The Sentient

by Nadia Afifi

  “We’re still going through the data,” Hadrian said as he leaned back in his chair. “But we did learn about your mystery man.”

  “The man in Rozene’s memory of the ceremony?” Amira asked eagerly.

  “The very same.” Hadrian swiped his hand in front of Lee’s monitor and a man’s face leapt from the screen to the center of the room, expanding to the size of a bookshelf. The face of the third man in the Unveiling ceremony. Hadrian twisted his wrist and the man’s features began to change, shifting subtly to form another, similar face.

  D’Arcy gasped. Amira blinked several times, moving closer.

  “That’s Victor Zhang,” Amira said.

  “The one and only,” Hadrian said, turning to the now-shifting face so that his own expression was unreadable. “Got an Alias treatment on the black market, or maybe even just a face-scrambler injection. Of course, he’s – was – too famous to pay a visit to the Trinity Compound without some kind of disguise. Lee played around with it for half a day before figuring it out. Can’t believe I didn’t recognize him myself.”

  Victor Zhang, a Cosmic, had visited the Trinity in the past, even attending an Unveiling ceremony. The scientist’s calm, polite expression as he observed Rozene’s humiliation lingered in Amira’s mind, followed by his own screams during his recorded execution. What had he promised or given Elder Young, before their relationship had soured?

  “So Dr. Zhang, Andrew Reznik and Elder Young were the three men who were scratched from Rozene’s memory,” Amira said. Before I came along, she added in her own mind. “And Zhang is dead, meaning we have no more clues or leads.”

  “Oh, how you underestimate your friend Hadrian,” Hadrian said with a dramatic, wounded gesture. “Do you think we just sit around here playing Scrabble and sharing cat holograms from the Stream, love? That there’s a chance in Hades, or the Neverhaven itself, that old Hadrian wouldn’t keep track of Elder Young’s comings and goings?”

  “Are you saying that you’re spying on Elder Young?” Amira asked, turning to Lee for confirmation. The boy nodded, stony faced.

  “As you have undoubtedly deduced by now,” Hadrian continued, “the good Elder has some friends in high places in Westport, in the literal and figurative senses. He doesn’t have much of a digital trail compared to a city-dweller, but he has an ID that he uses when he’s in town. Even uses his own name, boring as it is.”

  “Near-full access in Aldwych,” Lee said, counting names off on his fingers. “The Soma building, Galileo Enterprises, the McKenna-Okoye complex and the Avicenna. Sometimes lists an address in the Rails, the neighborhood where all the Aldwych scientists live. Even more crazy, he has NASH access.”

  Amira exchanged a stunned glance with D’Arcy. The Trinity’s highest Elder, a man who had tortured and killed a leading scientist, given free rein to roam Aldwych’s halls. And to space – the world above the world Amira had dreamed of reaching since she first thought to look up at the sky. Nausea bubbled within her.

  “How did you find all of this out?” D’Arcy asked. Lee’s face lit up with a rare, impish smile.

  “We have an informant, you might say,” Hadrian said.

  “Who?” Amira asked.

  “One of my former kids,” Hadrian said, scribbling on a grease-stained napkin before handing it with a flourish to Amira. “He – sorry, she – works on the Satyr Road, and it just so happens that Elder Young is one of her regulars. He pays her a visit when he’s in town and needs a break from his teenage brides. A former Trinity girl, but the old git doesn’t recognize her, given that she looked plenty different when he kicked her out. Her talents go beyond her night job, though. She knows her tech and may have something that could help you if you’re really going to start digging into the Cosmics to find our little Rozene.”

  “Hang on,” D’Arcy said. “Why are we starting off at the Satyr Road when these people are probably miles away now? You don’t think Rozene might still be in the city, do you?”

  Hadrian sprang out of his seat and waved his finger at her, as though pleased with the question. He paced in front of them, the children pulling back to give him space. In that moment, Amira once again took in the entirety of his alarming appearance – the web of tattoos along his arms that seemed to protrude out of his flesh, the scars that shone white on his neck as he stood in the shadows of the ship, and the unsettling wolf-like eyes that always glowed with feverish animation yet revealed nothing of the man behind them.

