Kit hissed next to me, a sharp intake of breath. “Maggie?”
Zeera joined us.
We waited for Maggie to appear again.
When she did, it was like she knew we were watching, like she could sense her brother was waiting there. She walked straight up to the camera and stared directly into the lens. Directly at us. Maybe she’d just discovered it. She looked away, then at it once more, as though debating something. Then, she seemed to make a decision. She took a step back and dug around in her pocket before drawing out a small slip of paper. She held it up to the camera. On it she’d scrawled two words.
HELP ME.
“Where is she?” Kit asked in a voice that was strangled.
Zeera tapped frantically on her tablet. “I’ve been trying to pinpoint her location for days, but it’s scrambled.” She sighed and glanced over at Kit. “I don’t have time to figure this out right now. I’ve got to get everything ready or else the Body Market will reopen without even an attempt at interference from us.”
Rain nodded. “You’ve tried long enough,” he said to Zeera. Then he turned to Kit. “After tomorrow is over we’ll help you find your sister.”
Kit’s eyes went blank, like a shade pulled down to block out the light. “I’ll find her myself.” He wouldn’t even look at me. “But I appreciate knowing she’s alive,” he added quietly, before turning and walking out of the room, leaving my hand empty and grasping.
I found him outside in the hallway. “I made you a promise and I’m going to keep it.”
Kit was shaking his head. “Back at Trader’s house, when you were plugged in, I decided that I can’t ask you to.” He looked at me fiercely now. “I’m never going to ask it of you, okay? Our deal is off.”
My lips parted in surprise. “But—”
“You have enough to deal with,” he said before I could finish. “You don’t even know yet, do you?” There was a desperate quality to the look in his eyes.
“Know what?”
He pulled me back inside the weapons room and led me straight to Zeera. “Tell Skylar the bad news,” he said.
Zeera looked like she was caught doing something she wasn’t supposed to. She hurried to the other side of the room, checking on one of her other screens.
Kit called after her. “Tell Skylar the truth about what she’s gotten herself into.”
This must be the something Zeera had left out this morning. “Just say it, Zeera.”
But it was Trader who started talking. “We ran into a problem, coding the Shifting App,” he began. “Let’s call it a power problem.”
Zeera was wringing her hands. “More like a brainpower problem.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well,” Zeera went on, “the Shifting App will only work if you shift at the same time as everyone at the market. We, um, need your brain to run it.”
I took this in and thought about it. It wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t horrible. It would mean I wouldn’t be awake when they got people out of the Body Market, but Rain and everyone else could handle things. The plan would still work. “So what you’re saying is, I’ll need to be plugged in to wake up the others. That doesn’t seem so bad. There are plenty of plugs downstairs. Right here.”
“Yes,” Zeera said slowly.
Kit crossed his arms. “Somebody tell her the rest of it.”
“Listen, sis.” Trader stepped in once again. “What you said is correct, you need to be plugged in. But the really unfortunate part is that, for the App to function like you want, you know, for it to actually override the plugs the New Capitalists control in the market, you’re going to have to be kind of close to the market.”
I stared at Trader. “How close?”
Rain joined our group. “Inside the market itself,” he said. “On one of the plugs in their network.”
My mouth went dry. “But how—”
“We’re going to have to swap one of the bodies so we can replace it with yours,” Rain finished.
My head spun with the force of these implications. I grabbed the nearest chair and sat down. I thought I might vomit. “I need to be one of the bodies in the market?” I looked over at Zeera, who nodded. Why was it that whatever happened in this world, it somehow always involved me on display? Kit was tapping his foot, like he was waiting for them to keep going. “Just get the rest over with already,” I said.
Zeera crouched down in front of me. She put her hands on my knees and peered up into my face. “You’re going to have to wait to shift back as long as you possibly can. The second you wake up in the Real World again, the App will stop working. Anyone still transitioning will get left behind.” She took a deep breath. “We’re going to have an entire team monitoring you, ready to help get you out when everyone else is safe.”
“There’s no other way?”
“No,” she whispered.
“And this is happening tomorrow, right?”
“That’s when the market is slated to reopen, so yes,” she confirmed.
Kit was glaring at Rain, like this was all his idea. Then to me he said, “You don’t have to do this. It’s too dangerous.”
Rain shook his head. “Skylar can do this. She’s been through worse.”
Kit snickered. “What, now that you’re dating someone else, you’re willing to risk her life?”
“Hey, don’t bring me into it,” Lacy protested. “It wasn’t my plan.”
Kit eyed Trader. “Why can’t you be the one to do it? You can shift, too.”
Zeera stood. “That’s the thing. I need Trader helping me orchestrate this. I can’t do it without him.” She sounded regretful. Guilty, too.
I pulled myself out of the chair. “It’s okay,” I told Zeera. “Really.” I knew she always had Sylvia in the back of her mind and I wanted to reassure her, even as my own hope for survival wilted. Shifting had already taken such a toll on my body, and the worst of it was right when I woke up. If I was to be the last person left in the market, there was no way I’d get to safety. I’d end up back in the hands of my sister. I tried to laugh. “This was my idea, I may as well be the last one to clear out!” With the rise of my voice came more dizziness.
