I needed to start talking. I needed to distract her and then make my escape. But words seemed impossible to recollect.

  “It is too late, of course,” she went on, closing the door behind her and entering a code on a keypad I’d failed to see. “What is done is already done,” she added, keeping her eyes on me as she moved sideways to the shelves.

  I watched her reach up to the statuette of Ganesha and then she moved it into place without having to look. I needed to attack now; the laser gun was the first thing she’d grab once the hidden spot opened.

  I glanced around the room. The desk was bare, no letter openers or heavy paperweights. My eyes landed on the brass potted palms beside the low table; too big to move. But a tall, intricately painted, glass hookah pipe sat on the floor beside it. The glass thick, promising it would be heavy enough.

  I inched toward it, just as Isha’s peripheral vision snagged on the incense I’d not shifted back into place. Her hand paused, mid reach, and then she was going for the hidden door and I was leaping across the room, swinging a hookah pipe while my vision spun and vestiges of tobacco wafted up from the now lethal looking weapon in my fisted grasp.

  Her delicate hand wrapped around the laser gun just as the pipe smashed down on the back of her head.

  She slumped to the tiled floor, her small breasts rising and falling beneath the colourful k'ri k'ri she wore.

  I stared at her for a long moment, then reached into the hole behind the shelf and pulled out the laser gun, flicking it on immediately. The whir felt familiar, when it had never felt welcoming before.

  I crouched down and checked the girl, regret only making a small impression. She knew what she was doing, she’d always known. Even when she’d fired a gun on the guys back at Park Road, Isha had known what it was she was doing.

  But she was out cold now and it was time for me to leave.

  “Sorry, Simon,” I mouthed at one of the cameras. We’d not be watching undetected from now on.

  One last look at Isha and I crossed to the door. Coming face to face with the keypad. I tried to eScan, but the door was on override. An override I was guessing was caused by whatever code Isha had entered when she shut it.

  For a second I couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t reason out my next line of attack. Isha knew I was here, when she awoke all hell would break loose. But until then I had a chance of getting back to the kitchens and getting out with the others, undetected.

  Until the alarms started to go off overhead, loud ringing whoops of earsplitting sirens.

  I took a step back from the door, my gaze locked on the keypad, my mouth open as a surprised breath of air slipped out. No more time. We were done for. Escape was the only answer now.

  I lifted the laser gun and aimed at the keypad, firing off several pulses until it was well and truly fried. Lazy tendrils of smoke wafted up to the ceiling, in direct contrast to the panicked turmoil I was feeling inside.

  I tested the door again. It didn’t budge. The eScanner refused to cooperate either. I was locked in Harjeet’s quarters, armed but not up to par.

  I turned around and faced the bank of windows over his desk, crossing quickly to get a look outside. The fall was too great from here, nothing between me and the hard concrete ground but three floors of air. I started heading towards Harjeet’s bedroom, hoping the windows on the far side held more possibility, when the door to the room clicked open.

  My gun was up and aimed even as I ducked down behind the desk out of direct line of sight.

  A drone stepped in, red eyes glowing. It found me within seconds, then as though dismissing me as a threat, turned mechanical eyes on Isha’s silent form. Slowly it looked up at the closest camera. The buzz it made sounded out my impending demise. If a buzz could sound angry, this one certainly did.

  I realised I should have been firing, but by the time that realisation made it through the fog, the drone had slipped back out of the room. Leaving Isha, and more surprisingly, leaving me.

  I let a breath of air out and had started to stand from my crouch when Harjeet Kandiyar waltzed into the room, seemingly unarmed. Of course, the drone that followed him wasn’t. Its laser gun pointed at my head.

  I could have done it. Simply fired and got a pulse off before I was dead. But Harjeet would be dead too. It was almost worth it. But I hadn’t come this far, faced this much, survived this long, not to keep fighting.

