False Hearts Page 14

  “Why did Tila send me to you, Mia?” I ask again. “Did Tila tell you anything? I need to know. If you care even a little for us, please, please tell me, or we’re both good as dead.”

  “She found the link,” the figure of Tila says, twisting her torso back and forth, child-like, the green sequins on her dress twinkling. “The link that no one is to know. He is the red one, the fair one, the handsome one. From Earth, and now he goes back to the Earth. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Changing faces like kaleidoscopes.” My false sister laughs, high and insane. It’s almost exactly what Sal said Tila said in Zenith, just after he found her with Vuk’s body.

  As I recall the crime scene, it starts to blossom around the figure of my sister. Blood seeps up from the floorboards, the coffee table grows like a mushroom, the broken glass scatters. The colors are so bright and saturated, the real world seems a pale echo. Tila reaches her hands up to cover her ears, rocking back and forth, her mouth open in a silent scream.

  “This is you, too,” Mia whispers, watching it with awe.

  “Go away!” I shout at the blood and glass. It stays, feeding on my anger.

  Nothing happens. The anger and fear threaten to choke me.

  I have to push them away.

  I let out a breath and close my eyes. I try to let go of the urge for violence. I manage to find that small center for self Mana-ma always pushed us toward. I thrust all emotion away. Slowly, so slowly, the crime scene fades and disappears. I feel the briefest flash of triumph before I turn my attention to Mia. I no longer have the same desire to hurt her. Thank God.

  “Tila’s words make no sense,” I tell her. False Tila quoted from the Bible, not Mana-ma’s Good Book. Once, that would have offended me. Now I grind my teeth in frustration, gripping Mia’s shoulder harder, until if this were reality she’d bruise.

  “Who’s that man you were talking about?”

  Mia starts to shudder. She’s taken control of her Vervescape again, but she’s unstable and it reflects in the world around us. The ground cracks and shudders. Lightning blasts outside the glass window. Thorned trees grow from the cracks in the concrete, slinking along the ground and up toward the ceiling. The trees bear fruit, but in horror, I realize they’re small humans, like thorny mandrakes. They reach their barbed hands toward us, dark mouths open in silent screams. Little red lights pulse from the bottoms of their throats, as red as Mia’s anger. I try to push them back, but they’re too strong.

  The scalpel disappears from my hand, and Mia wriggles away from my grasp. False Tila is trapped by looping roots. She twists and turns, trying to free herself.

  “Taema!” Her eyes bore right into me, and I can’t help but think that she is my actual sister, here somehow in this nightmare.

  The demons grasp Tila, their wooden roots digging into her flesh. Black blood seeps from her wounds. Next to me, Mia cackles. She’s euphoric, fully caught in the throes of the drug.

  I struggle on the floor to free my sister—even though rationally I know she’s not real, I can’t leave her. My hands are soon slick with dark blood. Mia attacks the mandrake-demons, plunging knives deep into their bellies until the lights in their throats go out.

  The faces of the figures are changing and with a sickening drop of my stomach, I realize that many of them are the faces of the men and women from Mana’s Hearth. Changing faces like kaleidoscopes. Is this what Mia meant? She still hates so many people there, all these years later. She never told us why she left the Hearth, and it was never spoken of while we were growing up in the redwood grove. We’d thought it rude to ask.

  I’ve seen the darkness that threatened to overwhelm Mia, as she tried to escape Zeal only for its tendrils to delve deep into her again. Now Verve has her in its grasp, and it’s worse. Will she wake up, angry and enraged, still thirsting for blood?

  Clutching the facsimile of my twin, I can’t help but fear that maybe I missed the darkness in her, too. Or in myself, because aren’t we the same?

  Mia comes back to herself, just a little. “You should thank your sister.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s protecting you. Or trying to.”

