“You mean a hundred years from now,” Joel said, flatly. “You mean after that?”
“We’ve all made sacrifices,” his sister Katherine said. The icon of her father glowed in her hands. “It would have been easier to take the company public. But we wanted—we needed—something different. And now it’s your turn to give something up.”
“This is the future,” Paris said.
“It’s not like Daniel was a real person,” London added. “Not really. We made him, Joel. We had him built. Like a doll.”
“An action figure,” Silas rumbled. And they all laughed. Hwa’s stomach flipped over. Dr. Smith had tried to tell them. Project Changeling. An avatar. A sleeve. They had built him to their specifications, raised him up and made him comfortable, like a sacrificial lamb. And now it was time for slaughter.
“We must not laugh at Daniel,” Zachariah said, gently. “He’s been very obedient, until now. Quite the model employee. It’s just this young woman that’s turned his head.”
Hwa shut her eyes. It was her fault. If she had only wanted him less. Needed him less. She forced her head back into the game. Joel had asked her up here for a reason. And it was with Joel, she realized now, that her loyalty lay. The rest of the Lynches could go fuck themselves.
Joel stared at his siblings. He looked at his father. He reached over and brushed something from the old man’s collar. Then he leaned over and hugged him. The two of them stood together for some time.
“Hwa,” Joel said, in a clear voice.
“She revealed the truth to me,” Zachariah said, patting Joel on the back. “She showed me what I needed to do. Why I needed to move now, and not later. To strike while the iron was hot.”
“Hwa, save Daniel.” Joel was still embracing his father. He held tight. “Hwa, save him. Save him now.”
“Yes, b’y,” Hwa muttered.
She charged the two of them. She pulled Joel off his father, and pushed him behind her with one arm while her other reached out and clocked Zachariah right in the face. Let him try to transfer his consciousness when he wasn’t even conscious. See how well that worked out, for the old man.
Zachariah Lynch wove on his feet. Only his cuirass held him upright, standing on his knees like a puppet whose strings weren’t entirely cut. “Joel…” he murmured through blood. “You can’t see the future that’s coming…”
“You didn’t see me coming, either,” Hwa said, and levelled a devastating kick to his ancient body. He fell like a sack of autumn leaves. She turned to Joel. The boy stared at the old man. Then he looked at his siblings. As one, they rose from their seats. The other Lynches stared at Hwa and Joel. For the first time all night, it occurred to Hwa to wonder about prison. She knelt. Zachariah still had a pulse. “He’s alive.”
“Shame,” Katherine whispered. “Fucking megalomaniacal prick. Roko’s Basilisk. Honestly. It’s like he never left the cult.”
“He was crazy,” Silas said. “I loved him, but he was fucking nuts.”
“Well said,” Paris Lynch said, pulling his jacket straight. “I must say, Joel, for a first official executive decision, you’re doing extremely well. We won’t forget this, anytime soon. Naturally we’ll be helping you with the transition, now that Father’s health has taken such a rapid decline.” He winked at Hwa.
His twin, London, tossed the icon toward the centre of the room. The others quickly joined it. She shook her head as though to clear it. The other Lynches pricked up their ears, identical in their mannerism of listening. “Oh dear. Is that screaming? From downstairs?”
“Happy Halloween,” Silas said, and raised his glass.
Joel ran. Hwa followed.
* * *
“Joel!”
He was running much faster, these days. She had only a moment to be pleased about that before the crowd crushed her against one wall. She ran against the current of crying teenagers heading upstairs. They sobbed and tripped on their trains and tails as Hwa moved downstairs. She watched Joel weaving through them, getting further ahead of her, his footwork quicker and more graceful after only a few weeks of training. Prefect tried to tell her something but it was so loud, on the stairwell, echoing with feet and cursing and frantic pings. Her specs flooded with information on each student and she ripped them off, jammed them down her collar. She rode the handrail the last few steps, dashing out onto the dance floor.
Joel was there, with Dr. Carlino. He looked like he was asleep. The older man cradled him in his arms.
“Get away from him!”
Hwa shoved the doctor out of the way with a body check. She picked up Joel and felt his skin. Still warm. Pulse still good. Breathing even. “Joel. Joel, come on, b’y. What’s happened?”
“I have a killswitch,” Dr. Carlino was saying. He looked at her with dead eyes. The cameras were off. Black. Empty.
“Fuck you.” Hwa blinked hard. She threaded her arms under Joel’s shoulders. She had carried him once. She could carry him again. She knelt. Prepared herself for a fireman’s carry. Looked up.
A drop of blood splashed on her upturned face.
“For moments like these,” Dr. Carlino said, “a killswitch is the best thing.”
Eileen hung from the ceiling in ribbons. Her skin was a parody of crepe paper, stretched and curled like old-fashioned party decorations along the rafters. Her eyes were gone. Her lips were a rose. Not a real rose, but one made of flesh, as though her face had suddenly decided to bloom instead of smiling or laughing or crying or screaming, which she must have done.
She must have screamed so much. So hard. In so much pain.
Like Hwa was doing, now.
