Page 86 of Awry
Zaya is so near, but still so untouchable.
Despite the distance that remains between us, something has settled within me since I held Zaya again.Perhaps it’s my beast, which is more active, more present than it’s ever been before.So even despite itching to be at her side, I feel more myself, more in my own skin, more … actively participating in my own life than I have for thirteen years.
I glance at the clock.It’s near dawn.I resolve to not spend another day away from Zaya Gage.Then I focus back on what I need to do to make that happen.
While I run various scripts on the other monitors, I’m adding to my report on the main monitor before me.I’ve broken down the key points in the timeline of Presh’s attempt to flee our sperm donor, right up to the moment she enters the Choices Cafe with Breaker and Chains.I’ve got them arriving, and then Breaker and Chains tearing out of the parking lot.
Vid of Presh in the cafe, though?Nothing.Zaya doesn’t appear on any of the feeds either.And it’s not that the footage has been destroyed or cut.In fact, the only way I know it’s been tampered with is Presh’s accounting.Someone extremely skilled has simply wiped Presh and Zaya from the footage I’ve managed to gather.I even found some random vidTuber’s feed that matches the timeline, but in which neither Presh nor Zaya appears.
That level of video manipulation, leaving no traces that I’ve been able to spot, is beyond me.I would have said it was beyond current technology.Except I’ve had my hands on Zaya’s personal device.Her phone is a pretty, shiny thing, all titanium and shatterproof glass wrapping around internals that don’t exist.Not for open purchase, anyway.
A shuffle of noise beyond the code-sealed door in the corner to my far right draws my attention.
No matter the acuteness of my shifter hearing, even in human form, I can hear nothing beyond the steel doorway in the wall directly in front of me, beyond which stand the interrogation room and three holding cells.I can only hope Reck isn’t actually murdering the bikers Grinder dropped off earlier.But I can easily hear the person slinking in from the main house.The fact that she didn’t use the elevator, coming instead through the tunnel to sneak past all the extra enforcers Rath has monitoring the house and grounds, gives her completely away.
She isn’t nearly as sneaky as she thinks, though.
But then, she isn’t a shifter.
I haven’t really absorbed that yet.
The keypad on the door in the right corner flashes.The door opens just a crack, and a small hand curls around the edge.One purple-blue eye fills the slit of the opening, blinking rapidly.Though the light is low in my secondary lair, it’s pitch black in the hallway beyond.
“It’s just me,” I murmur, shifting my attention back to my monitors.Okay, shifting my attention back to one of the three pictures I’m using for the facial recognition algos.
It’s a shot of Zaya.Asleep.
Yes, I snapped a picture of Zaya Gage curled up in bed yesterday morning.Like a complete creeper.I took multiple pictures, in fact, though only one of them came out with minimal blur.It was either that or crawl into the bed with her.That, or I wouldn’t have been able to force myself to leave the motel room, even though the club needed me, Presh needed me —
“I can’t sleep anymore,” my baby sister whispers.Presh slips into the room, carefully shutting, then locking the door behind her.She steps past a well-worn brown leather couch set against the wall, which along with the coffee table and two stools at my workstation are the room’s only furnishings.The half-eaten pizza I had dropped off for dinner sits abandoned on the coffee table.
How the fuck Presh knows the access codes into and through the tunnel from the main house, I have no idea.Just like I have no idea what those purple eyes manifesting for my sister mean.What kind of awry power will she wield?It’s a huge and possibly explosive unknown.
I know that’s part of what’s fueling Reck’s current rage.It’s not just his utterly irrational response to Zaya’s reappearance in our lives.
Presh shuffles over to me.I wrap her in a one-arm hug, and she leans into me, head on my shoulder, blinking at my screens.
“That’s … footage of me at the train station.In Dallas?”She swallows hard.“I was trying to figure out what train would get me over the border into California.”
“Yes.”I’ve run the footage I’ve illegally accessed from the station spanning twenty-four hours before and twenty-four hours beyond Presh’s slipping out of the shadows and purchasing a ticket three nights ago.As far as I’ve been able to track, she made a clean getaway.No Chains or Breaker on her tail.
“How did you get it?”
I shrug.Cracking Federation code is fucking child’s play, even that of the Transportation Bureau.The Federation government is a sham, meaning personal protections aren’t regulated.Nor are personal freedoms, for that matter.The entire country is as lawless as it can get within its own borders.Borders that many residents of the Federation are careful to not cross, because the countries surrounding them take strong exception to the violation of any and all fundamental rights.
That makes Chains and Breaker’s movements through Cascadia, even prior to snatching Presh, exceedingly suspect.Because they weren’t just in-country to grab my little sister back.The timeline doesn’t match up.The train is way faster than a couple of shifters on bikes.They had to be in or around Tacoma already, near where Presh disembarked and tried to purchase a ticket back to Portland.I’m still piecing their movements —
“What the fuck, Rought?”Presh suddenly jabs her finger toward the picture of Zaya on my lower screen.“Is she asleep?”
Before her death thirteen years ago, I had easily lost count of how many times I’d watched Zaya sleep.Dozing in the shade on the beach after a summer swim.Or curled in a nest of blankets in the tree house I built in one of the massive firs overlooking that same beach.Or … as the years progressed and we grew from childhood friends to something much, much more, cradled in my arms, deliciously spent after coming multiple times on my fingers or my tongue —
“Rought!”Presh snaps.
“I’m running facial recognition, Presh,” I say, glad my voice sounds normal, not husky or broken.
“Doesn’t make it any less creepy,” she mutters under her breath as she shuffles over to the couch.She pulls the pizza box off the coffee table and cuddles up with it as she sits.“You need a blanket down here.”
“You need to be in bed.”