  “I don’t need protecting.” Even though it’s a dream, my body reacts as it would in the real world. My ears feel like I’m going through a tunnel at high speed, and my vision darkens to a little point. I am filled with more rage than I’ve ever felt. I want to hurt Mia with that same, shocking intensity I felt before. My sister came to her, confided in her, and Mia ratted her out to someone. If it’s the Ratel, then my cover is blown before it’s even begun. If it’s not the Ratel, then we have someone else to worry about. Perhaps it was Vuk, and that’s why my sister killed him. To keep him silent.

  I know nothing.

  Because of this broken woman, my sister might die. Maybe she killed, but would she have been put in that situation if Mia had been stronger?

  There’s still no proof of my sister’s innocence or guilt, I have to remind myself. The forensics report was only one way it could have happened. She might have had to defend herself. I still cling to the hope that there was someone else in that room. Somehow. But if she killed to protect me … how would I ever be able to accept that? Especially if I can’t save her?

  My false sister is dead. The blood flows until she’s enveloped in the black, oily muck. The demons with the faces of the people we grew up with open their mouths impossibly wide, the coals in their throats glowing as they devour her. Our parents are among them. I see their twisted faces slurping up the muck in euphoric delight.

  Screaming, I launch myself up and leap on Mia again. She has another scalpel in her hand. I manage to dodge it, knocking it to the floor. The demons pull on my ankles but I ignore them. My hands are around her throat and I’m squeezing, squeezing, squeezing. Mia gasps, purpling beneath me. I can’t calm down enough to try and affect the dream in any other way.

  “Lucid dreaming, my ass,” I gasp.

  If this was a straight Zealscape, I know that if I killed her in the dream, she’d wake up, strapped to the Chair, knocked out of her hallucination. That’s dangerous enough. But I have no idea what happens in a Vervescape. What if it’s more of a shock to her weakened body, and I kill her in the real world?

  I should care. But my hands don’t slacken.

  Strong hands grip my shoulders, yanking me back. “Let go of her,” Nazarin says. “Let go. You’ve learned all you can from her.”

  His deep voice snaps me from the iron vise of Verve. My hands jerk from her throat, though a red imprint remains.

  “It’s the drug,” he says. “Happens to everyone who takes it. Everyone has a darker side.”

  “Zeal or Verve?” I ask.

  His brow furrows. “What?”

  “This batch has been contaminated. We’re in a Vervescape, not Zeal.”

  “Shit,” Nazarin says. “We need to get out of here.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “Mia found a way to trap me in a different part of her dream. It disappeared when she was too distracted to control it anymore.”

  He means when I was half-strangling her. I flush in shame at what I’ve done.

  Mia has already stopped paying attention to us, like I never interrupted her. Mana-ma has returned, whole and shivering in her black robe. Mia is engrossed in a grisly task involving one of Mana-ma’s hands, peeling back the skin and picking out the tendons one by one. Simulacra of the hands that once rested on our heads, giving us benedictions, asking us to purge the darkness within.

  “Mia,” I say. She looks up, eyes distant.

  I gather that stillness within me again. “You don’t need to do this to live. You can be free of it. Try to live your life in the real world again. I loved you so much, and you were so good to us for those years we needed you most. You can be good again.”

  Her breath hitches. She gives me a long, unblinking stare, and a flash seems to pass between us, before she turns her head back to Mana-ma, her shoulders heaving with silent
sobs.

  I turn my back on Mia and her phantom, letting Nazarin’s hands remain around my shoulders, reassuring in their realness. It’s only as we’re leaving I notice that Nazarin is also covered in blood, cuts marring the skin of his arms and his left cheek. He’s wearing the same dark clothes from Zenith as well, fitted close to the muscles of his chest and narrow waist. He looks dangerous. What nightmares has he endured, over the past few years?

  Or what nightmares has he enacted?

  We trudge silently down the abandoned corridors of the apartment complex, the dead leaves whispering underfoot. Outside, we look up at the building again, the rain drenching us through. The sky still boils red, blue, black and purple, an endless, wounded expanse. Even though the bloodlust of Verve still sings through my veins, I am comforted by the fact that I can’t imagine how anyone would do this willingly.

  Nazarin rests his forehead against mine.

  “Wake up.”

