Crashed (10 page)

"That's not loyalty, it's blind faith."

He just shrugged. "Says you."

We'd gotten way off topic, and I suddenly wondered whether Riley was smarter than I'd given him credit for, steering me away. "So you miss it here?"

He swept his arms out before him, showing off the peeling, stained walls, the yellow puddle. "What's not to miss?"

"I'm serious," I said. "You could have come back after the download."

"Thought you said you were serious," Riley said, cracking a half smile. "And even if I'd wanted to . . ." He shook his head, turning his left hand over as if examining its smooth surface, free of identifying creases and whorls. "Wouldn't have worked."

"Just because you're a mech?"

"Partly."

"What if Jude had wanted to move back?"

Riley paused. "He didn't."

Before I could explain the meaning of a hypothetical, the door opened. I froze, but Riley leaped to his feet, assuming a fight stance, knees bent, fists drawn.

"Am I interrupting something?" Sari asked, stepping into our cozy little hideaway.

It took a moment for Riley to drop his fists.

"What do you want?" he asked, his voice gruffer than the one I was used to.

"Honestly?" Sari took a few steps toward him. He backed against the wall. "Just to get a good look."

"You got one," he said.

"Also this." Before he could react, she'd crossed the room and her arms were around him, her cheek pressed to his chest. He hesitated, and then his arms crept around her. His eyes met mine, over her shoulder, then closed.

It wasn't an easily categorizable hug. There was no sex in it, barely even a spark, but there was still something about it that made me feel like I should leave the room, leave them alone.

Then she let go and slapped him across the face.

"Did that hurt?" she asked.

He shook his head. She slapped him again--or tried to, but he caught her wrist just in time. She twisted away from him.

"What the hell?" he shouted.

"You tell me," she shot back. "Where'd you go?"

"I'm right here."

"Before!" She took a couple deep breaths. "You stop voicing me. Or answering any of my texts. You totally disappear! So you tell me: What the hell?"

"Sari, come on."

"You never came back." She looked up at him, eyes clear and dry, mouth pinched to a point. This was a girl who didn't cry. "Two years, and you never came back--until one day you just show up again? With
her
?"

"You know why I couldn't come back," he said.

"Even if you wanted to, right?" Sari snapped. "But you didn't. Why would you? Better life, better girls, better everything, right?"

"Nothing's better," Riley growled. "And I'm not the only one with a new life. Since when are you and Gray so tight?"

"It's not like that," she said, the lie so obvious on her face that she must have intended it to be. She wanted him to know the truth behind the denial--to hurt him. I had to admire how well she played the game.

"So tell me how it is," Riley said.

Her eyes narrowed; her voice tightened. "Like you care."

"Since when do I ask, if I don't care?"

She reached out her hand again, and Riley moved to intercept it. She gave her head a quick, sharp shake. He dropped his arm. Sari touched his face lightly. Her fingers flickered across his cheek, his chin, the bridge of his nose. "It's really you?" she asked, peering into his eyes like there'd be some leftover in there, something familiar tying him to the face she'd known. A waste of time. But that was the thing about orgs. If they couldn't touch it, see it, hear it, they concluded it didn't exist.

Riley closed his hands around hers, removed them from his face. They stood that way, connected, for a long moment, then separated. I couldn't tell who'd let go first.

"What do you want, Sari?"

She hesitated. The iron expression wobbled. Then stiffened again as she made her decision. "Just to talk. Like we used to."

Riley looked like he wanted to argue, but instead he nodded. "Yeah. That'd be good."

Sari shot me a nasty look. I couldn't blame her. "Not here," she said. "Not in front of
her
."

"She's okay," Riley said.

"I don't know her."

"I do." Riley said.

Do you?
I thought, skeptical.

But Sari was convinced. She glanced back and forth between us. "Yeah. Obviously. But
I
don't, and I don't want her listening."

"I'll go," I said. "It's fine."

Sari snorted. "Where
you
gonna go?"

"She's right," Riley said. "It's not safe."

He was doing it again, acting like I was some fragile blossom needing protection from the elements. And not even in a marginally flattering, she's-such-a-beautiful-flower kind of way. More in the I-don't-want-to-clean-up-the-inevitable-mess kind of way. On the other hand, as far as I could tell, this claustrophobic, stained, piss-ridden room was a pretty good stand-in for the city at large. And I wasn't in the mood for sightseeing. "Fine."

"You want me to go?" he asked, like he'd asked in the woods.

He'll come back,
I told myself, and I nodded. Just like last time, he looked hesitant.

Unlike last time, he went.

"That was quick," I said, irritated by my relief as the door swung open. Only a few minutes had passed. "I figured you two would--"

I jumped to my feet as Mika and two other guys I didn't recognize--
big
guys--stepped into the room, shutting the door behind them.
Knees bent, fists clenched,
I thought, trying to imitate Riley's instinctive don't-mess-with-me pose. The look on their faces suggested I wasn't doing it quite right.

