Unplugged

by Donna Freitas

  The breath left my body, the hurtful remark making me wince. Had everyone really seen me on display? I pulled the tunic closed around my neck, ashamed. Disappointed, too. These were seventeens, sure, but that didn’t make them friends. Not yet, at least.

  “Yeah,” said another girl, sounding defiant. “Well, up close she looks way stronger to me.”

  This comment turned my head. My eyes went over this newest girl, her clipped brown hair and brown eyes, her skin the same color as mine. Her hands were on her hips. There was something familiar in her expression. “I know you,” I said as a memory flashed. “You were on the cliff. You helped me the day I woke up here.”

  She nodded. “I’m glad you made it. I’m Jessica.”

  “Nice to meet you. And thank you,” I said softly. Then I smiled.

  She smiled back. “Nice to officially meet the real you. Welcome,” Jessica added.

  I headed toward Rain, dazed by all the attention, especially the attention that was unkind. I’d much rather disappear into the crowd than stand out. I followed him out into another hallway, this one dimmer, the walls and floors painted black. The door shut behind us with a soft click.

  “It won’t always be that way.” Rain glanced at me. “They’ll get used to seeing you more as just another person involved in our cause.”

  I shrugged. My confidence seemed to have gone on break. “I guess.”

  “Try to be patient,” Rain said.

  I pulled my arms around my body. “But the way everyone stared . . .” I trailed off. “It’s just so . . . so hard to get used to.”

  “Everyone in this city knows about you, Skye, and they all have opinions about you as a result,” he said quietly. “It’s a lot to take in, but just like they’ll get used to seeing you, you’ll get used to seeing them. Before, you were the girl the New Capitalists held up as a symbol for their new plan, the girl we were going to try to rescue. Then you were the girl who up and nearly rescued herself. You surprised everyone. Most everyone in a good way. I promise.”

  Rain stood close. We seemed connected by a strange electric current. It ran across my skin, making the tiny hairs stand on end.

  “I think I’d rather go back to being the girl nobody ever noticed.”

  Rain nodded. “I know what it feels like to have a famous face. I know how difficult it can be, how harsh people can be when they judge you. How it makes you yearn for anonymity.” He looked over my shoulder, at some unseen thing in the distance. “One of the things I love most about being in the Real World is that even though the seventeens know who I am, there are only so many people who can watch you at once. Not having thousands of voyeurs has helped me remember—has freed me to be—the person I really am.” He sighed. “It’s such a relief.”

  Now I was the one reaching out to Rain, placing my hand on his arm. The touch sent that current from my fingers to my heart. He studied my hand a long while, my fingers curled across his skin. I could see hope enter his eyes hesitantly, and I didn’t turn away from it.

  23

  Behind closed doors

  “THERE’S SOMEONE ELSE you should see,” Rain said as we continued on through the hall. We stopped in front of another old wooden door. Rain took out a key, unlocked it, and we went inside. A woman, not quite as old as my Keeper but definitely older than us, was sitting on the couch, reading a book. Her hair was long and silky and black, her eyes dark, almond shaped, and set into her face in a way that made them totally unique.

  Real World beauty came in so many different shapes and colors.

  Rain hung back by the door.

  “Hello,” I said. “I’m Skylar.”

  The woman set her book aside. She didn’t seem surprised I was here. “My name is Mae. I was expecting you at some point.” Mae looked beyond me at Rain, her eyebrows a question.

  “It’s all right,” he said.

  I glanced around the room. It was strangely familiar, set up like a home, the curtains drawn tight over what I assumed were windows, though for all I knew there was a concrete wall behind them. A sofa and two chairs were arranged along the far wall. There were a few shelves with books and a small glass vase, empty of flowers, on a tiny round table. Beyond the living room I could see a kitchen table, a counter, a sink, and a hallway leading down into other rooms.

  I’d seen another place set up just like this one.

  I’d lived in it.

  “Who are you Keeping?” I asked Mae.

  She gestured toward the same door that would lead to my room. “Why don’t you see for yourself?”

