>
<
I smile, feeling slightly less alone despite the familiar surroundings. >>Hi back. Tell him he needs to annoy Tahir for me while I’m gone, all right? >>
<
If I sit here any longer, the Orangery’s heavy, perfumed air will make me drowsy. Can’t have that. My neck prickles as I get to my feet. Keeping my movements controlled and precise, I turn.
A young teen girl with no parental unit in sight is stationed along the path, holding up a digital placard that reads “Disconnects against the Dome.” In the background, there’s an image of a tree struck by lightning. She must’ve arrived in the time I’ve been sitting here, brazen enough to brave the upper Canopy by herself or groomed by her elders to make a political statement, given all the tensions lately.
Her gaze flicks toward me. No filter separates her from me. No data clogging her view, distracting her from her surroundings. No matter how skilled we get at using our implants, it’s never as seamless as we intend.
Brita co-wrote her first article for the NW Signal a few days back talking about how the Disconnects are pushing to make themselves more visible. Not just through protests and demonstrations, but by moving up though New Worth, entering spaces they’ve implicitly been denied before. They believe that the upper levels are too far removed from their concerns. By making people see the Disconnects firsthand, putting a real face to the problem, they hope to move the conversation forward. They can’t all be criminals or headcases who’ve had their implants revoked or religious nuts who abstain from all tech. Some are just mild-mannered teen girls looking for a better life.
And I know too well what that’s like.
After lunch the next day, that dead feeling in my stomach arrives right on time, heralding the start of the curdle. Abandoning my half-eaten gelato I get up from the cafe table, pleased to find my lightheadedness isn’t too devastating. At least not yet.
I fall in with the crowd and angle east, mentally willing the client to get their shit together so I can dump the data early and move on. A girl can hope.
I window-shop for hours until I can no longer stand looking at the items that don’t fit into my life as a courier. I follow that up with an exhibit of impressionist art at a museum. Then a stroll through the biopark, oohing and ahhing at the displays of native species that comprise a handful of rooftops in the southeastern sector of the Lower Canopy. I walk the concourses of New Worth for hours and hours until I’m exhausted. Finally the destination comes through on my second circuit through the Understory.
<
I roll my eyes. >>Why, Tahir, I’m shocked. You mean the client’s constant delays have messed up the delivery window?>>
<
>>Good. I’m ready to be done with this blood once and for all.>>
<
I walk past a cluster of offices full of bland, unhelpful names that provide little-to-no insight into what the companies actually do. This part of the Understory’s definitely on the more functional end of the spectrum, with hardly any plants to cheer up the storefronts and dreary apartment buildings. The slight pall that the sunlight simulators and mirrors can’t seem to diminish doesn’t help either.
But at least the offices of McKinley, Porter, and Santos show up right where they’re supposed to be, though I’d be surprised if the paint was dry on the door.
“I’m here for Ms Santos,” I say to an ancient receptionist, but I may as well be speaking to a robot for all the comprehension in his eyes.
A woman rushes into the room. She smoothes out her business slacks and beams a manufactured smile in my direction as she pings my implant. I can almost see the moment she relaxes when my signal matches the one she was told to watch for. “We have everything set up in the next room, Miss.”
“Oh, this just arrived as well.” The receptionist gestures to the nondescript briefcase I’ve come to know by heart. Must’ve come a few minutes before I did.
“Why didn’t you say so?” The woman’s face flashes with irritation before she gives me another forced smile. She takes the scrubbing kit from the receptionist and waves me toward the hall. “If you would follow me?”
A headache bubbles up behind my eyes. Let’s get this over with.
The scrubbing’s left me a bit twitchy. I feel like Humpty-Dumpty – not quite put back together again – as I return to headquarters. I can’t tell if it’s nerves or just the inevitable post-scrub malaise. Nausea, cramping, exhaustion all go with the territory. Less common are changes in blood pressure, resulting in the nosebleed that accompanied my very first curdle. Either way, it’s still unpleasant as I ride out the sensations.
Kat sends me a synch request. >>There’ll be a laserball tournament in the gym tonight,>> she says without preamble. >>You in?>>
I sigh. <
>>Oh, come on. Fleet’s been trash-talking all day. We gotta show him up.>> I can just see him strutting around the common areas to drum up interest in the team-building activities the handlers put on every couple of weeks.
<
>>We’re on the same team, silly. Dash, Bandit, you, me.>>
<
>>Well, now you know. Game’s at 7. See you soon!>> Then she’s gone, leaving a bemused smile on my face. She’s no replacement for Brita, but it’s good to have a friend at Aventine.
Crowds intensify the closer I get to Fountain Center. Angry chants float on the air. Way more people than implant signals mob the entrances to the city’s administrative buildings. Just my luck. Another demonstration with all the hallmarks of the rallies that have popped up over the lower city. But this time the Disconnects have come to the upper levels to air their grievances. They don’t want to wait until the time is right. Or turn over their fate to some lottery. They don’t care about issues of infrastructure and orderliness. They just want to get away from New Worth and the implant-based society that has made them obsolete.
