by James Wake
There was no doubt it was Tess. She was hovering at the fringes of the whole scene, slowly edging away and talking to fewer and fewer people, until she faded into those still fleeing and turned a corner.
A mercy, in a way. All her other troubles were forgotten. Cheshire? What’s a Cheshire?
The noise picked up, air prickling with energy at what was coming. Drones zipped through the air around her, directing attacks this way any second.
Without another look, Nadia turned and flew straight for the office.
Chapter Sixteen: Projection
She was beginning to get worried.
Some time had passed since Nadia had come home and crept into the Pass out from Exhaustion Suite, leaving the door open a tiny crack. Enough to see the doors that led down to the garage and enough to see a generous slice of the office floor.
She was crouched at the door. Long, controlled breaths. Even now, as strong as she was, her legs were starting to protest. It had been an hour at least. All manner of worst-case scenarios played in her head: Tess knocked to the street with a Dome raising a baton for another blow. Tess in shackles, thrown into the back of an APS wagon, still coughing from the gas. Or lined up with other criminals, hooded and cuffed and kneeling in the rain. They would take her prosthetic, certainly, detach it at threat of force and steal it away, defile it, the brutish bunch of…
She had to remind herself that she was, in fact, angry at Tess. Furious even. Still, Tess’s empty chair stared back at her, sitting lonely in front of an array of dark screens.
It wouldn’t take much. A pair of glasses rested on a workbench near the chair. All she had to do was put them on, call out her name, ask if she was all right.
What’s that, my dearest Tess? You are on the run from the Domes and in desperate need of rescue? Why, I shall ride to your aid this instant. That is, as soon as you apologize. Ha! For what, you ask? Why, for having an entire double life without me perhaps?
Nadia wasn’t angry really. Not exactly. Concerned. That was all. Concerned for poor Tess, who was clearly in over her head and putting herself at great risk.
Great, great risk. Arrest. Detainment. Maiming. Death. Nadia squirmed in place, seconds away from dashing into the office and snatching up her glasses.
The doors opened a moment later. Tess walked in, green jacket damp around the shoulders, her ponytail drooping with rain. Nadia let out a silent sigh, relieved and fuming in equal measure.
No gas mask. Discarded? No, surely ripped away by a grasping thug. A narrow escape. The girl was probably shaken to her core.
Tess made a beeline, not for her desk and screens, but one of her workbenches. She grabbed a soldering iron and dabbed it against something on the bench.
Nadia watched every motion closely. Wisps of smoke lifted off the bench, that peculiar stench of burning plastic creeping into her nostrils. Tess wafted the smoke into her face and rubbed her neck and hoodie a few times.
Tess froze. She took a deep breath, her back to the bedroom.
“Nadia?” she called out. “You here?”
Nadia counted out four long breaths, enough time to walk from the bed to the door. Stretching and yawning, she stepped into the office, calm and relaxed.
“Oh, hey,” Tess said, not a hint of distress in her voice. “You’re back early.”
“Wasn’t feeling well,” Nadia said. “Took a nap instead. A bit lonely, though.” She slid over to Tess, rested an arm around her waist, and nuzzled up against her neck.
Her skin was cold and clammy from the rain. The smell was overwhelming. Eau du plastique. But buried deep below it, where Nadia never would have noticed if she hadn’t so recently been reminded of it, was the stinging scent of tear gas.
She planted a quick kiss on Tess’s neck anyway.
“Whoa. Are you getting sick?” Tess said, stepping out of Nadia’s grasp. “Get away. I haven’t had a cold since I came off the immunosuppressants, and it’s been awesome.”
“But Tess, I do so miss your pre-lovemaking rituals,” Nadia said, sidling up close to her again.
“Stop! Eww, no! Quarantine!”
“Do it again for me? Like old times?” Nadia said, pulling Tess close by the hips. “Right as things are about to get interesting, excuse yourself to blow your nose for twenty minutes?”
“Is that what you like? Does that turn you on?” Tess grinned and blushed. “You sicken me.”
“Literally.”
Tess groaned long and loud as she pushed her away again. “Okay, sorry, no. I was just popping in to get a few things. I gotta run.”
Nadia pouted. “What are you so busy with?”
“You know, the usual. Gonna pick up a pound of coke, cut it, flip it, take the money, and blow it on whores.”
“Tess.”
“Game night. League of Eternal Hime expansion just came out. Gonna meet with some nerds IRL.”
She actually said the acronym out loud. Eye are ell. Nadia hated every syllable of it.
“You are, of course, invited,” Tess said.
“Pass.”
“Thought so.” She started to leave, snatching a bag from her workbench. “Want me to grab you anything?”
Nadia made a show of smiling and thinking. “No, I think I shall order takeout and sleep. Thank you.”
“Not even some comfort macaroons?”
Diabolical. Her one weakness. Nadia stayed in character. “That would be lovely, but I could never.”
“Duly noted,” Tess said, in a way that very much suggested macaroons.
“Tess?” Nadia said, just as her partner was approaching the door.
“I won’t be out long.” Tess stopped, hovering inches away from escape. “Did you see that thing about the rent?”
