“What’s up?” I ask. She turns to face me, startled. Those legs are encased in high boots below a short skirt and a sweater—her sole concession to the crisp wind blowing outside. The bag over her shoulder is violently pink rubber, covered in comically large spikes.
“Come upstairs with me?” Haven asks. I swallow dryly.
“Uh . . .”
“To your mother,” she clarifies impatiently, long nails digging into the strap of her bag. “My project is ready.”
“Sure, okay.” On the way up to the third floor, I try to get her to tell me what’s going on, but her lips stay pressed together. Haven pauses at each break in the stacks, where the pedestals are, to look left and right.
“Good,” she says. “We’re alone.”
Confused, I lead her to my mother’s locker. The solid, sharp-edged chip is in my palm for only a second before Haven holds out her hand. Automatically, I lift my arm to pass it to her, then stop. “Going to tell me what we’re doing here?”
She shakes her head, unzips her bag, pulls out a computer and a tangle of wires. “I hacked in,” she whispers, even though there’s no one else here. “You can see everything, Anthem. All of it.” Without waiting for me to answer, she walks to the nearest viewer, does something complicated with the cables, and opens her computer on top of the usual touch screen.
My feet stick to the floor. Blood hammers in my ears. I imagine I can feel it swishing around my own chip. Everything I do, every experience I have is recording to it. Even this. Right now.
“I just thought maybe you’d want to . . .” Haven bites her lip.
“I do.”
“The information’s not gone, just encrypted on the chip itself. I always thought they erased it permanently, but then I wondered. . . . Why would they do that? The Corp’s all about having stuff to hold over us, so it makes no sense that they’d get rid of
anything
. It works,” she says, coming to pry the chip from my stiff fingers. “I tested it on my grandfather.”
“I can’t believe you did this.” I’m in awe of her. “Will they know we looked?” I glance at the nearest corners of the ceiling. “Is this safe?”
She gives me an
oh, please
look. “They’re good. I’m better. And CRCs aren’t under surveillance. No point, since they’ve gotten rid of everything we’re not supposed to see. Or think they have.” Rapid clicks reverberate down the long room as she types on her keyboard, and the halo of lights bursts to life above us. But instead of my mother appearing, I’m looking at a glowing, three-dimensional map drawn in blues and greens, dust motes breaking up the perfect lines.
“This is the network?”
“Told you it was beautiful.”
I’m completely still, but feel as if I’m moving. The hologram in front of us is changing at a dizzying speed as Haven navigates her way through menus and subfolders. Finally, one appears right in the middle, an icon at eye-level, marked
Citizen T25641
.
“Here,” Haven says simply, unnecessarily. “Press this when you’re ready. After that the navigation’s normal. I’ll just be—”
I grab her hand to stop her. “Stay.”
“You sure?”
I nod. I’m suddenly sure of a lot of things I wasn’t last week, or yesterday, or five minutes ago. Whatever’s on that chip, Haven’s
given me an incredible gift—time with my mother without Corp interference. I won’t have to look at this image of her and know I’m not seeing the whole story.
There are so many more choices than I normally have. Options for every day of my mother’s life since they implanted her chip. Most of the early years I’ve seen already. I guess there isn’t really much a kid can do that the Corp would need to hide.
I pick something at random; an evening when she was about fifteen. The lights flicker almost imperceptibly, the hologram changing from the Grid to a young girl—not blonde the way I remember her in life, but with long, wild spikes of violet hair I’ve only seen on a viewer. They threaten to poke the eyes of the boy holding her hand as they walk along a street in the middle of the Web, faces and bare arms turned to chameleon-skin by flashing neon.
“I’ve never seen this,” I tell Haven.
“Is that your father?”
“No.”
For several long minutes, I watch the two of them. I don’t really care who the guy is, but I understand why the Corp removed it. Hard to convince us that the editing is for our benefit if they leave memories in that might be painful for those left behind.
“You look so much like her,” Haven says. “The same eyes.” She hasn’t let go of my hand and I want to grip her fingers more tightly. I would, if I wasn’t afraid it’d draw her attention to the fact that I’m still holding on to her.
It’s impossible to memorize everything. Often, I land on memories I already know from my earlier trips here. But there are new ones, too—in one, my mother steals an apple from the depot, in another, she lies gray-faced and screaming on a bed in an OD station. I don’t linger on that one for long.
There are surprises: an argument with a guard I can’t hear but that makes my breath catch, even though she’s young and I know she survived past that day. A casual sneer I never saw on her face in real life, aimed at Corp headquarters as she walks past. Physically, I’ve always known we were alike. Maybe that’s not the only way.
Flick, flick, flick
, I go through the menus, the memories, my mother. The invasiveness should feel wrong, but we all know this will happen to us.
I almost skim past it. My finger is already touching the key that will take me to the next image when my brain catches up with my eyes and my hand recoils. Beside me, I hear Haven’s sharp intake of breath and sense her surprise as the hairs around my neck jack stand on end.
She’s young, younger than I am now. Maybe sixteen, and too bright and colorful to be standing in the dingy room, its walls blackened with whorls of soot from a fire. A few precious candles sit in corners, their wicks dancing in a draft.
The viewers have no sound, and I’ve never wished more that they did. Instead, I have to make up the melody coming from the violin in my mother’s hand, her cheek resting against old wood. Even without hearing, I know she’s good. Her fingers move with graceful confidence, the hand holding the bow steady and strong.
“Holy shit,” Haven whispers. I can’t say it any better, so I don’t say anything. I just watch, transfixed.
That’s where I get it from.
She
gave my talent to me.
Emotions play tug-of-war in the hollow space in my chest. Pride. Disappointment. Awe. Envy. Anger.
