Page 137 of Talk Data To Me


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He crossed the parking lot to his hatchback.

He might be walking away from everything he’d ever worked for.

Everything that gave him value.

He kept going.

He didn’t regret his words or his ultimatum—not at all—and he was actually smiling, even if it was a shivery, unsteady smile with the muscles in his cheeks and jaw twitching—but he couldn’t click his seat belt into its latch. He dropped his keys when he tried to slot them into the ignition. Safe now in his hot car, safe to crack and break, his breath began to hiss in a sickening, erratic whistle.

Fuck, fuck!

He gripped his thighs with both hands, digging his fingers in until his cold, sweating skin blanched under his jeans. He could feel the bruises forming, knew the precise pain that it took to raise them. He chose a fresh spot, and a third, a fourth, pressing and releasing, pressing and releasing, struggling to master himself, to just breathe—

The pen behind his ear clattered down into the hatchback’s center console.

Thud.

…it wasn’t a good pen, not one of his specialized sketching instruments. Just an ordinary ballpoint. He had no drawing paper either.

It didn’t matter, though.

Because, really: what more could he risk today than he already had?

He pushed the cotton knit of his Henley up over his forearm. He pressed the pen against the damp crook of his elbow. Ragged lines began to jerk along his skin, down onto the heel of his hand. The feverish marks didn’t produce the design of alien civilizations or track explorations along the final frontier, however. His precision was gone, vanished into the whorls of pigment twining between his fingers.

But shining in the heart of his palm: her face, barely recognizable, abstract, galaxies in her hair—a girl with kaleidoscope eyes.

And he breathed.

His arms were black with scrawls before he finally accelerated out of the Modern Physics parking lot, up Sand Hill Road to the freeway. His evening run with Bunsen in Stulsaft Park was a sprint. No music. His rhythm was the fast but steady beat of his heart.

He opened Erin’s text thread a dozen times, saw her ellipsis a dozen times, and answered with his. No messages. Maybe they both understood:

Tomorrow.

Again, he breathed.

She was hyperventilating.

Crouched up against her headboard, arms locked around her knees, rocking,rocking, she couldn’t feel the leaden weight in her stomach of the energy bar she’d managed to choke down, couldn’t feel her fingers, couldn’t feel her tongue. A typing ellipsis flickered back and forth in her text thread with Ethan; her thumbs were numb on the screen, her palms flashing hot and cold and wet, and she meant to assure him that she didn’t regret what she’d done, because she didn’t—she really didn’t—scientific parasite—butour editors have received an allegation of fraudulent data, publication of your paper has been suspended—

Ping.

Not theswishof a lightsaber.

Martina

How’d Monday’s spreadsheet analysis go?

She blinked.

Monday.

It was only Wednesday.

How?

Wednesday, just after eleven o’clock at night in Silicon Valley, and the Monaghans would be—should be—asleep in hammocks by the beach, in beds with soft, sagging mattresses where she’d bounced as a child on Christmas morning, or in… well, Adrian probably wasn’t asleep. If Manhattan wasn’t at rest, neither was he. But she couldn’t call him. She was Dr. Erin Monaghan, and she couldn’t have her brother stepping in to fight her battles and lose them—and hewouldlose, because he was powerless to help her now, no one could—