False Hearts Page 9

  Over Chinese takeout ordered from the replicator, Nazarin tells me more about his experiences in the Ratel, though he skitters away from a lot of the explicit details. After two intensive days, I feel more ready than I ever thought I could in such a short span of time.

  It’s not enough, though.

  I still have to change my face.

  * * *

  We go to a flesh parlor out of the city entirely.

  It was the easiest way to avoid people who might have known me or Tila. The SFPD, the Ratel, Zenith clients, my co-workers—none of them would bother traveling fifteen miles to change their features when there’s a flesh parlor on every doorstep.

  We take a hovercar over the Golden Gate Bridge flightpath. It’s been over a year since I left the city, unless it was for work. I always mean to explore more, but I’ve been too busy, usually working on VivaFog machines even on the weekends. When we were younger, Tila and I would take so many day trips from the city. We went up to Monterey, to Santa Cruz, to Berkeley. We’d pack picnics and laze on the beach or in a park, Tila sketching and me reading a book before exploring the shops and the markets. I miss those days.

  Nazarin takes us up to Marin, the affluent area where tech workers commute in and out on the underwater high-speed BART. He looks tired. Working for the Ratel by night and training me by day means he’s functioning on too little sleep. Rejuvs help, but they’re not a substitute for proper sleep. The flesh parlor he’s chosen is one of the best in the nation. When the hovercar touches down, my nerves refuse to behave, no matter how much of Mana-ma’s training I use.

  They’re going to change my face.

  Not much, but enough. I keep trailing my fingertips along the lines of my brows, my nose, my cheekbones. Nazarin notices but does not say anything. I swallow, putting my hands down. It’s not much of a change. And I can always change it back.

  We sit in the waiting room. I press my nails so hard into my palms that they leave marks. I’m shaking and I can’t seem to stop. Nazarin lifts his hand, pauses as if tempted to take it away, and then rests his hand on top of mine. He gives me a look out of the corner of his eye as if to say: is this too much? Should I not? His hand is warm, the palms callused. I can see the small scars, pale against his skin, which is only a little lighter than mine. I put my other hand over his and squeeze, grateful for the comfort, before taking both hands away.

  A nurse pokes his head into the hallway, his scrubs white and crisp, and makes eye contact.

  “I’ll be right here,” Nazarin says.

  I give a sharp nod. I follow the nurse through the bright, white walls and into a room. There’s another Chair within. I’ve had my fill of these things the last few days. They’ll knock me out, and through gene therapy and a scalpel, I’ll wake up with a different face.

  “The doctor will be with you in a moment,” the nurse says, helping me into the Chair and plugging the wires and electrodes into me. I’m still shaking. He gives me something to calm me, until I feel as if I am floating. I listen to the beeps of the monitors and my mechanical heartbeat. It reminds me of that first day I awoke from surgery.

  The door opens. In my addled state, for a moment I wonder if it’s Tila, coming in to find me, IV trailing behind her.

  It’s only the doctor, coming to change my face to molten wax and mold me into my sister. The SFPD doctored the files, to make it seem like “Tila” went back to her original face, and has now changed her mind yet again.

  He comes forward and asks if I’m all right. I nod. I’m floating, high above myself. He sends me to sleep, and my last thought is that actually, I don’t mind this. My face will change, but I’ll look exactly like my sister again.

  EIGHT

  TAEMA

  I’m wearing Tila’s clothes.

  They’re nothing like my usual attire—a coverall for scurrying up a VivaFog antenna, listening to its gentle hum as it draws the fog into its whirring machines, or a dress similar to the ones we wore in the Hearth on weekends, plain, comfortable, unremarkable. All the things this dress is not.

  I have never cared much for fashion. We both experimented when we first arrived in the city, excited by the freedom of being able to choose our own clothes; of not having to make everything and alter the torsos; of wearing different clothes from one another. We had fun peacocking ourselves and dyeing our hair, having moving tattoos inked on our skin, playing with materials of strange textures and cuts. I soon grew bored of it, erasing the tattoos, letting my hair return to its brown corkscrew curls, giving the fancy clothes away and buying things that felt more familiar.

