Wildcard

  I catch glimpses of their vibrant costumes from my window as I hurry around, changing out of my dress and throwing on my black jeans and sweater. Black gloves go on my hands, fresh socks and sneakers on my feet. My pair of slim knives is tucked inside my boots, while my backpack is filled with my usual supplies—my grappling hook, handcuffs, and stun gun. Finally, I download a randomly generated face to set over my features and pull a new mask over the lower half of my face.

  I may be running with a fancier crew now, but the familiar ritual and the weight of my old tools feel right, convincing me that I actually know what the hell I’m doing, even as Hideo’s words from the banquet earlier whirl around in my head.

  He looked like I had ripped his heart right out of his chest.

  Believe me, I regret nothing more.

  I scowl and yank harder on my shoelaces. None of this was ever my fault, and he knows it. But my encounter with him has still left me spinning, my mind crowded with all the different emotions that he brings.

  An incoming message from Zero cuts through my train of thoughts. I startle in the darkness and glance up, half expecting to see him standing there in the middle of my room.

  How was your meeting with Hideo?

  “I managed to get a second one with him,” I whisper back, my words transcribing in midair before being sent back to him.

  When?

  “Tomorrow night. It’ll be private—no public settings.”

  There’s a pause, and I wonder whether he or Jax had somehow spied on my earlier conversation already, and whether he’s just testing me now to see if I’ll tell him the truth.

  Make sure it counts.

  Outside, a huge roar goes up as the streets shift to red and gold, the Phoenix Riders’ colors. Cars honk in enthusiasm as they drive by.

  “It will,” I say.

  No more replies come from him.

  I wait a little longer, then sigh and bring up Tremaine’s map of the Innovation Institute. I tap on Tremaine’s profile to send him a message.

  “Hey,” I murmur, watching my words appear in my view. “You still in for tonight?”

  I wait for a while. There’s a bit of static on his end, but nothing more, and when he doesn’t respond, I take a look at his profile. He’s still online, and his profile is haloed in green.

  Hey.

  I message again.

  Blackbourne. Wake up.

  Maybe his connection’s bad. Or maybe he really doesn’t want to talk to me anymore, not after everything he spilled to me last night. I unplug my board from its charger, trying not to dwell on what other reasons he might have for being silent.

  When he still doesn’t answer me after a few more messages, I get up and grab my board. Heading to the institute without Tremaine is probably a bad idea, especially after Taylor’s talk with me. At least I’d given something to the Blackcoats, enough to keep them satisfied that I’m doing my job for them—but if I’m going to be meeting Hideo tomorrow, any extra info I find on Sasuke will need to happen tonight.

  I’m running out of time.

  * * *

  * * *

  I DON’T LEAVE my hotel through the front door. If Jax is watching me tonight, she’ll expect me to go through main entrance. So instead, I pull out my old cable launcher from my backpack, hook the end onto the balcony railing, then climb over the ledge and leap off.

  Wind whips my hair up in a stream, but from the outside, no one can see more than a rippling shadow moving along the side of the complex. I squint, shivering in the cold as the cable launcher carries me down, jerking to a halt less than a story from the ground.

  I release the cable and let myself fall with a soft thud. Then I toss down my board and head in the direction of the institute.

  For the first time in a while, I head down into the first subway train I can find. They’re still congested at this hour of the night. Salarymen exasperated with all the festivities slowing down their travels jostle past me without sparing so much as a glance, while groups of eager fans clog the trains, each trying to get to some party or Warcross street game happening in the city. Ramen stalls and bakeries lining the station interiors are all still packed, while high-end stores bustle with customers, everyone looking for limited-edition championship purses and belts and shoes that will all go away once the Warcross season ends. Alongside the advertisements covering the walls of the station are the virtual figures of two more top players chosen for the closing ceremony.

