by Kyle Harris
Libby nodded.
“And then it hits. You feel the edge, and you cross it, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Your legs shake. Your eyes turn back into your skull. Your heart is racing out of control. And you hope it lasts forever this time. It never does, but you still hope it. Then it passes, and everything’s pulsing.” Her finger absently followed the trail of hair from her belly button down to her crotch. “And it leaves you feeling good. Really good.”
“You claim you’re not good with words, but I could almost feel everything you said.” Libby sighed. “I only wish you could show me.”
“Once we figure out what kind of glitch you got, then you better hold the fuck on.”
Libby’s smile was warm and hopeful. She scratched the back of her neck once more.
“What’s the matter with you?” asked Chaz.
Libby looked at her, eyebrows raised in an expression of inquiry.
“The neck. You keep scratching at it.”
“Oh. It’s only my scar. Normally I never feel it, but sometimes it itches and just won’t quit. Like right now.” She smiled again. “I swear it’s not lice.”
“You swear? Are you even allowed to say that?”
“I promise it’s not lice. You want to see?”
Chaz smirked. “Show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”
Libby turned her head away and lifted a clump of hair. Running down the nape of her neck was a faint pink line, about three centimeters long. The scar was old and probably as healed as it would ever get.
“I was younger,” she said, “and I fell down and cut myself open. That’s what my mom says. It was years ago. She had to take me to the emergency room for stitches, but I don’t remember it.”
Chaz leaned in for a closer look. She was no virgin to scars. She had been forming her own collection of them since the pre-tits era. On her body were a lot of references as to what qualified as a scar. Libby’s was damn interesting. Chaz had seen a few that were perfectly straight like that, but they weren’t from falling down and slicing yourself open.
Libby’s scar wasn’t an injury; it was a fucking incision mark.
“You see it? It can be hard to find without light.”
Chaz hesitated. The gears of suspicion were starting to crank. “You got that when you fell? You’re sure?”
“My mother can still recount the accident.”
“What about your dad?”
“He wasn’t there when the fall happened, but he came to the hospital. He told me the doctors were more worried about a possible infection than the injury itself. But God was present for the surgery, because nothing went wrong.” She turned, letting her hair drop. “My other girlfriends never asked me questions about it.”
“It’s a kick-ass scar.” And a total fucking cover-up. Nothing could make a straight cut like that except a surgical laser. Or a really steady scalpel. But Chaz knew that more questions would only draw more suspicion and kill what was left of the mood. She stored the scar into a mental folder for later.
Libby rubbed noses with Chaz before snatching a brief kiss. She stared for a while. Just stared. Then: “We were all designed with equal care, but when I look at you, I sense something more meticulous. Like you’re someone who received more of God’s craftsmanship.” Her laugh was almost a little girl’s giggle. “I can be silly. You don’t have to say it.”
“Is that how you picture God?” asked Chaz, genuinely curious. “Like a dollmaker?”
“No,” said Libby, but she didn’t say it right away. “A dollmaker only has two hands.” She bit her lip. “Knowing God’s form is not something that Christianity or any religion can teach, and I don’t think we are meant to know. But sometimes I believe He walks around us. He observes.”
“Like someone in a zoo?”
“Sort of. But there are no cages, and He walks among the animals. But the animals don’t understand He is God. A tiger looks at Him and sees only a tiger. A monkey sees only a monkey. A turtle sees a turtle. You understand?”
“And a person sees a person.”
Libby nodded. “Exactly. He is a reflection of what looks upon Him.” One of her hands found its way to Chaz’s thigh, laid there on the titanium alloy just above the knee. It was intimate but not erotic; that chance had passed. “I don’t intend to bore you with more childhood stories, but this was also when I was young. Maybe six, seven. My family and I were at a market. I remember there were so many people, like a sea of them. And then I lost sight of my parents. I cried and kept crying. I thought if I cried loud enough they would hear me, and they would come find me.
