Robin Wasserman - Torn

I stopped.

I hid.

It was the smart move; we were outnumbered, and throwing myself at two men with guns trained on my sister could only make things worse. If Kiri had intended to shoot her, she would have done it already. Probably. Still, I felt like a coward. And I hated myself for it.

Ben was dead.

Ben had kept his mouth shut about me, about Jude and Auden. He’d picked a side, our side. And now he was dead.

Without taking my eyes off my sister, I reached for my ViM. If I could get through to Jude, if I could call in a rescue—

“Where are the rest of them?” Kiri asked Zo.

“The rest of who?” She was staring at Ben, eyes wide and watery.

“You’re not here alone.”

Just tell her, I thought.

Or maybe, Don’t tell her . Information was leverage, Riley had once reminded us. Secrets were power. If Kiri got what she wanted out of Zo, what need would there be to keep her alive?

On the other hand, if I showed myself, gave Kiri what she really wanted, maybe she’d just let Zo walk away.

“It’s just me,” Zo said, and I could tell she was trying to regain some semblance of spunk. It wasn’t working. “Sorry to disappoint.”

Something buzzed at Kiri’s waist. She lifted her ViM to her ear and nodded. “Good. Bring them in.” Then she turned back to Zo, with that eerily familiar smile. “I see you’re just as big a liar as your sister.”

I didn’t have to call Jude. He was here, with Auden by his side, both of them frog-marched into the room by four BioMax techs, techs carrying guns—a real one for Auden, a pulse one for Jude, both of them deadly.

“Any problems?” Kiri asked.

“Not a one,” the tallest one said. “They fell for it all the way.”

“Good job.” She waved a hand toward the nearest wall. “Put them over there.”

The techs shoved them into the wall, along with Zo, lining them up, their hands out at their sides, fingers outstretched, palms empty, nothing up their sleeves, so to speak. Nothing left to stop this… except me.

“So where is she?” Kiri asked.

“Who?” That was Jude, eyes wide, expression clueless. Unconvincing.

Kiri just laughed. “I know she’s here, somewhere, lurking about.” She raised her voice. “Are you here, Lia?” she shouted. “Hiding? Typical. Most people would want to help their friends—their sister . But not you, Lia, right? Nothing changes. All that matters is you .”

“How long have you been talking to yourself?” Jude asked. “You may want to see someone about that.”

Kiri ignored him, and gestured to the two techs who’d been there with her the whole time. “What are you staring at? Get back to work.”

They put their weapons away and knelt at the base of the nearest server bank, where they began fiddling with a web of wires spiraling out of the exposed circuitry. They were hooking up a device and clipping it to the wires.

Seven of them. Three of us, backs against the wall.

And then there was me. Hiding. Waiting. Watching.

In other words, doing nothing.

“That’s an uplink jack,” Auden said suddenly, loudly—far more loudly than he needed to, unless he was hoping to be heard by someone who might be all the way across the room, invisible. “I’ve seen one of those before.”

Ben had pointed it out too—just as loudly.

“Smart kid,” Kiri said, sounding distinctly unimpressed.

“So you’re uploading something into the network?”

I flashed on the data banks we’d discovered in the BioMax basement, the neural patterns they had filed away for a rainy day, for whatever machine they deemed ready for an obedient human brain to guide its movements, its actions at the beck and call of BioMax, mechanical slaves.

What would happen if they uploaded one of those obedient cybernetic slaves to the network? How much would they control? Maybe the AI, the war machines, had all just been practice—maybe BioMax wanted more than money. Maybe they wanted everything.

Kiri ignored Auden and addressed the techs. “How close are we?”

“Five minutes,” one of them said, voice slightly wobbly. “If it works.”

“It better work.” Kiri jerked her head at the two techs guarding Zo. “Make yourself helpful,” she snapped. “Go see if you can’t hunt down their little friend. I know she’s on board.”

They shifted nervously, glancing at each other, but neither moved. One mumbled something under his breath.

“What’s that?” Kiri glared.

“Bad numbers if we go,” he muttered. “Three of them, two of us—”

“They’re children .” She rolled her eyes. “Fine. Kill the defective and the girl, but save the skinner. If this doesn’t work, we might need him.”

“To upload?” Auden said, nearly shouting.

Not because he was afraid. Not because he was panicking.

Because he was talking to me.

“We can’t use him,” one of the techs said. “If we upload an intact one, it’s possible—”

“Who said he’d be intact?” Kiri smiled. “Now, take care of it.”

Kill the defective and the girl.

Two men raised two guns. Kiri watched, waited. Still smiled. And it was like she was smiling right at me, like she knew I was there and was taunting me, daring me to show myself, to do something stupid, throw myself at her, at Zo, at the weapons, throw everything away, like she couldn’t wait for it to happen, and she couldn’t wait to watch.

Two men, two guns. But there were no guns guarding the uplink device. Only two techs, who were barely my size, who had dropped what they were doing and were frozen, watching Kiri, watching the guns, watching death about to happen.

This is a dumb idea, I thought, but there was no time to think.

I ran.

I ran toward the server, toward the uplink jack, toward the techs, who scattered as I barreled toward them, and I lunged for the uplinker, fumbling with the familiar wires and switches, aiming the wireless input jack at my pupil, only one chance to get this right, to flip the switch, to do something , even if the triggers compressed and the guns fired and physics took over. I couldn’t stop Kiri. I couldn’t stop bullets. But maybe I could stop them from uploading whatever they were so desperate to upload—by uploading myself first. Maybe it would only stop them for a moment, I couldn’t know. But a moment might be enough to save Zo.

Kiri’s thugs flickered at the edge of my vision, and as I fumbled with the device—urging myself faster, faster —I saw them whirling around, and then there was an explosion in my ears, and suddenly the world shifted. I didn’t understand why the ceiling was so far away, why I was on the ground, why I couldn’t move, why the explosions were still firing, but quieter now, like sharp popping noises, distant bombs bursting in air and, with each of them, pain, bursting in me. Legs, chest, neck, more, until there was no telling one from another; the pain radiated everywhere, sharp and sweet, and in the rush I could believe that my body was a body, that I was alive.

The upload worked, I thought.

I will survive.

But it didn’t work that way. The memories would survive. The pattern would survive. But I wasn’t in the uplink, and I wasn’t in the servers. I was on the ground. I was bleeding a viscous green fluid and firing sparks and watching uselessly as my friends took advantage of the distraction and struggled for their lives. I was stuck, as I was always stuck, in this body that didn’t belong to me, that wasn’t me; that’s what Jude had taught us, that’s what I was supposed to believe—I was my mind, I was my memories.

But my mind, my memories, were locked inside the head, and the head was bleeding.