“I took care of it.”
Tess stared at her for a long second. “It doubled.”
“I took care of it.”
“Look at you, squeezing your trust fund dry. Must be nice.”
“Says the girl living with me. Tess, it looked…erm…a bit dangerous outside on my way home.”
“Oh, yeah. I saw it on the news. Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere near that mess.”
They stared at each other, two pairs of eyes meeting miles apart. Tess heaved a sigh and came back, squeezing Nadia in a tight hug.
“I’ll be careful,” she said, bolting for the door again.
Nadia let her go, crossing her arms and smiling and posing perfectly pleasantly, watching, waiting, and…there. Gone.
The moment the door clicked shut, she grabbed her glasses. Her gloves were nearby, not her suit gloves but a slim black pair with fingertip sensors.
Microphone off. GPS off. Video feed off. A mannequin across the room was wearing her old turtleneck, still discreetly filled with connections and functions.
Nadia scoffed. Game night. Insulting. Tess really should have been selling drugs and soliciting prostitutes. That would at least be suitably shameful.
As she changed clothes, she realized game night was as likely as anything else she could come up with. That almost stopped her. There would be no turning back if Tess caught her, no alternative but confrontation.
Something sharp wound in her mind: a rising, savage tone.
There would be a confrontation. That, she was sure of.
* * *
Water gushed down the street, a gray foaming river, drains bubbling as they overflowed. Nadia hadn’t spent much time underground on her last few outings. Her usual routes had been swallowed up by the rising tides. The rain didn’t help, dumping water onto the city for days now, a deluge that would go on for months.
She stalked through milling pedestrians, knowing Tess had come this way. Her glasses had tracked the driverless taxi that had picked Tess up, then switched over effortlessly to trailing Tess’s bobbing ponytail as she milled around downtown.
There didn’t seem to
be any real aim, any direct route. Tess strolled along with seemingly no cares. She must have been as drenched and uncomfortable as Nadia by now. Tess even retraced her steps a few times, following long lazy loops along the city’s sidewalks.
Should’ve brought an umbrella. Nadia flipped the collar of her trench coat up and nestled down into it. That same hated white coat. So last year.
Her glasses traced possible routes with small percentages of likelihood underneath, based on Tess’s path so far. The things had been dreadful at their predictions previously, so Nadia went on ignoring them.
No prediction for the vending machine Tess stopped at. Nadia drifted into a stoop, not too fast, not too slow, as if she were coming home.
It smelled. A few scraps of sweat-stained cardboard and a bucket were tucked into an entryway. Nadia curled her nose as she stepped around the spots of red on the ground. If APS officers were so strident about prosecuting vagrants, why did they never bother to clean up afterward?
She leaned back out into the street. Tess was gone, but the glasses picked her out and zoomed in on her before Nadia even had time to type in the command. Skipping the escalator, Tess disappeared down a busy stairwell descended from the sidewalk.
Nadia headed to the stairs, pushing her way past people now. At least she and Tess would be indoors.
The mall extended for blocks, deep under the artificial ground, a labyrinth of bright cheery halls. Tess was a mere silhouette. Nadia kept a careful distance, weaving between gaps in the crowd.
Slick, soulless music welcomed her. Arched screens turned the tunnel into a sunny vista of an old European market, with street stalls and outdoor cafés and gondolas in the distance.
Someone had vandalized the railing by her hand.
THE CAT IS RIGHT. BURN IT ALL DOWN.
She couldn’t recall Cheshire ever exhorting anyone to burn anything. It didn’t matter. Her glasses pinged as Tess turned a corner at the bottom of the steps, leaving her view. Patience. No way she could shove past people on the stairs, not this many of them, not without making a commotion.
Patience. Nadia’s hands hid in her pockets, her nails digging into her palms even through the gloves.
Tess was easy to pick out, actually. She was the only one in sight sucking a smoothie through a straw. Not moving particularly fast either, her head turning side to side as she passed glass storefronts.
Screens everywhere, many of them dark. A few stores had bothered to put CLOSED or EMPTY STOCK or WAIT LIST ONLY up on their glass. A panel directly above Nadia asked if she was having trouble with rising prices before offering her an AGF credit account—the only credit that offers bonus points for daily necessities!
It flickered, going dark before lighting up with a familiar, hated face.
go home.
Nadia ignored it, as did everyone around her. Nothing short of certain death could dissuade her at this point, and even that she would have to ponder. A storefront at her side played faint waves on its glass, waves of color that faltered and solidified into that same leering cat face.
stop following.
So he—or she or whoever—was watching. Nadia gazed all around her. Far too many cameras, and those were only the ones she could see. She gave all of them a nasty look, just to be sure, then continued to follow Tess.
“I’m trying to help you.”
It had been a long time since she had heard Cheshire’s many voices in her ears.
Nadia stopped, for a moment. “Can you hear me?” she said. It was innocuous enough. Most of the people around her seemed to be talking to themselves anyway.
“You know I can.”
“Good. Then take all your silly advice and choke on it, please.”
Silence in her ears, but for the constant assault of the crowds around her. Tess stopped in front of a bright store full of frilly pink hats, each adorned with animal ears.
