Project Recollection: Book One of the Affinity Series

by A A Woods

  If I could, I’d go back to a time when I could see. After all, what I really want is to look at my brother and remind myself that he was real. But I’ve been blind for as long as I’ve had my cable, so I go to the next best thing.

  I slip into the memory and it’s like sliding between warm sheets on a winter night. Mesmerizing. Addictive.

  I don’t care.

  I’m walking through darkness, but I can smell our old apartment. Paint. Cinnamon. Detergent. Linseed oil. Clay. My body takes a hesitant step without my brain telling it to, the memory carrying me forward, making decisions for me. It’s the easiest thing in the world to feel what I once felt, experience the world at arm’s length, to exist without the risk of existence.

  Shoving aside the warning bells ringing in my head, I sink deeper into the memory.

  Pain radiates up my shin as I bump into a table, but it’s not the pain of a Yokai match. It’s not real. It barely even registers.

  I want to laugh, but a growl rumbles through the chest of my younger self like the sound of a train approaching.

  “Careful, little tiger.” Zhu’s voice comes from my right, my brother watching as I stumble through the room.

  “I don’t need your help.” My voice is snappish and petulant and I want to stuff the words back into little Mei’s mouth, speak softly to this shade of Zhu. But the memory rolls on, already stamped and sealed.

  “I could help, you know. Tell you when you’re about to run into something.”

  “No!”

  I’m inching forward again, toeing in front of me, fists clenched at my sides.

  “Okay, how about this?” He’s moving around me, shifting the air. “How about we have a code word? I can shout it when you’re about to run into something.”

  My body pauses and I lift my head, glaring through the oily darkness. “What code word?”

  “How about… peaches?”

  I purse my lips and my body tenses. But my real body is singing. I feel like a frozen traveler standing beside a fire, ready to crawl into the heat and let it consume me.

  “Peaches?”

  “Yeah,” Zhu says, his voice laughing and arrogant and wonderful. “Everyone will think I’m just being nice.”

  “You’re never nice.”

  “Ah, but they don’t have to know—”

  Suddenly, the memory shifts. I’m too shocked to react as my senses cut from the warm apartment to a cold office. I’m standing in front of a desk, beautiful polished wood interrupted by a massive data screen. I’m taller, my body thicker. My arm feels foreign and stretched as it gestures toward the dark-skinned woman behind the desk.

  “Yasmin, please, you need to see reason.”

  Her skin is like polished obsidian, stony and cold. She looks at me with an expression of vague annoyance, her fingers folded over the data pad, her IRIS cable wrapped around her neck like a piece of jewelry.

  Yasmin Abergel, C.E.O. of Project Recollection.

  The face of everything I hate in this world.

  “I’ve already discussed this with you,” she says. “We are moving forward with the Ankh Program and that is final.”

  My real body gasps, but the memory has me in its clutches, my brother’s heart beating in tandem with my own.

  “But it’s a disaster in the making. Just take a moment to think about the implications, please. If you give people the ability to steal bodies, what do you think it’ll mean?”

  “It means we are defeating the final enemy. Our company will conquer death.”

  “At what cost?! Look, I know this has personal implications for you—”

  “Careful, Mr. Sidana.”

  “—but we both know what kind of monstrosity this will create.”

  She shoves to her feet, her fingers splayed on the desk as she stares at me, eyes sharper than the tip of her IRIS cable. “Monstrosity is relative. Every major advance in human history has come at a cost. We can’t possibly help every single individual person.” She spits the word like a curse before stopping. Breathing. Composing herself. “You should be proud, Zhu, to think you’ll be the pivotal gear in such a momentous occasion.”

  “No.”

  Yasmin’s eyes glitter. “Do you really think you can hold this back? We are not the only ones investigating methods to download and transfer the human mind. We are just the first to come up with a viable procedure.”

  “Not if I stop you.”

