“You don’t know me very well,” I said coldly. He wanted an unfeeling machine? He could have one. “So I should probably mention that I hate people telling me what I’m thinking.”
“Hate’s such an ugly emotion.”
“Funny, then, that you spend so much time spreading it around.”
“I wouldn’t expect something like you to understand the nuances of human emotional experience.” The preacher tones were back. “The Brotherhood of Man is an organization of love. We embrace that which is noble in the human spirit. Ours is a mission of purification and distillation. Elimination of corrupting elements and parasites clinging to the social organism.”
“But you don’t hate,” I said sarcastically. “Because that would be wrong.”
“I’ve told you before, Lia,” he said. “I bear no ill will against you—any of you. Not every problem is its own cause. Hating the symptoms won’t help us cure the disease.”
“Tell me whatever it is you want to tell me, or let me out of here,” I said. “Since I can’t actually die of boredom, my options are pretty limited.”
“Fine, let’s talk about the unfortunate attack at Synapsis.” Savona stretched out on the couch, lacing his hands behind his head.
“Fine. Talk.”
“Let’s say, hypothetically, there was no attack.” He closed his eyes, smiling like he was having a particularly pleasant daydream. “Or not a serious one, at least. Let’s say the toxin was plain old Naxophedrine, causing discomfort and unconsciousness but no fatalities.”
“But I—” I stopped myself, suddenly realizing how stupid I’d been, revealing the thing I’d tried so hard to hide. That I had been present for the attack.
“But I was there!” he cried in a high, mocking falsetto. “I saw them die!” He opened his eyes and sat up, leaning toward me. “Did you? Did you really?” He pressed a hand to his eyes. “You can’t always believe what you see.” And when he pulled his hand away, his eyes were bleeding, a trickle of red running down each cheek.
I was proud of myself for not screaming.
Savona wiped away the blood or whatever it was. “It’s a brave new world, Lia. Anything’s possible. You should know that.”
“They worked for you.” I said it, but I couldn’t believe it. I’d seen them. Stepped on them. Mourned them.
“No one works for me,” Savona corrected me. “The Brotherhood is composed of volunteers, serving the people not me. But let’s say, hypothetically, that the so-called casualties of the Synapsis attack were affiliated with the Brotherhood. That perhaps the video, the one with your face so inconveniently plastered all over it, was doctored.”
And suddenly, in a unexpectedly visceral way—visceral, like I could feel it in my nonexistent gut, like for a moment I could taste what fear used to mean, in all its shivering, hair-raising, stomach-twisting glory—I was afraid. Because I knew how this story ended. The supervillain exposited his crimes, but only before offing the hero. In the story it was a mistake, giving the hero time to escape and shout his discovery to the world. It was a ridiculous roadblock placed in the path of inevitable success.
But I was no hero, and I didn’t have an escape plan. “Why are you telling me this?”
I am not afraid, I thought, repeating the lie in a trembling mental voice, twice, three times. Faithers had left blood vengeance behind them. They talked a good game, but they didn’t do violence, lunatics or not.
Of course, Savona was an ex-Faither.
“You asked,” he said.
“Now what?”
“Now you leave,” Savona said.
“Leave? Just like that?”
“Just like that. I won’t have your father”—his lip curled in distaste—“snooping around my facility. So you run home, and you tell everyone how the big, bad Rai Savona didn’t desecrate a hair on your godforsaken head. And you keep our little conversation to yourself.”
I didn’t bother asking if he was insane. It seemed self-evident. “Why would I do that? So you can enjoy your war between orgs and mechs without the inconvenient truth getting in the way?”
“You’re glad that those forty-two people are alive,” Savona said. “Each and every one of them. Even though they deceived you? Each and every one of them?”
“Surprised?”
“I can only assume you’ll want to ensure they stay alive,” Savona said. “Your silence buys them life. But if you choose to break my confidence …” He let the threat dangle in the silence.