It was the most Nadia had seen of her face this whole time. Tess stared at the hats, still sucking something thick and beige through a straw. She was smiling, silently giggling to herself.
Nadia watched her through a reflection on a storefront across the way. When Tess moved again, she saw Cheshire staring back at her in the glass.
“You will not like what you find, perhaps.”
“I never asked for your help. I do not want your help.”
“A shame. I thought we made such a wonderful team.”
“I have exactly…” Nadia started to say, as she watched Tess enter a store.
A game store.
“Exactly one partner” was what she had been about to say.
Nadia waited, watching, counting the seconds. Perhaps it truly was a meeting with friends. Other friends. Friends Tess had.
They’d been living together—sleeping together—for a year. With a sinking pit opening in her gut, Nadia realized she had no idea what friends Tess had outside their sordid little affair, what she did when Nadia was at La Garrud practice. Was meeting people to play games something she really did?
A good person would know these things, Nadia reminded herself.
No matter. Part of her dearly hoped she would walk inside that store and see Tess enjoying herself, playing League of Endless Him or whatever it was.
No part of her even considered not following.
The store was a cramped mess, soaked in mawkish green light. On one side, a counter. On the other, a row of sitting people wearing headsets, their fingers twitching in the air. A cramped aisle between the two ran to a door at the back. Every available inch on every wall was covered in splashes of what Nadia could only assume were game titles.
“Welcome, miss,” an older man behind the counter said. He looked completely out of place in this store, well-dressed but casual, calm and serene. His eyes were completely glazed over with light, even worse than Tess’s internal display.
Nadia didn’t say anything right away. None of the people sitting was Tess. A trash can next to the counter had an empty smoothie cup on top, the straw chewed and crimped.
“Can I help you with something?”
She had a feeling that inquiring after a girl in a green army jacket might not be productive. “I’m, er…no, thank you. Browsing,” she said, staring at the back door. A chip reader was affixed next to it, shining a red light.
The man gave her a long look. His teeth were yellow, sickly shaded in the green light. How did one even get yellow teeth in this day and age?
“Are you looking for the new League of Eternal Princess expansion?”
Nadia narrowed her eyes at him. Nothing on any of the walls announced League of Eternal anything.
“Wasn’t it League of Eternal Him? No…Hime,” she said, overemphasizing the last syllable.
He nodded, giving her a leering smile. “Ah, a true fan! We have plenty of those players in the back room.”
His fingers twitched. The red light on the chip reader turned green.
Nadia gave him a long, careful look, but the man wouldn’t meet her eyes—he was watching the front door.
“Last chance,” Cheshire said in her ears. “Turn back.”
A few short steps away, she pushed the door open—light and smooth and without a bit of resistance.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
A dim hallway lay on the other side, damp and musty. Stairs led down, toward a single caged lamp at the bottom. She recognized the concrete walls, the smell of decay—this was one of the forgotten basements of the city, left over from before the floods.
The door clicked shut behind her. Nadia heard it lock. There was no handle on her side, no push bar or chip reader. No turning back.
That suited her just fine. Flexing her arms, Nadia followed the stairs. The sleeves of her turtleneck were still made of enhanced fibers. She’d put on tights to match, concealing them under a skirt and boots. The cuffs of her coat were rolled up to expose the electrified
pads on her forearms.
The only thing she was truly missing right now was light amplification. An open doorway awaited her, everything beyond it a dark silent void. If this was a trap, she was already caught.
She reached the bottom of the steps.
A spotlight snapped on, blinding her. Something cold and hard and hollow was pressed to her temple.
“Don’t move,” a familiar male voice said.
Nadia disobeyed. She ducked and swept her arms against where his arms had to be, knocking the gun to the side and yanking him into a sweeping strike against one of her forearms.
“Stop!” Tess yelled.
Nadia froze, a hair away from shocking the man. Her eyes adjusted—she knew his face, but she didn’t know from where. Thick jawed, brown skinned, almost as short as her.
“Don’t zap him!” Tess said from somewhere behind the spotlight.
He smiled at her—a warm, goofy smile—as he nodded down. Nadia followed the nod, seeing the pistol he held pointed snugly against her ribs.
No matter. She kept her electrified arm up close to his face. “Are you all right?” she called out to Tess.
“I’m fine. Calm down. Lights!” Tess said.
The spotlight died. Much softer lights replaced it, a jumble of blue hues on bulbs strung all over the ceiling. A wide room came into focus, with doorways leading off into further darkness. Tess sat at an old table, and at her side sat…
Polina Aleksandrovna. And at her side, Brutus, throwing Nadia a dopey little wave.
“Lady and gentlemen,” Tess said, standing up and holding out her arms, “it is my pleasure to introduce the Sapphire Shadow.”
“Woo!” Brutus said.
“Woo,” Aleksa said, rolling her eyes.
“What? This is her? For real?” the man at her side said, holstering his gun. “My old partner would flip a bitch if she were here.”
Nadia felt her hands release the man, but her arms stayed stuck in place. Numb. Every part of her body was numb, floating, as though she’d been ripped out of her own mind.