Resistance

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Nate couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.

Dorothy let his father’s limp body fall to the floor.

It didn’t seem real. Couldn’t be real.

Dorothy aimed the gun that had just killed his father at him, and Nate felt no inkling of alarm, his nervous system too tied up in knots to react. His ears were ringing from the explosive gunshot in the enclosed room, and when he managed to drag in a breath, the air stank of gunpowder and blood.

The Chairman’s blood.

His father’s blood.

“I’m sorry, Nathaniel,” Dorothy said. The face of Thea’s puppet put on the requisite sad expression, but Nate could have sworn he saw through those eyes into the heart of Thea’s malice and madness. “I didn’t want to do this. I truly didn’t. But I know our father as well as you do. Probably better, actually.

“You see, I have always monitored the net for security purposes. I found one of the copies of the video you and Miss Lake made while you were in hiding. You were going to use it to blackmail Daddy into stepping down, weren’t you?”

Nate was too numb and too horrified to acknowledge the question, much less answer it. He’d come here thinking he’d been almost angry enough to kill his own father, but seeing his father lying on the floor in a pool of blood disabused him of the notion.

“Daddy would have been furious, of course,” Dorothy continued without waiting for a response. “And he would have asked me to go looking for the videos to destroy them, just as he had me looking for the recordings you made when last we met. But until I found them all and destroyed them, he would have felt obligated to accede to your demands, no matter how furious it made him. And that would have been unacceptable.”

“But you don’t care if those videos are released,” Nadia said in a small, shaking voice. “You don’t care that it could cause a war.”

“I wouldn’t say I don’t care,” Dorothy said with a thoughtful frown. “I have dedicated my whole life to the well-being of my state and would hate to see it jeopardized. However, I believe that only the lower classes would be outraged enough by your claims to object with any great violence, and they don’t have the means to stage a long-term insurrection. There would be violence and there would be casualties, but the Executives of Paxco would quickly gain the upper hand.

“In other words, unlike Daddy, I don’t think it would be the end of the world if the truth got out.” She glanced down at the body at her feet with a fond smile. “Of course, I also don’t think anyone will believe your claims after they learn the two of you conspired to assassinate the Chairman. You can be certain the video I release will be playing on the net all around the world and will be far more convincing than your quaint little confessional.”

Nate shook himself from his trance and looked at the monster his father had created. The monster who thought it would be no big deal if Paxco’s lower classes were to take up arms against the government. So thousands of people would die. So what? As long as the government won in the end, she was okay with that.

And she was also okay with killing the man she’d once claimed to want to make immortal.

There were people pounding on the office door and yelling, though the soundproofing made their voices indistinct and their words indecipherable. The Chairman’s personal phone rang from inside his pocket, but no one was inclined to answer it. Nate imagined his father’s bodyguards must be frantic out there, but they would need a bomb or something to get into this well-defended room.

Nate was shaking, and he wasn’t sure if it was from rage or grief or maybe even fear. He felt the weight of the still-hidden gun tucked into his pants at the small of his back. His odds of getting to it, flipping its safety off, aiming, and firing before Dorothy put about ten holes in him were slim at best, but he was so, so tempted to try it. Even though killing Dorothy would be a pointless gesture. Thea was the one who needed to die, and killing Dorothy wouldn’t accomplish that.

“Don’t get any funny ideas, Nathaniel,” Dorothy warned. “I told you before that I was going to let you go, and I meant it. But not if you turn this into a gunfight.”

“Why?” Nadia asked. “Why would you let us go?”

“Because dead, you might take on martyr status. In prison, you might start oversharing with anyone who will listen, and there will be people who want to listen despite the evidence I present. But on the run, wanted for the assassination of the Chairman, you remain exactly what you are and what you should be: powerless children.”

Nate shuddered. There was always a lot of political maneuvering that went on when the Chairmanship changed hands, and Dorothy, as an unknown who had only been introduced into Paxco society a few days ago, would have her hands full. Nate had no immediate family left, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have relatives who would see any political unrest as a chance to further their own interests, maybe even seize the Chairmanship for themselves. Dead or alive, Nate might be able to help their cause, or at least become a symbol they could rally around. The same could be said of Nadia, whose family was almost as powerful as his own. But if he and Nadia were missing, and wanted for murder and treason and any number of other crimes …

Dorothy wasn’t going to let them go. Not really. She just wanted them to run so she could kill them somewhere else, where no one was looking and their bodies would never be found.

“You know where the emergency exit is,” Dorothy said, gesturing. “I suggest you use it. The video will show that you and I wrestled for the gun, and you eventually hit me over the head with it and knocked me out. I will be ‘unconscious’ long enough to give you a nice head start.”

Nate stared at his father’s body. He couldn’t just let Thea get away with this, could he? Couldn’t run away like a common criminal and thereby convince everyone that he was as guilty as Dorothy claimed.

“My preference is that you be on the run,” Dorothy said when he didn’t immediately move for the exit. “My second choice is that you both be dead and silent. More inconvenient for me, and a little harder to stage convincingly for the video, but I’m sure I will manage if I have to. And I’ll start with Miss Lake.”

The gun shifted, pointing at Nadia’s head. Nate’s body moved without conscious thought, and he found himself stepping in front of Nadia to shield her.

“Nate, don’t…” she said, putting her hand on his shoulder as if to push him aside. But he wasn’t budging.

“Go ahead and open the emergency exit, would you,” he said, his eyes locked with Dorothy’s. “It’s not as heavy as it looks.”

“Are you sure?” Nadia asked.

“I’m sure. We have to get out of this alive. We’re the only ones who know who and what she is, and that makes us the only ones who can stop her.”

Dorothy laughed, and Nate had to admit that the idea of him and Nadia being able to stop her seemed absurd. They had no resources, no power, no money. They had a fledgling resistance movement that consisted of five teenagers on the run from the law. Not exactly a force to strike fear into Thea’s heart. But the odds had been against them from the very beginning, and they’d kept fighting. They would keep fighting until the bitter end.

Nate straightened his shoulders and glared at Dorothy as she continued to chuckle over his threat and Nadia pushed the bookcase aside to reveal the exit. She might laugh now, but there was no doubt in Nate’s mind that the moment he and Nadia were out of sight, she’d be planning how she could track them down and kill them.

Nadia opened the emergency door. It was time to go.

Nate looked at his father’s crumpled body one more time. His eyes misted over, and his heart ached. Despite everything that had happened between them, Nate realized now that he’d always harbored a secret hope that, someday, they might reconcile their differences. Now, thanks to Dorothy, that hope was gone.

“You could make a Replica.” His voice came out hoarse, and he hated that he was betraying any of his emotions.

Dorothy shook her head. “But I won’t. Even if I started over with an earlier version of him, we would eventually reach an impasse. I loved our father, but like all human beings, he was resistant to change, and he could not share my vision of Paxco’s future.

“Now go,” she commanded. “Your time here is up.”

Vowing to himself that he would be back, that he would not allow Dorothy to win, Nate followed Nadia into the stairwell and shut the door behind them.