  I looked at Rain.

  “I’ll wait for you out here,” he said.

  I went to the door and knocked lightly.

  Then I listened.

  There was no sound, not a word from whoever was inside. I put my hand on the knob and turned it, opening the door a crack. Again I waited to hear something—a cry of protest, a welcome, the rustling of sheets on the bed. But there was nothing. I pushed the door the rest of the way open and stepped inside the dimly lit room. In the bed was a girl. She seemed to be sleeping, eyes closed, her arms resting above the sheet, her shoulders thin and delicate, her skin so pale it was almost translucent. Freckles dotted it, dense in places on her hands and at the base of her neck, but most of all on her face, spread across her cheeks and forehead like spilled ink staining paper.

  She stirred.

  The movement shifted her long hair into the ray of light coming from the doorway. It was the color of rust.

  “Lacy?” I whispered.

  Her eyes fluttered open. They immediately narrowed as she looked at me standing there. “Who are you?” she asked. “Where’s my Keeper?”

  I took a step closer. “You don’t recognize me?” I bent forward into the light. “It’s Skylar. Skylar Cruz.”

  Her face changed. Her eyes lost their suspicion, replacing it with surprise. “You’re Skylar Cruz?” she whispered. “But you’re so . . . so pretty.”

  I took a step backward. Even though Lacy had given me a compliment, the disbelief in her tone had stung. Hurt edged into my voice. “Do you know where you are?”

  Lacy pulled herself to a sitting position. It took a lot of effort and adjusting until she was comfortable, which made me think she hadn’t left the bed yet. “The Real World. At my Keeper’s house.” Each word took a lot of effort. Lacy blinked once, twice. She seemed so disoriented. Then her eyes narrowed again, and I saw the Lacy I knew from the App World in them. The mean girl inside her had returned. “If you’re really Skylar, then you should have information for me. Have you made any progress in finding Rain?”

  It was like I’d stepped through a time warp, and Lacy was talking about a world I no longer lived in. “You really have no idea, do you?”

  “I know plenty,” she said haughtily.

  But I could hear a flicker of doubt in her voice.

  I couldn’t decide what came next. It felt unfair that Lacy was so in the dark, that Jonathan Holt had tricked her into unplugging us and unplugging herself too. He’d taken advantage of each one of us, and she seemed just as lost as I felt at different moments. But on the other hand, waking up in the Real World hadn’t seemed to cure Lacy of her nastiness. Still, didn’t she deserve to know that Rain was just on the other side of the door?

  I certainly didn’t like it when people kept the truth from me.

  “You know what? I’ll be right back.” I walked out of the room, passing the Keeper, and went straight up to Rain. I grabbed his hand and pulled him into the room with me. “Lacy, I give you the real Rain Holt.”

  Her mouth parted with surprise. “Rain? Is that really you?” Her eyes blinked, like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

  And I felt so bad for her.

  “Hi, Lacy,” he said quietly.

  Her eyes dropped to our clasped hands, then they traveled back to Rain’s face. “I’m here to convince you to go home again.” These were her words, but her voice wavered as she said them. “We can leave anyti
me you want. Your father needs you. I need you. Aren’t you happy?” she asked, though it came out a whisper.

  “Lacy.” Rain spoke her name again but this time in warning.

  A single tear rolled down her cheek.

  I was reminded of that icon of Lacy when she was just a little girl, calling out for her parents, trying to get attention. Having to watch them ignore her again and again, and the way her face fell each time, crushed by this abandonment.

  I slid my hand out of Rain’s.

  Lacy wiped the tear from her face, but it was quickly replaced by another. “You were the only person who ever really saw me, Rain. Who stood by me and not because of my money and fame.” She hiccupped, her eyes on him. “I know you didn’t love me like I loved you, but I never thought you’d leave me. Never.” Lacy leaned forward, reached out her hand to him. It hovered in the empty air, grasping at nothing. “And then you unplugged and didn’t even say good-bye. I can’t go back there without you. I can’t live without you.”

