“We don’t have time for this shit,” Mika snapped. “Just do it.”
“It’s not natural,” he whined.
“Who’s supposed to be intimidating who here?” I asked Mika, trying to figure out how to get past four hundred pounds of muscle (plus a few pounds of Mika’s scrawn) to make it to the door. “Because I don’t think it’s working out the way you planned.”
“Do it,” Mika ordered like a guy who’s never given an order before.
“Do what?”
Instead of answering, the less chatty of the two musclemen darted toward me and twisted my arms behind my back. “Sorry,” he murmured, and before I could ask him sorry for what, something hard slammed into the back of my head and the transparent pane of glass between me and the world—between my artificially constructed reality and the vivid, visceral, live experience of org life—shattered into a thousand bright shards of pain.
CITY DARK
“Why not just stop being afraid?”
Hit me again, I almost said—and that scared me more than the musclemen, more than wild-eyed Mika, who looked totally freaked out to see me still on my feet, eyes open, brittle grin firmly in place. But the pain made the world seem real—made my body seem real. Extreme pain, at least, the kind that overwhelmed my conscious awareness that every sensation was just a string of little ones and zeros assembled into patterns specifying hot, cold, or ouch.
“Again!” Mika shouted, saving me from choice, and the hand smashed down, touching off another explosion of light and pain behind my eyes, and this time I think I screamed, although it was impossible to hear anything, not with the thunder in my head.
And then it drifted away, and I was still on my feet.
“Seems like someone didn’t do his homework,” I taunted Mika, slowly inching away from him as a plan—a crazed, stupid plan—began to coalesce. “We can do this all day, but I should probably mention that my skull’s made out of a reinforced titanium alloy. It can survive five hundred g of impact. You’re strong, but I’m guessing not that strong.” I had the back of the chair in my grip. A rickety piece of junk that wouldn’t stop them from coming at me again, but—I stole a glance at the wall of windows, already spiderwebbed with cracks—might just get the job done. If I had the nerve.
“Mika?” the guy said. I could see why he kept his mouth shut—his voice was about three octaves higher than any self-respecting muscle-bound thug would want it to be.
“You’re not scared?” Mika said, looking at me like I was his science project.
“Of what?” I tried to laugh. “You want to kill me? Good luck.”
“It’s true,” said the first muscleman, he of the lower voice and higher fear factor. “I saw it on the vids. You knock one off, they just download it into a new body.”
Mika glared at him. “Who cares?” he asked. “You know that’s not why we’re here.”
“Gray promised Riley we could stay here, safe,” I reminded him, and tightened my grip on the chair. Any second, they could come at me again. Just do it, I told myself. Do it. “You want to piss them off?”
“Riley’s not here,” Mika said. “And Gray’s an idiot.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah. Gray’s the idiot.”
“Just finish this!” Mike shouted at his goons, my cue that it was now or never. As the ’roiders lurched toward me, I hoisted the chair, whirled around, slammed it through the window, didn’t flinch from the explosion of glass. Instead I ran into the storm of razor-edged crystals, into it and through it and past it, jagged glass carving my palms as I grabbed the frame and threw myself, without pausing, without thinking, without fear, into the sky.
Life is a physics problem. Bodies in motion. Bodies in free fall, at a constant rate of acceleration, gravity dragging them down and down and down.
Thirty-two point two feet per second per second, down.
Sixteen stories between jagged glass and stained pavement.
Three seconds. Three seconds to live—if you’re an org.
If you’re a mech, three seconds to decide.
Headfirst, brain crushed on concrete, life downloaded to something new and fresh and far away.
Feetfirst and there was a chance.
In the dark there was no ground, no building, just the wind, just the clock, seconds ticking down. My body had no org instincts, no reflexes to act on. There was only thought put into action. There was only what I knew.
Two seconds.
I knew a lot: You learn how to fly, you learn how to fall.
Relax, I thought, angling my body, head up, feet down. Muscles loose. Toes gently pointed, knees bent. Relax.
