“Yep,” I said, unable to keep the pride out of my voice. “I have a whole floor to myself. It was my dad’s before he… you know.”

  “Damn,” she said, shaking her head. “What I wouldn’t give to live here…”

  “Well, you do now,” I reminded her, leading her to the edge of the roof and jumping up onto the nearest awning. She followed me as we climbed all the way up to my floor, where I opened the window and helped her inside.

  “You live here?” she asked again, gaping even wider this time as she scanned the apartment. “It’s like a dream.”

  “Yeah,” I laughed. “There’s food in the fridge, help yourself to anything, though I mostly do takeout. Feel free to order stuff and have them drop it at the door for you. Oh and keep this shut.” I pulled the dark shade down over the window.

  “Ah, why, it’s such a cool window?” she asked, and I grinned again as I pulled off my hood and jacket.

  “Yeah, it is, isn’t it? It’s my favorite thing about this place, but it’s too dangerous. We’ve risked too much bringing you here already. Don’t want anyone to see inside, though I doubt they’d be able to make out much from that distance,” I explained. “Even so, I’d rather be safe.”

  “Yeah, me too, I guess.” Cindra plopped down on the long black couch and let out a long sigh of relief. “Thanks again… wait, what’s your name? I just realized that I don’t know.”

  “Oh, right,” I said, surprised myself. “It’s Nic. Nic Joch.”

  “Nic… I like that,” she said, looking into my eyes again when I pulled off my sunglasses. “You have great eyes, you know.”

  “Thanks.” I winked at her cheekily. “So do you.”

  To my surprise, tears started to fall down her cheeks. “Thank you,” she said, nearly sobbing under her breath.

  I crossed over to her and wrapped my arms around her, pulling her close to me. She buried her face in my shoulder.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked her. I could feel all kinds of mixed emotions in our bond, and I couldn’t quite place what was going on inside her head. “You’re safe now, you’re safe.” I stroked her auburn hair gently. It was soft and silky.

  “It’s just all of it,” she said, her voice muffled by my jacket. “It’s overwhelming.”

  “Yeah, I know, I get that,” I murmured in her ear. “I know it doesn’t compare to what you’ve been through, but I’m really overwhelmed, too. I feel you.”

  She nodded and pulled back from me after several more moments. I felt good, being physically close to her when we were already so close emotionally and spiritually because of our bond. She wiped away her tears before I could do it for her.

  “Can I sleep here?” she asked, already lying down across the sofa.

  “Oh,” I said. I hadn’t thought of that bit of logistics. “I mean sure, but you can take my bed if you want. There’s another one.”

  “Oh, okay, maybe later,” she murmured, already drifting off. Cindra was already out like a light by the time I grabbed the comforter off my bed, so I draped it across her before returning to my bedroom. I zonked out myself on top of the sheets, still dressed in my shirt, pants, and boots.

  I fell asleep before I even hit the bed.

  7

  Cindra and I both slept through most of the day, which wasn’t too bad. It wasn’t unusual for binders to take the morning off after a binding since it was such a draining process. Plus, with my top position, I could pretty much do whatever I wanted, and no one would call it into question.

  When I finally dragged myself out of bed a little after noon, I came out into the main living area to find Cindra curled up in the blanket on the couch, drinking coffee and watching the news on my holovision against the opposite wall.

  “Anything good on?” I asked, sitting down next to her and stifling a yawn. Even though I’d slept late, it still didn’t feel like enough after all that work the previous day and night.

  “Not really,” Cindra said, scrunching up her nose at the holovision as she sipped her drink. “Well, I guess it’s good there’s nothing about us yet.”

  “I’d say so,” I laughed. The story on the news was something mundane about a brawl at a nightclub, the usual fare.

  “Hey, so you said something about wanting to know more about what happened to your dad, right?” Cindra asked after several moments of sitting there watching the news, enjoying each other’s company. I’d just met this girl, but already I felt closer to her than anyone I’d ever known, including longtime girlfriends.

