was up on the table, waiting for Quinn and Samuel to begin the process. And then, the images stopped. Just like an old movie reel that kept getting stuck in the same exact spot. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t push past the snag, couldn’t see how the movie ended.
“What’s wrong?” Lucas asked.
I relaxed my muscles into a natural expression, but not quickly enough.
“Thinking about Quinn?” he pressed. Ugh. Sometimes, he was way too astute for his own good.
“Yes. But everything’s still a void after the procedure. Any progress on your end?”
Lucas’s eyes lit up. He flexed his fingers in the space between us, as if getting ready to conduct an orchestra. I knew what that meant—I’d seen it before. He performed that funny hand maneuver whenever he was excited about some prospective technological breakthrough.
“What? Did you figure out how to restore the data she erased?”
He grinned. “Not completely, not yet. But I’m close.”
My shoulders sagged.
“But soon we can connect your system to my restoration program and give it a try,” he said, attuned to my subtle changes in posture.
“Really? When?”
“Maybe tomorrow morning. Can you wait that long?”
“Why can’t you just tell me what you do know? We can try and fill in the blanks together,” I suggested, hoping that Lucas would agree to play detective with me.
“I don’t think it’s prudent,” he said softly. “I only know bits and pieces from picking up your thoughts and talking to you via remote. I don’t have the entire picture, and I don’t want to give you misleading information. It will be better if we restore your drive.”
It was the same line he’d fed me every time I’d pressed him for more details.
The problem was, I read between the lines. The only reason misleading information would be problematic was if something terrible went down after Quinn and Samuel had hacked into me back at her lab.
“We’ll get your memory back. One way or another.”
The quiet reassurance in Lucas’s voice soothed me. I might not have fully agreed with his decision, but one thing was for sure—I trusted him completely.
Even though my memory would be useless once the bomb went off.
I fell into step beside him as we headed back to his brother’s cabin. My measured, even steps were a contrast to his awkward limp, the result of a congenital foot anomaly that no amount of surgery could completely fix. Not that Lucas was weakened by it at all. He was lean but wiry, stronger than he looked. And mentally, he was about as fierce as they came. Without him, I never would have made it out of General Holland’s compound alive, and he’d risked everything to come and rescue me in the desert. Even now, he was here with me at great personal risk. He’d taken medical leave from his job at SMART Ops, but he could only be gone for so long without arousing suspicion.
Any day now, he might have to go back and leave me behind. And if I was being honest with myself, the thought of that terrified me.
“Come on, let’s get you where it’s warm,” he said.
I raised an eyebrow. “Like that really matters.”
“Fine, I’m freezing out here. Can we go now?”
I grinned and nudged him with my elbow. As we walked, the brown horizontal lines of a rustic cabin peeked through the trees on our left.
Actual distance: 26.25 ft.
As usual, my android sensors required that I had the precise measurements. Because that information was so crucial when you housed an explosive device inside your body.
We passed the trees and entered the small clearing. The A-frame log cabin sat in the rear, ugly and squat like a beehive that had been smashed by an angry fist into half its normal size. Nothing adorned the walls or windows. The rooftop slouched well below the tree line, and the only way to get here by car was via a precarious, off-road path that you had to search forever to find. The walkway that led to the front of the cabin had been shoveled recently, leaving two short snow walls on either side.
The main door creaked open. A scrawny, pale man stumbled out onto the porch, rubbing his eyes like he’d just woken up. When he saw his little brother coming toward him, his body tensed and his eyes narrowed.
“Jesus, Lucas, make sure the door latches when you go outside. And wear your damn jacket if you don’t want to catch pneumonia and die!”