by A. L. Davroe
The words I’ve wanted to say to Katrina for the past few months bubble up into my throat, but I swallow them down. I didn’t come here to get myself thrown out on the street or sold to a Doll House. I need to stay here so that I can still access Dad’s files, be with Meems, and go into the game. Yes, she’s why I’m down here. I can’t leave her alone with these horrible people; they’d probably sell her for scrap metal.
I ball my fists, take a deep breath, and hold it till the count of ten. “Look,” I huff. “I didn’t come down here to pick a fight. I just want to know if you’re going to do what you told Meems you were going to do.”
Katrina purses her lips and lifts her already half-empty glass. “I don’t know what she thinks I’m going to do.”
“Okay,” I say, trying to keep myself from screaming. My shoulders feel so tight I could pop. “She gave you her chasis so that you could buy me prosthetic legs. If you’re not going to do that, at least give her back her chasis. Please.”
Katrina stares at me for a long moment, her face blank. “Meems and I never agreed that the chasis would go to your legs. Meems simply came to me, said that she understood that we were having some financial issues, and offered to provide her chasis to help pay the bills. She asked that it go to help you, and I agreed. She never said anything about your legs.”
I frown, confused. Perhaps Meems had just assumed that the only logical use for credits allocated to help me would go toward the only obvious need that I had. “What did you use the credits for?”
Katrina shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” I repeat, shocked.
She lifts her hand and runs her fingers through her hair. “I’m not the one doing the selling, Ellani.”
For a moment, I think she’s joking. But her face is serious. So is her tone. Confused, I say, “But, I-I don’t understand. She gave the chasis to you, didn’t she?”
Smiling bitterly, she stares down at the cleaning unit as it again cleans up her mess. “You really don’t know, do you?” She crosses her arms, as if holding herself against a cool breeze. “Well, why would you? They say you’re a genius, but honestly, I just don’t see it. Do you even know who I am?”
I stare at her for a long moment, too confused even to breathe.
“Your father and I, we were engaged to be married once.”
I open my mouth, stunned, and for a moment I can’t speak. “What?”
“Before her.” She says “her” like the word is poisonous, spitting on it and mentally stomping all over it. Her eyes go wistful. “Before Cleo, Warren and I were engaged. It was a good match, and we liked each other. Loved each other, even. He called me beautiful, used to love the way I’d Alter and Modify myself, said no one was more beautiful.” She draws a sharp breath and her voice goes dark. “But then Cleo came along. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what happened from there.”
No, she doesn’t. Dad once told me that the chemistry between him and Mom was almost instant, that she’d come into his world and completely unraveled him. I assume it was much like how it is with Gus and me. They were married just days after meeting. It must have devastated Katrina. It must have been a social scandal—to break an arranged marriage like that. How embarrassing it must have been.
“One day he was there by my side and the next he was gone. I moved on, of course. Became a guardian for the city, took in Sadie, but I never stopped loving him.” She laughs to herself, shaking her head. “When Cleo died, I thought that he’d finally realize that he’d always loved me more, but when I came back to him, he was distant and cold. No matter what I did to try to catch his eye. He only ever saw you. You, a Natural abomination that looks so much like her. It hurt.”
I swallow, uncertain how to interpret what’s going on, unsure if I should turn and run from the knife-like quality of her voice. Is she going to lose control, try to hit me again? She’s already keeping me prisoner, trying to starve me; it doesn’t seem like such a far-flung idea to take to beating me—the spitting image of a woman she loathes. But should I even believe her?
She turns away. “He never stopped loving her. He worshipped you as if you were a relic, his only remaining connection to her. And now he’s gone,” she breathes, her voice false and light. “And here you are. Her spawn with her face and all his love, living in what should have been my house with all the credits that should be mine. And now you’re down here making demands of me.” She turns and flashes me a slightly manic grin. “Honestly, Ellani, you’re lucky I haven’t choked you in your sleep.”
For a horrifying moment, I just stare at her, wide-eyed. I’m too afraid to even breathe.