  I stared at Lacy, shocked by this display of vulnerability and pain. Despite everything, my heart went out to her. First Lacy’s parents had made her feel lost and alone, and now Rain.

  Lacy was staring at him, imploringly.

  Rain opened his mouth, then closed it.

  I went to her and sat down on the edge of the bed, remembering how she’d reached out to me as we were unplugging. I took her grasping hand in mine and lowered it until it came to rest along the crisp white sheet. “You’re not alone, Lacy. I’m here. And Adam is right nearby, too. Now that we’ve found one another, we’ll all stick together. We’re not going to leave you, I promise.”

  Lacy looked at me as though she’d forgotten I was there. She retracted her hand. “Don’t touch me, Singles trash.”

  My jaw dropped. “Singles trash?”

  “That’s exactly what you are,” Lacy huffed.

  “I can’t believe I actually just felt sorry for you.”

  “I don’t need anyone to feel sorry for me,” she said. “I’m still Lacy Mills and I’ll always be Lacy Mills.” Her eyes grew small and mean.

  And all the sympathy evaporated from mine.

  I turned to Rain. “I’ve seen enough. Let’s move on.”

  Rain cleared his throat. “Okay.”

  Lacy smacked the bed with her hand, a soft thump. “Rain!”

  “Bye, Lacy,” I said, disappointed. For a few minutes I’d felt a kinship with her, realized how much I wanted a friend, longed for another girl in whom I could confide and who would confide in me. I felt stupid for even trying to find this in Lacy. The longer I went without Inara, the more I realized how irreplaceable she was. As we shut the door on Lacy’s protests, the quiet that followed, for once, was a welcome relief.

  “She obviously cares for you,” I said as we walked away from the Keeper’s apartment.

  Rain shifted uncomfortably. “I know.”

  The sound of our footsteps was soft against the tiled floor. “I feel like there’s a lot more to you and Lacy that you’re leaving out,” I said. “She unplugged for you. She doesn’t want to return to the App World unless you go with her.”

  “Lacy and I go way back,” he said. “We have a complicated history.”

  I stared at him, trying to read his expression. We turned a corner, heading left down a long hallway. “She said she was in love with you. Were you ever in love with her?”

  Rain didn’t answer. My question hung in the air between us. As the echo of the words drifted away, I realized I wanted the answer to be no. Rain’s fingers trailed along the wall. “There was a brief time when Lacy and I were together,” he admitted.

  “Together, together?” I couldn’t help asking.

  “Is there any other kind?” he deflected.

  A silence fell between us, and I contemplated this new information. We reached the end of the corridor. “Where are we going?”

  “There’s one last place I want to show you,” Rain said.

  “And then you’ll take me back to my Keeper’s?”

  He tilted his head. “I could take you back.” He hesitated. “Or you could stay the night. Get to know some of the people here.”

  Something fluttered inside me. “Won’t the Keeper be expecting us?”

  Rain shrugged. “I told her we might return tomorrow. If you were open to it.”

  “I’m open to it.”

  “Good,” he said.

  Tension strung itself between us as we continued through the halls. Then Rain gestured toward an imposing metal door at the end of the corridor, unlike all the others I’d seen so far. It reached all the way to the ceiling and it was twice as wide as the others. It had a look of heft to it, like it might lead to a vault. Great round bolts framed its edges. Rain entered a code into a panel on the wall and it sighed open.

  “This,” he said, “is our weapons room.”

  I swallowed. “Weapons?”

  “Go ahead. Look.”

  I went inside and found myself in a fortress of sorts. I’d assumed by weapons Rain had meant guns and bombs. The word evokes a certain kind of violent object, like the ones I’d seen holstered in the belts of the guards walking the city, or the stone dagger I’d plunged into the heart of the man on the cliff. There were a few guns lined up along the wall and spread across a table in the far corner, but their numbers were small in comparison to what seemed the central weapon of choice that was everywhere I looked.

  “I don’t understand.” I wrapped my arms around my body. It was cold in here. “Video screens?”

  Rain’s face lit up. “Yes.”