  ABENI LEA of KENYA | TITANS

  TREY KAILEO of USA | WINTER DRAGONS

  I hold my breath and let myself get lost in the fray, hoping that no one recognizes me through my disguises when we’re all pressed together in the trains. I ride a few different subway lines until I feel like I can’t even find myself in the midst of all the bodies. If Jax still manages to catch up with me, it’ll hopefully take her long enough to give me some time to check out the institute on my own.

  Half an hour later, I emerge into the darker, quieter residential streets beyond the outskirts of Tokyo. Here, the virtual overlays diminish into little more than building names in subtle white letters—Curry House, Bakery, Laundry—and the block number I’m currently on, then rows and rows of nondescript house labels. Apartments 14-5-3. Apartments 16-6-2.

  My board streaks silently through the roads until the homes come to an abrupt end. A solid stone wall wraps around the next block, ending in a security window and a lowered barrier gate. I pull to a stop in front of it. There, looming past an expanse of lawn and fountains, is a large office complex, its main atrium made entirely of glass.

  My gaze stops on the words engraved into the slab of stone just beyond the barrier gate, the same one that Tremaine had shown me in his photo.

  JAPAN INNOVATION INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

  The parking lot isn’t empty. I see a few black cars here, parked in one corner.

  My hackles rise at the sight. It’s entirely possible that some people are just working late—but something about the cars reminds me of the one I’d ridden in with Jax when she’d first taken me to the Blackcoats. Maybe Tremaine is here, too. At the thought of him, I do another quick scan of my messages. He’s still online, but he hasn’t answered me yet.

  I hesitate for another second before I finally pull my hood on tighter, switch my randomized facial features to a new set, and squeeze past the car barrier.

  The main entrance is locked, of course. From the outside, it’s hard to make out exactly what’s past the all-glass front atrium—but it soars at least three to four floors high, and some kind of dim gradient of colored light is sweeping around inside, from top to bottom. The entire building looks shut down for the night. I glance back at the cars, considering, and then wander away from the main entrance to follow the building’s wall.

  I make my way around the entire complex, looking for a good way in, but everything seems locked down, with no security faults anywhere. I huddle down near a clump of bushes on the side of the main building and bring up Tremaine’s maps again, hoping to see some security vulnerability I might have missed. Then I run a search on whether the complex has any online system that I can worm into. Once, I’d broken into a closed Manhattan boutique by getting past its security cameras’ simplistic passwords. But here, I find no weaknesses.

  What good was coming here if I can’t even get inside? I sigh, then poke around the perimeter of the building a second time, looking for what clues I can gather. There are several different buildings connected here: a physics wing, a neuroinformatics wing, a research resources tech center, and several cafés. None of this is new info—I’d seen all of this in my online research on the institute.

  I’m about to call it a night when I suddenly hear the faint sound of footsteps.

  Ahead of me, one of the side entrance’s glass doors slides open—and Jax steps out. She glances over her shoulder fo
r an instant, and her gaze sweeps over the campus.

  I duck below the bushes surrounding the building. My mind stumbles frantically from one possibility to another, each thought as rapid as my heartbeat. What the hell is she doing in here? Who is she with?

  Jax probably didn’t travel here alone. She’s a bodyguard and an assassin, which means she’s either here guarding Zero or Taylor, or she’s here on a mission to cop someone. I count to three under my breath, then dare to peek around the side of the bushes.

  Several guards have emerged from the building to join her. They’re dressed in black, too, and I wonder for a moment if any of them are the same people who’d watched me duel Zero in the Dark World. Maybe they’re the type of low-level goons you’d hire out of the Kabukichō area in Shinjuku.

  Jax exchanges a few terse words with them, then heads off toward the far side of the complex at a brisk pace. A couple of the guards follow her, while two others start heading back into the door.

  I move before I can think everything through. Shoulders hunched; eyes forward. I sneak along the bushes like a shadow, as quickly and silently as I can toward the open door. As the last guard disappears inside the door and it starts to close, I dart forward. I slide into the building’s dark interior without a sound, right as the door slides closed.

