“I’m sure it was…,” I say. “But, Annalise, there might have been more information there we could have used. Other files hidden away.”
“There were definitely no files,” she responds. “The only thing left in that terrible place was its ghosts. It deserved to be razed.” For a moment, I can still hear the anger in her voice; burning down the academy didn’t fix the pain it inflicted on us. The act was barely a Band-Aid on her wounded soul.
“Boom,” Quentin says loudly, turning the laptop around. “Bank records,” he adds, pointing to the screen. “Right after you girls left the academy—”
“Escaped,” Annalise corrects.
“Escaped,” Quentin repeats, pointing to let her know she’s right. “After you escaped, Demmy transferred just shy of twenty thousand dollars to another bank account. The only detail says it was Bio-Tech Equipment.” He rolls his eyes. “Not exactly subtle. Weirdly, prior to this transfer, Demmy himself received twenty grand, only it seems to be from another account in his name. So… I think he stashed money somewhere.” He tosses a cautious glance at Jackson, who nods that he agrees.
“Not that I want to put a price tag on us,” I say, “but… aren’t we worth a lot more? Mr. Goodwin was paying millions.”
“I, for one, am priceless,” Annalise says simply.
Quentin smiles at her before pointing to another line in the bank records. “I went back as far as it would let me, and twice a year, Demmy would get a payment from this account. So either he’s paying himself or they’re using this other account to hide the direct link. Until last month when he straight-up sent the money for ‘Bio-Tech.’?”
“But why would he buy Valentine?” I ask. “Even if he knew what was going on, why buy her? She was… According to Petrov, her programming had been damaged. Why buy a defective model?”
“Cheaper?” Quentin suggests.
Jackson shakes his head. “No,” he says, looking around at us. “My God, I hadn’t connected it until now. It was because of me.”
“What?” Annalise and I ask at the same time.
“My dad knew I was searching through my mother’s things;he must have… He must have realized I was figuring things out about Innovations. Anton knew I’d been in contact with you, Mena. If he figured out who I was, he probably contacted my dad. Told him to handle it. After I hurt my leg, my dad would have known I helped you escape. He knew we were… together. So he got Valentine.”
“For what?” Quentin asks. “As a replacement girl for you?”
Jackson flinches and quickly says no, but the words have already stuck to me. Had Jackson’s father thought I was just a pretty face to his son, easily substituted? Is that what he thought Jackson wanted?
Jackson leans toward us in his chair. “Now that I think back on it,” he says, “my father was furious when he came to see me in the hospital. He said I was a fuckup—which wasn’t entirely new, but it felt more vicious than usual. He told me I’d made a mess of my life. He said I really screwed him over. I thought he was talking about the hospital bill. But no, he meant you.” He looks at me. “And that’s probably why he bought Valentine, so that he could wake her up to track you down. A gift to the academy to make up for his fuckup son.”
I’ve been wrecking Jackson’s life since the day I met him. The fact that my disruption upset his father isn’t the worst thing I’ve done to him.
“Did you talk to him after you left for Connecticut?” I ask.
“Only once,” Jackson says. “He called to ask—” He stops abruptly. “Fuck,” he mutters. “What if he tracked my phone to figure out where we were?”
“Ah, so it wasn’t Raven,” Annalise announces, swinging around to look at me. “See? I knew there’d be another explanation. She’s not with Anton.”
Although this doesn’t exonerate Raven, I push forward with the current theory.
“Say he tracked us for the corporation—then what?” I ask. “Who killed your father?”
“Your girl,” Quentin says, slapping his hands together. “My money’s on Valentine.”
“But she wouldn’t have remembered her old life,” I say. “She would have been reset.”
“That might not be true,” Jackson replies. “You’ve all been progressing quickly, right? Learning fast. What if… I mean, this is her third life, possibly more. What if each time, you get smarter? Think faster? They could have switched her on and… maybe she didn’t like what she found.”
“I don’t believe it,” Annalise says. “She would feel us. She’d be looking for us.”
“Or…,”Quentin says, building on Jackson’s theory, “Valentine got a programming upgrade, and they turned her into some kind of Terminator.”
“Which movie was that again?” Annalise asks me.
After leaving the academy, we consumed every bit of media pertaining to robots or AI, wanting to understand how the human world viewed us. It ended up being comical, even for the movies or literature meant to be warnings of sentient AI taking over the world. Humans are truly gifted at scaring themselves.
“Hasta la vista, baby,”I whisper.
