Company Town (31 page)

Hwa's fist snapped out so fast she almost didn't register it as movement. One minute Moliter was standing, and the next minute he was on the floor. He writhed helplessly, a potato bug curling in on itself, struggling to talk through the bloody gurgling in his throat.

“You little fucking
bitch,
” he said. “With your big fucking mouth.”

Coach Alexander. Coach Brandvold.
Is it true that one of the teachers here has a type?
“What, did Administration finally fire your ass? They finally find out how you were spending your lunch period?” She mimed him jerking himself off.

Moliter spat blood at her. It spattered dark red across the creamy marble floor.

“You're pathetic,” Hwa turned to the assembled crowd. “This guy, right here, he used to be my teacher. If you can believe that. And senior year, right after my brother died—” She choked on the words. Took a breath. Forced them out. “He said it was a shame about my face, because if I could make money the way my mother did, my brother wouldn't have died working on the Old Rig.”

Hwa toed one of his ankles. “You're lucky I don't have time for you.”

She turned back to Síofra. He was clutching his head. He looked miserable. Hwa reached over and held him. The crowd gave them room. She ushered him to a banquette along the wall. He slid down and folded into himself. She stroked his hair. His face. His breath came light and fast and shallow. Like he was bleeding out.

“Oh, God, I'd forgotten how much things could hurt, Hwa, it hurts—”

“It's probably just a migraine, eh?” Hwa tried to sound breezy. “I'll find Joel, and then I'll get you home, and get you sorted. Joel?”

Silence.

“Joel.” She swallowed hard. She made fists in Síofra's suit jacket to keep her hands from shaking. This was just too much for one night. “Joel, goddamn it, you answer me right this fucking minute, or I swear to Christ—”

“Joel, you simply must understand.”
Zachariah's voice sounded in her ear. Joel had opened a live feed, rather than answering her. That meant he couldn't answer. Or wasn't at liberty to do so. Hwa scanned the room for him. He was nowhere she could see.
“I plan to live a very long time. And your friend Daniel is a part of that plan.”

Hwa's stomach turned over.
I have great plans for Daniel,
the old man had said. Oh, Jesus. Oh, Christ. Oh, fuck.

“Joel, where are you?” Hwa whispered. She toggled her vision. She found Joel. He was on the floor above her. She pressed her forehead to Síofra's. “Hold on,” she said. “Hold on, Daniel.”

“My name.” He cracked a smile that was also a rictus of pain. He spoke through chattering teeth. “You know my name.”

“Goddamn right I do,” Hwa said. She ran.

*   *   *

The Lynch family stood gathered in a small meeting room above the forest. The floor was a one-way mirror looking down onto the red and gold of the trees below. The walls of the room were glass. Through it, Hwa could witness the aurora borealis rippling overhead, green and purple against the stars, a tingling in Hwa's teeth, an itch across her muscles.

She hunkered close to the floor.

“The time has come,” Zachariah Lynch said. “Joel, you will inherit this company. That has been my plan since long before you were even alive. Even before you were but a blastema in your mother's uterus. But I never intended for you to do it alone.”

She heard it in an odd stereo effect. Joel had opened his ears to her, and so now she heard it in both sets, organic and mechanical. Briefly, she wondered where her mother was down in that forest. Where Eileen was. Where everyone was. How she had reached this dark, hushed place herself. How it had come this far.

“I don't believe in death.” Zachariah paused for breath. “I think death is a myth. A fairy tale, to keep humanity in line. Something to make us fear our own decision-making power. Something to make us tremble before the capacity of our own agency.”

A murmuring among the Lynches. A habitual agreement. Like an
amen
or a
praise God
. Like a hymn they'd been singing their whole lives.

“I have devoted my life to this company,” Zachariah said. He was leading Joel around the perimeter of the room, gesturing at the stars outside the glass. “I have tried to have what might be called a fulfilling existence. Tried to have it all. Work. Family. Space for art and culture. Some dreams.”

The old man turned to face Joel. In the dark, the buttons and switches on his breathing cuirass glowed and pulsed. “What I've learned is that no one can have it all.” His smile stretched wide and pale in the dark. “You can have it all, but not all at once.”

