The Dazzling Heights

“What are you saying, that I made her up? She’s right there on camera, you can see for yourself!” Leda burst out, exasperated.

“I’m saying this is really weird. If she’d ever lived anywhere, she would have gotten registered, for an ID ring or a tax card or whatever.”

“Well, there’s your answer,” Leda declared. “She’s never actually lived anywhere—only visited. She never got an adult ID.”

Watt wouldn’t have thought of that, but it made sense. “Why would anyone live that way?”

“Because she’s up to something, obviously.” Leda delivered the phrase with a dramatic flair, as if she were an actress performing in an old tragic play. She frowned. “But why hasn’t anyone figured out that her retinas are wrong?”

“No one actually verifies retinal scans in public places, just cross-checks them with the criminal list. I’m guessing you haven’t seen her in any private homes,” he pointed out.

“Just Avery’s, but it was for a party,” Leda said, and Watt nodded.

“Whatever she’s up to,” he said the phrase the way Leda had, which elicited a smile, “she’s clearly an expert at it.”

They both grew quiet at the notion.

Then Leda looked up with a new idea. “What about schools? Could you run her facial-reg on school networks, not government ones? Or are they hard to crack?”

It was a good idea. Watt wished he’d thought of it first. “Nothing is too hard for Nadia,” he boasted, which wasn’t totally true, but sounded badass. “Nadia?” he prompted, but she’d already found a hit. Clare Dawson, who attended St. Mary’s boarding school in England for a single year.

“Yes! That’s her!” Leda cried out in excitement.

Another match popped up. Cicely Stone, at an American school in Hong Kong. Aliénor LeFavre, in Provence. Sophia Gonzalez, at a school in Brazil. And on and on, until Nadia’s screen was covered in at least forty aliases—all clearly linked to images of the so-called Calliope.

“Wow,” Watt said at last. This was way more intense than what he normally dealt with on [email protected] Haus, which was usually just student grade-wipes and cheating spouses, the occasional ID search.

“This proves it. She’s a criminal,” Leda said triumphantly. Her dark eyes were dancing with the thrill of the chase.

“Or a sociopath, or a secret agent, or maybe her family is crazy. We can’t jump to conclusions.”

Leda moved closer to the screen and bent down. He found himself distracted by her presence. “Nadia,” he added, clearing his throat, “can you find records of any incidents at these schools? Expulsions, misdemeanors, anything unusual in her files?”

“And cross-reference all her classmates at these schools, see which of them were her friends? Maybe we can find something through them,” Leda added. Without warning she sat on Watt’s lap, laced her fingers up in his hair, pulled his head down to hers. Her mouth on his was warm and insistent.

Watt was the one to pull away first. “I thought you said that wasn’t why you came here,” he teased, though he wasn’t complaining.

“It wasn’t the only reason,” Leda corrected.

“You don’t want me to go up to your—”

“Shut up,” Leda said impatiently, and kissed him again, her arms over his shoulders. It was easy to stand, to carry Leda to the bed—she was so light—and lay her gently down, never breaking the kiss. Then his hands were on her back, the curve of her hip, and her skin was so soft, and Watt didn’t know anymore whether he liked her or detested her. Maybe he felt both, at the same time, which would explain why all his nerve endings were going haywire, like his whole body might explode at any moment.

He started to ask Nadia to turn off the lights, but the room was already dark, a deadbolt sliding firmly across the door.

LEDA

LEDA BLINKED UP into the darkness.

She was wrapped around Watt’s sleeping form, the two of them cocooned in the warmth beneath his blanket, tangled so closely that even their breath had subconsciously aligned: their inhales and exhales occurring together like in that old medieval poem about the star-crossed lovers. “Clock,” Leda whispered, as quietly as she could.

The blinking numbers in the top left corner of her vision told her it was 1:11 a.m. Crap. She hadn’t meant to stay so late—had only come over on a sudden impulse, when she saw Calliope at antigrav yoga with Risha and remembered her conversation with Avery. She’d hoped, desperately, to find something on Calliope—as if she could give it to Avery as a peace offering, and undo all the wrongs she’d inflicted on her friend.

And, she admitted, she’d wanted an excuse to see Watt.

She shifted over in the narrow bed, not especially surprised that she’d fallen asleep there. She felt so … at ease with Watt, her sleep finally free of the nightmares that normally chased her down long, endless hallways and grasped at her with phantom fingers.

Thank god she’d at least had the presence of mind to tell her parents she was studying late with friends. Hopefully they wouldn’t notice her tiptoeing upstairs at this hour. Then again, they hadn’t noticed her sneaking Watt into her room all week, either.

Leda propped herself on one elbow to glance down at Watt’s sleeping form, tawny and lean and dangerous. He was like a flame, drawing her in, and she couldn’t stop even though she knew it might hurt her.

She let her gaze trace over his features in a way she never would while he was awake, studying his strong nose; his full, sensuous mouth; the shadowed lids over those glowing hazel eyes. His eyes were twitching a little, as if he was dreaming. What did that mind of his dream about? Maybe he dreamed of her.

She reached her hands up into his thick dark hair, playing with its curls, feeling the ridged smoothness of his skull beneath. So much intelligence in that whirling, humming, genius brain of his, she thought, so much that she didn’t understand. Watt fascinated her, and scared her a little too, because he was so unlike anyone she’d ever met.

Her fingers traced a bump under his right ear, and her breath caught. His skin was raised in a perfect circle, far too regular to be natural. It was firm to the touch, as though something had been surgically embedded there. She tried to lift his hair to get a glance at his scalp, but she couldn’t see even a trace of a scar.

A cold shiver of foreboding traveled up her spine, and her hand darted quickly back. Surely not, Leda thought, in answer to the bizarre thought that had traveled up from some place deep within her. Surely Watt’s computer wasn’t embedded in his brain. It seemed impossible.

Yet it explained so many things about him—the way he moved through the world more effortlessly than other people, without ever mumbling to his contacts. All those times he seemed to communicate with Nadia in complete silence. The fact that Leda had never been able to locate Nadia, no matter how diligently she’d searched through his room.

It seemed impossible, yet if Leda had learned anything in her seventeen years, it was that the impossible was very often true.

Watt stirred, his eyes fluttering open. “What time is it?”

“Shh, it’s late. Go back to sleep.” Her mind was still frantic, trying to sort out the implications of what she’d found.

“Don’t leave yet,” Watt said drowsily, reaching up to run a hand down her bare arm. His touch sent tiny explosions along her skin. Leda wanted more than anything to lie back down, press herself into him, unlearn the truth that she’d inadvertently discovered. She wanted to ask Watt about the strange bump in his skull. How had he gotten Nadia in the first place, and did it hurt? Did he regret it, being part computer?

Watt started to sit up. Leda cast her gaze wildly around the room so that he wouldn’t catch her staring, and her eyes caught on something she hadn’t noticed before, a virtual reality headset on his bedside table. It looked like a half-completed prototype; even Leda could tell that huge chunks were missing. Only really hardcore gamers still wore headsets, since the rendering on them was still better than even the most powerful contacts. “Did you build this?” Leda asked, picking it up, hoping to distract him from her rapidly beating heart.     PrevNextTip: You can use left and right keyboard keys to browse between pages.

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