The Body Market

by Donna Freitas

  “Can I come in?” Kit asked from behind the door.

  “What’s happening?” I cried.

  Panic flowed through me. Something was deeply wrong with my hands and feet. Hatred for the body, for being in it, being real, followed up the panic. By the time Kit came into the room, the pain was so intense I was blind with it. I didn’t even protest when I felt him pick up my legs and move them onto the bed. I didn’t resist, either, when I felt his hands around my hands, rubbing them between his own.

  Eventually, after what felt like a million years, some of the pain subsided. Kit moved on to rubbing my feet, and they too, began to feel slightly better, and then a whole lot better.

  I watched him work.

  No one had ever touched me like this before. Held my hands in theirs or my feet, my toes. Well, not with my knowing it. A jumble of feelings tumbled through me. Even though Kit was doing this to warm my skin, my frozen limbs, it felt like . . . like something more. I wiped my hand across my face, as much to hide the burning feeling in my cheeks as to dry the tears.

  “I’m okay.” I wanted to pull away from him. “I think I’m better.”

  Kit stopped and looked at me. “Is the pain gone?”

  “No,” I said honestly. “Almost.” I tried to move, but he held fast.

  “You can’t get up. You need to stay here and rest.”

  “But—”

  He took a deep breath. “Don’t argue, Skylar.” He sounded so tired right then. Absolutely exhausted.

  I decided to listen, because I knew he was right. Then I noticed his bloody shirt was gone. “You were bleeding. You were hurt. Why aren’t you resting?”

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “What happened?”

  “Which part—to your hands and your feet? Or to me?”

  “Both,” I said.

  “Well,” he began, “you had frostbite, or nearly.”

  “What’s frostbite?” Mrs. Worthington had never taught us about it, which was surprising since she took such pleasure in the various ways the body could make us hurt and undermine our existence.

  Kit finally removed his hands from my skin. “Frostbite is a condition you get in the extreme cold, where parts of your body actually freeze.”

  I shook my head. “But . . . how could that have happened?”

  “You don’t remember anything?”

  I racked my brain, but all I really knew was that I’d been dreaming. “No. Not really.”

  Kit crossed his legs on the bed. Clasped his hands in his lap. “Skylar, when I found you, you were out in the snow.”

  “No,” I said, trying to think, to understand. “I was . . . I was just dreaming.”

  “You weren’t,” he said. “Well, you were, but I guess you were also sleepwalking. Or trying to escape. Though escaping in your bare feet is a questionable idea in a blizzard. And without anything on your hands.”

  I thought about the snow, how it was piled so high it was nearly impossible to see out of the windows of the cottage. The idea of being outside in it, unaware, unprotected, was terrifying. My hands were still curled like hooks and they were ghostly pale, like the blood couldn’t quite pump itself to my fingers yet. “Am I going to be okay? Or am I going to . . . lose them?” I added in a whisper.

  Kit inched closer to me on the bed. He reached out his hand for one of mine. “Can I?”

  I nodded and let him take it, watching as he inspected my fingers, my palm, even my wrist. The skin still burned, though only a little.

  “I think I found you in time,” he said after a while. “But you may notice that you’re sensitive to the cold over the next weeks, especially your fingers and your toes. They’re always the first to freeze.” Kit eyed me. He still had my hand. I wanted to take it back but also, I didn’t. “Which is why a person should always wear gloves out in the snow. And shoes. And socks.”

  “If I was awake, I’d never have been so stupid as to risk my life like that.”

  “I didn’t say you were stupid,” he said. “But you could have died.” Something unreadable passed over his face. “Listen to me, Skylar, there are some things you just can’t fight and win. There are real things more powerful than any human or technology that we can dream up, and when we face down those things, we must show them our respect and back away. This blizzard is one of those things. And right now it’s beaten you and you have to let your body heal.”