Joel frowned. “I'm not sure what you're saying.”

“I'm saying that I'm retiring,” Zachariah told him. “I'm saying that the time has come. The future I envisioned has taken too long to arrive. It's time I made a transfer. Never enter a position without first designing your own exit strategy, Joel. Once you have it in place, you can run things the way you want without fearing the consequences. That's the only way to innovate, in this world.”

“Exit strategy?” Joel cast his gaze to his brothers and sisters. They all looked elsewhere. Each of them held a picture in a frame. The images in the frames flickered: Zachariah old, then Zachariah young. Zachariah sick, then Zachariah healed. His whole history was told in those icons carried by his older, more devoted children. “Transfer?”

“Don't look at them, look at me,” Zachariah murmured. “I'm the one who has put you in this position. You're my heir! You're the future of this company!”

“But, Dad…” Joel looked at his father, and then at the iron lung in the centre of the room, under the massive skylight. “Dad…”

“I'll still be your father,” Zachariah said. His rubbery lips pulled back into a gleeful smile. His prefab teeth gleamed unnaturally white. “If anything, I'll be an even better father. I'll be able-bodied. I'll be prepared to travel with you, to help you make decisions, to help you chart a course for this company. But I'll also finally be able to have my own life. I'll have a fresh start. And some day, so will you.”

“You mean a hundred years from now,” Joel said, flatly. “You mean after that?”

“We've all made sacrifices,” his sister Katherine said. The icon of her father glowed in her hands. “It would have been easier to take the company public. But we wanted—we needed—something different. And now it's your turn to give something up.”

“This is the future,” Paris said.

“It's not like Daniel was a real person,” London added. “Not really. We
made
him, Joel. We had him built. Like a doll.”

“An action figure,” Silas rumbled. And they all laughed. Hwa's stomach flipped over. Dr. Smith had tried to tell them. Project Changeling. An avatar. A sleeve. They had built him to their specifications, raised him up and made him comfortable, like a sacrificial lamb. And now it was time for slaughter.

“We must not laugh at Daniel,” Zachariah said, gently. “He's been very obedient, until now. Quite the model employee. It's just this young woman that's turned his head.”

Hwa shut her eyes. It was her fault. If she had only wanted him less. Needed him less. She forced her head back into the game. Joel had asked her up here for a reason. And it was with Joel, she realized now, that her loyalty lay. The rest of the Lynches could go fuck themselves.

Joel stared at his siblings. He looked at his father. He reached over and brushed something from the old man's collar. Then he leaned over and hugged him. The two of them stood together for some time.

“Hwa,” Joel said, in a clear voice.

“She revealed the truth to me,” Zachariah said, patting Joel on the back. “She showed me what I needed to do. Why I needed to move now, and not later. To strike while the iron was hot.”

“Hwa, save Daniel.” Joel was still embracing his father. He held tight. “Hwa, save him. Save him now.”

“Yes, b'y,” Hwa muttered.

She charged the two of them. She pulled Joel off his father, and pushed him behind her with one arm while her other reached out and clocked Zachariah right in the face. Let him try to transfer his consciousness when he wasn't even conscious. See how well that worked out, for the old man.

Zachariah Lynch wove on his feet. Only his cuirass held him upright, standing on his knees like a puppet whose strings weren't entirely cut. “Joel…” he murmured through blood. “You can't see the future that's coming…”

“You didn't see me coming, either,” Hwa said, and levelled a devastating kick to his ancient body. He fell like a sack of autumn leaves. She turned to Joel. The boy stared at the old man. Then he looked at his siblings. As one, they rose from their seats. The other Lynches stared at Hwa and Joel. For the first time all night, it occurred to Hwa to wonder about prison. She knelt. Zachariah still had a pulse. “He's alive.”

“Shame,” Katherine whispered. “Fucking megalomaniacal prick. Roko's Basilisk. Honestly. It's like he never left the cult.”

“He was crazy,” Silas said. “I loved him, but he was fucking nuts.”