  Yasmin stands straight, her chin held high. “Should you choose to go down that road the consequences will be… severe. You think I’m being selfish? Imagine how this decision could affect your family. Your sister is what, fourteen? Fifteen? A scandal like this could ruin the entire trajectory of her life.”

  “Don’t threaten me.” My voice is Zhu’s growl, familiar and foreign and terrifying.

  “Then don’t be difficult.” Yasmin turns, faces the cityscape behind her. “I understand your hesitations. Truly, I do. But your sights are too narrow. Too idealistic. There’s a layer of civilization out there that’s inherently useless. Addicts, Gamers. The refuse of society. I intend to galvanize the world above by making use of the one below.”

  “You’re going to murder innocent people.”

  She glances over her shoulder at me, her expression sad and sympathetic. Almost mocking. “But they aren’t innocent, Mr. Sidana, any more than I am. They are simply superfluous.”

  “I won’t be a part of it.”

  Yasmin sighs. “I’ll give you until tomorrow. Take the night. Think about your decision. Be sure you make the right one.”

  “Oh, I will.”

  The memory fades, shifts, and I’m staring in a mirror. Zhu’s face is looking back, but it’s panicked. Too haggard to be my brother.

  I’ve never seen him like this.

  “Mei, I’m so sorry, but I couldn’t think of any other way.”

  His voice is raw and chilling. I can’t breathe, can only watch as his lips move, as his voice rumbles through my own throat.

  “They’re going to arrest me tomorrow, I’m sure of it. Yasmin has no intention of giving me enough time to interfere with her plans. And, as my employer, they have full jurisdiction over my memory files. The only way to get this out was to sneak it into your cable. I’ve spent so much time tinkering with your IRIS that ProRec won’t be able to distinguish the one time that matters.”

  Zhu leans into the mirror, his eyes wide and pleading.

  “I hope you’ll look back and when you do you’ll look here, but I can’t be sure. I wish I could do more, but this is all I can think of.” His voice breaks. “I’m sorry, Mei. My tiger. I would give anything not to do this to our family, but ProRec is changing the game. Their new Ankh Program is designed to transfer consciousness from one body to another. But the problem is that the transfer only works on cables that have grown deep into the brain. A human mind is too big and complicated and the new body needs to be able to download it. They started with memory addicts, but that only works about half the time. Now they’ve changed their procedure to use Gamers. People like Gemma.”

  When he breathes it sounds like he’s been running, the air scratching against the skin of his throat.

  “I’m leaving this for you in the hopes, however faint, that you can use it. There’s no way they’ll let me spread what I know. But maybe you can do something to stop them.”

  My shoulders tense and Zhu leans in even more, his breath fogging the glass.

  “You’ve always been strong. Stronger than me. I’m sorry to leave this on your shoulders, but there’s no other way. Be my tigress, Mei. Don’t let them do this.”

  His voice cracks. His eyes stare into mine, into his own. And then the memory shifts and I’m a child once more, stumbling through the living room as Zhu continues to plot out code words and secret handshakes. I’m laughing, but outside the image, outside the world, my heart is pounding.

  I pull out of the recollection as quickly as I can, letting the swirl of disorientation catch me like a
wave.

  Zhu hadn’t hidden his secrets in my core code.

  He’d hidden them in my memories.

  And thanks to my thoughtless stubbornness, it took me six damn months to find them.

  Self-loathing and rage fill my body, crowding out rational thought, but still the puzzle pieces come together, fitting into a picture that’s more horrifying than anything I could have prepared for.

  Project Recollection is using Gamers to give their rich investors new bodies.

  Suddenly, it all makes sense. Damien was sold to William Barber, notoriously ancient and ill. The Russian diplomat, the Chinese real-estate mogul, the supermodel? All given new bodies, fresh starts, acquiring more time by stealing someone else’s.

  My fingers wrap around my IRIS cable, relishing the pain of the sharp tip against my palm. I squeeze tighter and feel skin break.