  I found myself staring hard at Kit, wanting to see what his eyes told me. Once his eyes began to speak, they revealed so much, far more than with other people’s. Maybe that’s why he worked so hard not to let them speak at all. Maybe he knew how much they gave away when he wasn’t careful.

  “I’ll be back later to check on you,” he said.

  I could tell he didn’t really want to go. Reluctance—that’s what his eyes revealed. I wondered how far that reluctance might extend. I glanced down at his hand, which still held mine.

  “Sleep, Skylar,” Kit said, sliding it away and getting up.

  I stopped him with another question. “The blood I saw earlier. On your shirt.”

  Kit didn’t turn around. “Yes?”

  “You didn’t tell me what happened,” I said, though I was pretty sure I already knew.

  He kept his back toward me and didn’t speak.

  “Was that from . . . from me?”

  His fingers curled around the edge of the doorframe. “Yes. You had a kitchen knife. You stabbed me with it.”

  “Oh,” I gasped out. My heart constricted. “I was dreaming,” I reminded him.

  He looked at me over his shoulder. His eyes were empty again. “I’m sure that was it, Skylar,” he said, his voice full of sadness, or maybe regret, and then he closed the door behind him.

  I was alone again, in the quiet.

  But my instincts nudged me like an insistent child.

  I’d been doing this all wrong. Escape, violence, that wasn’t how I was going to win in this scenario. Kit was right: my gaming skills were useless, given the storm and the havoc it wrought. I took a deep breath into my lungs and let it out, remembering how the people in this world regarded me, remembering how they focused on my body, how I’d become a symbol to their cause, and therefore I had worth. To Kit, I was something to trade. But last night, at dinner just before he told me his name, he said something that stuck in my mind. It replayed itself now as I sat here on his bed.

  I could fall in love with you, Skylar, and it wouldn’t make a difference.

  But maybe he was wrong.

  Maybe it would make a difference. Maybe, just maybe, if he even came close to such a feeling, he would let me go, wouldn’t be able to allow himself to give me over to my sister.

  I needed to get him to like me.

  And I knew, I could tell that he already did like me, at least a little. That’s what he kept hiding from his eyes, what he chased away whenever it showed itself. Interest. What I needed to do to Kit was the very same thing that Rain did to me. And in getting Kit to fall for me, I’d be doing something I hadn’t even known I’d wanted to do until now: I’d be getting back at Rain. Because somewhere, deep down, despite Lacy, despite everything, I knew Rain still had feelings for me.

  Just as I did for him.

  7

  Rain

  family

  THE APP WENT through my code like a shot of heroin.

  My virtual self soaked it up all at once and let out a long sigh of relief. I studied my arms, my hands, to see what new and exciting thing I’d become.

  But something was wrong.

  I was . . . exactly the same as before.

  Unchanged.

  That feeling, that sense of joy that spread through me completely, to every bit of my code, vanished as suddenly as it had appeared and I nearly retched.

  Where was I?

  I looked around.

  Strange. I was exactly where I’d thought. In my room in the Holt family penthouse atop the tallest skyscraper in the City. Across the street, the
facade of the Water Tower rippled and curled a bright blue, waves breaking along its surface. Just beyond it I could see into another penthouse. Two girls stood side by side, their virtual hands pressed across the glass.

  One of them seemed to look straight at me, as if she wanted to tell me something. They were like ghosts, glowing beyond the glass.

  Did I know them?

  I turned away, shook off the strange feelings, the way the girl’s hand reached for me. The App was the problem. It must be faulty and was messing with my code.

  I called up more Apps, more and more until they nearly blocked everything else from view. They chatted me and prodded and caressed my cheek and my shoulders and even my feet. Their presence helped to relax me and I lay back on my bed, hands behind my head, taking in the sweet anticipation of downloading another one, or maybe two or three at once. I was so rich with Apps, I’d always been so rich with them, and this knowledge was an enormous relief. But at the same time, I . . . I hated them for some reason, the way they wouldn’t ever leave me alone, or give me a moment’s peace. They were like a plague on my existence.

