False Hearts (33 page)

“What do you think it is?” Taema asked me.

“We’ll find out soon enough.”

We did.

That night after dinner, Mom and Dad drew the curtains and asked us to sit at the kitchen table. They wiped off the worn wood with antiseptic. They took out a little package and unwrapped it. Little silver squares fell onto the table, glinting in the buzzing electrical light overhead. I knew they were whatever the woman had given my mom that afternoon.

“What are they?” I asked.

“VeriChips. For identification. Made out to Taema and Tila Collins,” Dad said.

“Our last name is Amner,” Taema said.

Because the VeriChips had our real first names, it meant that Mana-ma would be able to find us more easily, if she really wanted to, after we escaped. After losing everything else, we couldn’t stand the thought of having to call each other false names, too. We didn’t think there was anything she’d be able to do to us once we escaped. Once we arrived, we kept our past hidden, kept our noses clean. We thought it was enough.

(We were stupid.)

Mom and Dad got out the medical supplies. They were going to put the VeriChips in now, since we’d leave on the next supply ship out. Mom arranged it with that same woman, who was in charge of the ship. I don’t know how—we wouldn’t have had anything to bribe her with. Maybe she appealed to her conscience or something.

Mom did it. She swabbed our right wrists and numbed the area with some ice. It didn’t do much for the pain, but we didn’t cry out as she used a scalpel to cut the skin and slot in the ID chip. She told us everyone in the cities outside had VeriChips. They were important. She closed the wound with a tiny stitch and wrapped it. It was autumn so it was getting a little colder, and she ordered us to wear long sleeves and not show anyone the bandages while we were healing. There might be a small scar, but we could get it erased once we were in San Francisco with a bit of our first paycheck. I remember wondering what a paycheck was, and how I would receive one.

Mom and Dad spent several hours that night telling us all the outdated information they knew about San Francisco and the outside world that the Hearth hadn’t taught us. Even though Taema and I had already learned some of it from our contraband tablet (still hidden under our mattress), we were both totally overwhelmed. It was so much information that we couldn’t take it all in. Mom and Dad were desperate to try and give us as much of a head start as possible, so we didn’t say anything and just listened.

That night we lay forehead to forehead on the bed, looking at the bandages on our wrists.

“We’re already Impure, I guess,” Taema whispered. She looked so young, so vulnerable, and I hated that I must have looked the same way.

“The Pure and Impure stuff is bullshit, Taema.”

Her mouth twisted. She knew that on some level, but she couldn’t help her gut reaction. That the technology she’d been taught was evil her whole life was now implanted under her skin. “It’s really happening, isn’t it?”

“Once we’re gone, we’ll never come back,” I said, and I felt both triumphant and a little sad. For all Mana-ma and the Hearth’s philosophy weren’t for us anymore—especially me—it was the only place we knew. Our friends were here. Our parents. Our whole way of life. Through that tablet, we’d only had a little peek into the window of the Real World. Everything was going to change.

We fell asleep that night knowing our time in the Hearth was coming to an end.

TWENTY-FIVE

TAEMA

It’s time for my shift in the Verve lounge in a warehouse down by the docks. The reminder came through on my implant, on an untraceable line. This week, Tila’s shifts are Monday and Wednesday.

Nazarin’s on security duty. They’re trying to arrange his Test, and he’s bending over backward trying to find excuses for it to be delayed until after the drop.

As I take the MUNI through the glowing green tunnels, I can’t stop thinking about the Test. All the images that flashed before my eyes, the smells, the confusion. The simulated murder that had seemed so real. Murder. The word that seemed so ugly when I first heard it, but now I’ve acted out homicidal violence in two simulations. I’m about to dive back into another Vervescape, and who knows what or who I will find there.

Once I’m at the warehouse, I force myself to push the macabre thoughts from my mind. I have to focus on being Tila again, one of the newest lucid dreamers in the Ratel. A Rook.

The outside of the warehouse is boring, blocky concrete. A faded sign once proclaimed “Geary Hovered Automobiles,” but it’s faded and tagged with moving graffiti. A stylized bunny holds knives and does a cartwheel above the old image of a hovercar, over and over again.

Malka opens the door before I can even knock. I can’t help it; I start and take a step back in alarm. She narrows her eyes and smiles at me. She’s wearing a long dress of artful folds, like a Grecian tunic.

