by Meg Collett
“Do you know who this is?” Hutton asked.
“Viksyn Viper.”
“Vik is someone from the cast who’ll set you up to fail. Anytime you film with her, you must be on guard, like Sloane was in this interview. Vik will use every word against you. She’s also your number one enemy, but we’ll talk about how to deal with her when we start practicing individual interactions for each cast member.”
Hutton went through overviews of the other cast members. The cast in its entirety consisted of Sloane, Roman, Vik, a bad-boy musician with shocking red hair, a billionaire techie who’d invented the latest and greatest social feed app, twins from the flesh-feeds, and Beau Montgomery. They, along with over fifty crew members, would crowd the set—a glass penthouse at the very top of VidaCorp’s downtown skyscraper.
“While you won’t have many hostile interviewers in your face on the red carpet,” Hutton said after going through the cast for a third time, “you will have reporters and feed anchors who’ve known Sloane for years asking you questions and speaking with you. They’ll scrutinize you for the smallest change that could give them a juicy story. It’ll be far worse and far harder than you think.”
“Lucky for you,” Roman chimed in from the floor of the back wall, “Maddox loves a juicy story. It’ll help ratings.”
“Who’s Maddox?” Wren asked Hutton.
“Maddox Rivers is the field producer for Glass House. He’s the only crew member who knows about you. Also, it’s best not to get on his bad side. He doesn’t like Sloane very much since she got a movie of his canceled. Not much good blood between them. But you’ll meet him soon enough.”
“Are all of Sloane’s relationships so mercurial?”
A hush fell over the room at Wren’s question.
“People loved and hated Sloane,” Roman eventually answered. Wren twisted around to look at him, ignoring her body’s complaints. “Normally in the same moment. It’s complicated.”
“Why date her for so long if you feel that way?”
Roman’s jaw ticked. Wren wanted to ask him why he was here at all, but she kept her mouth shut.
Standing by the televisions, Hutton laughed. “Good point, Wren. Roman isn’t one to talk about things that are complicated. Are you, Ro?”
“Don’t call me that.”
Hutton held up her hands, still laughing, but Wren shriveled under the tension radiating off Roman. She thought another complicated relationship could be right here in the room, one between Roman and Hutton.
“Wren,” Hutton said. “You’ll receive dossiers on each cast member and the more prominent workers on the crew this evening. I want them memorized by tomorrow.”
She queued up another series of Sloane’s interviews and paused them all. Wren smothered a groan as Hutton said, “Time for round two. Try not to suck so badly this time.”
11:
A few days later, not much had changed. Wren still sat in her wheelchair, parked in the middle of the exercise room she’d started calling Hutton’s Torture Room. Between the pain medication, her alteration recovery, and the threat the Whitebirds posed, Wren hadn’t slept much. One week had passed since her arrival in Hollywood, yet it felt like years.
But the thing that worried her most? She still wasn’t allowed to look in a mirror.
It shouldn’t have worried her so much, not with the threat of anarchists and the upcoming red carpet event in two weeks, but the mirror thing plagued her. It was tangible. She could look around and find all the places where mirrors had hung. She could stare hard enough at her reflection in a window or a dark television screen and know she was different. Sometimes, she caught the others staring at her as if they’d seen a ghost. Technically, they had.
So Wren worried. Lately, it was the only thing she was doing well.
“We’ll start with another quiz of the cast. Hopefully you studied after yesterday’s embarrassing attempt.”
Wren had tried to study, she really had, but the words in Hutton’s dossiers were tiny and black. They wiggled like fleas all over the page. Wren always got a searing headache after a few minutes of trying to read them. Her eyes would burn until she cried.
Hutton pulled up the image of a short young man with gangly arms and legs. His hair was wily and tightly curled, and the cameraman had caught him sucking on an inhaler, his cheeks hollowed from the deep pull of air.
