“I’ll be monitoring your progress in the next room.” He taps his temple. “But if you need anything, you know how to reach me.”
I dart down a tight alleyway somewhere in the southeast quadrant of the Terrestrial District, a cold sweat running down my back.
The simulation’s so good it almost hurts. On the air, I can taste the slight tang of trash. There’s too much of it produced down here for the cleaning bots to keep pace, and it doesn’t help that they’re usually cast-offs from the upper levels.
The low light’s perfectly rendered as well. When the simulation started out in front of a dirtside train station, I didn’t think. I simply reacted, switching on my ocular boost’s night amplification filter to make it easier to navigate the tight streets. The simulation’s AI congratulated me for that move since the NAmp filter’s apparently a new mod for most recruits. Growing up in the lower levels, I’ve been the proud owner of one for years, for what good it’s done me.
All my senses tell me I’m back in the Terrestrial District, but I cling to the stubborn voice in the back of my head reassuring me it’s just a very sophisticated simulation. No need to flinch at every shadowed doorway or tense up at each intersection. I tell myself nothing down here can hurt me, not really, as I follow my map, closing in on the location for the data drop.
The ambush, when it comes, takes me by surprise. Not because I wasn’t expecting one – there was bound to be one in the scenario somewhere – but because it’s so brazen. Two men stumble out of a bar as I go past. As soon as I dismiss them as your typical dirtside degenerates more interested in my breasts than my blood, the first one tackles me to the ground, punching the air out of my lungs.
The thug yelps as my shirt zaps him, momentarily shocking my NAmp filter. Somehow, my fist manages to connect with his solar plexus. I swing my leg up and around, twisting the rest of my body out from underneath him – a handy move I picked up from the arcade.
I get to my feet just in time for his partner to take a swing at me. I dance away, minimizing the hurt he intended, and grab his wrist before he can pull back. I give his overextended arm a ruthless twist, then take off running, his pained cry chasing my steps.
We’re not supposed to be drawn into altercations if we can possibly avoid it. The risk of failure’s too high. Evasive maneuvers it is. As I take the next turn down a twisting alley, my NAmp filter flickers, then goes dead, and no amount of eyecast commands can reset it. Other functions are hashed too. Déjà vu so sickeningly fresh hits me with maglev speed as darkness bleeds into my vision, blurring with memories better left buried.
Steps tramp closer. This AI doesn’t like downtime. I back myself deeper into the alley, hating the effortless way my mind fills in the gaps. It was the rear of a half-empty mod parlor, not a rowdy bar four years ago, though the dumpster and its position are roughly the same. This time it’s full of rotten food and broken glass, not stinking bags of medical waste.
That doesn’t matter, though, as I find myself retracing my steps, retreating at a half-crouch, tears stinging my eyes, my breath coming in hiccupping gasps. Darting behind the dumpster, I tuck into myself and breathe slowly through my mouth, mentally willing the thugs to pass by.
I close my eyes, but my ocular interface is gone. A whimper escapes me, breaking the memory’s hold long enough to hear footfalls echo off concrete. A muttered curse. Then, eventually, silence. But I know silences can lie.
History won’t repeat itself. I won’t let it. I won’t–
||| Simulation complete. |||
The dark alley fades, replaced by boring rec suite walls. My heart’s still struggling in my chest when Tahir breezes into the room. “How did it go?”
I can only manage a lopsided shrug, feeble like a stroke patient’s. I keep my gaze on the ceiling, determined not to see the disappointment on his face when he realizes just how royally I screwed up in the simulation. They’re going to send me back there. To the Terrestrial District.
I should’ve known I couldn’t escape it forever.
My headache redoubles in intensity as he goes to the console screen and scrolls through the simulation readouts. Then he grunts, breaking the painful silence. “Most recruits run and get caught when they start to flag. You chose a good tactical position and didn’t get spooked as you waited them out, giving the backup team time to intervene,” he says over his shoulder. “That’s very good.”