Rain’s hand shot out to steady me. “You need something to eat.” He looked around the weapons room. “We all do.”
I nodded. Even after all this time, I still occasionally forgot that real bodies needed food. “Good idea.” Kit walked over to the monitor again, his eyes watching for his sister to appear once more. “Do you want to come with us?” I asked him.
He shook his head, his forehead creased with worry.
I placed a tablet directly into his hand and curled his fingers around it. “This is for you, just in case you want to be in touch and we’re not together.”
He stared down at it.
I didn’t wait for him to reply. Instead, I hurried to rejoin the others. We were already headed through the door when Kit called out.
“Don’t leave without me today, Skylar,” he said.
I turned back. Kit was looking at me, those eyes of his full of worry, his hand still curled around the device I’d given him. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
When we got to the cafeteria, no one noticed me enter, and at first I felt a rush of relief. Even after months of living here, people’s looks would linger a bit too long when I entered the room, or when I passed them by, their eyes shifting away from their plates and their lunch companions until they landed on my face.
But today, the mood had changed dramatically, and as I realized why, the relief drained away.
Gone was the laughter that darted between tables, gone was talk altogether. People seemed to have forgotten one another. The cafeteria was like a tomb for the walking dead, the silence only occasionally interrupted when two people crashed into each other, each one rubbing their knees or their elbows, their arms or their sides, barely looking up to see the object of their assault. Everyone had their heads bent over their tablets, their fingers tap, tap, t
apping away. Their eyes were all and only for those little glowing screens, sending messages, I supposed. If they smiled, it was on behalf of whatever they saw happening in their palms. They seemed like they were in a trance.
When we’d first given people the devices, I remembered how everything grew quiet in the room, everyone suddenly engrossed by their tiny glowing displays.
“Don’t worry,” Zeera had said at the time. “It’s just the initial fascination.”
So when did that initial fascination wear off? Or did it ever?
Even when I ran into Adam while I was getting my food, his head was bent over his tablet. I wondered whom he could be messaging, since Parvda was just a little ways off, getting her drink.
I looked around nervously, then nudged him.
“Huh?” he said, distracted.
I elbowed him harder. “Adam!”
His head popped up and he blinked at me quickly. “Sorry. Skylar! What’s up? You’re awake again!”
“I am,” I said, then added, “This is what’s up,” tapping the screen in his hand.
“Oh.” He sounded sheepish. “Yeah, these are kind of addictive.”
I lined up behind him to get some water. “I can see that. How’s that going to affect tomorrow? We can’t have people absorbed by what’s in their hands instead of paying attention to what we’re about to do.”
Adam looked around, surveying the scene in the cafeteria. Then he nodded. “Don’t worry.”
“No?”
“They’ve gotten really good at using their tablets, really fast.”
“Obviously,” I said. “But what about the part of the plan where everyone has to deal with what’s happening with the people around them?”
“I’m going to handle it myself this afternoon,” Adam promised. “I’ll call a meeting and make sure everyone knows what they’re doing. No one’s going to let anyone down, Skylar,” he reassured me again, this time in a whisper. Everything was eerily quiet. “Least of all me,” he went on. “If you’re going to risk your life, everyone here is going to back you up. People will rise to the occasion.”
I nodded, trying to convince myself this time. “I hope you’re right.”
At some point during lunch, a message from Kit appeared on my tablet.
Come stay with me at the cottage tonight.
For the rest of the afternoon, as meetings were held and plans were finalized, I considered his proposal. Maybe if things had been otherwise, if my role tomorrow was going to be different, if things weren’t going to be so risky, I would have told Kit no, maybe another time. But this could be my last night in this world, or my last night of freedom, at least, depending on what happened at the Body Market. I thought about my almost-kiss with Rain last summer, how I’d held back—how we’d both held back—as though we would have all the time in the world after things slowed down. When really, it seemed, we’d missed our chance altogether.
In my mind, I conjured an image of Kit, his eyes, the intensity in the way he stared, those tattoos on his arms I’d grown to love, the sound of his voice and the touch of his hand in mine. I’d grown to love our long nights by the iron stove, talking, too. My heart fluttered and my body seemed to feel these memories everywhere.
I might’ve missed my chance with Rain.
But I didn’t have to miss my chance with Kit.
So I found myself typing out three letters in response:
Yes.
36
Rain
responsible
THE SOUNDS OF the nearby ocean were deceptively soothing.
I stared down at my father, my hands balled into fists. Every time I came to visit, he seemed so peaceful, like he hadn’t a care in the world, yet he was responsible for so much chaos and grief. We were responsible, my entire family, starting with my grandfather, Marcus, who split our world in two.
But a small part of me felt sympathy for Jude and her cause. However misguided, she was doing what she could to keep what was left of this Real World economy afloat, and the people who depended on it as well. Jude was simply taking advantage of the situation in which she found herself.
My father, in her position, would do exactly the same.
I was certain of it.
