A presence. A cool shadow.
“It seems to be waking up.”
It?
“That’s impossible. It’s just the move. The body is confused. The plug is in perfect condition.”
“Put an end to its confusion. I can’t have interruptions.”
That first voice, the voice of a woman, it reached into me like a long curl of black smoke seeking to fill my lungs. Then hands. Hands again, hands at my shoulders, my arms, my legs, holding me down.
NO! my mind protested again.
I am a girl! A human girl! Not just a body! Not just an it!
These thoughts shouted inside my head.
A jagged pain sheared across my arm.
It’s just a dream, cried my brain. Just a dream.
But then a great piercing noise filled the air, the world all around.
A scream.
It was coming from my throat.
It sounded so . . .
So real.
I was dreaming again.
In the dream I was lying on a narrow slab of stone. I could feel it against my skin, rough and cold and hard. I tried to open my eyes. Overhead, there was blinding light. Everything filled with glowing spots. Burning orange clouds floated across blackness. Quickly, I closed them again. I heard a murmuring, the murmuring of people gathering in large numbers, talking in low voices, a crowd near me yet set apart. The noise was a great tapestry of words whose threads I could not separate. The last time I’d heard such vast whispering was at the seventeens’ funeral, with Inara.
Was I dreaming about the funeral? Would I turn my head and see my virtual sister next to me? The possibility sent a pounding through my chest, a pounding so intense it thumped like it would burst away from my body. Or through it.
It was a heart.
A heart.
My real heart?
The heart in the dream was loud. It filled my brain, my mind. My ears. So much throbbing. In between the rhythmic beats, I heard those voices. They were everywhere, all of them strung together and coming at me like a rushing river that tripped and skipped over the pulsing of my heart.
Snatches of speech.
“. . . the New Capitalists.” Thump. “Win . . .” Thump. “Freedom . . .” Thump. “App World tyranny . . .” Thump. “Crisis . . .” Thump. “I bid you, come and see . . .”
Wait. No.
These weren’t snatches of speech.
They were snatches of a speech.
I listened harder, tried to decipher their meaning, any meaning at all, but I couldn’t stop that constant noise from pulsating through me and interrupting the words. Maybe if I could manage to see, I would be able to calm down. Yes. I needed to see where I was. That would change everything.
Once again, I let my eyelids slide open.
It took a long time for the spots to fade, for my sight to adjust to the brightness. Too long. I might have been lying there for hours before I was able to focus on the great expanse of blue above me, so big and vast and infinite, but most of all, so so blue. I nearly smiled.
Blue like the sky.
I was looking at the sky.
The real sky.
I was certain of it.
What else could this beautiful roof overhead be?
Now I did smile. Wide and full of joy.
But then I turned my head, turned it ever so slightly toward the murmuring, the whispering that hung around me like a cloud of gnats, and I knew, or, at least, I thought I knew that I’d yet to awaken. There was no way I’d come to from the dreams Trader told us about, because what I saw was impossible.
A thousand pairs of eyes blinked back at me.
Maybe more.
The murmuring shifted until it became a great buzz.
And my smile fell away.
The crowd stared as though they’d never seen a girl before, their faces blank with shock. They were maybe twenty feet away, gathered behind a long curving panel of glass that was anchored to the ground by metal posts. They were dressed in a pale shade of blue, everything about them so still, the glass wall shielding them from the breeze whipping across what looked to be a long, barren peninsula, jutting out into nothingness. I was raised up and apart from them. A sliver of ice pierced me, followed by a fear that was cold and vast and consuming. And then came the shame.
“Don’t worry,” said a voice from my side of the glass. “The shift in location is a natural shock to her system. The body is merely adjusting.”
Were these words for me?
I didn’t dare move. I lay there, frozen, afraid to cause another stir. Let them think I didn’t understand. Let them believe I was dreaming.
I was dreaming—wasn’t I?
The crowd, the way they stared, reminded me again of the seventeens’ funeral. Could this be my own funeral? Was I a hologram, floating above everyone, as Rain had been just days ago? Was that why I was so high up? Had I died in the process of unplugging?
The crowd’s sheer numbers hooked into me next. There were thousands of them, and only one of me. It was as though I’d downloaded some nightmarish version of Odyssey, but driving the momentum of the landscape and the challenges was fear—my fear of the unknown, of unplugging, of being trapped and unable to move. Terror and dread created so much vulnerability, so much weakness.
But then, what else had Trader said before we unplugged?
Think of it like a game.
Play like your life depends on it, he’d said.
I’d learned long ago that I could let a game play me, or I could play it.
A calm spread across me like a healing salve. In a game I could do anything. In a game I could advance. I could get to the next level.
In a game I could win.
The prize was getting to the Real World at last.
I lifted my head. Just to see what would happen. If I was going to advance, first I had to figure out the rules.
Looks of astonishment met my eyes. The crowd seemed to see a ghost. I considered their faces differently this time. I sat up now, only a little, to gauge their reaction, a clockwork girl moving in fits and starts. The noise of the crowd shifted along with me, its tenor higher and wider.