I blink back a sudden wave of vertigo. Is that what he thinks happened? I was locked into my own simulation with a completely different set of parameters. I’m still breathing through my mouth to avoid the rotten meat smell of medical waste. I can still hear the drip of a water pipe somewhere behind me. Feel the bruising grip on my wrists as I was pulled out from behind that stinking dumpster.
Tahir gives me an apprising look. “Those kinds of instincts don’t come easy.”
No. They certainly don’t.
I don’t know what’s more upsetting. That I froze up, or that Tahir, through some twist of fate, views my performance as a success. My shame compounds, but I dare not say anything.
He turns back to the readouts and frowns. “But your emotional readings are rather…” He looks at me, questions pressing at the edges of our connection as though he’s trying to see past the restrictions keeping him at bay.
Mentally, I’m still in that alley, curled in on myself with stale beer and grease clinging to my nostrils. But he needs an answer, one that will get him off my back. I shrug, more convincingly this time, I hope. “Not a big fan of the Terrestrial District, simulated or otherwise.”
“I see.” He sets the screen down. “If you want a break before we move on–”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“Excellent. I’ve reserved the training room for the afternoon.” He’s already headed for the hallway.
I wrestle out of the rec suite harness and fall to my knees. Light-headed, sick to my stomach, and full of self-loathing. I’ve never had an arcade hangover like this. At least Tahir didn’t see. I get to my feet and stumble after him like a drunken sleepwalker.
The rest of the day passes in a blur. It feels like I’ve just fallen asleep when my implant wakes me up the following morning. I lay there for a moment wishing I didn’t have to meet Tahir and start the process all over again. My head still hurts, my body aches all over, and if so much wasn’t riding on me keeping Aventine happy with my progress, I’d seriously consider throwing in the towel, even though I’ve never quit anything in my life.
When I finally go downstairs I wonder if I’m hallucinating when Tahir tells me, “No modules today.” He leads me to the training room where a young woman, maybe mid-twenties, with a kind face and copper, chin-length hair, waits for us. “This is K-29. She’ll be your sparring partner,” Tahir says. To K, “It’s M’s third full-length day.”
Her eyes widen. “Oh, I see.” She gives me a smile. “Welcome to Aventine. It’ll be nice to have another girl around.”
It’s a struggle to smile back. “Thanks. Wait. Sparring? I’m really not up for–”
“We want to ensure our couriers have the tools to protect themselves,” Tahir says.
“Can’t you just access my old arcade profile? I’ve logged plenty of…” A tremor runs through my body. I mentally scream at it to hang on a little bit longer. Any weakness Aventine will use against me.
Tahir sounds like he’s underwater as he speaks. “Impressive as that may be, all the training in the world can’t compare to the real thing. Now–”
K puts her hands on her hips. “Sorry, but I’m out. She’s so far gone, she doesn’t even realize she’s bleeding,” she says with a nod in my direction. Tahir gives her a look I can’t decipher. K ignores him and catches my eye. “Come find me when the curdle’s over.”
What is she talking about? I check over myself for cuts, then see the drops of red pattering to the floor below. My hand finds my nose. Warm wetness that glistens red on my fingers. I’m bleeding. A lot. Just like bef
ore. I can’t…
Oh no.
The room shifts, and everything fades away.
Chapter Seven
“M.”
“Mmm.” Skimming the surface of sleep, I clutch at fragments of a half-remembered dream. Rik was there, only–
“M, wake up.” I throw up my arms at Tahir’s voice, needle-sharp in my ear, desperate to call back the dream, but it recedes until only a vague sense of loss remains. “Hold her down,” Tahir says to… someone. “M, open your eyes. Come on. Focus.”
I turn away from his voice. “Leave me alone.”
“Emery, please.”
