I doubled over, in disbelief, horrified at the sight of the bone jutting out of the skin of my forearm. I wanted to vomit. And when I saw Jaden collapse on the floor next to me, my first instinct was to collapse along with him, but Mom would be back inside any moment.
I tried grabbing him with my good arm, but the motion sent sparks of pain radiating from my bad one. Pain. That was it. Remembering my new-found physiological control, I switched my BCI back on and toggled through to my nervous system, instructing my thalamus to stop receiving any electrical signals from my left arm. And then it was gone. Not just numb, but empty.
In one fell swoop I picked Jaden up one-handed and flipped him onto my back, carrying him out of his room and into mine. I put him on the bed and opened the window, first just enough to see that Mom or Mr. Bosworth hadn’t come by this part of the house, and then wide enough to fit through. I paced quickly over to the door and shut it behind me just as Mr. Jefferson appeared at the end of the hallway. “I thought I heard a noise. Is everything all right?”
“Actually, could you take a look at something here? Neither Jaden nor I could figure out how the door came off.”
As soon as Mr. Jefferson had trundled over and began scanning the hinges, I opened up his interface and powered him down. After taking out his battery when he slumped to the floor, I dragged him into Jaden’s room and lifted him onto the bed. Then I took out a piece of electronic paper from Jaden’s desk and wrote a note in his scrawling, child-like handwriting. “Hey guys. Mr. Jefferson malfunctioned and knocked down the door, so I shut him off. Went to the hardware store to get new screws for the hinges. Might also head to Spencer’s house.”
I left the note propped up against the fallen slab of wood, and rushed back down the hallway and out the door. By the time I was around the side, Mom already had the cat in her arms and was moving back onto the patio.
“Some big help you were!” she said.
I turned sideways so she couldn’t see my left arm. “Sorry, Clint from my geology group messaged saying there was a bit of a crisis with our eggshell geode. I should head there now, but have you seen Jaden? His door’s off its hinges and he left some note about going to the hardware store.”
Mom paused. “I just saw him in his room a few minutes ago.”
“Me, too,” I said. “Anyways, I’ll see you later on.”
“What time will you be back?” she asked, a little bewildered.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do, but soon as I can. I love you, Mom,” I added.
“Love you, too.”
As soon as she was back inside with the cat, I went around to the other side of the house and through my window, picked up Jaden again, and carried him outside and around to my car. I plopped him in the passenger seat, put my clear, modulated mask over my face, and my sunglasses on his. Then called Ethan on my bug as I was pulling out of the driveway.
“Hey, man. We’ve got to talk.”
Chapter 38
Ethan hadn’t spoken for a minute after I told him. There had been this void opening, drawing us down into the darkness. He’d always been right about needing to go faster and I’d always known it, too; ever since the first robbery a timer had started on the number of days we had remaining to be kids, walking around and going to school. It was too terrible to admit. Just like it was too creepy to think that every bug or bird could be a camera, or someone could have their film on even during a normal conversation, or your soundwaves were being analyzed with software every time you spoke. You just didn’t think about it, because if you actually did it would crush you.
“You know we gotta do something big,” I said, looking down at my brother, unconscious and hogtied in Richard’s Faraday cage in the back of the shipping container. The handy thing about Faraday cages was that they didn’t just keep things like electromagnetic fields from getting in but they kept them from getting out, too. Which meant there’d be no way for Jaden to use the broadband or radio transmitter on his BCI to call for help. “Things are going to have to be dramatically different by the time he wakes up.”
Ethan looked paler than I’d ever seen him before. His voice was barely a whisper. “I know.”
“Depending on what he does, people are going to have a lot of questions. And we’re going to have to have plausible-sounding reasons for everything, along with evidence and perfectly synchronized stories to back it up. That means big bumps in white matter. Processing. Dr. Griswald said it wouldn’t be cheap so we can’t fuck around with any of these regular houses anymore.”
“More than that,” Ethan whispered.
“What do you mean?”