  “Yeah, I went to see my lawyer yesterday after, well… you know, what happened in the binding room,” I said, not wanting to bring up any bad memories unnecessarily. “He’s definitely keeping something from me.”

  “And you want to break in,” she said. It wasn’t a question. She could probably feel my intentions as easily as I could feel hers.

  “Yeah.” There was no way I wasn’t going back there after the weird conversation I’d had with Hayter. “I was thinking about breaking in tonight.”

  “Can you do that?” Cindra asked, arching a skeptical eyebrow at me. “Without getting caught, I mean. And if you do get in there, how’re you gonna get into his files and everything?”

  “Don’t you have any faith in me yet?” I leaned back on the couch, spreading my arms across the tops of the cushions as I shot her a grin. “I’m the best binder in the world. I can get in anywhere.”

  Her eyebrow was still arched, however. “Why on earth would binders know how to hack?” she asked.

  Typical. No one ever seemed to understand how much our job could entail at times.

  “Cybernetic implants, baby,” I said, still grinning. “Have to hack past ‘em to get to the spirit world and perform a binding.”

  “Cybernetic implants,” Cindra scoffed and scrunched up her nose again. “What a waste of time and money, and they don’t even look good. Make people look like some kind of monster.”

  “Can’t say I disagree,” I said, “but cyborgs pay, all the same.” She rolled her eyes at this.

  “Okay, well, remember that guy I told you about?” she reminded me. “That ex of my sister’s? I can guarantee he’s a better hacker than you.”

  “Eh, that’s probably true,” I said, considering this. Just like I’d told slimeball in our first meeting, the binders’ hacking skills were limited. “But despite his high profile, Hayter’s not exactly high tech, and this is something I need to see this for myself. After this one, I’ll talk to your friend, I promise.”

  “Okay.” Cindra still looked kind of skeptical at this, but she ultimately nodded. “But find a way to tell me if you need help or anything.”

  “Oh, I think you’ll know,” I said, smiling at her. “We’re bonded, remember? But don’t worry. I’ll be fine. I think you should stick around here for a while, even though no one’s looking for you yet. They will be soon.”

  “Yeah, I know,” she said flatly, turning back to the holovision. Cindra clearly wasn’t too thrilled about this arrangement but gave no indication that she was going to fly in the face of it. She knew it was best to be safe.

  “Alright, I should get going.” I reluctantly rose from the couch. “Order any holo films or shows or anything you want. Food or anything else, too, just make sure to have the drone drop it off when you’re out of sight.” She nodded, and I went back to my room to dress in my work clothes.

  I made a brief showing at the office that afternoon, pretending to work at my desk while I listened in to the surrounding high-level employees to see if they gave any indication there was a problem. They didn’t. Cindra and I were in the clear for now, and I expected we would be for a while.

  Who would come looking for that slimeball, anyway? From what I remembered, he didn’t even really have a job. Lived off of family money or winnings or something like that.

  I was lazily combing through TelCorp’s front page when someone came up behind me.

  “Nic,” Elias said, seemingly coming out of nowhere and putting a hand on my shoulder. “How are you today? Excited about your new position?”

  I nearly jumped out of my seat, on edge given what Cindra and I had just done, but I calmed myself in a second.

  “Uh, yeah,” I said as I looked up at him. “I’m looking forward to starting next week, but I just want to experience the field a bit more for the next couple of days.”

  Elias’s eyes were sunken in, and he was obviously hungover. I wondered how much he remembered of our conversation from the previous evening. He’d gotten pretty drunk after all.

  “Of course you do,” Elias said, giving me another all-too-bright fake smile. “We’ll be glad to have you.” He squeezed my shoulder again and departed for his office.

  I watched him as he left with a new sense of loathing. It was clear this man had a part in my father’s death, not to mention the exploitation of so many like Cindra. He was going down.

