8 – Betrayal

  The restaurant was crowded and noisy, but Tony liked it that way. He wanted the anonymity of crowds, and Addie, being from the Blast, didn’t mind it at all. The booths were more than well-worn; they were beat-up with tape holding them together where the material had split. Even so, the fragrance of spices in the air and the size of the crowd said all you needed to know about the quality of the food. “Good?” he asked, watching Addie swallow a big bite of her pad thai.

  She smiled, licking some sauce off her lips. “Mmhmm. How’s your curry?”

  Tony nodded, scooping some “chicken” and rice onto his chopsticks. “Good. Very spicy.”

  Addie watched him chew, narrowing her eyes. “That’s how you define good?”

  Tony swallowed, chuckling as he shook his head. “Nah, I mean, the flavors are great.” She stared at him for a minute, smiling slightly, and he felt a small lump in his throat as he thought about what he’d do if he couldn’t see her face anymore. It was a strange thought to have, maybe, but he had his reasons, what with that message he’d received from Eric.

  Since then, he’d lied to her at least once, and if you counted all the opportunities he’d had to bring it up, you could say he’d lied by omission a dozen times. How do you bring something like that up, though? Bluntly? Something like, “Listen, I know we agreed to go after Eric and Jen together, but things have changed. I found out she’s keeping tabs, and I can’t risk her moving against me before we move against them. I gotta get away from you…”

  “Why do you look like that? Was something wrong with that bite?”

  Tony covered his mouth and cleared his throat, shaking his head. “Spicier than I thought.”

  “Put some more rice in it!” She pushed the container closer, and Tony nodded, scooping some onto his dish.

  “Um, how were things at Madeline’s? You looked happy when I picked you up.”

  Addie smiled as she picked up her soda and took a sip through her straw. “She’s so great! Look!” She pulled her zipper down a little and reached into her coat, withdrawing a small, plastic clamshell. When she clicked the clasp and opened it, he saw a paperback book inside.

  Squinting, he leaned a little closer and read the stylized title, “The Left Hand of Darkness? You bought a book?”

  Addie’s smile grew wider. “No, she gave it to me. My first! I mean, if you don’t count my dad’s.”

  “That’s really nice! Is it good?”

  Addie nodded, closing the plastic case. “I just started it, but I was drawn in right away. I mean, I was in the mood for some quiet reading, you know?”

  Tony chuckled, shaking his head. “Nah, never been hit with that kind of mood, I don’t think.”

  “Sure you have, you just don’t know it. I mean, have you ever read a book for fun?”

  “For fun? Do graphic serials count?”

  “Strips? I’ve binged tons!” Addie smiled, stuffing her book back into her coat. “Have you ever read Midnight Samurai?”

  Tony clicked his tongue, picturing the main character without trying. “You kidding? I always wanted to be like Hanzo.”

  “Oh my gosh! Now it’s all making sense!” Addie laughed, leaning back and shaking her head while she looked at him adoringly. Tony felt his heart breaking again as he thought about losing her. Could he live if she wasn’t there to look at him like that? What was living, anyway? “You’re in a funny mood. Why are you staring like that?”

  “I just think…” Tony started to chicken out, but then he forced his dumb lips to move, leaning forward to take Addie’s hand. “I think I fucking love you.”

  Addie closed her mouth with an audible click of her teeth. She tilted her head to the side as she stared into his human-looking eye. “Don’t tease me, Tony!”

  “Why the hell would I tease you? I mean, I know I don’t often confess my feelings, but damn, Addie, you must know I’m crazy about you!”

  “There’s being crazy about someone and then there’s love.”

  “Yeah, well, I meant what I said. I’d do anything for you.” Tony started to scowl. He hadn’t been prepared for her to question his feelings when he’d laid them out on the table. As he loosened his grip on her hand, she tightened her fingers.

