Unstrung

by Kendra C. Highley

  He thinks I visited a stims dealer while I was out? That ass. “No. I just had my Exeprin like usual. Nothing else.”

  “Yet you were thrashing around in bed like you were coming off a high,” he says in a tone I don’t like. “Let me see your pupils.”

  “I’m clean, idiot. You know I can’t lie to you.” I roll from bed and stand over him. Jole’s so lanky that I can only get a height advantage when he’s sitting down. “I made good on my promise, ’kay?”

  Before I can jerk out of his way, Jole grabs my chin and peers at my face. He lets go fast, knowing if he delays I’ll bite his fingers. My sobriety is no teasing matter, for either of us. I’ve been addicted to stims as long as he’s known me—skies, as long as I’ve known me—and it’s caused more problems than we can bear. But his acting like my own personal conscience? That I can do without.

  “See anything?” I say, barely keeping my temper in check. I really want to smack him a good one, but I just….can’t. Jole’s broken enough without my help.

  “Nothing but my brown-eyed girl.” He sounds apologetic. “Look, I’m not trying to be a jackass. I just worry.”

  My shoulders sag and I sit next to him. Jole has reason to worry. I’m clean, but as each day brings a fresh hell, I get an itch. The Exeprin helps, acting like a mix of liquid adrenaline and caffeine. The stims give me an extra edge, though, especially if I take both at the same time. That’s the feeling I want—the notion that I’m superhuman, faster than anyone around, a wisp in black, braving the night.

  I close my eyes and whisper, “I’m clean.”

  Jole’s arms come around me and he gives me a moment’s peace before saying, “We have work to do. I’ll be in the shop when you’re ready.”

  I help him to his feet, worried about how thin he feels. That, in conjunction with the loose jeans, is another sign he’s not taking care of himself—the pain makes him lose his appetite. “How’s the leg?”

  “It’s been better.” He takes a slow step. “Dr. Jonas tells me I’m stuck with the brace for good. No more sneaking about for me.”

  Jole’s voice holds no bitterness. He always hated running jobs. Getting his left leg shattered in eight places after falling off a roof onto a metal girder freed him to do the tech work he loves. The cane, though, and watching him wither from pain…I’ll never forgive myself. It’s a wonder my nightmares don’t include that night, the look of terror on his face as he fell. The sound of my screams, carrying on the wind. It took so long for Turpin to find us. Jole was unconscious and I. . .

  I swallow against the bitter taste of bile in my throat. I wish Jole never had to ask if I’m clean again. After that night, I was done with the stims.

  But are they done with me?

  “You okay?” he asks, looking worried.

  “Yeah,” I say, casting about for a better subject. Anything to cancel out the images rampaging in my head. “If you let me off from helping with the chip, I’ll give you a haircut.”

  Jole runs a hand over his dark hair—it’s shaggy enough that he has permanent bed-head. He may be three years older than me and totally brilliant, but in some things he’s like a little kid.

  “I don’t need one.”

  “You’re right,” I say. “It’s perfect.”

  We both laugh when my shoulder twitches. I’m what you’d call an “honest thief.” It’s not by choice, though. Every time I try to tell a lie, even if I’m being sarcastic, my stupid shoulder twitches. No matter how hard I try, the tic won’t go away.

  Jole’s smug grin when he sees my tic relights some of my temper. I cross my arms and give him the stink-eye. “So…haircut?”

  He heaves a dramatic sigh. “Fine, deal.”

  After he leaves, I sink back down on my bed. Flashes of the dream keep jolting me. Why won’t it stop? The white-haired girl looks at me, pleading for me to understand, yet I always wake up without any answers for her. Feeling heavy, I get up, strip the sheets off my bed and head downstairs to throw them into the washing unit on my way to the shower. I’ve told Jole time and again my sweat doesn’t stink—that I was born smelling like perfume. And he always knows I’m telling fibs.