More blood dripped down. It fell warm on Hwa’s cheeks like tears. Some pattered across Joel’s face and she wiped it off, frantically covering his face with her hand and his limp body with her coiled one. He shouldn’t be stained, she thought. Not like me.
How had he done it?
Where had he found the time?
Daniel had been dancing with her. From the moment Eileen left the room. Her eyes had never left him.
“Daniel,” she heard herself say. “Daniel. Daniel. DanielDanielDaniel.”
“I’m coming,” he said, in her bones. “Just stay where you are. Don’t move. I’ll be right there, Hwa. Hwa?”
Her body started to shake. It whispered up her right side first, a slackening, a sudden lack of control, the terrible awareness of not being able to stop it, of not being able to stop anything, of not being able to do anything, of all the things she could not and would never do. How time stretched out in that moment, the moment between consciousness and arrest, between tragic event and brain event. Was that how it was for Eileen? For Sabrina? For Layne? For Calliope? Had the final moment stretched out into an infinite agony?
Was that Hell?
Warm darkness covered her eyes. Warm arms wrapped her and Joel up. Warm lips in her hair.
Daniel.
“I’m here,” he said.
The seizure ripped through her.
PART THREE
NOVEMBER
16
Daughter
“Would this fit you?”
Sunny held up a sheer black wrap dress. “It’s see-through,” Hwa said. “I don’t want it.”
Sunny clicked her tongue. She tossed the dress on the leave pile. The leave pile was a hell of a lot smaller than the take pile and the maybe pile. Hwa looked at the closet. They weren’t even close to done. She suspected that her mother’s closet might actually be connected to a subspace pocket the universe had labelled COLD WATER WASH; LIKE COLOURS.
“The people from the Benevolent Irish Society are going to be here in two hours to collect stuff,” Hwa reminded her. “Why can’t I help you?”
“You don’t know where anything is,” Sunny said. “I can’t ask you to find anything, because you don’t know where I put things. I have a system.”
An avalanche of mesh and velour and feathers poured out of the closet. “Some system.”
&n
bsp; Sunny stood up straight. She pointed at Hwa. “Don’t fucking start. Don’t even fucking start. If the Lynches were actually able to catch this crazy motherfucker, I wouldn’t even be in this position.”
Hwa looked at the piles of clothes. The boxes of dishes. Why was Sunny even packing dishes? She barely ate anything, anymore.
“If you’d voted for the Lysistrata strategy—”
“I didn’t join a union so I could strike. I joined for the fucking pension.” Sunny wadded up a pile of pink lace and threw it on the maybe pile. “I work like everybody else in this town. As hard as I can for as long as I can.”
“I know.”
Sunny turned up the drama as she pawed through more piles of stuff. There appeared to be no organization whatsoever. Storage devices on top of clothes on top of old tax records on top of rolls of towels. Over twenty years of total chaos strewn across the floor of the living room. Hwa couldn’t even see the coffee table, anymore. She wasn’t sure that what she was perched on was even a chair, under all the clothes.
“I hate moving,” Sunny said.
“Yeah.” Hwa spotted a Christmas card she’d made in pre-kindergarten sandwiched between the pages of an artisanal blown glass dildo catalogue. She decided not to mention it. “Moving sucks.”
“Is that why you’re staying? Or is it your boss?” Sunny arched an eyebrow. “Is he making it worth your while to stay?”
“Mom!” Hwa buried her face in her hands. “We haven’t … We don’t … He’s my boss.”
“Never stopped me and Tae-kyung’s father,” Sunny said. “He was my manager. It’s the same thing.”
Time to change the subject. “Will your place in Calgary even have enough room for all this stuff?”
“Of course it will. It’s Alberta. Big sky country.”
“That’s Montana.”
“Whatever. It’s the mainland.” Sunny stood up and stretched. She bent at the waist and Hwa heard all the pops in her spine as the muscles finally relaxed and the vertebrae found alignment. Sunny’s hands traced through the wreckage, pushing aside old cookbooks until her hands lit on a box. Before she even opened her mouth, Hwa knew Sunny was about to switch tongues.
<
“What are they?”
<
“Of me?” Hwa asked. “And Tae-kyung?”
Sunny shook her head. It was a tiny movement, like the jerk of a fish on a line. “No. They’re of me. Do you want them?”
“What, they’re like your publicity shots? Because I can go online and see those. And besides, I thought you sold all of them already.” She gestured at the clothes. “You should be selling all this shit, too. You’ve still got fans. I’m sure someone, somewhere, wants your old underwear.”
Sunny sucked her teeth. <
Hwa shrugged.
<
Hwa stared at the box. “Before you started working? Before you signed your first contract?”
Sunny nodded. <
Hwa nodded. “Fine.”
Slowly, Sunny handed over the box. It was a movement of her whole body. Like something in the box would die if she ever let it leave human hands. When Hwa opened it, Sunny hissed. But inside there was just an envelope secured with an elastic. The years were written on the envelope in script Hwa didn’t recognize. Her grandmother’s, maybe. Hwa had never met her. Hwa tucked the envelope down into her vest.
