Wiped Read Online Free Page B

a voice said quietly off to my side. I stiffened, but didn’t turn to look at him. I hadn’t seen him move closer, my mind too distracted. My eyes all for Trent.
    I’d hurt him and I didn’t know how to make it better.
    “I’m not sulking, Cardinal,” I said in my best impersonation of an Elite. Cardinal Beck understood Elites. He served them. Or had at one time. Now he served Free Wánměi. Technically he served the interim Government. In reality, I was beginning to think he might just serve me.
    Beck was overprotective too, but not like Trent and not like my father. He didn’t love me. He respected me.
    He respected the Zebra.
    “You’ve been hiding in this corner for two hours,” he pointed out. “Watching them all make decisions on your behalf and not bothering to correct them.”
    “I’m not in charge here.”
    “Perhaps you should be.” I turned to look at him then. He wasn’t watching me, his eyes - alert, aware, focused - were on the room at large.
    “I find that hard to believe,” I argued.
    He offered a shoulder shrug, very un-Cardinal-like. He’d started doing it only recently, and I couldn’t help thinking it was a mimic of me. I always tried not to laugh in his face when he did it. Beck and casual did not go hand in hand.
    “President Tan believes you are our nation’s future,” he murmured softly.
    “Tan is grasping at straws. A flailing man reaching out for a lifeline. He does not wish to be President, so he seeks an alternative. I am not that which he seeks.”
    “You were Wánměi’s.”
    “I was what they needed me to be.” The words were familiar, I realised. I’d heard Trent use them before. The rebels were, at one time, what Wánměi needed them to be, too.
    “And now?” Beck asked, shifting in the shadows at my side. He’d be spotted if anyone looked too closely. But everyone was avoiding me.
    Except Beck.
    “And now I don’t know,” I finally admitted, letting out a weighty breath on a sigh.
    There was a lengthy pause and then, “I don’t believe it. You risked censure for an ambush. You risked… this” - he held his hand out, indicating my ostracised position in the room - “for the chance to… what exactly? What was your plan, Selena? What had you been trying to do?”
    No one called me Selena. Not even my father. Selena had died when he had died. But Beck would have known that. And he would have known that my father’s return changed everything.
    But I was no longer Selena Carstairs. And yet I didn’t correct him. Because I didn’t much like Lena Carr right now, it seemed.
    “You knew there were people here,” the Cardinal went on. “You knew we’d be attacked as soon as we landed. Yet you kept it to yourself. I understand why,” he rushed to say, but I’d had no intention of interrupting. He was on a roll and I was intrigued to see where he landed when he reached the bottom. “They wouldn’t have wanted to be as antagonistic, as… brash, as that. They’d have wanted to plan and surveil and attack only when the danger had been contained.”
    He understood, all right. He’d seen the change in the air as soon as the Masked were identified. As soon as my father was revealed as their leader.
    “But that’s not what I can’t fathom,” he said softly, the heat of his nearness finally reaching me. I’d been so cold here in Lunnon. For more reasons than the climate in this city. “You knew they were here, you determined that they’d attack us. You must have realised we’d fight back. They’re all dead,” he whispered and I worked on not flinching. “Would a delay have avoided that? Would it have meant we’d be dead instead of them? I’m not sure. But there’s a reason why you didn’t let this play out naturally. Why you manipulated the situation to your needs.
    “What are your needs, Citizen? What does Selena Carstairs hope to achieve?”
    “You make it sound so self-serving. So egotistical.”
    “Not at all. I cannot believe the Zebra