“Hello, canary,” she greets me. “Come on in.”

I cross the threshold.

Inside, I expect it to be as dilapidated as the outside, but instead it’s bright and fresh as a hospital room.

Malka leads me down the long hallway. Her heels click on the tiles, her hips swishing back and forth. She glances over at me. “I’m glad you’re feeling recovered. We’ve missed you, the past few shifts. Could have used your expertise. Now you’re all Tested, though, we can trust you with more than the menial dreams, canary girl.”

Like Kim, she seems to be fond of nicknames, but there the similarity ends. Kim is warm and genuine, and everything about Malka is carefully engineered. She gives a throaty laugh and stops by a door. It opens with a soft exhalation of air. “In you go. Think of this as part two of your Test. What can you do with a juicier dream?”

I step in, my palms damp with nerves. Inside is a Chair, far smoother and sleeker than the ones in Mirage, or even in the training room at the safe house. A man lies down, strapped in. He doesn’t seem to be there against his will. Next to him is a second, empty Chair.

I look closer and jerk with surprise.

“Thought you’d recognize him,” Malka says, smiling. If I’m the canary, she’s the cat with the cream.

“This is … Mr. Mantel.” The owner of Sudice, Inc. One of the most powerful people in the world. He was technically my boss’s boss’s boss’s boss. I’ve only seen him from afar a handful of times in my years working for Silvercloud. It’s so incongruous, seeing him plugged into a Chair in this secret Verve lounge run by the Ratel. Does the government know?

I put my hand up to my necklace, pretending to fiddle with it. While Malka gazes down at the man’s supine form, I press the hollow of my throat. One. Two. Three.

I swallow against the nausea and the migraine.

“You see why trust is important to us,” Malka says smoothly. “No one else may know that he comes here. And no one will learn of it, will they?” The tip of her tongue darts out to wet her red lips.

“Of course not.” My breathing is shallow. I force myself to fill my lungs. It doesn’t help. I still feel as though I can’t breathe.

Hold it together, Taema. Hold it together.

“Are you all right?” Malka asks with false concern.

“Fine,” I say with a little half-smile. “Just … amazed to meet the man in person. So to speak. I’m to … go in?” I eye the second Chair.

“Yes. You observe the dreams, I observe you, and we see how you do. Another Test, as I said, yet this one is not quite so … complicated.”

I give a strangled approximation of a laugh. “Let’s hope I do as well.”

“Yes. Let’s hope.”

The half hearted smile slips from my face.

The room is soundproof. Outside in the hallway, dozens of people must walk by, but I can’t hear any of them. It’s as if this room is all that exists, and the only sounds are the short susurrations of the machine, and the faint sounds of three humans’ breaths.

“What do you want me to suggest to him?”

“Nothing this time. Just observe. You don’t want him to notice you.”

“All right.” I turn off the brain recording. I’m not sure if it’ll work in the Vervescape, and Kim told me not to use it for too long.

She plugs me in, prepping syringes. If they can do it Chairless, like they did with my Test, why go through the steps here? Perhaps it’s still in process, or the level Ensi dosed me with was too low. I hadn’t even realized I was on it.

“Night, night,” Malka says from above me.

I float away.

*   *   *

Mr. Mantel’s dream is grainy. Small flecks of white float along my vision like static. I focus on making myself invisible as a ghost.
I’m not here
, I try to tell the dream.
Don’t notice me. I’m just another speck.

The static parts, the dream clearing. The colors brighten until it’s as vivid as Mia’s dreamscape. Mr. Mantel has a woman tied up on a bed in a penthouse apartment. It’s Sharon Roux. The woman is the mayor of San Francisco.

She’s as naked as he is, their clothes scattered around the room. Fresh bruises paint her legs and upper arms. Nowhere they’d show in her suit. I furrow my brow, until I see her smiling. She wants the restraints, and he wants to restrain her.

He crawls on top of her again, beginning anew. He hurts her, she cries out, she smiles, he smiles. It’s different from the Zealscape. He’s not killing her. There’s no blood. No oily muck. No monsters. They’re both enjoying themselves with pleasure and pain.

