The Operator

Cars went past in the nearby street, and a burst of music rose and fell, echoing off the surrounding buildings. Silas hunched into himself, scanning the moving flow for anyone watching him. It had been early spring the last time he’d been to Lloyd Plaza. Peri had just realized that Bill had filled her memories with lies and had made her his queen in the very game she’d entered with the intent to shut down. She’d ultimately succeeded, but his gamble of giving Peri her diary to hopefully remind her of their love was looking slim at best.

Frustration, quickly smothered by guilt, pulled at him. It was up to Peri. It was always up to Peri.

Frowning, he turned from the shallow, engineered lake thick with ice-skaters and spun his empty coffee cup between his finger and thumb in a nervous circle. Peri’s favorite coffee sat cooling next to him. The email of her flight reservation coming in at Detroit rather than returning to Atlanta hadn’t surprised him, but her later text asking him to meet her here with any Evocane he could spare had. It was ugly stuff, growing worse as he picked it apart. WEFT had been in a tizzy when he left. No one was telling him anything. Actually, they were ignoring him. Being labeled a science geek had its perks.

Uneasy, he shifted on the bench, squinting up at the low-Q recording drones hovering over the stage, not comfortable with the thought of how easy it had been to slip out of Atlanta and make his way to Detroit with three injector pens full of what Evocane he had left. Sure, he’d gone through eighty percent of his field-agent training before abandoning it, and yes, mistakes happened when you pulled the best people from multiple organizations and various protocols mixed, but the door had been wide open.

That he might be leading Peri into a trap was a distinct possibility. That she’d left St. Louis without permission wasn’t hard to figure out either. His first guess that she’d gone ghost seemed unlikely since what little WEFT gossip he’d heard was about Harmony and how pissed Steiner was at her. Peri had to be behind it.

Frowning, he crossed his ankles under the table and put his hands into his coat pockets to at least try to look relaxed. She wasn’t late—yet. The cool shapes of the three Evocane pens met his fingers, worrying him more. He’d double-checked that it had been untampered with before he’d parceled it out and put a vial of tinted baby oil in its place. Peri had asked him, and he’d brought it, but he’d be damned before he let her get hooked on it—the lure of being able to remember her drafts or not.

Silas jerked upright when he recognized her silhouette among the throng, her petite form graceful and her boots giving her an extra inch. She looked good in her tight black pants, somehow making the utilitarian coat with the WEFT logo seem trendy and fitting in with the young crowd even with her intent expression. A ball cap covered her face, and she was watching the low-Q drones as she made her way over.

He gathered himself to rise, motion slowing when Harmony came up behind her. They were wearing the same coat, and Silas scanned the tops of the surrounding buildings for more than pigeons as the two women had a hushed, eye-darting conversation. Clearly not liking the situation, Harmony grimaced at him before settling herself against one of the snow-dead planters, where she could watch both them and the street behind her through the reflections. The CIA agent had the shadow of a bruise on her jaw and was moving with a pained stiffness that said she was feeling more than the extended travel to get here.

Silas’s welcoming smile faltered as Peri got closer. She didn’t look much better, her turned-up nose red with cold, her lip swollen, and a scrape on her cheek—rug burn, maybe? Eyes haunted past her long lashes, she looked too small to survive the crap her life heaped on her as she made her way through the gathered people. She’d cut her hair to its task-short severeness sometime between Atlanta and now, and she flicked it from her eyes when the wind gusted, meeting his gaze with a guilty swiftness. He couldn’t help but feel a tinge of pride for her. She’d come a long way in regaining herself in the year she’d been out of Opti. They’d worked hard to instill in her an aversion to being alone, building on her natural fear of forgetting and lying to her that to not remember would lead to insanity. He’d have to remind her of that lie.

“How do you get so banged up in so little time?” he said, his hand going out to cup her cheek. People were watching them, but it was in question of what someone like him was doing with someone like her.

“You should see the other guy,” she said, stiffening as his fingers touched her face. But it was guilt and heartache in her eyes, and he slid his other hand behind her back and drew her forward to sit.

Peri’s eyes shot to his, the panic in them having nothing to do with Opti, WEFT, or the low-Q drones skating over the square. But he would not lose her again because of his own fear, and he pulled her into an embrace, needing to feel her against him to prove she was okay.

“I did, and she looks better than you,” he whispered, his arm still around her and his head bowed to breathe in the scent of her hair. He felt her breath catch, and then, for an instant, surrounded by the happy chatter of people, her body relaxed into his, accepting him as her arms tentatively encircled him, so light they were almost not there.

And then she pulled away, still refusing to believe she deserved it.

Silas slumped as his hand dropped to his side. Harmony was staring at him. Worried, he gestured for Peri to sit. She wouldn’t look at him as she settled herself exactly where he knew she would, able to see the skaters and the street busy with Sity bikes and commuter traffic. Behind her, the holographic mannequins began shifting into upscale leather and lace.