She turns away. “But killing you would cut off my paychecks. And I’m not that stupid.”
I blink at her. “Paychecks?” Why does she need the tiny city-issued checks for guardians when she has my entire fortune to spend?
Katrina turns and smiles at me, all mockery. “Stupid, stupid, Ellani. If you were anyone else, I’d feel bad for you. I’d feel bad about what they are doing to you, I’d stand up for you, try to help you. In the beginning I fought with myself. I’d think about this situation and say to myself, ‘She’s just an orphaned little girl, scared and alone.’ But then I’d look at you on Tasha’s screen and I’d just see her, writhing. And it made me laugh.” A little giggle escapes her. “So maybe that makes me a little cruel, huh? But it’s not like I’m the one doing it to you. I’m just taking glee in it. And theft? Well, we both know who the real thief is, don’t we? And isn’t it poetic justice? That you suffer for their sins? In many ways, it’s not even cruel of me to relish your pain.”
Her frigid hatred of my mother and her crazed grin send needles in my spine. I fight not to tremble, not to run away from the maniacal pleasure she gets out of my pain. I think past the surface of her words. She’s not the one who is causing all this, she’s just allowing it to go on, because she’s a sadist. I knit my brow. “Who? Who is it that is keeping me here? Who pays you?”
Katrina opens her mouth, but we’re both interrupted by a shrill squeak of dismay. I look up to see Sadie standing at the top of the stairs, fists planted on her hips. “Oh my sparks, Momma. What’s she doing down here?” she demands, her expression very similar to one Nadine once had when a small rodent went running over her bare foot.
“I-I’m just-” I stammer.
Sadie ignores me and turns pleading eyes on her “mother.” “Momma,” she whines in her high-pitched voice. “Bastian will be here any moment. She can’t be down here. I’ll be ruined.”
“I know, baby,” Katrina says, holding out her hands, placating. “She was just leaving.” She looks down at me, her expression snake-like. “Weren’t you?”
“Bastian?” I squeak. “My Bastian?”
“Ugh,” Sadie breathes. “He’s not yours. He’s mine.”
Katrina sucks in a long breath. “Of course he is. Bastian Drexel is not your Bastian, Ellani. You’re dead—therefore nothing is yours anymore. He’s Sadie’s fiancé now; you should congratulate her.”
Head reeling, I stare at the still-scowling Sadie. Before I can think, I say, “Can I see him?”
“No, you can’t see him,” Sadie howls. “Momma,” she practically screams. She’s near tears now, and I don’t really understand why.
Katrina holds up her hands. “Okay, okay. She’s going upstairs. Aren’t you?” She doesn’t wait for me to respond. Instead she lurches forward and grabs the back of the hover-chair. She must have hit the manual override button on the back of the chair because, as much as I mentally slam on the brakes, the chair continues to skim back down the hall and up the stairs, Katrina behind me.
On the landing, Katrina releases the chair and it continues on its own, back into my room, then spins and faces the door. Katrina is standing in the doorway, arms crossed and frowning at me. “I know you’re some kind of gifted Programmer. I know you l
et yourself out, and you’ll somehow manage to do it again. How you managed to bypass your G-Chip, I don’t know, but I don’t recommend you do it again. I’ll be watching you more closely now. If I see anything strange in Tasha’s history, if I see any messages coming in or going out, if I see you outside of this room, I swear I’ll report you, and they will not be merciful with you. People who can do what you do are a security risk, not worth keeping around, if you get my meaning. If you wish to live, you’ll do as you’re told. Is that clear?”
Stiff, I nod.
“Good.”
Once the door slides shut between us, I let the shakes overtake me. And then I cry. And when I’m done crying I sit and think for a long, hard time. When Meems comes in to bring me dinner, I don’t look at her. I’ve gotten into the habit of avoiding her face. It hurts to see someone I love walk around scarred and broken because of me. Especially since it seems her sacrifice was entirely in vain. Seeing that I don’t want to talk, she leaves me with my untouched food.