This close to headquarters, with an atmosphere of uncertainty that can roil into violence at a moment’s notice, the demonstration’s not a place I want to get caught up in as courier or as a citizen who enjoys being connected. An air of electric expectation charges up the people in the vicinity, regardless of what they believe about Disconnects, Emergence, or the future of New Worth. A breathless sort of awareness of something bigger than me threatens to take over, but I push it back.
I still have a job to do.
Whirling around, I bite back the impulse to run. Talk about blood in the water. That’s the absolute worst thing to do in a situation like this. Showing I’m scared and drawing even more attention to myself and, by extension, Aventine.
I gather myself, my newly scrubbed blood pumping through my veins, as I stay on the edge of the crowds. I’ll have to use an alternate route to get back to HQ. Lengthening my stride, I whip around the corner, colliding with something hard and warm. “I’m sorry, I–”
Oh no. Rik… Randall stands in front of me, a shocked look on his face. All the air in my lungs whooshes out of me. What is he doing up here? It’s definitely him, right down to the inky black hair.
Randall stares down at me with dawning comprehension. Eyes wide, mouth parting wordlessly. “Emery?” He says my name softly as if he’s afraid he’s mistaken me for someone else.
And he has. I’m supposed to be M-37 now.
I had almost convinced myself I never needed to see him again. With Aventine’s restrictions on outside contacts,
who knows when or if I’d ever get permission to talk to him without subterfuge. But now that he’s here, in the flesh, I can barely look at him. It feels too… intimate.
Tahir said in the event I run into someone from my old life, I’m to deny who I am. Or was. If that doesn’t convince them, I’m supposed to report the incident to Aventine. What they’ll do, I don’t know.
I force myself to create a bland smile with my trembling lips. “Sorry, I think you have me confused with someone else.” I step around him.
“It is you.” His hand snakes out and grabs my arm. Static jolts between us, and he pulls back with a cry.
I inch away from him. “What the hell?”
“I’m sorry,” he says, looking anything but. “But Emery, everyone thinks…”
“Look, I don’t know who you think I am or what you want, but I’m this close to calling the cops.”
“Wait. I…” His brow furrows. For a moment I see his doubt, wondering if he’s misidentified me, then his jaw hardens in certainty. The longer I hang around, the greater the chance he’ll wear me down. Which isn’t fair to him. He’s already grieved me, moved on. Meeting now can only dredge up that old pain. I try to move past him, but he shadows my moves.
“Don’t run away. I don’t care what ID you’re broadcasting.” His words wake me up. “Please.”
I take a deep breath, unpleasantly aware of the evening crowds converging with the protestors that have already gathered. People going home from work after a long day. Heading to a restaurant for dinner or grabbing takeout. And our face-off with one another as the rest of New Worth eddies around us. “I’m not doing this here.”
He glances around and leans in. “What, are you some kind of government agent?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“It does. Whatever this is, it took you away from me.”
I scan the concourse, on the lookout for someone from Aventine. A lump forms in my throat. “This isn’t some arcade game. If my… work finds out about you…”
“Tell me what you’re mixed up in, and we’ll figure it out together.”
Together. The word echoes through me. Bitter with promise. “Stop it. Just… stop. Forget everything you ever knew about me.”
“Liv, wait.”
My old handle on his lips sends ice through my veins. “That’s not my name anymore.”
He taps his temple. “Let me in, and you’ll see the truth, I promise. These last few weeks…” His voice cracks, and tears prick my eyes. He takes my gloved hand in his, cradling the back of it. The urge to fit my data receptors against his is almost a tangible ache. “Liv, whatever happened doesn’t change anything for me. I’ve missed you so much.”
He’s seen my mind, my face, and hasn’t been scared off. But that may not last once Rik learns what I did that set me on this course. Or once Aventine finds out about us. Our meeting like this, no matter how coincidental, will look suspicious. And the risk of failure’s too high. I don’t want that kind of trouble for Rik.
You always had a choice. Just not very good options.
And they only get worse from here. My vision blurs as he places my palm against his. The heat of his hand is absorbed by my glove, preventing calibration. I wipe my cheeks and hastily pull away. I have to end this now, once and for all. I tell myself it’s for his own good.
One day, I’ll let myself believe it.
“No one can know about me. Not even you.” Before he can protest, I continue, “Did you ever ask yourself why I didn’t reach out to you after the party? I could have, you know. Any time.”
I finally knew his real ID. It was just a matter of pinging him with a synch request. It would have tipped off Aventine, too, but that’s not the point. Neither is the fact that I almost reached out to him through the arcade in a moment’s weakness. “Remember how worried I was about meeting in person. That it would ruin our connection? Well, guess what. I was right.”
He blinks as the meaning of that washes over him.
The poisonous words spew out of my mouth so easily, Harding would be proud. “Knowing who you really are just confirms that you’re the last person I want in my mind.”
Hurt flashes across his face – I’m nearly certain of that, even though Randall’s all but a stranger to me. “You don’t mean it,” he finally says, but I can hear the lack of conviction in his voice.
