by Tessa Elwood
Mom props her feet on one of the lower tubes, ankles crossed under loose slacks, shiny shoes tapered to black points. Twin soles against the pale isolation of Yonni.
I stare at Mom’s unmoving feet and then into her perfect heart face—rounded cheeks, sharp chin—the memory crisp despite the dream. Or because of it.
And I am dreaming.
“Wake up,” I tell her or me or both. “Just wake up.”
Nothing happens. The room doesn’t blink out, I don’t open my eyes somewhere else.
But I can always wake myself up.
“Have you ever seen the future, Kit?” Mom’s head tilts with her toes, which swing this way and that. “And I don’t mean the Accounting. Have you ever had a moment, where without any evidence whatsoever, you just knew?”
I lean across Yonni’s encased silence, careful not to smudge the glass bed. “Get your damn shoes off her bed.”
“What if I said you were my moment?”
I stand, slamming the chair back into the wall as I point to the door. “Out.”
She doesn’t rise or even jump, simply fishes in her pocket and pulls out a small datadisc. Holds it out over Yonni’s chest, dangled between loose red nails.
I grab her wrist. “What are you doing?”
“Rewriting the grid,” she says and lets the disc fall.
I open my eyes. Above, the white ceiling cracks from corner to corner, connecting the stained tiles. Soft light filters through the window.
Yonni’s bedroom. Mine now.
I sit up, rub my head to smear the words. It didn’t happen that way. Nothing happened that way.
Except the glass bed, which became a casket when the treatment failed. I can still feel it, the sterile room’s stuffy air, the sweet metallic under my tongue.
Snores filter through the door to the living room. Dad passed out maybe five minutes after I dumped him on the couch. Didn’t move all day or all night, it sounds like.
I hug my arms and check the small digiclock on the bedside stand. Just after seven.
The Enactment Office wanted me there by eight. If I don’t show, they might send people. Those people might see Dad.
And pass along the info to the Records Officials.
Hell.
I bolt for the shower. Fifteen minutes later, I’m dripping, dressed, and beside the couch. I touch Dad’s shoulder, but he doesn’t move. I shake him.
“Mmmhmm,” he mumbles.
“There’s Berrimix in the cabinet, some milk, and some juice. Use the bathroom over there.” I point to the door opposite the bedroom’s. “If you go into my room, I’ll kill you.”
He flaps a hand at me and snuggles deeper into the couch.
I scan the suite. No spare keypasses or money lying around, no trinkets worth pawning. I scrabble into my shoes and run out the door.
“Ms. Franks.” An older woman in a deep blue suit materializes at my elbow before I can follow the revolving door back outside.
The skytower lobby stretches in windows and reflections. Mirrored floor and ceiling tiles refracting an infinite number of Kits, all stepping in unison. I face front, but they crowd my peripheral until I’m a feedshow of jitters.
The woman walks us past the central oval desk to the lone door beyond. The desk sentry doesn’t look up from his digislate, but I’d bet a week’s worth of reds he’s counting my steps in the mirrors.
At least I’m not into skirts, else he’d have something to see.
The woman flattens her hand against the lone silver door and the circuits underneath blossom into threads of light. The door splits down the middle. She gestures me into a flat gray hall. “Thank you for your prompt arrival. We appreciate punctuality.”
I was five minutes late.
“Anytime,” I say.
Our strides sync, and I keep my eyes on the floor. It’s also silver, no mirrors or seams. No seams in my companion, either, her suit a second skin. Probably custom made. Lordling attire. Or maybe Investigative Enactors get paid more than their City counterparts.
The woman stops midway to nowhere in front of a door that looks exactly like all the others. Her palm presses its center, and it opens on a blank white room with a table, two chairs, and nothing else. Smooth walls, smooth floor, smooth ceiling.
“Have a seat,” she says.
I step inside and something whooshes behind me, almost a breeze. I turn. The door’s closed. More than that, it’s gone. I spread my hands over the wall, but there’s nothing. No telltale seams scrape my fingers, no subsurface circuits light up. The entry wall remains as blank as the other three.
I’m trapped in a box in the Investigative Enactment Office and no one knows I’m here.
I knock my forehead against the wall. It’s cool, smooth, and full of eyes. I can feel them, every last camera I can’t see.
Just like I can’t see the door.
I push off the wall and sink into a chair like a good little detainee. Fold my nonthreatening hands on the empty table and let the seconds tick into minutes. Lots of minutes.
No one comes.
Which means I’m somebody’s latest sideshow. I drum my fingers against my wrist to give them something to see.
Yonni would always tap her fingers while waiting. Given half a second of downtime, she’d be sounding out the rhythm of some old song against doorframes or countertops. By contrast Mom’s hands were always still as stone.
The tapping must get someone’s attention. The wall cracks open and a man steps through. Brown hair, sharp eyes, broad shoulders. He’s reassurance and rough grace, sleek but not too sleek. Familiar somehow—he carries himself like Dad does, when Dad’s sober and on his game—but that’s not it. Not the right correlation. But he reminds me of someone.
“Ms. Franks,” he says.