  I stayed at TelCorp pretty late, making up for my morning away. It also provided a decent alibi, having the security cameras watching me and everything right before my planned break-in. I made sure they had a full view of me making my way back to my apartment.

  Cindra was snoozing on the couch again when I got home. I didn’t bother to wake her. After all that she had been through, the foxgirl deserved her rest. Plus, she might try to talk me out of the break-in again. I’d talk to her when I got back.

  I pulled my disguise from the previous night back on, then swung out the window and down my building’s awning, just as I had on my way to rescue Cindra. From there, I hopped over to a building to the west instead of the south this time.

  I went down several streets before I saw the giant foxgirl billboard that I recognized from Hayter’s office. I gritted my teeth at the sight of it, the events of the previous day crashing back to me.

  The billboard was attached to another office building right across from Hayter’s and his colleagues. It had similar balconies to the ones on my apartment building, and I jumped from the roof of the nightclub next door (featuring dancing foxgirls, of course) and grabbed on to one of them. Climbing the balconies was considerably less fun than falling down them, but I had more than enough upper body strength to make my way up to the one bearing the billboard.

  I stared up at the foxgirl on the billboard and turned away in disgust before making my way up the pole and to the sign itself. This wasn’t all that difficult, given my skill set. It was pretty high, sure, but there were rusty old prongs jutting out of it that I could grab onto, leading all the way out between the two buildings.

  A small ledge stuck out under the ad itself where I could stand. From there, I had a clear view of the ledge right underneath Hayter’s office. It was a long jump, but I was sure I could make it. After all, I’d be coming down on it from a slight angle. I grinned, bobbed up and down on the balls of my feet for a minute to prepare, and launched myself downward.

  I almost didn’t make it, and for a second, I thought I would fall to the ground. I wasn’t scared, though. In fact, it was exhilarating in a way. When I was close, I grabbed onto the rusty old railing on the awning. My feet dangled in the open air, and I looked down to see the pedestrians below. It was a good thing these buildings were too close together to support any air traffic between them.

  With a burst of energy, I pulled myself up and over the railing. I rolled down the railing and across the metal floor. Up close, it was more of a ratty old fire escape than an awning like the ones on my apartment building. Hayter’s office window was just up above it.

  I repositioned my hood to cover my face and jumped up to grab the windowsill. I pulled a small laser cutter out of my pocket and shone it along the bottom of the window. The red light whirred as it did its work. I kept it close to the window’s edge, so it would be easy to seal back up before I left. Hayter would never know.

  When the laser had sliced a thin line in the window, I slipped a small rod from my collection of tools in my pockets underneath the slice in the window and pressed on the window controls inside to raise the rest of the window up and allow me to enter. I swung my legs over the window and made my way over to Hayter’s desk, careful to avoid the detection of the cameras pointing at the door. I had to stay in the back half of the room to remain hidden.

  I was a decent hacker like I’d told Cindra. We binders were pretty good at covering our tracks on basic stuff like this, but Cindra was right. For future endeavors, we’d need a professional.

  With that thought in the back of my head, I opened Hayter’s computer. It was older and clunkier than what I would expect from a lawyer of his caliber, but then again, he was pretty old and clunky himself. All the easier for me to hack into his files, then.

  I pulled a small datachip out of my pocket and inserted it into the side of the computer, right in the standard dataport. I’d modified both the hardware of the chip and the programs on it from the standard TelCorp design to help with cybernetics hacking, and while I’d tested it on computers in the TelCorp lab, I’d never had to use it in a real situation before. The chip should dig into Hayter’s computer and find a pathway in. At least that was the theory. I wasn’t sure how well it would do in the field, dealing with high tech software, but this computer wasn’t exactly that.

  Lucky for me, it did work, and Hayter’s computer opened all of its files to me in short order.

  I perused through all of his client’s files until I found my own name. There was only one document inside that folder: my father’s personal will leaving all his possessions to me. There was nothing about my dad’s professional will or any other connected legal documentation at all.

