Robin Wasserman - Shattered

“Even more obnoxious when he wins than when he loses,” Jude said, grinning. “Even though he gets zero practice.”

I realized I’d never seen Jude laugh for the fun of it rather than at someone else’s expense; I’d never seen Riley laugh at all. But here they were, no different from Walker and his brainburner football buddies, assing around like a couple of idiots with nothing more to worry about than whether they could finish the bottle of chillers before their girlfriends showed up for date night.

Riley kept telling me that I didn’t know Jude, not the way he did. So was this what he meant? The real Jude, the astonishingly normal, orglike Jude, who dropped the all-knowing guru act as soon as he was alone? Or was it just a mask, designed to fool Riley into thinking that his faith and loyalty were well-founded, even though they were miles and bodies away from whatever ties bound them together.

Or maybe he was both at once; maybe he was neither.

“See something you like?” Jude suddenly asked, taking the VR mask off his face, staring at me like he’d known I was there the whole time. I suddenly felt like I’d been spying on more than just a game. Riley jerked around toward the doorway and pulled off his own mask, wearing that bleary-eyed expression of someone yanked into reality before he was ready.

“I’m just, uh, looking for Ani,” I stammered, backing away.

“She’s out,” Riley said. “Another rally, I think.”

Jude glared at him.

“What rally?” I asked.

Riley opened his mouth, then, with a wary glance at Jude, closed it again.

Obedient like a dog, I thought in disgust. Not attractive.

It wasn’t the kind of thought I wanted to be having about Riley, or any of the mechs. Attractive, not attractive—not my problem, either way. Not that I was oblivious to his broad shoulders or sinewy muscles. And not that he wasn’t exactly my type, not just the tall, dark, and monosyllabic thing, but the way he could say all he needed to with a touch or a look or—even though I didn’t technically have proof of this, I had no doubt—his biceps tightening around you, curling you into his chest, into that body-shaped hollow created by his open embrace—

No. That was exactly the kind of thinking I didn’t need. One disastrous night with Walker had been enough to prove that when it came to mechs, anatomically correct was necessary but not sufficient. I could do anything I wanted—it was the wanting that was the problem. There was a reason we had to jump out of planes and dive off cliffs to get a high, to break through the wall separating us from the ability to experience something real. I’d wanted Walker all right, just as much as before the download—but when I had him, his body tangled up in mine, it had been cold and awkward and empty. It had been—why not just say it?—mechanical.

Walker wasn’t the only one . That was the renegade voice in my mind, the one that insisted on reminding me of everything I’d prefer to forget, like that afternoon by the waterfall with Jude. But that didn’t count. That hadn’t been real. Just a moment of desperation. It didn’t prove anything other than the fact that I was right about staying away.

“What rally?” I asked again, determined to stop thinking about things there was no point in thinking about.

“See for yourself,” Jude said, flipping on the nearest screen and calling up a live vid.

Savona had upped his production values while I was dreaming. What had once been a bare stage with a plywood podium was now an elaborately dressed proscenium, framed by dark velvet curtains that perfectly set off the glowbars lining the stage. The eerie golden glow encircled a central dais, coated with iridescent paint that shimmered under the stage lights. Savona stood at its center, the glowbars showering him in a golden aura. And sitting by his side, as always, his most loyal disciple.

He looks stronger than he did before, I told myself.

An audience of hundreds cheered them on. “Do you want to live in fear?” Savona shouted at his Brotherhood. “Is that the country you want for yourselves, for your children?”

“No!” the crowd roared back.

“Are their rights more important than our lives?” he shouted. The camera zoomed in on his flushed face. Despite the frenzy in his voice, his black-eyed gaze was ice. “More important than our souls ?”

“No!” the crowd faithfully called back.

“Friends, we once were lost, but now we are found,” Savona intoned. He raised a finger: Wait. At his command, they fell silent. Auden planted his hands on the arms of the chair and heaved himself into a standing position. He leaned against Savona for a moment, steadying himself, then stood upright, unassisted. “Our message has been heard,” Savona said. He grasped Auden’s hand. “Our sacrifices have not been in vain.”

They raised their clasped hands. “We are in the right,” Auden said, his raspy voice projected over the crowd. “Will we do whatever is necessary?”

“We will!” the crowd thundered.

“Will you ?” Auden asked, and when the camera zoomed in on him, his gaze was anything but steady. His eyes were wild, unfocused, and at odds with his strangely placid smile. I wondered if Savona had drugged him up before wheeling him out onstage.

“I will!” the crowd shouted as one.

“ I will!” Auden shouted back. He and Savona raised their hands again. “We will!” they cried in unison. The applause drowned out whatever they said next. The vidroom’s sound system was designed to be louder and clearer than life; the cheering erupted all around us.

I forced myself not to lunge for the controls and blot it out. No more dreams, I told myself. Eyes open . So I watched. I listened. Until I couldn’t take it anymore, and as if he somehow knew exactly when I would break, Jude shut it off.

“They’ve been throwing one of these every week,” Jude said. “Your little boyfriend’s gotten pretty popular.”

“It’s not Auden,” I insisted.

“Sure looks like him,” Jude retorted. “So unless you’re not the only one with a convenient double floating around—”

“Enough!” Riley held up a hand to each of us, palms out. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t matter that she’s denying reality to believe whatever the hell she wants to believe?” Jude asked, voice soaked in sarcasm. “Maybe she should go join her boyfriend onstage. She’d fit right in.”

“This isn’t helpful,” Riley said. He and Jude looked at each other for a long moment. Then Jude nodded.

“Fine,” he said. “Here’s the deal. While you were… sleeping, Savona and his Brotherhood ramped it up. It’s not just these ridiculous rallies. They’re bussing people in from the cities, feeding them, giving them free med-tech, and sending them home with plenty of antimech crap to spread around to their friends.”

“That’s the part I don’t get,” I said. “Why would anyone in a city want to team up with Savona ? He’s got everything, and they’re—”

“Nothing?” Jude asked dryly.

For a long time, I’d believed my father when he said that the people who lived in cities deserved to be there—maybe even wanted to be there, because they couldn’t hack the rules of the real world. I’d thought Auden was crazy, going off on all the ways that the government and the corps treated the slummers like nonpeople. “I’m just saying that they should know what it’s like. To be told you don’t count.”

“They do,” Riley said quietly. “That’s the problem.”

“Auden’s smart,” Jude added. “He’s going to the cities, the corp-towns, showing them all the ways their lives suck. They aren’t allowed to hate the people who put them there. But they can hate us. Average city lifespan is thirty-seven years. We live forever. You do the math.”