Page 126 of Coldwire
“Can you put your display on speaker? So he can hear what I’m saying?”
Tamera is confused. She must be wondering why I don’t call him directly. She doesn’t ask it outright. She says, “Easy enough,” and turns off the water running in the sink, the rush of background noise easing. On myend, the splatter of the rain is incessant, tapping a restless rhythm when it drops off the edge of the shelter. “Henry? Lia’s calling.”
“Lia?” Dad’s voice has a faint echo, picked up by speaker mode from across the room. I can imagine Tamera standing at the entryway into his office, my dad seated at his desk. “What’s going on?”
“Dad, they’re investigating you.” I don’t know where to start. I don’t know how to ease in. So I don’t. “My posting is Uncle Chung. He went missing after making a weapon for the Medans, and we were supposed to find him. I don’t think they’ve ever been worried about where he is. I think they already have an operation in place to acquire the program anyway. The point of my whole posting was to lure you out because they suspect you have something to do with his work, and I just opened Kieren Murray’s second secret briefing, where it says he’s watchingmeto find whatever he can to pinyou.You need to do something. Go public first or hide or—I don’t know—anything, because they’re going to charge you with treason otherwise.”
Silence. If it weren’t for the sound of Tamera’s breath, in and out, out and in, I would think the line had dropped.
“I can’t, Lia,” Dad says. “It’s true. I am involved.”
I stagger, leaning against the bus. The surface is cold, wet, agonizing.
“I don’t… I don’t understand.”
“It’s not treason. Not in the way they want me for. There’s too much to explain, and I can’t speak it all here.”
“Try,” I say. My voice cuts through the rain. I’ve gotten louder. “You owe me that much.” I’ve been shoved right into the middle of his scandal without knowing it. NileCorp used my entire practical examination to get to Dad, as though I’m only an extension of his guilt.
“It’s not safe. You should have told me this had to do with Chung. I would have never let you be sent after him. You could have stayed with me—”
“I’m on a posting because I’m trying to stay with you!” I exclaim. “Mywhole life, Dad. I’ve been working so hard my whole life so I’ll have the choice of staying by your side.”
“None of that matters if NileCorp hears the wrong thing. Lia, whatever Chung has recently made is child’s play. His first attempt was shut down, and he’ll never get there again.”
Project Wit. The program he was working on in Atahua, that NileCorp forced the government to put away.
“That’s what Medaluo recruited him for, isn’t it?” I say. “They’ve called it Operation Coldwire. It’s a remake.”
“It’s not.”
“Then what—”
“Say nothing. Do nothing. It doesn’t matter what you find for them—”
And the line goes dead. The entire call tab disappears from my display. I jerk back, clicking around. “Hello? Dad? Tamera?”
I try to call again. Dial tone.
They’re already watching me. NileCorp shut the call down.
“Lia.”
I whirl around. Before my eyes adjust to the dark, I think that I’m hearing an intrusion inside my display, that Headmaster Murray has taken over the line to speak to me directly. A second later, I find Kieren standing behind me, right where the shelter doesn’t quite reach. The rain has soaked through his shirt.
Even while several paces away, I can feel his guilt rippling off him like some physical aura. It occurs to me, immediately, what I did wrong: after I went through his files, I should have flipped the pages back to where he’d left them.
The moment he viewed them again himself, if he was paying the slightest attention, he knew that I knew.
“What do you want?” I intone. There’s no point feigning normalcy, pretending that this might be a misunderstanding.A joint posting. I could laugh that I believed it even for a second. How stupid am I?
“At least let me explain,” Kieren says, begs. “My father called me earlier and said NileCorp felt satisfied enough to send me my real directive. I knew nothing prior to this. That addendum was entirely sprung on me—I barely got a word in edgewise.”
“Don’t lie.”
Kieren takes a step forward. I match him at once with a horrified step back, and he falters, freezing where he stands. “I’m not,” he rasps. “I’m—”
“What was Weston talking about, then?” I ask. “What about asecret assignmentthat your father hinted to you before we entered Medaluo’s server? Tell me it had nothing to do with me. Look me in the eye and tell me he didn’t suggest I might be involved with Chung’s disappearance.”