  There were screens of all sizes, some as big as me and others so tiny they would fit into the palm of my hand. Most of them were barely thicker than a few sheets of paper. They were mounted along the walls and stacked on shelves and packed into boxes sitting on the floor. All of them were dark. Lifeless.

  “None of them work?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” Rain said. “But they will soon. I guess you could say they’re our secret weapons.”

  “What are you going to do—hit the New Capitalists over the head and hope they pass out?”

  Rain laughed. “Definitely not. That would be a waste of incredible resources.” He walked over to one of the boxes and pulled out a screen the size of the cutting board the Keeper used in the kitchen, but paper-thin. Black on one side and silver on the other. He held it out to me.

  I could just make out my reflection in the light shining from above. “Does it do anything?” I asked. “Is it a bomb in disguise? Someone picks it up and it explodes?”

  “Ah, no,” said someone else, a girl who emerged from behind one of the largest screens. “Not that either.” There was a tiny silver wand in her hand, maybe a tool of some sort. She was my height, with long thin limbs and dark features, her skin olive in tone, with a strong nose at the center of her face. She emanated strength.

  Rain placed the screen back on the table. “This is Zeera, our master of technology. Zeera, this is Skylar.”

  I took a step back. The name unsettled me. “Do I know you?” I asked, but then I didn’t need to wait for her answer. My mind found the memory it sought. “You’re Sylvia’s girlfriend.”

  Zeera’s eyes immediately glassed over. She wiped her sleeve across them. “I am.”

  “I’m sorry she’s not with us. Sylvia was”—I realized I needed to correct myself—“is a wonderfully kind person. At least, from what I knew of her before I left.”

  Zeera didn’t speak. All that strength seemed to soften now, and she became a girl who’d lost the person she loved.

  Rain put a hand on her shoulder. “Zeera joined us when she learned Sylvia couldn’t ever unplug. She’s one of our best weapons scouts,” he added.

  Zeera straightened, all business again. “The abandoned houses along this beach are a wealth of resources. The people who lived here were rich and sometimes there are up to twenty screens lying around useless on desks and tables.”

  Rain was
nodding. “With the changes in technology and the founding of the App World, the devices of old were considered useless—a pale comparison to plugging in.”

  Something beeped behind Zeera, and the large screen she’d been working on flickered. She glanced back. “I need to go deal with that,” she said. “It was nice to meet you, Skylar. I hope to see you later so we can talk about the people we know in common. Excuse me,” she added, and walked away.

  I watched her disappear behind the screen. I was glad I was staying overnight so I would have the chance to talk to her again. I picked up the device Rain had placed on the table and looked at it, turned it over in my hands and ran my fingers across the smooth surface. “So if they’re not just blunt objects and they don’t explode, then what are they for?”

  “They’re for spying,” Rain said simply. “Before the App World existed, the Real World was wired for these devices to connect people to the virtual sphere and to one another. Then the technology ban was instituted and the power was cut. But it’s all still there. All we need to do is turn the power back on and voilà, we have access to every corner of every street and building in New Port City. We’ll be able to see everything. And hear it. And watch it unfolding like with a hologram.”

  “You’re going to become voyeurs,” I said, realization dawning.

  Rain smiled, but the smile had a bitter quality to it. “Yes. For once, I’ll get to be the one watching, not the one being watched.”

  It didn’t seem to matter what world I was in. Here, like in the App World, we wanted to pry into the lives of others, whether they wanted us to or not. But the thought of having to do it through a screen you held in your hand instead of an App downloaded into the brain was difficult to get my mind around. “It doesn’t seem fair to watch people when they’re unaware and vulnerable. I certainly didn’t like finding out that I’d been . . . watched. On exhibit for everyone.”

  “I understand,” Rain said quietly. “But in this world, it’s the best weapon we have.”

  I considered this, and set the spying device back on the table. I suddenly didn’t want to be touching it, as though it might turn on and broadcast my face to people I didn’t know in a faraway place. Then something else occurred to me. “Can you access the App World with any of these?”