“Did you see that? She moved!”
“Is she awake?”
“But she can’t be!”
Strength laced itself through my veins, knotting together until it had woven itself into something tough, something durable. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that a long sliver of slate had come loose on the dais where I lay, the perfect weapon. The crowd’s attention briefly turned back toward the voice giving the speech, as though their gaze could will an explanation for the girl who seemed to rise from the dead. I shifted my hand ever so slightly, until my fingers curled around the loose stone’s edge, dislodging it.
The audience turned to me again.
Slipping through them would be impossible, and going around the glass to get past them impractical. Their attention was fixed on me like voyeurs’ on someone famous. I searched their faces for signs of familiarity, to see if maybe Adam or even Lacy was among them, wondering if all of us were trapped in the same strange and terrible dream, but there was no one else I knew. If I couldn’t move through the crowd or around them, I would have to escape by going the other way.
The way of the sea.
I could hear it behind me, the steady crash of it beyond the peninsula. What’s more, I could smell it. It called out to me.
But then something else called out to me—someone.
“Skylar!” she screamed over the wind.
I turned toward the voice. A girl with cropped hair that peaked in spikes. The feeling that I should trust her—that I must—spread through me.
In games I had allies, and here was one. I was sure of it.
Then others began to emerge.
One, two, then five, then ten, pushing their way to the edges of the crowd to places where the glass no longer provided a barrier. It was like they were marked with a sign that only I could see,
alerting my instinct to trust. Guards emerged too, coming alive like wooden toys. They wore the same pale blue as everyone else, but their clothes were fitted, and on their feet were thick-soled boots. But it was what they wore at their waists that made them seem like guards. Guns. They had guns. The guards began to fan out from the crowd in a wide curving arc. Some of them moved toward the girl, who continued to yell.
“We’re here for you,” she shouted. “You are not alone! Be brave,” she cried when the soldiers seized her.
But the others began to move as well—there were too many allies for the guards to subdue, and the guards seemed as surprised as everyone else by what was happening.
I sat up all the way now, the sharp stone cutting into my palm, assessing the distance between the dais and the ground below. It was covered in golden grass, burned from the sun. The crowd turned frantic, people shoving, fighting, faces pressed against the glass. I was about to jump when my attention caught on a quick movement to my near left.
I turned.
Everything seemed to slow right then.
A woman stood off to the side, alone in front of a podium looking out at the crowd only a few paces away. She, too, wore the same pale blue.
There was something familiar about her. The woman stared at me in shock, and I wondered if she, too, thought I was a ghost.
“Don’t,” she mouthed, shaking her head, a mixture of fear and sadness in her eyes. And shame—there was shame in her expression. “Please,” she added.
Her voice seemed to reach inside of me. A deep ache yawned and grew until I was nearly consumed with it.
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe.
Everything was silent. The crowd held its breath alongside mine.
Then suddenly the game picked up again, time returning to its regular speed, the audience coming to life with shouts and screams. This must be a test, I thought, a test where, at the end, I would get to see my family again. The Real World must be close now. The game was enticing me to move forward.
So forward I would go.
“Run!” someone screamed. It was the short-haired girl’s voice again, this time closer. She must have gotten free from the guards.
I braced my body against the stone dais, ready to spring, when one of the guards leapt over the glass wall and two more pushed their way through the angry crowd and around it, headed my way. It was only a second before one of them was on me, throwing himself up toward the place where I was perched. Whether he intended to knock me off or trap me or even kill me, I wasn’t sure.
I waited until he had nearly reached me.
Then I plunged the dagger of rock into the guard’s chest and moved out of the way. His eyes bulged, a split-second look of shock in them, before he let go a howl so high and horrible it could spur the dead to action. He fell down hard, twisting across the narrow stone.
Then came the blood. So much blood.
Had I ever seen so much blood before in a game?
I couldn’t move, fixated on the velvet ooze spreading across fabric and rock and skin—my skin. The girl, the one who’d called out to me to run, was now below me, gesturing frantically for me to join her on the ground. The other guards were nearly on me, murderous looks on their faces, guns in their hands, the metal caught so strangely by the light of the sun. My heart sped. I’d lost my chance to flee.
Then a new voice called out to them.
The voice of the woman behind the podium.
“Don’t hurt her!”
The guards froze.
Everyone else did, too.
Now was my chance.
I slipped off the dais to the ground with a heavy thump, and raced toward the edge of the peninsula, the ocean beyond its cliff. There was no time to think okay or yes or no, no time to consider how high or how dangerous, or even ask if I might die. There was only enough time to reach the edge before the guards would overtake me and throw myself into the great expanse of churning blue sea that stretched out toward the horizon.
So that’s what I did.
It’s just a game, I told myself over and over as I flew toward the jagged edge that zigzagged along the cliff, the soft grasses giving way to loose rocks. I didn’t look back, not once, even as the shouts behind me got closer. Suddenly I was six paces away, then five, then four, three, two.