At the slight catch in his voice, something mentally clicks into place, and I stop fighting him. Squinting, I can just make out Tahir looming over me. Past him, instead of the walls of the training room, or those of my Aventine-issued quarters, stainless steel paneling and air scented with antiseptic surround me. “Where am I?”
“The med clinic. How do you feel?”
My body twinges at his words. “Shitty.”
“Do you know why?”
I shake my head, but that only makes the clamp around my skull squeeze tighter.
He gives me a patient smile. “Remember why you’re here.”
“Seriously? Another lesson? Just fix me already.”
“Your blood. You’re rejecting the encoded blood that was injected into your body three days ago.”
I hear the words, but it takes a while for my mind to make sense of them as I struggle against sleep’s grasping fingers. “The booster shot? You knew this would happen?” I should be angry, but I’m too exhausted to muster up the energy.
“That’s right,” he says, calmly. “What you’re feeling right now is what couriers call ‘the curdle.’ It’s important to experience it yourself so you’ll recognize the symptoms.” My implant pings with an incoming message from Tahir. It might as well be an air horn. “I’ve sent you a more technical explanation for reference when you’re feeling better.”
I groan. “Great. More homework.”
“M, listen. Three days. Three days is all you have before you have to get your blood scrubbed.” Removing all trace of data from my bloodstream.
Dimly, I register someone changing out the port on my arm. “Wait. What happens if I don’t?”
He pats my hand. “We’ll get you fixed up and talk later.”
At some point, they bring me back to my apartment. I sit up in bed gingerly, keeping my eyes shut until I’m certain there’s no more blood oozing out of my body. After fumbling about in the bathroom, I discover Tahir, sitting trance-like on the couch, communing with his implant. How long has he been here?
He blinks, slowly coming back to himself. “Feeling better?” Nodding, I take a seat on the opposite side of the room. “You faint at the sight of blood?” An amused smile tugs up the corner of his mouth.
I cross my arms. “It’s not funny.”
“On the contrary, M. I’ve been doing this a long time. Never seen someone with such a… strong reaction.”
“Leave it alone, OK?”
At my sharp tone, his brows raise. “Does this have anything to do with your history in the Terrestrial District?”
“Why don’t you tell me? You were Harding’s right-hand man at recruitment. You already know everything.”
He frowns, lines creasing his forehead. “Not this.”
No, I guess he doesn’t. I glare at the wallscreen opposite. Haven’t had a chance to purge the Aventine logo yet. It stares back at me, cold and unyielding.
“Emery?”
At his words, I can’t stop my hand from going to the delicate skin at my throat. It’s impossible to feel the threadlike scar there through my gloves. But all I have to do is close my eyes to recall the thick, coppery, somnolent sensation of my lifeblood siphoning out of my body.
>>I was attacked on my way home from school, senior year.>> Verbalizing what happened gives it too much power, so I stick to synching instead. >>Nearly bled out in an alley in the Terrestrial District.>>
<
>>Wasn’t something we wanted advertised. I fought back, managed to protect myself long enough for help to arrive.>>
Tahir clamps down on his reaction, but I catch bits and pieces of it – his horror, his sympathy, and a sudden surge of anger. <
>>No. All I know is he wanted my implant. In the struggle, he nicked my carotid by accident and ran off.>>
He inhales sharply beside me. <
>>No. With each one, I kept hoping… But it turns out there are a lot more scumbags in the Terrestrial District than I thought.>> And the police weren’t terribly interested in putting a stop to them, not with their ballooning caseloads and general disdain for anything remotely related to Disconnects.
Our connection churns as he processes everything. “You have my apologies for not better preparing you for today’s scenario,” he says with painful formality.
Intellectually, I know I got off easy when too many before me haven’t. It was just a scrapper, not an even more dangerous kind of predator. But there’re always moments, ones that often creep up on me, where I’m back in that alley, my muscles screaming, my mind in shock.
