The door crashed opened and in the doorway stood a guard in full livery, his dematerializer raised. Several more guards joined him. One was holding a SmartGem aloft, likely thesource of the location trace.
“I’d like you to come with me, please,” the guard told her.
Zada got to her feet. Her disguise did her no good now. There was no need to search her. She was surrounded by a damning ring of code. The cloned ring still sat heavy upon her finger. And any biometric scan would instantly reveal who they were.
“I’m sorry,” said Daphne, low and urgent. “Just play along, okay. I’ll get us out of this.”
The guard wrenched them apart.
Daphne raised her hands in the air. “I confess!” she shouted. “Me, Daphne Fallow, I confess. I made my friend doubt her match because I wanted a chance to break into the program and change her intended to me. Her only crime was listening to me. Take me instead, I’ll tell you everything. You won’t even have to—it was my fault, okay? All of this was all my fault.”
The guard looked from Daphne to Zada, as if hesitant to touch a Fallow.
“It was my fault,” said Daphne again. “I’m so sorry.” She fixed Zada with a searching look. “I love you.”
Daphne wanted her to play along, Zada realized. She wanted Zada to act the part of an innocent, and Daphne would act the part of a woman in love, figuring that with her connections, she could avoid an Extrication—and divert suspicion from her true purposes long enough to find out more about her mother.
“I love you,” Daphne said again. More guards streamed into the room. One grabbed Zada’s elbows, wrenching them behind her back.
“Nothing a little Counseling won’t fix,” he said.
Shit. Whatever that entailed, she got the feeling she was about to have no other option.
Another guard grabbed at Daphne, who kicked and swore and reached out toward Zada again.
“I love you!” Daphne half yelled.
As the guards marched Zada out of the room, she twisted around to look at Daphne one last time, forcing herself to meet those beautiful brown eyes. Zada had read love in those eyes. She had read concern, and love, and friendship, and Daphne had looked at Zada and seen only a means to an end, the dupe who could get her a little closer to her goal.
Daphne was watching her. Daphne was pulling hard against her own guard to keep a firm, steady stare leveled straight at Zada.
Of course she was. Because Daphne was pretending to care. Just like always.
Seconds before the guard dragged Zada through the door, Zada managed to turn to Daphne one last time and, in a voice several shades calmer than she felt, say, “You’re right. This is all your fault.”
Then she was gone.
Chapter NineteenCapture
The guards removed Mozelle’s cloned ring from Zada’s hand none too gently. Then they brought her to a small, nondescript room and left, door disappearing behind them. The walls were white and plain except for a single empty shelf, and the floor was gray tile. There was nothing else.
Part of her wanted to fight back, to throw her body against the wall and proclaim her innocence, the way people did in movies when they were falsely accused of some terrible crime. But there was no point. Even if anyone was listening on the other side, they would never believe her. And even if they believed her, she had no way to prove any of it. She’d been caught in a circle of proprietary data drawn from the Core with a cloned ring on her finger.
They left her waiting for a very long time. Long enough for Zada to replay her every interaction with Daphne over the past six weeks. Zada had been so willing to see what she’d wanted to see, so willing to believe there was some part of Daphne that would still do anything for her, just as she would have done anything for Daphne. She’d been so sure, but the winds of reality had snuffed out the spark of hope in one single blast—Daphne’s true aim had always been to clear her mother’s name.Daphne had always been working for Daphne. Zada’s own plight had merely been a handy opportunity.
That was not even the worst part. She remembered the long nights back at school, how Daphne had whispered to her about the truth of her mother, could still hear the heartbreak in Daphne’s voice. If Daphne had come out and told Zada what she wanted out of the Heartsong program, Zada would have understood. What hurt most was that Daphne hadn’t trusted Zada with the truth. She hadn’t seen Zada as anything but a means to an end.
Zada paced the room until she could no longer remember where the door had been. She checked each wall and found nothing but that lone empty shelf, walked another two circuits, and then she let herself slide to the floor. There was no point in maintaining her dignity.
It wasn’t even the loss of Daphne. Or, it wasn’t only that. Slowly, gently, so gradually that she hadn’t even noticed, Zada had started to hope for and imagine a future where she was unafraid to say how she felt, where the only force shaping her actions was her own desire. Maybe that had been immature or foolish or both, but to suddenly lose it—for the first time in many years, she cradled her face in her hands and sobbed like a child.
She was still crying when the door appeared to her left and a woman with steel-gray hair wearing a sleek, fashionable blue dress walked in, carrying a bundle of fabric under one arm. When she drew closer, Zada realized it was Administrator Erskine, Marianne’s mother.
The door melted out of existence again behind her. Zada watched it disappear and felt nothing. There was nowhereshe could go where things would be different. If she were to leave New Ionia, she would starve, and starve again from the absence of a way to play her triple cello. The walls around her pressed in from all sides, but the room itself hadn’t changed. Zada had. Like Alice in Wonderland, Zada had grown too ungainly, too large to fit in her space. She braced herself for the newcomer’s sharp disdain.
“Hello there,” said Administrator Erskine, her voice melodic and calm. “I’m Lucretia. I believe you went to school with my daughter, Marianne? I brought you some clothes.” She held out the bundle, smiling slightly. “I can’t imagine you’ll want to do this dressed as you are.”
Zada peered up at her. Daphne had found the jacket and the boots, had laid the hat on her head once. The thought of shedding the costume made Zada feel very tired. She didn’t want to sit there literally wrapped up in memories of the last forty-eight hours. She didn’t want to put back on a dress and a corset as if she was the same Zada as before. She had the strange sense none of it would fit.