  TWELVE

  TILA

  I remember dreaming of trees after we fell.

  The redwoods towered above me, the branches criss-crossing like dark lightning against the blue sky. Taema and I were lying on our sides, staring up. There was no birdsong, and barely a rustle of wind. I felt like we were the only two people in the world.

  “Are we dead?” I asked my sister.

  She leaned close, pressing her forehead against mine. “Not yet.”

  * * *

  It was our heart.

  We’d always known it was weak. There’d been a few scares when we were little. Thinking about it, it’s pretty crazy that we had as few health problems as we did, without proper medicine and all that. That day, at the age of sixteen, we had a heart attack.

  So then it was us resting in the Wellness Cabin, in the same bed where Adam had been when we threw grapes at him. I hated being in the bed where he had died.

  I was so scared that we were going to die too. Taema slept a lot. I think she had less oxygen than me, since I was the bigger twin, just barely. The supposedly stronger one.

  I kept wondering if this was the beginning of the end.

  It was.

  * * *

  I had to stop writing for a bit. The lawyer came to visit me. It’s not long until the trial.

  I don’t trust him. His name is Clive Ranganathan, and he’s tall, with dark hair slicked back with too much gel. He’s supposed to be a pretty good lawyer, but I can tell he doesn’t give a crap about me. He thinks I’m guilty, I can see it, so why would he break a sweat really trying to set me free? It’d be bad for his reputation if he did—every guilty fucker out there would beg for him to take their case before they were hanged by the system. Not that there are many, these days, in the Shining Example of San Francisco.

  Not yet, at least.

  It’s more fun to defend the innocents. Mr. Ranganathan is already slumming it more than he wants to, having to defend someone who might be wrapped up in the Ratel.

  He went through his plan and I sort of half listened to him. He nodded his head as he talked, his big hands flipping over his tablet, showing the evidence against me. There’s more than last time.

  After a bit, I stopped listening altogether. I started humming “A Hazy Shade of Winter.” He was offended and left. I don’t care. He can’t do anything for me. The only person who can save me is Taema. And I still don’t know if she’s trying to, or if I want her to.

  I don’t want to write any more about the present. It’s depressing, though the past is getting depressing too.

  Looking back is almost scarier than looking forward.

  * * *

  We felt better after a couple of days of rest and we were able to leave the Wellness Cabin and go home. Our parents were really relieved, to say the least. They cooked us our favorite food that first night: amaranth with vegetables and chicken, baked apples for dessert.

  Yes, it was real chicken, not the vat-grown stuff everyone eats in the city. We raised them. Killed them. Ate them.

  We were all quiet at the dinner table, not wanting to talk about what we all knew: that it was only going to get worse from here.

  We’d known since we were pretty little that we might not live that long. But it was sobering to have to actually face that.

  I felt so bad for Mom and Dad, though. They were the best parents you could ask for, really. Some of our friends fought with theirs all the time, but we hardly ever fought with ours. They talked to us as if we were equals, asked us our opinions. Even writing about them right now I’m tearing up like crazy. I miss them most out of everything back in the Hearth. I miss all of us sitting by the fire on cold days, me and Taema sewing clothes, or Taema reading and me chattering away to Dad. Dad and I were closer, and Taema and Mom were closer. Which seems sort of funny, now that I think about it, since obviously we spent the same amount of time with both of them.

  I wish they’d have come with us.

  They were both so worried for us. It hurt to look at them, as they tried to keep the knowledge that they knew we were dying from their faces. They were bad at it.

  * * *

  The next day we had to go to Confession for Mana-ma. We’d already missed a week. Neither of us wanted to go, but then we’d never really enjoyed it. Nobody likes to have to list all the ways they’re defective.

  Mana-ma didn’t preach it that way, though. It’s supposed to be exposing who you are fully, both the bad and the good, acknowledging it and then letting it go and moving forward. She seemed more concerned with the bad. Like most people.

  Before that treat, we had Meditation. It was our first session since the tablet died. I really didn’t want to do it, and I could tell Taema didn’t either. Even if we said we were still feeling bad, though, they’d wonder why we were missing it. So off we went.

