Shattered (14 page)

The lighted bodies advanced. I shut down the infrared; I needed to see their faces. Mech eyes needed no time to adjust to the dark. The orange figures faded to gray shadows, and I saw: They were human, barely, stooped and ragged, their skin so layered with black soot that they melted into the tunnels.

For a moment I allowed myself to nurture the fantasy that they, whoever they were, poor but kind, would envelop me in their fold, spirit me away to safety, and then bask in the glow of my gratitude as I gifted them with a new life, safe and aboveground, their lives saved in return for saving mine, a happy ending.

And then I saw the glint of the knife in a raised hand, a long shard of broken glass clasped in another, heard a low, gutteral
roar. The rats streamed away, seeking the safety of darkness, like they knew what was to come.

I should have jumped headfirst,
I had time to think, just as a hand clamped down on my shoulder, yanked me backward. Someone grabbed my arm, nearly pulling the shoulder out of its socket, and dragged me up the stairs, my feet scrabbling for purchase as my ass thudded against the concrete. “Should've left you down there for the carvers,” the guy grunted, dumping me in a heap at the top of the stairs. Compared to the dark of the tunnels, the night sky seemed to blaze pink.

Mika leaned over me. I threw a wild punch, but he caught it, his scrawny grip deceptively strong. “Thanks,” he said, a creepy smile stretching across his face.

“For what?”

“For making this fun.” And he shoved a gag into my mouth. Pulled off his T-shirt and wrapped it twice around my head, leaving me in the dark. Someone tied my wrists together, then—after I landed a few kicks, yielding some mildly satisfying grunts and yelps—my ankles. Hands hauled me off the ground and slung me over a shoulder, my head dangling toward the ground, my blindfolded face plowed into someone's ass. They carried me away.

When they pulled out the gag and ripped off the makeshift blindfold, I'd come full circle: another room, as featureless as the first, only without windows. The thugs were gone, leaving Mika and me alone.

I was tied to a chair.

“Go ahead,” I told him, steeling myself. My hands were bound behind my back, and my ankles knotted against the legs of the chair. They'd turned me into a piece of furniture. “Just do it.”

“What?”

Like I was going to give him ideas. “Whatever it is you're going to do.”

“That's what you think?” he asked, sounding disgusted. No—offended. He walked over to me, stroked a finger along my jawline. I jerked my head away, then thought better of it.
Bring it a little closer,
I urged him silently.
I'll bite it off.
“You think I brought you here to . . .
do
things to you?”

“You're right, that's crazy,” I said, straight-faced. “You probably just want to chat.”

“You think we're all animals, don't you?” Mika poked me in the shoulder. Hard. “
Don't
you?”

I shrugged.

“Penned up like dogs. Fighting each other for scraps.” He shook his head. “Who are
you
calling an animal? I'd rather be a dog than an
it
.”

“Not a dog,” I muttered. “Dogs are housebroken.”

“What's that?”

I just smiled at him. He slapped me, snapping my head back so hard it slammed on the back of the chair. The jolt of pain was like a mouthful of milk chocolate—sweet in the moment, but not rich enough to make much of an impression.

“Why aren't you scared?” he asked.

“Of
you
?” I sneered.
“Maybe because you're too stupid to notice that I'm a
mech
. You can't kill me. And I don't care if you hurt me.”

“I could make you care,” he said. “You don't want me to do that.”

“Doesn't seem to matter what I want.”

He circled the chair a couple times, then stopped in front of me, his legs straddling mine. He slapped his hands down on the chair back, long, hairy arms locking me in, then sat down, his ass heavy on my knees. He lowered his face to mine, and I wondered what his breath smelled like. Sour, I imagined, concentrating on his chipped front teeth. Or maybe sickly sweet like rotting fruit.

It's just a body,
I thought, watching his hands creep along my bare arms.
It's not me. It's got nothing to do with me.
Tiny, curly black hairs dusted his knuckles. His ragged nails were dark with grime. Long fingers, a strong, tight grip.
It's just wires and microreceptors and synflesh. Not me.

He pushed himself back to his feet. “I'm not an animal,” he snarled, backing away. “Whatever you think.”

I didn't want to feel relief, because that would be an admission I'd felt fear. I was supposed to be beyond fear. Secure in mind, fearless of body, that was the idea. “Fine,” I said, steady. “So now what?”

“Now we wait.”

We waited for more than an hour. Me in my chair, Mika's eyes darting from me to the door and back to me again. When it swung open, and Sari sauntered in, I allowed myself one moment
of willful ignorance before accepting the obvious. This wasn't a rescue.

I glared at her. “Where's Riley?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Worried? There's nothing I can do to him anymore, right?” Sari whispered something to Mika, who nodded. “Besides, how do you know Riley's not the reason you're here?”

I just stared at her.

She laughed bitterly. “Oh, that's right, you know him so well.”

“Like you used to?” I reminded myself that she was no different from any other stuck-up bitch who thought she was in charge. And that was something I could use.

“No one knows Riley,” Sari said. “You'll figure that one out yourself.”

“Seems like a pretty pathetic attempt to get him back.”

She snorted. “Why would I want him back?”

“Right, you've got Gray now.”

Sari rolled her eyes. “Gray was convenient. Now he's not. A girl like you probably understands exactly how that goes.”

“Don't pretend you know anything about me.” There had been guys who were toys, guys who were power plays, guys who were placeholders or just something to play with before I got bored, but that was over now. Mechs played by different rules. And I didn't play at all.

“I know freaks like you and Riley belong together,” she said. “I've moved on.”

“To what?” I glanced pointedly at Mika.
“Him?”

Sari burst into surprised laughter, then cut herself off as Mika's face flushed red.

“What's it feel like?” she asked abruptly.

