Chapter 44

I sit at her kitchen table. We haven't spoken yet except for her to tell me to sit, or when she told me to be quiet in the car as I started to speak. "I need a moment," she had said, her breaths still deep and irregular.

After all the time I had already waited, it seemed a lot to ask, but I gave it to her. We drove down a narrow road lined with giant eucalyptus trees to a neighborhood of old homes. Most looked abandoned. Both of her hands gripped the steering wheel, and she never once turned to look at me. She pulled into a long graveled driveway at the end of the street, where there was a single-story house with a wide porch that wrapped around most of it. She parked at the back of the house, and we went in through a rear door, directly into the kitchen.

Now she stands at a faucet and fills a glass. Her hand shakes. She sets the glass in front of me, then sits in the chair opposite mine, finally looking at me, taking her time, staring, soaking in every detail of the new me. She doesn't doubt any longer.

"Why didn't you come sooner?" she asks. "Why did you wait all this time?"

"Come sooner?" And then I realize what she's thinking, that I've been out seeing the world and having a big party for the last couple centuries. "I've only had the new equipment for a year, Jenna. I couldn't come sooner. Unless, that is, I was able to mentally transport a little black cube through the air."

Her lips part, and I watch her draw a shallow breath. "You mean--"

Yeah. It isn't pretty on her face or mine. She knows exactly what I mean. She remembers the hellhole, but she only got the tour up to the front door--I got the whole house and all nine levels of the basement.

I stand, my chair squealing out behind me, my voice filling the kitchen. "What did you think, Jenna? Did you think? Did it ever occur to you to make it your business? Don't ask me why I didn't come sooner! Why didn't you come?"

She stands too, like she's ready to fight me. "I was seventeen, Locke! And I was scared and confused! You have no idea what I went through! I thought I had destroyed your mind upload. I disconnected it from the battery dock and threw it in a pond myself. Someone must have--"

"What?" I walk around the table toward her. "You?" I couldn't have heard her right. My vision spins. I'm not sure if I'm dizzy from my injuries or from anger. "You destroyed it?"

She takes a step back. "I thought I did. My father had it hidden away in a locked closet. He was saving it, just in case--I knew what it was like, Locke. I couldn't bear the thought of you staying there forever. It was all I could do."

I take another step toward her and nod my head, looking down at the wood-planked floor. "Sure. Of course. Just get rid of your best friends." I look back up at her. "We were your best friends, weren't we? Yeah, don't bother using that Jenna charm on your father and persuade him to liberate us too. That would be too much trouble. After all, you're the entitled Jenna Fox." She backs up to the kitchen counter. "Oh, that's right, you still had ten percent. Is that the magic number?" I glance at a knife on the counter near the sink. Her eyes dart to it too. We play a game of chicken with our eyes, wondering who might grab for it first. "Go ahead, Jenna! Cut me! Do it! I bet my blood's redder than yours! Screw your lousy ten percent."

She freezes, staring at the knife and then back at me. The room reels. I steady myself against the table. None of this is going how I planned. I didn't want it this way. I hardly recognize myself. I bet she doesn't, either. My legs shake, and I pull out a chair and sit. I rub my hands across my thighs, trying to push the tremors away, and then I look back at her. Her eyes are fixed on me, so wide, so blue, so frightened. My anger is overpowered by the ache of a question that has eaten away at me too long. I clear my throat and whisper, "Why did you give up on us?"

I watch her face transform from angry to confused. She is silent for almost a full minute, her lips twitching like she is trying to compose a thought. Finally, when she speaks, her voice is firm. "It was a different time, Locke. It's impossible to judge the past through the eyes of the world you know now. There's been more than two centuries' worth of change. What they did with me back then was illegal, but it was risky too. They didn't know what they would get when I woke up. Ten percent was hope for them. They believed it made the difference. But you and Kara--everything was gone. Your eventual existence seemed like an impossibility. My father's mind couldn't even grasp the idea of doing this behind your parents' back. How could he ever tell them? Not to mention the ethics of it all. He was struggling already with what he had done to me, and whether it was right. It was a different world then."

She edges closer, wary, like I'm an animal who could spring without warning. Maybe I am. She returns to the table but maintains a safe distance. "But I never gave up on you. I did what I thought was right. I did for you"--her voice catches, and I watch her stiffen to maintain control--"I did for you what I knew you would do for me if it were the other way around. I thought it was finished. I don't know how someone got to your upload. It was at the bottom of a pond and--"

"No one got to the one in the pond."

Her head turns to the side like she didn't hear me quite correctly. "How did ... I don't understand."

"Copies."

"What?"

"Come on, Jenna. You have five hundred billion biochips too. Even back then, no one could make a video game without someone hacking it before it even made it to market. People made illegal copies of anything to make an easy buck. Books, movies, software, you name it. A thousand people worked for your dad, and he invented something way more valuable than a video game. Opportunity knocked, and someone took advantage of it. It never occurred to you or him that someone would make copies?"

She steps away like she is dazed. She slowly circles the kitchen and finally stops at the counter, leaning against it for support. "There was a copy of me," she whispers. "'Just in case,' my father had said." She shakes her head. "My God, I should have known, or at least suspected." She whirls to look at me. "You said copies." The expectation in her voice is unmistakable. In a hushed voice she says, "Kara?"

I nod. "Kara too. She's on her way here."

And that seems to break the thread that is holding her together. Her face falls into her hands, and she sobs. They are quiet sobs, nearly silent, and that somehow makes it worse. Her chest shakes like something violent has been broken loose inside of her. I see now that Kara and I weren't the only ones who suffered. I can see that she still loves Kara too.

I push against the table to help myself stand. My temples throb. "Jenna, there's something else you need to know." I take a step forward. "It's about Kara--" My knees buckle, and I suddenly find myself looking up at a ceiling looming in and out of focus, and then I see Jenna's face over mine, and then they both disappear.