Shattered (13 page)

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 musclemen 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.

“Why not just stop being afraid?”

H
it 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.