For a second I thought Ethan didn’t hear me, seemingly lost at the sight of my brother on the floor. “We’ll have to get new identities lined up, with all the paperwork and files ahead of time, so the only thing we’d still need to do if things go wrong is the plastic surgery. Maybe a change in skin tone, too. Spanish—Moorish almost. Something that would really throw them off.”
Even now, even given everything that was happening, that prospect seemed distant and absurd. But, just as I was about to say something to that effect, I realized through a fog that it wasn’t. And that if things went wrong I might never see my parents, Lena, Michael, Christopher—anyone I cared about, again. That detonation made me panic even more, but it simultaneously made everything vivid. The breeze made my skin prickle while the sun seared it. It felt like time was slowing down just as much as my heart was speeding up.
“What do you think we should hit?” I asked, my voice now matching his whisper.
“The one with an art collection that you always said we’d need to be more Revised first? Well, we’re more Revised now, aren’t we?”
My stomach felt like it was moving up through my chest. I couldn’t breathe. Everything we’d crossed off before had been for a reason. “Yeah, but we’re not going to have the drones. Jaden must’ve installed a kill switch that tripped when he got incapacitated, because they’re not turning on.” I went in and tried selecting them again in my film, but they were still greyed out.
“Sure it’s not the batteries?”
I shook my head.
“At least we’ve already got everything mapped,” he said, and then seeming for the first time to notice my arm, he said, “Jesus. What happened to you?”
I gestured toward brother. “It’s fine. I dialed back the pain setting.”
“But you still have to set it. Let’s go in and see my uncle. He was a medic, remember?”
“We don’t have time. And he’s probably high anyway.”
“He was probably high the whole Gulf War, too, and they still gave him a medal. Now come on.”
The rest of the day ran like a dream frozen in the abstract that only melted into a recognizable version of reality when we ducked out of the shipping container into the afternoon sun. Having to identify exits and calculate building escape routes, I was coming to appreciate the outdoors in a way I never had before, especially as we entered December. Maybe slipping into it and living off the grid wouldn’t be so bad. Simply existing.
“At the beginning of the trimester it would’ve taken ten hours to make that blue morpho, seven after the first Revision, and now I could probably do it in two.” Ethan looked both ways as we jogged across the yard to my car. Ever since the officers came to lunch, neither of us could keep our eyes on one thing for more than a few moments, even when we were in seemingly secure areas. “Procrastination’s finally prudent.”
“Whatever you say,” I said as I unlocked the doors and we climbed in, hardly in the mood for any of his ruminations. Especially since the car, a 2020 Ford Starlight, had been unshaded and was a furnace now, the vinyl blistering. The air not working. The steering wheel turning slick with sweat as soon as I touched it.
We did an intel check, discussed the approach, and determined we needed to return by midnight to re-up Jaden with acetylcholine. There was a chance he wouldn’t wake up until 1:30 or 2 a.m., but this wasn’t somethi
ng to gamble on.
Traffic was nearly nonexistent like it usually was these days, since asphalt had been swapped for fiber. Unfortunately for nature, though, this migration happened about a century too late for most of it, and the subsequent Revisionist approximations gave the world the feeling of a restored historical building, repainted in the bright colors of the tropics.
We parked the car, put on baseball caps, and strode casually into the park. When we were twenty yards from the edge, I grabbed a Frisbee out of my bag. On the tenth throw, Ethan sent it sailing over my head, through the pine tree break, and deep into the undergrowth of the Humbuchers’ garden.
“Well, fuck me.”
Exchanging glances, we grabbed our bags and walked into the trees. Once in the yard, Ethan searched for the Frisbee while I put my ski mask on and took out the glass cutter, disappearing into a bush next to a window. The laser was so precise that the glass looked untouched until I removed a rectangle from the window, laid it against the siding, and climbed carefully into the two-foot by two-foot gap.