  “Let’s talk this through,” he said in the casual tone of a professor asking his class to consider a tough math problem. “They could take her to the Trinity, but that would be obvious and a long trip for a small army of men and a pregnant girl. After the scene at the Soma, the Feds might finally decide to pay the compounds a visit. But the Trinity is secure, in its way, and I’ll bet Elder Young has some hideaways up his sleeve in the event that he wakes the sleeping tiger and gets raided.”

  Lee and several of the other children gaped in disbelief and Amira understood why. The idea of the government raiding the compounds, any compound, was inconceivable to them. The Gathering was the last time the compounds faced a direct challenge from the outside world. Amira’s pulse quickened as she remembered what Elder Young had said. Mobilize the compounds.

  “But they could also still be in Westport, or somewhere close by,” Hadrian continued, turning to the gym’s single oval-shaped window, through which a sliver of moon peered inside. “They have allies here now, who the fuck knows why, and I bet those Cosmics have a fancy pad somewhere with lots of security to keep her hidden. Still risky, though – Westport is a big city, but we’re good at stepping on each other’s toes.”

  “Why keep her alive, though?” Amira asked in frustration. “Elder Young said, ‘We need her alive’. But why? He wanted to marry her once. Is that still his plan?”

  The girl with the dreadlocks snorted loudly.

  “She’s damaged goods,” Hadrian said by way of explanation. “I doubt the good Elder would even pawn her off to one of his men at this point. She’s lived in Westport too long and had too many chances. No, my guess is that this is much bigger than little Rozene, bless her, and they’re doing this to make a statement.”

  Amira exchanged a confused look with D’Arcy.

  “Have you been away from the compound that long, love?” Hadrian asked. “Think about it. Remember when you broke a rule back home, got caught stealing cookies or diddling yourself in your room? What did they make you do as punishment? Besides getting a beating or two, what did you have to go through each time?”

  “Unveiling and community penance,” Amira said, and the horrific realization gripped her. “They’re going to execute her in public!”

  “Blast it on the Stream is my guess,” Hadrian said. Lee turned pale.

  “And they need to do more than that,” D’Arcy added thoughtfully. “They’ll want to show how wrong it was to clone her in the first place. They won’t just let the baby live, will they?”

  “No,” Hadrian said, no longer smiling. “They could do a few different things, thinking off the top of my head, but my bet is they’ll get mini-Rozene out of her, if she hasn’t gone into labor already, and get it all mutilated, to show the world what happens when you upset the Conscious Plane, or whatnot.”

  Amira closed her eyes, suppressing a resurging wave of nausea. Lee walked out of the room, but not before Amira saw his ashen face twisted in horror. Hadrian was right; for something as spiritually threatening to the compounds as human cloning, the Trinity would make the most brutal statement possible. Even Harrison Harvey, a city figure, spoke of women reproducing without men completely. What could frighten Elder Young more than that?

  “We don’t know that for sure yet,” D’Arcy said, glancing sidelong at Amira with a nod of reassurance. “They could want a ransom, even, or have a list of demands like people have been doing for centuries.”r />
  “Maybe,” Hadrian said. “Mayhap the Cosmics also want our Rozene for something, and that’s part of their deal – they let the Cosmics do what they want with her, which is why they didn’t blow a hole through her head the minute they saw her, and then the Trinity can take over at the end.”

  Amira sank into a chair, overwhelmed by the sense of dread coursing through her body. Her focus surprised her. Perhaps she was at her limit, and her mind could no longer handle a protracted state of panic. Too much was out of her control – Rozene could be under torture or worse at that very moment, and though no one admitted it, not even Hadrian, they were grasping at straws to figure out her location.

  The Stream cut back to the Soma and a wave of anger washed away her guilt and fear. This was not only an attack on the city she loved, imperfections and all, but on each young escapee gathered around the screen who, like herself, sought control over their lives. They no longer felt safe from the compounds’ reach. There was also Amira’s debt to Rozene – her patient, friend and fellow refugee. Valerie Singh’s final words to her were to keep Rozene safe and see Pandora to its end, and Amira would have to find a way, for both their sakes.