  This explains the missing Gamers, the upswing in raids, the MemHeads who vanished without a trace.

  I gulp air, my throat working convulsively.

  The Tournament.

  Order request for sixty-five bottles of champagne for the event tomorrow night.

  It’s a trap.

  ProRec is luring healthy, adapted Gamers in for some kind of sick pony show, an exhibit for rich investors. I imagine Yasmin presenting the contestants.

  Choose your body.

  Pick your future.

  Who cares if they’re murdering innocents, so long as they get to start over. And if it’s someone from the Tunnels, an outcast no one will miss? Even better. I remember the owner of Danny’s Diner, the snide looks and whispers and scathing remarks I run into every time I venture topside. This city has been built to ignore the disappearance of people like us. People like Damien. A part of me admires the brilliance of it. Feed on the bottom to bloat the top. It’s a scheme as old as time, one that society has been conditioned to accept.

  My knuckles ache and my palm bleeds.

  I barely notice.

  My tiger.

  This is my fault. I could have found this months ago, somehow used this memory against Project Recollection. With time, I could have gone to a proper news stations, started a campaign, stopped the Tournament before it had even started. But now it’s rolling toward me, the horrors my brother tried to prevent only hours away from happening.

  What can I possibly do now?

  But I have to do something. I can’t let the company I hate bastardize the work of the brother I love. And it’s bigger than that. I think of all the Gamers, people I once dueled and mocked and laughed with, gearing up for tomorrow night. All their lives hanging by a thread as the scissors of ProRec draw closer.

  I shove to my feet, swaying with hunger and exhaustion and the burden of what I now know. The cavernous Chain station echoes with the noise of everything that works against me. I’ve never felt so small.

  But I have to stop them.

  I can’t fail Zhu again.

  Ignoring the risk, I connect my father’s PAP to the wireless network. My breath is tight in my chest as I compose a message to Khali.

  I’m sorry. I can explain everything. Meet me at the factory?

  It feels like an eternity, but she responds in moments, the message cold and perfunctory but there.

  Be there in an hour.

  I disconnect the PAP.

  Trying desperately not to think about how impossible everything just became, I begin the long trek back to my training ground.

  She’ll to listen to this. She has to. Maybe the neutral space of the factory will make her more forgiving. But no matter the mysterious reason for her avoidance of ProRec or the sanctity of her secrets, I have to believe Khali will fight beside me. Brave, reckless, beautiful Khali won’t let this kind of thing happen in the world that forged us, the world we kissed in. I think of her rusty laughter and her crooked smile. I need her, need to believe that she won’t turn me away. Not again. Not when I explain.

  Will she?

  Tora

  Saturday, September 22nd, 2195

  1:20 A.M. EST

  I’ve spent so long hiding that I feel like I’m marching up to the executioner’s block as I approach the warehouse. The whole long, arduous, meandering journey from the Chain station to the Edeken factory, I’ve been planning what I’m going to say to Khali. How I’m going to approach her.

  I’m sorry. I was wrong to corner you at home. But here’s the truth…

  My heart turns over again and again and again.

  The truth is that I’m terrified. The truth is that I’ve never done this. The truth is that my secrets have been buried for so long that they’ve fossilized, become a part of my bone structure. Tearing them free and putting them on display feels like ripping out my own kidneys.

  But I made this mess.

  It’s time I set it right.

  I pause in front of the door, take a deep breath. It’s cracked and light spills out in a welcome mat, inviting me inside. But I only stare through the broken eyes of my father’s PAP, my brother’s jacket pulled tight around a lost, lonely creature with nothing to lose. The logical side of my brain wants to rationalize away the pulsing terror in my throat. After all, there are hundreds of Gamers I could go to. I’m not the only one with a vendetta against Kitzima, and I’m far from alone in my hatred of Project Recollection. Getting someone to listen to the exiled blind girl would be a challenge, but if I try hard enough, I could find someone else. If Khali turns me away, I can still go on.