I struggled against the rope binding me to the chair. “A little tight, actually. Feel free to untie—”

“Not that. You know. Sitting around, knowing you're not going to die. Never get ugly. Sick.”

None of the orgs in my world—my former world—got ugly when they got old. It's like the pop-ups said: a nanojection a day kept the wrinkles away. And there was always a lift-tuck every few months when things started to sag.

“At least you're starting out ugly,” I said. “So you've got nothing to lose.”

Sari bared her teeth, but before she could do anything, the door eased open. A thin, vertical strip of face appeared through the crack. An inch of pale lip, split by a deep red scar, a sharp nose, hooded brown eyes. “Let's go!” the mouth commanded. “Things to do.”

Mika scrambled, tipping me off. This was the final puzzle piece, the alpha to their pathetic betas. Riley's replacement. Sari glanced at the door, eyes shining. She smirked at me. “This is all Riley's fault, you know.”

“I doubt that.”

She jerked her head toward the shadow behind the door. “You piss off Wynn, you pay. Riley knew that then, and he knows it now. Ask him. If you ever see him again.”

She left me alone.

“Riley?”
I VM'd. But again there was no answer. Possibly he was out of range. Gone to get help. Or just gone.

Mechs feel fear, just like orgs. Sharp, imminent fear, a red, flashing danger sign, like when you're hurtling toward the earth at a hundred miles per hour. And when the fear's sharp enough, it overpowers that annoying voice, the one wanting to know
If I'm afraid, why aren't my hands shaking? Why aren't my teeth chattering? If I feel fear, why don't I
feel
fear?
You don't think about it, because when the danger sign's flashing brightly enough, you don't think at all.

Fear I felt. But not the thing that comes after the fear, the thing that shows up when the door closes and the noise stops and you're just waiting—and waiting—for something to happen. The tight-chest, stiff-neck, rigid-muscle, can't-breathe thing that serves as a constant reminder that Something Bad is on its way.

I never noticed it when I was an org—that's part of being an org, having the luxury not to notice anything—but some emotions are more inside your head than others.
Happy
, that's a brain feeling. But
sad
? That's in the body. In the gut and the throat and the jaw.
Anxious
too.
Worried. Nervous.
All the feelings your brain would escape from if it could. So your body grabs hold and doesn't let go. Org minds can go to as many happy places as they want, but their bodies always drag them back down to sweaty palm–ville.

Org
bodies. Not mine.

So when I forced my mind to something
else—clothes, in this case, and the new morphdress I was considering, almost solely for the pleasure of watching Jude's face fall as its skirt transformed from mini to maxi before his eyes—it went.

I can't escape,
the train of thought went.
And they can't kill me. They can't hurt me in any way that counts.

So why think about what was going to happen next?

Why not just
stop
being afraid?

And then the lights went out.

I'm not afraid of the dark,
I told myself, then repeated the words out loud. My voice sounded strange, floating through the black. Disembodied.

It was just curfew, I thought. Nothing more mysterious or dire than that.

I'm not afraid of the dark.

It was what the dark meant. The cities were primitive. Energy ran through wires, snaking through the air or buried in the ground, safe from those who would steal it, abuse it, use it up. Unlike out in the real world, where energy was wireless and, as long as you could afford to pay, there for the taking, as much as was needed. That was the world I was built for. That was the world that powered the converter in my chest.

I'd last three days, maybe four. But that was it. Then no more power, which meant . . . what?

As long as the artificial brain was intact, it sent out a signal that interfered with the functioning of any other brains with the
Lia Kahn
pattern. It was how BioMax ensured that I remained
Lia Kahn, the one and only. The memories I stored every night were guaranteed to stay locked away in storage. Until the brain in my head was destroyed and the signal failed, giving BioMax the automatic go-ahead to download Lia Kahn into a brand-new body. No harm, no foul.

But power failure meant I stayed in this body, even if it was useless. Maybe indefinitely, an unconscious lump of parts. And maybe that was the plan. Toss me out with the garbage—or keep me around, a life-size doll, to do with what they would.

None of the mechs I knew had played around with power failure. Maybe my brain would stay active while they did whatever they did. Maybe it would be like being trapped underground, blind and frozen, forever.

I said I wasn't afraid of the dark.

I say a lot of things.

“Lia.”
It was Riley's digitized voice in my ear, low and urgent. The VM link only worked within a few miles, which meant they hadn't taken me too far away. “
Where are you?”

“Trapped.”
I wiggled my fingers. If I'd been an org, they probably would have gone numb by now.
“I don't know where they brought me.”

“I shouldn't have left you alone. I never thought Sari would—”

“It's done,”
I said.
“Where are you?”

“They tried to . . .”
A pause.
“It doesn't matter now. I got away.
It was too easy—I think they let me. You okay?”

“They can't hurt me.”

“They won't try.”
He didn't sound as sure as I would have liked.
“They're not after that.”

“So what do they want?”

“It's complicated.”

It was always complicated.

“There's this guy Wynn,” he said. Then stopped.

Keep talking,
I thought. And not just because I needed to know. His voice, even in this monotonic form, was warm, something to hold on to in the dark.

“He thinks he runs things around here,”
Riley said finally.
“And I . . . pissed him off.”

“I heard.”
Sound tough, be tough. That was the rule.
“So he wants some kind of revenge?”

“He wants me,”
Riley said.
“And Jude. For you. That's the trade.”

“He had you,”
I pointed out.
“He took me instead.”

“Because that was easier.”

Because he knew you'd fight back,
I thought, disgusted with myself.
Because he knew I couldn't.

“And he needs me to get Jude,”
Riley added.
“He wants both of us.”

“Why?”

There was another pause so long, I was afraid he'd gone.