When the alarm for Nexis goes off, I don’t go in. Gus and the others are expecting me; we’re going to go forward with our mission to capture and collect a bounty on Glockmock the Terrible, but I can’t go. While that mission is calling me, I have a bigger, more important one here.
Unsent Letters to Delia
Dee,
I need your help, your strength. I feel like I’m in a dark place again. Confused and lost. Who is keeping me here and why? It’s clear to me that Katrina isn’t the one in charge here. Someone is pulling her strings—like the ones I use in Nexis. She’s an awful person, but perhaps not evil. Not if she loves Sadie as much as she does. Yet her hatred of Mom and Dad blind her, make her complacent in my captivity and mistreatment. What do I do about it? And what about Meems?
I wish you were here. I need your big, beautiful brain to help me work through this puzzle like you’ve always helped me see clearly in the past. I hope things are well with you… Sadie is marrying Bastian, which means that I guess you’re not. She’s prepping for Senior Banquet, which means you are, too. I hope you have a beautiful-enough outfit. I would have designed yours for you—you need a special outfit for a night like that. I wonder who you’re going to be announced to… Perhaps you’ve stolen a suitor right out from under Carsai. Hmm…stealing…yes, that might be it. I can still be Robin Hood. Oh, Dee, I knew you’d help me!
—Ella
It isn’t hard to find Meems’s chasis. With the combination of the G-Chip and the Main Frame working together to glean exactly what you’re looking for, Internetwork shopping is incredibly easy. Hacking Katrina’s credit account isn’t as easy, but it’s certainly not as difficult as one might think it would be.
Part of me feels bad for Katrina and her history with my father. But the logical part of me says that none of Katrina’s bitter feelings are my fault, thus I shouldn’t have to suffer because Dad jilted her. The other part of me feels guilty because I promised Meems I wouldn’t do any more illegal hacking and here I am, two hacks in one day. But this is a good cause.
“Now,” I whisper to myself, “how to pull it off.” I have access to the credits, and I know where the chasis is, but how do I make the purchase without it being obvious I’ve stolen from Katrina? I mean, I’m not really stealing; these credits are truly mine. Right? But still, the amount of credit in her account is nowhere near what I assumed it would be. So maybe she’s right? Maybe she’s just being paid, and she doesn’t see any of my inheritance credits. There’s no way I can take from her account without her realizing it.
And, if she notices the theft, she’ll know it was me. Besides the fact that I have skill and motive, she can see exactly what I’m doing if she looks into Tasha’s systems. Plus, if Meems suddenly has her chasis returned, that would be a dead giveaway.
I lean back in the chair. I could easily steal from the rich to help the poor like Robin Hood, but at what price? I remember what Gus told me. Assess the situation, look at who is being hurt and who is gaining. Meems and I are both gaining. Katrina will not suffer horribly. But what happens if Katrina does find out? I think about what would happen if I did get arrested for hacking. I’ve never heard of a trial where someone managed to bypass their G-Chip. So they are either dealt with without a trial, or it’s so rare a thing that I’m the first person in history to experience this, and the significance of that is not lost on me. Either way, the resulting outcome doesn’t look promising. I’d end up far worse than my current handicapped prisoner state. I have to keep myself safe, for Dad’s sake.
I look up at the screen, my eyes tracing the scarlet numbers displaying Katrina’s credit balance. With a blink, I close out of the account. A moment later, I pull up the account that Dad once put my allowance in. I don’t have many credits. While I had been saving up for a Day-I-Turn-Eighteen-Mod, I never did save all that much. I always spent a good amount of my weekly allowance on the clothes that I once loved so much and now can’t even wear. All those credits spent on frivolity, and I only wore some of those outfits once. Some not at all. “Such a waste,” I breathe.
I look up at my account again, an idea blooming in my mind. “Maybe not.”
Fifteen minutes later, Tasha pings into my mind. “Inventory of Ellani Drexel’s wardrobe complete.”
I sit up and mentally command her. “Sell it.”
“Please repeat command.”
I roll my eyes at the ceiling. “Put the entirety of the inventory up for auction on the Internetwork.”
