Proud Machinery

CHAPTER THIRTY

Elias felt gray.

The graying process had gone faster than Holifeld had predicted. Elias could feel it. He knew that by tomorrow, at the latest, he would be entirely transformed and would in all likelihood call up Akiyama and ask to join his cause. (Elias now realized that Akiyama had won every argument the two of them had ever had. Elias had been irrational and Akiyama had made sense.) That's why Elias had sent Holifeld a message insisting the break-in happen that night.

It wasn't bad, being gray. For the first time in his life, Elias didn't have to think any thoughts he didn't want to think. His mind did all the work he needed it to—solving problems, predicting dangers—without sidetracking, daydreams, or sudden, irrelevant remembrances.

Well, only one.

Honestly, Elias could easily have made the switch already, that morning, driven to Johnston by himself and walked up to the front door of this building instead of sneaking in the back, turned himself in. He would have been a Gray, simple as that, and would never have to go back to anger and anxiety and all that other useless pink clutter.

But it would have made Kess so sad.

He shouldn't put this much value on Kess's feelings. She was only one person, as irrational as any un-Gray. And she was infatuated with Elias, making her particularly unreliable when it came to deciding what should happen to him.

And yet he remembered the night they met. It was a warm, bright spot in his cool gray mind. There was her face, relaxing after a burst of laughter, and there were the lights hung all over, shining through her yellow hair.

He looked at her now. Silver had led them to an elevator with shining mirrored walls and a keypad by the call buttons where she tapped in some code. Kess stood with her back to a corner. In his memory (that memory), Kess's eyes were brown. Now they were gray and glittering.

The elevator opened onto a large, long room. Two more Grays flanked the door, waiting for them. At the end of the room were tall, broad windows, and a desk, and a man sitting at the desk. The window frame made an angle. The sides of the desk made an angle. The man's shoulders made an angle. The man had Asian features and black hair going silver at the temples. He dressed in a suit of the same cut and color as the one Christopher Stone had worn the one time Elias had met him, when he passed him that note, the note from Akiyama, the note that said not to tell Kess.

"So you're the boss," said Kess to Jonathan Akiyama.

"No he's not," said Elias. "The Grays don't have dominance hierarchies."

Kess looked at him with her brown eyes. Eyes are all curves without angles. "Um, what?"

"You are here," said Akiyama, "to find something. We are unaware of anything within this building you would want, and so it is likely something we are not aware of. That would indicate something which was erased from our minds by Silver's memory purge."

Standing on the other side of Kess from Elias, Silver spoke up. "It is possible that I commissioned other projects at the same time as the memory purge. Indeed, this would have made the purge a more appealing strategy." And then, quick and sharp, Silver reached into Kess's pocket with her black-gloved hand and pulled out the vial containing the Nox. "It is likely that one of these projects is contained here."

Kess made a sound and grabbed at the vial, but it was already leaving Silver's hand, arcing through the air toward Akiyama, who caught it one-handed and set it on his desk. "Given that you knew about whatever is in this vial, and its location in the building, it is likely that the two of you are in contact with Vance Holifeld. Are you willing to disclose any information you have regarding his location, intentions, or capabilities?"