Chapter Twenty-Eight - Molly
Lincoln pulls me close and our hearts race with the aftermath of lovemaking.
How quickly life changes. Before I came into this cave I was alone and now I feel like maybe… I mean, I know it’s stupid—he’s crazy, and even though we were so close as kids, we’ve been apart for fifteen years—but I really feel like I have a partner. My memories are still blurred. Not quite fitting together properly, like trying to fit the wrong piece in a puzzle. But the basics are there. He is the only reason I lived. I have always known that there was something missing inside me.
“I’m gonna keep you here,” he says in a low grumble that tells me he’s thinking of falling asleep. “Women don’t need to work. They belong barefoot in the Batcave.” I turn my head a little to try to see his face over my shoulder and he starts laughing. “Hey, you’re the one who wanted me to be Alpha. That’s who he is.”
I snuggle up to his chest and a smile leaks out. “You’re wrong. I know I don’t remember as much as you, but I remember enough to know you’d be good to me.”
“Hold that thought, gun girl. Just hold onto it until morning. Because I’m dead tired and we still have a lot to talk about. But I’m definitely not gonna think about that until I get some sleep, wake up, and fuck you one more time.”
God. I could almost go again right now. He’s so fucking hot. His arms are like cannons. Iron-hard biceps that wrap me up and make me feel safe and protected. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as relaxed as I do right now. His chest and abs are corded muscle. Deep valleys and granite hills that make me feel safe from everything I’ve ever feared.
“Promise me you’ll be here when I wake up.”
“I promise,” I whisper, my eyes heavy and my body satisfied. “Everything can wait until tomorrow.”
“That’s my girl,” he mumbles.
He drifts off soon after, but sleep eludes me. My mind is too busy to give in right now. My whole life is flashing before my eyes. All the good, and there was a lot of that. I was loved by the Masters family. And I was cared for like I was their own daughter.
Will was my best friend all growing up. We were five years apart and I loved him so much. A part of me wonders if I didn’t unconsciously remember what Alpha meant to me. If I didn’t replace Lincoln with Will. Both older, both fearless, both looking out for me.
But Will’s death destroyed me. It was bad enough after our dad died. The show fell apart, of course. My mother fell into a deep, deep depression and she did things. Horrible things. Like mess up the bikes so we’d crash. Will and I both did during practice. But it was so apparent that the bikes had been tampered with, it led the safety manager straight to her. She threw a fit, yelled and screamed. They had to drug her to calm her down. And the next day I found her sprawled out in a pool of blood in her trailer and that was it for the Masters family in the circus. Finding lost girls who needed help was one thing, but a dead body would not be good for the business. And every once in a while there’d be social workers nosing around trying to find out if any of the show kids were being abused or worked too hard.
I was already a teenager by then, so no one was worried about me. But there were other kids. And the same day that my mother tried to take her own life, one showed up.
It was either get her professional help or the social worker was going to open an investigation on all the kids. Will and I agreed, of course. My mother needed help. But once she went into the institution, she only got worse. And that’s the real reason I took the job in Cathedral City. I want to help her, I just haven’t had the courage to go over there and see her yet. I have never visited. Will and I were too busy surviving after things fell apart.
Once I turned eighteen Will and I drifted apart because he got into racing. I sigh into the darkness. I was so stupid to let him do that. But Will was the one in control, not me. He was my rock. Even after my father died, he was still my rock. I never worried about him. I justified my father’s death. He was older. He took a few risks to make the show better and he lost.
But Will was always so rational. I guess I counted on that. I counted on him to hold us together and then he went and got himself killed.
It blew my mind and the depression hit me so hard. The realization that I was all alone in the world was just too much. I needed to get out. Escape. It was so easy to drop out of life like my mother did. So easy to give in to the sadness.
Then this job offer came and I saw a way forward. Maybe it was grasping at straws, or maybe I had some deep memory of what Cathedral City meant to me.
The school.
Lincoln lets out a soft snore and then turns over, releasing his tight hold on me.
I miss him immediately. Whatever bonds we formed as children, they are still there. Delicate, maybe. Thin strands of memories and emotion that have tried their best to be put to rest over the years. But still there.
I’d like to try with him. Strengthen those bonds. Find what we lost that winter night when we parted ways.
