Kelley Eskridge Read Free

about it since Phase One started. I've been working overtime to
get my other projects wrapped up so I could be ready. I've read every
single project report, the minutes of every meeting. And you have the
nerve to sit there and say you don't know much about it. But you'll
take it. Again. Again ! Because
you're the Hope. No, just be quiet,” she said, her voice rising. Jackal
was trying to say Stop, Mama, don't do this .
“And don't look at me like that,” Donatella continued, the words
foaming out. “Of course it's because you're the Hope. Anything Ren
Segura needs, anything Ren Segura wants, whether you're ready for it or
not, whether you can even understand it. All of it taken from someone
else! Every training opportunity,” she spat the words, “every
accelerated class, every place at the head of every line, every second
of attention could be going to someone who's worked and worked and
worked and then has to stand by and see it all go to you because you're
the precious Hope. Again and again and again! But you can't have this,
you can't! You've had your chances. This is mine!” She was shouting
now, her mouth enormous. “It's not fair, they give you everything,
everything, the best chance I'll ever have and you don't deserve it,
you're no more a Hope than I am!”
    And then her mother gasped and put a hand
to her mouth, the left hand with the old scar showing stark white: and
they sat in awful silence until Jackal said, “What do you mean?”
     
    Born too late, was what it came down to,
even after all the careful planning, the induced labor, the drugs, the
forceps. They had dragged her out of her mother's womb well past the
first second of the new year; her birth, as with all the potential Hope
births, recorded by tamperproof time-stamp technology supplied by
EarthGov. Which had promptly been subverted by the technicians. “It's
Ko technology, after all,” Donatella said. “We should know how to get
around it.”
    And so they had, and little Ren grew up
and took the web name Jackal and worked and trained and prepared, the
unknowing center of an enormous secret, a plan that had seemingly run
itself like clockwork for twenty-two years. Until now: until her mother
had lost her temper in the one way she never should. Jackal understood
why Donatella's voice had changed from fury to fear at the end, why she
had followed Jackal onto the front terrace saying “Ren! Ren, wait! Come
back and let's hammer this out.” But Jackal hadn't gone back. Don't
negotiate me, she had thought bitterly, I'm not a fucking business
deal. Except she was; and that was the real problem, the bottom line.
The company had wanted a Hope badly enough to take the enormous risk of
creating one, and the Hope's own mother had destabilized her at this
most critical juncture. Ko would crucify her mother if they knew.
    And maybe they should. How dare Donatella
do this to her, make her so miserable that she could sit surrounded by
her web and feel so alone? She had a sudden longing to hurt her mother.
Hurt her deep. She imagined herself in some vice president's office
telling the story doggedly, piously, saying, “I'm completely on board
with this, but I'm a little worried that my mother is so upset.” God,
it's tempting, she thought.
    “What is?” Tiger said, drinks in hand,
startling her; she hadn't meant to speak aloud. Can't tell you, she
thought, can't tell anybody, and then hoped she hadn't said that out
loud as well. “This is,” she said as brightly as she could, reaching
for the glass.
    Around her, her web mates chattered on.
She wanted to scream. She wanted to hit something. She wanted Snow to
hold her. But she had come here to get centered, so best be about it.
She roused herself and waded into the conversation, made herself focus
and listen and smile, smile, smile. She shifted so Tiger could perch on
the arm of her chair. She recounted for Bear the entire plot of a play
she'd seen in Esperance Park, complete with arm-waving