  As the children slowly retreated to their cabins, Amira turned to Hadrian to ask the final question that haunted her since the Soma attack.

  “The Tiresia,” she said in a low whisper, and his sharp yellow eyes met hers directly. “The Cosmics and the Trinity found the box of vials empty. The vials I gave you.”

  “Did they now?”

  “They know it’s all gone,” Amira said.

  “They’re not fools, love.”

  “What is it, Hadrian?”

  “What is what?”

  “The Tiresia!” she said with venom. “What does it do?”

  “No clue.”

  She opened her mouth to scream in frustration, then closed her eyes and exhaled. Hadrian waited patiently beside her, his head cocked in a mocking gesture of innocence. Calming down, she clasped her hands together and faced him again.

  “If you don’t know what it is or what it does, why did you have me steal it?” she asked.

  “Because somebody far more important than the two of us asked me to,” he said. “Get it out of the Soma, he said, whatever you do, get it out and keep it safe. And that’s what I’m doing. I didn’t ask anything beyond that.”

  Amira laughed, loudly enough that her bitter peals of mirth echoed across the room’s battered walls. Yet another riddle.

  “I guess I won’t bother asking you who it was this time.”

  “Oh, you’ve guessed the answer already, love,” Hadrian said with a wicked grin. “Tony Barlow. He and I go way back, guess I forgot to mention that, and I owe him some. Smart guy, that Dr. Barlow, so when he asks for a favor, it’s for a good reason.”

  “You lied,” Amira said. “When I asked you about Barlow and you promised to look into him.”

  “I did,” Hadrian said matter-of-factly. “Barlow wanted his drug hidden and his last supplies away from men and ladyfolk with ill intent, and I didn’t want you knowing more than you needed to. Keep you under the radar, as it were. Too late for that now. You’ve made yourself many enemies by fixing our Rozene. Want my advice? Don’t make another one out of me. We’re on the same side, love.”

  As Hadrian sauntered toward the door, he turned one last time.

  “He asked about you quite a bit. Barlow. Seems very interested in you, Amira Valdez.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The Satyr Road

  The Satyr Road cut diagonally across the heart of Westport, a bleeding artery of neon lights and glistening cars that snaked through the city’s congested center. The bright sheen of new rainfall only enhanced the effect of a place that produced its own radiance, however artificial it may be. Brazenly painted signs and video screens spanned the length of tall buildings, advertising multi-story complexes of sex shops, performance clubs, virtual rooms and more private, intimate services. Women and men posed on display in artfully lit glass windows, advertising their wares, inspected and admired by passersby along crowded sidewalks.

  Amira and Lee tried to feign ease with their surroundings, but the compounds’ obsession with sexual purity was a hard lesson to unlearn, even with years and miles of distance. Beyond its general licentiousness, however, there was much about the Satyr Road that unsettled Amira – artificial, silicone bodies displayed like meat through glass panels, the mile-away stares behind every worker’s eyes, making human and robot faces impossible to distinguish. Then there were the darker offshoots of the main road, the alleys behind alleys, where robots with children’s bodies were furtively advertised. ‘Keep Real Children Safe’, the campaign slogan read. Amira turned away in disgust, resisting the urge to yank the signs from the window. Instead, she grabbed Lee’s elbow and continued ahead. They could not afford to draw any attention to themselves.

  After several blocks, Lee regressed to staring at the pavement, and Amira wondered whether bringing the quiet teenager as a backup was, at best, pointless, and possibly even dangerous. D’Arcy worked for Pandora, Hadrian drew too much attention and Julian was undoubtedly being watched. As a result, Lee became her accomplice for the night.

  “This is the one,” Amira said, pulling Lee down a narrow alleyway past a window of robotic women in provocative poses that a nearby sign promised were ‘the authentic human experience, inside and out’. In the alleyway, they entered a narrow building with a faint ‘Hotel’ sign above it and into a musty room with fading, mold-colored carpeting. There was no reception desk or any evidence of service. Creaking stairs, also shabbily carpeted, led up several flights to the address Hadrian provided, the number ‘42’ barely readable on the door.

