by A A Woods
Tora
Friday, September 21st, 2195
10:24 P.M. EST
Khali’s Gaming House is an abandoned cellphone store, a crumbling brick building cut in half horizontally by the ceiling of the Tunnels. Huge posters lean against dusty windows, advertising discounts for technology that went obsolete long before I was born. The building itself seems to encapsulate the gloom around it, an artifact of the old world. Voices echo from an open window, laughing, chatting. Casual.
To the world above, this is a ruin.
To the Gamers inside, it’s a home.
I stand out front, sweeping my PAP over the building’s decrepit façade, working up my courage to knock. Tracking Khali down was easy—a simple matter of monitoring the feed on her recorder and using the visual clues she doesn’t even know her IRIS is logging—but owning up to it is hard. It means admitting that I bugged her, followed her. That I didn’t trust her.
A desperate voice inside me shouts to go back, deal with this later. I can hide in Damien’s Gamer House for the evening and message her to meet me tomorrow morning. Ask for her help then. We might still have time to challenge another Gamer for their key. She’ll never know that I planted a recorder on her and reverse-analyzed it to figure out where she lives.
But the Tournament opens in less than twenty-four hours.
I don’t have time to be a coward.
I clench my fists against my thighs and shove my PAP into my pocket. By tracking down Khali, I’ve made her vulnerable. Gained the upper hand. Perhaps I can minimize the damage by approaching with my own vulnerabilities worn in the open.
I lift my fist and, before I lose my nerve, thump it against the dusty glass door.
The voices above me go silent. For a long moment there’s only the wind of the Tunnels lifting my hair, whistling around me.
And then the door slides open.
“Tora?” Khali’s voice is harsh and unwelcoming.
“I’m sorry,” I say with a flinch.
“How did you find me?” Her question is the crack of a whip, the jab of a knife.
I flinch again. “I need your help.”
“Tora, how did you find this place?”
“Can I come in?”
She hesitates. I can feel eyes on me—more than one pair. The other Gamers? Khali’s friends? I try to ignore the surge of jealousy, not knowing if my envy is for Khali or the people who get to live with her.
“Fine,” she says at last, and there’s a click as she steps aside. I reach out one hand, feel for the edge of the door.
She doesn’t help me as I stumble inside.
“Tora, what are you doing here?”
Her voice is laced, edged with a nimbus of anger that makes my heart flutter and my nerves prickle. I wonder for the millionth time if this was a bad idea.
Too late now.
“Can we speak in private?”
Khali doesn’t answer. There’s a flutter through the bodies gathered around me and my frustration ripples like someone dropped a stone in it.
This is ridiculous.
Plunging one hand into my pocket, I tug out my father’s PAP. There’s a simultaneous intake of breath, but Khali speaks as I tilt the camera toward her.
“It’s fine. She won’t record anything.”
There’s an unspoken threat in her words, but I ignore it as I sweep the PAP in a slow arc, taking in the scene.
Three Gamers stand in a loose circle around me. A twitchy girl who looks like she’s been electrocuted hovers behind a glass case displaying the latest model of 150-year-old technology, her IRIS cable green-banded and stuck behind her ear. A blue-eyed boy with rainbow-dyed hair leans against a pillar, his arms folded under a loose poncho.
And then there’s Khali. Statuesque in glittering black boots and yellow pants, arms folded, polished nails tapping against her bicep. Her posture has anger etched in every angle, every joint, but her eyes have something else. Something deeper.
Fear.
“Khali, I need to talk to you,” I say, turning my body to face her. I hold out my free hand in supplication. “Please.”
Her eyes drive into me and I wonder how it would feel to really meet that gaze, to be pinned under its spell without the shield of electronics between us. There’s flint in her expression, a crackling anger that is one wrong word away from blazing into an inferno. I remain silent, my breath caught like a wild animal in the cage of my ribs, waiting. Hoping.