  I remember that Meditation so clearly. Lying in the meadow, the day clear and perfect. California weather through and through.

  Almost everyone was already gathered there by the time we huffed and puffed our way down to the dandelion-studded meadow. Mana-ma waited by the path. She rubbed the fingers of her left hand against her thumb, something she did when impatient. Another bitter pill to go down our throats. We felt the “zap” that meant the drug had taken effect. The colors all grew so much brighter.

  Dimly, I wondered if we should be taking whatever Mana-ma’s drug was, with our heart. Surely our heart could have been an excuse to get out of that day? Then I was so high I didn’t care in the least. We stumbled down and joined the ring of people.

  Mana-ma stood in the center of the circle, and we all began humming as the drugs took a stronger hold. We reached out for each other as Mana-ma listed the images for us to create in our minds. A butterfly’s wings. The petals of a rose. The sky, dark with clouds, fresh rain falling.

  There was a flash, pure and bright, that traveled through the ring. The pain that had been lessening with each Meditation returned. We writhed and panted, and I wondered if Mana-ma enjoyed it.

  “Yes,” I heard Mana-ma say, even though she was speaking so quietly no one should have been able to hear her.

  Another flash, and we weren’t in the meadow anymore. We were standing in a forest. The trees weren’t redwoods like the ones in Muir Woods. The bark was all silver, the leaves blue and purple. The sky roiled a deep green. All the members of the Hearth stood in this weird forest, looking about, confused. In the middle was Mana-ma. Triumphant.

  “Mardel,” she said. “Come forward.”

  He came forward, blinking, dazed.

  “You have often spoken to me in Confession of your struggle with drink,” she said.

  Mardel’s cheeks, always red from alcohol, flushed deeper. Way to break the sanctity of Confession, Mana-ma.

  “I think together, with me as the conduit for God, we can heal you of that urge, here in the sacred wood. Will you permit us to try?” She held out her hand.

  Mardel nodded, visibly shaking.

  “My flock,” Mana-ma said. “God’s blessings upo
n you all. Let us join hands again and think healing thoughts to Mardel. Let him never again crave another drop of drink, so his mind and heart are clear to receive God’s love.”

  We sent him healing urges, yet with so many people, each had a slightly different emphasis and flavor. Some wanted him to also become kinder, less prone to snap. His wife wished he would smile more. Others simply hoped he’d never again crave drinking to excess. I could feel everyone’s thoughts, see into their minds. Except for Mana-ma’s. She was closed off, wrapped up like her long, black robes.

  Another flash. Another burst of pain.

  We were back in the meadow.

  “Excellent,” Mana-ma said, bursting with pride. “I knew it.”

  She helped Mardel to his feet. “How do you feel, my son?” she asked.

  “I feel … better,” he said, smiling from ear to ear.

  “Do you crave vodka?”

  “No,” he said, surprised. “I don’t.”

  We all cheered.

  I hoped that, because of the triumph or whatever the hell we did in the meadow, we wouldn’t have to do Confession that day.

  No such luck. “We’ll celebrate after,” she said.

  We walked slowly back to the church.

  The night before, I had felt our heart flickering, stumbling unevenly as it tried to pump blood to both of us. I wondered how long it’d keep beating. Morbidly, I wondered when it did stop, which of us would die first. Selfishly, I hoped it was me. I didn’t want to see Taema without that light in her eyes.

  We passed the greenhouses with the mushrooms. We wouldn’t be able to help with our chores that afternoon.

  We had to wait about half an hour for Confession, slumped against the church wall. There were two people ahead of us. They came out of the Confession room, looking all contemplative. When they saw us, they stopped, rested their hands on our shoulders, and kissed our foreheads. It was meant to be comforting, but I couldn’t help but feel they were saying goodbye. We’re not dead yet, I wanted to yell at them, bashing my fist against their faces to snap them out of it.

  Finally, it was our turn. I pressed my forehead against Taema’s for a moment.