One second.
Tense up, and the impact would jolt through rigid muscles, straight to the energy converter in my chest, the computer in my head. The wind was thunder, the ground was coming, my brain was raging, but my body obeyed. Relaxed. Prepared.
The ground slammed into me with shattering force, sending a shock wave that blazed up my spine. It felt like my bones were liquefying. It felt like being crushed to an infinite point. But I ignored the feeling, focused on the act. On letting the fall drag me into a roll, my arms tucked under my legs, my head to my chest. Down and then up again, bouncing like a child’s ball, arms covering my head, elbows arrowed forward, knees tucked. Protect the soft spots. Twist hips to the right, shift body, land sideways, another explosion, radiating from head to toe, roll over, and over, just let it happen.
Until it ends.
I was on the ground. Arms worked. Legs moved. I twisted my head, gently, from side to side. Everything intact. And I was still thinking, I was still I, so the brain was safe. Which meant my chance to throw this body away and escape to the safety of a storage computer, a new download and a new machine, had slipped past, and somewhere up there, Mika and his thugs were on their way.
This is wrong, I thought, slowly, gingerly testing the arms, then the legs, pushing myself upright. Jumping out a window shouldn’t make you feel more alive.
On my feet, I spared only a second to look up at the path I’d fallen, tracing the line of the building, searching for the broken window, but the tower was too tall, the night too dark. And they would be coming for me.
Everything looked different in the dark. Thanks to Jude, I could see in infrared, but there was nothing to see but towers and shadows. The dim red glow of the sky was enough for that. I didn’t need to see where I was going—I needed to know where to go, and without Riley, there was no hope of that.
“What the hell is going on?” I VM’d Riley, half expecting that the network jammers would jam this too.
“Lia?” His voice sounded so close and so calm. Too calm. He didn’t know.
Or that’s what he wants me to believe, I thought.
“Lia, where are you? What’s wrong?”
If I told him where I was, and he was a part of it . . .
“You need to get out of there, now,” I VM’d. “Your friend Mika’s crazy. I’m—” I trusted him. Even if I shouldn’t, I trusted him. “I’m outside. They’re coming. Which way should I go?”
He didn’t hesitate. “West six blocks, then turn right, go another ten blocks, and there’s a vacant lot behind the tower. Lots of broken-down cars. Pick one, get in, wait for me. I’ll be—”
“You’ll be what?”
Nothing.
“Riley? Riley!”
But he was gone.
Three figures emerged from the tower, and I ran. West, like he’d said, pounded down the street, silently as I could, but the streets were abandoned after dark, and I was like a neon target in the empty city, and they gave chase. I kept to the edges of the sidewalk, trying to disappear into the shadows cast by the towers, then veered to the right and darted into an alleyway. The narrow dead-end passage was lined with piles of trash, and I squeezed between two of them, frozen. I could hear them out there, pacing the streets, calling for reinforcements.
“Maybe she went down there,” someone said. “No way I’m following.”
“The tunnels?” Mika’s voice. “Bitch can’t be that stupid.”
I waited for them to give up. They would have to eventually, and I would find my way home. I’d navigated the city at night before, for fun, for a game, and I could do it again. Even if this time I had no light, no pack of daredevil mechs at my back. I could do this alone.
Then: White eyes in the darkness.
“I saw you jump.” A small voice. Young.
“Shhh!” I hissed. He crept closer. It was a kid about half my height, harmless. Except that with one shout, he could send us both to hell. “Please.”
“They’re looking for you,” he whispered.
“Hide and seek,” I said desperately. Kids hated me. All of them. Even when I was an org. I knew how this would end. “So let’s hide.”
“Gimme your shoes.” He pulled back his lips like he was baring fangs, but there were more gaps than teeth.
“What?”
“Your shoes!” he said, too loud. “Or I tell them where you are.”
I didn’t bother to ask why he wanted them, or what he’d do with shoes two sizes too big. I just stripped them off and shoved them at him. He hugged them to his chest and grinned. “I saw you jump,” he whispered again. “I want to jump.”
