False Hearts Page 7

  On that walk back, tablet well hidden, a few people were milling around the church, waiting for midweek prayer, dressed in shades of cream and brown. A lot of us had brown skin, brown hair, brown eyes. When we first came to San Francisco, we couldn’t believe all the color.

  I remember I looked up at the church. The five-pointed symbol was carved over the door, painted gold and silver. A light was on in Mana-ma’s study. As far as I know, she’s still the leader out there, as I haven’t heard anything about her dying. She’ll probably outlive the apocalypse; she’s just that stubborn. The supposed wife of God, according to the Good Book. I used to believe that, I really did. But I’d started losing my faith long before I found that tablet, I think. I can’t pinpoint what caused that; just a lot of little things adding up. Guess I was proven right.

  Mana-ma would probably be pretty interested in a Confessional from me now, a lot more than she was when I told her I’d stolen some cherries from Leila’s allotment. Confession was meant to be one-on-one with Mana-ma, but Taema and I were a two-for-one special. A few times, she asked one of us to cover our ears while the other confessed, but she gave up after a while. We already knew each other’s sins, anyway. Obviously.

  It’s late here in the cell. Earlier today they asked me some questions, some about my sister. I hated every second of it. She’s definitely trying to help me, and I don’t want her to. What if something happens to her because of me? I thought I was doing the right thing. Now, guilt haunts my every moment. Maybe I fucked everything up beyond repair. Stupid, stupid. So stupid.

  I’d rather write about the Hearth. Back then, everything was messed up, but we had each other. We didn’t realize how terrible everything was going to become.

  Mana-ma would hate that I was writing about all this. She’d be absolutely livid at me for exposing her secrets, but you know what? Fuck her.

  I should probably end on some profound note, instead of a swear word. But I told you already: my sister’s the one who has a way with words. I have a way of getting things done.

  SEVEN

  TAEMA

  After Dr. Mata, we return to the safe house. The sun begins to set. It’s been such a long day.

  “Meeting Kim for that drink will be fun, if you take her up on it,” Nazarin says, “though don’t be surprised if she busts out a bottle of real tequila and you wake up with the hangover of your life the next day.”

  “You speak from experience.”

  He winced at the memory. “Oh, yes.”

  I smirk and climb into the hovercar.

  I turn to him after we buckle in. “Did she ask me for an evening out, or a date? I couldn’t tell.”

  “She’d probably be open to either.” He pauses. “Do you date women?”

  “Sometimes. I’m bi.”

  “Is your sister, too?”

  “Yep.” I wonder why he asks. It’s not as if it’s rare in San Francisco.

  He looks away and powers up the hovercar, taking off toward the safe house. We don’t speak, both gazing at San Francisco and its flashing lights spread out before us, lost in our own thoughts. I lean my head against the window, my eyes fluttering shut as I doze fitfully.

  Once we’re back in the gingerbread house, it’s growing late. I want nothing more than to crawl into bed and pull the covers over me, but Nazarin has to hook me into the Chair for a few hours. Then it’ll be time to call Tila’s friends—as her—and tell them why I won’t be answering their pings for a while.

  I sway with exhaustion. All the mental and emotional stress has now compounded with the physical. I pop a few Rejuvs and let Nazarin strap me into the Chair. It brings back memories of my engineering training and waking up with facts and numbers in my head, but not being able to move. I push them away.

  I want my sister. I want to hold her close, to tell her everything, to have her tell me it’ll be all right. When I’m anxious and my mind moves too quickly, she rubs the back of my neck, easing out the tension, her words soothing in my ear. How many times have I fallen asleep to the sound of her voice?

  Tila is not here, and she’s the reason I’m doing all this. My whole world has tilted on its axis. Memories of my sister are now tainted by all the lies I know she’s told. I didn’t see it. How could I not have seen it? How can I ever hope to trust my own judgment again?