  “Don’t you dare retreat now, mister! I love you, too. I love you so much it hurts my heart.” She moved her thumb in small circles on his palm, and it felt so good, so real, that he honestly forgot his hand wasn’t flesh and blood.

  “It shouldn’t hurt,” he said, his throat getting tight. “But I know what you mean.” He looked away before he caved and blurted out something he’d regret.

  “What’s going on with you today, hmm?” She continued to caress his hand, and in the din of the restaurant, with the neon lights flooding in through the front window, painting their booth in garish tones, he tried to disappear, pushing away his worries and plans and sinking into the sensation of her touch. He tried to forget about Eric and Jen and just imagine that they were free—that Addie wasn’t in danger, that the world was a wide-open place where they could go and do whatever they wanted.

  “I dunno, Ads. I guess I’m just feeling it today. I can’t believe how much things have changed for me. My life is different, but so am I. I’m not the same guy who woke up in Beef’s alley.” He turned back toward her, blinking his silver eye to banish the tears pooling in it. “Nothing I was, nothing I had, matters anymore. You’re everything to me.” He didn’t say the last part, the thought that was driving his current thought process: I could die tomorrow, and it wouldn’t matter, not if I knew you were safe.

  ###

  When Addie woke, her room was dark and silent, but the distant sounds of the warehouse came to her, filtered through the insulated panels that made up her ceiling and walls. She smiled, remembering her night with Tony, but when she turned onto her side, expecting to see him lying beside her, the spot he’d earlier occupied was empty, the blanket smoothed back down. Had he gone back to his room? Hadn’t they agreed to tell her dad about them? Why continue hiding things?

  Stifling a yawn, she glanced at the clock on her AUI: 0221. She closed her eyes, wondering if she’d be able to fall back asleep, but something in her stomach felt wrong—a nagging, tingling worry. Tony had been acting so strangely. The thought came out of nowhere, but it hit her like a splash of cold water. She sat up with a start, her heart suddenly racing. She didn’t know why, but she suddenly, absolutely, needed to see Tony.

  She glanced at her mini-map, and that’s when she realized where her unease had come from. Some subconscious part of her brain had already noticed the absence of his dot. She practically flew out of bed, charging down the hallway toward his half of the apartment as she asked, “JJ, when did Tony stop sharing his location?”

  “Twenty minutes ago.”

  Twenty minutes. “Where was he when he did that?”

  “Still in the warehouse.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “Where?” Addie asked, forgetting her earlier intention to check his room, and veering toward the door—no, forget the door! With an alacrity that she’d never shown before, not even during a job when lives were on the line, she yanked some Dust out of her reactor and wrapped it around herself in a perfect pattern. Her vision brightened as the darkness of the warehouse apartment gave way to the strange, blue- and gray-tinted light of the veil, the place between. As JJ responded, she was already slipping through the wall, into the warehouse proper.

  “He was near the bay door where he parked the van last night.”

  Would he take the van? Would he do that if he were leaving her? Maybe he’s just running an errand. No, not at two in the morning. Maybe he couldn’t sleep, though. Maybe he went to the gym. Maybe breakfast— “Idiot, Addie!” she hissed. Why would he turn off his location sharing if he were doing something like that?

  As she slipped through crates of her dad’s wares, making a beeline through the warehouse toward the bay door, she caught her first glimpse of the vehicle. He hadn’t taken it. Some people might have felt relief at that, but not Addie. She knew he wouldn’t do that to her if he were leaving. No, he’d leave her the van.

  As she ran, passing through hundreds of objects, she frantically looked at her AUI, hoping to see a blinking message from JJ. It was hard to read the elements in the strange light of the veil, and JJ didn’t have connectivity in the veil, but it didn’t matter. The icon wasn’t blinking. She ran past the van and straight through the exterior wall, bursting into the night in the quiet industrial neighborhood. None of the nearby businesses were open at night, and the people who lived around there were like them; they didn’t advertise the fact.