Like always, I pressed my hand against the glass, and like always, this gesture made me imagine a life where my father was just this, my father. A time when the worlds never split, and where parents raised their children on love, teaching us to navigate the perils of life as safely as we could, kissing the cuts and bruises on our real bodies when they came about.
Longing rushed through me, like the waves outside this cavern.
It didn’t have to be this way. It was only because families like mine had made it so, and acted as though they were saving everyone from hardship and pain, when really what they cared about most was power and control. My father and grandfather before him took advantage of people’s appetite for the virtual and the division it caused. Instead of helping heal the discord and teaching people to navigate between the virtual and the real, they exploited it and pretended like they’d done something noble for the world.
I snatched my hand away and stood over my father.
What would happen if we took people like Jonathan Holt and Jude Cruz and Emory Specter out of power? Would people truly want a life without their bodies? Would people truly not ever want to swim in the real ocean and walk on the real beach again? Could Apps ever replace the stuff of this world in a way that was satisfying enough to let go of this world altogether?
So many of us were never given a choice, not a real one.
And now, without bodies to come back to, the remaining plugged-in generation wouldn’t even get the chance to think about a real life or a real future at all.
I opened the latch on the glass box and the top sighed open.
Then I slid the tablet that controlled the plugs in this room from my pocket and began to tap in the code I knew by heart.
And I waited. And watched.
Suddenly the pinkie finger on my father’s left hand twitched slightly.
Skylar wanted to do an emergency broadcast to warn people what was happening in this world, to give them a choice of staying plugged in or reclaiming their bodies.
Well, my father was the king of the emergency broadcast.
I tapped in the next set of numbers.
I watched, now, as Jonathan Holt’s foot shifted ever so slightly.
I kept tapping, one code after the other, noticing how his knee jerked a little, then his elbow. Being plugged in made a person so vulnerable, even someone like my father.
It was time to take him out of power, at least for a little while.
My fingers tap, tap, tapped.
He owed me that much. And he owed Skylar, too.
Suddenly, finally, Jonathan Holt heaved a great gasp.
His lungs rose and fell in ragged breaths.
I checked the time. By tomorrow morning he would adjust enough to be lucid.
Color flooded into his cheeks.
My father didn’t know it yet, but he was about to help us do the most important emergency broadcast of everyone’s lifetime, more important even than the one where he announced the borders had closed. What’s more, I was ensuring that he didn’t disrupt our plans once they were in progress.
I watched as his eyes fluttered open, waited until he seemed to focus, knowledge coming into his gaze—knowledge and recognition.
My father saw me. Finally.
That’s when I spoke.
“Hi, Dad, it’s been a while hasn’t it?” I said.
And then I smiled.
37
Skylar
gestures
AS THE AFTERNOON waned, I watched the beginnings of my plan leap into motion. Adam and Zeera met with the seventeens to explain how the Shifting App would work. They would all be posing as buyers at the market, scattered throughout the real Body Tourists. After I made the emergency broadcast and bodies began to shift back to t
he Real World and awaken, everyone’s job was to take advantage of the ensuing chaos and begin ushering people to safety. Messaging on the tablets was on a need-to basis only. And absolutely no gaming.
“We can’t have you distracted,” Adam kept emphasizing. “People could die if you’re not paying attention. Skylar could die.”
Everyone turned and looked at me.
As much as I wanted to, I didn’t turn away. Tomorrow I would be at their mercy, as would so many other bodies. I needed them to see me, to remember the stakes. I was sitting there off to the side, listening to Adam and Zeera go over everything a second time, when Rain came into the room and beckoned me to follow. He led me to the other side of the mansion, where no one lived.
I eyed Rain with suspicion. “What’s this about?”
“Just trust me,” he said. “Please?”
I didn’t respond. But when he opened the door I went inside after him, surprised to see my own Keeper standing there.
“Hi, Skylar,” she said. Her eyebrows arched. “You seem . . . tired.”
I hugged her fiercely. Her arms were a relief around me.
“I sent word to the Keeper that we’d need her help,” Rain explained.
I looked from one to the other. “Help with what?”
The Keeper gestured toward the bedroom. “See for yourself.”
Rain hovered close behind me as the two of us entered the room together, the light soft in the surrounding darkness. I nearly backed away the moment I saw who was there. A man lay in the narrow bed, far older than our years. His skin seemed to sag with the effort of existing.
I turned to Rain in shock. “Your father decided to unplug?”
Rain shook his head. “No. I decided for him.”
“But why?”
Rain arranged two chairs next to the bed. “I worried if we surprised him, that he’d interfere with our plans. My father doesn’t like to be left out of things.” Rain sat down and I did the same. “But I also thought he could help us.”
I looked at the man in the bed once again. I was used to seeing Jonathan Holt plugged in, his face always at peace, his body relaxed, as though his position as Prime Minister was his most natural repose. Here, his muscles seemed tense, his face exhausted. I wondered if he was having terrible dreams, still hovering in that surreal state between unplugging and waking up to this world. He seemed so vulnerable, his body on the verge of collapse. “How can he help us by being here?”
The Body Market Page 22