Robin Wasserman - Shattered

Issuing his edict of I-told-you-so doom, Savona did his best not to smile.

We watched the aftermath of the attack: spidercrawlers trawling the scene, their metallic tentacles snapping pics, searching for hidden explosives and time-release toxins, scrabbling over the bodies to triage the victims. And then the humans took over, alienlike figures, their faces distorted by thick biomasks, loading the wounded onto stretchers. We watched the secops swarm the atrium, stepping over and around the bodies that remained—intact bodies, healthy and whole, except for their pale skin, their open eyes blurry with blood.

We watched the attack from every angle, watched the orgs fall again and again, and each time, even though we knew what to expect, it came as a surprise—they were moving, they were laughing, they were fighting, and then they weren’t anything.

We watched as the secops finally dealt with the dead. Shoved them into bags, zipped them up, dragged them out like trash. Watching it all play out on-screen made it less real and more real at the same time. It was no longer something that belonged to us, something chaotic and terrible and private. It was an event now, neat details packaged into a comprehensible narrative; it belonged to the world. It wasn’t life—it was news.

Riley paused over the next vid, which hadn’t been posted until the day after the attack. “Maybe we’ve seen enough,” he said. Trying to protect me again? Not his job.

“Play it.”

The vid was grainy and without sound. The camera bounced around and for a few seconds, it was hard to make out anything but shadows and blobs of light. The lens focused, revealing a group of masked figures. The camera panned across their faces, each covered in black. Then zoomed in on a smashed console emblazoned with the biohazard symbol. A quick cut to a grate, a hand holding an aerosol sprayer, a bluish mist drifting into an air duct.

A blur as the camera spun around, landing on the person holding it. She was the only one without a mask. Her face swam in and out of the frame as she set up the shot. Then she was clear, and she smiled.

A message from the mechs, read the cap.

Riley reached for the screen. One swipe of his finger and the face would disappear. I grabbed his wrist, squeezed it. Didn’t meet his eyes; didn’t want to see them rest on my face, then dart back to the face on the screen, her face.

Our face.

“You orgs want a war?” a murderer said in my voice. She smiled again, and it was my smile. “You got one.” An alarm sounded. Her smile grew. “You know what happens next.”

I did.

Riley cut the link.

“That wasn’t me,” I said.

“I know.”

“That wasn’t me,” I said again.

He nodded. “I know.”

“But it wasn’t—”

“Lia, stop.” He put his hands on my shoulders like he was holding me steady. Like I was shaking. Which I wasn’t. “I know,” he said. Slow and firm. “It wasn’t you, it couldn’t have been. You were in the atrium when the alarm sounded. I saw you. Besides, other than her face…” He didn’t have to say the obvious. She’d had shorter hair, different clothes—black from head to toe, a killer and a cliché. She’d stood differently, moved differently. She was a physical copy, nothing more.

Riley was still holding on to me. I couldn’t look at him. Instead, I linked in again, flipping through the vids until I found what I was looking for. It was cross-posted from the Brotherhood’s zone. “I would never have expected this ,” Auden said in response to tepid questioning from some unseen interviewer. “But that’s exactly the point, isn’t it? You never really know a skinner. You only see the self they want you to see.”

“Do you understand me?” Riley said, fingers tightening on my shoulders. “That. Wasn’t. You.”

But it had my face. My voice. My smile. Auden believed it was me. Anyone watching, anyone I’d ever known, would think it was me.

My father would think it was me.

“Just stay calm,” Riley said, like he could see behind my steady gaze, steady hands, into the storm inside my head.

He cut the link again. “Take it nice and slow,” he said. Sounding like my old track coach when we’d pushed ourselves too hard for too long and needed something to lean on. Struggling to fill our lungs.

Breathe in, breathe out, I thought, the hysteria creeping in again. If only.

“None of this is your fault.” Riley leaned close, his voice warm and steady in my ear. “You didn’t do this.”

“It wasn’t me,” I said again after a long, silent moment, and this time I wasn’t trying to convince him, or myself. It was just the only fact I had, a starting point.

“It wasn’t you,” he said in the same tone, and I could tell he got it. Crisis averted. For the moment. “I know that. But no one else will.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t freak out,” he said.

“Sorry, but did you not see the same vid I saw?” I snapped. “Because this is me freaking out.”

“We have to voice Jude and—”

“And what?” I grabbed his arm as he was reaching for the ViM. “We leave him out of this.”

“He’ll know what to do,” Riley said.

“Right. Because Jude always knows what to do.”

“This is not a joke,” he said in a low voice.

“You think I don’t know that? Was that your face on the vid?”

He looked down at his arm, and I realized I was still holding on. I let go.

“Jude’s the one who forced us to go to the corp-town,” I reminded him. Forced me , specifically. No one else would do.

“So?”

“So if someone’s setting us up, it hasn’t occurred to you that Jude—”

He stood up abruptly. “He wouldn’t do that.”

“I’m not saying—”

“You better not. Or I’m out of here.”

“Fine. I don’t think he would ever do something like that.” So I didn’t want him to go; so I lied.

“Good. Because he wouldn’t.” Riley kept his eyes fixed on a low-hanging branch. There were still enough leaves clinging to the trees to block out most of the dim sunlight. The first night had been hard, huddling in the darkness, listening to the unfamiliar chitterings and hoots of the Sanctuary’s protected species, wondering if there were wolves or bears or some other fanged predator of an earlier age prowling for fresh blood. Nothing seemed quite as dire once the sun came up, but after two days trapped in the trees, all I wanted was some sunlight and an open sky.

“I just said that, didn’t I?” Best friends was one thing, but it was like Riley thought if he said one bad thing about Jude—or let anyone else release a single criticism into the universe—he’d be struck by lightning.

Jude’s not God, I wanted to remind Riley.

But not as much as I wanted not to be left alone.

“The point is we shouldn’t bring anyone else into this,” I said. Thinking: Jude sent us to Synapsis Corp. Sent me . To meet a mysterious contact who never showed up. Thinking you’d have to be a moron not to wonder. Or an acolyte, blinded by faith. Same difference. “You said yourself, they could track us through the network—and now we know they’re looking for us.” Looking for me. “If we get in touch with Jude, we’d only make him look guilty. Bring down the secops on everyone.”

“I don’t know…”

“It’s my life, right?” I said. Only one mech had turned her face to the camera. A few shots had caught Riley running away, but he’d been the smart one, covering his face with his shirt. No one was looking for him. “If we’re going to take a risk, it should be my decision.”