  Immediately, I slip into the closest hidden crevice I can find—a row of tall recycle bins. But the guards have already disappeared down the hall. I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment and lean my head back against the wall, then pull down my mask so I can take in some deep gasps of air. A sheen of cold sweat covers my entire body.

  In my next life, I’m going to be an accountant.

  Farther down the hall, the guards’ footsteps grow steadily fainter. I wait until it’s completely silent before I pick myself up and move forward.

  The building is dark, and no one seems to be on duty. I go until the ceiling starts to get higher and the sound of my footsteps changes. Then I emerge into the main atrium, and I freeze, my mouth open.

  The institute’s main lobby could be a museum in itself. The ceiling soars many stories above me, and in the vast space is suspended what I can only call an enormous art sculpture that resembles the electric pulses of a brain—except on a massive scale, extending all the way from the ceiling down to a few feet above the floor. Hundreds of lines of light connect colorful orbs, and as I watch, the lines flash and fade, glow and darken. It’s hypnotizing.

  Other displays are encased behind glass boxes—human-like machines with metal limbs and legs, structures made of thousands of cylinders and circles all moving in a rhythmic pattern, curtains of light that look like a neon waterfall.

  For a moment, I forget myself and wander from display to display, awed by the eerie beauty of it. I stop at a large timeline projected against the entirety of one wall. It shows the origins of the institute, old black-and-white photos progressing until the timeline ends on a modern-day image of the current building. Then everything shifts, the photos expanding so that they fill the wall, details printed over each image in white letters before scrolling to the next.

  Headlines appear filled with praise for the institute—a center devoted to giving its clients cutting-edge technology, to conducting experiments decades ahead of their time, to the constant advancement of science.

  The muffled sound of some distant sob cuts through my thoughts. I crouch against the wall on instinct, pushing myself deeper into the shadows. The cry has come from somewhere farther down one of the halls. Something about it seems familiar.

  I wait. When I don’t hear anything else, I leave behind the main atrium and hurry down the hall closest to me.

  It’s too dark in here to see the ceiling now, although the sound of my footsteps tells me how high the space is. Two thin purple neon lines highlight the edges of the floor. Several long minutes drag on, occasional sounds and voices ringing out. Somewhere ahead of me comes another muffled thud, then voices I don’t recognize.

  The hall ends abruptly, leading into another enormous space—this time with several brightly lit rooms covered on all sides with thick glass walls.

  Inside one room is Zero.

  I frown. No, it’s not Zero—just something that looks like him, a black metal suit, tall and lean, its head and body completely encased in armor. A robot? Standing outside the glass room is Zero himself, deep in conversation with Taylor. She has several screens hovering in front of her, all of them only blank white, from my view. As Zero talks, she pushes her glasses up on her nose and types onto a screen in midair. Her shoulders look fragile in their hunched position.

  Zero steps away from Taylor toward the glass. She nods at him. And, as I look on, he steps right through the glass wall and into the room with his armor.

  I blink. He’s not here in person—he’s a virtual simulation. Then where is he?

  Zero walks around the robot version of himself, inspecting it carefully. A loud beep sounds out from the glass room—and suddenly, the robot moves. Zero holds out his hand; the robot moves its limb in the exact same motion. Zero turns his head; the robot turns its head, too. Taylor pushes the door open and joins him in the room. She tosses a metal object at the robot, and Zero’s hand whips out. The robot does the exact same gesture, catching the object in a perfect grip.

  I gape. Whatever this robot is for, it’s entirely hooked up to Zero’s mind, with a level of accuracy that frightens me.

  The muffled sob I’d heard earlier now comes to me again. This time, I turn to see Jax emerge from the shadows of another hall at the other end of the space, shoving a figure forward until they’re both standing before the glass room. As Taylor and Zero step out, Jax forces the figure onto his knees.