One.
And I leapt.
I flung my body out to the sea, a human stone set loose from a slingshot.
Before gravity took me in its grip and dropped me toward the earth, I saw exactly how far I had to fall. It was as though I’d thrown myself from the ledge of a thirty-story tower, one built on a series of sharp rocks jutting out into the sea like an arrow. The fear, angry and terrible, reared up in me again, threatening to take back control of my mind and my limbs. It wanted to win me over.
But I couldn’t let it.
Getting to the Real World depended on my passing this test.
This was just a challenge I needed to clear, one last App working its way through my code that would eventually drain away. That was all this was and nothing more.
Gravity sucked at my feet.
I plummeted toward the sea.
My insides seemed to rise to my middle, my stomach pushing into my lungs, my skin wanting to pull itself up and over my neck and face as though it were a piece of clothing that could be removed. My vision filled with the vast deep blue of the water, of the ocean about to meet my body.
Blue like the ocean, went my memory, my mind.
Blue like me.
I remembered the ways in which I’d felt at home in the sea, as though my legs were meant more for swimming than walking, how I never felt more myself than when I was diving low and fast under the water. My instincts took over just as my body neared the end of its drop and I straightened, toes pointed, arms above my head and hugging my ears, all of my muscles perfectly tight, bracing for impact.
My feet pierced the surface.
The slap was a shock, skin and bone meeting rock.
The rest of me disappeared under the water with a great splash. I kept my muscles tight to manage the blow but the impact knocked my head backward like a punch, even as I continued downward, the ocean gripping my feet and pulling me into its darkness. Water rushed into my nose, a million tiny bubbles blurring my vision. I kept my lips shut tight, holding my breath. If I opened my mouth, this game would be over.
Finally, the downward momentum slowed.
I was able to move my hands, and I pushed them through the water. On my way toward the surface, the sharp edge of a rock slashed across my leg.
The pain was blinding.
Then came the blood.
A cloud of it billowed up around me like red smoke expanding outward until the ocean consumed it. A steady stream poured from a long gash open along my thigh. Mrs. Worthington’s voice broke into my brain. Bodies are so easily shattered.
My lungs burned with lack of oxygen.
Soon I’d run out.
I looked around underwater, but the ocean was too dark to see anything clearly. A purple fish darted by me and then another, their shiny scales skimming across the back of my hand.
Frantically, I propelled myself upward, knees bending and kicking, leaving behind a long trail of blood. I pushed harder, swimming toward the murky light above, a light that brightened the higher I went, my lungs screaming. The sun shining through the water was my guide, my hope, and I noticed the white bottom of a boat just a little ways off. I darted as fast as I could toward its shape, hoping it was empty.
I broke the surface, gasping.
“There she is! Hurry!”
So it wasn’t empty after all.
My eyes stung, my throat burned, my lungs were on fire. My muscles were rubbery and tight all at once. Before I could swim away, the boat was coming toward me, a series of figures hanging off the bow, reaching for me.
“Quickly!” one of them shouted.
Then the boat was upon me. There were arms reaching out, hands, so many
hands, grabbing at my arms, my shoulders, my back, dragging me up until I was over the edge, coughing and dizzy, water streaming off me, streaming everywhere, and blood, too. I didn’t know how many people were there in the boat, but one of them, a boy, pulled me close, my hair soaking his shirt through.
“How did you do that?” he asked. He sounded incredulous.
I looked up at him. I took in his eyes, his face, his tousled dark hair. I spoke, my voice so hoarse it nearly had no sound.
“I know you,” I said.
And then the App, the game, the dream—whatever this was, this purgatory between worlds—it finally drained away.
PART TWO
Ten days later
14
I am born again
EVERYTHING WAS DARK and blurry and my head hurt like someone was slamming it with download flashes. I wanted to cry out but my mouth wouldn’t make a sound, like someone had glued my lips together. My throat burned as though it were on fire and my arms felt like rocks, my legs aching and throbbing. My nails were knives digging into tender skin.
My skin.
I was here. I was real.
I’d made it.
My nails cutting into flesh and the pain it produced was proof of this.
“Stop that. Skylar, don’t pinch. You’ll make yourself bleed.”
What?
My jaw moved side to side and up and down, stretching my tongue. I tried to form words, but it felt as though I was made of rubber, the way everything was twisting this way and that, my throat too hot and sore to produce sound. Why did my throat hurt so much? I lifted my arms, my hands, heavy and solid and clumsy, up and up and out until they hit a wall. But it wasn’t a wall in front of me. There was a triangular bump on it and coarse hair tangled together like rope on top and skin, more and more skin, someone else’s skin, not my skin this time.
A face.
There was a flash of light.
I tried my eyes once more but all they saw were distorted images, squiggly lines and shades of gray.
“I’m glad you’re waking up. You’ve been asleep for a long time. Your body needed to recover.”
It was the same voice again, a woman’s voice. Smooth and deep and rich.
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