  Tony wouldn’t have called a cab that close. He was too cautious, too good. He’d walk a ways before he got one. Still, knowing Nora, it would be waiting, and he wouldn’t have to go far. Gasping in panicked desperation, Addie started to run, sprinting down the empty street, a noiseless ghost, haunting the warehouse district, silently seeking her lost love—

  Her melodramatic self-narration faded as she saw a lanky, slouched figure walking down the street, hands in pockets, duffel over one shoulder. “That asshole!” she hissed, slowing her steps when she caught up and was only a dozen strides behind him. Addie forced herself to take a deep, shaky breath, then she gathered her Dust and pulled it back into her reactor. As the world snapped back into full color, Tony froze.

  He slowly pulled his hands out of his pockets and held them up to either side. “Don’t shoot.”

  Addie wasn’t sure what she was feeling in that moment—anger, certainly, but also gut-wrenching sadness, a sense of betrayal, and utter disbelief at the idea that he could make a joke like that. “You asshole!” she hissed.

  Tony sighed heavily as he lowered his hands and slowly turned around. He was wearing the coat she’d bought him. His pluming breath was enough to crack the shell of Addie’s numbness, enough to make her aware of the cold, and the fact that she was wearing a pair of shorts and a tank top—nothing else. As her body abruptly began to shiver, she took a step back, noting the bone-deep cold of the concrete under her bare feet. “Ads, what are you doing?” he had the gall to ask.

  “What am I doing? I’m chasing down a guy who just told me he loved me. I’m going through everything he ever said to me and trying to figure out what was true and what was a lie.” She paused to inhale, irritated by the way her teeth chattered. “And I’m struggling! I’m struggling because right now everything feels like a lie!”

  Tony groaned and looked up, peering into the sky. Addie followed his gaze, noting the hundreds of blinking lights up there—drones, mostly, but maybe a few planes. “I was going to message you. Securely.”

  “If it’s something you could message me about, why not do it now? Why do I have to wake up expecting you beside me, to find the bed cold? Why do I have to chase you down in the street like an absolute loser?” When she said “loser,” the dam broke, and Addie started to sob, her body, already shivering from the cold, shaking with emotion. When Tony stepped toward her, she backed up again.

  “Ads, let me give you my coat.”

  “No! You don’t get to act concerned about me. If you cared, you wouldn’t be sneaking away. Not after everything we’ve shared. Not after all the things we said. The promises we made—that you made.”

  Tony’s shoulders slumped, and he clicked his tongue, muttering something that Addie’s implants couldn’t pick up. He looked around, no doubt thinking about how she was yelling in the middle of the night in a neighborhood where certain gangs were known to dump stolen cars after joy rides or where people met to conduct illicit deals. Meanwhile, she continued to shiver, and she didn’t care. When he stepped toward her again, she backed away.

  He stared at her for several seconds, and then, to her irritation, a blinking message icon appeared on her AUI. She looked at him and growled. “Seriously?”

  “Just read it.”

  Addie folded her arms, her entire body vibrating with shivers as she focused on the icon:

  Tony: I’m sneaking away because I knew you’d fight me. Because I’m not as damn smart as you, and I didn’t think I’d win the argument. Still, something in my heart tells me that I need to get away from you. Something tells me I gotta deal with this damn mess before you get hurt. There’s something you don’t know, but it’s complicated. The thing is, people could be watching us right now. There could be a drone recording us. I mean, honestly, it’s more likely than not.

  Addie blinked, staring at Tony, watching how the dim amber glow of his chrome eye made half his face stand out while throwing the rest of him into shadow. “Seriously?”

  “Can we go back inside?”

  Another message flashed on her AUI, and she read it:

  Tony: We can talk in the van. We won’t wake up your dad that way, and I can turn on the jammer.

  Without responding, Addie turned and started retracing her steps, her bare feet slapping on the concrete, accompanied by the sound of Tony’s boots as he kept pace behind her. He didn’t try to speak to her again, other than to mutter, “I’m sorry, Ads.”