  While hot water streams down my back, I wonder for the millionth time how I ended up here seven years ago. I’m fuzzy on the details. Dirty, skinny, bruised—that’s how Turpin described me when I showed up at his back door holding a half-eaten fish sandwich in one hand and a spent dart gun in the other. He said my pupils were blown, like I’d been stimmed out of my mind. He also said he kept me in the clean room for two days, trying to figure out if I was a threat or a convenient accident.

  I scrub at my hair, unable to remember a thing about my past. I don’t even know when I got hooked on the stims—or who gave them to me in the first place. Was I born to an addict? Or did some creeper light me up so I’d be more docile? It sucks not knowing, but maybe it’s a blessing. It’s like my life started when Turpin took me in, a do-over. I don’t even know how old I am. Turpin guessed I was ten when he found me, and it sounded right at the time. But really, my earliest memory is of biting him when he hooked me up to an Exeprin IV the first night he let me upstairs. Things get a lot clearer after that; my blood type was perfect for the serum and my body made the most of it. During my first six months here, I recall eating a lot, sleeping a lot and spending the rest of my time scaling the warehouse walls like a duster-bot.

  That’s the real reason Turpin kept me rather than calling the authorities. I was just a little too good at getting into and out of tight spaces. He had me working cat lines and rappelling before I turned eleven. I did my first job—a test run at a high-end jewelry store to fund other projects—before I turned twelve. I never questioned why we robbed people; I liked the thrill of success too much.

  I still do.

  The timer on my watch beeps twice. Time for my shot. If I let the serum wane too much between injections, it takes extra Exeprin to bring me back to level. The white-room nightmares are bad enough; I don’t want to endure a six-hour hallucination playing catch up. I turn off the shower, wrap up in a towel and head to my locker.

  My syringes are in a black case on the top shelf. Exeprin isn’t legal, strictly speaking. Sure, certain special-ops groups in the military use it for reflex and sensory enhancement, but the drug’s illegal for the general public. It’s never been a problem for us, though. Turpin has friends in low places. Good thing, because I like to be extra sharp when I work and Exeprin puts my reflexes on the razor’s edge.

  I clean my hip with an alcohol square, then jab the little needle into soft flesh. The serum burns going in, and my senses take flight. I can hear the shower around the corner drip, drip, drip. The light, which seemed dim before, is more than enough to illuminate the locker room. Cat’s Eyes, I call it. With the Exeprin, I can almost see in the dark. I smell the soldering iron heating up in Jole’s lab upstairs, and the locker room’s mildew is overpowering. The blood in my veins lights to fire, racing through my body like gold.

  Skies, I love the rush. I sit on the bench and let the music of the spheres wash over me. The beat of my heart matches the spin of the earth. I drop my head back, whirling in time and space.

  Soon it fades, that initial feeling of immortality, but the sharpness will linger for hours. Too bad I don’t have a job coming up—I could tackle most anything Turpin has for me.

  A hum and the sound of voices float through the locker room door. The warehouse’s afternoon shift is back from lunch break, filling orders for boxes of fish-shaped crackers and chocolate grahams. Always good to diversify, even if the more criminal half of our business is booming.

  I bound up the stairs three at a time and slip through the door on the second floor. A hallway divides the huge, concrete-floored space in half. One side has our living quarters: two bedrooms joined by a rec room. The lab takes up most of the other side and there’s a kitchen at the opposite end. We decorated the hall with vid-pictures of computers for Jole, and actual paper posters of old fashi
oned motorcycles for me.

  What I wouldn’t do for a Harley. Never going to happen, though. Those are Class A restricted for street use. Only wealthy hobbyists and museums can get them now. The posters were difficult enough to find, a present from Turpin after I lifted build-specs from one of Maren’s factories. Sure, the artificial models in the plans were K300s—three versions older than the top of the line K600s currently in service—and the specs only covered ocular systems, but it was the closest we’d come to finding out how her synthetic “people” were made.