  I continued to dig through the files, but I didn’t find my dad’s name or anyone else I knew at TelCorp, either. That was frankly odd. A lawyer like Hayter was bound to have at least one TelCorp client other than myself. It was the biggest employer in Termina, by a long shot.

  So then I started scanning through all of the client files as quickly as I could. It took me most of the night, but I didn’t find anything suspicious. Then, in a last-ditch effort, I pulled up Hayter’s own personal files, including his finances and other things like family photos. His finances had additional password protection, so I ran the chip again, and it opened the file.

  Well, he was definitely working for TelCorp. Almost all of his payments came from them. Not a specific client, but the actual company. That was unusual and suspicious, and he’d gone to pains to cover it up, too.

  Within all that personal info, another file caught my eye as the name made up of random characters. When I tried to open it, I found that it was also password protected. But my chip knew what to do and opened it. To my shock, it was full of videos of my dad. I pulled up the most recent one and hit play.

  “What are you saying, Mak?” Hayter asked nervously. I couldn’t see him, but I could see his hand movements and could tell he was picking at his eyebrow even back then. The camera was aimed directly at my dad, and I’d never realized how much he looked like me before. His short brown hair, his blue eyes, his broad shoulders. He had a few lines on his face, but other than that, we could be the same exact person.

  I stared at him, soaking in every little detail.

  He looked scared. His shoulders were slumped, which was unusual. His eyes kept darting around the room as if he was expecting someone unsavory to come crashing through the door at any moment.

  “I don’t know, Kain, there’s just something off,” he said, his eyes still darting around the room, which looked largely the same as it did today. “The board’s starting to get angry with me, and they’re starting to talk back, too. They’ve never done that before. They’re trying to change everything about my company.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true…” Hayter began, but my dad cut him off.

  “It is,” he said sharply, looking straight at Hayter for the first time. “And I think they’ll do anything to make it happen. They know that I won’t let it as long as I’m alive.”

  Hayter was picking furiously at his face now. “What could you possibly mean by that? Mak, you’re talking crazy here.”

  “My life is crazy.” My dad leaned forward in his seat and placed his hands on Hayter’s desk. “I’m telling you, Kain, my life’s on the line here. There’s a helluva lot of money at stake in this. If the board thinks it can quadruple profits by performing nonconsensual bindings, do you really think they’d stop short of anything to get rid of me?”

  “It’s your company, Mak…” Hayter said, but my dad cut him off again.

  “Not for long if they get their way,” he said, clapping his hands on his lap for emphasis. “They want Elias Berg in charge now.”

  “I thought you liked him--”

  “I did!” my dad exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air. I’d never seen him this agitated except that time he got angry with the board which was probably right before this, now that I thought of it. “But now he’s talking about profit over people, just like I was afraid of when I hired him. I want him taken out of my will!”

  “Now, Mak, let’s not be too hasty,” Hayter said, and I’d never been so certain he was in Elias’s pockets.

  “Hasty?” my father balked, exasperated. “They told me that if I didn’t change my mind, they’d find other ways to get me out. And just on the way here, I was nearly hit by a rogue air car! Do you really think that’s a coincidence?”

  I glanced back at the date on the video and sank back in Hayter’s chair when I realized that it was the same day he died.

  “Okay, okay,” Hayter said in defeat. “Whatever you want, Mak, okay? Whatever you want.”

  “Okay,” my dad said, and for the first time, he looked so tired, and I noticed despite the dark aesthetic in the office, there were real bags under his eyes. “I want to transfer everything to my son. Scrap the old will. He becomes CEO in the event of my death.”

  So there was another will.

  “Um, Mak, your son is six,” Hayter reminded him.

  “I know that!” my dad snapped. “Which is why until he’s of age, the company will continue to be run under its current rules. No changes whatsoever.”

 

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