Robin Wasserman - Shattered

“Why would you know?”

“Does Jude know?” I asked. “Doesn’t seem like he’d approve.”

“You think I need his approval?”

“You’re the one who nods along to whatever the hell comes out of his mouth,” I said.

“Maybe I’m loyal.”

“And that means never questioning anything?”

“Not the big things,” Riley said.

“That’s not loyalty, it’s blind faith.”

He just shrugged. “Says you.”

We’d gotten way off topic, and I suddenly wondered whether Riley was smarter than I’d given him credit for, steering me away. “So you miss it here?”

He swept his arms out before him, showing off the peeling, stained walls, the yellow puddle. “What’s not to miss?”

“I’m serious,” I said. “You could have come back after the download.”

“Thought you said you were serious,” Riley said, cracking a half smile. “And even if I’d wanted to…” He shook his head, turning his left hand over as if examining its smooth surface, free of identifying creases and whorls. “Wouldn’t have worked.”

“Just because you’re a mech?”

“Partly.”

“What if Jude had wanted to move back?”

Riley paused. “He didn’t.”

Before I could explain the meaning of a hypothetical, the door opened. I froze, but Riley leaped to his feet, assuming a fight stance, knees bent, fists drawn.

“Am I interrupting something?” Sari asked, stepping into our cozy little hideaway.

It took a moment for Riley to drop his fists.

“What do you want?” he asked, his voice gruffer than the one I was used to.

“Honestly?” Sari took a few steps toward him. He backed against the wall. “Just to get a good look.”

“You got one,” he said.

“Also this.” Before he could react, she’d crossed the room and her arms were around him, her cheek pressed to his chest. He hesitated, and then his arms crept around her. His eyes met mine, over her shoulder, then closed.

It wasn’t an easily categorizable hug. There was no sex in it, barely even a spark, but there was still something about it that made me feel like I should leave the room, leave them alone.

Then she let go and slapped him across the face.

“Did that hurt?” she asked.

He shook his head. She slapped him again—or tried to, but he caught her wrist just in time. She twisted away from him.

“What the hell?” he shouted.

“You tell me,” she shot back. “Where’d you go?”

“I’m right here.”

“Before!” She took a couple deep breaths. “You stop voicing me. Or answering any of my texts. You totally disappear! So you tell me: What the hell?”

“Sari, come on.”

“You never came back.” She looked up at him, eyes clear and dry, mouth pinched to a point. This was a girl who didn’t cry. “Two years, and you never came back—until one day you just show up again? With her ?”

“You know why I couldn’t come back,” he said.

“Even if you wanted to, right?” Sari snapped. “But you didn’t. Why would you? Better life, better girls, better everything, right?”

“Nothing’s better,” Riley growled. “And I’m not the only one with a new life. Since when are you and Gray so tight?”

“It’s not like that,” she said, the lie so obvious on her face that she must have intended it to be. She wanted him to know the truth behind the denial—to hurt him. I had to admire how well she played the game.

“So tell me how it is,” Riley said.

Her eyes narrowed; her voice tightened. “Like you care.”

“Since when do I ask, if I don’t care?”

She reached out her hand again, and Riley moved to intercept it. She gave her head a quick, sharp shake. He dropped his arm. Sari touched his face lightly. Her fingers flickered across his cheek, his chin, the bridge of his nose. “It’s really you?” she asked, peering into his eyes like there’d be some leftover in there, something familiar tying him to the face she’d known. A waste of time. But that was the thing about orgs. If they couldn’t touch it, see it, hear it, they concluded it didn’t exist.

Riley closed his hands around hers, removed them from his face. They stood that way, connected, for a long moment, then separated. I couldn’t tell who’d let go first.

“What do you want, Sari?”

She hesitated. The iron expression wobbled. Then stiffened again as she made her decision. “Just to talk. Like we used to.”

Riley looked like he wanted to argue, but instead he nodded. “Yeah. That’d be good.”

Sari shot me a nasty look. I couldn’t blame her. “Not here,” she said. “Not in front of her .”

“She’s okay,” Riley said.

“I don’t know her.”

“I do.” Riley said.

Do you? I thought, skeptical.

But Sari was convinced. She glanced back and forth between us. “Yeah. Obviously. But I don’t, and I don’t want her listening.”

“I’ll go,” I said. “It’s fine.”

Sari snorted. “Where you gonna go?”

“She’s right,” Riley said. “It’s not safe.”

He was doing it again, acting like I was some fragile blossom needing protection from the elements. And not even in a marginally flattering, she’s-such-a-beautiful-flower kind of way. More in the I-don’t-want-to-clean-up-the-inevitable-mess kind of way. On the other hand, as far as I could tell, this claustrophobic, stained, piss-ridden room was a pretty good stand-in for the city at large. And I wasn’t in the mood for sightseeing. “Fine.”

“You want me to go?” he asked, like he’d asked in the woods.

He’ll come back, I told myself, and I nodded. Just like last time, he looked hesitant.

Unlike last time, he went.

“That was quick,” I said, irritated by my relief as the door swung open. Only a few minutes had passed. “I figured you two would—”

I jumped to my feet as Mika and two other guys I didn’t recognize— big guys—stepped into the room, shutting the door behind them. Knees bent, fists clenched, I thought, trying to imitate Riley’s instinctive don’t-mess-with-me pose. The look on their faces suggested I wasn’t doing it quite right.

“Didn’t realize I was having company,” I said brightly. “You should have told me you were stopping by, I would have cleaned the place up.”

One of the musclemen paled as he looked me up and down. “You didn’t say it was going to be one of them .”

“We don’t have time for this shit,” Mika snapped. “Just do it.”

“It’s not natural,” he whined.

“Who’s supposed to be intimidating who here?” I asked Mika, trying to figure out how to get past four hundred pounds of muscle (plus a few pounds of Mika’s scrawn) to make it to the door. “Because I don’t think it’s working out the way you planned.”

“ Do it,” Mika ordered like a guy who’s never given an order before.

“Do what?”

Instead of answering, the less chatty of the two musclemen darted toward me and twisted my arms behind my back. “Sorry,” he murmured, and before I could ask him sorry for what, something hard slammed into the back of my head and the transparent pane of glass between me and the world—between my artificially constructed reality and the vivid, visceral, live experience of org life—shattered into a thousand bright shards of pain.

Hit me again, I almost said—and that scared me more than the musclemen, more than wild-eyed Mika, who looked totally freaked out to see me still on my feet, eyes open, brittle grin firmly in place. But the pain made the world seem real—made my body seem real. Extreme pain, at least, the kind that overwhelmed my conscious awareness that every sensation was just a string of little ones and zeros assembled into patterns specifying hot , cold, or ouch.