“Present,” I say.
The door slides shut.
He takes the chair opposite. I straighten and drop my hands to my lap. The room’s general whiteness washes out his skin. His blue-black suit overcompensates, gives him form.
The man takes my measure and doesn’t comment, not even with his eyes. “Tell me about the Accounting.”
Have you ever seen the future, Kit?
I don’t move, don’t blink.
Premonitions. Yonni was into premonitions. She was into dreams, too—would sometimes accept or refuse clients by them. A dream’s the reason she first went out with Missa, who became her last lover, the only one where “love” applied. After Missa, there was never anyone else.
Have you ever had a moment, where without any evidence whatsoever, you just knew?
This man could happily kill me at breakfast, then forget I existed by lunch.
I relax into my seat. Whatever happens here won’t give anyone nightmares, least of all him. “Accounts? Like money? Looking for a loan?”
The man doesn’t move. “Did your mother mention it?”
“A loan? From me? She worked at the Archive. She probably made more than you.”
His eyebrow lifts. A pale bow over shallow sockets, the perfect, unstated, wanna bet? But his voice remains neutral. “Tell me about the Accounting.”
“I think it has to do with numbers, but you know, I dropped out of school.”
He smiles. A twisted snake of a thing that bites my gut. The hairs on my neck try to scramble for safety, but safety isn’t what this is about.
“Ms. Franks,” he says, moderate, relaxed. “I am certain I don’t need to remind you of the severity of your situation.”
I smile right back. “That assumes the situation trumps the people involved. ‘Beware no one more than yourself, for we carry our worst enemies within.’”
Yonni always hated it when I quoted Gilken at her.
The suit doesn’t even blink. “You’re saying you are your own worst enemy, Ms. Franks?”<
br />
“I’m saying I’m scarier than you.”
He doesn’t move a muscle—the patient, professional Adult.
Until his mouth opens, and his voice dips into I-will-skin-you territory. “I very much doubt it.”
This is almost fun. “I don’t.”
He leans forward at speed, his presence a near physical weight. I want to hunch over, curl up, slam a dozen doors between me and him.
I set my jaw and don’t.
“There are other methods to ensure cooperation,” he says.
And likely none of them are quick. This is not a man who gets nightmares.
What the hell am I doing?
I cross my arms. “Mom took off when I was eight.” True. “She only walked into my life a month back.” Also true, for a given value of truth. “What do you think I know?”
The room seems to shift with each word. The question was stupid, but the truth is a disaster. He owns the field now. It’s in his eyes, in the prickled bite under my skin.
“Why don’t we do a mind map and find out?” he says.
My jaw drops.
Mind maps involve steel chairs and wires and jacking with one’s head. Long needles, maybe drills. It was all over the newsfeeds last year, the debate over continued experimentation—if the minimal-at-best information garnered was worth leaving the subject a drooling puppet. The universal consensus was no.
“It’s illegal,” I say.
“It’s regulated,” he counters. “I’ll have the room set up in an hour.”
A room. I mouth the word, roll the o’s on my tongue. They squiggle and bounce and solve everything. I laugh, rocking my chair back on its legs.
Drooling puppet. Not my first choice, but good as any.
I lean forward, slam my palms on the table, and mirror his dead-eyed stare. “Okay, then. Map me.”
His eyes flash. Shock? Anger? Less than a second and more than enough. He wants something, which means he has something to lose.
I don’t.
Match, set, game.
He rises without a word. Steps to the wall, does the palm bit, and slips through.
I stretch and lock my hands behind my head.
I won’t even have to do anything. They’ll take care of it all for me. No one will have to find the body and mop me up. No one will see me and think Mom.
“Ms. Franks?” My earlier escort appears. “If you would follow me.”
I hop up and march.
Her steps are brisk but less demanding than before. She doesn’t take my arm or match my pace or wait for me. She scans her palm at the end of the hall, and the door opens to . . . the lobby? Big desk, bored sentry, mirror self-propagating eternities.
“So the mapping’s in another facility?” I ask.
The woman doesn’t slow down. She glides across the mirrors and opens the skinny door beside the revolving one. She waits, expressionless, as I step through.
“Where to?” I ask.
“Your choice, Ms. Franks,” she says and shuts the door.
They were supposed to map me.
I push out onto the rooftop of the Gilken Museum with enough force that the door rebounds off the wall. No one’s bothered to change the entry codes yet, and if they had I’d pop the locks. The museum isn’t highly secure or populated midmorning or even in general. No one saw me slip in. No one was around. No one is ever around. I used to borrow one of the inventory digislates with general network access, then slip up here to research. It started with Yonni’s meds, finding her new ones, then after—
After I just wanted off-planet. The scholarship would have paid for everything. I’d be somewhere else, someone else.
Guess I did manage to pull that last one off. I’m the hack-bomber’s daughter. Dreams do come true.
I kick off my shoes and start across the roof.
“You again,” someone says.
I slam to a halt, fists clenched and eyes tight.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
But no, there he is—that same power technician, barrel arms jammed deep in the innards of an open fuse box. Sweat slicked, sun drenched, and glaring my death.