  “OK,” Nazarin says, drawing me from my thoughts, setting the electrodes on my skull and lowering me down. He even draws the blanket over me, which is an oddly touching gesture. I am shivering, but more from unease than cold. Nazarin takes out the needle, prepping the Zeal and melatonin mixture which will help ease the learning. It’s a much lower dosage of Zeal than they use in the lounges—just enough to prep the implants to receive the information.

  “We’re starting you off with general Ratel info,” he says. “What we know, so will you. The hierarchy, the main businesses they’re involved in, the identities we’ve managed to scrounge. Some recordings of interrogations, that sort of thing.”

  After my nap, I’ll be a Ratel expert. I wonder if they’re going to have to wipe all this information after this investigation is over, but I decide not to ask now. They can take info out almost as easily as putting it in, these days.

  “I have to go out tonight after dark, take up my cover,” Nazarin says. “But I’ll be back by dawn.”

  “What do you do for them?” I ask.

  “This and that,” he says. “Mostly I deliver Verve or act as security.”

  So he saw my sister when he was picking up or dropping off the wares. He’s about to go into the place I’ll soon join. I close my eyes and hear the whirr as the machine starts. I can hear the low beating of blood through my mechanical heart in my ears.

  “I’ll wake you up in two hours. I’ll just be in the next room doing paperwork.”

  “All right,” I say, already drifting away as the Chair gives off melatonin.

  A calm, robotic female voice is the last thing I hear:

  Brainload initializing.

  * * *

  There are two people in the interrogation room.

  A man chained to the table looks haggard, like he hasn’t slept in days. He has the same shaved scalp, bisected with scars, as Nazarin. Usually, in these informational dreams in the brainload, the person has no sense of self. But I always remember who I am, and that I’m dreaming. The other man, a detective, I guess, stands tall, but he seems tired. His sandy-colored suit is wrinkled, as though he’s slept in it.

  It’s almost like I’m an invisible ghost in the room with them. I can imagine what it looks like to walk around. The scientists who examined Tila and me said that was why we retained so much more—because we could visualize and fit things into patterns more easily than those who couldn’t control the recordings. Other people can learn to do it, but because of Mana-ma’s training we’ve been doing it since we were small, even if we didn’t realize it at the time.

  The recording has been doctored, streamlined so the information can reach my brain efficiently. The man looming over the prisoner is yelling at him, and the prisoner glares back. They shout at each other, their staccato movements jerky. There’s a jump, as if something has been cut. The view switches from the standing man leaning toward the prisoner, screaming into his face, to him sitting on the other side of the room, appearing calmer. The prisoner now has a red mark on his cheek. I guess that they’ve fast-forwarded through the intimidation, which I didn’t want to see anyway.

  The prisoner seems cowed. “This is how the Ratel works,” he says, his voice and eyes flat. They’ve drugged him, or broken through some other way. “The Ratel’s hierarchy is set up like a chess game. The Pawn is the lowest level. They run errands, stand guard, collect extortion money from businesses. Deliver drugs or guns. Drive cars. They do what they’re told and hope they make a name for themselves. If they do well, they might get promoted to Knight. Some people directly enter the Ratel at this level, but not many. To become a Knight, you have to prove yourself by committing a
… worse crime than the ones you have already committed.” The man pauses, swallows. He seems haunted.

  “What did you do?” the detective asks.

  “I had to kill someone,” he rasps, and he shuts his eyes.

  “Who?”

  “It doesn’t matter. They were invisible.”

  The detective frowns. “What –?”

  “Do you want to know how the Ratel works or not?” the prisoner interrupts, harsh.

  “Go on. Do you want water?”

  The prisoner shakes his head. He pauses again, staring down at the table, as if gathering strength. “After that, you can graduate to a Rook or a Bishop, each with subtly different roles in the organization. They’re all under the King, of course, but Pawns and Knights hardly ever see him.”

  “Do you know who the King is?”

  “I’m a Knight, so what do you think?”

  “That’s not a yes or a no.”

  “It’s a no, you dick.” The prisoner leans away from the table, the chains of his handcuffs clinking together. He lifts his head in a defiant tilt. “That’s all I’m telling you.”