  Tila erased all the tattoos but one, a stylized broken heart on her thigh in a Polynesian style (we are part Samoan, as well as black and white), the two pieces not quite connecting. Doesn’t take a psychologist to figure out the symbolism of that. The waxworker gave the same one to me this afternoon, and it twines from my upper thigh down to my knee.

  I swallow, tugging the dress down over my hips. It’s a slinky number, the skintight material shimmering purple in one light and midnight blue in another. The boots I wear have thin, faux-leather ribbons that wrap around my legs until they reach where the tattoo begins. I’ve rubbed lotion with small gold specks all over my legs and arms (the tattoo is already completely healed, along with my face; the marvels of modern medicine), and my limbs glow.

  My hair is gone, chopped short, the texture changed from curly to straight and the color to bright blue. They’ve mapped the color to my genes, so I don’t have to worry about roots. My nose is shorter and wider, and turns up at the end. My cheekbones are slightly higher, my lips a little fuller, my chin a little pointier. It’s subtle, very subtle, but I don’t like it. It makes me more conventionally pretty, and more anonymous in this city of perfect faces.

  I paint my lips dark purple and outline my eyes in blue. I tip the ends of my eyelashes with silver dust. I have dressed like midnight to go to Zenith. That’s me in the mirror, but I can’t see myself. Tila looks back at me, but it blurs. Tila. Me. Someone in between. A stranger. I turn away from the reflection.

  I slip on a coat and leave the safe house, the door snapping shut behind me. I take the MUNI, like Tila would have. As I enter the station, in the corner of my vision I see Tila’s name and the amount of the fare deducted from her account. It’s true. I am officially my sister.

  I step on the train and it takes off. I stare at the strangers, lit green by the algae of the tunnels. I feel like people are watching me, but perhaps it is merely because I am showing more leg than I usually do, and humans are biologically programmed to stare at bare flesh.

  I’m nervous about meeting the owner, Sal, and Leylani. I fear what they will say, what I might find out. I fear I will disappoint Nazarin and be a poor undercover agent. More than that, I fear I will fail to find out what they need to know to free Tila, and she will go into stasis. Or worse, that I’ll find out things about her that I’ll never be able to forget or forgive. This is the point of no return. For both of us.

  I leave at the correct stop and walk along Montgomery Street, the mica in the sidewalk sparkling.

  I feel very alone as I look up at the TransAm Pyramid dwarfing the surrounding buildings. It was rebuilt a century ago, based on the original Transamerica Pyramid but twice the size, all glass and quartz-concrete. Evidently in the foundations, echoing the original, there are thousands of dollars’ worth of credit chips instead of coins, thrown in for good luck as the concrete was poured over it. I hope I can take a bit of the luck, though evidently it didn’t work for my sister.

  I take a deep breath and enter the lobby, nodding at the doormen before making my way to the glass elevator.

  I have to let Taema fall away again. I have to become Tila.

  I’m alone in the elevator—most of the other hosts and hostesses won’t arrive until later. I rise above San Francisco, staring down at the sparkling lights in the growing darkness.

  “Hey, Echo,” the hostess at reception greets me. Too brightl
y. I fight the urge to narrow my eyes. Does she know? Does everyone know what actually happened in the back room three nights ago? Are they all being bribed a king’s ransom to keep quiet, or did the SFPD really manage to keep it under the radar?

  I nod to her, and the brainload intel tells me her nickname is Pallua. All the hostesses choose nicknames. Psychological distancing, I guess. I was touched when I found out Tila’s was Echo. Now I’m the echo, a thin replica of Tila. Even my serviceable walk in heels is different from her feline prowl.

  Through my VeriChip I’m able to bring up Tila’s employee file, but Nazarin had the owner expand my access. I bring up internal communications from the club over the last few days into my ocular implant overlay. Since the incident, nobody’s used the back room where the crime scene was. Everyone’s been told that a high roller’s rented it out for a long, exclusive Zeal trip.

