I watch her, confused for a few seconds, and then chase after her, pinning her against her truck just before she opens the door. Her back is to me, and she is shaking her head over and over. "No! It's not possible! No!"

I hold her tight so she can't thrash, my mouth near her ear, and I whisper, "It's me, Jenna. It's really me."

Her hair is wet with tears, and I realize the tears aren't hers. I close my eyes, holding her, feeling her body tremble against mine. She's so small, smaller than I remember. Jenna.

"Please ... believe me."

Her head stops shaking, and her muscles go slack. I let go and she turns to look at me. She scans my face, and I see the disbelief in hers. "It's almost Locke, but your eyes..." She reaches out to touch my hair and then pulls back, her eyes still searching for an unruly cowlick that is no longer there. "And you're taller, and--"

"Bigger," I finish for her. "I didn't have a father who lovingly re-created every inch of me, like you did. I had a madman."

She pales and shuts her eyes, breathing deeply like she is going to be sick, and then finally she opens them again but doesn't look directly at me. "Get in," she says. "We need to talk, but not here."

Chapter 44

I sit at her kitchen table. We haven't spoken yet except for her to tell me to sit, or when she told me to be quiet in the car as I started to speak. "I need a moment," she had said, her breaths still deep and irregular.

After all the time I had already waited, it seemed a lot to ask, but I gave it to her. We drove down a narrow road lined with giant eucalyptus trees to a neighborhood of old homes. Most looked abandoned. Both of her hands gripped the steering wheel, and she never once turned to look at me. She pulled into a long graveled driveway at the end of the street, where there was a single-story house with a wide porch that wrapped around most of it. She parked at the back of the house, and we went in through a rear door, directly into the kitchen.

Now she stands at a faucet and fills a glass. Her hand shakes. She sets the glass in front of me, then sits in the chair opposite mine, finally looking at me, taking her time, staring, soaking in every detail of the new me. She doesn't doubt any longer.

"Why didn't you come sooner?" she asks. "Why did you wait all this time?"

"Come sooner?" And then I realize what she's thinking, that I've been out seeing the world and having a big party for the last couple centuries. "I've only had the new equipment for a year, Jenna. I couldn't come sooner. Unless, that is, I was able to mentally transport a little black cube through the air."

Her lips part, and I watch her draw a shallow breath. "You mean--"

Yeah. It isn't pretty on her face or mine. She knows exactly what I mean. She remembers the hellhole, but she only got the tour up to the front door--I got the whole house and all nine levels of the basement.

I stand, my chair squealing out behind me, my voice filling the kitchen. "What did you think, Jenna? Did you think? Did it ever occur to you to make it your business? Don't ask me why I didn't come sooner! Why didn't you come?"

She stands too, like she's ready to fight me. "I was seventeen, Locke! And I was scared and confused! You have no idea what I went through! I thought I had destroyed your mind upload. I disconnected it from the battery dock and threw it in a pond myself. Someone must have--"

"What?" I walk around the table toward her. "You?" I couldn't have heard her right. My vision spins. I'm not sure if I'm dizzy from my injuries or from anger. "You destroyed it?"

She takes a step back. "I thought I did. My father had it hidden away in a locked closet. He was saving it, just in case--I knew what it was like, Locke. I couldn't bear the thought of you staying there forever. It was all I could do."

I take another step toward her and nod my head, looking down at the wood-planked floor. "Sure. Of course. Just get rid of your best friends." I look back up at her. "We were your best friends, weren't we? Yeah, don't bother using that Jenna charm on your father and persuade him to liberate us too. That would be too much trouble. After all, you're the entitled Jenna Fox." She backs up to the kitchen counter. "Oh, that's right, you still had ten percent. Is that the magic number?" I glance at a knife on the counter near the sink. Her eyes dart to it too. We play a game of chicken with our eyes, wondering who might grab for it first. "Go ahead, Jenna! Cut me! Do it! I bet my blood's redder than yours! Screw your lousy ten percent."

She freezes, staring at the knife and then back at me. The room reels. I steady myself against the table. None of this is going how I planned. I didn't want it this way. I hardly recognize myself. I bet she doesn't, either. My legs shake, and I pull out a chair and sit. I rub my hands across my thighs, trying to push the tremors away, and then I look back at her. Her eyes are fixed on me, so wide, so blue, so frightened. My anger is overpowered by the ache of a question that has eaten away at me too long. I clear my throat and whisper, "Why did you give up on us?"

I watch her face transform from angry to confused. She is silent for almost a full minute, her lips twitching like she is trying to compose a thought. Finally, when she speaks, her voice is firm. "It was a different time, Locke. It's impossible to judge the past through the eyes of the world you know now. There's been more than two centuries' worth of change. What they did with me back then was illegal, but it was risky too. They didn't know what they would get when I woke up. Ten percent was hope for them. They believed it made the difference. But you and Kara--everything was gone. Your eventual existence seemed like an impossibility. My father's mind couldn't even grasp the idea of doing this behind your parents' back. How could he ever tell them? Not to mention the ethics of it all. He was struggling already with what he had done to me, and whether it was right. It was a different world then."