  The detective opens his mouth to respond, but the scene dissolves.

  “Do you know who the King is?”

  The question again, asked by a different voice. The faces of the two people in the room are blurred this time, to protect the identities.

  “Ensi,” the other person whispers, and the word picks up, echoing around the room: Ensi, Ensi, Ensi.

  “Who is the Queen?” the voice asks. The Queen is the right hand—and like the chess piece, she goes anywhere. Does anything. Including some of the worst crimes in the Ratel. Most of the time, if you’re invited to see the Queen alone, you don’t leave the room alive. All this information slots into place.

  The other blurred face responds: “Malka.” It, too, reverberates around the room. That’s all they have on the King and Queen. Whispered names or aliases. How they truly function, who’s closest to them—the SFPD hasn’t cracked any of that. Even after two years, Nazarin has only seen Malka a few times, and has never seen Ensi.

  More snippets of interrogations trickle into my mind. I learn names of prominent members of the Ratel, more details about the relationships between the various pieces on the chess board of San Francisco underground crime. The information changes, and I see tables of the same data, laid out logically, so that my brain will process and store it in a subtly different way. This includes maps of suspected Ratel hideouts, possible combination codes or passwords.

  Still later, music floats through my brain, the wavelengths undulating through my mind. Here, my brain finally enters REM, and facts still trickle in through the music, deep into the subconscious. Certain nuggets of information will arise if and when I need them.

  So many words, so many sounds, so many pieces of a puzzle that I try to fit together. Throughout it all, I wonder: how much of this does Tila already know?

  * * *

  “Wake up,” Nazarin says, his voice low and soothing.

  I open my eyes, and his face is the first sight to greet me. His dark brows are knitted together, studying my face. “How are you feeling?” he asks. He takes off the electrodes and brings the Chair into a seated position.

  I press a hand to my temple. “Like an overly damp sponge.”

  He gives me a humorless half-smile. “I remember that feeling. I made some coffee. Do you want any?”

  “Yeah, sounds good.” I rise to my feet, steadier than I expect to be.

  I follow him into the kitchen, slumping into a chair. I clamp my teeth together to stop the endless litany of facts streaming through my brain from escaping my lips. Within a few hours, the information will settle, but right now, my brain feels like it’s in overdrive.

  Nazarin pops a Rejuv and sets the steaming cup in front of me. “They put a lot more into you than I’ve ever seen before in two hours. You sure you feel all right?”

  “Fine,” I say, trying to sound so. I take a sip of coffee. It’s the sanitized San Francisco stuff, nearly caffeine-free, with creamer, but it’s warm as it slides down my throat.

  “Do you have any questions about what you’ve learned?” Nazarin asks.

  I frown. “I’m still sorting through it. Maybe later.”

  Nazarin glances at the clock above the replicator. Half past six. “I’ll leave you to drink your coffee. But then you should phone Tila’s friends. Your first assignment. I have to go.” His eyes are a little puffy, despite the Rejuv.

  “Right,” I mutter, staring into the coffee cup. Nazarin stands, and pauses right before he passes me. For a moment, I wonder if he’s going to rest a hand on my shoulder. I think I would have appreciated the gesture. In the end, he sighs and leaves me be.

  “Hey,” I call after him, and he turns. “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-eight.” Two years older than me. He probably became a cop at eighteen, a rookie recruit around the time I entered San Francisco. “Why?”

  I shrug a shoulder as he leaves. “Just curious.”

  I drink the coffee slowly, laying out all the recently acquired information in my mind. Between this and my already chaotic anxiety about Tila and about what I’m doing, my brain seems too crowded. I want to scream, to let it all out. I clutch the coffee cup tighter, and then force my fingers to relax. I push the chair away from the table and fold my body into a corner of the room, so that both walls press against my shoulder blades. I breathe in, breathe out, and empty my mind of all extraneous thought.

  It’s time to phone my sister’s friends, as my sister, and tell them I’m going away to China.