  But the thought sends jagged pain lancing through my chest, spreading through my ribs, even worse than the knowledge of how badly I let my brother down. I can’t hide from the full brightness of this encounter. Because my mind keeps drawing back to her lips on mine and her bright clothes and her intoxicating, relentless defiance in the face of the impossible. Where I cower in shadow, she dances in the dark.

  I need her, more than I’m willing to admit.

  Something shifts in the warehouse. A footstep. But it’s muted, rubber and not hard plastic.

  My neck prickles.

  Something’s wrong.

  “Khali?” I call, my nervousness compounding, stacking, crushing into diamond. I take a step forward, trying to make out details through the cracked lens of my father’s PAP. “Khali, is that you?”

  “Come on in, Mei.”

  It’s Khali’s voice. Khali’s inflection. Khali’s raspy murmur.

  But it’s not her, because Khali’s never called me Mei.

  I sweep my PAP to either side of the door, but there’s nothing there. No port, no bikes, no sign of who might be inside. Goosebumps pop out along my arms and legs. I take a deep breath. I have to be steady. Whoever is in there has taken over Khali’s communication. Which means they have Khali.

  Which means I need to find out who it is.

  There’s only one way to do that.

  I bounce my knees, unplug myself, and tuck the broken PAP into my jacket pocket. With my IRIS cable jammed between two fingers, I take several sharp breaths. I only have one advantage, so I’d better squeeze everything I can out of it.

  I trace the route in my head.

  Mentally count the steps.

  And then I throw myself forward like a sprinter taking flight, a loosed arrow. I crash through the half-open door and the sound reverberates in announcement. Surprised shouts—low and hard – rise around me, swirl in my wake, but I’m sweeping past them before they can shift. Before they can follow. Hands grab for me but they brush against my jacket, sliding off my shoulders. Something snags my hair but I whip myself free, lift my knees high. I can’t fall, or all will be lost.

  I crash into the managers stand with bruising force, hands still outstretched. They drop, scraping frantically along the buttons and levers. There. The port. I feel bodies closing in, cutting off my escape. But it doesn’t matter. Heart pumping, blood rushing, I plunge my IRIS cable into the port and tumble into the warehouse system.

  Now we can play fair, I think with a surge of malevolent fury, chann
eling all my frustration into the Edeken network as a hundred digital eyes wink on.

  I see the tiny shape of me—black hair, hunched shoulders, leather jacket—with her hand still on the cable. Six figures in black armor are surging behind her, yanked along by her mad dash to the middle of the warehouse. They’re almost there, hands almost closing around her arms.

  My arms.

  I see two letters emblazoned on their chests, simple and silver and menacing.

  P.R.

  Project Recollection’s private police come to collect me at last.

  Was Khali the bait?

  I shove the thought aside. No time. Right now, I have six fish in my bucket.

  Time to start shooting.

  A mechanical arm hums to life, swinging out of nowhere and catching the closet officer, the one whose hand was about to grab my shoulder. He goes flying, sailing into a tangle of delicate machinery with a tinkling noise. My attention shifts and a crane crashes down, its arm in a crooked elbow around my miniscule body. One of the PR police releases a high-pitched warning before she’s cut off by a seven-jointed hand coming out of nowhere, wrapping around her head and whipping her into a shadowed corner.

  Two down.

  The others have realized the danger and are lifting their weapons. Stun guns, standard military issue, very helpful against human bodies. Not so much against an entire cavern of wriggling technology.

  I can’t help but grin.

  My machines attack as one, plunging toward the remaining black-clad figures, crashing down like a column of water. They strike, shift, dart, each branch of myself perfectly matching the moves of the ProRec team. I am a spider, a monster, a creature of unlimited destruction. I feel infinite and strong as I sweep and curl and crush, my focus blessedly averted. The distraction of the fight sweeps me away.