“No!” I hissed, shaking my head wildly. “It wasn’t the shoes—”
“She’s in here!” he shrieked in a shrill, almost feminine register. “Over here!”
Just a kid, I told myself, suppressing the urge to wring his scrawny neck, but I was already in motion, shooting out of the alley and pinballing across the street. Bare feet slapping cement, I ran. Something sharp sliced my heel. I kept going. Mika and the others were already responding to the kid’s cry, running at full speed, about a block away. I knew I could outlast them, but only if I could outpace them, and they were fast. The alleys were dead ends. But just in front of me, the ground opened. Cement stairs led down into a dark maw: the tunnels.
Bitch can’t be that stupid, Mika had said.
Watch me.
It was dark down there, pitch-dark, but I had the infrared, and the underground cavern lit up in deep blues and purples. The stairs emptied onto a thin platform running along the edge of a long pit that tunneled into the distance in both directions. And in the pit, streaks of orange and yellow light scampering through the navy blue. Heated bodies scurrying through the cold dark. I pressed against the gritty tile wall of the platform as more yellow shapes streaked through the darkness, a couple on the platform angling toward me, their tiny claws feathering across my bare feet.
The rats, or whatever they were, didn’t scare me.
It was the other lights in the darkness, deep in the tunnel but creeping closer, bodies outlined in pulsing orange and red, the colors of life, the size of people, but people with twisted, gnarled shapes, backs hunched like horseshoes, limbs askew or absent.
I could hear voices above me, Mika shouting at the head of the stairs, urging his thugs down into the deep. Escape meant venturing into the tunnels, wherever they led. Whoever was waiting there for me.
The lighted bodies advanced. I shut down the infrared; I needed to see their faces. Mech eyes needed no time to adjust to the dark. The orange figures faded to gray shadows, and I saw: They were human, barely, stooped and ragged, their skin so layered with black soot that they melted into the tunnels.
For a moment I allowed myself to nurture the fantasy that they, whoever they were, poor but kind, would envelop me in their fold, spirit me away to safety, and then bask in the glow of my gratitude as I gifted them with a new life, safe and aboveground, their lives saved in return for saving mine, a happy ending.
And then I saw the glint of the knife in a raised hand, a long shard of broken glass clasped in another, heard a low, gutteral roar. The rats streamed away, seeking the safety of darkness, like they knew what was to come.
I should have jumped headfirst, I had time to think, just as a hand clamped down on my shoulder, yanked me backward. Someone grabbed my arm, nearly pulling the shoulder out of its socket, and dragged me up the stairs, my feet scrabbling for purchase as my ass thudded against the concrete. “Should’ve left you down there for the carvers,” the guy grunted, dumping me in a heap at the top of the stairs. Compared to the dark of the tunnels, the night sky seemed to blaze pink.
Mika leaned over me. I threw a wild punch, but he caught it, his scrawny grip deceptively strong. “Thanks,” he said, a creepy smile stretching across his face.
“For what?”
“For making this fun.” And he shoved a gag into my mouth. Pulled off his T-shirt and wrapped it twice around my head, leaving me in the dark. Someone tied my wrists together, then—after I landed a few kicks, yielding some mildly satisfying grunts and yelps—my ankles. Hands hauled me off the ground and slung me over a shoulder, my head dangling toward the ground, my blindfolded face plowed into someone’s ass. They carried me away.
When they pulled out the gag and ripped off the makeshift blindfold, I’d come full circle: another room, as featureless as the first, only without windows. The thugs were gone, leaving Mika and me alone.
I was tied to a chair.
“Go ahead,” I told him, steeling myself. My hands were bound behind my back, and my ankles knotted against the legs of the chair. They’d turned me into a piece of furniture. “Just do it.”
“What?”
Like I was going to give him ideas. “Whatever it is you’re going to do.”