“That’s Kruzer,” Wren said, her vocal cords still healing. She secretly liked him for the awkward nervousness he exuded in this picture. “He created the ConneX social app. It’s the most downloaded app of all time.”
“Last name?”
Wren had heard it countless times on television, but the name eluded her lips right as she was about to say it. Her mouth hung open uselessly.
Hutton pursed her lips. “Kruzer Gem. What country did he emigrate from to escape the communist leader who wanted to recruit him for a sanctioned hacking project?”
Many countries in the European Conglomerate were communist, but Wren couldn’t think back to her middle school lessons on geography. “Ah …”
“Wrong.” Hutton stabbed her finger against the remote and pulled up the next image.
“Daphne and Delphine Deep. They’re flesh-feed stars.” Wren blushed. “The highest paid in the industry.”
“And they earn every penny,” Roman said from the back.
Hutton made a disgusted face. “At least someone’s been studying—unlike Wren.”
“Hey,” Bode said, “cut her some slack.”
“I’m not cutting her anything. She should know this already.”
As a new image popped up on the screen, Bode continued arguing on Wren’s behalf. “It’s the first week. If her Tube alterations hadn’t been done all at once—”
“It’s fine,” Wren snapped, surprising them all. “Hutton is right. I should know this.” She carefully lifted her chin toward the image so she didn’t strain her neck. “That’s Foster Banks. He’s the lead singer of a popular synth band.”
“What’s the name of his band?”
Mak listened to it all the time, but Wren had always hated the screaming guitars and Foster’s wailing. It gave her a headache. “I don’t know.”
“What a surprise.” Hutton pulled up the next image. “Clearly, you don’t know your cast members, so let’s move on to Sloane’s interviews. Maybe you won’t screw this up so badly.”
Wren screwed it up—royally, as Mak would have said.
Her flat, uninspired words fell short every time Wren tried to respond to the interviewer’s questions. After each answer, Hutton unmuted Sloane’s response, her scowl darker than the last. Finally, after two hours of barked instructions and reprimands, Hutton threw up her hands.
“You have to do more than just say the words!” Hutton looked on the verge of throwing the remote to the ground and smashing it with her four-inch stiletto heel. “You have to mean them. No one will believe you’re Sloane if you just stand there dribbling meaningless gibberish.”
“I know.” Wren slumped in her chair, exhausted.
“Then try harder.”
“You could leak to the press that Sloane is doing some heavy serk these days. It would explain why she’s so off,” Roman suggested dryly.
Wren twisted around in her chair, ignoring the pain that washed over her, and demanded, “Are you serious? She died of a drug overdose, and you’re going to say that? Are you a complete idiot or just a total asshole? Perhaps both?”
Roman’s eyes widened by a fraction. He hadn’t expected his callous words to offend her. Wren might not have known Sloane personally like everyone else in the room, but she was getting sick and tired of everyone making jokes at a dead girl’s expense.
“I’m sorry,” Roman said and sounded like he meant it. Not that Wren cared. He could be a Whitebird, or he could just be Sloane’s ex-boyfriend. Either way, Wren really, really didn’t like him.
She sat back in her chair and pressed her hand to her aching ribs. “Whatever. Just
shut up. You’re distracting me.”
Wren waited for Hutton to press play on the remote, but instead, she stared at Wren, her glossy lips parted, perhaps in surprise. She recovered and said, “Yes, Roman. Stop distracting her.” Her eyes slid back to Wren’s. In the same tone, she added, “Actually, that last answer was pretty good. Let’s continue.”
It was Wren’s turn to be shocked. Had Hutton complimented her?
: : :
That evening, Wren crept down the penthouse’s hall. It was close to midnight, and all the lights were off. The city’s luminance pressed against the drawn curtains. Wren paused to look outside. The billboards flashed their wares, the skyscrapers grinned with interior lights, and the hologram shimmered at the edge of the city. From here, Wren had a clear view of the Hollywood sign on the hill, perched like the city’s personal moon.
