Carver raises his brows. This piece of information transforms his face.
“But I don’t like the dark,” I add. “I don’t want to spend a lot of time in dark places.”
“You’re afraid of the dark?” Mr. F asks.
I make no apologies to anyone about my fear of the dark. When you’ve spent 260 years in a black hole with no sound, touch, or light, you have a whole new understanding of what darkness can mean. “Yeah, Xavier. You got a problem with that?”
“I got all kinds of problems, kid, and that’s the least of them. Cool your heels.” His eyes are locked on mine, neither of us ready to back down.
Carver stands and walks in the shadows like he’s trying to divert our attention. “What about this woman named Miesha?” he asks. “I understand she helped you get away from Gatsbro. What do you know about her?”
“She’s tough—at least that’s the act she puts on. She’s had a hard life. She spent some time in prison. Turns out she’s my niece. Sort of. About eight generations removed. I guess technically, I’m not related to her any more than I am to anyone else, but it’s all I’ve got.”
“Trust her?”
“With my life.”
“She was part of a Resistance movement, wasn’t she?”
Knowing about me is one thing, but I’m surprised he knows so much about Miesha. “Was,” I answer cautiously. “Her husband and daughter died because of it and that’s when she quit.”
The others have fallen silent. Carver seems to be in control of where we’re going. I watch him continue to pace in the shadows. “How did they die?” he asks.
“Burned. Their house was torched by Security while she was away at a market.”
“Horrible. Did she identify the bodies?”
“No. She was arrested the minute she returned to the house. That’s when she went to prison. She was in for eleven years.”
There’s a long silence. I wait for someone to speak, but they all seem to be weighing this information.
“Is that what this is about?” I finally ask. “Are you part of the Resistance?”
Carver keeps his face in the shadows, like he doesn’t want to betray his expressions, but I note the hesitation in his step. “There’s no Resistance movement anymore,” he says.
“There’s always resistance, whether you say it with a capital R or not. You may call yourselves the Network, but I don’t see the difference. The Network exists to help the same people who are part of the Resistance.”
“You’re wrong,” Carver says. “The Network is only a humble humanitarian effort, while the Resistance was proactive and political. Let’s move along to—”
I push my chair back. “Can we just cut the semantics crap? You already know all about Miesha, Jenna, Kara’s death, and probably the color of my underwear. Enough with the questions. Why am I here?”
“To help a Non-pact. We already told you,” Mr. F grumbles.
“Who?” I’m not trying to hide my impatience anymore. I understand they aren’t sure if they can trust me yet, are maybe even afraid of who or what I am, but I’m just as wary of them. Meeting shady figures in shady basements doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. I’ve already sized up the room, figured out my fastest exit and the convenient obstacles to throw in their paths. I hope they can hear in my voice that I’m seconds from walking out the door. They either meet me halfway or they don’t.
Carver returns to the table and sits. The four exchange glances. He opens his mouth to speak but Livvy cuts him off. “We aren’t sure, Locke. There’s been a rumor for the last year that the Secretary of Security is holding someone in a special detainment area somewhere in the city. Usually arrested Non-pacts are sent to Reformation and Reassignment Centers in the desert, but not this one.”
“What did he do? Violate public space?”
Livvy shakes her head. “No, for that he would have been whisked to the desert years ago. We think he might be someone who stole some money sixteen years ago. A lot of money.”
I let out a quick puff of dismissive air. “Why would you want to help someone like that? Stealing’s a crime, in case you haven’t heard.”
“If it’s who we think it is, he didn’t do it for himself,” Carver explains. “He did it for the Resistance.”
Bingo. We’re back to that after all. I raise my brows in victory, but they don’t seem to notice, more entranced with this long lost thief.
“It was pure genius,” Xavier continues. “He hit every government contractor who built security systems to keep Non-pacts from public spaces. Nine contractors, eighty billion duros all funneled instantly into a secret account. They went down like dominoes.”
They have my attention. “Eighty billion?”
Mr. F smiles like he’s reliving it all over again. “Besides the financial hit, the humiliation factor for the so-called security contractors was so high, the theft was never revealed to the public. He had done maneuvers like this before on a smaller scale, but this time he outdid himself. The day he did it he sent us a ‘complete’ message in the afternoon along with the account numbers, but by evening he was—”
Carver jumps in. “Gone. And access to the account for eighty billion was gone with him. We thought he had sent us all the numbers, but apparently for safety reasons he only delivered half via cyber-transmittal. We later learned that the other half was to be hand-delivered.” He opens a note window, writes something on it, and flicks it toward me, a virtual memo floating across the air to me. I grab it and it becomes tangible material at my touch, almost like paper. “That was all we got,” he explains, “twelve numbers that are virtually worthless without the rest. He said he’d make sure we got the missing numbers but he never had the chance. He disappeared without a trace. He was either missing or dead.”
“Or he took off with the money. Isn’t that what thieves do?”
“Not him.” Xavier’s ears redden and he looks like he’s going to tear off my face.
I blink slowly so he knows I’m unaffected. A lesson for you, Xavier: Never show the enemy your weakness. “Okay. So missing or dead. But you don’t know which?”
“His house was raided by Security Forces,” Carver says. “Burned out. His body was never produced. His widow—”