  Sometimes I didn’t know who I was without them.

  No. I definitely didn’t.

  My father’s voice floated down the hall.

  Before I could block him from entering my room he’d already appeared, standing in front of me. With a startled, piercing sigh, the Apps around me fell to the floor, dead.

  I jolted up from the bed.

  I’d never seen them so . . . dead before. They were lifeless, covering every surface, the bed, the pillows, even my legs.

  Could an App die?

  Could they all?

  Were they even alive in the first place?

  My father was watching me with that smug look he sometimes got, like when he was about to tell me the latest way in which I’d failed his expectations.

  “Hello, son,” he said.

  I stared at him without speaking. What in both worlds could he want from me now? He never called me son.

  “I need you to do something for me,” he went on.

  I waited.

  “Something on behalf of this family, on behalf of your duty to the App World.”

  “No,” I said, before he could even reveal what it was. That’s when I remembered I had something to tell him, something that I’d been thinking about a long, long time. I glanced out the window, looked beyond the Water Tower again, the way it glowed a bright blue in the Moonlight 4.0, searching the skyline for the two girls in the glass, but the girls were gone.

  Jonathan Holt’s smug look had fallen away. “What do you mean, no?”

  “There’s something I need to tell you first,” I said, my eyes steady on him. “I’ve decided to unplug.”

  The moment these words were out of my mouth the Apps everywhere turned to dust.

  I sat up and rubbed the back of my neck.

  I’d fallen asleep on the floor of the plug facility. I’d been dreaming, just dreaming. The waves flowing into and out of the great dark cavern sounded their comings and goings, despite the storm. The ocean never stilled, never stopped for anything. I breathed deep, taking in the salty, damp air, and turned to the glowing glass case next to me.

  My father lay there, plugged in, unmoving.

  I got on my knees, the floor hard underneath them, staring at him in the coffin-like case.

  And I nearly laughed.

  He was the most powerful man in the App World, well, perhaps aside from Emory Specter. But in just a few seconds, if I wanted to, if I decided it would suit my purposes, I could rip him from his existence there and force him into the Real World. He was so very vulnerable, we all were, plugged in, yet every App citizen lived their virtual life like it would never end. Though, with the miracle of virtual technology and the grand plans of Emory Specter, I supposed now it really wouldn’t have to.

  For a second I was ashamed, having such malicious thoughts about my father. But then, one of the things I’d learned since waking up in the Real World was that I could be ruthless. An image of the knife thrown by Skylar hurtling across the room and sinking into her own sister’s eye flashed in my mind. All of us could be. Sometimes a person had to be ruthless and even a little bit malicious to survive, and to make something of himself or herself in this life.

  Thoughts of Skylar reminded me of my dream, the two girls in the window of the penthouse. The girl I’d been looking at, looking for after she disappeared, was Skylar. In one of her more talkative moments after the night of the fire, she told me about the Sachses’ apartment, how she’d loved it, loved its view of the Water Tower, her favorite building in the City. Skylar and I were standing at the edge of the ocean that day, and she was staring out at the New Port City skyline in the distance, the Water Tower spiking the clouds. Her hair whipped and tangled in the breeze.

  I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her.

  And I remember how in that moment I thought to myself:

  You’re so beautiful. No wonder you inspired your sister to conceive of the Body Market, to think that with you she could change the fate of New Port City. And you will change its fate, but not in the way your sister imagined.

  In the way that I have.

  The thought started out so sincere and innocent and then grew so sinister. Like something that would cross the mind of my father.

  Skylar kept talking, telling me how she’d look out at the view almost nightly at Inara’s. I explained to her the exact location of my family’s penthouse mansion, and how my room faced the Water Tower as well.

  “You were right there all along. Just across the way,” she said, the air chilled with the onset of winter, the waves rushing along the sand of the shoreline, then receding again.