Here he was, just trying to work, and now he has to deal with my sorry self.
He pulls his hands free. “What the hell are you—?”
I turn right back around and walk out.
I walk home barefoot. Again. As if I have endless shoes to strew about.
My heels hurt. The pavement is hot and dusty, and every time I curl my toes something catches in the crease. Rocks, old wrappers, glass.
I could have been halfway to crazy by now, tied to a chair with a needle in my brain. It wouldn’t hurt. They’d numb me from the inside out, and I’d wake up different.
Or not at all.
Mom worked with the Archive’s mind mapping research division for a stretch, before switching to scent mapping instead. She explained it once, over coffee. How scents could be used to trigger reactions in people or objects on a fundamental level, and how the effect could be directed and magnified with the help of an implanted receptor. She talked for an hour while the coffee got cold and people wandered in and out of the café without sparing us a glance. A month ago, she was an Archivest and I was a tour guide, and everyone could care less. I watched them instead of her.
Until Mom cut herself off midsentence. Just say it.
Say what? I asked.
That you hate me.
I took my mug with both hands to keep them still. I’d have to know you to hate you, I said.
A long, long silence.
I can fix that, she said.
I thought she meant she was going to stick around long enough for me to get to know her. Stupid.
The midday sun bakes the city gold before South Central finally bleeds into West 1st and I’m almost home.
“I’m telling you, Ricky,” screams a distant, Dee-like voice, “you better damn well open this door!”
No. Oh no. Dad can’t have answered the visitor intercom. He couldn’t be that stupid.
I sprint the rest of the block and swing left onto my street.
Dee stands at the entrance to my tower, lips pressed to the intercom box beside the keypass scanner, her finger stiff on the button. “What the hell are you doing in my apartment?”
“Kit’s apartment,” Dad responds through the scratchy speaker. “And I’m visiting my daughter.”
Yep. Dad is definitely that stupid.
My legs fold and I land on my butt on the curb. My feet feel every hour I’ve walked, and one of my toes trickles blood.
Four floors up, a woman with a hair-frizzed halo sticks her head out a window. “God dammit, leave the man alone,” she calls. “He wants to visit his kid, let him visit his kid.”
“Thank you,” says Dad. “Finally.”
Dee backs up to yell at the stranger. “You mean the kid he ditched when she was seven?”
“Nine!” Dad blares righteous indignation. “Millie was gone, and I was going to come back. I was on a job.”
“Oh, really? You mean one with two legs and tits?”
Two more windows shoot up on levels one and three. Mrs. Divs pops her wrinkled head out of the lowest one. “You do not talk like that outside my front door, young missy. You get off my steps or I’m calling the Enactors.”
Great. There goes my suite.
“Excuse me, we’re having a private conversation,” Dee snaps.
A young guy hangs out of the window higher up. “Then maybe you should have it where we all can’t hear you.”
“And maybe you should get your big fat—”
“Okay,” I yell, hauling myself to my feet. “Okay, show’s over. Everybody back up.”
Mrs. Divs swings her shaky finger at me. “Kit?”
“Kit?” e
choes Dad from the speakers. “Dee’s here! Did you see—”
“Where the hell have you been?” Dee asks.
“What’s it matter?” I crest the steps and press the intercom button. “Shut up, Dad.”
“You bet it matters,” Dee says. “Here you are, prancing around while Greg—”
“Kit?” Mrs. Divs asks, louder.
“Go on back inside, Mrs. Divs,” I call, leaning past Dee’s shoulder. “I’ve got this.”
Big mistake. Dee grabs my shirt and shoves me, hard, into the wall. My head bounces—cracks?—and the world blurs.
Dee shakes me in the recoil until the world bleeds color. “Greg’s facing lockdown, and you let Ricky in? Him?”
“Dammit, Dee.” I try to push her off, but there’s thunder in my brain. “Greg’s always facing lockdown.”
“You unhand her!” Mrs. Divs shouts. “You unhand her right now!”
“It’s okay, Mrs. Divs,” I say. “Just go back inside.”
“You call this okay?” Dee rears and backhands me. My cheek grates between my teeth. “If I lose Greg because of you, I swear to God—”
Her hand swoops for a second strike, then stops midair. I can read the lines in her palm. They say she’s going to hit me.
Except she doesn’t. Someone’s grabbed her wrist. A larger hand, a guy’s hand. The one from upstairs?
“Here’s a bet for you.” He has a cheerful voice, not loud or angry. He maneuvers Dee back without exactly pushing, and plants himself firmly between her and me. Lots of dark hair, bare shoulders, and neck. “How long will you last when your opponent fights back?”
Dee doesn’t miss a beat, her words for me alone. “Taking after Mom, are we? Got yourself a new toy?”
“Don’t.” I slide past the guy and almost fall over. Almost. “Don’t even.”
Mrs. Divs appears in the doorway, waving her cane like a damn laserblade. “Be gone, wretch! If you think I tolerate this kind of behavior on my doorstep—”
Dee reaches to yank it from her hand, but I’m there first and all she gets is my hair. I plant myself in the doorway.