The Drafter

“I was there,” Silas said flatly, anger growing. “Ready to extract her. She had everything we needed to end this, and you scrub her? Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

Allen looked out the grimy window. “Maybe because you drove Matt’s van into the Detroit River?”

“Don’t get cute with me, you little pissant.”

“I scrubbed her to save her life,” Allen reiterated, his attention coming back to him, but Silas thought there was far too much guilt in it. “You were already in transit before it happened. There was no way to tell you. And there’s still a chance to end this. Fran wants you to cut her loose, and I agree. She needs to come back to Opti to finish it.”

“You scrubbed her because you finally had her with you!” Silas accused, satisfied he was right when Allen flushed.

“I had to.” Allen slid from the desk. “Good God, Silas. She was dying. Dying in my arms and wouldn’t draft. Bill knows she is an alliance sleeper agent. He’s probably known since day one. If I had taken less than three years, they would have suspected me.”

Maybe. Silas eased back as he recalled how low the odds had been when they’d started this five years ago. “Bill doesn’t know who she is,” he muttered.

“He does.” Allen carefully stretched his damaged knee. “That’s why Jack kept scrubbing her to keep her oblivious and productive.”

“Like you,” Silas said bitterly.

“Not like me.” Allen frowned, eyes drifting to nothing. “The idiot shot her to get her to draft, and with her intuition—”

“She never would have accepted him, scrub or not.” Silas’s focus blurred, his shoulders aching from being pulled back too tightly. Peri was a pain in the ass, demanding and particular, but he trusted her intuition more than most people’s facts, and there was no one he’d rather have watching his back in a tight spot. Even now.

His eyes flicked up to Allen. Especially now.

“So you let her kill him,” Silas accused. “When there was no one else to be her anchor.”

Allen’s expression sharpened. “I did it in the hopes that with closure we could play this out to the end.” He pulled himself up stiffly, weight on his good leg. “The government knows Opti is rife with corruption, but they need Opti like bread needs flour. They tasked Bill to find it, which of course he did, using the opportunity to modify the list so as to keep his game going. Peri found out she was on the original and responded in her usual style.”

Silas nodded, the drying blood on his face pulling. And in the aftermath, she’d drafted and forgot everything. “Where does that leave us?”

Allen pushed his glasses up. “Bill has the list, but Jack kept the original chip with everyone’s names on it for insurance. Bill has already ripped their apartment apart looking for it. It’s not in her Mantis or the hotel they stopped in, and neither Peri nor Jack would have destroyed it. Has Peri said anything about it?”

Silas snorted, his cuffs catching as he leaned back. “No. But she wouldn’t know, since you wiped her clear back to her first Opti anchor.

“I think you’ve gone native,” Silas accused. “I think you like where you are, what you do, playing both sides. I think you like that Peri knows you and not me.”

Allen hunched, angry. “And that’s why you’re buying her dinner, outfitting her for travel, refusing to cut her loose when Fran told you to send her back in? Peri doesn’t know anything, and I’m this close,” he said, his finger and thumb a mere inch apart. “If I can get Peri back and working, I can find who’s funding Bill. I’ve got a shot at finding how far it goes. I know the idea was she’d be the one to break it, but I can finish it and we can all go home.”

Silas squinted at him, cheekbone throbbing. He never could decide when Allen was lying. He’d always relied on Peri to tell him. His eyes flicked to Allen’s broken fingers and damaged knee. No reason to change that now.

“That woman does not like to be lied to,” Silas said, gaze rising to find Allen’s waiting.

“Tell me about it,” the tired man said around a sigh. “You think I did this to be with Peri? Every time I touch her I’m scared to death I’ll trigger a wisp I didn’t fragment. She knows I’m lying to her, just not about what.”

Allen is worried about leftover fragments, and the only things she remembers about me are a few inside jokes about asthma and shoes. Silas’s suspicions tightened.

Fingers fumbling, Allen searched a pocket of his suit coat, holding up a theme book before setting it on the desk. “I haven’t gone native, but I’m starting to wonder about Peri.”

“You read her diary?” Silas’s lip curled.

“It was either me or Bill,” he said. “I told him it would help me convince her I’m her anchor, but I went through it to find evidence of Opti’s corruption. Something we could use.”

“And?”

Allen shook his head. “Nothing. If she kept track of her findings, it was somewhere else.”

This was going nowhere. He had to get out of here. She wouldn’t wait forever.

“She’s changed, Silas,” Allen said, bringing him back to the cruddy little construction trailer. “Her diary? She enjoys what she does a little too much. We don’t know what’s going on in her head apart from what she tells us and what we can piece together. What’s to say she’s not working for Bill to find the head of the alliance and assassinate the top people?”