“If you come here again…” I’ll have to tell Aventine one way or another. I shake my head. “Just leave me alone.”
I wait, half-expecting him to yell or crush me in his arms. I see only a shadow of what he feels pass over his face before it slams shut.
“If that’s what you want, Emery.” He sounds perfectly agreeable. “As you said, you know how to find me.”
Then he leaves, taking with him my chance to be the one to walk away.
Part Two
Bleed Out
Two Months Later
Chapter Fourteen
The work keeps me sane. That moment when Tahir pings me with a job is what gets me out of bed. While the fundamentals haven’t changed, the variables do. Each data-rich blood transfer has a different character. Some lay heavy in my veins, not quite an ache but unignorable. Ice, fire… Others light and airy, almost effervescent. Tahir says it’s all in my head, but he’s not the one getting injected with secrets.
Between the clients’ different data security preferences and my own latitude in how I get myself to each drop, no two jobs are the same. I’ve seen more of New Worth in the last few weeks than in all the years before I came to work for Aventine. So much of the city hides in plain sight. As long as I stay busy, I can push my old life down deep inside me in the wake of what’s needing done. It’s the days I don’t get a job that are the problem.
For weeks after seeing Randall that day on the concourse, I jumped at every seemingly innocuous comment from Tahir. But either Aventine has no inkling of what transpired or they’ve done a killer job of lulling me into a false sense of security.
I finally decided I could either drive myself wild with worry they would send me packing to the Terrestrial District or save that energy for when I really need it. Especially in those quiet moments holed up in my quarters when I have no distractions left to keep me from remembering the wounded look on Randall’s face or Brita’s laugh. Or from wanting to reach out to my parents, have their consciousnesses fortify mine. I’d give almost anything for them to tell me everything’s going to be all right as though I’m a little girl all over again. The rightness of wearing Emery Olivia Driscoll’s ID again… all of it is incompatible with my role with Aventine, which is part of me now too.
It resides in a separate box though, compartmentalized and safe from the past, so long as the work keeps coming in.
Mid-morning, Tahir still hasn’t contacted me with a new assignment. I hunt him down in the Crow’s Nest, where he and the other handlers monitor jobs in progress. A jumbo-sized wallscreen partitioned into smaller ones flashes through different security feeds throughout New Worth. Set up in the corner, his station, a standing desk crammed with monitors, a touch console, and an old-school keyboard, faces the wallscreen.
At my entrance, he glances over and holds up a hand to forestall me as he finishes up his synch chat with whoever’s out in the field. As I wait my turn, I try to see if I can identify the camera location on display before it rotates to the next feed. Finally, Tahir relaxes and acknowledges me with a nod. “What brings you here, M?”
“What’s my assignment for today?”
“You don’t have one. You’re taking a break. Two days.”
An eternity. Too much time on my hands left over for thinking. “Oh, come on. Send me out.”
“No,” his voice sharper this time. “Under the new rules, downtime’s even more important between jobs.”
Tensions with the Disconnects have yet to abate with only a week to go until the lottery selects the people who will be able to live at Vesa. If anything, the unrest has gotten worse, keeping us courie
rs on our toes. The areas in yellow on our maps that we’re supposed to avoid when we’re on a job have expanded, making navigating the lower levels tricky. The authorities have been trying to identify the people behind the movement ever since someone was killed at one of their pop-up rallies a few weeks back, but they haven’t made much headway, according to Harding. As a result, the heightened security protocols are still in effect, making everyone at Aventine miserable.
“But–”
“Show me your arms.”
“What does that have to do–”
“Show me.”
Biting back a snarl, I push up my sleeves.
Tahir nods to himself. “Thought so.” His gloved fingertip points out what I already know. Bluish stains along the inside of my forearms. Skin bruised from too-frequent data transfers. “Wound-heal can work wonders, but you need to give it time to catch up.”
“But two whole days?”
“If someone knew about couriers and saw your arms, it’d be a dead giveaway. Even if they didn’t, they might think you’re addicted to something with all those needle pricks.”
“Please. I don’t look like a junkie.”
“Looks can be deceiving. You should know that better than most.”
I do, but… “I can’t just stay here and do nothing.”
He turns back to his station and sucks in his cheeks. “An excursion then. Up to four hours this afternoon.”
A generous offer, but it’s not enough. “You just want to foist me off on the unsuspecting public.”
He laughs. “Can you blame me?” He gestures to his desk. “Some of us still have work to do.”
Kat’s handler, Miranda, looks up from her workstation. “K’s around today. You can always practice together and work out some of your frustration.”
“A wonderful idea,” Tahir says, as if the matter’s settled. I want to protest, but at the look on his face, I know better than to push my luck.
“You two are impossible.”
Their laughter follows me out of the room and into the hall. Kat flashes me a bright smile when I join her in the training room a few minutes later. “Thanks for coming,” she says. “The holos’ feedback doesn’t compare to sparring against a real person.” She would know.
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