It seems to me like he’s reliving a memory. Verve can enhance memories, so you relive them in glorious hyper-saturated color. It’s a strange sensation, to watch someone having sex, knowing that you’re strapped into a Chair and another woman is monitoring your physical sensors. I don’t look away, though. I’m doing my duty and observing everything, in the hope I notice what Malka wants me to.

Why has Mr. Mantel chosen this memory to relive? What is he enhancing? How will he be when he wakes up? Angrier? Ready to come back again tomorrow? And what will the Ratel suggest to him? There are so many options. To take a deal that will profit the mob. To hold back a patent or push forward another? Or they could overwrite his personality completely, and make him into whatever they want. If they have the main man of the most powerful company in the world as their puppet, think what they could do. Control the top of Sudice through Mr. Mantel, and control the bottom by sending violent, hungry Zealots, reprogrammed by Verve, into the fray. Topple the structure and make what they want of it.

After what seems like hours, Mr. Mantel and Mayor Roux have finished. Mantel unwraps her restraints and they sprawl across silken sheets.

Pillow talk. Time to focus. I shift closer, keeping to the shadows. Neither of them notices me. Even in the dream world, my temples throb and my stomach feels as though I’ve swallowed rocks, despite the fact that I turned off the brain recording.

Mantel and Roux lie next to each other, but don’t quite touch. I can’t tell if they love each other or are using each other. Maybe both.

“It’s getting out of hand,” Roux says, staring up at the ceiling. Static dances across her face. Strands of dark hair cling to her glistening forehead.

“What is?” Mantel asks, folding his hands behind his neck.

“The Ratel situation. Do you know how much of my time it’s taking up these days?”

“I can only imagine.”

She bares her teeth. “They have to be stopped, Mantel. It’s your pharmaceuticals they’ve twisted.”

“You think I don’t realize that? I don’t see how they can be stopped.”

“Yeah, yet it means the criminal bastards are out on the streets. There was a robbery last week. From a civilian. We had to cover it up. But I don’t think we’ll be able to do that much longer. And what if there’s a murder? We’ll have riots. This is a delicate balance, and I don’t want it to fall in the Ratel’s favor.”

“We’re trying to find a countermeasure, but it’s taking time.”

“We don’t have time.” Roux sits up, the bed sheet falling to pool at her waist. Her large breasts defy gravity, thanks to the wonders of flesh parlors. I don’t feel Mantel’s emotions like I did when Kim played Nazarin’s memories, but it seems somehow linked. How else can these drugged dreams be so clear, if they aren’t somehow messing with implants?

Everything’s connected.

“If you still had Veli, then you’d have a cure by now.” I have no idea who or what Veli is. The name hasn’t been mentioned in Tila’s notes, or in the SFPD’s brainloading.

“You don’t know that. And he was an imposter. Some little upstart my father plucked from one of his pet projects.” Mantel’s brow draws down. Almost against his will, an image flickers on the wall of a younger man with a strong jaw and angry eyes. It disappears almost immediately, until I’m not sure if I really saw it at all.

“He was a genius and you were a jealous little boy.” She sounds bored, as if she’s said this to him many times before. She swings her legs over the bed and begins to pull on her stockings.

“Be careful, Roux.” Mantel’s voice simmers in anger.

She looks over her shoulder at him. “I always am.”

The dream shifts. Another woman enters the room, and I don’t recognize her. Mr. Mantel looks over his shoulder in my direction, and I worry he sees me as everything fades away. His dream continues, but I leave.

I wake up in the Chair, Malka watching me, unblinking. In the Chair across from me, Mr. Mantel has a hard-on. I avert my gaze.

Malka folds her hands over her knees. “Well, what did you notice?”

I think through it, replaying the conversation over in my mind.

“Be careful, Roux.” Mantel’s voice simmers in anger.

She looks over her shoulder at him. “I always am.”

“Roux knows that Mantel’s not to be trusted.”

“What makes you say that?”

“She doesn’t give him any specifics. She hints that she’s doing things to bring the Ratel down, but that’s all. She chides him about letting Veli go…” Here I falter. “Who is he?”

“He’s the man who truly invented Zeal. Mantel ousted him from Sudice and put a hit on him, so they say.” She raises an eyebrow. “Veli hasn’t been seen since, in any case. What else did you notice?”