Why didn’t she ever tell me? Why hadn’t she prepared me somehow?
When the clip is played out, I restart it. Again and again and again I watch, my feet moving as near to the hologram as they can without disturbing it. Up close, I see the broken hairs on the bow and the scar across the violin’s scroll. I’m sure those things didn’t matter to her, the way I don’t care about how battered my guitar is.
Why didn’t she tell me?
I step back to the controls. My fingers scramble over the keyboard as I look for more, skipping past ordinary memories, which would be interesting on any other day.
There it is again. She’s older in this one, the sickness already taking hold, but she grips the violin with as much strength as she did when she was younger.
I never had any idea. My mother worked in a library; she wasn’t a musician.
Except . . . she was. And she kept it from me.
No more secrets. Especially not from the girl who’s given me this.
“We should go,” I say. “The twins will be home soon.” The door to the third floor swings open—someone else coming to visit a ghost.
Haven is already unplugging the wires, slamming her computer shut, and slipping all of it into her bag. The lights wink and die out when she pulls the chip from the tower and hands it to me. Whoever just came in is getting closer, walking down the aisle next to this one. I put my finger to my lips and Haven nods.
The chip feels heavier in my hand as I carry it to the cabinet. I close the door, checking twice that the lock sealed properly. The woman we pass on our way to the exit is about my father’s age, tears streaming down her face as she waves her wrist in front of a small pane of thick glass.
Home is the only safe place for this conversation. We hop a
trans-pod in silence, my head so full my temples are bulging and achy.
I haven’t tracked since this morning.
The twins beat us to the apartment by a few minutes. We spent too long at the CRC. Their joy at seeing Haven follow me through the kitchen dulls my frustration at not being able to talk to her yet. As soon as I can, I bribe them with chocolate into playing quietly and drag Haven into my room. She takes the headphones I give her with a raised metallic eyebrow but says nothing and tracks with me.
Calmer, if only because the track didn’t kill me, I sit on my bed and watch her legs as she sits down. “Thank you.” My voice cracks, and I inspect my fingernails. “What you did . . .”
“Wanted to see if I could, that’s all,” she says. I don’t buy it, but whatever, that’s not the important thing. “What happened to the violin?” she asks in a whisper, nudging me until I stretch out on my back. “Do you know?”
I thought about it all the way home. “When she was . . . near the end, we didn’t have the credits for the tracks we needed to help her.” My voice cracks. “Then, one day, we did.”
I wonder if my mother knew, whether my father sold it because she’d asked him to or if he did it on his own, unable to bear seeing her that way.
Will I have to do the same for him?
Can
I?
“She never told you.”
“No. She kept that secret pretty well.” I try to keep the bitterness from my voice and fail miserably. What else didn’t she tell me?
“Anthem,” Haven says, propping herself on one elbow and finding my hand with hers. “I’m sure she was just trying to protect you.”
Her face is so close, mouth inches from mine. I almost do it, but I chicken out and focus my eyes on the ceiling. “Yeah. Can we
just be quiet for a minute?”
She takes me seriously, not even answering, just settling down against my side. The air swells and contracts along with my nerve. In the next room I hear the twins playing. Through the thin glass of my window noises filter up from the street. My father is snoring, someone’s shouting somewhere.
“I need to tell you something.”
Haven wriggles closer. “What?” she asks, her nostrils flaring against my shoulder. “You smell good.”
That isn’t helping. I’ve rehearsed this moment over and over in my head. Now that it’s here, I wish she were further away so I could concentrate or even closer so I’d have an excuse to say nothing at all. “Seriously,” I say, “this is important.”
Fingers still their gentle wanderings over my ribs. “Is this about your friend?”
“Sort of. I”—deep breath—“Well, Scope and I—”
Haven sits up, the side of my body suddenly cool. “You’re back together.” Her voice is flat.
“What?” Oh. Oh, yeah, I see how she got there. Absolutely nothing is funny about anything this afternoon, but I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing at her confusion. It’s just so . . . something. “No. Hell no. It’s just that my mother . . . she wasn’t the only one.”
Green eyes widen and search my face.
“We’ve been playing. Music.” In a rush, I explain everything: the band, Johnny, and what we’re doing now at the club. I talk until I run out of words, of breath, of hope that she’ll take this well.
And after what she did for me, I am the Web’s biggest asshole.
Stillness falls in my room, thickest over the few square feet taken up by my bed. “For how long?” I should have guessed she’d ask this question first. It’s the one I didn’t want her to.
“Years. Haven, they’re killing people now. No warning, no chance to say good-bye.”
“You lied to me.”
I didn’t, not really, but my guilt is the same either way, so I don’t defend myself. I was a hypocrite that day in the park.
“Don’t you trust me? Think I’d be able to handle it? Why didn’t you tell me before? Why did you tell me not to get involved if you’ve been doing it forever? Fuck, I’ll bet you and Scope thought that was really funny.”
That pain . . . I did that. I hate myself. “Scope’s always thought I should tell you, and of course I trust you.”
“Then why?”
“I was trying to protect you.” This is less of a good reason than it sounded an hour ago, yesterday, last week. I know now how it feels to hear that excuse.
“Because I’m some weak girl who needs it?” she asks, her voice thick with angry tears.
“Because if I get caught, I pay the price, and you . . . That price is too high.” She doesn’t answer, and I try again. “You’re the strongest person I know, Haven. You don’t let anyone else decide what you should do with your life.”
“That isn’t
exactly
what you’re doing?” The bitterness is so sharp it turns
my
mouth sour.
“I almost told you. So many times.” I reach for her hand. When she pulls her fingers away, my heart goes with them. I know she feels me sit up; I’m sure she senses my eyes on the face that’s pointedly turned away.
“So why are you telling me now?”