Echoes (Echoes Book 1)

by Therin Knite

  “Yes?” The amusement in her voice is thick. It’s an attempt to hide the admiration.

  “I need a shortcut to the train station at Jefferson Circle. Got a suggestion?”

  Chapter Eleven

  I find her eating dinner at a restaurant at four thirty-two AM. She isn’t difficult to track down. On my way to Jefferson Circle, I plug her picture from the Manson file into the IBI’s reverse search program, and the results pour in by the hundreds. In minutes, I have a detailed outline of heterochromia lady’s public life. Like many upper-class modders, she goes by a pseudonym—hers is the pretentious Lady Svipul. Lady Svi for short. Her real name is nowhere to be found on any news or media sites. The rich like their private lives as far away from the poor and dirty as possible. But while I’m shuffling onto an early bird train that’ll take me to Hamilton End, I decide her name isn’t vital to solving the Manson case.

  As long as I can talk to her in person.

  She has a share feed that publicizes her every social move. At five o’clock yesterday evening, she ate breakfast with a few old friends who came from Tokyo to visit. At eleven, she attempted to go to Club Valkyrie, only to find the place shut down by order of the IBI. Two minutes later, however, she’d already fallen into step with another group of acquaintances, and she spent the next several hours at a masquerade ball in the suburbs. Now, she is having a three-course meal at the famous Beacham Inn Restaurant on the corner of Second and Roosevelt. Once she finishes up her busy night at her favorite super-expensive food establishment, she’ll head home, bathe in a luxurious tub with gold fixtures, and sleep from seven AM to three o’clock in the afternoon. So goes the life of a night socialite.

  Before I dare get within two blocks of the restaurant, I make a detour onto a side street and duck into one of the micro-designer stores that make Hamilton End the shopping destination of thousands of tourists every year. The lone cashier gives me a quick survey, determines I’m penniless riffraff, and tries to shoo me out. If she had any security on duty at this time, I’d probably be dragged out of the neighborhood and tossed into the nearest low-class sector. She’s not that lucky, though, and I’m not that luckless. Or that dumb. In the early hours, the micro-shop strip relies only on an abundance of security cameras and a nearby police station to take care of petty criminals.

  “I’d like to buy a nice outfit. Shirt. Pants. Shoes. Coat.”

  She considers talking back to me, but I open my bank account on my Ocom and show her I have enough to afford it all. Fifteen minutes later, I’m wearing the most expensive clothing I’ve ever had the opportunity to touch, the cashier is draining eighty percent of my hard-earned money, and the freebie shirt Lana gifted me is in a trashcan under the checkout counter, along with my dirty pants and shoes. I have a funny feeling the cashier heads out back to burn my clothes after I leave.

  Anyway, Beacham Inn.

  Wealthy men and women filter in and out of the three-story building as I approach. I try my best to blend in with them, but although I mimic their postures and facial expressions, I still don’t quite fit into their world of perfect people. I’m a bronze coin in a bucket of gold, and they can spot my tarnish a mile away. Several young women smile when they first notice me, but after a few seconds of hard scrutiny, their confidence wavers, and they start whispering their doubts. I cannot replicate the atmosphere of this social brand. It’s something developed over decades of conditioning.

  The lobby of Beacham Inn branches off in two directions. On the right is the inn itself, a few guests lingering here and there in a collection of glass-walled lounges. To the left is the restaurant. Despite the time of day, it’s hopping; I count about seventy people on the first floor alone. Once inside, I’ll be able to disappear into the crowd with ease and find my way to Lady Svi’s private, top-floor dining room. It’s getting inside that’s the hard part. The place has a waiting list a light year long, and anyone with less than a million in the bank is laughed right out the door.

  I break off to the right. Nodding politely at the receptionist manning the front desk, I turn the corner, pick up my pace, and proceed to run straight into a middle-aged man emerging from the closest lounge. We tumble over into a heap of flailing limbs and distressed swears. I recover my balance and roll off him as fast as I can, apologizing thirteen times in a row. “Are you all right, sir?”

