Robin Wasserman - Torn

Day seven.

Halfway there.

Not going to make it.

“You skank!” Cally shouted, and launched herself at Pria.

“Not my fault you couldn’t give him what he wanted!” Pria screeched, squaring off to face the charging blonde. She crouched and grabbed Cally around the knees, flipping her head over heels. Which put Cally in the perfect position to gnaw on her thigh.

Pria went down.

Hands clutched at tangles of blond hair, yanked. Violet nails raked across pale skin. They hissed, they slapped; teeth were bared, backs were arched, saliva was sprayed. There was some very unladylike grunting. Soon the two interlocked, writhing bodies rolled across the mansion’s marble floor, a monstrous eight-legged beast.

Sometimes these fights ended at the hospital; sometimes they ended in bed. (Or in the closet, the pool, the shower, the rug—any and every conceivable surface.) Whatever the audience wanted.

Now , the voice commanded. Tell them.

“You’re both brainburned,” I said. “You want to kill yourselves over Caleb? Go for it.” The voice gave me the storyline, but—usually—I made up the words myself. A miniature measure of freedom in my zombie life. “You know who’ll really love that? Felicity. Because then she gets him all to herself.”

The writhing creature froze, then separated itself into two discrete bodies again, every eye, ear, and molecule trained on my next words.

“Of course, she’s already got him,” I said.

“That bitch!”

“That skank!”

“That tramper!”

“I’ll kill her.”

“Not if I kill her first.”

“I’ll kill you first, if you try that.”

The truth: Felicity had never touched Caleb. I didn’t know if I was lying because I wanted him for myself, because I wanted Cally or Pria for myself, or because I wanted trouble. The voice would tell me, soon enough, and then that would be the new truth.

The fight temporarily over, and Felicity marked for death, we were free to move on to more pressing concerns.

“Mini or maxi?” Pria demanded, hanging the two dresses over her curvy frame. “There’s a rage at Chaos tonight and we are there .”

“Maxi,” I said. “Definitely.” Because that day I was supposed to be hating on Pria, and the billowing black and white gown made her look like a pregnant cow.

“That’s my dress !” Cally spit, grabbing it out of her hand.

Pria looked clueless, but only for a moment. Then her face transformed—narrowed eyes, tensed muscles, slight upturn in her puffy lips. A masterful dose of pure spite. “So what if it is?” she snarled. “Looks better on me, anyway.”

It’s your dress, the voice decided.

So that’s what I said.

Then I added the part about the pregnant cow.

And then I was on the ground, with my hair in Pria’s hands and my artificial flesh beneath her nails.

Good luck breaking the skin, I thought, gifting her with a light sucker punch that would give her plenty of material for the cameras.

It had been made clear to me that the audience loved a fight.

Especially when the skinner lost.

“Every skinner—I’m sorry, mech—has an understandably conflicted relationship with the Brotherhood, but I think it’s safe to say that yours is more conflicted, or certainly more complicated, than most,” the interviewer said. “After all, its current leader, Auden Heller, is a former classmate of yours, isn’t that right?”

You know it’s right, you disingenuous bitch.

I should have known better than to believe Kiri when she said the interviewer had agreed to my terms. Easy to declare a subject off-limits when you’re backstage—so much the better to launch a sneak attack once the cameras are rolling.

I smiled.

“Yes. We were in school together for about ten years.”

“And you were close?” she said.

“Briefly.”

“Until that day at the waterfall—”

“I don’t talk about that.”

“That’s understandable,” she said, sounding sympathetic. She patted my knee.

I let her. I even let her regurgitate the story of the waterfall, and how Auden had nearly died trying to save me, the skinner who didn’t need saving. My fault, and so—in his mind, and the minds of the Brotherhood’s brainwashed masses—the fault of every skinner.

“It must be so hard for you,” she said. “I’m sure you wish you could talk to him, apologize for everything that’s happened. Is there anything you’d like to say to him now?” she asked, eyes hungry. “Anything at all?”

I wasn’t about to ruin everything by exploding on camera. Two weeks of misery were not going in the garbage just to give myself the luxury of self-pity. Or privacy. I’d given the latter up for fifteen days, and the former up for good. But I couldn’t play along.

I glanced off camera. Kiri’s lips were moving, and, like a ventriloquist’s dummy, the interviewer began to speak. “Looks like we’re out of time,” she said, stiffly. I was surprised the sweat running down her face didn’t harden to ice. “It’s been a pleasure to have you with us. Please come again.”

I smiled like I meant it. “Anytime.”

Maybe I was the better actor after all.

Day fifteen.

“You survived.” Kiri swept me off as the interview ended. That was code for You didn’t screw up. I didn’t know whether she meant the interview or the whole two weeks; I was too tired to care.

One more night and I was free.

I couldn’t thank her for the save—not without revealing her interference to the vidlife audience. So I just raised an eyebrow, and she mirrored the gesture with her own. You’re welcome.

“She wanted me to talk about myself,” I chirped. “What’s better than that?” Code for I know I’m already dead… but kill me now. Please.

“Ah, the Lia Kahn we all know and love,” she said. “Sure you’re not too tired to hit this gala tonight?”

A star-studded night with the crème de la crème of high society, pretending not to notice that the crème was made with soured milk? We both knew there was only one acceptable response.

“Me? Miss a party? As if.”

No one told me the party was underwater.

A transparent bubble sucked us below sea level. The orgs were intrigued, pressed against the clear walls, watching fish meander by and algae lick at the glass. This was all new to them, an adventure. But I’d stroked through the deep; I knew what it was like to lose myself in the silent dark of the water.

I knew what was hiding beneath the ocean’s surface—I’d seen the dead cities and their bloated bodies, and I knew that only algae and jellyfish could survive in the bath of toxic sludge. But the transparent dome was surrounded by an elaborately fake ecosystem, sparkling water clear enough to show off rainbow coral reefs and fluorescent schools of fish. It was the perfect match for the garish undersea spectacle that lay within the dome, synthetic algae undulating from the floor, sparkling lights floating in midair, stars hung so low you could flick them with a finger and watch them float across the room, as if we were all buoyant, gravity temporarily suspended. Holographic reefs and ridges projected from every surface, the illusion broken only when the occasional dancing couple floated right through it. Literally floated, thanks to the buoyancy generators beneath the floor that lifted them on a cushion of air. The party was a gala, which normally would have meant fairy-tale finery, but this time, apparently—for those more in the know than I—demanded a more nautical touch. Mermaids drifted by on hovering platforms, their hair architectured to float above their heads. There were org-sized sharks with gnashing teeth and of course the obligatory skanked-up efforts, in this case nude body stockings wired to project shimmering scales across bare abs, chests, and asses.