told me that if I ever really saw you, I wouldn’t want you anymore.”
Somehow, the pain digging lines into his face intensified.
“I still do,” she confessed. “I want you more than anything. But this—this would always be there between us. You’d always feel guilty, and I’d never know if I could trust you.”
“I should feel guilty,” he replied harshly. “And I don’t deserve your trust.”
“See?” She closed the distance between them. The moment her hands touched his face, a visceral longing seized her, and she wavered. All she had to do was take it all back, tell him she forgave him.
Tell him it was all right.
But she couldn’t bring herself to say it. Oh, she could forgive him someday. She knew that already, felt it in the pit of her stomach.
But she didn’t know if she would ever be able to forget.
She kissed him. But the heat that unfurled when he groaned and reached for her was edged with bitter heartache, and she quickly pulled away.
“Good-bye, Knox.” The moment the words left her lips, she turned around—180 perfect degrees—and walked away.
* * *
TECHCORPS PROPRIETARY DATA, L1 SECURITY CLEARANCE
The skeletal remains have been verified as those of DC–031. Cancel the reward.
Security Memo, February 2082
* * *
TWENTY-FIVE
Nina loved her home.
Her neighborhood wasn’t the fanciest or safest or cleanest, but it was hers, which would have made her love it anyway. But it was also the nicest—she knew all the people hanging out on the front stoops and street corners.
And they knew her.
That all changed when she left Five Points. When she ventured out into other parts of Atlanta, she became something worse than invisible. People’s long-neglected lizard brains jolted, their creaky instincts came to life—and somehow, some way, they knew they were in the presence of a predator. They smiled tight little smiles that didn’t light their eyes, and they skirted around her in wide arcs. Like if they somehow came too close, they’d get sucked into whatever troublesome orbit had brought her into their territory. Sure, she could smile and dispel their tension to varying degrees of success, but that took energy.
Energy she didn’t seem to have these days.
No wonder she preferred night drops. Dani might have decried the dangers, but Nina would take her chances. She’d take anything, so long as she didn’t have to look into one more stranger’s fearful eyes.
So when the Professor had requested a daytime exchange, it had given Nina pause. Not because it might be a TechCorps trap—the setup for a perfect ambush, one that would leave her dead or worse—but because she’d have to venture up on the Hill, where skyscrapers and high-rises spiked up between estates that could have housed dozens of families. The waste of space nauseated Nina.
Worst of all, smiling didn’t work on the people up on the Hill. All of their predators smiled, so it only made them more nervous.
She found the Professor right where he said he’d be, sitting on a bench outside one of the area’s many research facilities. This one apparently specialized in developing synthetic substitutes for plant-based pharmacological agents, and for a moment she wondered if this was where he worked.
Probably not. Even the Professor wouldn’t be that sloppy.
But even Nina had to admit it was a nice place—lush and well manicured, with tall trees shading the cobblestone paths. Places like this got hard to find when you strayed too far from the Hill.
The Professor barely looked up when she slid onto the bench beside him. He was preoccupied with scattering birdseed from a rumpled paper bag in his hand.
She let the silence hang for a few seconds before cracking it open. “What are you doing?”
Instead of answering, he pushed his horn-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose with the knuckle of his index finger. The damn things had been old-fashioned even before the Flares, but the Professor was like that. Sweater-vests and bow ties and heavy optical frames that kept sliding down his nose.
A black-and-white photo of him would be indistinguishable from an image of a mid-twentieth-century Cold War operative, right down to the bench and the fucking brown bag of birdseed. Maybe he’d seen too many spy movies. Or maybe he was just a lonely, bored scientist who got off on the idea of a little danger.
She waited.
Finally, he spoke. “I was feeding the pigeons.”
Nina looked around. Verdant as it was, the area around the bench was decidedly bereft of wildlife. “There are no pigeons.”
He shrugged, as if that had no bearing on