Robin Wasserman - Torn

“I’m not weak,” Riley said. “I’m tired.”

“Of me?” I asked. My voice sounded small, and I hated it.

“Of this.”

“Of us.”

“Come here,” he said, and opened his arms to me.

I wish I could say I turned my back on him. Not because I hated him or because he was wrong, but because it was my turn to be hard. Pride, dignity—invisible things, imaginary things, like the self, like the soul. They distort reality; they get in the way. But they still matter.

I stepped into his arms. I wished I could breathe in the scent of him, that his skin was warm and his chest rose and fell beneath his shirt.

It wasn’t supposed to go like this, I thought. We were supposed to be a fairy tale. A cliché of a love story, the princess and the rogue, the lady and the tramp. We had died and come back to life; we were copies who’d found reality in each other. We were machines who’d found love. The circumstances were extraordinary. How could the end be so damn ordinary?

Just another breakup.

Just another broken heart.

If I really wanted him, I would find a way to fix it, I thought.

If I really wanted him, I wouldn’t have driven him away.

But as usual I didn’t know what I wanted. Other than his arms around me.

I wanted that, but not enough to hold on when he let go. Imaginary dignity, maybe. But it was real the way we stood there, alone together, nothing left to say. It was real when we walked to the car in step, side by side, not touching, and drove away, mature, grown-up. Separate.

This is really happening, I thought. This is how it ends. But I didn’t say anything. I didn’t do anything.

Mechs don’t cry.

And there was nothing else left.

So we were civilized about it. No tantrums. No shouting. No one threw anyone else’s clothes out the window. We simply went back to Riley’s place, and—because Zo and I didn’t really have anywhere else to go, and because I could tell Riley had no stomach for throwing us out—we lived like we’d been living before. Except that I spent nights in the bed and Riley stayed on a chair by the door. Sari and Zo kept a wary eye on both of us. I hadn’t told Zo exactly what happened, only that Riley and I were done, and that I was fine, he was fine, everything was fine. I didn’t know what he’d told Sari. That wasn’t my business anymore.

How mature of us , I thought as we sat silently in the apartment, watching the orgs eat, or brainstorming with Jude to figure out what to do next. How civilized.

That was civilization, apparently. Playing the part, wearing the smile, keeping your mouth shut. Centuries built on etiquette and deception. You hurt an animal, it hurt you back—no thought, no hesitation, just a snarling beast, a rabid lunge, a bite. We were better than that. We nursed our wounds, circled each other, waited for something to change.

“No reason we can’t be friends,” Riley had said before we stepped back into the apartment that first time, so different from when we’d left.

I had nodded; I had agreed. And, granted, it had been a while since I’d had a friend. Maybe this was what it was like.

We were arguing for the fifth day in a row. We, the three of us—Jude, Riley, and me. Three dysfunctional musketeers. The apartment had become our war room. We’d been going round in circles for too long—as Jude pointed out, it seemed only likely that BioMax had recorded our intrusion, that they knew what we knew. The longer we waited, the more time they would have to take care of the problem.

But if they knew, why hadn’t they already done something to stop us?

Jude wanted to go to the network. Reveal the truth to the masses—though even he had to admit that the masses seemed unlikely to stand behind us, not when BioMax could promise them AI tech beyond their wildest dreams and, with it, luxury, plenitude, security. “It’s not even hurting us,” Jude said. “Not really.”

I couldn’t believe it. “Are you kidding me? You didn’t see—”

“That’s what they’ll say,” Jude cut in. “And if it’s not hurting us, what do they care? What do they care either way?”

“We can’t go public,” Riley said. “Once we do that, we’ve got nothing left.” He didn’t look at Jude. If he was carrying any guilt for what had happened at the temple, he didn’t show it. If anything Jude was the one who looked guilty. I wondered what Riley had told him about me—and whether they’d talked about all the things he no longer remembered. But I wasn’t allowed to ask Riley, and I wasn’t about to ask Jude. “Secrets are power. You don’t just give them away.” Now he did look at Jude—and at me. “I say we go to BioMax. Tell them what we know, and what we want.”

Jude perked up. “Blackmail?”

“Reciprocation,” I said. Call-me-Ben’s term for it.

“BioMax owns us,” Jude said. “We piss them off, that could be it. No more repairs, no more replacement bodies…”

“Scared?” Riley sounded scornful. “Since when are you afraid to die?”

“I’m just laying out the facts,” Jude said.

“Sure.”

“For blackmail to work, you need leverage,” Jude said.

“We’ve got files, pics, what else could we need?” Riley asked.

“If we know the public won’t care, don’t you think they know it?”

“Then why keep it a secret in the first place?”

“I’m not saying they want it public,” Jude said. “I’m just suggesting they have a contingency plan. We don’t.”

“Exactly.” Riley turned to me. “We have no other plan. You want to go to the secops? To the government?” He laughed at his own joke, like there was anyone who wasn’t under the thumb of BioMax or one of its allies. “You want to go to the Brotherhood ?”

“Lia? What do you think?” That was Jude asking, uncharacteristically. And Riley watching, waiting for me to choose the wrong side.

“I think… it could work.” Lie. BioMax was too big, we were too small, and walking into the lion’s den, showing our hand, seemed insane. But I didn’t have a better idea. And I didn’t want to argue.

“Two against one,” Jude said. “Guess that’s the plan.”

Unless he’d made a miraculous conversion to the democratic process, Jude going along with this meant he believed it was the best way to go—or else he was giving Riley his way as a gift, because for some inexplicable reason he felt indebted. The last time Jude had let loyalty and guilt guide his instincts, Ani had led us straight into an ambush.

“Guess that’s the plan,” I repeated.

Because, all other things aside, I wanted it to work.

I voiced Kiri, requesting the meeting. I said I had something important to discuss, that she should bring call-me-Ben, call-me-Ben’s boss, anyone who had decision-making power at the corp. Anyone who wasn’t my father. Kiri agreed to set it up, and I cut the link, wondering if she knew.

I spent the morning before the meeting at the waterfall. It should have been a toxic zone for me, but somehow that day with Riley had purged it of the past, and it was just a waterfall again. I sat on the edge of a wide, flat rock, dangling my feet in the water and shrouding myself in the thunder of the falls, white noise that drowned my capacity for rational thought. I burrowed into myself—or maybe it was the opposite; maybe I was climbing out of my skin. Fusing somehow with the rock and the trees and the open sky. Time ticked by, and I let myself forget what I was waiting for. Until it arrived.