Robin Wasserman - Shattered

“Your shoes!” he said, too loud. “Or I tell them where you are.”

I didn’t bother to ask why he wanted them, or what he’d do with shoes two sizes too big. I just stripped them off and shoved them at him. He hugged them to his chest and grinned. “I saw you jump,” he whispered again. “I want to jump.”

“No!” I hissed, shaking my head wildly. “It wasn’t the shoes—”

“She’s in here!” he shrieked in a shrill, almost feminine register. “Over here!”

Just a kid, I told myself, suppressing the urge to wring his scrawny neck, but I was already in motion, shooting out of the alley and pinballing across the street. Bare feet slapping cement, I ran. Something sharp sliced my heel. I kept going. Mika and the others were already responding to the kid’s cry, running at full speed, about a block away. I knew I could outlast them, but only if I could outpace them, and they were fast. The alleys were dead ends. But just in front of me, the ground opened. Cement stairs led down into a dark maw: the tunnels.

Bitch can’t be that stupid, Mika had said.

Watch me.

It was dark down there, pitch-dark, but I had the infrared, and the underground cavern lit up in deep blues and purples. The stairs emptied onto a thin platform running along the edge of a long pit that tunneled into the distance in both directions. And in the pit, streaks of orange and yellow light scampering through the navy blue. Heated bodies scurrying through the cold dark. I pressed against the gritty tile wall of the platform as more yellow shapes streaked through the darkness, a couple on the platform angling toward me, their tiny claws feathering across my bare feet.

The rats, or whatever they were, didn’t scare me.

It was the other lights in the darkness, deep in the tunnel but creeping closer, bodies outlined in pulsing orange and red, the colors of life, the size of people, but people with twisted, gnarled shapes, backs hunched like horseshoes, limbs askew or absent.

I could hear voices above me, Mika shouting at the head of the stairs, urging his thugs down into the deep. Escape meant venturing into the tunnels, wherever they led. Whoever was waiting there for me.

The lighted bodies advanced. I shut down the infrared; I needed to see their faces. Mech eyes needed no time to adjust to the dark. The orange figures faded to gray shadows, and I saw: They were human, barely, stooped and ragged, their skin so layered with black soot that they melted into the tunnels.

For a moment I allowed myself to nurture the fantasy that they, whoever they were, poor but kind, would envelop me in their fold, spirit me away to safety, and then bask in the glow of my gratitude as I gifted them with a new life, safe and aboveground, their lives saved in return for saving mine, a happy ending.

And then I saw the glint of the knife in a raised hand, a long shard of broken glass clasped in another, heard a low, gutteral roar. The rats streamed away, seeking the safety of darkness, like they knew what was to come.

I should have jumped headfirst, I had time to think, just as a hand clamped down on my shoulder, yanked me backward. Someone grabbed my arm, nearly pulling the shoulder out of its socket, and dragged me up the stairs, my feet scrabbling for purchase as my ass thudded against the concrete. “Should’ve left you down there for the carvers,” the guy grunted, dumping me in a heap at the top of the stairs. Compared to the dark of the tunnels, the night sky seemed to blaze pink.

Mika leaned over me. I threw a wild punch, but he caught it, his scrawny grip deceptively strong. “Thanks,” he said, a creepy smile stretching across his face.

“For what?”

“For making this fun.” And he shoved a gag into my mouth. Pulled off his T-shirt and wrapped it twice around my head, leaving me in the dark. Someone tied my wrists together, then—after I landed a few kicks, yielding some mildly satisfying grunts and yelps—my ankles. Hands hauled me off the ground and slung me over a shoulder, my head dangling toward the ground, my blindfolded face plowed into someone’s ass. They carried me away.

When they pulled out the gag and ripped off the makeshift blindfold, I’d come full circle: another room, as featureless as the first, only without windows. The thugs were gone, leaving Mika and me alone.

I was tied to a chair.

“Go ahead,” I told him, steeling myself. My hands were bound behind my back, and my ankles knotted against the legs of the chair. They’d turned me into a piece of furniture. “Just do it.”

“What?”

Like I was going to give him ideas. “Whatever it is you’re going to do.”

“That’s what you think?” he asked, sounding disgusted. No—offended. He walked over to me, stroked a finger along my jawline. I jerked my head away, then thought better of it. Bring it a little closer, I urged him silently. I’ll bite it off. “You think I brought you here to… do things to you?”

“You’re right, that’s crazy,” I said, straight-faced. “You probably just want to chat.”

“You think we’re all animals, don’t you?” Mika poked me in the shoulder. Hard. “ Don’t you?”

I shrugged.

“Penned up like dogs. Fighting each other for scraps.” He shook his head. “Who are you calling an animal? I’d rather be a dog than an it .”

“Not a dog,” I muttered. “Dogs are housebroken.”

“What’s that?”

I just smiled at him. He slapped me, snapping my head back so hard it slammed on the back of the chair. The jolt of pain was like a mouthful of milk chocolate—sweet in the moment, but not rich enough to make much of an impression.

“Why aren’t you scared?” he asked.

“Of you ?” I sneered. “Maybe because you’re too stupid to notice that I’m a mech . You can’t kill me. And I don’t care if you hurt me.”

“I could make you care,” he said. “You don’t want me to do that.”

“Doesn’t seem to matter what I want.”

He circled the chair a couple times, then stopped in front of me, his legs straddling mine. He slapped his hands down on the chair back, long, hairy arms locking me in, then sat down, his ass heavy on my knees. He lowered his face to mine, and I wondered what his breath smelled like. Sour, I imagined, concentrating on his chipped front teeth. Or maybe sickly sweet like rotting fruit.

It’s just a body, I thought, watching his hands creep along my bare arms. It’s not me. It’s got nothing to do with me. Tiny, curly black hairs dusted his knuckles. His ragged nails were dark with grime. Long fingers, a strong, tight grip. It’s just wires and microreceptors and synflesh. Not me.

He pushed himself back to his feet. “I’m not an animal,” he snarled, backing away. “Whatever you think.”

I didn’t want to feel relief, because that would be an admission I’d felt fear. I was supposed to be beyond fear. Secure in mind, fearless of body, that was the idea. “Fine,” I said, steady. “So now what?”

“Now we wait.”

We waited for more than an hour. Me in my chair, Mika’s eyes darting from me to the door and back to me again. When it swung open, and Sari sauntered in, I allowed myself one moment of willful ignorance before accepting the obvious. This wasn’t a rescue.

I glared at her. “Where’s Riley?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Worried? There’s nothing I can do to him anymore, right?” Sari whispered something to Mika, who nodded. “Besides, how do you know Riley’s not the reason you’re here?”

I just stared at her.

She laughed bitterly. “Oh, that’s right, you know him so well.”