“You’d kill your own followers?” I finally said, unwilling to believe it.
“I won’t have to do anything. They do what I tell them to do,” he said steadily. “They’re willing to give anything for our cause.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“Maybe.” He smiled. “Care to test me? If you’d like a demonstration, I can call your friend Jackson in here—although his wife and children may not thank you for it.” He shook his head in mock sadness. “So many Brothers and Sisters beyond that door, willing to do anything to protect their families.”
“By dying?”
“By ensuring that your kind doesn’t destroy us.”
Savona paused, waiting for me to spit something back at him. But I could see the crazy in his eyes. I’d seen what he did to Ani—this was a man who could talk people into things. Maybe he was right, and he could talk people to their death. He folded his hands together on his lap, almost as if he were praying. “I’ve given you this information because I can’t have you poking around here, out of control, trying to dig up the truth. And I can’t risk keeping you here. This seemed the quickest way to shut you up. I’m sending you back out into the world. With a promise. The Synapsis attack was not your fault—those ‘deaths’ were not on your conscience. But if you say anything to anyone, I’ll know. These deaths will be real—and they’ll be on you.”
“You don’t think I have a soul,” I reminded him. “What makes you think I have a conscience? Maybe I don’t care how many orgs have to die.”
“Maybe,” he said. “And maybe even if you go to the authorities without any proof, you’ll be able to convince someone to trust the word of a skinner over that of Brother Rai Savona. Certainly it would be to your advantage to try. I suppose it will be an interesting experiment. I’m willing to take the risk—I know what I’m willing to sacrifice for my cause. The question is, how much are you willing to sacrifice for yours?”
“You’re disgusting.”
He offered up a humble smile. “Our flaws are what make us human. You wouldn’t understand.” Savona stood. “We’re done here.”
“Wait.” Asking was a show of weakness, but maybe I was weak. “What about Auden. Where does he fit into this?”
“You mean does he know I’m speaking to you tonight? Does he know about the attack? All of it?”
“Any of it.”
“Why would you believe anything I had to say?” Savona asked, sounding genuinely curious.
“I won’t.”
“And yet you still want to know.” He was looking at me like I was a science experiment, one he’d written off as a failure that had suddenly produced some unexpectedly intriguing results. “After everything you’ve done to him—and everything you’ve seen—you still believe he’s on your side.”
“Just tell me.”
Savona raised his eyebrows. “Ask yourself, Lia, why was it your face on that video, declaring war on the mechs? Why would I choose you? Especially since your father’s connections, his ludicrous campaign, make you a particular liability. Certainly compared to a skinner from a city, with no connections, no family, no power. Why would I go after you?”
“I have no idea why the hell you’d do anything.”
“I wouldn’t,” he said. “And I didn’t.”
It was a long, dark walk back to the car. Alone.
The kind of walk that gave you time to think. A silent night, a mile of cement and weeds. A face in my head, a dead man walking.
And Sloane, Ty,
and Brahm left behind.
Ani left behind.
Why was I always the one that got away?
Not that I’d gotten away with anything. Not if I believed Savona’s threats, his deal. Their lives for my silence.
How was I supposed to let the mechs be blamed for what he’d done—for what he hadn’t done, for the deaths of orgs who were more alive than I was? What if people kept believing that we were dangerous, if the Human Initiative passed, if we lost our rights, lost our credit, our personhood, everything—and all because I’d stayed silent? Hid what I knew, to protect insane orgs willing to die to prove how much they hated me?
If they were the ones with the choice, they wouldn’t save me.
But I couldn’t die. That was the difference, right? The bright line marking off “acceptable losses” from “tragedy”? Whatever the mechs lost, it couldn’t be worth as much as a single org life.
That’s what the orgs would say, anyway.
I didn’t want to think.
I linked in to the network, and there was a message waiting for me at my zone. Not from Jude, pestering me for details; not from Ani, apologizing, recanting, atoning.
