Page 7 (1/1)
Michael grimaced and swore under his breath He spun around and started walking, briskly, his rabbed hiain He stopped and stared, sure that he’d gone totally pale
"What’s wrong with you?" the girl asked, her expression soer "Jax You look like a … like a zoht now I haven’t heard fro o of his shirt and stepped back Now she only looked hurt "What happened to us hanging out while your parents were gone? Ties? Can’t call me? What’s …" Her words faded out and she furrowed her brow "Jax Seriously What’s wrong? Did soed to say "Uh, look, um, Gabriela …" With every syllable that came out, she looked more perplexed If he’d doubted at all before, he no--there was no way he could fake being Jackson Porter "Look, things have changed I couldn’t explain it in a million years I’ past people, dodging shoppers, then broke into a run He ran and ran and ran through the city, and he didn’t look back, not once, scared she’d be on his tail, not until he found another alley far away, sure that he’d left her behind She’d never even called after hiht not even have tried, too baffled to speak
But he was alone
Gasping for every breath, he sank to the ground and huddled in a hidden corner, aching for what he’d done to that poor girl, a girl he didn’t even know
But Sarah … Sarah he did know
He had to find her
Twenty hours later, Michael was on a train, a real train--one of the sleek BulletStreams that traveled almost two hundredin his virtual life as a Tangent, whichhe couldn’t believe he’d never realized before: he’d never gone anywhere with his fanificant distance, anyway And it had never seee to hied for the next time you could slip into your Coffin and leave the world behind That had seemed normal to Michael, and he suspected it wasn’t true at all At least, not for everyone
In soh he had no justification, he was offended by how manipulated his life had been But wasn’t that the very definition of being a program? He didn’t knohy; it just ticked him off All of it And noas flesh and blood He wasn’t sure when it had started or when it would end, but he knew that, slowly but surely, he was transfor ownership of his … "self" The insecurity of being artificial had started to fall away, and he didn’t kno he felt about that It caance he didn’t like Or understand
And part of the proble about Gabriela He felt sos really did reside in the heart Which, in Michael’s case, still belonged to Jackson Porter
Maybe he just felt guilty about hurting the girl’s feelings so terribly Sighing, he leaned his head against thenext to his seat and stared out at the landscape as it flashed by He wasso fast it was almost impossible to discern one place fros, a blur of farmland, a blur of forest Noas an endless sea of houses and apart by in streaks of color
It had been a busy day He’d rested far better than he’d expected the night before, sleeping in the sa fro fresh and nervously excited about getting on with his new life, especially by finding Sarah And then the day had unfolded in a flurry of errands to prepare for his trip
He’d written a short note to Jackson Porter’s family and dropped it off at their apartment, unable to think of a better way to do it than the old-schoolhadn’t changed when he took over Jackson’s body and that Kaine didn’t have e was brief to lessen the risk of saying so thes he wanted to do That he was sorry for taking so much money but he wanted them to know he’d be okay That maybe he’d come back someday
Blah, blah, blah
It was, of course, ridiculous They’d call the police and co for him, no matter what he wrote But at least they’d knoas alive After seeing the broken door, their o ith awful possibilities of where hehe loved them Which al it to the parents he’d known in Lifeblood Deep The ones who still felt like his parents Who, he’d packed a suitcase he found in Jackson’s closet, then stood for a moment in the hallway outside the apartment The apartment that should’ve felt like home but didn’t As for the broken door, he didn’t knohat to do, so he propped it up against the wall Who knehat they’d think Feeling a sadness that just confused hi he’d done after that was go to a bank station He needed to make sure that what he’d done on Jackson’s NetScreen had worked He breathed a great sigh of relief when the account of one Michael Peterson appeared, filled with plenty of ht one of the finest EarCuffs on the market, then had the old one destroyed and the new one installed He arranged his travel and booked a hotel in a town near Sarah’s, and now here he was, on a train, heading toward the girl who’d become one of his two best friends The last ti in a pool of lava Hopefully she’d fared better in real life
The dizzying view rushing by outside the as starting to ers sitting around hiroups of people could face each other and chat during the trip His gaze fell on a woman about five rohose eyes met his for the briefest of moments She quickly--too quickly--looked down and studied so intently on her NetScreen