  “Good gods, boy! Watch where you’re going.” He stands, straightens his suit jacket, sniffs in the most conceited manner possible, and marches off down the hallway toward the elevator. He doesn’t even notice I snagged his Ocom. First ever pickpocketing attempt: success!

  Since Ocoms have biometric locks to prevent fraud, the only place a person not keyed into one can go is the non-user ID page headed Please Return to Owner. After it defaults to that page, I tuck myself away into a short hall that leads to a unisex bathroom and use a trick Jin taught me a few months back. Press the on button six times, then hold down the emergency key for ten seconds, and finally type in a sixteen-digit sequence of ones and zeros. A developer’s naughty trick that allows anyone to convert the non-user ID page into an exact replica of the actual ID page. Fake IDs made easy.

  Once I’ve got…Martin Rickman’s ID page up, I head for the restaurant.

  “Name?” The hostess garbed in a sea green suit gives me a brief once-over, offers me a fake smile, and returns her attention to the reservation list on the Oscreen embedded in her podium.

  “Martin Rickman,” I say. I’m aware of the possibility that the hostess has seen the real Rickman before, but considering the number of people that enter this restaurant on a daily basis, I’m betting the likelihood of her remembering his face is low. And as I watch her scroll through the non-guest reservation list, only to realize that Rickman is in fact an inn guest, I seek comfort in the fact that my gambit worked without a hitch.

  She switches to the inn list and locates his name about halfway down the page. “Ah, there you are, Mr. Rickman. Please scan your Ocom ID.”

  I wave my jerry-rigged tablet over the podium’s scanner, and the hostess’s screen blinks green in response. “All good?”

  “Yes, sir. Enjoy your meal.”

  And I’m in.

  I bypass dozens of yawning socialites and flirting couples and waiters kept awake with toxic cocktails of energy pills, heading straight for the fancy spiral staircase in the back. My three-flight ascent passes by in a blur of muted gold and gray and green, the restaurant’s color scheme reflected in every element of its décor. At the top of the staircase, I find my destination. In a special dining room walled off with lightly tinted glass is the honorable Lady Svipul and her entourage of hyper-modders.

  A hundred and one ways to approach her cross my mind, but it turns out I don’t even have to make the first move. As she’s sipping her red wine, she rolls her multicolored eyes at a joke made by the man sitting next to her, and coincidentally, they land on me. She stares and stares and stares some more. Recognition floods her gaze. Then she sits her wine glass down and makes a bewildered expression unbecoming of her social status. The shock doesn’t last long enough for it to harm her reputation though. She recovers with a wide, flirty grin and beckons me to come hither with a finger.

  So I come.

  * * *

  The drugs are in the air, but by the time I notice my brain function’s diminishing capacity, it’s already far too late to extricate myself from Lady Svi’s group of friends and run for the hills. After her accompanying guards determine I’m not a threat, the club patron invites me to sit down in an empty seat next to her. All eyes in the room are locked onto me, some curious, some wary, some jealous, some hostile. The woman herself taps a fork against her wine glass to signal order and silence before introducing me as the boy who broke her heart at Valkyrie the night before last. Her friends are scandalized. And instantly find me attractive.

  Lady Svi runs a finger down the collar of my coat, examining the fine detailing on the seams. “This is an expensive piece.” She know
s it’s brand new. Just like she remembers I wasn’t this well dressed the night we met. “Where’d you get it?”

  “Some boutique designer store on the strip. Won a bit of money in the market last week and thought I’d reward myself with a little something.”

  “I see. So, are you a risky investor? Or do you take it easy?”

  “Oh, very risky.”

  She plucks a garlic roll from the basket in the center of the table and cuts it open with her knife. “Lovely.” Her attention shifts to my sling. “What happened to your arm?”

  “Tragic jogging accident.”

  “Interesting.”