From Zo.
Her av was draped in black, as always, its oversize dark eyes lined in blood red. It spoke in her voice.
I know what happened, Zo’s voice said, her av staring straight out of the screen, straight at me, the way she never did, not since the accident. We need to talk.
THE GUILTY ONES
“Here is our enemy.”
If three people had broken into the Temple in the dead of night, with intent to vandalize a sacred space and plunder its sacred secrets, perhaps Savona would have been obligated to turn them over to the secops. But the trespassers were mechs—three of them, as it was announced in every vid, on every news zone, no mention of the one released or the one who chose to stay. And the secops wanted nothing to do with them. Savona was on his own. So were the mechs—they were his mechs now.
When it came to rights, we were in a liminal zone. No one’s property, not yet—but not quite our own, not anymore. Ani had chosen her team wisely: three mechs whose parents had given up on them, who had no remaining ties to the org world. No one to care if they disappeared. BioMax refused to get involved, given the “criminal nature” of the circumstances under which they’d been acquired.
Not taken, not kidnapped. Acquired.
Call-me-Ben wasn’t taking my calls.
And the network was wild with support for the Brotherhood of Man, horror at the narrowly averted attack. Three mechs surely headed toward a ventilation shaft or somewhere worse. Three mechs with deadly intent, headed off in the nick of time.
Three mechs, strapped to three tall, sturdy posts, made from freshly cut pine. Posts drilled into the stage at the front of the Temple’s largest auditorium. Directly behind the central podium. The perfect visual backdrop to the next Brotherhood rally.
Three mechs, their hands bound, their heads shaved, their mouths gagged, their eyes open.
Confirmation that the electric shock hadn’t completely shattered their systems. But who knew whether the shock had incapacitated them, fried the connections between the neural network and the body, leaving them trapped inside their own heads, plastoid lumps for the Brotherhood to pin up like ornaments. Or whether they’d been left broken inside, half there, half absent, damaged remnants of their old selves, gibbering wild-eyed nonsense, missing reason, missing themselves. What would it look like, madness in a mech?
“Here is our enemy,” Savona said, his back to his audience, to the cameras, preaching to his prisoners. “Crept into the very heart of our Temple, just as the skinners have wormed their way into the heart of society. Here is our enemy, the barbarians at our gates, just as the skinners will struggle to defeat our measures, the boundaries we draw for our own protection. Here is our enemy, and here they will stay, for them and for you. For your benefit, so you can look upon them and truly see. For their benefit, so they can understand their crime, their trespass. Not breaking into the Temple—the Temple is an open door to any in need. Any.” He paused there and I waited for the camera to pan across to her, as it often did—her blue-black hair peeking over the crowd—Savona’s prize mech, his pet mech, the one who’d seen the light. I should have been grateful that he so loved parading her across the vids—it was the only proof I had that my story was true, that I hadn’t led the others to the slaughter, struck my own deal with Savona and Auden to guarantee my escape. After all, I was the one that walked away, free and clear.
I should have been grateful, but I couldn’t stand to see her there, glowing under Savona’s warm approval. I couldn’t stand her expression, coldly serene, empty of doubt or regret. Empty.
But this time the camera didn’t move. It stayed on Savona, leaving the fourth mech, his mech, just another invisible face in the crowd. And I was relieved.
“They would trespass here,” Savona boomed. “Here, where they’re not wanted, as they don’t belong, trespass without a thought, because their very existence is a trespass upon humanity.”
He bowed his head and raised his arms out to his sides as if flourishing invisible wings. “We bear them no ill will. But we will hold them here, like this, until BioMax agrees to stop creating new skinners, until the government recognizes that those already built must not be allowed to maintain their stolen identities, living among us, carrying the names and faces of the dead. They will be a symbol, a reminder that our fight continues. And when we have achieved our goal, we will release them.” He raised his head then, staring up at the mechs dangling from their posts, unable to respond, unable to look away. “We will release you,” he said, like it was a solemn vow.
