The Key to Fear - Kristin Cast Page 0,45

stuffed the voice back into the trenches of her mind.

“It’s the city of love,” she said with a sigh. “Or it was at one point.”

Rhett lined up his shot, relaxed, and then lined it up again. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It’s romantic.” Elodie traced the stitching along her collar. “Couples used to go there and climb the stairs of the Eiffel Tower or watch it twinkling at night. They’d even kiss,” she whispered. “I’m pretty sure that’s where that term French kissing came from.”

“See, that kind of stuff is what was wrong with people from the past.” Rhett adjusted the earmuffs around his thick neck. “They were all over each other, touching and hugging, smashed together traveling to work and wherever else. And since that apparently wasn’t bad enough, they had to rub their disgusting, wet mouth holes all over each other too. They were out of control and practically begging to be wiped out.” He slid Elodie’s earmuffs closer to her.

Elodie pressed the squishy muffs against her ears and crossed back over the yellow line, flinching at the first round of gun blasts.

She wasn’t asking to kiss. She didn’t understand the need any more than Rhett and was fully aware of the risks involved. Mixing her saliva with Rhett’s could very well spawn another pandemic and wipe out Westfall. All Elodie wanted was a nice, romantic adventure that would assure their arrival to romancia-landia, and Paris seemed like a great place to start.

“Survive that, you monster fuckers!” Rhett roared over the cracks of gunfire.

Elodie grimaced.

Maybe Rhett wasn’t built for romance.

Sparkman swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Her boots hit the ground before her alarm had a chance to sound. She fastened the belt yawning open like the mouth of a single-toothed snake above her hips before pressing her fists together, each knuckle cracking. Her strawberry-blond braid brushed her shoulder blades as she stretched her neck, then her arms, and then her legs.

She always slept dressed. Ready to go. Ready for anything.

Her alarm finally caught up to her and blared through the one-room apartment, reverberating off the barren beige walls and the thin glass of the twin windows stretched against the far wall like eyes. She wasn’t sure why she even set the alarm anymore.

The old-fashioned coffee pot gurgled to life, hissing and popping as the first drops hit the heated glass. Except for one space, Sparkman’s place was low tech. No bots, no holoscreens or holopads, and, better yet, no Holly. All day Sparkman worked with computers, the MediCenter’s Holly assessing and offering advice. Holly was a babysitter, Normandy’s spy, and the old kook took pleasure in the fact that Sparkman knew it. All day Sparkman yearned for the quiet of her modest home and the peace that zipped up around her like a sleeping bag.

Sparkman fastened the blackout drapes shut. They were her only furnishings, if she was desperate enough to call them that, which she hadn’t found in an alley or abandoned building.

She opened the door to the closet, or what should have been the closet, and leaned forward, resting her broad chin against the chinstrap worn smooth from repeated use. Orange light, the same orange of the rising sun, burst across her retina.

Three beeps sounded.

She was in.

Four holoscreens activated in succession, lighting the inside of the dark closet. Sparkman slid her only chair across the cracked linoleum floor and settled into it as four pixelated shadows each found their seats and did the same.

She twined her fingers and rested her hands against her lap before announcing herself to the group. “Sparkman, here.”

“And Whiskey.” The voice came from the first screen.

“Delta.” From the second.

“Zulu.” The third.

And finally, the fourth, “Echo.”

The board members had each called out their sign. Their voices had been altered, with a robotic tinge, a kind of hollowness only perceptible to those trained to hear it. Only top-ranking Eos members knew each other’s identities, as well as the identities of everyone involved within their sect of the organization. And Sparkman wasn’t at the top.

“Sparky!” The first holoscreen flashed a little brighter as Whiskey spoke. “Tired of working with good ol’ Normandy?” There was a drawl to Whiskey’s voice. A kind of lilt Sparkman couldn’t quite place through the filter. “We could sure use you here in my department.”

For years Whiskey had tried to lure Sparkman away from Normandy, but she had to see this assignment through, for the good of Westfall’s citizens or not. Normandy experimented on people. On children.

“He’s