  Amira rapped the door sharply.

  She fidgeted anxiously, pulling her sleeves over her wrists. Since her own room at the Canary House was no longer safe, she was forced to borrow clothes from the girls on Hadrian’s ship, all considerably younger with less-developed frames. Her black sweater itched and crawled up her navel, and the eggplant-hued jeans she managed to squeeze into pressed at her mercilessly from all sides. Most of the girls on the ship discarded the signature lace veils and shapeless compound dresses within days of escape and opted for the tightest and least comfortable clothes available. One restriction traded for another.

  The door flung open and a striking woman with long, layered bronze hair peered out, scanning her two visitors under heavy eyelids. She made a delicate gesture with her hand to beckon them inside.

  “Hadrian let me know you were coming,” Maxine St. Germaine said in a melodious voice that revealed neither warmth nor displeasure at their arrival. Maxine’s dimly lit apartment could not have been further removed from the dour, stale hallway. The contrast was so evident that Amira paused to readjust her eyes to the wealth of rich colors and textures inside. Tapestries hung on the wall to their left, classic scenes of geisha walking over bridges beneath cherry blossom trees and pouring cups of tea. Ornate stone sculptures sat on end tables, male and female figures with limbs entwined in various contortions. A large screen on the opposing wall ran in the background, depicting scenes of a less subtle nature that turned Lee’s ears red. The furniture was simple and utilitarian, glass tables and leather couches with clean lines, glowing warmly under the delicate streaming lights that stretched along the walls.

  They followed Maxine behind a curtain that partitioned the front area, clearly designed with her clients in mind, from the remainder of her apartment.

  Behind the curtain, the back room had the chaotic quality of an artist’s studio, but instead of canvases and paint, wires, gears, microchips and a wide assortment of tools covered every surface. A high-powered microscope rested in the corner next to a compact molecular beam epitaxy. Amira recognized other tools and instruments associated with computing, although she suspected that D’Arcy would understand most, if not all, of the
room’s impressive array.

  Lee let out a low whistle, reaching out to touch the microscope.

  “Not a bad setup, eh?” Maxine said, pulling up a red velvet chair to sit. “Drink?”

  She jerked her thumb at a bottle of vodka on the table in front of her, and when they both shook their heads, she poured herself a glass.

  “I have a nice little side operation here, as you can see,” Maxine continued, lighting a cigarette. “Mostly tech that you can’t get through the normal channels. I can enhance Eyes, quantumize smaller computers, fix outdated systems. Some of my clients have things done on the side and some aren’t clients at all. There’s no shortage of folk here in Westport in need of some discreet upgrades.”

  She laughed airily.

  Amira searched her heavily made up features for any trace of her former masculinity, but found none. Maxine’s frame was narrow and delicate, strategically pneumatic in the appropriate areas, though her shoulders and collarbone jutted out prominently, the final remnants of awkward adolescence. Few Westport natives took advantage of the latest sex-transitioning procedures, due to early screenings for genetic variations and less rigid gender roles, but compound refugees were known to request transitions when they arrived in the cities.

  According to Hadrian, Maxine’s past was one of unwelcome births, assigned male when she was born in the Trinity Compound. At the age of fourteen, puberty greeted Maxine with more trauma than most, bringing facial hair but no deepening voice, and a body that remained soft and round.

  Maxine’s parents knew something was wrong, but did not confront the issue until the hot, turbulent summer when the changes could no longer be kept secret. Maxine wearing the starched, trademark white shirt at ceremonies, unable to conceal growing breasts. When the boys lined up to receive Chimyra, Maxine always stood out as the shortest. After an official inspection, surrounded by horrified relatives on a cold, late night, she was pronounced by the Trinity’s healer as neither entirely man nor woman, unfit to submit to a husband or hold dominion over a household. When the Elders expelled her, she held her sobs in the back of her throat while passing through the front gate, because boys were not supposed to cry. In Westport, she became Maxine through a few strategic surgeries, though she chose to leave some ‘ambiguities’ – as Hadrian referred to them – for the parts of her body she was comfortable with, a uniqueness that made her marketable on the Satyr Road.