“Well said,” Paris Lynch said, pulling his jacket straight. “I must say, Joel, for a first official executive decision, you're doing extremely well. We won't forget this, anytime soon. Naturally we'll be helping you with the transition, now that Father's health has taken such a rapid decline.” He winked at Hwa.

His twin, London, tossed the icon toward the centre of the room. The others quickly joined it. She shook her head as though to clear it. The other Lynches pricked up their ears, identical in their mannerism of listening. “Oh dear. Is that screaming? From downstairs?”

“Happy Halloween,” Silas said, and raised his glass.

Joel ran. Hwa followed.

*   *   *

“Joel!”

He was running much faster, these days. She had only a moment to be pleased about that before the crowd crushed her against one wall. She ran against the current of crying teenagers heading upstairs. They sobbed and tripped on their trains and tails as Hwa moved downstairs. She watched Joel weaving through them, getting further ahead of her, his footwork quicker and more graceful after only a few weeks of training. Prefect tried to tell her something but it was so loud, on the stairwell, echoing with feet and cursing and frantic pings. Her specs flooded with information on each student and she ripped them off, jammed them down her collar. She rode the handrail the last few steps, dashing out onto the dance floor.

Joel was there, with Dr. Carlino. He looked like he was asleep. The older man cradled him in his arms.

“Get away from him!”

Hwa shoved the doctor out of the way with a body check. She picked up Joel and felt his skin. Still warm. Pulse still good. Breathing even. “Joel. Joel, come on, b'y. What's happened?”

“I have a killswitch,” Dr. Carlino was saying. He looked at her with dead eyes. The cameras were off. Black. Empty.

“Fuck you.” Hwa blinked hard. She threaded her arms under Joel's shoulders. She had carried him once. She could carry him again. She knelt. Prepared herself for a fireman's carry. Looked up.

A drop of blood splashed on her upturned face.

“For moments like these,” Dr. Carlino said, “a killswitch is the best thing.”

Eileen hung from the ceiling in ribbons. Her skin was a parody of crepe paper, stretched and curled like old-fashioned party decorations along the rafters. Her eyes were gone. Her lips were a rose. Not a real rose, but one made of flesh, as though her face had suddenly decided to bloom instead of smiling or laughing or crying or screaming, which she must have done.

She must have screamed so much. So hard. In so much pain.

Like Hwa was doing, now.

More blood dripped down. It fell warm on Hwa's cheeks like tears. Some pattered across Joel's face and she wiped it off, frantically covering his face with her hand and his limp body with her coiled one.
He shouldn't be stained,
she thought.
Not like me.

How had he done it?

Where had he found the time?

Daniel had been dancing with her. From the moment Eileen left the room. Her eyes had never left him.

“Daniel,” she heard herself say. “Daniel. Daniel. DanielDanielDaniel.”

“I'm coming,”
he said, in her bones.
“Just stay where you are. Don't move. I'll be right there, Hwa. Hwa?”

Her body started to shake. It whispered up her right side first, a slackening, a sudden lack of control, the terrible awareness of not being able to stop it, of not being able to stop anything, of not being able to do anything, of all the things she could not and would never do. How time stretched out in that moment, the moment between consciousness and arrest, between tragic event and brain event. Was that how it was for Eileen? For Sabrina? For Layne? For Calliope? Had the final moment stretched out into an infinite agony?

Was that Hell?

Warm darkness covered her eyes. Warm arms wrapped her and Joel up. Warm lips in her hair.

Daniel.

“I'm here,” he said.

The seizure ripped through her.

 

PART THREE

NOVEMBER

 

16

Daughter

“Would this fit you?”

Sunny held up a sheer black wrap dress. “It's see-through,” Hwa said. “I don't want it.”

Sunny clicked her tongue. She tossed the dress on the
leave
pile. The
leave
pile was a hell of a lot smaller than the
take
pile and the
maybe
pile. Hwa looked at the closet. They weren't even close to done. She suspected that her mother's closet might actually be connected to a subspace pocket the universe had labelled C
OLD
W
ATER
W
ASH;
L
IKE
C
OLOURS
.