  Besides, Shiloh wasn’t here. Harjeet’s message to Isha only now making it through the quagmire that was my scrambled head. I’ll be with Shiloh most of the day. But should return in time to witness the announcement. It had been worthwhile; we could eliminate the drone factory from our list of possible locations for Shiloh’s brain. I had to get out alive to tell the others.

  I had to.

  “Well, well, well,” Harjeet said in perfect Anglisc, the tones well rounded and sophisticated. Matching his perfect attire. “Honourable Selena Carstairs, what a surprise.”

  Was it? I wasn’t so sure. He didn’t seem shocked in the slightest.

  “What happened to your head?” he asked, ignoring the laser gun I still had levelled at his chest.

  “Walked into a cupboard,” I offered.

  His lips twitched. “How clumsy. And here I thought you above such mistakes.” His eyes narrowed on the hand holding the gun. The hand that was still fucking shaking. “It seems you are not well, Elite. Perhaps you should sit down.”

  I was not sitting down with this man.

  “Where’s Shiloh?” I asked, in what had to be the most inept intelligence gathering tactic ever seen. I didn’t have it in me to be subtle. I certainly didn’t have it in me to beat about the bush. And it seemed I didn’t have it in me to throw him off the scent either.

  Remarkably, it appeared honesty was my go-to when suffering from a head injury.

  “Look around you, Selena,” he said in a self-satisfied purr. “She is everywhere.”

  I did look around me, as though his words were literal when they were obviously not. One drone stood in the room with us, but no Shiloh mainframe.

  “On every street?” he offered, clearly seeing my lack of comprehension. “In every house,” he added. “Why, this building is riddled with Shiloh. Although, I must admit, I am impressed with your team’s ability to doctor the security cameras. Tell me, what else have you tampered with?”

  I wasn’t falling for that trick again. Just because I took him literally seconds before, did not mean I’d answer his questions honestly now.

  Silence reigned for several moments. While Harjeet assessed me and I tried ever more futilely to think of an escape plan. The pounding in my head hadn’t abated, so that didn’t help. In fact, I was trying to ignore the obvious increase in distracting pain that now throbbed through every single bone in my body and stabbed spikes into my eyeballs with maniacal glee.

  “You always did impress me,” Harjeet said, crossing to a sofa and taking a seat. The drone moved with him. Standing at his back, laser gun target locked on me.

  Sitting myself might have been a good idea as my legs felt unusually weak; I was sure all blood had pooled in my head. A physiological improbability. But I held firm, leaning only slightly against the desk for much needed support.

  “You know, we could have done so much together, you and I,” he added as he smoothed out his r'aru, ensuring it didn’t crease. “Think, Selena, the world in the palm of your hands. I would have given it to you.”

  “I don’t want your world.”

  His eyes lifted to mine, amusement and calculation there.

  “No, you want a dream. A fantasy that reality can never provide. I had hoped you were more practical, but like most women you are bedazzled by the promise of love and laughter, by the glimpse of a freedom that is inevitably false hope.”

  “How is it false?” I demanded.

  He laughed, derision dripping off each chuckle he made; amusement coating his handsome features.

  “It is false because they would not know what to do with it. Because they would beg for order to be restored. They are not like you, Selena. Privileged, wanting for nothing, and therefore sure of your place in this world. They are bottom feeders, reliant on others for everything, and when they are forced to take care of themselves, they will fall.”

  “And you think Shiloh can give it to them,” I guessed.

  “Not Shiloh. Me.”

  My turn to laugh. It was Elite dismissive. “Shiloh is stronger than you realise.”

  “Shiloh is mine to control.” He paused, cocked his head to the side and held my gaze with the eyes of a snake. “And you gave her to me.”

  I widened my own eyes with mock surprise. I’d long ago worked out what that flash-drive had contained. But how it could give Harjeet more control than General Chew-wen had, I didn’t know. In the end, General Chew-wen had none.

  “And you believe,” I said, voice incredulous, “that she is listening? That you truly control her?”

  “Of course I do,” he snapped, a fissure appearing in his immaculate armour.

  My gaze fixed on the drone behind him. Buzzing low, red glow from its eyes.