  The acrid scent of burning metal gets stronger as I close in on the lab. Thinking to play a little joke, I fling the door open with a bang. Jole doesn’t even jump. I walk around his giant worktable to stand next to him. He keeps staring at the chip through his micro-scanner, making me wait until he’s ready to acknowledge my existence. In the quiet of our battle of wills, the feed plays in the background. No special reports about thieves in the night, just a program talking about the life and times of Maren DeGaul. When the narrator gets to the part about how she rose to power after the economic collapse and “saved” the city with her artificial labor force, I turn off Jole’s data pad. There’s only so many times I can hear that story without gagging.

  Finally, Jole looks up with one eyebrow raised. “What, did the feed offend you?”

  “I’m not in the mood for a lecture about our Lady and Savior.” I glare at him. “How did I not scare you? Anybody would’ve flinched when I banged the door.”

  “I heard you coming.”

  I give him an indignant look. “You did not. I walked quiet.”

  “No wonder you got caught last night, if that’s your idea of quiet.” A spark of amusement flickers in his eyes, which look almost silver to me now that I’ve had my Exeprin.

  So that’s why. “Cheater—you took your Exeprin, too.”

  Jole chuckles. “Maybe. You’re the one who said I needed a dose, Little Rabbit.”

  “Little Rabbit?” I say. “You’re just trying to push my buttons, aren’t you?”

  “You know me, being annoying is somewhat of a specialty.” He reaches out to push a lock of my hair behind my ear. “You look better than when I woke you up.”

  “I am better.” I take a small step back to examine the chip in the micro-scanner’s display. It looks like any other chip—plastic case and metal wiring. “Find anything yet?”

  Jole frowns. “Well, it’s got a tight security code. I’m going to plug it into a blank machine next, see if I can read it. It’ll probably take me a few hours to hack it, though.”

  I groan. “Please tell me Turpin didn’t send me after a worthless piece.”

  “No, there’s something good on it. The security alone says it’s important stuff.”

  “Think the clients will be happy?” I ask.

  “Who knows? If I were them, I’d be impressed that you got into one of the Quad’s buildings, never mind what’s on the chip.”

  I decide not to tell him about the blue light since it’s clear Turpin hasn’t. It seems strange that Turpin didn’t mention it; he likes to see Jole and me give each other hell. He calls it healthy competition. I call it irritating. “I doubt that. I’m just the delivery girl. You’re the one who’s going to give them something useful.”

  He gives me a cocky grin. “It’s good to be known as the brains of the outfit.”

  Now, I’m really glad Turpin didn’t tell Jole how well the laser cutter worked. His ego is intact, even if his body isn’t. “Do you need me for anything, Mr. Confident?”

  “You could get me a sandwich.”

  Jole’s lucky. If I wasn’t so glad to hear that he was interested in food for once, I probably would’ve smacked him in the back of the head and told him to make his own lunch. “Certainly. May I take your order, sir?”

  “Ham spread with pickles and a big hunk of cheese on that good sourdough Turpin had delivered from uptown yesterday.”

  “Ham spread?” I mime gagging. “That’s nasty. But, hey, it’s your sandwich.”

  As I leave for the kitchen, he calls, “And don’t you forget it, Little Rabbit.”

  Chapter Three

  The Danger in Thievery

  Three hours later, as evening falls, I sit on my bed, unkinking the knots in my cat line. My hasty escape last night resulted in the mother of all tangles. I had to cut the line from my climbing harness before I could start on the knots, and untying them keeps my hands busy while I wonder how much longer Jole will need to crack the chip. A few stars shine in the slowly darkening sky outside my tiny window. Lights in high rises across the lake shine brighter.

  From this distance, you’d believe the city is perfect. Each address our governor makes extols the virtues of Triarch, almost like someone’s feeding him the lines…which they probably are. A lot of people buy into his shast, though, and why not? He sees Maren DeGaul as a savior and the Quad as a host of angels.

  Ask any of us living in the sectors adjacent of Triarch Center and I bet you’d get a different story. When enough people lose everything they own because politicians get the bright idea that you can always just print more money until the bill goes unpaid, you get a planet full of malcontents. Anarchy becomes really easy then, because hungry people are willing to do a lot of things that comfortable people would never consider. That’s how Turpin explains it, anyway. He was only nine when a lot of that went down. He lost his entire family in a riot, which kind of explains his “trust no one” attitude.