  I’ve been staring blankly into the distance for too long. Pallua looks down at her bright red nails. She’s a prototypical hostess—perfect features, perfect body, golden-brown skin, her hair a riot of purple, blue, and green. Tattoos of peacock feathers glow around one shoulder, snaking toward her breasts, which are on display in her low-cut gown.

  I wave vaguely, and something stills in the other girl’s face. A crease appears in the smooth skin of her forehead, tense lines deepening next to painted lips. She swallows and busies herself with the reception desk. I rub my clammy palms discreetly on my dress, avoiding eye contact with the few other hosts and hostesses who are milling around Zenith waiting for their shifts to start.

  “Your client’s waiting,” Pallua says, her bright smile back in place. “Cute, too.”

  “Thanks.” I smile, hoping it reaches my eyes.

  The door to the back room where I’m meant to be seems to stare at me, waiting for me to enter. I pause in front of it, take a deep breath, and the scanner reads my VeriChip, identifying me as Tila.

  The door swooshes open. I step through and the dim lights brighten. Detective Nazarin waits for me, perched on a luxury sofa. He must have come in the rear entrance. He looks like a thug in the dark clothing that doesn’t quite obscure his shoulder holster.

  The room is simple, but everything screams of wealth. I don’t look at the round bed in the corner. There’s a well-stocked bar, and a wide expanse of polished floorboards and low-pile rugs with abstract designs. Zeal Chairs are parked discreetly in the corner of the room.

  Next to him is Sal, the owner of Zenith. He’s a tall man, thin and elegant. He wears rings on all his fingers and a dark green suit, the cravat at his neck a vivid blue that matches his eyes. It looks old-fashioned, almost Edwardian, but then Tila said he was like that: picking bits of the past and interweaving them into his look. Sal is one of the few people that Tila genuinely respects. He took a chance on her by taking her on at the club, trained her up, and always treated her well. She spoke of him sometimes, over dinner. He’s meant to be fiercely protective of his employees and he prides himself that Zenith has had no scandals, no violence.

  Until three days ago. I feel nervous that he knows about the switch between me and my sister. How trustworthy is Sal, really? I asked Nazarin about it earlier, right before I went up to change into Tila’s clothes.

  “From all we can tell, he’s fairly clean,” he reassured me. “There’s nothing connecting him to the Ratel. There’s a chance of course that he’s covered his tracks well, but it’s a risk we have to take. For an exorbitant sum, he’s keeping very quiet.”

  “Tila told me once that he prides himself on keeping his word,” I responded.

  Detective Nazarin nodded. “We have to hope that’s true.”

  The door closes behind me. “We thank you for your assistance with this investigation, Mr. Kupka,” Detective Nazarin begins.

  He waves his arm. “Call me Sal, please. And we all know it’s in my best interests as well as yours.” He looks me up and down. “My, but you do look just like Tila. It’s nice to meet you, Taema.”

  I incline my head. “It’s nice to meet you, too. Tila’s spoken well of you.”

  I notice he doesn’t call my sister Echo. The man before me looks polite, and a small smile rests on his face. I glance around the room, swallowing. There’s absolutely no trace of a crime scene, but this is the room where it happened. Did Tila sit on that very sofa on the night that tore both our lives apart?

  I lean against one of the pillars of the room. It’s rude, but I can’t bear the thought of sitting down. Why are we meeting in this room, and not the others? I bring up the logs again. Ah. Because all the other rooms in Zenith are booked, and even if Sal wants to help us, he doesn’t want to eat into his profit.

  I look toward the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking downtown San Francisco. The bay is tinged its usual phosphorescent green, the lights of the skyscrapers blue and white. Hovercars wink and blink as they weave their way through them.

  “So,” Nazarin begins, and I turn. “Was Vuk Radke a regular client of Zenith?”

  “He’d come maybe once every other month or so,” Sal replies. He seems at ease, relaxed. I find that unnerving. A dead client was found in this very room, my sister covered in his blood, and he doesn’t seem to mind at all. I swallow.

  “Did he often see Tila or Leylani when he was here?”