“Then there’s a man by my side. I don’t remember his face—I don’t think I looked up to see it. All of a sudden I feel relaxed, and I stop crying. He points ahead of where we’re standing. There are so many people, but the crowd splits right down the middle. Splits, like it was all a play and that was part of the script. And at the end of this pathway are my parents.”
Chaz asked the obvious: “God?”
“No, I don’t think it was. Or not directly. But that’s how I think God interacts with us. He is the stranger we see with the face we can’t remember. He gives us a direction when we’re lost, He gives us courage when all we feel is fear.” Their eyes met. “He leads us where we’re supposed to go.”
Chaz thought about what Okocha had told her, that religion was just an adaptation of hope. Libby hoped there was someone looking out for her. That’s all. It might be childish, but it sure as fuck wasn’t insanity. Far, far from it.
With the possibility of sex caught in a tailspin—already a fiery wreck, more like—Libby got up to fix a snack. She slipped on a T-shirt, nothing else, and Chaz’s eyes tracked her across the room and out. She felt a tinge of regret for not bringing her dick along. The native plumbing down there worked fine, but sometimes it just felt more in pitch with whatever was brewing in her loins to grab and stroke something. Genetic muscle memory when beholding a prospective mate.
She tugged on her underwear and grabbed her tasker. All the bits and pieces of the Kennedy job had been saved with a shortcut; one click brought her back to SNIFF_OUT! and the overview of the apartment layout with the target zones. Unfortunately, there was a higher chance that Christianity would proclaim Jesus Christ as a bottom bitch than of Libby ever leaving Chaz alone in the apartment. Which meant treasure hunting was going to be dodgy.
One of the red circles was just down the hall—the master bedroom, according to the blueprint. She compared the location of it to a screenshot from a few weeks back when the map had first been generated. The live zone perfectly overlapped with an original. A desk.
SNIFF_OUT! was also still tracking UNKNOWN DEVICE. Only now the trace wasn’t putting it in Libby’s bedroom but somewhere on the other side of the apartment. Chaz pinged it a few times, but nothing returned except the network address. The signal was weak too, flirting around -81 and -82 decibels. Her guess was that SNIFF_OUT! had caught a whiff of something on the floor above or below. Buildings like the Platinum Regal usually came with robust insulation—a luxury catered to people who might carry sensitive information, like wealthy CEOs—but it wasn’t impossible for signals to slip through the cracks.
Her mind’s eye saw that blinking cursor again. She left the tracking on for now.
Chaz crossed the room. She heard Libby moving around in the kitchen. Back at her apartment that might have been four or five steps away; here it was a fucking trek. It still wasn’t ideal, but being a looker had taught her to never wait for the perfect moment. Those didn’t exist.
Now? Now.
She fetched a Renell camera out of her coat. Then she hurried down the hallway, keeping her footfalls as soft as possible—then shuffling after she heard the loud echoes of her metal feet. It made her think of ice skating but without the part where she busted ass.
Into the master bedroom. No time for sightseeing; she laid her eyes on the desk straight ahead. Chinese TCL model—easily distinguishable by the small power
-supply module tucked inside the right support plane. Eliminating the possibility of wireless intrusion meant there was only one way to access the desk’s drive.
She looked up. The Pruitt homestead had high ceilings, and the same was true in the bedrooms. Definitely an advantage. Even better, there was a smoke detector almost right over where the desk was. The plan was simple: plop the camera up there next to the smoke detector, record Fuckturd typing in the password, and hope no biometrics were involved.
If the right stars aligned, it might work.
Except how the fuck was she going to reach that high? Even using a chair, she needed her hand to stretch another meter or so. Jump? No, not going to happen—she foresaw about a million fucking ways the chair’s plastic wheels could turn that into a nasty spill. On a stone floor too.
No time to be resourceful. Chaz positioned herself under the smoke detector and lined up the toss. It just had to be good enough. No more than that.