Then, for the first time, he faced his audience. “They may never understand,” he assured them. “They are machines, prisoners to their programming. We can’t let their confusion sway us. We can’t let their delusions fool us. We can’t rest until the skinners are forced to accept what you all know in your hearts. Men make machines. Objects. Complicated, remarkable, sometimes wondrous objects. But objects nonetheless. Only God can make a life.”
“You were supposed to be her best friend,” Quinn told me when she heard. “And you want to blame me? Where were you when all this was happening? Where were you?”
I hadn’t blamed her. Not out loud, at least.
Just told her what had happened, just the facts. Just what Ani had said and done.
Just that Ani had decided betrayal was what mechs did, so why shouldn’t she join the party.
“What makes you think I was her best friend?”
“She told me,” Quinn said.
She told me you actually cared about her, I thought. She was wrong about a lot.
But I didn’t say that. Didn’t ask how we could be best friends when I barely knew her. Or how anyone would want to be my best friend after seeing what had happened to the last one.
“You were supposed to look out for her,” Quinn said, angry as Quinn ever got.
And I didn’t say anything to that either. Because buried beneath all the reasons that she was wrong—I wasn’t Ani’s best friend, I wasn’t the one who’d broken my promises or broken her heart, I wasn’t under any obligations—she was also right. As right as Quinn ever got, at least.
I’d let her think she was my friend, I’d let her tell me things, secrets, let her listen to mine, asked about her like I cared, had cared, and maybe I’d let myself think we were friends too—and then I’d shut my eyes and looked away.
My fault, not my fault, all of our faults, no one’s fault. And then I linked into the network, saw those mechs, none of them friends, each of them one of us, and all I saw in that moment was that Ani was to blame for what Ani had done.
“Why’d you even do it?” I asked Quinn. “Just couldn’t stay away from Jude, even though you knew it was the one thing that would—” I shook my head. “That’s it, right? Nothing so sweet as forbidden fruit and all that?”
“W
hat am I, a child?” Quinn snapped. “Or Jude’s some god of love I couldn’t resist? Please.”
“What’s the point, then? You just wanted to hurt her?”
“Maybe I don’t need a reason for what I do,” Quinn said. “I do what I want. Maybe that’s the point.”
I didn’t answer.
“You’ll never understand what it was like for me,” Quinn said. “Before the download.”
I wondered—was that what Jude heard when I talked, After everything I’ve lost, I deserve whatever I can get? Was that why he always threw them in my face, words like “spoiled” and “naive” and “childish”?
So you were a damaged orphan, strapped to a bed for fifteen years, trapped inside a wasted body, I wanted to say. So what?
We’re all damaged, I wanted to say. And we’re all here now. Stuck. It doesn’t mean we get to do whatever we want. Or hurt whoever we want.
But I didn’t.
I wanted to believe that she went to Jude not because she wanted him, not even because she chafed at anyone telling her what she could and couldn’t have, but because she didn’t want him, suddenly didn’t want anyone but Ani, and the idea of that, chaining herself to a person when she’d finally gotten free of her cage, losing the freedom to want what she was supposed to want, freaked her out so badly that she pounced on Jude, did it practically in public, did it and would have done it again and again until she got caught.
I wanted to believe that about her and pity her rather than blame her, but I couldn’t, not quite. And so instead of asking the question and getting the answer I didn’t want, I left.
After it happened, Jude took to sitting in the greenhouse, cross-legged on the floor beneath the tables bursting with purple and golden blossoms, hidden from the hothouse lights by the wide fronds of an anthurium plant overhanging its pot.
“She liked to come here,” Jude said, squinting up at me when I found him there. It was two days after the failed raid, and the glass building blazed in the sun. From his perch in the leaf-shaded dark, I must have been a silhouette to him, backlit by the light. “She’d just sit. Said it kept her calm.”
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