My mother would be appalled to know I sneak around in the backs of systems like this as often as I do, but ironically, she’s the one who forced me to learn it.
Here’s a thing to know about my family: when someone goes from zero to life-alteringly rich, one of two things happens. Either the next generation figures out how to sustain it, or they blow it in spectacular style.
My mother falls into the first camp, and she’s so committed to keeping GravesUP locked on target that she’s locked me out.
Which is, in fact, why I’m here, in a freaking greenhouse, hacking my way into some flower-loving scientist’s workstation,trying to figure out how to stop a bunch of mercenaries from killing me.
I’m just saying, if she hadn’t forced me into coming to Mars without her blessing, I’d have been on a different ship, and I’d be having a very different day right now. But I’d have needed a very different childhood for that.
Growing up, my twin sister, Marguerite, and I were inseparable. In the bloody waters of corporate politics, we were two young sharks, and we loved hunting together. We talked spreadsheets and mergers at the dinner table, and hostile takeovers for dessert. We knew what it meant to be a Graves.
Still, there was one division of assets we didn’t see coming: our parents’ divorce, when we were thirteen.
I was out of favor at the time. My sister and I had been caught hacking into the servers of a greentech company we wanted to acquire, and I’d taken the fall for it.
Our mother’s never been the cuddly sort. She’s utterly focused on GravesUP, and we spent our lives in orbit around her, living and dying by her rare attention, and her rarer approval.
We both grew up understanding we were part of a legacy bigger than any one individual. Mom holds the keys to the castle – to our way into being a part of GravesUP’s future. Our job has always been to convince her to let down the drawbridge.
When it came to the greentech hacking incident, she didn’t mind that we found a back door into a company we wanted to acquire. At thirteen, we were old enough to go after what we wanted.
She was just mad we were stupid enough to get caught.
Looking back, I can’t believe I was gullible enough to take the hit for it. I still don’t know why I did, except that Marguerite suggested it. I adored my sister, and I trusted her completely.
‘Even if she locks you down for a minute, one of us will still be able to act on what we learned,’ she said. We were twins. We were a team – so I went along with it.
I was so, so stupid.
The divorce happened shortly after that. Mom left the family compound and took Marguerite with her. At the time, I thought I wasn’t going too because I was still in trouble.
I was left behind with Dad. Marguerite was all tears and promises to stay in touch, and her personal security had to peel her off me to haul her away.
‘Go,’ I said, because I was thirteen and stupid, and sure it would be okay. ‘I’ll see you soon.’
But that was the last time I saw her in person.
Dad took the divorce badly, and after Mom took Marguerite away, he buried himself in his art. He’d never been as driven as Mom was – she was the Graves, and he just married into the family. So he went back to his work as a sculptor. To being the man he’d been before he fell in love with an heiress, I guess, though he did still live in a mansion, surrounded by staff.
He shut himself away from everything, including me.
He ignored the parts of our empire he was meant to be running, and I was dumped at boarding school, helpless to do anything about it.
I triedeverythingto reach my sister, but it was like Mom had made her disappear off the face of the planet. To Mom’s credit,she and Dad had always made sure Marguerite and I were kept out of the public eye. So while my mom was constantly in the news, or giving interviews, I didn’t expect to spot my twin on TV.
I called, texted, messaged on multiple systems, used all the old code back doors we’d left for secret messages when we were kids. I tried paying staff to pass actual, physical letters written on literal paper to her. I flew a friend to Mumbai, where I heard she was, to try to deliver a message in person. I even hacked the Graves corporate system to try to reach her.
Nothing. But then Marguerite started showing up in the media. There was coverage about Mom and her going to this country or that, attending meetings together, making moves.
They never mentioned me at all – Mom’s other child, my sister’s twin. It was like I was invisible, and nobody even remembered I’d been there.
It was about a year after they separated us that a gossip site reported that my sister was staying at Claridge’s in London. I’d grown really good at illegal comms by then, and I got a vid call into her room via the hotel’s security system. When Marguerite’s face filled the screen – gold-green eyes staring out at me, cheeks pink like she was just in from a run, hair half out of its braid – my heart stopped.
‘Marguerite,’ I whispered, lifting one hand like I could touch her face, instead of the screen.
She blinked at me in pure surprise. ‘How did you get a call through?’ she asked.
And that was when I realized there was a party going on in her hotel suite. Music was thumping low and fast, bodieswere moving, someone was shouting, someone else was singing.
