Robin Wasserman - Torn

“Try me.” I offered up a perfect smile. Nothing to hide. What you see is what you get.

“As you know, the Brotherhood of Man has been making overtures in our direction,” Ben said. “They claim they’d like to publicly bury the hatchet.”

“In our backs?”

Ben cleared his throat. “They have a powerful voice and numerous followers—”

“Hate sells.”

“—and if we can tap into that, it could be very helpful to our cause.”

“Where is this going?” I asked. Circumlocution was call-me-Ben’s specialty; he could talk for hours without saying a thing.

As usual it was Kiri who cut through the crap. “We’re staging an event,” she said. “A public peacemaking. The Brotherhood will announce their willingness to help incorporate the mechs into society, and BioMax will graciously accept their offer.”

Kiri was one of the only BioMax people who actually used the word “mech.” It was one of the things I liked best about her. The rest of them all said “download recipient” or “client” or, if they didn’t realize I was listening, “skinner.” But Kiri used the name we’d given ourselves. She was smart—too smart to buy into the Brotherhood’s line. Maybe Auden was sincere. But that was irrelevant, now that the Honored Rai Savona was back in the picture. “You do realize they’ve got an agenda?” I said.

“Quite honestly, their agenda doesn’t matter to us,” Ben said. “Right now they’re doing exactly what we need them to be doing. If they take an ill-considered path in the future, we’ll take whatever measures we see as necessary.”

Translation: Squash them like a bug.

“So what do you want from me?” I was sickened enough being in these offices, facing them, pretending nothing had changed. Throw Savona into the mix—and Auden, who I tried not to think about, couldn’t think about—and almost bearable turned into not . “Since it’s obviously not my opinion.”

Is it ever?

Jude’s voice, Jude’s disgust. They want you to dance for them, I could imagine him sneering, not talk. Certainly not think.

“The Brotherhood is extending an olive branch, Lia,” Ben said. I hated when he said my name in his oily voice, like he was granting me a gift by acknowledging my identity. I know what’s inside your head, his expression always seemed to say. I’ve seen your flesh peeled away, your brain exposed. I know what you really are. “We don’t want to turn our backs on that.”

“Fine. I still don’t see—”

“We want you to represent BioMax,” Kiri said. “Stand up at a podium with Savona and Auden, make a little speech, shake their hands, sit down again. Simple as that.”

“Simple?” I laughed. “You’re a bad liar, Kiri.”

“You don’t have to marry them,” Ben snapped. “You’ll speak, you’ll shake hands, and then we’ll start the music and serve the food and you can go skulk in a corner or visit your friends upstairs or whatever antisocial course suits your fancy.”

“What friends upstairs?”

“On the thirteenth floor,” Kiri said. “The event’s down at our research facility—there’s a nice banquet space there, and we think it’ll send a good message, get the word out about the limitless technological horizon, all that. We’ll be packaging a whole vid segment on the rehabilitating mechs, give the public more insight into the process. Better our turf than theirs, right?”

I nodded, distracted by the possibilities. With all those people it would be easy to slip away from the crowd, into the corners of the building that I’d never been allowed to enter. With an event like this going on downstairs, it seemed likely that the place would be understaffed, maybe even cleared out, which would give us a clear path.

It wouldn’t do to give in too quickly. Not when they both knew exactly how I felt about Savona and, I could tell, had come in girding themselves for a fight. So I let them argue and spin and cajole; I let them explain all the ways that this could be a new start for us, that many of the most vicious antiskinners were followers of the Brotherhood and their watching the leaders recant could change everything, that I was the key to forgiveness. Especially given my history with Auden—

That’s where I stopped them. “I’ll do it.”

Kiri beamed. “I promise, if it’s a disaster, you’re welcome to say I told you so.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I will.”

I twirled for the mirror, and the nearly weightless silk skirt billowed around me. Under any other circumstances it would have been an optimal opportunity for preening. The sleek ball gown hugged every curve of my perfectly sculpted mech body, and the shimmering blue—which shifted across the spectrum from sky to indigo and back again as I moved—glowed against my smooth, pale skin. Riley brushed his lips against my neck, then traced a finger down my bare back until it reached the sash of silk slung low over my hips. “You sure you have to go out tonight?” he said softly. “You could stay here, and—”

“I’m sure,” I said. The ball gown wasn’t exactly the pinnacle of delinquent style, and I suspected the idea of breaking into BioMax might have seemed slightly less surreal if I’d been decked out in something more appropriate. But camo gear, even the kind programmed to blend into any background, wouldn’t offer much invisibility at the BioMax ceremony. The idea was to blend, and—I shot a final confirming glance at the mirror, taking in the elaborately twisted blond braids, the jeweled designs sparkling along my arms and breastbone, the oceans of silk—I blended.

“Whoa,” Riley breathed, eyes widening as Zo stepped out of the bathroom, her shoulders hunched and arms crossed her chest as if she were preparing for attack.

Her hair was clean and shining for the first time in years, pulled up in a loose chignon that highlighted the long arc of her neck. She’d traded in her standard uniform of baggy shirts and sagging retro jeans for an asymmetrical black gown. Satin coated one arm, leaving the other bare, and a latticework of temp tattoos crawled from her wrist to her neck. It looked like her skin was knit from silver lace, and somehow it worked. She looked beautiful, but not in a shocking ugly-duckling-turns-swan kind of way. Zo was still Zo, and crap clothes and greasy hair couldn’t hide a genetic bounty for which our parents had paid a fortune. She looked better, but no matter how much she tried to hide it, she’d always looked good. I’d always known Zo was beautiful.

I’d never known how much she looked like me.

Or at least, the me that used to exist, in a different body with a different face. Zo was now almost exactly the age I’d been when the accident happened. And it occurred to me that watching her get older would be like getting a glimpse into the future I didn’t get to have.

“You look great,” I told her.

She scowled. “Whatever.”

“You look like some old lady,” Sari commented, from her habitual sulking spot in the corner.

“You look amazing,” Riley said. “Both of you.”

Zo stopped hunching after that. She kept sneaking glances at herself in the mirror, and I wondered what she saw. If she saw me.

“You sure you don’t want me to come with you?” Riley asked. He pressed his hand to the small of my back. As an org I’d found that gesture irresistible—something about a warm hand on cold skin, at exactly the spot where I felt strongest and most vulnerable all at the same time. But I was a mech, and it was just a hand. I smiled at Riley.

“You hate parties,” I reminded him. “I realize I look hot enough to make you forget that. But you’d remember as soon as we walked in, and you’d be miserable.”