The first attempt was spot on, but the adhesive base of the Renell camera was on the wrong side. She caught it and immediately chucked it again. It banged off the smoke detector.
“Chaz?” Libby’s voice. It came from her bedroom. “Where are you?”
Shit, shit, shit! Chaz shut her eyes and focused. Her heart would be racing less if she were walking through a patch of land mines. Okay, God, if you’re really real and you hate this fucking scumbag as much as I do, just give me a little assistance. Come on, Your Heavenly Greatness.
She lined up the target. Swung the arm. Released.
The camera made contact. And stayed.
Chaz silently fist-pumped her success. Now to leave Pruitt’s wank station alone and come up with an excuse.
Except something in her periphery caught her eye, and she stopped to look. Hanging on the wall next to her were six crosses—the crucifying sort—all lined up in a row. One would have made sense—Christians’ huge boner for the crucifix could be considered religious necrophilia. But six? Why six? And they were simply made: two little boards glued perpendicularly. They were well below the bar for Jesus Christ memorabilia in a multimillion-dollar apartment.
But Chaz didn’t flee yet. Because neither of those reasons—how many there were and their apparent cheap construction quality—explained what was so fucking creepy about them. It was just a vibe. Out on the streets, she thought she had a pretty reliable mental compass when it came to choosing between investigating or walking away.
Here, the needle was pegged on the former.
She went over to the first cross in the lineup and lifted it off the nail. Nothing special on the front. She turned it over. On the back of the horizontal board was an engraving. A year.
0019.
She returned the cross to the nail and picked up the second one. On the back: 0020.
Returned it to the nail. Then the third: 0022.
The rest: 0023, 0024, 0026.
Nothing more recent than twenty years ago. The only thing that came to mind was dead family members. Chaz had seen photos of Earth graveyards, the burial sites bearing crosses like these. Maybe it was something like that. A commemoration thing. But six croakers in seven years? That was some stinky luck. And why were there no names?
Libby appeared in the doorway. “Did you get lost?” she asked. In her hand was a small platter of cheese and crackers.
“There were secret rooms I hadn’t explored yet,” said Chaz. First response that came to mind. She pretended to be disinterested in the crosses and instead picked up a framed photo to the right. It was a recent snap of Libby from the top of a skyscraper. Some kind of observation deck. Behind her, the sea stretched until it was sky. “Hottie alert.”
“Chaz.”
She looked at Libby’s face. “What? You’re pretty hot.” Then down. “But not as hot as you in that T-shirt.”
“Chaz. You’re holding a picture of my mother.”
Chaz stared at the photo again, the recognition of Libby’s words slowly sinking in. “Oh.” She placed it back on the nail and rubbed her hands on her underwear as if to wipe them clean. Awkward silence. Then: “Shit.”
“You’re not my first girlfriend to see a resemblance,” said Libby.
“Resemblance? Are you sure you two aren’t twins?”
Libby laughed. “And how would that be possible?”
Chaz shrugged. Libby had a point. Or, what if it was cryogenic freezing? That could explain the disparity in ages. Libby had been kept as an icicle for thirty years. When she was thawed, everyone thought she was the Pruitts’ daughter. When actually Juliet was going to transplant her brain into her younger twin sister and live longer. Fucking genius.
Or they just looked a lot alike. Chaz liked her version of the story better, though. More twists.
“My mother usually returns around three,” said Libby. “What time do you have?”
Chaz checked the time on her tasker. “Just after two.”
“Let’s go back to my room. I’ll share.” She started walking away.
Chaz took a step and then stopped, still looking at her tasker. One of the red circles had moved—wrong; it was still moving. It leapfrogged down the hallway every time the screen refreshed.
Libby’s tasker? Chaz hadn’t seen her holding it.
She navigated over to the side menu and touched the little box for SAMSUNG GLYDER v2.0132. The window of the blueprint shifted over to Libby’s bedroom, where SNIFF_OUT! claimed the tasker was currently located. It was a different circle.