She carried on through the penthouse. Bode had fallen asleep on the couch again, the television muted and glowing. They’d taken to watching her favorite movies, which were mostly romantic vampire flicks that Bode endured to keep her company. She made sure a blanket was covering him before she eased into the kitchen to grab a glass of water. The filtration system barely made a sound as she poured water from the refrigerator. With a full glass, she crept down the opposite hall to Sloane’s office.
Wren might not have been allowed in here if she’d asked. She hadn’t. A few nights ago, when she couldn’t lay in Sloane’s bed for another second, she’d gone tip-toeing through the apartment and found the office behind a closed door. Not much had changed in there since Sloane’s death, and Wren found comfort in the floral wallpaper, the bookshelves heaped with scripts and knickknacks, the piles of rugs, and the scent of vanilla and sunlight. Sloane had lived and breathed in this room, and it hadn’t been swept away after her death like so much else.
Wren soundlessly opened the door and slipped inside. When she turned around, she almost screamed.
Roman sat at Sloane’s chrome desk, his feet kicked up on an ottoman. He jerked forward in the desk chair and swung his legs under him. “What the hell?” he hissed, as surprised as Wren.
“What are you doing in here?”
“I could ask you the same.”
“Too bad. I asked you first.”
His clothes—black jeans with boots and a gray sweater that lightened his eyes—were different from the outfit he’d worn that morning. The scar beneath his eye gleamed against his tanned skin, and the fact he’d chosen not to have it altered scared her more than she thought a simple little scar could. She wondered if the scar held meaning, perhaps as a calling card for the Whitebirds or a symbol of his rebellion against a culture dominated by beauty and perfection, which VidaCorp perpetuated.
She was seeing a Whitebird in everyone.
“I come in here sometimes.” He shrugged. It was then that Wren noticed the crystal glass of dark amber liquid on the desk in front of him. “I always liked this room.”
“I thought you didn’t sleep here,” she said. She knew he didn’t because she only saw him during morning training. The penthouse was big, but not that big. She would have known if he were here. A person experienced Roman’s presence deep in their gut.
“Hutton said I need to be more careful about appearances, so I’ll be staying here until the show’s opening.”
At his mention of the red carpet event, the skin beneath Wren’s eye twitched. “Oh. Great.”
She hadn’t meant to sound sarcastic, but it came across that way. Roman crossed his arms and leaned back in the chair again. “Why are you here?”
Wren thought about lying but decided it wasn’t worth the effort. “I come here to practice. Her computer isn’t password protected.”
Roman’s eyes fell to the sleek white screen on the desk, the touchscreen keys inlaid into the desk’s metallic sheen. He picked up his glass of whiskey and threw back the liquid. “Yeah, she was always careless when it came to security.”
He swiveled around in the chair to face the mini bar. He opened the glass door, pulled out a bottle of whiskey, and poured himself another drink.
“Want some?” he asked without glancing back.
Wren wrapped her arms around her middle. “My father’s a drunk.”
He paused as he reached for a second glass. “Beer or the harder stuff?”
“Beer.”
Roman went on and poured her a glass. He spun back around and stretched out his hand, offering her the glinting drink. “Mine likes scotch. I can’t stand the stuff.”
“Your father drinks?”
“Like a fish. You gonna take this?”
Wren took the drink. The crystal was cold and heavy in her hand. She sniffed the liquid and raised her eyebrows at Roman. “It smells strong.”
“I’m thinking you can handle it.” And then Roman completely floored her by smiling at her. Not a smirk or a sneer like he gave Hutton, but a real crooked grin. It completely transformed him. His wolfish eyes warmed, the tanned skin crinkling at the corners. His teeth were blindingly white—as were everyone’s in this town—but they weren’t the sharp fangs Wren had conjured in her mind.