  Addie was numb, and it wasn’t just from the cold. She felt devastated by Tony’s betrayal, and even though she’d caught up to him and he’d suggested going back to talk, she felt like she’d lost something precious, like some magical glamour on their relationship had been stripped away. She’d trusted him so implicitly! When he’d said that he’d do anything for her, she’d believed him. She truly loved him, and the idea of being without him was so gut-wrenching that she’d actually run after him in her pajamas. Who does something like that? Was she living in a serial drama?

  Those stupid questions aside, the thing that was really cracking her heart to pieces was that sense of loss—that the thing that made their love so real, so storybook-like, had been stolen by his act of betrayal. She struggled to imagine what he would say that might make it okay. She wanted there to be a way for him to salvage things. She wanted to think that she could find a way to trust him again, but as she walked back to the warehouse, shivering and cold, inside and out, she couldn’t imagine what he might say to make that happen.

  She stood to the side, arms folded, hands in her armpits, shivering with chattering teeth as she watched Tony disarm the security and pull the door open. She slipped through and, in the much warmer air of the warehouse, padded over to the van. She pulled open the driver’s door and crawled inside, fresh tears springing into her eyes as she felt the new seat cushions—had he known when he installed them?—embrace her.

  Tony clambered into the passenger seat and hurriedly tapped the control screen, increasing the interior’s ambient temperature. Addie shivered silently, refusing to acknowledge the warm air that began to waft toward her from the vents. Of course, she wanted to hear Tony’s story. She wanted him to be able to mollify her, but in that moment, she was still wallowing in the terrible sense of loss, still coping with the idea of betrayal from someone she’d trusted so totally that the idea of him leaving her hadn’t crossed her mind—not since they’d grown so close.

  Those thoughts boiled to the surface before Tony could start speaking, and Addie said, “When you first came to our shop, when I first learned a little bit of your story, I was sure you’d leave. I should have trusted my first instinct.”

  “That’s not fair, Ads.”

  “Isn’t it?” Addie stared pointedly through the windshield at the exterior door.

  “Will you let me explain?”

  “I’m listening, aren’t I? It was me who chased you down, right? If you had your way, I’d be sleeping, and you’d be gone.”

  “I wasn’t going away forever!” He stretched out his hand, reaching for hers, but Addie folded her arms again, shifting away from him. He stared at her for several seconds, then he reached up to the ceiling and tapped the little box Glitch had installed there. Addie’s ears buzzed, and a flicker of static passed through her vision as the jammer took effect. When he sat back down, he stared at her until she looked at him. When their eyes locked, he said, with a simple shrug, “Eric found me.”

  Addie’s heart stopped, and new tears sprang to her eyes. “What do you mean, he found you? He dumped you here!”

  “I mean, he reached out. He sent me a message, and it was very damn ominous. He said—” Tony shook his head, clenching his fist. “You know what? I’ll just show you. Nora saved it. I mean, she saved a copy of me watching it. The vid self-deleted. Here.”

  A window popped up on her AUI, and JJ asked, “Tony wants to share a video file. Shall I play it?”

  Addie almost said yes, but then that tiny kernel of doubt sprouted into a weed of distrust, and she looked at Tony with narrowed eyes. “You wouldn’t be trying to install some malware, would you? You’re not trying to knock me out so you can run, right?”

  “Ads, dammit, if I wanted to run—” He caught himself before he said something utterly stupid. “I mean, if I wanted to make a scene, like knocking you out, then I’d just run. Like, literally. Come on, I’m not gonna lie to you. Just play the vid.”

  Addie stared at him for several more seconds. She already knew she was going to play the vid. She believed him, even if she really shouldn’t, but she wanted him to feel her doubt. He stared back at her, his chrome eye shining in the dark. After a minute, she leaned back in the seat and, under her breath, muttered, “Play it, JJ.”