Whatever was moving wasn’t the tasker.
That blinking cursor in Chaz’s head began to throb again.
She selected the option to tag the devices with their network names on the graphical output. The mystery item moving down the hallway—now turning into Libby’s bedroom—was UNKNOWN DEVICE.
The fucking scar.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Chaz, what is it?”
“I don’t know.” True enough.
Thermal imaging showed there was a raisin-sized cool spot in Libby’s neck. Chaz tinkered with the contrast slider and infrared color schemes, but she couldn’t pull up any more detail of whatever it was. Consumer-grade taskers weren’t exactly the go-to tools for high-resolution thermography. But it was colder by a few degrees.
There was something in there, sure as hair on a nutsack.
And it was spitting out a wireless signal, which meant it could be accessed. Chaz shopped through menus in SNIFF_OUT! until she found something that might help: product libraries. The current version of the program came preloaded with a ten-year database of consumer electronics. One of the add-on bundles installed a more inclusive device library spanning back fifty years. It might help identify whatever the fuck this was.
She touched the link and authorized the purchase. While the download ran in the background, she showed Libby a screenshot of the thermal and explained the visible cold spot.
“Why would something be implanted in my neck?” Libby hadn’t reached hysteria yet, but it was in her headlights. “Why would my parents keep me in the dark about this?”
“Libby, I really don’t know.” Chaz kept her voice calm, controlled. Libby had every reason to freak out, but it would only make this worse. “It doesn’t hurt, does it?”
“No.” Libby scratched her neck again. “I don’t feel anything, besides when it itches. If you hadn’t told me, I would never have known.” She turned to look at Chaz. “You think the itching is related?”
Another question Chaz had no answer for. She shrugged.
“How did you even know to look inside my neck?”
Because I was looking for your dad’s desk, so I could hack it. Yeah, right. “I was gonna check my email. When I looked for your network, this baby popped up.”
“Wait. That thing inside my neck has a wireless signal?” Her eyes grew huge.
“Uh-huh. But before you start dropping your panties, you should know that you need some serious upgrades. Because it would take you decades to store all your ba
llerina photos on that thing.”
Libby didn’t laugh. Or smile. Well, it had been worth a shot.
Her eyebrows eventually dropped from the stratosphere. “It’s like a computer chip, you think?”
“Or some kind of drive.”
“A computer drive?”
Chaz nodded.
Wrinkles appeared on Libby’s forehead as she thought hard. “Chaz, if it’s like a computer, could you see what’s in it? Could you—I don’t know how these things work, but could you connect to it?”
“I think so.”
Deciding on how to break the news to Libby had eaten up a lot of time, and it was fast creeping toward three o’clock. Libby knew it too. They were both back in their clothes, Chaz ready to bolt for the front door if the alert came through.
While monitoring the download progress, Chaz felt Libby squeeze her hand.
“I am so grateful for everything you’re doing, Chaz. And everything you have done.” Her voice was surprisingly steady now, if not a little melancholic. “I know we’re so very different. But I see why God guided you into my life, or guided me into yours. You’re saving me.”
Chaz said, “That thing in your neck isn’t a bomb, Libby. You don’t have to worry. Dr. Chaz says you’re gonna pull through just fine.”
That got a smile. Score. “I didn’t mean it was death you were saving me from,” she said. “I meant you are showing me the proper way. At the risk of sounding a little cliché—again—all of our lives are paths. The direction we choose is what we think is best.” Her hand squeezed harder. “But sometimes we must not go where we believe the signs point. Sometimes the right path is the most perilous.”
Is that the sound of a cocoon breaking open?
“I have blinded myself with compassion for my parents, because our parents are whom Christ instructs us to love. We must honor our fathers and mothers, we must never forsake them. If we do, we inherit a hatred in ourselves.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “But I have hallucinated something in my heart for them. And God is showing me this now by implanting me with a real love in its place.” Eyes wet and longing. “And that love is not for my parents.”