  He doesn’t like to talk about it, though.

  It all changed when the governing corporations formed. In our case, the Quad—the joint corporate council—restored order, cleaned up the streets and made sure everyone had jobs and enough to eat before making Precipice Industries “responsible” for us and installing Maren as CEO, to be “special advisor” to Triarch’s city government. At that point, no one cared that we were more like employees or assets than citizens; bellies were full and the lights were on.

  Soon after that, Maren spearheaded a plan to create artificials—lab-grown, programmed humans—to do our menial labor. That’s when our economy really took off. Real people didn’t have to work as hard anymore to make ends meet because the programmables did the dirty work for us.

  And, lo, our savior rose.

  I snort. Not my savior. Some of the old criminals we work with used to try to scare me with “Maren” bedtime stories when I was younger. One guy said she cut off his ear and used it to build one of her artificials. Total shast, even if he did have only one ear. But there isn’t any doubt that she’s a nasty piece of work. Too many of Turpin’s friends have disappeared for us to doubt the danger in crossing her or the Quad.

  And enough of them have reappeared in pieces to make absolutely sure we know they mean business.

  The press, though, they paint Maren and the government as perfect. But if Triarch were perfect, if the Quad propped up the government enough to keep everyone safe and whole, I wouldn’t have a job. The black market wouldn’t exist. And kids wouldn’t be found roaming the streets with no memory of how they got there, addicted to stims and eating fish sandwiches they found in a dumpster.

  If Triarch were perfect, I wouldn’t have ended up with Turpin. I’d be safe and sound with a family who loved me, and I’d remember who I used to be.

  What would it be like to live in one of those apartment buildings across the lake? To have a normal family? For my biggest worry to be what to wear each day? Deep down, I believe it’d be boring, but that doesn’t stop me from wondering who my mother is. Or why she left me to my own devices.

  Is she even alive?

  No, I don’t want to think about that, so I refocus on my task of untangling my line, leaving the ghosts to sort themselves out. I’m fighting the worst of the knots when my com beeps. I slip it into my ear and tap the “talk” button. “LP online.”

  “Lexa, upstairs please.” Turpin lowers his voice. “And wear something professional.”

  What, pajamas are
n’t professional? But something’s up—I hear it in his tone—so all I say is, “Be there in five, boss.”

  I pull my hair into a sleek ponytail before slipping into a short, blue dress and a sweater to cover my arms. Most of my shoes have soft bottoms, practical for prowling, but I have one pair of nice heels for occasions like these. Uncomfortable, I click-clack my way down the concrete hall to the stairs and climb up.

  Turpin answers my knock himself, rather than yelling for me to come in. He’s wearing his best cardigan, a sure sign something’s wrong. Over his shoulder I see two men in expensive suits. One is balding, with gray fringe around the edges of his scalp. The other man has wavy blond hair. Two huge guys stand against either wall, glaring at me with hard eyes. They’re muscle, pure and simple…which means only one thing.

  Shast—our clients are here.

  I force myself to stand up straight, keeping my joints loose, like I don’t care who they are. Turpin presses his lips together, the warning clear if not spoken. Best behavior.

  Right.

  He ushers me in and the bodyguards’ eyes follow my every move until I sit in the uncomfortable metal chair next to Turpin’s desk; the cushy seats are reserved for the clients. The blond man—Mr. Drummond—stands as I cross the room. A real gentleman, that one. Two jobs ago, he shoved Jole into a wall for accidentally erasing part of a hard-drive while trying to hack through its encryption. Turpin had to promise to buy me a new data pad preloaded with my favorite music to keep me from breaking Drummond’s nose.

  “Good to see you, Ms. Pate,” he says.

  “Mr. Drummond.” I give him a slight nod, playing demure for the crowd.

  Baldy doesn’t hide his dislike of me as well as his partner does. “Young lady, we demand an explanation for the issues last night.”

  “Mr. Stewart, please,” Turpin says, sounding nervous, “Like I said, we’ve run into a new security protocol. There was no way of knowing—”