Robin Wasserman - Shattered

I didn’t have to. I’d seen the look on Sari’s face when she saw Riley and me standing together. Heard the catch in her voice when she’d asked what it was like knowing I’d never grow old. Everything else about her might have been part of the show, but that was real. And they’d all looked at us that way. It wasn’t like in the corp-town, all those people staring at us, curious or disgusted or afraid. In the city, there’d been all those things, but there’d also been something else. “They really hate us.”

“Why not? Why should they die and we get to live?” Riley asked. But he wasn’t looking at me—he’d turned to Jude, like he honestly wanted an answer.

Jude quieted him with a nearly imperceptible shake of the head. “Your boyfriend’s smart,” he said, returning his attention to me. “He feeds the idiot masses all this Faither bullshit about our immortal souls or lack thereof. But he’s working both ends—drowning the network in op-vids and pop-ups about how we’re a security risk.”

“Because of the corp-town attack,” I mumbled, feeling guilty, even though there was nothing to feel guilty about. “But they arrested her.”

“It’s not just Ariana whatever her name is,” Jude said. “It’s the fact that she was able to get into the ventilation ducts—no fingerprints, no biometrics. Someone finally woke up to the fact that mechs can be anyone, do anything. Savona’s riding it as far as he can. The Faithers—or whatever they’re calling themselves now—may be crazy. But Savona’s not. He’s good.”

But Savona was crazy. Crazy enough to do… anything? “You don’t think—Could the Brotherhood have had something to do with the attack?”

“Someone deserves a gold star,” Jude said with a sneer. “You’re a little late to the party, but better late than never, I suppose.”

Auden would never be a part of something like that, I thought.

But maybe he didn’t know.

“So what are we doing about it?” I asked.

Jude raised an eyebrow. “We?”

I ignored him. “If they’re involved, there must be some kind of proof. We should—”

“Start sniffing around?” Jude suggested. “Attend some rallies? Maybe get someone on the inside to find out what’s really going on?” He clapped his hands together with a sharp crack. “Brilliant idea. Too bad you were busy napping, or it could have been you.”

“So you sent Ani ? By herself ?” I asked. Unbelievable.

“She can handle it,” Jude said. “Wears a camo hoodie that hides her face. They have no idea what she really is.”

“You didn’t think to ask me?” I said. “I’m the one who knows Auden. How much more inside track can you get?”

“You haven’t quite been available,” Jude pointed out.

“You could have—”

“And even if you were ,” he said over me, “you’re not objective. You’re obviously in denial about your twisted friend.”

“And you’re objective? You’ve hated him from the beginning. You’re probably thrilled to finally have a good reason.”

“But you admit I have a good reason,” he snapped. “That’s the point.”

“The point is Ani shouldn’t be doing something like this by herself. Next time I’m going with her.”

“Well, isn’t she lucky to have such a noble protector,” Jude drawled, like he knew exactly why I was so determined to go to the Temple, and that it had nothing to do with Ani.

For once I almost wished he’d give me one of his tedious lectures about what was really going on inside my head, because I had no idea. I believed what I’d said about Ani: This wasn’t the kind of thing she could handle on her own. After seeing those vids, I wasn’t sure any of us could. But she was a big girl, and I didn’t owe her anything. So what was it, then? Was I just so desperate to see Auden and—what? Prove that he didn’t really hate me? Convince him that we could go back to the way things were?

Could I be that delusional?

“Someone set me up at that corp-town,” I said, keeping my eyes on Jude, watching—always watching—for some kind of telltale reaction. But there was nothing. “If it was the Brotherhood, I have to know. I’m not going to let Ani do all the hard work.”

And maybe that was it: the idea of doing something. Anything. Even if it meant facing what Auden had become; what I made him. If he and his Brothers wanted to take everything—my credit, my identity, my personhood—away from me, let them try. But this time, they’d have to do it to my face.

“It’s not a good idea,” Riley said.

Like it was his decision. “Don’t think I can handle it?”

“Can you?” Jude asked.

“I guess we’ll find out.” I glared at both of them, daring them to try to forbid me.

Instead, Jude raised his hands over his head, imitating Auden’s motion of victory. “We will!” he shouted in a raspy voice, sounding eerily like Auden. “You will!”

I would.

The Brotherhood of Man held a rally every Sunday.

“I still don’t see why you have to go.” Ani pulled a camo hoodie over her head. She tossed a second one to me.

“Maybe I’m curious,” I said, checking myself out in Ani’s mirror. This was less a fashion don’t than a burn-before-wearing situation. Sensors in the hoodie detected ambient color and reflected it, allowing the wearer to fade into any background, an imperfect invisibility. The thick, baggy hood cast enough of a shadow over my face that I could have been any age, any gender, I could have been some gap-toothed, pockmarked med-head from the city. I could have been alive.

The camo tech had been a military innovation before we were born, had filtered into the fashion zone when we were kids, and had quickly drifted into obscurity when it became obvious that fading away defeated the point of style. Now they were cheap novelties, just the kind of thing a tech-deprived city rat might rescue from the trash with a scavenger’s glee. We’d fit right in.

Ani strung a thin silver pendant around her neck and fumbled with the chain. Then she held the necklace out to me. “Can you?”

A glowing orb of blue lazulate dangled from the silver chain, a perfect match to the silver blue streaks that trickled down her neck and spine. I’d seen this kind of stone before—Bliss Tanzen had had one that she loved showing off, at least until it became clear she’d lied about receiving it from a dashing young heir to the SunFire fortune. It turned out that after a shocker-fueled all-night encounter, the solar energy baron had blocked her from his zone; the necklace came from Daddy. But I knew from Bliss’s incessant boasting before her secret emerged and the necklace got recycled that something like this was worth almost as much as a car. A small, cheap car with a submoronic nav-system that restricted it to preprogrammed routes and major highways, but a car nonetheless. Lazulate was almost as rare as it was useless, which meant its harmless radioactive glow had become a totem of wealth. “Pretty,” I said, fastening the chain at the nape of her neck. “New?”

Ani closed her hand around the pendant. “Quinn gave it to me.”

“Quinn Sharpe ?”

She glared at me. “Surprised? What, that she’d bother? Or that she’d bother for me?”

“No, that’s not what I meant,” I said quickly. “I just—Quinn doesn’t seem like the type to—”

Ani burst into laughter. “Joking.” She brushed her thumb across the glowing face of the lazulate. “You’re right, I guess. But Quinn’s changing.”

“People do that?” I asked, only half kidding.

“These last few weeks…” Ani shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe she’s just getting tired of all the…”