“I’ve worked hard to not let that day define me,” I say, slowly. Same for all the people I saved from other scrappers over the years. That sustained me even when my search for the man who attacked me kept coming up empty.
“I know. That’s why you’re here. We take people with potential and make them strong, stealthy, strategic. Prepared to face anything. I’m certain you’ll find a way to channel that day into your work for Aventine. You can’t rewrite history, but you can rewrite your reactions to, shall we say, less-than-agreeable stimuli.”
True. I thought if I learned everything I could to protect myself, I’d never find myself in a situation like that again – or if I did, I’d know how to get myself out of it with better results. Endless arcade sessions helped me rebuild confidence in myself, but it wasn’t enough. I vowed to hunt my attacker down, just as he had me. I shake my head. “I wanted revenge. I wasn’t thinking about any of this.”
Tahir nods slowly. “Understandable. But I have to ask, why risk your future on one degenerate scrapper?”
Any advantage I gained from graduating from the College of New Worth would be wiped out by a criminal complaint. But I convinced myself the risks didn’t matter. “Because he needed to be caught.”
That he’s still out there somewhere, Tahir thankfully doesn’t point out. Instead he leans forward. “I promise you’ll have more notice for any training scenarios that might be uncomfortable for you. But believe it or not, your experience just makes our job easier. You already have the situational awareness to monitor your surroundings. Not everyone comes to us with that healthy distrust of their environment already built in.”
Tahir sounds so weirdly pleased I guess things like this are features, not bugs, as far as Aventine’s concerned.
I flop back into the chair, running my hands along the armrests as Tahir watches on. “What about the curdle?” I finally ask, desperate to change the subject. “Didn’t you say the whole reason you want people like me is because we’re supposed to be immune to the hemocryption process?” If that’s true, we shouldn’t present any rejection symptoms.
“You’re certainly immune. However, the curdle’s something Aventine adds in as a failsafe. The encoded data has a finite lifespan, and as it degrades, a toxin builds up in the courier’s bloodstream. Not only does it encourage swift and orderly transactions, but it gives our clients assurances that their data’s protected at every stage of the process.”
“Can the curdle kill me?”
�
�Not right away, but the side effects are incapacitating, as you’ve already experienced.” No shit. “Basically it’s to ensure couriers stay on task and stay loyal. In the event of failure, if they’re abducted by an opposing force or are otherwise prevented from doing their job, the curdle helps neutralize them.”
Every time I think I’m starting to understand how things work around here, Aventine upends my expectations. “All this was conveniently left out of training.”
Tahir spreads his hands helplessly. “A necessary evil, I’m afraid. It’s important you understand the limits to your ability so you can manage them responsibly.” He gives me an approving look. “You should feel proud. Most recruits are a mess at the end of day two. Day three, and you could still function.”
“Up to a point.”
“Up to a point,” he agrees, tenting his fingers.
“You should’ve told me.”
“Standard procedure not to.”
“I’m really starting to hate how things are done around here.” I back off on my implant’s emotional filter momentarily and enjoy Tahir’s slight wince. “Intensely.”
He gets to his feet. “Well, the good news is the rest of your training’s fairly straightforward from here on out. No more tricks, I promise.”
He means it, and I give him a slight nod. “I’ll hold you to that.”
“I’m sure you will.” A disturbing gleam lights up his eyes as he sets a briefcase onto the coffee table. “Now, how about a lesson in scrubbing your own blood?”
My stomach lurches at the remembrance of all that red leaking out of my nose like a faucet. “You’re kidding.”
“We have to break you of your squeamishness some time,” he says with a wag of his index finger. “And for you, the sooner the better.”
He displays the contents of a scrubbing kit for my inspection: on one side of the divider, clear plastic tubing wound together, gauze, medical tape, and a medical cuff. The other side must be the scrubber unit – where my blood enters, the encoded blood is filtered out, and then the cleaned blood exits the other side so it can be pumped back into my body.
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