  “You and I know differently, don’t we, Shiloh?” I offered. The increase in volume to the drone’s buzz was all the answer I would get. And all the answer I needed. “What I don’t understand is what you get out of this. What’s in it for you, Shiloh? A new Chief Overseer you haven’t even announced on the news.”

  My gaze returned to Harjeet.

  “Why?” I said, waiting for him to get it. To realise that he was just her pawn and nothing more.

  I’d seen many sides to Shiloh, from when I was young in the Chief Overseer’s Palace, to when I battled her at every high security facility I infiltrated over the past ten years. The Shiloh unit my father had left me was practically a different machine, working from a different mainframe. It was so far removed from the Shiloh of today it had to be.

  But it wasn’t. Oh, it had blocks and checks in place; blocks and checks the original Shiloh units had. And it had an overlaying programme, written by my father, which Simon had as yet not been able to crack, that protected her from outside harm. But it still received its direction, its power, its complex processing abilities, from Shiloh’s mainframe.

  A mainframe that was now compromised.

  And yet, my Shiloh unit was not.

  So no, the Shiloh of today, the one Harjeet thought he controlled, was not the machine it had once been. One look at my Shiloh and one look at the drone before me and I knew without a shadow of doubt that they were not essentially the same.

  Despite them being very much the same in one crucial way.

  “It is strategic,” Harjeet offered. “Two dead Chief Overseers in as many months would cause chaos.”

  “In a society rigidly controlled by the Overseers? I seriously doubt that.”

  “You are ignorant of your sway, Selena. Of the power you have over the nation.”

  “A power you want. But Shiloh won’t give you.”

  “Ah,” he said. “I see you need a demonstration.”

  I blinked as the drone turned towards him, preemptively expecting his next command.

  “Shut down,” he instructed. The drone buzzed in reply. “She will not harm me.”

  The drone moved robotic red eyes to my hand still holding the laser gun, then turned back to look at Harjeet, as if to say, “Are you mental? She holds a laser gun!”

  Yes, Shiloh had changed. She was not the same.

  She had evolved.

  “Shut down,” Harjeet insisted.

  The drone stood upright. Facing forward, metallic hands at its sides. I watched the red glow fade from its eyes as the buzz diminished to nothing.

  “See?” Harjeet said.

  And I lifted my gun and fired between the drone’s eyes.

  It hadn’t even toppled to the floor before I had the laser pointed back on Harjeet.

  “That was uncalled for!” Harjeet exclaimed, pressing his fingers to a pendant he wore around his neck. The movement became frantic as his eyes darted towards the still closed door. I was sure it wasn’t locked. But I was picking it was soundproofed.

  “No one coming?” I asked in a pleasant conversational tone.

  “Where are they?” he snarled, giving up on the pretence of cordiality and swiftly rising to his feet, then placing the sofa between me and himself in lightning speed.

  “Stop!” I ordered. “Or did you miss the part where I just shot your drone?”

  “You won’t shoot,” he insisted.

  “You really have the wrong idea about me, Citizen,” I pointed out.

  His head shook. “No. It’s not how you work. It’s not how you think. You’re much too noble for that.”

  I barked out a breath of laughter, so wanting to pull the trigger and regretfully realising Harjeet was right.

  He was unarmed. I couldn’t do it. I may be a member of the rebellion, but I was not a rebel at heart.

  “I’m leaving,” I advised, keeping my gun levelled on him as I walked backwards towards his bedroom. There would be more drones out in the hall, Harjeet had expected them when he hit his panic alarm.

  An alarm Simon had blocked with my father’s still hidden transponder. It gave me hope and reiterated the fact that there was no need to kill an unarmed man.

  I briefly thought of what Trent would have done. It only took a split second to deliberate. He would have shot Harjeet between the eyes and walked over his corpse without blinking.

  I paused at the threshold to Harjeet’s bedroom, his amber eyes already resuming their calculation, fear lost to conviction.

