking nothing about her was real.

She wasn’t a princess, wasn’t a queen. Wasn’t a person, even. She was someone else’s toy. A piece. A pawn.

Nothing.

? ? ?

The woman made of will disintegrated right in front of him. Angela Neko, his Angela, who had once held him up when he got low, who’d given steel to his own spine, fell apart like a sugar skull left out in the rain. Kellen watched it happen and couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it. He went to one knee behind her cushion and caught her at both shoulders lest she ghost away to nothing. He didn’t expect those hands to hold her upright—she was supposed to be the strong one, damn it—but she swayed in his grasp.

Hold on there, darlin’. I got you.

His eyes were drawn to the back of her head, her nape, disappearing into her slick smartfabric dive suit, and his hands, holding her steady. He spotted the tip of a claw mark to the left, and he moved his grasp to avoid putting pressure on a wound that must already hurt. And that’s when he saw it. Shoulder strap on her dry bag, the shape of which was tucked behind her shoulder blade. The shape in that bag was unmistakable from this angle.