Inside, it was as if a designer had dipped her pen into the past and drawn the dark cherry wood floors and wrought iron candle holders before pushing into the future with black metal furniture and panel displays on milk-colored walls. From the ceiling hung light fixtures shaped as irregular polygons that shone down into numerous nooks and alcoves, gouged out in the cobblestone. Balls and toys were scattered across the rooms, nursery-like, giving everything a buoyant whimsy and reminding you that a Revised toddler lived here, bringing the house full-circle back to the present.
“How are you doing in there?” Ethan asked in my ear as I resealed the window.
“Good, you?”
“Still looking.”
“I’ll be out in a second,” I said, ascending the spiral staircase and winding my way around to the study. The safe was exactly where Jaden’s notes said it would be, in the southwest corner opposite the bookshelf. I reached into my bag and picked up the device, but froze when I realized it felt too light.
Running my fingers over it I found a depression where the PCB should have been. “Ethan . . . Ethan. There’s a problem.”
“What?”
“The PCB’s gone.”
“What? How?”
“I don’t know. It was there yesterday, but it’s not in the bag!” I checked it again, my hands tingling.
“So, it’s gotta be in the car then. I’ll go get it.”
“Not a good idea.”
“You see the safe, right? It’s where it’s supposed to be?”
“Yes.”
“Well we can’t just leave it. And it’s fine—there’s hardly anyone around. There was an old couple that walked by, but they’re way on the other side of the park now. I’ll be back in a second.”
“Ethan . . .”
“I’ll be back in a second,” he repeated.
I wasn’t sure if I was only feigning prudence to cover myself, but it’s not like it mattered. We were out of time.
The thought haunted me as I sat back in a chair and waited, scanning book titles on the opposite shelves. Volumes of Flaubert, Dreiser, Balzac, and Eliot. I recognized a couple from a summer reading list from the Gifted Program, but what use were old books now, anyway? The characters didn’t have films or BCIs. Or know anything about quantum computing and molecular biology. Things were just moving too fast. Even books written tomorrow would be obsolete by the time they went to print.
The clock on my film ticked away a minute. And then another one. I stood up and looked out the window—realizing how close to Michael’s we were. If you took this road back down to Nile Boulevard and went north for a couple of kilometers you were basically there. Ethan had once joked that we should just rob his house, and I’d nearly punched him in the face.
I wanted to punch him again now; he should’ve been back already. For a few moments I was reassured in the knowledge he would’ve said something if he were in trouble, but what if he couldn’t? What if Jaden had gotten up somehow? Maybe not gotten up—we’d given him Ethan’s extra meds and thrown in some bazetone for good measure—but what if he’d sabotaged something beforehand? Stepping out of the study, my foot made a hollow sound on the dark wood, a cold feeling spreading out inside me. The house felt different. Menacing. “Ethan, how are you doing?”
There was quiet.
I adjusted the frequency up point one and started down the staircase. “Ethan, what’s going on?” I moved it again, this time down point two. “Ethan?
I turned the corner and stopped. A policeman was peeking through the window outside.
Chapter 39
I swallowed a scream. He hadn’t noticed me yet, but he was panning fast across the room. I wanted to duck, but there wasn’t any time, so I fused back into the wall, motionless, hoping that somehow the glare would be too bright for him to see inside. His eyes brushed over me and kept going, but then they stopped and retraced, very slowly, to where I was standing. He didn’t jump back or go for his gun, and I was too shocked to do anything either. For a few moments we just looked at each other.
In a couple of minutes I’d be in the back of a police car, and in a couple of hours I’d be in a small room with a detective, hooked up to physiological sensors. I’d see my mom cry and my dad hold his head in his hands. They’d piece together the rest of the burglaries, tacking on charge after charge, and when I turned eighteen in March they’d try me as an adult.
It was over.
But then I remembered the ski mask was still on and I could just be one of the other robbers. Neither of us had moved, but the thought of getting away, going back to school, living, and dreaming again had a magnetic pull. I felt myself drifting closer and closer to the point where my momentum would carry me over the edge. And then it did, and I was running.
