Trent chuckled. "So, how did you figure out her name?"
"Didn't. I gave her one. Ingénue R1554-9370S-02K16. That's kinda like Rissa Petos, if you read the numbers like letters, right?"
"Yeah, like the way kids shorten everything," Trent agreed. "So, you just started calling her Rissa, and she's ok with it?"
"Thrilled." Sin's voice was tragically cold. "She's never had a name before, Trent, just the serial number. She's not allowed to be an individual, but she is. She doesn't live in a lavish apartment—the Enclave is a monitoring compound. She lives in a four-foot care bay, hooked up to probes and feeding tubes."
"And you buy this shit?"
Sin looked at the drink in his hand, realizing the supposedly spoiled girl he was protecting had probably never experienced something he took for granted. "Yeah. I do. She's like two different people. One when she's under surveillance, and another when I get her alone."
Trent laughed, leaning back in his chair. "So, did she try to rip all your armor off and trace kisses down your chest? Or, what was the other one? Something about claw marks across your shoulders?"
Blood rushed to his face. Sin had read the fan sites just once and vowed never to look at them again. Unfortunately, Trent insisted on relaying the lewdest comments he could find. While Sin could remember what it was like to touch a woman—well, a girl, at any rate, since he'd been sixteen at the time—Trent had taken his vows too young and the idea of a lusty fan intrigued him. He was also highly amused by Sin's embarrassment about the whole thing.
"No," Sin said. "She barely touched me. Thing is, Caleb and Parker, the head of security for Pharmacon and his second in command, were trailing us today, and she went from demure to efficient. The girl could barely catch her breath—they can't walk faster than a crawl without becoming exhausted—but she told me how much time we had till the train arrived, down to the second. She didn't complain, she didn't lag behind. She kept up and made herself useful."
Trent stuck out his lower lip and nodded, mulling that over. "Ok. Tell me you weren't shocked an overweight mental case wasn't exactly in shape, though?"
"Rather the opposite. She's a rack of bones. There's nothing to her but layers of cloth."
"So you did get her out of the robes!" Trent winked deviously.
"I grabbed her arm.Throughthe cloth! Not even muscles; just a twig of a thing."
The jovial man groaned, still smiling. "You're killing my dreams here, Sin. Give me something to work with."
"She has pretty eyes? Grey, nearly silver, and if you watch, she conveys her expressions through them." He shrugged. "That help you any? Because it's all I got."
"Yeah," Trent muttered, flicking the remote at the screen before mashing a few more buttons. "Grey eyes, huh?" He pulled up a news image of an Ingénue, then flicked to another and another. "They're brown, Sin." He flicked again, this time finding a closeup, and pointed. "Brown, not grey, and everyone knows they're clones."
"Rissa's are grey."
Trent scowled, flipping through pages on the web quickly, using the holoscreen to display them. His eyes scanned the information before moving on. Finally, he stopped on a poor-quality image, supposedly from a bystander, displayed in the corner of an article. He zoomed and enhanced the very pixelatedimage to show an unconscious girl wrapped in blue cloth, limp on a stretcher, being loaded into a medical transport. He pressed again until only her half-covered face dominated the screen, her eyes open but staring at nothing, as if dead.
"Can't tell if they're grey or blue, but they sure aren't brown." He returned to the article and the headline proved his point. "Sixth Ingénue Attacked, The War On Cybernetics Has Begun."
"Yeah," Sin said softly. "That's my girl."
"So you're babysitting the only Ingénue who's woken up after a mind wipe, and from what you say, it sounds like she's pretty normal?"
"No," Sin laughed, the word caught between his chuckles. "No. She's not normal, not by a long shot. But she's human, if you can convince her to trust you."
"Right. So why am I here again? You just want to talk about your new crush or something?"
"I want to get her out." Sin tipped the bottle to his lips, sucking back the carbonation and feeling it burn as it slid down his throat. "We're supposed to protect those who cannot protect themselves. We're the hand of God, serving to bring justice to this world, right? Well, if half of what she's said is true, she needs us."
Chapter Fifteen
The next week had been more of the same, except for the friendly conversation, because the girl had finally started talking to him. Barely. Surveillance was still a big problem. But every day, Sin picked up his client at the OutLink building, escorted her across town, waited while she did her thing, and returned her undamaged. Twice, he'd caught sight of someone trailing them and had altered their course. He couldn't be sure if she'd been targeted or not, but that damned blue robe she wore marked her as an Ingénue, and therefore valuable.
He rolled over in bed, thinking about it. Fourteen Ingénue had been hit now. OutLink had been more than happy to share that information, but they tried to hide how many had been lost. So far, the total was up to twelve who'd died in their attempts to wipe their own mind, and one had been rendered useless to the company and retired.Retired.Sent to a mental hospital was more like it, to have her precious cybernetics removed, left with a partial brain. No wonder his client was so important to them. Not only had she wiped her mind, but she was also still functioning perfectly.
A tickle in the back of his head notified him of a message, and with a groan, he sat up, pressing the button over his temple. In his cybernetic eye, words scrolled, notifying him of yet another date with his little princess. Twelve days, and he'd been called to escort her eleven times. He acknowledged the summons and pulled himself up, grabbing a cigarette on his way to the toilet.
The strangest thing was, he'd started to look forward to seeing her. Maybe it was because she was so smart, but he felt like even their small talk was layered with nuances. Then there were those eyes. He'd told Trent they were windows to the soul, but he'd had no idea how right he was. It was like he could see her every emotion in those silver depths.
He dressed, smothering the butt of his smoke in the overfull ashtray, and strapped on his guns. This time, he took the subway. It was a short trip to OutLink Corp., and the stares of those around him were amusing. Some bowed their heads respectfully; others stared with open amazement.