“Request acknowledged.”
I sit back and wait. I consider it a gift from some benevolent superior being that Katrina hasn’t sold all my belongings yet.
Within the first ten minutes, the first bid blips up on the screen. It’s a fair sum, but not enough. I reject it. Three more bids, each higher than the next. I reject those. Then the fifth bid. Twice as high as the last, and exactly what I need.
“Done.” I accept the bid and listen as the entirety of my wardrobe, carefully packed into a large shipping container by Tasha and her sub-unit minions, drops out of the lower storage deck, slams onto a shipping belt, and disappears behind the heavy doors of a pressure tube. A moment later, the container begins its journey through the vast robot-run network that, from the ground up, rules everything in Evanescence.
A moment later, the digits on the screen change, my credit account reflecting the new deposit. I stare at the numbers. Such a large sum. Enough to buy myself new legs. Enough to buy back Meems’s chasis.
But not enough to do both.
I could have legs. If I had legs I could run away. I could meet up with Gus, here in Evanescence, as the girl he knows and loves, and live with him forever.
I glance at the adjacent screen, the one displaying the hollowed-out shell of the one mother I’ve ever known. She’s being sold by a third-party dispenser; there’s no way of knowing if the seller is Katrina or someone else, or if she’s even changed hands since initially being sold. Assess the benefactors and the victims. Giving one last longing glance toward the outside world, I mentally press the purchase button under the chasis and watch the credit numbers run back down.
I have sold the clothes off my back to save the skin of another. I did it without lying, cheating, stealing, or tricking. I did it simply, by letting go of my Aristocratic frivolity, by accepting who and what I am. My father would be proud of me.
I am proud of me. “My name is Ellani Drexel,” I whisper in the dark-light of my father’s workroom. “I am, and always will be, a Natural.” I grin to myself. “I can’t step on anyone if I have no legs to stand on.”
Chapter Thirty-four
Post-American Date: 6/22/232
Longitudinal Timestamp: 1:18 p.m.
Location: Free Zone, Fief of Lau; Nexis
As I materialize in the common room, Gus glances up from a tankard of cider. “Elle,” he breathes. He’s on his feet and coming toward me befo
re I can even get my bearings. His arms are around me and his lips on mine in the next instant.
When he’s satisfied that he has given a warm enough welcome, he releases my lips and presses his forehead against mine, holding me close.
“Hey,” I say.
“You didn’t make the last jump,” he says, his voice a condemnation, yet there is a waver in it that lets me know he was worried.
I put my hands on his chest and urge him away, enough that I can look into his eyes without straining my neck. “I’m sorry. I had some complications back home.”
The skin around his mouth pinches as something stormy darkens his eyes. “What’s wrong?” His voice is deep and defensive, a sign of his protective nature. “Are you okay?”
I smile at him and kiss his neck, which is bare and available in the new outfit he has picked for himself. It’s some kind of rough woven shirt that hangs loosely from his shoulders and laces across his chest, revealing more bare skin than the mandarin collars we’ve been wearing since Chinatown. “Nothing,” I say into his skin. “It’s fixed. Thanks for waiting for me.”
He touches my cheek. “We wouldn’t get far without you. I wouldn’t get far without you.”
I turn away, shy.
His arm tightens around me, and his fingers curl around my neck. “Are you sure you’re okay? If you’re in trouble in Real World, I’ll help you.”
I wrap my arms around his waist, wishing that I could take him up on that offer. But it’s more dangerous than ever for him now. “Yeah.” I bury my face against his shoulder, hold him close. “I just…had to take care of my android.”
I feel his head cock against mine. “Android?”
A little laugh escapes me. “You sound surprised.”
He’s quiet for a long time. “What was wrong with it?”
“Her,” I correct. “Meems. She’s my nanny droid, or was; I guess I’m too old for that now, but she’s family. At least to me she is.” I pause, realizing I sound stupid. “I know that sounds odd. She’s just a robot, after all. But Meems is special. It’s like she’s human. You know?”