Robin Wasserman - Shattered

“Just to be clear, you went sightseeing in the city by yourself. To play at slumming for a few hours. For fun ,” the detective said, standing up again. The sympathy was draining from her voice. Fine. As long as she thought I was a repulsively self-absorbed rich bitch and not a mass murderer. Let her hate me all she wanted. “And you’re certain you went nowhere near Synapsis Corp-Town?”

I forced myself to laugh, hoping it didn’t sound as artificial as most of my attempts in that direction. “Who’s going to be impressed if I go to a corp-town ?” I scoffed. “I mean, the city, that’s one thing. That’s slamming. But a corp-town?” I wrinkled my nose. “That’s just, like, where they grind fish crap into food or something. What would I do in a place like that?”

“I can think of a few things,” the detective said in an icy voice. She stroked a finger across her ViM. The gray wall lit up with images of the corp-town attack. I looked away—then abruptly looked back, confused. How would an innocent person react? Was I supposed to be so horrified I couldn’t stand it? Or should I act fascinated, like someone who hadn’t seen it in person, who hadn’t stepped over bodies while trying to escape?

I am innocent, I reminded myself. I shouldn’t have to act.

Somehow, the more time that passed, the less I believed it.

“Don’t I get a lawyer or something?” I asked.

She narrowed her eyes. “Have you done something that would require a lawyer?”

I wondered how many noobs actually fell for that one. “Do you know who my father is?”

“We know a great deal about you, Lia.”

“Then you know I’m not some idiot city slummer you can bully into giving up my rights.”

Detective Ayer raised her eyebrows. “What kind of rights do you think you have?”

“Same as everyone else.”

“Same as every org , you mean?”

I kept my face blank.

“‘Org.’ That’s the term you and your friends like to use, am I right?” she asked, too pleased with herself. “And you skinners prefer to call yourselves ‘mechs.’”

I shrugged. “So?”

“Seems rather hostile,” she said mildly. “Inventing a slur for everyone who’s not like you?”

“More hostile than ‘skinner’?” I shot back. “Or how about ‘Frankenstein’? That one never gets old.”

“Call yourself whatever you want. But ‘org’…” She shook her head. “I don’t know, I hear that word, and it sounds to me like you’re trying to denigrate humanity. Convince yourself that you’re somehow superior.”

“That’s a lot to get from one syllable,” I said.

“Context counts,” the detective said, swiping her ViM again. The mech vid popped up on the wall screen, my face smiling into the camera, delivering her succinct manifesto. You orgs want a war?

Detective Ayer froze the frame. “Do you want a war, Lia?”

“Of course not!”

“Is that you in the vid?”

“I already told you it’s not! I’ve never been to that corp-town or anywhere near there.” No DNA, I reminded myself. No fingerprints, no biomatter, no nothing that could connect me to the corp-town.

“It must be strange, sharing a face with a murderer,” she said casually. “Or maybe it doesn’t bother you, the murder of forty-two orgs ?”

“It bothers me.”

“But maybe the ends justify the means?” she suggested.

“What ends could justify that ?”

“You tell me.”

We glared at each other. There was no way I’d look away first.

“Let me lay it out for you, Lia,” the detective said finally. “It might not be you in that vid. But I think it is. I can read people—”

“I’m not people,” I said sourly. “I’m a skinner , remember?”

“A skinner who was picked up in a city . Tied to a chair by a bunch of city rats? Now tell me, what’s a sweet little girl like you do to get the slummers so angry?”

“You’ll have to ask them,” I said.

Her lips quirked. “I’m afraid they’re unavailable for questioning.”

I didn’t let myself dwell on that one.

“Some people—some orgs —don’t need a reason to hate me,” I said, the “you should know” clear in my voice. “It’s enough that I’m a mech.”

“Just to be clear: You’re refusing to explain your activities of the last three days?” she asked. “You’re aware how that looks?”

“Like I care. What I do is my business, not yours.”

“Maybe.” She sighed, tugging at the cheap material of her corp-provided suit, the wrong cut and a size too small. I could have told her that shoving herself into the beige sausage casing wasn’t working and that she should go back to pinching her pennies to save up for her next lipo—lift-tucks and the like were rarer in corp-towns, more of an occasional splurge than a fact of daily life, but no amount was too much to pay to stave off age and fat. Too bad for her, I wasn’t really in the fashion-favor-granting mood. And for all I knew, pleasantly plump was the latest trend in her corp-town, the better to make clear you weren’t an underfed city rat. Besides, at least she still got to eat . Let her deal with the consequences.

“But here’s your problem,” she continued. “It’s my job to decide what’s my business. And right now, I say it’s you.”

“I want a lawyer,” I said.

“Tough.”

“I have rights,” I reminded her.

“Oh, really?” She smirked. “What are they?”

I hesitated. The ins and outs of the criminal justice system weren’t exactly a hot topic of study at the Helmsley School. “I know you can’t just lock me up here when I haven’t done anything wrong. If you won’t let me voice a lawyer, at least let me tell someone I’m here.”

“And who would that be?” she asked.

“None of your business,” I said. Thinking: No one . I hadn’t talked to my parents in months. So who did I know that could fix this kind of problem. Jude?

Riley, I thought. But that was idiotic. How was he supposed to help? Even if it turned out he wasn’t the reason I was here?

“Since you seem a little murky on the facts, let me explain them to you,” Detective Ayer said. “One: There has been a major attack on a civilian population. Two: There are indications that this may be part of an ongoing threat. Three: I’m empowered to do anything within my means to ensure another such attack doesn’t take place. Four: You’re a skinner. Not a person. Just a person-shaped box with a computer inside. Boxes don’t get lawyers.”

“The government considers me a person,” I said. “Look it up.”

“Five,” she continued, like I hadn’t said anything. We both knew that the government had outsourced all security matters to the corps. Everyone had agreed it was safer that way: The government couldn’t be trusted with unlimited power, they’d made that obvious time and time again. But the corps were, in principle, regulated by the exigencies of the market. They thrived when the customer thrived, and mutual self-interest was the ultimate satisfaction guarantee. So now corporate boards made the rules, and the corporate secops carried them out. No questions asked. “No one knows you’re here. And until you cooperate with me, no one will.”

I crossed my arms. “Is this where I’m supposed to cry?”

I am a machine, I told myself. You can’t threaten a machine.

“You can do whatever you’d like,” the detective said. “As long as you tell me the truth. Let’s start with Friday morning. Why don’t you tell me everything you did from the moment you woke up.”