  For a woman neck-deep in mod culture, Lady Svipul is sharp. Most hyper-modders I’ve met are airheaded and unconcerned with the world around them. They live to alter their looks, to be admired for altering their looks by others who alter their looks, and to scrape by with enough money to continue altering their looks on a weekly basis. But Lady Svi is an upper-class modder. Money is no object to this woman; she was born with it, and she retains it through smart business practices like pitching patron bids at modder clubs that’ll score her numerous modeling and escort invitations. Hundreds of thousands of dollars a month.

  She immerses herself in mod culture from a distance, unwilling to mix fully with the lower classes. As in the real world (outside the confines of the modder scene), she sees herself as a queen among commoners. She interacts with low-class modders just enough to earn a reputation of benevolence and generosity. They fulfill her need to be complimented and adored.

  Most of this she tells me within our first five minutes of conversation. Most of it is subtext.

  “So, do you do anything besides investing?” The rest of her wine disappears in one delicate gulp.

  “I work at Chamberlain Corporation.” Dynara would appreciate the jest. “The Ocom design team.”

  “Oh, really?” She places her empty glass on the table, lips curling up in coquettish disbelief. “You look a bit young for that.”

  “I have four PhDs.”

  A pink eyebrow rises. “Are you modded to look younger, or are you just a smart boy?”

  “The latter.”

  Her laughter bounces off the glass walls, and I know for a fact no one in this room would ever laugh louder. “You get more intriguing by the minute. Poor friends. Rich clothes. Smart brain. Dull job. You’re a regular conundrum, aren’t you?”

  “My name is Adem, by the way.” I ignore the fact she outright called Jin poor.

  “A simple name. It suits you.” Her attention lingers on my hair again, and I can tell she’s trying to decide whether it’s natural or a mod. Before she reaches a conclusion, someone knocks on the door in a quick cadence. Lady Svi waves to the modder on the other side and beckons for her to enter. The young woman clack-clacks in with sky-high heels and heads for an extra chair one of the guards brought in a minute ago. This was supposed to be a five-person dinner.

  I’d apologize for crashing it, but I’m not sorry.

  Finally, Lady Svi signals for the real party to begin, and the lights near the walls dim while the chandelier above the table brightens. It illuminates the faces of the strangest crowd of people I’ve ever sat with in my life. I tried my best to ignore them for the first few minutes, but with the latest addition, I can’t stop myself from cataloguing every weird and off-the-wall mod decorating their bodies.

  The two men in the room are not twins, but they’ve been modded to look like they are. They sport the same exact facial expressions and reply to everything at the same time. I’m almost convinced they’ve had some sort of chips implanted into their brains to make them capable of acting in unison.

  One woman has hair down to her waist, half of it blue, half of it pink, split in color at her central part. Her lips are the same, dyed to match her hair. In fact, every expression of color on her person maintains the “cotton candy” effect: nail polish, eye shadow, clothing. If she walked into a circus, children would be liable to eat her on sight.

  Although I guess that’s better than them screaming in terror, which is what would happen if they came into contact with the new woman in the group. She is a living nightmare. Black hair. Black eyes. Black lips. White as paper skin. When she smiles at me, pretending to notice my existence for the first time, she reveals that all her teeth have been filed to sharp points.

  I feel like I’ve walked into a dark fantasy graphic novel.

  When the first course is served, the group gets down to business: drinking and gossiping. Most of what they say goes right over my head; they mention people off-handedly that I’m sure are members of modding circles but whose names I’ve never heard, not in Bod Mod Monthly or on TV or anywhere on the sixty-five news sites I subscribe to. I’m witnessing talk of the modding underground, the “stars” and “daredevils” who never gain mainstream fame, those who would be labeled real-life monsters if they dared to walk the streets during the day, those who perform less-than-legal mod surgeries for people willing to pay for the next global trend months in advance just so they can claim they were first.

  It’s about the time they start debating the latest trends in genital mods that I notice something isn’t quite right. When nightmare girl starts mouthing off at cotton candy woman in defense of penis enlargement, her voice isn’t as steady as it was when she first came in. And she hasn’t had a single drink. Suspicious, I scan the room in detail and home in on the vents in the corners—they sport a low-hanging mist.

