Bitter Angels Read Online Free PDF

shoulders and Jo’s luggage piled around us. The lake winds whipped outside the station’s transparent shields, but in here, we were toasty warm and could safely watch the gale raging across Lake Superior. Jo and I had the platform to ourselves. The nervous wouldn’t take the cable on a day like this, but I sort of liked the iron-grey sky and the waters dancing beneath the wind.
    Wars had once been fought over the water in the Great Lakes. Nasty little wars, with smuggling and sabotaged pipelines, and starving locals and slave labor. Now my family lived peacefully on an artificial island in the middle of it, where the architects went in for tempered glass and molded wood, because you only lived out in the middle of Lake Superior for the view, so they wanted to make sure you got as much of it as possible.
    The grey waters surged below us, but in the distance we could see the deep greens and reds of forested cliffs. Soon, they’d be white with snow, like a line of clouds caught between sky and water.
    “So, are you going to tell me who Bianca is?” Jo folded her arms. Her long white hair was piled in elaborate red-tipped ringlets on top of her head. She’d eschewed a hat, and was muffled deep in a black coat, a stark contrast with her artificially ivory-colored skin. Slim red boots encased her legs and a red scarf did more to call attention to her slender throat than keep it warm. I wouldn’t call the look beautiful, but it was arresting—like her words.
    “Dad always told us never to ask, about the Guardians, about anything,” Jo went on. “He told us to let you make your peace with it. That was your business. Making peace.” She cocked her head. “How’s that working out?”
    “Jo…” I began, but the cable bus pulled in—a string of colorful, flexible cars hung on the white spiderweb that stretched from tower to tower over the choppy waters.
    The doors slipped open and a few passengers climbed out. We stepped in, presenting our palms to the door monitors. I made my way to a spot by the window and took off my small pack, tucking it in the holder in front of me. Raindrops smacked against the window, showing minute ice crystals in each tiny puddle.
    Ugly weather, settling in for the long haul. How metaphoric .
    Jo plunked herself down beside me, resting her pack on her knees. “You were saying?”
    The pain was starting up, a steady throb behind my right ear. “Never mind.”
    The car lurched slightly and started forward. In less thana minute, we were gliding above the waters, heading swiftly and smoothly toward the shore.
    “Never mind your never mind,” Jo snapped. “Are you going to tell me who Bianca is?”
    I sighed. Stubborn girl. Stubborn woman. How very like her mother, David would have said, had said , more than once.
    “Bianca is…was…a data tracker.”
    “What, like an analyst?”
    Annoyance pricked me. How could she not know this? Then I remembered. It was because I had consistently refused to talk about it with her or either of her siblings. And while the Guardians make a great show of not keeping any more secrets than is strictly necessary, we also don’t go around advertising our ranks and specialties.
    They don’t. I meant they, not we.
    “A data tracker is a kind of analyst,” I said, lacing my fingers together. “Bianca looked at data flow, ephemeral or solid, in context. A whole world’s worth of it, if she had access. Years of it, if necessary. When she was done, she could predict the critical decision points in real time: people, news sources, gossips, whatever. If you could control the points she identified, you’d cool down any hot spot within a few weeks. She was always right. Always.”
    “You didn’t have an AI that could do that?”
    “Not the way she could.” I smiled a little, remembering the glint in Bianca’s eyes and the sharp twist to her grin that came when she finally had the answer.
    Got’cha , she’d whisper to the screen. You’re mine now .