At once it was a different existence. Quicker breathing. Lighter steps. Thoughts catching fire and fizzling out. My shoulder slammed into a vase as I spun around a corner and vaulted into the kitchen, plowing through a row of chairs that hadn’t been pushed back into the table, only vaguely aware of the impact.
This is it. This is everything.
I was in the closest thing to a dead sprint I could muster in the splint, aiming for the sliding door to the patio and the sheet of sunlight just beyond it, when I slowed and pivoted. The cop had seen me turn, so he’d be coming around this side of the house to try and cut me off.
I skidded on the wood floor, pushed back off the glass, and bolted the other way, getting as far down the hall as I could while still being able to see the back porch. As soon as the blur of his head entered the frame, I turned and sprinted the rest of the way to the front door with everything I had. The unlocking knob twist-and-pull was a fluid motion, and I was down the steps and flying through the manicured grass of the front lawn.
The cop’s car was sitting in the driveway, the faint whirl of operators and calling codes piping out the window as I bounded past. Knowing I needed to be gone from view by the time he came back around, I lunged one way, changed my mind, and then lunged the other, moving so fast my feet barely touched the asphalt. Then my body took over, jumping the hedgerow into the front yard of the house across the street and skimming over a small table set for a child’s tea party. I zoomed past a driveway, registering in a blur a Lexus and the compact SUV parked along it, and then was in the backyard, ducking under a swing set and hopping a row of bushes and a small fish pond. Barely slowing in front of a fence, I gripped a wooden point on top and flung myself over. There was too much weight on the balls of my feet when I landed, and I almost had to tuck into a roll before finding my balance just in time to dodge a patio barbeque set, weaving in between some chairs and a gas grill.
As I careened around a corner it occurred to me that if I got caught there wouldn’t be any more barbeques, or watching fireflies in the park, or sleeping out under the stars. There’d be nothing to look forward to. In fact, by the time I got out of prison, everyone would’ve Revised so much tha
t the world would be unrecognizable.
Armed with that thought, I barreled down the stone walkway along the side of the house and into the front yard. A rectangular robot was mowing the grass, but it was facing sideways so its cameras couldn’t see me. I figured by this point the officer would’ve realized that I hadn’t gone out the back and would come looking for me in his car, so I needed to get out of the search radius, away from this sprawling suburb where there was nothing but open spaces and neighbors on edge.
I could make for Jesup Park a mile away. There wouldn’t be many people out jogging since it was still so blistering hot, but at least I’d be less conspicuous than here. It was large and wooded, bigger than Midland, and paths crisscrossed each way, so I could cut diagonally all the way to the river and cross at the 5th Street Bridge.
As I pounded down the sidewalks, nanobots raced through me, oxygenating everything that mattered. I was the opposite of tired. I’d thought the heights of consciousness were reached through winning ball games, acing tests, and playing video games, but they weren’t even on the same scale. My world had been drawn with whites and grays, and now, as I jumped a short hedgerow, I was seeing every hue blazing with life. All together. All at once. A ten-year march crammed into a heartbeat. This is what had been on the other side the whole time: the clanking of plates, the toasts, the uproars of laughter. I’d always thought it’d been a movie playing, but here I was ripping open the curtain and it was real.
Twigs and branches tore at my arms as I burst through a clump of bushes and out onto another sidewalk. There was a couple walking their pair of Labradors a few feet away and they jumped back in surprise. The dogs’ barks exploded into the afternoon air like gunshots and I nearly tripped, trying to turn and run the other way.
With my good arm, I reached out and touched my ski mask to make sure it was still on. While no one would be able to make an ID, I was so conspicuous that anyone who saw me was likely to call the police, or at the very least tell them they’d seen me if asked. Maybe if there was no one around the next corner I could take it off in favor of the clear, contoured one and try to blend in. I still had my bag and the same white shirt and blue jeans I’d been wearing all along, but maybe the officer hadn’t seen them. The glare had been bright, and it’d only been a few seconds.
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