His cave is the perfect place to hide from the world and put it all back together. And I guess that’s what he’s been doing here. Hiding from life. Just like me and my life in the circus, and later the military.
I’d like to join him. I’d love nothing more than to stay here and never go outside again. It could be perfection. Lincoln and me and our little home in a cave filled with tools, and labs, and computers.
I wonder what he does down here. Does he have a job? I bet he’s some kind of engineer or mechanic. And what’s he hiding with those gloves? I look over at the computer in the corner of the room and study the screen. The desktop has no icons on it and the background is a picture of glowing circuits.
I have a sudden urge to snoop, but it’s obvious the screen’s on lock, so why bother.
No. No snooping. I want Lincoln to tell me things in his own time, in his own way. But I am dying of thirst right now and I have to pee. So I ease myself out of the bed and feel around in the darkness until I come up with my panties. I pull them on and go searching for my shirt, but all I find is Lincoln’s. It will have to do for now, so I shrug on his tee and smother myself in his scent.
I tiptoe towards a crack of light coming from under a door and, after a few seconds of searching, find a handle and pull it open.
The light is not bright, but I squint my eyes after the black of his room. The Batcave is humming with computers and the light reflected off the wall-sized jellyfish aquarium is throwing a wave pattern over everything. That giant monitor on the wall where he was talking to Case Reider is grayed out now. But a lot of other things are going on. The hologram of a bike in progress is still hovering over a table and robots scurry around it, busily working as their metal appendages whir with motion.
What does he do here? It sure looks like he’s a bike builder. I walk forward a few paces and then spy an expansive hallway I missed on the first trip. The far left side of the cave is a huge glass wall, and on other side are rooms. One is filled with tanks that hold luminescent jellyfish, smaller versions of the one in the main tank. They flicker rainbow colors in the darkness and I’m mesmerized by their weightless dance in the water.
The main tank is giant, something you’d find in a city aquarium. And the jellyfish are huge. They seem like decorations or pets. I walk forward to get a better look at the new tank room. These smaller versions look like specimens when you take in the equipment surrounding them. Microscopes and refrigerators.
I walk on after a few moments and the next room looks like an engineering lab with various stationary robot arms busy working on another bike.
There’s more to see farther down a slender hallway and another glass-walled room. But when I walk forward to peer inside, this lab is totally different. There’s some kind of operating table in the center with the kind of light above it that you’d see in surgery. The next room has white mice in small cages stacked to the ceiling. More computers, of course. If he’s a mechanic, he’s a very high-tech one. But mice? And microscopes? And what’s with the room filled with jellyfish?
“What are you doing?” I whirl around and find that holographic woman behind me, her transparent hands on her hips like she’s annoyed.
“Just looking for a bathroom,” I say back. “And I’m thirsty.”
“I think we might have a problem.”
I take a step back. Her tone is harsh and even though I know she’s made up of lights, she scares me. “W-w-what kind of problem?”
“I didn’t know about the inhibitor.” She scowls and I wonder just how much power this thing has. “It creates a powerful advantage in your favor. I might have made a mistake.”
“I don’t… I don’t understand.” I’m not sure I should talk to this computer. What if she’s got something against me? What if she resents the fact that I’m here? It’s clear that Lincoln doesn’t bring people down here. She’s probably wondering about our past. “I don’t really know what that means,” I say. “You’re Sheila, right?”
“Correct,” she says, walking around me in a circle, like she’s sizing me up. Trying to figure out if she can take me in a fight. “What if you ever want to hurt him?”
Shit. She is not going to let it go. And she scares me. I don’t think this technology even exists. I have no frame of reference for what she might be capable of. “I don’t—I don’t understand it all, I’m sorry. I just need to pee.”
“Do you know what he is? What he does?”
“No,” I say truthfully. The concept of Alpha was never explained to me. And an eight-year-old does not need to know such things, even if she’s a pawn in the game. The only reason to use a small girl as part of some secret plan is to make her cooperate without having to explain. “But I’m interested,” I say, hoping that will make this thing back down, or at the very least, fill me in a little.
“So you can arrest him?”
“Do I have a reason to arrest him?” I know he’s involved in those murders, but I don’t know the how or the why. He was not on the security footage.