  “I was,” I replied, still unable to take my eyes from her. I even went so far as to suggest that maybe I’d seen her there one evening before I’d unplugged.

  Maybe my mind wished for this in the dream, that Skylar had been right there, hand pressed against the glass of Inara’s family’s apartment the very moment I told my father I was going to unplug, right when I’d decided to take control over my future, only to find out my father had already decided the same fate for me.

  Even the decision to unplug, he took away from me.

  He was so pleased when he realized that my big plan coincided with his.

  “I knew I’d find you here.”

  I leapt back from the glass. There was Lacy, standing just a few feet away, her face lit up by the glow of the cases lining either side of us.

  “You always know where to find me,” I said.

  “That’s because you and I are the same, Rain Holt.” Lacy sat down next to me. The two of us stared at the face of my father for a long, long time. I kept my hands in my pockets.

  8

  Skylar

  exchanges

  A FEW HOURS later, the power went out in the cottage.

  For the rest of the night I’d slept like the dead. When I woke again the world was still white with the raging storm, the light outside bright from the snow coming down sideways, everything inside a dull, filtered gray. I got up from Kit’s bed, unprepared for the way my feet weren’t quite ready to hold my full weight, and nearly fell. The first days I spent at the Keeper’s came roaring back, how I’d stumbled at first, trying to walk, having to hold on to everything in my path. My hands and feet throbbed from my unplanned excursion into the snow, and I felt something like relief that there was nowhere else for me to go right now except into the next room.

  So that’s where I went, slowly, deliberately.

  Cautiously.

  I was even more wary of Kit now.

  He was standing in the kitchen, staring at the pile of wood stacked against the wall. Or maybe he was contemplating how little wood was left. Three pieces formed a lonely triangle on the floor.

  The chill in the air was noticeable. “I guess we burned through it quickly.”

  Kit kicked the logs that remained with a ferocity so intens
e I jumped. They flew in different directions, skittering across the floor, one of them coming to rest at my feet.

  I went to him and gripped his arm. “Violence isn’t going to conjure up more wood.”

  Kit froze. He stared at the place where my fingers curled across his skin, as though he could see the inner workings of my body, the web of veins and muscle and bone.

  Quickly, I retracted my hand. Then I bent down to pick up one of the scattered pieces of wood.

  Kit’s eyes raged when I met them again. “Let’s see if you’re still making jokes when you and I are freezing tonight.”

  “We’re not going to freeze,” I said, though not at all sure I was right and he was wrong. “I thought there was more wood. There was a lot left yesterday. Where did it all go?”

  He went to the edge of the kitchen where one of the logs had come to rest and retrieved it. He glared at it. “You’re smart, Skylar. Where do you think?”

  “We burned it, obviously.”

  “Well, we wouldn’t have if you hadn’t gone on that little excursion in the middle of the night and forced me to use up most of the stores to keep you warm,” he snapped.

  I swallowed. “Oh.”

  “Oh? Really? Oh. That’s all you have to say?”

  “I’m not sure what else you want to hear.”

  Kit turned his glare on me. “Nothing, ideally.”

  I matched it with a glare of my own. “You’re the one who brought me here, so deal with the consequences.”

  “Don’t remind me. And at the moment, I’d prefer to spend the rest of this day in silence.”

  I crossed my arms. “Fine. We’ve done enough talking to last me a lifetime.”

  “Good. I’m glad we agree.”

  I returned the log to its resting place against the wall in the kitchen. “We do.”

  Kit piled the other two pieces on top of it. Then he stalked across the cottage to his room and went inside, slamming the door behind him. My hands balled into fists, rage building in me like water rising against a dam, threatening to spill over the edge. I approached the iron stove, noticing how the warmth coming from it was weak. I glanced toward Kit’s room, thinking that behind his closed door it could only be colder, wondering if he was sitting there on his bed shivering.