Just when I begin to wonder if she isn’t going to respond, she flicks her head toward the curling stairs at the back of the room.
“Jonah, Keri, give us a second. We won’t be long.”
I follow her, distracting myself by watching her clicking heels, marveling at how she can walk on stilettos with more grace than I can in my rubber-soled boots.
She leads me into a converted office, two ragged mattresses shoved against the walls, spilling tangled blankets and clothing over the carpeted floor. When the frosted glass door slides shut behind us, she spins to face me. “Where’s the tracker?”
“On your IRIS.”
She yanks her technicolor cable around. It looks almost iridescent in the dim light. Like the rest of her.
I hold my hand out. She places the sharp tip in it, her tight glare never loosening. With two fingers, I brush along one of the grooves. The tiny recorder falls out and lands on the floor, immediately swallowed by the forest of carpet.
“Explain.” She shoves the word at me without warmth, without the slightest hint of her usual twinkling mischief.
“I needed to know I could trust you.”
“I can hardly say the same.”
“Look, I’m sorry. It was a mistake. But I need your help.”
“And why would you want my help? You can’t trust me, remember?”
I sigh, letting the PAP dangle from my IRIS cable as I reach up and scrub my face with both hands. Khali has a way of throwing me off center, leaving me reeling, and I wish I could escape it but I can’t. She’s a sun and I’m a planet and we keep circling, keep entering each other’s gravity, tugging each other closer. And the urgency of my mission pales in comparison to how much the thought of losing her hurts.
How do I even start?
“Khali, the things you said last night, you can’t possibly know how much that meant to me. I’ve been alone for a long damn time and then you came along and I don’t know how to react. How to behave. This is all new to me.”
Khali doesn’t respond and I can’t see her, but I don’t want to pick up my PAP. I hold my hands out, frozen, waiting for her condemnation or acceptance, trying to find meaning in it all the things she’s refusing to say.
It’s the most vulnerable I’ve ever felt.
“Please,” I continue, breaking under the weight of her stillness. “There’s something I need to do, but I can’t do it alone. And I can’t imagine doing it with anyone else. To be honest, I’m terrified. And you have this weird way of making me feel brave.”
Silence stretches between us, raw and empty and nauseating. I’m holding my breath, hands shaking, mind spinning like the PAP hanging from my IRIS cable.
Finally, Khali sighs. “What is it?”
I bite my lip. Take a deep breath. “I need to get into the ProRec tournament.”
“No.”
Her answer is so sudden, so final, that I actually take a step back. “You know Kitzima exiled me. I need someone to fight in my place if I want to get an invitation—”
“The answer is no.”
“But…”
“Tora, I don’t know why you’re so obsessed with Project Recollection, but I want nothing to do with them.” There’s a twist of pain in her voice. Her words leave no room for argument.
I shake my head. “What happened to the Anubis who wasn’t afraid to hit a cripple?”
“She’s laying low until all this tournament nonsense is over.”
“I don’t understand—”
“And you don’t need to.” H
er voice cuts through mine, shutting me down with more vehemence than I’ve ever heard from her.
“Is this because I tracked you—?”
“This is because I’m not a plugged-in moron. That tournament is a farce and ProRec is a monster and you’d do well to stay far away.”
I’m pulling up my father’s PAP. I tilt it just in time to see her turn away, her arms wrapped around her chest. She looks small, shrunken, a shadow of the giant who strolled into the warehouse last night as if it she owned the world.
“Is this because of Chief Witch?”
Khali freezes. Her shoulders tighten and then shake as she chuckles. “So you did read my messages.”
“Just the one.”
“Look, Tora, I like you. But drop this.”
“I can’t.” I step forward. “People are depending on me.”
“And I’m depending on you to let this go.”
“What’s going on, Khali? Why are you so afraid of them?”
“Why are you so stubborn?”
I reach out, grab her shoulder.
“What the hell are you hiding from—?”
