Free Silver Eyes by Nicole Luiken

“What’s this? Perfume?” I pretended to spray my neck.
    Anaximander plucked it out of my hand and packed it in its case. “It’s your insurance. If you get hit with a Knockout patch, you have ten seconds to inhale this spray. It will hyperoxygenate your blood to prevent you from passing out.”
    â€œCool. Body armor for Knockout patches.”
    â€œExcept that regular body armor doesn’t dissolve fifteen minutes later, leaving you unprotected,” Anaximander said dryly. “Hyperoxygenation wears off quickly. That’s everything. You’re set.” Anaximander paused awkwardly. “Angel—”
    â€œYou don’t have to say it,” I told him. “I’m well aware that you don’t think I’m ready to go on a solo assignment.”
    â€œNo, I don’t,” Anaximander said bluntly.
    I winced inside. I’d been hoping he would correct me.
    â€œIf I were in charge I would never have hired you. I think you’re too young for what the job requires.” Anaximander paused. “Which is why I’ve been so hard on you. I kept hoping you’d back down and realize you were in over your head. But you never did.”
    I perked up a little. That had sounded suspiciously like a compliment.
    â€œIt’s not your skills that I doubt, Angel. You’re fast, and you think on your feet better than anyone I’ve ever known. It’s your toughness that I worry about. Some of the tasks I’ve done for Mr. Castellan have been . . . unpleasant.”
    I stopped on the verge of assuring Anaximander that I was tough. What exactly did he mean by “unpleasant”? Unwillingly, I remembered Mike’s speculation that SilverDollar had hired us to do industrial espionage.
    But Anaximander was through being forthcoming. “Your aircar leaves in twenty minutes. You’d better get going.”
    I left the room at a sedate walk but was running when I turned the first corner. I headed for the subbasement in Gray Section, the Knockout patches Anaximander had just given me in hand. I had to see Mike before I left.
    Someone was coming down the hall, so I twisted the doorknob to the Loyalty Induction room as if I had every right to go in. I planned to put on a show of searching my pockets for a nonexistent cardkey, but the door wasn’t locked. I slipped inside.
    The Observation Room was empty. So was the Loyalty Induction chamber on the other side of the window.
    I listened at the door to the surgery, then opened it, too.
    A heavy antiseptic smell hung in the air, but Mike was gone. And I was out of time. I left Taber not knowing if he was okay. Or insane. Or dead.

I N THE PASSENGER SEAT of the aircar I stared at my new identicard with deep unease.
    The picture was of me. The birth date was mine. My name was even spelled correctly, Angel Eastland.
    So why was I upset?
    I heard Mike’s voice in my mind: “In 2099 you need ID to do everything. . . . Finally, we decided to let Anaximander capture one of us. That person would try to obtain identicards and money from the inside.”
    I now had half of what Mike and the Angel he’d known had risked so much to get.
    So what? I asked myself sternly. That was the old Angel. The new Angel isn’t on the run, and she’s the one with the card.
    Sometimes I felt as if there were two Angels, Shadow Angel and New Angel. Shadow Angel was hiding somewhere inside me. Sometimes I caught echoes of her voice, but that was all.
    I hated the way Shadow Angel kept manipulating me, but if I lost her I was deathly afraid I would lose myself.
    Shadow Angel. New Angel. For a moment I felt as if I were fracturing inside. Frightened, I fought down the feeling and looked out the windows of the aircar instead.
    The pilot landed me at the SilverDollar Tucson facility, and I registered for the symposium.
    To give me a leg up in making friends with his nephew, Eddy had arranged for me to be billeted with