  “What are you doing with the Citizens on the container ship?” I asked; one last effort to elicit some usable intel.

  “Selena,” he chastised, a slow shake of his head. “Shoot me and I might tell.”

  For an infinitesimal moment in time I considered it. Considered becoming what Trent despised. I knew it. I’d seen it in his eyes. He hated what his father had made him. He hated it, but he still did it. Because the rebellion always came first.

  I shook my head, seeing the gloating look in Harjeet’s stare.

  “You won’t get far,” he offered, as I lifted the laser gun and fired at the bedroom window, shattering the glass.

  The sound of the shards scattering to the ground below sounded foreboding. Soon that would be me.

  “No, Citizen,” I said in reply, once the whine of the laser gun had subsided. “It is you, I fear, who won’t get far. Shiloh will see to that.”

  He opened his mouth to say something, smug condescension on his austere face, just as the drone woke itself up and raised its laser gun towards me. Harjeet squawked in surprise. I might have yelped.

  And then I was firing and running and dodging laser beams as I threw myself out of the window and felt only air.

  See? I thought, as the wind rushed past and the ground approached much too quickly.

  Harjeet was not in control.

  But then, neither was I.

  Chapter 28

  I Kissed Her And She Kissed Me

  Trent

  She’d thrown herself out of a window again. I could not fucking believe it.

  “Oh, shit,” Alan said as I started running. Waiting for the snap of homemade wings. It didn’t happen.

  Lena hit the awning over a second floor window, slowing her fall some, before she rolled over the edge and plummeted to the roof of a truck parked below.

  The sound of her body connecting with metal sent a chill right through to my bones.

  “Lena!” I yelled, uncaring if any of the multiple drones patrolling the factory’s grounds could hear me. So far Si had kept them entertained. The alarms were still sounding, but as far as they were concerned, the offenders were all inside.

  Of course, the shattered window and me screaming out on the forecourt meant that was soon to change.

  “Oh, fuck. Lena,” I said as I climbed up on the hood of the truck and took in the dent Lena’s crumpled form had caused. “Oh, baby,” I murmured, my hands trembling for a second over her still figure.

  And then I grew some balls.

  I quickly checked her pulse, thankfully finding it fluttering. Then ran my fingers over what I could reach of her head and shoulders, coming away clean; no blood.

  “Drone!” Tan yelled from below us and my eyes flicked up to where it hung out of the shattered window three stories above. She’d fallen from there. From way the fuck up there.

  “Move, Trent,” Alan warned as Wang Jie hurled something, I was betting rocks from the fancy-arse landscaping, at the drone. Which threatened to fall back down on Lena.

  I scooped my hands up under her shoulders, prayed like fuck she didn’t have a neck or back injury, and pulled her down off the roof, onto the hood and into my arms.

  A laser gun tumbled from her grip and landed beside Tan. His eyes met mine; I recognised my own thoughts as they flashed through them. Trust Lena to have armed herself.

  Here we were weaponless, facing off a platoon of Shiloh’s drones, and Lena had taken the time to pilfer a laser gun. I lowered my lips to her forehead and offered a kiss as I ran hell for leather toward the far corner of the complex. Tan firing Lena’s gun frantically at our backs, laying down cover, giving us a chance to escape.

  I had a God awful moment when I thought that he might not make it. That I’d have to tell a recovering Lena that the last member of her adopted family had perished while I ran. But as I skidded to a stop beside Alan at the hole Si had made for us in the fencing - a remote controlled explosive placed there earlier today as our one and only backup plan - Tan slid in behind me.

  I handed off Lena’s unconscious form through the gap to Alan, who immediately stood and started running towards Navin sitting in the now empty van beside the road. Wang Jie scrambled through. I followed as Tan continued to lay down fire and then Navin was there, laser gun in hand, firing back and yelling obscenities at the top of his lungs.

  I patted him on the back but didn’t wait around. I needed to get to Lena. Within seconds I was on-board the vehicle, Alan had started it up and Wang Jie was hanging out the back calling to the others.