"Didn't realize I was having company," I said brightly. "You should have told me you were stopping by, I would have cleaned the place up."

One of the musclemen paled as he looked me up and down. "You didn't say it was going to be one of
them
."

"We don't have time for this shit," Mika snapped. "Just do it."

"It's not natural," he whined.

"Who's supposed to be intimidating who here?" I asked Mika, trying to figure out how to get past four hundred pounds of muscle (plus a few pounds of Mika's scrawn) to make it to the door. "Because I don't think it's working out the way you planned."

"
Do
it," Mika ordered like a guy who's never given an order before.

"Do what?"

Instead of answering, the less chatty of the two muscle-men darted toward me and twisted my arms behind my back. "Sorry," he murmured, and before I could ask him sorry for what, something hard slammed into the back of my head and the transparent pane of glass between me and the world-- between my artificially constructed reality and the vivid, visceral,
live
experience of org life--shattered into a thousand bright shards of pain.

CITY DARK

"Why not just stop being afraid?"

Hit me again,
I almost said--and that scared me more than the musclemen, more than wild-eyed Mika, who looked totally freaked out to see me still on my feet, eyes open, brittle grin firmly in place. But the pain made the world seem real--made my
body
seem real. Extreme pain, at least, the kind that overwhelmed my conscious awareness that every sensation was just a string of little ones and zeros assembled into patterns specifying
hot
,
cold,
or
ouch.

"Again!" Mika shouted, saving me from choice, and the hand smashed down, touching off another explosion of light and pain behind my eyes, and this time I think I screamed, although it was impossible to hear anything, not with the thunder in my head.

And then it drifted away, and I was still on my feet.

"Seems like someone didn't do his homework," I taunted Mika, slowly inching away from him as a plan--a crazed, stupid plan--began to coalesce. "We can do this all day, but I should probably mention that my skull's made out of a reinforced titanium alloy. It can survive five hundred g of impact. You're strong, but I'm guessing not that strong." I had the back of the chair in my grip. A rickety piece of junk that wouldn't stop them from coming at me again, but--I stole a glance at the wall of windows, already spiderwebbed with cracks--might just get the job done. If I had the nerve.

"Mika?" the guy said. I could see why he kept his mouth shut--his voice was about three octaves higher than any self-respecting muscle-bound thug would want it to be.

"You're not scared?" Mika said, looking at me like I was his science project.

"Of what?" I tried to laugh. "You want to kill me? Good luck."

"It's true," said the first muscleman, he of the lower voice and higher fear factor. "I saw it on the vids. You knock one off, they just download it into a new body."

Mika glared at him. "Who cares?" he asked. "You know that's not why we're here."

"Gray promised Riley we could stay here,
safe
," I reminded him, and tightened my grip on the chair. Any second, they could come at me again.
Just do it,
I told myself.
Do it.
"You want to piss them off?"

"Riley's not here," Mika said. "And Gray's an idiot."

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah.
Gray's
the idiot."

"Just finish this!" Mike shouted at his goons, my cue that it was now or never. As the 'roiders lurched toward me, I hoisted the chair, whirled around, slammed it through the window, didn't flinch from the explosion of glass. Instead I ran
into
the storm of razor-edged crystals, into it and through it and past it, jagged glass carving my palms as I grabbed the frame and threw myself, without pausing, without thinking, without fear, into the sky.

Life is a physics problem. Bodies in motion. Bodies in free fall, at a constant rate of acceleration, gravity dragging them down and down and down.

Thirty-two point two feet per second per second, down.

Sixteen stories between jagged glass and stained pavement.

Three seconds. Three seconds to live--if you're an org.

If you're a mech, three seconds to decide.

Headfirst, brain crushed on concrete, life downloaded to something new and fresh and far away.

Feetfirst and there was a chance.

In the dark there was no ground, no building, just the wind, just the clock, seconds ticking down. My body had no org instincts, no reflexes to act on. There was only thought put into action. There was only what I knew.

Two seconds.

I knew a lot: You learn how to fly, you learn how to fall.

Relax
, I thought, angling my body, head up, feet down. Muscles loose. Toes gently pointed, knees bent.
Relax.

One second.

Tense up, and the impact would jolt through rigid muscles, straight to the energy converter in my chest, the computer in my head. The wind was thunder, the ground was coming, my brain was raging, but my body obeyed. Relaxed. Prepared.

The ground slammed into me with shattering force, sending a shock wave that blazed up my spine. It felt like my bones were liquefying. It felt like being crushed to an infinite point. But I ignored the feeling, focused on the act. On letting the fall drag me into a roll, my arms tucked under my legs, my head to my chest. Down and then up again, bouncing like a child's ball, arms covering my head, elbows arrowed forward, knees tucked. Protect the soft spots. Twist hips to the right, shift body, land sideways, another explosion, radiating from head to toe, roll over, and over, just let it happen.