“If you did, would you? Or would you help him? Would you institutionalize him like your mother?”
“What? How the fuck do you know about—”
“I’m a computer, Detective. A very powerful computer.” She seems to grow bigger in that moment. Taller, wider, and maybe even more substantial. The light that makes up her body becomes dense, less transparent. And she seems more solid than she did a moment ago. “I have access to every database on Earth.”
She terrifies me. “That’s impossible,” I say boldly.
“Is it?”
“No one has that much power. There are firewalls and… stuff. I’m not very technical, but people take precautions. They don’t just let… clandestine programs wander in and take their information.”
“Is that what you think I am? A clandestine program?”
“I have no idea what you are.”
“You think I can’t get by a firewall, Molly Masters? You think I’m what? Some ordinary hologram? Because you’ve so seen so many of those, right?”
“Jesus, I don’t know. What are you asking?”
“Lincoln is not what you think. He’s not your Alpha anymore, Molly. He’s mine.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. What, are you jealous?” I laugh. “I’m not having this conversation with a computer. You can’t—”
“I might have made a mistake by encouraging him to see you again. You have no idea what’s happening here. And I don’t want you coming in and misunderstanding.”
“Then what is he?” I place my hands on my hips, ready to fight it out with this thing about who knows Lincoln better.
Sheila continues to circle me like prey. And even though I know my hand would slip right through her lightshow of a body, she’s intimidating. “What special power did the Prodigy School give you, Molly?”
“Special power? I don’t have a special power. I was used, Sheila. I was a pawn to try to keep Lincoln from disobeying. It’s not my fault I have that effect on him. I didn’t ask for any of this. I just wanted him to be my friend.”
“That can’t be all. What you see is not what you get with Lincoln, Case, or Thomas. So why should it be that way with you?”
“Oh, please.” I snort. “What’s his special power then?”
“He writes languages.”
“What? Languages?”
“Computer languages, Molly. Specifically, he writes computer languages that rewrite other computer languages. Do you know what a retrovirus does?”
“A retrovirus, like AIDS?”
“Yes, like that.”
“No, not really,” I admit. “I’m a cop, OK? I’m not a scientist.”
“A retrovirus inserts itself into your DNA and recodes. DNA is a code, Molly. And all codes can be rewritten. That’s what Lincoln’s computer languages do. They insert themselves into a system, rewrite the code, and then take it over without a trace.”
“So he’s a hacker. I didn’t know that, no. But it’s not surprising given the mad scientist cave we’re standing in.”
“He’s not a hacker, Molly, he’s a god.”
I snort.
“That,” she says, pointing to the operating room, “is his life’s work.”
I stare at her, utterly confused. What is she talking about? “I don’t see anything in there but a bed and a light, so you’ll have to give me more details.”
“That’s because he’s not in there at the moment. And he is his own greatest achievement.”
“Cryptic much? Is there a bathroom I can use? Or should I just go wake up Lincoln and tell him about our little conversation?”
“By all means, I’d love for you to go wake him up. Turn the lights on in there, while you’re at it. Ask him to take off those gloves too. See what he does then.”
Is she threatening me? Is she trying to make me think he’s going to hurt me? I sigh, not sure what to do, but I am curious about those gloves. So I ignore my bladder and walk back the way I came. I pass by a chair where his leather jacket is hanging off the back and spy that anarchy symbol on the shoulder.
It’s a sharp reminder that Sheila is right. I have no idea who Lincoln is. I have no idea what he’s been doing down here. And I have no idea what he’s been doing out there to those Blue Corp scientists.
I force myself to continue walking. My feet are freezing all of a sudden. The cold concrete floor sends a chill up my body as I head towards the open door, and when I get there, I stop just inside the darkness and feel around on the side of the rock wall for a switch.
“Where is the light?” I whisper.
“They’re voice-activated.” Sheila is directly behind me, but on the other side of the threshold. “So just say, ‘Lights on.’”
I swallow down the dread that is suddenly pulsating though me and force the words out. “Lights—”
They flicker on before I even finish.
What I see shocks my heart. My eyes scan the walls of the cave, taking it all in. And even though my heart wants to make it all disappear, my brain won’t let me and I fall against the side of the cave in shock.