  I can’t do it. It’s a simple thing, and the easiest job I’m likely to have undercover, and I can’t do it. Sweat breaks out along my skin. So much stress and heartache over the last twenty-four hours has been building, and the dam finally breaks. My mechanical heart thumps rhythmically in my chest against my metal sternum—completely immune to the external factors that would speed or slow a biological version.

  Tila—why did you do this to me? What were you trying to do? To prove?

  My fingertips find the familiar scar as I blink my burning eyes and slow my breathing. I close my eyes, grabbing my emotions and forcing them under control. Even now, I can’t escape Mana-ma, but at the moment, I’m glad of her training.

  I imagine the fear and the stress as darkness swarming around me to settle on my skin. Then, deep within myself, I kindle a light that starts from my heart and emanates outward, a pure white to eradicate the darkness. My skin is now clean and glows softly, settling in my mind.

  “I’m calm,” I whisper aloud. And I am. I’m almost giddy with it. A last breath, and I’m back to myself.

  I meditate for around ten minutes, the tension leaking out from my neck and shoulders. I float in nothingness, in blackness. All anxiety lifts from my skin, in tiny flurries, like soot in the wind. When I open my eyes, I’m almost giddy from the endorphins. I return to the kitchen table, my breath even and steady. The information has ceased overwhelming me. I’m myself again, more or less.

  I learned this from Mana-ma, and part of me feels nervous when I do it. As if just by meditating, I’ll somehow fall back into her thrall. But I’ve … we’ve been free of her for years.

  I set the pings to audio only. Tila has a lot more friends than I do. It never bothered me before, but looking at the list of names downloaded from my implants and projected onto the kitchen table, I feel like she’s left more behind in this world than I have. Her artwork. She collects people, and always remembers faces and names. Though I’ve made some impact with my VivaFog machines, I only have a small circle of friends, and I couldn’t say for certain if I’m closer to them than she is to hers or not.

  “Here goes,” I mutter, and ping the first name on the list. I have a little thrill of anticipation. I’ve often wished I could be more like my sister: stronger, braver, so sure of herself, whereas I always questioned myself and my perception of others. I relied on her too much, i
n many ways. By channeling her, maybe I can start relying on myself.

  I start with Diane, the curator of an art gallery nearby. Once, she had an exhibition of Tila’s artwork. It was a success and yet after that first and last exhibition, Tila couldn’t stand the thought of another gallery opening. She told me they were stealing pieces of her by buying her art. I hadn’t understood it: wasn’t that the point of making art? You put a little bit of yourself on canvas, or into a sculpture, or onto a page, and then you give or sell it to others so they also enjoy it?

  Since then, whatever work she did was never seen by anyone but the two of us. Her paintings are beautiful, and it seems a shame that nobody else shares them, but I respect her decision and the reasons behind it, and so does Diane. They’ve remained close friends.

  “Hey Tils!” Diane says.

  “Hey, Di,” I say, folding my face into a smile—even if she can’t see it, she’ll hear it in my voice. I lean on my right elbow, like Tila does. She pitches her voice different from me, a little lower, but aside from that, our inflections are identical. We can still speak at the same time if we want to. It unnerves people when we do it. Diane’s speaking, and I focus on her words.

  “… You can make it to the gallery this weekend, right? You’ll love this new artist. Such dark, fascinating work.”

  And here we go. “Sorry, Di, I’m gonna be out of town for a while.”

  “Really? Where?”

  “China. Taema’s got a job and I’m going with her. Can you believe it?” I strive for Tila’s lighter tone.

  “Oh, it’ll be lovely this time of year. How long are you going?”

  “Not sure. I have an open ticket. Might even be a few months.”

  “Wish I could come! Are you going to get one of those virtual assistants to help you do everything?”

  I laugh and say probably not. We chat for a bit. It’s not that difficult at all to be my sister. I was worried it would be, with how much she’s changed the last few years. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to bridge that final gap. Perhaps it was just different hair, a different face, a different job. I can slip into her personality almost as easily as my own. I thought it’d make me feel braver, but it only makes me all the lonelier.