Until it ends.

I was on the ground. Arms worked. Legs moved. I twisted my head, gently, from side to side. Everything intact. And I was still thinking, I was still
I,
so the brain was safe. Which meant my chance to throw this body away and escape to the safety of a storage computer, a new download and a new machine, had slipped past, and somewhere up there, Mika and his thugs were on their way.

This is wrong,
I thought, slowly, gingerly testing the arms, then the legs, pushing myself upright. Jumping out a window shouldn't make you feel more alive.

On my feet, I spared only a second to look up at the path I'd fallen, tracing the line of the building, searching for the broken window, but the tower was too tall, the night too dark. And they would be coming for me.

Everything looked different in the dark. Thanks to Jude, I could see in infrared, but there was nothing to see but towers and shadows. The dim red glow of the sky was enough for that. I didn't need to see where I was going--I needed to know where to go, and without Riley, there was no hope of that.

"What the hell is going on?"
I VM'd Riley, half expecting that the network jammers would jam this too.

"Lia?"
His voice sounded so close and so calm. Too calm. He didn't know.

Or that's what he wants me to believe,
I thought.

"Lia, where are you? What's wrong?"

If I told him where I was, and he was a part of it . . .

"You need to get out of there, now,"
I VM'd.
"Your friend Mika's crazy. I'm
--
"
I trusted him. Even if I shouldn't, I trusted him.
"I'm outside. They're coming. Which way should I go?"

He didn't hesitate.
"West six blocks, then turn right, go another ten blocks, and there's a vacant lot behind the tower. Lots of broken-down cars. Pick one, get in, wait for me. I'll be
--"

"You'll be what?"

Nothing.

"Riley? Riley!"

But he was gone.

Three figures emerged from the tower, and I ran. West, like he'd said, pounded down the street, silently as I could, but the streets were abandoned after dark, and I was like a neon target in the empty city, and they gave chase. I kept to the edges of the sidewalk, trying to disappear into the shadows cast by the towers, then veered to the right and darted into an alleyway. The narrow dead-end passage was lined with piles of trash, and I squeezed between two of them, frozen. I could hear them out there, pacing the streets, calling for reinforcements.

"Maybe she went down there," someone said. "No way I'm following."

"The tunnels?" Mika's voice. "Bitch can't be that stupid."

I waited for them to give up. They would have to eventually, and I would find my way home. I'd navigated the city at night before, for fun, for a
game
, and I could do it again. Even if this time I had no light, no pack of daredevil mechs at my back. I could do this alone.

Then: White eyes in the darkness.

"I saw you jump." A small voice. Young.

"Shhh!" I hissed. He crept closer. It was a kid about half my height, harmless. Except that with one shout, he could send us both to hell. "Please."

"They're looking for you," he whispered.

"Hide and seek," I said desperately. Kids hated me. All of them. Even when I was an org. I knew how this would end. "So let's hide."

"Gimme your shoes." He pulled back his lips like he was baring fangs, but there were more gaps than teeth.

"What?"

"Your shoes!" he said, too loud. "Or I tell them where you are."

I didn't bother to ask why he wanted them, or what he'd do with shoes two sizes too big. I just stripped them off and shoved them at him. He hugged them to his chest and grinned. "I saw you jump," he whispered again. "I want to jump."

"No!" I hissed, shaking my head wildly. "It wasn't the shoes--"

"She's in here!" he shrieked in a shrill, almost feminine register. "Over here!"

Just a kid,
I told myself, suppressing the urge to wring his scrawny neck, but I was already in motion, shooting out of the alley and pinballing across the street. Bare feet slapping cement, I ran. Something sharp sliced my heel. I kept going. Mika and the others were already responding to the kid's cry, running at full speed, about a block away. I knew I could outlast them, but only if I could outpace them, and they were fast. The alleys were dead ends. But just in front of me, the ground opened. Cement stairs led down into a dark maw: the tunnels.

Bitch can't be that stupid,
Mika had said.

Watch me.

It was dark down there, pitch-dark, but I had the infrared, and the underground cavern lit up in deep blues and purples. The stairs emptied onto a thin platform running along the edge of a long pit that tunneled into the distance in both directions. And in the pit, streaks of orange and yellow light scampering through the navy blue. Heated bodies scurrying through the cold dark. I pressed against the gritty tile wall of the platform as more yellow shapes streaked through the darkness, a couple on the platform angling toward me, their tiny claws feathering across my bare feet.

The rats, or whatever they were, didn't scare me.

It was the other lights in the darkness, deep in the tunnel but creeping closer, bodies outlined in pulsing orange and red, the colors of life, the size of people, but people with twisted, gnarled shapes, backs hunched like horseshoes, limbs askew or absent.

I could hear voices above me, Mika shouting at the head of the stairs, urging his thugs down into the deep. Escape meant venturing into the tunnels, wherever they led. Whoever was waiting there for me.

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."