Entangled Read Online Free Page A

influenced only by its immediate surroundings. An idea that is defied by quantum mechanics.
    Cade stirred through the pile of Mr. Niven on the floor.
    Her fingers crept and retreated—like practice. Playing scales. They would go so far, find nothing, come back. Go so far, find nothing, come back. Cade took all of the anger and confusion over what Mr. Niven had told her and crushed it down, kept herself to the repetition of these simple movements, to see if Mr. Niven’s remains could tell her more of the story.
    Cade wasn’t afraid of dead bodies. But this was something else—a faceless, skinless, organless heap. A not-body. Mr. Niven was mostly lab coat and the clunk of brown shoes. A few white spokes that at first Cade avoided on the theory that she would be touching bone, but on second inspection turned out to be plastic struts.
    Something had been filling out the struts and the clothes and it had seemed so clearly, frustratingly human that Cade had convinced herself she was looking at a human. But now she thought about Mr. Niven’s speech (stiff), his responses (limited), and his wrinkles (blinking).
    He wasn’t just a projector—he was a projection.
    And he’d stopped the playback much too soon. Not that Cade longed for the company of the old spacecadet, but he’d barely dented her list of questions—and those were splitting into more questions, sub-questions, each one demanding an answer. Who had decided to dump her on Andana? Why hadn’t she been kept safe, if Xan had? Who—or what—were these enemies of hers? And why should she face them to rescue a boy she hadn’t seen since they were both test-subject babies?
    Cade worked her way around the not-body, backed into her guitar case, and almost knocked it to the ground. She saved it with scrambling hands. Placed it down, smoothed the cheap locks flat. Cade had always thought it was her music and the Noise that marked her as different. But it turned out she’d been made that way by scientists who didn’t care if she knew what she was—until they needed her help.
    She thrust her fingers back into the wreckage of Mr. Niven. Another question rose. Why shouldn’t she throw what was left of him out with the night’s empty bottles, torn ticket stubs, smeared cocktail napkins, and forget the whole thing?
    The heap of struts and old clothes declined to answer.
    â€œJust so you know,” she whispered to the pile, “I don’t like you any better now.”
    In the thin fold of Mr. Niven’s shirt pocket, Cade’s hand caught on a new surface, with smooth facets and a dicey edge. The circle of dark glass. So that was real, at least. She pocketed it as her due and kept moving, hands sure and fast now. But she only found one more thing worth her precious pocket-space.
    A scrap of paper swimming tight with letters that she couldn’t quite make out. Cade could read, but it wasn’t like she got a daily helping of the printed word. She stuffed it in her pocket with the circle-glass. She would sound it out later.
    For now, she had a bathroom line to slink past and fans to disappoint.
    She left the mess for Mr. Smithjoneswhite.
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    With the quiet in Cade’s head, the desert sang a different tune, all sand-scratch and hollow-boned wind.
    She pulled up the metal door to her bunker. Clinked down the metal steps and landed in her square of cement. The desert was scattered with squares like this one, meant for travelers caught in the sudden bite of a sandstorm. Cade’s must have fallen off the maps. It had been empty—no visitors—for years.
    But now Cade wasn’t alone. Not quite. She had the pieces of Mr. Niven in her pocket. And, in her head, a picture of the boy. The cloud-skinned boy. The one she was entangled with.
    She sat down on the piece of scavenged plastic foam she used as a bed. It squealed at her, but Cade bore down and squished it into silence. She needed