Shadow Bound
Page 36
Kori shrugged. “The fact that you kept your cool in the alley, which tells me you’re not easily rattled. The fact that you held your own in that fight, which tells me you don’t run from trouble. And the fact that you need something from Jake, which tells me that you’re here because you want to be here, not because he wanted you here. Don’t get me wrong—he would have gotten you here anyway, but you didn’t even make him work for it.”
She crossed her arms over her chest again and silently challenged me to argue with her. “All of that together tells me that you may be a systems analyst, but you are not a corporate automaton with clean fingernails and an even cleaner conscience. This might shock and disgust you—and I’d be worried if it didn’t—but it won’t scare you away.”
How the hell was I supposed to argue with that? Insist that I was easy to scare? This was why I’d wanted Kenley assigned as my tour guide. Ten minutes alone with her, and the whole thing would have been over. Without the psychoanalysis and flight-risk assessment from her sister. Not to mention the dangerous, top-secret information I was now burdened with.
“You shouldn’t have brought me here,” I insisted.
“I had to bring you here. You had to see what he can do, and that he can get to anyone. You had to understand.”
And suddenly I did. I wasn’t just looking at a collection of human vegetables being milked for the source of their Skills. I was looking at my own future. Kori was trying to tell me without actually telling me that Tower would get what he wanted from me, one way or another. I could serve him, or I could bleed for him.
She wasn’t trying to scare me away. She was trying to scare me into signing, to avoid the alternative.
My head spun. My stomach pitched. But I stood straight and swallowed everything I couldn’t say. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but at least three people have seen us, and if any one of them talks, we’re both screwed.”
Though I hadn’t known about Tower’s pet project when I started this mission, I was fully aware of the risk to my own life. Personal risk I could handle, but I didn’t want her death on my conscience.
Hell, I didn’t want her death at all.
“They’re not going to talk,” Kori insisted. “The receptionist and the security guard don’t even know about this—Jake has half a dozen other projects going on in this one building. There are no cameras in here—” she glanced around the perimeter of the ceiling for emphasis “—because Jake won’t risk the footage being seen by the wrong pair of eyes. Which is also why the staff for this project is smaller than you’d expect. And Abbot can’t report us without getting into serious trouble himself. So as long as we’re gone before his replacement comes on duty, we’re all good. Unless…” Kori frowned and picked up the clipboard Abbot had dropped onto the table. She glanced at it for a second, then set it down again and crossed her arms over her chest. “Nope. No deliveries scheduled for today.”
“Deliveries?” I’d seen a lot of sick stuff both stateside and overseas, but nothing compared to this. To people kept comatose and harvested for their blood. This made me sick. “Are these the deliveries you’re no longer making?” I could hear the anger in my voice, and I could tell from the narrowing of her eyes that she heard it, too.
“I can’t answer that,” she said. “But I can say that I was removed from Jake’s personal security squad about half a dozen times to acquire a few of the more complicated things he required.”
“Because you’re a Traveler.”
“And because I’m a petite woman, which makes me slightly less threatening than your average hulking male goon.” I lifted one brow at her and she shrugged. “At first glance.”
“Why would you do this?” I demanded, my voice lower and harder than I’d intended as I looked out at the neat rows of cots and identically dressed donors. Everything was designed to strip them of identity. To dehumanize them, so the employees wouldn’t be bothered by that pesky sense of decency. Of human compassion.
“If you haven’t figured that out for yourself by next week, you can ask me again, and I’ll answer.”
But the answer was obvious. She’d had no choice. And neither had any of the people she’d taken. Tower had found a new way to rob people of their most basic rights, and as important as my mission was to me, on a personal level, I couldn’t overlook what I was seeing. I couldn’t just walk away from all this when I’d done what I’d come to do.
“Who are they?” I whispered, my voice an echo of the horror roiling inside me.
“They’re people,” Kori said, staring through the glass. “They’re from all over the country. None from this city, and few who would be missed by families or coworkers.”
“Few? So some were missed?”
“That’s inevitable. Some are presumed dead. Some are missed as runaways.”
“And you put them here.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact I couldn’t quite believe, and she couldn’t outright confirm.
“That’s how this works, Ian. This is what’s under all the fucking sequins and champagne. Stuff like this, and people like me and you, making it all happen.”
