THE GHOST INVENTOR SON-IN-LAW

Chapter 7: The Woman Across the Street

"You'll carry the brochure boxes," Helena said, without looking up from the dress catalog on her lap. "Two hundred of them. From the van to the ballroom, then to every table. And you'll wear the black waiter's jacket. I won't have you embarrassing us in that hoodie in front of the whole city."

"Yes, Helena."

"Mother." She turned a page. "In public, you call me Mother. People talk."

It was Wednesday evening, three days before the gala, and the Tan family was busy with the most important thing in the world: what Helena would wear. She'd ordered a new dress in deep green silk from a shop on Harbor Avenue that cost more than the company paid me in six months. Philip had signed the credit card slip without a word.

Nobody had asked if the company could afford it, least of all Helena. Since the new Pulse, everyone in the house acted as if the fifty-million-dollar debt had already disappeared.

"And don't speak to anyone important," Philip added quietly from the doorway, not unkindly. "Not tonight, Owen. Too much depends on it."

"I won't, Dad."

I nodded, picked up the shopping bags Helena pointed at and carried them to her car.

Being the helper at the gala was perfect. A man carrying boxes can stand anywhere in a ballroom. Nobody looks at him. Nobody wonders why he's at the back near the sound booth with his phone in his hand.

I'd already worked out the plan. I'd worked it out on the second night, while I was rebuilding Pulse with one half of my brain and planning with the other.

Sentinel would give a live AURA demonstration on stage. They always did; it was the best part of their sales show. The director would ask AURA a question, AURA would answer in its smooth, friendly voice, and three hundred rich people would clap.

And AURA was mine.

Three seconds through the Ghost Key, and AURA would answer the question honestly. Every scan would show its true path, straight to the Annex. Every fake number in Sentinel's bank account would light up on the giant screen.

The trap would close on the hunters instead.

It was risky. I knew it was risky. Using the Ghost Key in a room full of reporters, on a system the Directorate itself was watching, was like lighting a match in a room full of gas. If anyone traced the signal back to my phone, I was finished.

But if I didn't, the scanners would roll into Tan Dynamics next week, and I'd be finished anyway, along with everyone standing near me.

That evening, I left the house early for the night shift. I walked down Cypress Hill as the sun went down, through the crowds of Glass Valley, past coffee shops full of people talking about AURA and robots and the future.

The street outside Tan Dynamics was busy at that hour. Office workers flowed toward the train station. A self-driving taxi beeped at a cyclist. The giant screen on the building across the road showed an AURA advert: Preston Blackwell's tanned, smiling face with silver hair, white teeth and a black turtleneck, beside the words The Future Has a Name.

I stopped at the crossing and waited for the green light.

That was when I felt it.

The feeling every fighter at Site Nine was taught to trust: the cold touch on the back of the neck that means someone is watching you, and they're good at it.

I didn't turn my head. I let my eyes move slowly across the crowd on the other side of the road, the way the instructors had taught me. Businessman. Student. Old woman with a dog. Businessman.

Woman.

She stood still in the middle of the moving crowd, like a rock in a river. Thirty-three, maybe. Strong shoulders under a black leather jacket. Dark hair cut short and shaved on one side. And through her right eyebrow, a thin white scar I'd watched her get, on a training mat under a mountain, when a soldier twice her size caught her with an elbow and she broke his nose for it.

She was looking straight at me.

Kat Morales.

My heart slammed against my ribs. Three years. I'd thought every face from that mountain was either dead, wiped or gone forever, and here was one of them, standing in the evening crowd like she'd never left.

At Site Nine, Kat had led the security team that guarded the three of us: me, Mark and Isaac. She'd walked us to the labs every morning and back to our rooms every night. She'd told Mark his jokes were terrible. She'd taught Isaac how to throw a punch, and he'd hurt his own wrist doing it. She'd been the closest thing any of us had to a friend who wasn't a scientist.

The last time I'd seen her was the night they shut the base down. She'd been running down the hallway toward the white rooms, shouting Isaac's name.

The light changed. The crowd surged forward.

When it cleared, she was gone.

"No," I breathed. "No, no."

I ran.

Across the road, through the crowd, past the old woman with her dog, who shouted something at me. I reached the corner where Kat had stood and spun around.

Office workers. A man selling umbrellas. The mouth of a narrow alley between two buildings, dark and wet.

I went into the alley. My body moved before my mind told it to: low, quiet, keeping to the wall, my weight on the balls of my feet. Three years of being slow and clumsy fell off me like a coat.

The alley was empty. A dumpster. A rusted fire escape. A door with no handle.

Nothing else. No footsteps, no shadow, not even the smell of leather.

I stood there, breathing hard, my fists closed at my sides. Then I made myself open them.

Why was she here?

The old Kat would have walked straight up to me and punched me in the arm, the way she used to. She wouldn't have stood across a busy road and watched. She wouldn't have vanished.

Unless she wasn't the old Kat anymore.

Three years is a long time. Long enough for the people who wiped us to find new jobs for their old soldiers. Long enough for someone to offer a bodyguard more money than loyalty is worth.

Mark was dead. Someone had found Mark, someone who knew exactly who he used to be. And now, one week later, the woman who once knew every hallway, every room and every secret of Site Nine was standing outside my office, watching me.

Maybe she'd come to protect me, the way she used to.

Or maybe someone had paid her to find me.

I didn't know which. And until I did, Kat Morales was the most dangerous person in Crestport.

I walked slowly back out of the alley and into the bright, loud street. On the giant screen across the road, Preston Blackwell was still smiling down at the crowd, selling my work to the world with his perfect white teeth.

In three days, I'd be standing at the back of a ballroom with three hundred guests, two hundred boxes of brochures and a phone in my pocket that could open any door built on Genesis.

And somewhere in this city, a woman who knew every one of my old tricks would be watching me do it.