She moves like a snake. Her hand whips around, slams against my chest with the force of a battering ram. I fly backwards, hit the glass wall, my cry of surprise accompanied by a warbling echo. Air escapes me in a rush, a wave, leaving me gasping and sliding to the floor. The PAP’s camera is cracked, and the effect is kaleidoscopic, shattering the world.
With shaking hands, I tilt the faceted camera up. She’s looming over me, breathing heavily. The fragments I can see of her face are flushed, eyes wide, her surprise mirroring my own.
Tears overflow from the dam of my eyelids, but of course they don’t blur my vision.
They don’t matter at all.
I scramble to my feet.
“Well then,” I say, struggling to keep my voice even. “I guess you’ve made your answer clear.”
“Tora…”
But I don’t wait to hear what she has to say. My spine aches and my ribs burn but nothing compares to the lancing pain in my chest as I relive the moment again and again, feel Khali’s anger snap like a flag in the wind, listen to her hand whistle toward me. I try to reconcile this spooked, savage creature with the husky voice, soft lips, warm touch, but I can’t. The Khali from last night is like a stranger, something sweet and wonderful and suddenly gone.
Yet another thing ProRec ruined.
With everything cracking around me, my world as shattered as the PAP’s dizzying camera, I march down the stairs, out the door, and into the Tunnels. Tears course down my cheeks and tremors wrack my limbs and I wonder how much more I can possibly lose.
Memory File of Jonah Simmons
Gamer Name: Kujaku
Time Stamp: Friday, September 21st, 2195
10:51 P.M. EST
“What was all that about?”
You’re leaning against a doorframe, throwing a casual question to the girl sprawled on the ratty mattress, her long legs stretching up the wall like shadows.
“Don’t,” she says, voice throaty and deep.
“Still sulking?”
She tilts her head backwards and looks at you upside-down. Her wide lips are pursed and her eyes—so dark they’re almost black—are squinted with warning. “Not now, Jonah.”
“She was pretty cute.”
The girl throws herself upright with an exasperated snarl. You lean back as she swings around, her arms thrown wide.
“What happened to privacy in this place? I thought the Tunnels were supposed to be a good place to hide.”
Your shoulders lift in a shrug. “Maybe. Depends what you’re hiding from.”
She throws you a look the way an assassin throws a dagger.
A chuckle reverberates through your chest. “You know, the alluring mysterious figure only goes so far. You’ll have to drop the act someday.”
“I’m not playing a part, Jonah.” She folds her arms, glares at the wall.
“Sure you are. We all are. And I think she figured out yours and that’s why you threw her against the window.”
The girl doesn’t respond. She seems to shrink, folding as if drawn by a gravitational force inside her, a massive secret pulling everything in.
“Hey, don’t mind me,” you say in a voice warm with sympathy. “But if it changes anything, I think she meant well.” Her eyes flick up, drinking in your words, shining with desperation. You hold out your hands in a half-shrug. “I also think, if you tried, you could mend whatever was broken between you.”
“Who said there’s something between us?”
You snort. “Khali, you could see that shit from space.”
She blushes and looks away.
You shove off the wall with an expansive stretch. “Sometimes I wonder how you ever—”
But you’re interrupted by a crash. The tinkling of shattered glass. You whip around but the lights die, plunging you into darkness.
“Jonah, get moving.”
She’s behind you and you’re both diving into the viscous black, moving down the hallway toward something. Purposeful. Practiced. As if you’ve been waiting for this.
There’s a shriek from downstairs and your shoulders tighten.
“Keri—”
“Keep going.”
Her voice is harsh and panicked. You can’t even see the outline of her. There’s something shifting in the darkness and you feel like a swimmer, surrounded by deep-sea monsters in the dense waters below the city. There’s no illumination down here, not even the glimmer of stars. Just inky, oily nothingness.
You hear footsteps get closer.