“That’s what you think?” he asked, sounding disgusted. No—offended. He walked over to me, stroked a finger along my jawline. I jerked my head away, then thought better of it. Bring it a little closer, I urged him silently. I’ll bite it off. “You think I brought you here to . . . do things to you?”
“You’re right, that’s crazy,” I said, straight-faced. “You probably just want to chat.”
“You think we’re all animals, don’t you?” Mika poked me in the shoulder. Hard. “Don’t you?”
I shrugged.
“Penned up like dogs. Fighting each other for scraps.” He shook his head. “Who are you calling an animal? I’d rather be a dog than an it.”
“Not a dog,” I muttered. “Dogs are housebroken.”
“What’s that?”
I just smiled at him. He slapped me, snapping my head back so hard it slammed on the back of the chair. The jolt of pain was like a mouthful of milk chocolate—sweet in the moment, but not rich enough to make much of an impression.
“Why aren’t you scared?” he asked.
“Of you?” I sneered. “Maybe because you’re too stupid to notice that I’m a mech. You can’t kill me. And I don’t care if you hurt me.”
“I could make you care,” he said. “You don’t want me to do that.”
“Doesn’t seem to matter what I want.”
He circled the chair a couple times, then stopped in front of me, his legs straddling mine. He slapped his hands down on the chair back, long, hairy arms locking me in, then sat down, his ass heavy on my knees. He lowered his face to mine, and I wondered what his breath smelled like. Sour, I imagined, concentrating on his chipped front teeth. Or maybe sickly sweet like rotting fruit.
It’s just a body, I thought, watching his hands creep along my bare arms. It’s not me. It’s got nothing to do with me. Tiny, curly black hairs dusted his knuckles. His ragged nails were dark with grime. Long fingers, a strong, tight grip. It’s just wires and microreceptors and synflesh. Not me.
He pushed himself back to his feet. “I’m not an animal,” he snarled, backing away. “Whatever you think.”
I didn’t want to feel relief, because that would be an admission I’d felt fear. I was supposed to be beyond fear. Secure in mind, fearless of body, that was the idea. “Fine,” I said, steady. “So now what?”
“Now we wait.”
We waited for more than an hour. Me in my chair, Mika’s eyes darting from me to the door and back to me again. When it swung open, and Sari sauntered i
n, I allowed myself one moment of willful ignorance before accepting the obvious. This wasn’t a rescue.
I glared at her. “Where’s Riley?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Worried? There’s nothing I can do to him anymore, right?” Sari whispered something to Mika, who nodded. “Besides, how do you know Riley’s not the reason you’re here?”
I just stared at her.
She laughed bitterly. “Oh, that’s right, you know him so well.”
“Like you used to?” I reminded myself that she was no different from any other stuck-up bitch who thought she was in charge. And that was something I could use.
“No one knows Riley,” Sari said. “You’ll figure that one out yourself.”
“Seems like a pretty pathetic attempt to get him back.”
She snorted. “Why would I want him back?”
“Right, you’ve got Gray now.”
Sari rolled her eyes. “Gray was convenient. Now he’s not. A girl like you probably understands exactly how that goes.”
“Don’t pretend you know anything about me.” There had been guys who were toys, guys who were power plays, guys who were placeholders or just something to play with before I got bored, but that was over now. Mechs played by different rules. And I didn’t play at all.
“I know freaks like you and Riley belong together,” she said. “I’ve moved on.”
“To what?” I glanced pointedly at Mika. “Him?”
Sari burst into surprised laughter, then cut herself off as Mika’s face flushed red.
“What’s it feel like?” she asked abruptly.
I struggled against the rope binding me to the chair. “A little tight, actually. Feel free to untie—”
“Not that. You know. Sitting around, knowing you’re not going to die. Never get ugly. Sick.”
None of the orgs in my world—my former world—got ugly when they got old. It’s like the pop-ups said: a nanojection a day kept the wrinkles away. And there was always a lift-tuck every few months when things started to sag.
“At least you’re starting out ugly,” I said. “So you’ve got nothing to lose.”
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