  In an instant, I forget all about the robot. I forget about Zero’s virtual self controlling the robot with his mind, and Taylor peering at her screens through her glasses. All that matters is the crouched, trembling figure, his skin washed white from the lights, his hair hanging in sweaty strings, his mouth gagged with a cloth.

  Tremaine.

  Jax’s words drift to me, her voice echoing in the space. “Found him messing with the security cams,” she says. “He tried making a run for the panic room when he realized I was on to him. Somehow, he knew the panic room’s system is off the main grid.”

  Zero folds his hands behind his back and observes Tremaine’s bowed figure. “Sounds like someone has been studying the institute’s blueprints,” he replies.

  “Sounds like someone was laying a path out for someone else,” Jax adds. “He’s not here alone.”

  Tremaine shakes his head vigorously. His cheeks gleam wet under the light.

  I can’t swallow. Any sound around me has now faded completely away behind the roar of blood in my ears, and the edges of my vision blur. No wonder Tremaine hadn’t responded to any of my messages tonight. He came here after all—and they’d known, maybe had even been waiting for him.

  Taylor’s words rush back at me. And is that all you did tonight? I’m trying to warn you. I half expect her to step in and help him out, protect him from Jax and Zero. But she stays where she stands, screens still hovering around her.

  They must have found out Tremaine was the one behind the hack into the institute’s files, that he had passed along the information—maybe even that he’d given it to me. How did they find out?

  Through me. Maybe they were spying on our conversations; they’ve hacked into my accounts. Or they might have traced something Tremaine accidentally left behind.

  Suddenly I feel a tidal wave of nausea—it’s the same feeling I have when I know danger is creeping forward, and all I want to do is push everyone else away from me so it can’t hook into any of them.

  Tremaine has turned his face up to Zero now. Even in his terror, I can see the recognition registering on him—he’s never met Zero before, but he knows who he is. Jax leans down and removes Tremaine’s g
ag. Zero asks him something, but Tremaine’s lips don’t move to respond. All he does is stay silent. Jax’s shoulders shift as she sighs. Zero takes a step forward, but Jax shakes her head and holds a hand up.

  Let me, she seems to be saying.

  She takes her hands off Tremaine’s shoulder and stands back. The terror in me reaches a fever pitch. Everything around me seems to fade away as Jax pulls her gun from her holster and pulls it back with a click.

  This should be the part when I scream something out, where one word from me makes everyone stop and look in my direction.

  But instead, I can’t utter a sound. Jax points the gun straight down at Tremaine’s forehead. She fires a single shot.

  Tremaine’s body jerks. He crumples to the floor.

  My hands clamp over my mouth to keep me from letting out a cry. The shot rings in my ears.

  The kill I’d once seen Jax make now comes back to me in a wave, and I double over, hunching against the wall as I try to brace myself against the onslaught of the memory.

  We believe that there are too many people in the world who go unpunished for committing terrible crimes.

  Those were Taylor’s words that had ultimately persuaded me to join the Blackcoats. She had told me they fought for causes they believed in. Their actions were justified because she—they all—feared what Hideo was capable of.

  But in a single moment, every positive thing I ever thought about the Blackcoats, every word they’d plied me with, vanishes. Tremaine was alive just a second ago and now he’s dead, and it’s because of me.

  Breathe.

  Breathe.

  But I can’t think straight. I can’t function in this moment except to crouch like some kind of coward, trembling uncontrollably against the wall. The glass room in front of me blurs and straightens. I think I see Taylor stepping back as two guards drag the body away, another lingers behind to clean up the floor. Zero leans toward Jax to speak in a low voice, while Taylor tucks something into the hands of the other guards. No one looks concerned. It suddenly occurs to me that the guards here were paid to wait around and bring Tremaine’s body outside, so that they could drive it off somewhere. They were prepared to execute him.