Her voice was sharp, but her expression was empty, and I’d learned that when she looked like that—closed off and unavailable—she wasn’t feeling nothing. She was feeling too much. She was blocking it all out. That was a survival skill, and her still-beating heart was proof that it worked.
She crossed her arms over her chest again and silently challenged me to argue with her. “All of that together tells me that you may be a systems analyst, but you are not a corporate automaton with clean fingernails and an even cleaner conscience. This might shock and disgust you—and I’d be worried if it didn’t—but it won’t scare you away.”
How the hell was I supposed to argue with that? Insist that I was easy to scare? This was why I’d wanted Kenley assigned as my tour guide. Ten minutes alone with her, and the whole thing would have been over. Without the psychoanalysis and flight-risk assessment from her sister. Not to mention the dangerous, top-secret information I was now burdened with.
“You shouldn’t have brought me here,” I insisted.
“I had to bring you here. You had to see what he can do, and that he can get to anyone. You had to understand.”
And suddenly I did. I wasn’t just looking at a collection of human vegetables being milked for the source of their Skills. I was looking at my own future. Kori was trying to tell me without actually telling me that Tower would get what he wanted from me, one way or another. I could serve him, or I could bleed for him.
She wasn’t trying to scare me away. She was trying to scare me into signing, to avoid the alternative.
My head spun. My stomach pitched. But I stood straight and swallowed everything I couldn’t say. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but at least three people have seen us, and if any one of them talks, we’re both screwed.”
Though I hadn’t known about Tower’s pet project when I started this mission, I was fully aware of the risk to my own life. Personal risk I could handle, but I didn’t want her death on my conscience.
Hell, I didn’t want her death at all.
“They’re not going to talk,” Kori insisted. “The receptionist and the security guard don’t even know about this—Jake has half a dozen other projects going on in this one building. There are no cameras in here—” she glanced around the perimeter of the ceiling for emphasis “—because Jake won’t risk the footage being seen by the wrong pair of eyes. Which is also why the staff for this project is smaller than you’d expect. And Abbot can’t report us without getting into serious trouble himself. So as long as we’re gone before his replacement comes on duty, we’re all good. Unless…” Kori frowned and picked up the clipboard Abbot had dropped onto the table. She glanced at it for a second, then set it down again and crossed her arms over her chest. “Nope. No deliveries scheduled for today.”
“Deliveries?” I’d seen a lot of sick stuff both stateside and overseas, but nothing compared to this. To people kept comatose and harvested for their blood. This made me sick. “Are these the deliveries you’re no longer making?” I could hear the anger in my voice, and I could tell from the narrowing of her eyes that she heard it, too.
“I can’t answer that,” she said. “But I can say that I was removed from Jake’s personal security squad about half a dozen times to acquire a few of the more complicated things he required.”
“Because you’re a Traveler.”
“And because I’m a petite woman, which makes me slightly less threatening than your average hulking male goon.” I lifted one brow at her and she shrugged. “At first glance.”
“Why would you do this?” I demanded, my voice lower and harder than I’d intended as I looked out at the neat rows of cots and identically dressed donors. Everything was designed to strip them of identity. To dehumanize them, so the employees wouldn’t be bothered by that pesky sense of decency. Of human compassion.
“If you haven’t figured that out for yourself by next week, you can ask me again, and I’ll answer.”
But the answer was obvious. She’d had no choice. And neither had any of the people she’d taken. Tower had found a new way to rob people of their most basic rights, and as important as my mission was to me, on a personal level, I couldn’t overlook what I was seeing. I couldn’t just walk away from all this when I’d done what I’d come to do.
“Who are they?” I whispered, my voice an echo of the horror roiling inside me.
“They’re people,” Kori said, staring through the glass. “They’re from all over the country. None from this city, and few who would be missed by families or coworkers.”
“Few? So some were missed?”
“That’s inevitable. Some are presumed dead. Some are missed as runaways.”
“And you put them here.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact I couldn’t quite believe, and she couldn’t outright confirm.
“That’s how this works, Ian. This is what’s under all the fucking sequins and champagne. Stuff like this, and people like me and you, making it all happen.”
Her voice was sharp, but her expression was empty, and I’d learned that when she looked like that—closed off and unavailable—she wasn’t feeling nothing. She was feeling too much. She was blocking it all out. That was a survival skill, and her still-beating heart was proof that it worked.