“C’mon,” you whisper, reaching a hand behind you. Your fingers are on her back, pushing her ahead, and she’s reaching for something. You hear the grind of heavy metal being dragged over tile, like the opening of a door.
And then something slams into your temple.
“She’s here!”
The shout rings in your ears. Your head spins from the blow. You stagger to the side, try to turn, but the darkness is suddenly crowded. You’re surrounded. The girl is next to you, fighting them off, but they’re huge and fast and somehow anticipate your moves before you make them.
As if they can see.
You lash out with one arm, but a heavy hand grabs it. Twists it behind your back.
“Get your hands off me!” you spit.
“Jonah!”
The girl’s voice is desperate, bordering on a shriek, but you can’t help. Someone is cuffing your wrists and you feel a pinch as your IRIS is pulled taut.
“Knock them out,” someone growls above your head. “We don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
Your IRIS cable slides into something and you feel it fill your mind, drag you into unconsciousness, but not before the device blinks, a single light throwing a cone of red over the black helmets, huge shoulders, and simple insignia on the breast.
P.R.
Tora
Friday, September 21st, 2195
11:17 P.M. EST
I am broken.
It’s late but I have nowhere to go. Nowhere to be. I’m sitting in a Chain station at the very end of the line, shoulders slumped, head hanging, sprawled on the floor like a MemHead or a beggar and I can’t bring myself to move. The shattered PAP hangs from my cable, but I’m not looking through it. Not using it for anything.
My brain is too full to try.
It’s like having flashbacks, like reliving memories without consciously deciding to do so. To my aching, bleeding heart, no time has passed between this moment and the moment that Zhu didn’t come home. The endless hours as we waited, swallowing the snippets and memos sent by ProRec’s management team. It broke to the public the next day—youngest Project Recollection programmer accused of corporate espionage, family under investigation—but to me it was the night that mattered. That stretching silence where Zhu should have been.
I feel it again now, compounded by the months in between. Sharpened by the person I’v
e become. I think of the night before his disappearance, sitting with him by the window as he tinkered with my cable. I can imagine the warm sunset filling our old apartment with light, seen through the eyes of his PAP as he worked. His hands shakier than usual as they tapped out commands, guiding the Neurowiring in my brain to burrow deeper and deeper into my cerebellum.
And doing something else.
Burying secrets in my core code as he altered it.
Never let them see what I did, little tiger. Never let them find you.
I’ve gone over the image so many times it feels like a recollection. Like a rut left in my mind. But no matter how often I dig apart that night, I can’t figure out what he was really saying when he told me to hide. Did he know where his frantic instructions would lead? The bleak life he’d sentenced me to?
I’ve been strong, stronger than my mother. In all these months, I’ve never taken that plunge back into my own memories, never allowed myself the luxury of nostalgia. The temptation has been there—some days a murmur, other days a rising scream—but I’ve resisted, knowing that if I dive into what used to be, I might never come back.
Now, sitting in a silent commuter station echoing with the promise of distant trains, that insistent whisper has its claws in me. I’m sinking, failing, falling. I can’t go home and I can’t go to the Gaming Ring and now I can’t go to Khali.
There’s only one place left for me to turn.
Not for the first time, I wonder if there’s a god looking down on me. Mocking me. For all my struggle to avoid the place my Mom has called home for so long, fate conspired to lead me to its door and shove me through it. I can’t deny the tug anymore, but what will I lose by giving in?
Do I care?
With shaking hands, I lift my PAP and activate the brain scan, look, for the first time, into my own memories. There’s a hum and a shift as my IRIS pulls up a catalogue behind my eyelids. My catalogue. Recollection files scroll up and a breathless relief washes over me. Holding up my life in these neat little lines of code, I see how easy it is to slip back. To be myself, but not myself. A better version of myself. I can be Mei again, Mei without Tora. Mei with her brother and father and mother and life. The memories are too bright, too cheerful, taken so very much for granted.