Sunny let out a deep sigh. She looked at the piles. “Take that one down,” she said, pointing to the leave pile.
So Hwa packed up two giant garbage bags full of clothes and started down the hall. The garbage chutes were all full. Who thought it was a good idea to stuff a whole diaper bag down one of those things? Or a whole dressmaker’s dummy? Everyone really was leaving town, after all. Though the end of the month was always such a disaster in Tower One. She’d have to go down a floor or two. She found the nearest set of elevators and wiped her eyes. Everyone dragging their castoffs out must have stirred up extra dust. Her eyes burned. Her sinuses burned. Something smelled awful. The clogged garbage? No. Too acrid. Not sweet enough. Almost like … fertilizer.
There aren’t even any sniffers. Daniel had said that, about Tower One. It was why he was happy she’d moved.
A song came over the emergency intercom. An old jazz standard. Sweet. Slow. She’d heard it before. On the water. In the taxi. “Where or When”? That was the title. It autoplayed every time you passed the protest signs about the experimental reactor.
Oh, Jesus.
<
The contents of the garbage chute exploded. Heat washed over Hwa’s face. She fell to her knees. No alarm sounded. No sprinklers came. They’d hacked the building. Must have. Fire everywhere. Tae-kyung had died this way. Just like this. Flame licked the ceiling.
Beside her, the elevators chimed open. She bolted. Too late, she saw the darkness below. The empty shaft.
She fell.
* * *
Her mouth was full of blood.
Her ears rang.
Her leg throbbed.
Her head ached.
All in all, it was like the outcome of most of her early matches.
The elevator beneath her had major cracks in it. It looked … crumpled. She felt like the egg in one of Mr. Branch’s physics experiments. From what height did Hwa need to fall before she broke?
How much of her was broken?
She couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Not comfortably, anyway. Was that smoke inhalation, or a collapsed lung? Did it matter?
“Prefect?”
Nothing.
“Daniel?”
Nothing.
“Joel?”
Nothing.
She was in a giant Faraday cage. Communication with the outside world was impossible. She had two options. The first was to crawl up out of the shaft, somehow. The second was to open the trapdoor on the elevator she’d landed on, and hope that something inside still worked.
It took hours. Her fingers were bloody by the time it was done.
Weakly, she pressed the emergency intercom button. Static. “Worth a try,” she muttered.
Even her watch was broken. Sometimes light flitted across its spider-cracked surface, but nothing coherent or intelligible. Just blurs. And her specs hadn’t lasted two minutes. All she had to her name were the clothes that had helped break her fall, and the photos Sunny had given her.
She was going to die here, probably. She had one working hand and one working leg. Every time she tried to sit up, she puked. She searched her vomit for blood, but it was hard to focus. And there wasn’t much light. Just one single fluorescent coil.
This was the way she would have always gone out, she decided. She used to climb those elevator shafts like they were playground equipment. It was a dumb thing to do. Arrogant. She’d thought that just because she’d never had a bad fall that she never would. But now it was her turn. Her number had come up. She’d rolled snake eyes. Aces and eights. There was really no end to the list of appropriate metaphors, except there was no metaphor for falling down an elevator shaft during a terrorist attack and dying alone surrounded by your mom’s old clothes.
She made a nest for herself.
She slept.
Sleeping was good.
It preserved oxygen.
* * *
She kept pressing the emergency call button. Nothing.
She kicked with her good leg at the walls of the elevator. Miners did that, when they were trapped in a cave-in. They had to read passages from a book on the subject in French class. Germinal. That was the name. At one point the men started eating pieces of leather belt and shoe to feel full. Hwa wondered if it would get that far, with her. She hoped not.
She kept k
icking.
* * *
The light started to die. Whatever source it had been attached to, it was no longer attached. So she had to do the thing she’d been avoiding. Because doing it meant that things were well and truly over. That her days were numbered.
She pulled out the envelope Sunny had given her.
It was hard with one hand. But she pulled down the elastic and out spilled all the old pictures. None of them were very good. The person taking the pictures didn’t really know how to take pictures. Most were blurry. Ill-composed. Taken at things like parties, without much context.
The little girl in them was profoundly plain.
Not cute.
Not magnetic.
Not remarkable.
Not in any way noteworthy.
<
She’d looked just like Hwa. Like Jung-hwa, Just Hwa, Miss Go, Squirt, the miserable little bitch with the big fucking mouth. The girl without a future. Sunny had looked just like her. Before all the surgeries. Unstained, yes. But still plain. Plain and basic and not very special at all. Certainly not like a girl who would sing in a girl group. Not like a woman anyone would pay attention to, much less pay for.
No wonder Sunny hated her. She’d spent thousands of dollars doing everything she could to avoid seeing that face in the mirror every day, and then it came out of her body anyway. Only worse. Defective. Of course Sunny couldn’t love her.
It wasn’t an apology. But it was an explanation. And that was a damn sight more than she’d offered in the past twenty-three years.
Hwa tucked the pictures back under her collar, against her chest, and closed her eyes.
* * *
Light.
Cold.
Air.
A crack in the room.
17
Lover
Snow.
Company Town Page 24