  “Leylani was his favorite hostess.”

  “Did he stay over when he visited?”

  “Every other time. So perhaps three times a year.”

  “Have you had any dealings with him outside Zenith?”

  Sal shrugs a shoulder. “Here and there. I go to charity events. Sometimes he’d be there. We were on friendly enough terms, I’d say.” A flicker of emotion on his face: regret.

  “Why wasn’t Leylani here three nights ago?”

  Sal takes a cig out of his breast pocket and sucks on it, the end briefly glaring red. He blows out the mist. “Said she wasn’t feeling well and had to cancel her shift.”

  “Has she missed any work since?”

  “No, she came in yesterday. I haven’t told her anything about this.”

  “Can you tell us more about what happened three nights ago?”

  Why am I here? I want to ask them. I don’t want to listen to this. I don’t want to hear this slick, shiny-suited man dispassionately explaining the night my sister’s life fell apart—and mine, as a side effect. Yet I’m curious, too, and find myself drifting closer. Adrenaline courses through my veins. I force myself to calm down.

  “I found her. The room sensed the blood on the floor and it triggered an alarm. My employees are protected—they are never to be harmed. Fantasies like that are reserved for the Zealscape, but even so, we don’t allow violent sexual fantasies unless the host or hostess consents to it. Tila was always very clear she was not interested in that, and their engagement that night was not likely to be sexual.”

  My shoulder muscles are so tense they feel like they could shatter.

  “So I was concerned, obviously, and came in personally. There was Vuk on the floor, with Tila sitting next to him, covered in blood.”

  I close my eyes, but the vision is too vivid. I open my eyes to see Sal’s blue ones focused on me, curiously watching my reaction. I release the tension in my body, but cross my arms over my chest.

  “Did she say anything to you?” Nazarin asks.

  “She did.”

  I frown, and Nazarin nudges him. “What was it?”

  Sal pauses, as if trying to remember. “Ah. Yes. It was something like, ‘He is the red one, the fair one, the handsome one. He came from the Earth and now he returns. The faces keep changing.’ I had no idea what it meant. And I still don’t. I wasn’t sure if she actually saw me, or was muttering it to herself. Does it mean anything to you?”

  “No. Not yet. Why didn’t you tell the police?”

  He looks down, slipping the cig into his pocket. “Slipped my mind.” Clearly, it hadn’t. It reminds me uncomfortably of Tila. I wonder why he’s giving it to us now.

>   I can tell Nazarin wants to play the hard cop, but restrains himself—that wouldn’t work with Sal. “What did you do next?”

  “Called the police. And it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I debated letting her go, you know. I don’t mind admitting that. Tempted to let her wash herself off and disappear into the night. Dispose of the body. Clean up the blood.” He sighs. “But I knew I’d never get away with it, and much as I care for Tila, I didn’t care to sacrifice my livelihood for her. So I locked the doors and pinged the police, instructing them to come in the rear entrance and make as little fuss as possible. But then Tila threatened me with the knife, so I let her go. She grabbed Vuk’s coat by the door to cover up her blood-soaked dress and escaped out the back. I think Pallua saw something, or realized something was wrong, but she hasn’t said anything.”

  That explains her nervousness around me, at least.

  “Is Leylani here tonight?”

  “Her shift should start soon, yes. Will you be telling her what happened?”

  Nazarin shakes his head. “No, I don’t think so. No need. But we’ll probably observe her and the other clients briefly before we go home.” He nods at me. “She’s going to work a shift like you agreed. Try her hand at being her sister for a few hours. Let the other hosts and hostesses know that she’s going away to China with her sister. Then she’ll be gone.”

  “But Tila’s never returning,” Sal says, his voice bland.

  “No, I find it unlikely she’d return to your employ, or that you’d let her.”

  Sal considers me again. “Very well. This will be interesting, I suppose.” He tilts his head and points at his eye. “I’ll be watching.”

  He smiles, but I’m not reassured.

  “It’ll be interesting to see how similar you are to your sister,” he continues, standing and making his way to the window as well.

  I say nothing. What is there to say?