Titan: Let’s just say I’m familiar with their methods.
She stared at the words, mind racing. Who was this person? How deep did his knowledge of Praetorian go? And why was he sharing these cryptic warnings with her, of all people?
Before she could talk herself out of it, she typed:
Lovelace: Let’s meet IRL.
The cursor blinked steadily as she waited for his response. One minute stretched into two, then three. She’d surprised him. Good. It wasn’t easy to catch Titan off guard.
Finally:
Titan: Are you sure about that?
She wasn’t. Not remotely. But sometimes the only way forward was to take a leap.
Lovelace: Yes.
Titan: I can’t meet immediately. Two weeks from now.
Lovelace: Why the delay?
Titan: Unavoidable commitments. But I want to meet you, Daphne. More than you know.
Something in his phrasing made her heart rate pick up. She’d never heard his voice, never seen his face, yet she felt she knew him better than most people in her daily life. Was that naive? Probably. But her instincts about people were rarely wrong.
Titan: There’s a cafe in Paris. Café de Flore on Boulevard Saint-Germain. Two weeks from today. Noon.
Paris. An ocean away from her safe, controlled environment. When was the last time she’d left New York? Three monthsago for that conference in Seattle, and she’d hated every minute away from her systems.
Lovelace: How will I know you?
Titan: You’ll know.
Lovelace: You’re confident.
Titan: I am. But even if you don’t, I’ll find you. Wear something blue.
She hesitated, fingers hovering over the keyboard. This was insane. Meeting a stranger from the internet in a foreign city, when she didn’t even know his real name? Everything about it screamed danger.
But Titan wasn’t just any stranger. He was the only person who challenged her intellectually, who seemed to understand the way her mind worked, who never made her feel weird or awkward for being exactly who she was.
Daphne: Okay. Paris. Two weeks. Noon.
Titan: I’m looking forward to it.
The message window closed as abruptly as it had appeared, leaving Daphne staring at her reflection in the darkened screen. What had she just done?
The lab felt suddenly too quiet, too empty. She pulled her glasses back down onto her nose and turned to the main monitor, where the plane continued its steady progress across the Atlantic. Her family was coming home, bringing Sabin with them. They’d need her help to understand what had been done to him, to find a way to undo Praetorian’s conditioning.
And in two weeks, she would sit at a cafe table in Paris, wearing something blue, waiting for a man she knew everything and nothing about.
She wasn’t sure which prospect terrified her more.
twenty-four
Beeping.
Steady, rhythmic, annoying as hell.