She found herself smiling back before she could stop herself. Turning to the closed-off windows, she crossed to the leather reading chair and rearranged her expression before she faced him again. Bode and Hazen had said someone inside Sloane’s life was working with the Whitebirds. They’d said to look closely at Roman and Hutton. Now was a great time to get a feel for Roman and ask him questions, but he unnerved Wren. She took a sip of whiskey to fortify her nerves, but when the liquid hit her healing throat, she grimaced and almost gagged.
“I wanted to talk to you about earlier. About what I said.” His smile faded as quickly as it had come, and he twisted a silver ring on his finger. A nervous gesture. She was making him nervous?
Taking a seat in the leather chair, she crossed her legs. “You don’t have to explain anything to me.”
“I do.” He sipped his drink and clutched the glass tightly as he swallowed, the liquid acting as his life preserver. “I want you to understand Sloane is—was far more than what you see on all those television screens.”
“That’s not what I don’t understand.”
Roman returned to twisting the ring. “Then what is it?”
“I don’t understand why you’re here. Why allow her memory to be exploited like this? You had to love her. At least I hope you did. Yet you’re here, participating in this charade and reducing her memory to nothing more than a circus sideshow. That’s what I want to understand.”
Roman watched her, his face unreadable. Mak liked to protect, and Bode liked to comfort, and Hutton liked to intimidate, but Wren couldn’t figure out Roman. She had no information on him and no clue how to act around him. She stayed silent and returned his gaze, her earlier gumption keeping her spine straight.
“It sounds,” Roman murmured as if someone might be standing on the other side of the office door, “like you’ve already made your assumptions of me. You don’t need me to explain anything.”
The whiskey warmed Wren from the inside out. She sat her glass on the floor and leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “Why, Roman? Why are you here?”
He twisted the ring again, his focus on the slender silver band. “I’m here to—”
“Don’t lie.”
He paused, mouth half open, and drew his lips back together. A muscle flexed along his jaw, and his eyes burned Wren with an entirely different sort of fire than the whiskey, though both warmed her in disconcerting ways. “Is this you reading me? You know when I’m going to lie?”
“When you talk to Hutton, you lie a lot. At least, I assume you do because you’re always agitated. You twist that ring when you’re overthinking your response.”
He blinked down at his hand as if surprised to find the ring there.
“Did Sloane give it to you?” Wren asked in his silence.
“No, she didn’t.” The answer was ice cold. If Sloane hadn’t given him th
e ring, who had? Wren needed to remember to mention it to Bode tomorrow.
“Did you even love her?” The question wisped around the room like Sloane’s ghost was hovering over their shoulders, eavesdropping.
“At first. But toward the end, I only endured her.”
“I’m sorry.”
He hadn’t expected that. He started twisting the ring again, but quickly realized the action and stopped. “For what?”
“For losing Sloane and finding her body, even if she was only something you endured. I’m sorry.”
His lips parted again, and he had to jerk his eyes away from her face. The vein along his neck was thick and pulsing. “Sloane knew what would happen,” he said roughly—almost as though a hint of emotion was peeking through. “She was going down a road that only dead-ended at one place.”
Roman tossed back the rest of his whiskey and stood. He closed the distance between them and stood a foot away from her, looming over her. He reached down, and Wren thought he might caress her cheek or push her hair behind her ear, but he picked up her glass and stepped back. Wren fought to keep her disappointment off her face.
Why did she want him to touch her? Why did she feel rejected that he hadn’t? What was wrong with her?
“You’re smart, Wren. You’ll figure out how to turn the tables on those exploiting you. That’s the best lesson you’ll learn from Sloane Lux. For all her faults, no one can say they ever took advantage of her while she was alive.”
He retreated to the door. Without the heat of his presence, Wren fought back a shudder. His words about turning the tables on those exploiting her made her scalp prickle with fear.
He was reaching for the handle to leave when Wren blurted out, “What am I doing wrong?”
“With your training?”
“Yes.” Wren’s throat itched around a cough; she’d been holding her breath. “How do I act more like her?”