  I’ve been drugged, goddammit.

  It’s a normal feature of these sorts of places, I’m sure, to help stressed-out upper-class patrons relieve the tension built up from their busy days. But there is nothing I dislike more than mood-altering drugs. They dampen my ability to read people. They make me liable to say things best left unsaid. I can’t control my behavior when drugged any more than Jin can when he binges on the weekends and ends up on my couch.

  “I think I should go,” I say.

  The mindless chatter grinds to a halt.

  Lady Svi sets her second glass of wine next to her Ocom on the table and gives me a hurt look. Her pupils are blown. “Why, honey? We’ve just gotten started.” She rests her manicured hand on my left thigh, squeezing gently. “We’ve got two more courses. Plus dessert.” The hand slides up my leg, closing in on my crotch. The fake twins giggle, and nightmare girl nudges cotton candy woman with her elbow like she can share secrets with a touch.

  “No, really. I have a long day coming up. One…”

  For a second, I lose my train of thought.

  Uh-oh.

  This is the point at which I’d usually run full speed from the room, down the stairs, out the door, and into the nearest taxicab, but before I can budge, Lady Svipul grabs me by the coat collar and draws me into a kiss. Her friends snigger and whistle as she captures my bottom lip with her teeth and bites it softly. The sensation blows a circuit in my bogged-down brain, and something akin to a needy groan works its way out of my throat. Her other hand is still resting an inch from my groin, and there’s no way she can’t feel my hard-on.

  She pulls back, grinning, and blinks those damned mismatched eyes at me in an inviting manner. “Come on. At least stay for one more course. Please, Adem?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I can see the vents have ramped up their drug dispersion, but the implications don’t even register. My brain is mush. The kind of mush you throw out in the garbage. All the threads of thought I’ve been contemplating for the past hour have melted into it. Mush. The only coherent thought left is a single word, which I can’t remember the significance of.

  “Man...” Manson?

  “Feel better now?” Lady Svi wears a devious smile.

  “Ah, yeah.”

  “So you’ll stay?”

  “Ah, yeah.”

  “Fantastic!”

  * * *

  I’m in a car. It zips down Forty-Second Street and turns onto the ramp for Interstate 95, merging into early morning traffic from every club
, bar, and concert block in the city. Images float through my foggy head as the car weaves around party buses and dump trucks and tractor trailers: me sitting between nightmare girl and cotton candy woman while they feed me chocolate chunks from a three-hundred-dollar dessert, me dancing with Lady Svi to a high-paced hop-top song in a ballroom made for classical music, me using the fake twins for support as I’m led through an expansive parking garage. I don’t know what time it is, but I know I remember less than half of what happened inside Beacham Inn.

  In the window reflection of the car’s interior, Lady Svi is busy texting away. The car is dark, and her Ocom lights up her face with an eerie blue glow that warps her modded features. Her black blouse is transparent, but she’s wearing a bra this time. Some days she wants to reveal all of herself to her beloved peasant worshippers. Some days showing off is more a chore than anything else. This morning, she stands on some middle ground.

  She notices me staring. “Honey, you awake now?”

  My lips are dry, and I recall my morning bout at the hospital. Drugs. Fucking drugs. “Was I ever asleep?” The words are a raspy murmur.

  “For a bit. Had to get Jacobin and Raphael to carry you to the car. You’re a lightweight, huh? Don’t get high much?” She keeps on texting.

  “That obvious?”

  “Extremely.”

  The car turns off the interstate, cutting through four lanes of traffic until it reaches the turnoff for a suburban neighborhood called Grant Acres. It’s a gated community, and the car rolls to a stop behind a high-dollar convertible waiting for said gate to open. When it does, the convertible continues down the road, and our car moves up to the little scanner on a pole that verifies the identity of anyone attempting to enter the rich-only neighborhood. Lady Svi rolls down the window and waves her Ocom in front of the scanner. “Welcome back, Ms. Williams,” it says. “Do you have a guest with you today?”

  “Yes,” she replies.

  “Have a good day, Ms. Williams and guest.”