Robin Wasserman - Shattered

“If Jude’s the one you really want—”

“He’s not,” I insisted.

“But if he is—”

“Did you hear the word ‘not’?”

“I’m just saying that if you’re just playing around with Riley until you get bored and drop him, it’s one thing. But it would be such an evil bitch move to drop him for Jude that you would deserve any fucking thing that happened to you.”

There it was again, a flash of something dark and angry, like a shadow gliding below the surface of still water.

“What would… happen to me?” I asked carefully.

“I’m just saying, maybe Riley isn’t as safe as you think he is.”

“If you’re trying to tell me something, just say it. Otherwise, you should stop.” And for a few moments, she did. We walked silently, our footsteps slapping against the asphalt, our flashlight beams casting narrow tunnels of light. Behind us, the other mechs were just twinkling flashes in the dark.

“You don’t know who he used to be,” Ani said.

“It doesn’t matter ,” I reminded her. “It doesn’t matter who any of us used to be.” It wasn’t just a line I’d borrowed from Jude, something useful to reel in the newbies. I believed it, or I wouldn’t be sneaking through weeds at two a.m., breaking into the Temple of Man; I’d be at home, at Lia Kahn’s house with Lia Kahn’s doting parents, tucked safely away in Lia Kahn’s comfy bed.

“People don’t change just because you want them to,” Ani said. “Trust me.”

She sped up, gaining several feet on me. I jogged to join her, reminding myself not to let it get to me. That it wasn’t even about me, not really.

“Ani, wait.”

She kept walking. I touched her shoulder.

She scowled at me.

“You want to talk about it? Quinn?”

“Here?” We’d reached the electrified perimeter. Once we made it through—if we made it through—there’d be org guards prowling, and we would need to be silent and invisible.

“Fine. But if you ever do, you know where to find me.”

“Riley’s room,” she muttered. Then she sighed and gave me a tired smile. “Sorry. Again.”

“Forgotten.”

Mostly.

As the others caught up with us, we switched off our lights and went to infrared. The other mechs glowed a dull purple in my sights, nearly the same color as the pavement. Ani pulled out her ID chip.

“You sure this is going to work?” Ty asked, clasping Sloane’s hand. I reached out for Brahm’s hand, and Ani took my other, squeezing tight. The ID chip was pressed between our palms.

“If it doesn’t, we’re mechs, right?” Sloane asked, sounding like she was expending a considerable effort to seem carefree about the whole thing. “Electrocution could be exciting. Aren’t you curious?”

“Not particularly,” Ani said. “So let’s get this right. Ready?”

“Ready,” I agreed. The word rippled down the line and, as one, we took a step forward.

Nothing can happen to me, I thought, waiting for 50,000 volts to sizzle through me as I crossed the field. It wouldn’t be enough to kill an org, but who knew what a shock like that would do to a mech body, a mech brain. We were nothing but electricity, elaborately wired computers, and surely it would take less than 50,000 volts to fry the circuitry—maybe enough to send us careening into a brand-new body, but maybe just enough to warp our brains. When the wiring inside your head fused into a tangled knot, would you notice, or just think it was the outside world that had gone askew?

And then I took another step, and I was across.

Nothing happened.

“That’s it,” Ani said, dropping my hand. “We’re safe.”

“You sure?” I asked. She pointed to the faded etchings on the pavement, marking off the electrified area.

“Anticlimactic, right?” Sloane said. “Tell me a little piece of you wasn’t hoping—”

“No piece,” I cut her off. “Not even a little one. I’ll be happy for the whole night to be anticlimactic.”

The Temple loomed over us, white stone black in the night.

“It’s huge ,” Brahm said, staring up at its imposing face. In the dark, he didn’t squint, nor did he move like the rest of us, careful and timid, afraid with each step. He moved like he could see.

“I heard them talking about expanding,” Ani said. “There’s not enough room for everyone who wants to come.”

Sloane rolled her extinguished flashlight between her palms, keeping her head averted from the Temple. “How can there be that many morons in the world?”

“You know, Savona and Jude aren’t so different,” Ani said.

“How can you say that?” Brahm asked.

I knew how she could say it.

“Jude’s always telling us that we’re not human and we should just accept it, right?” Ani said. “They’re orgs, we’re machines . How’s that any different from what Savona’s trying to say?”

I’d asked myself the same question.

“It just is ,” Brahm said.

It was a pathetic answer. But none of us had anything better.

The Temple defenses were even more meager than Ani let on. Aside from the electrified perimeter, they were nearly nonexistent—no patrols, no guard posts or ID checks. And at the main Temple, nothing but a few easily tricked locks, nothing more than you’d find at the entrance of any organization matching the Brotherhood’s self-description—open, accessible, innocent. Silent and single file, we followed Ani into the building. Instead of taking the moving sidewalk through the silver tunnel to Savona’s staging area, we went the opposite way, slipping through an unmarked door into a labyrinthine zone of beige corridors. I recognized it from my last trip to the Temple—Auden’s office lay along one of these hallways. Maybe he was in there, hunched over a desk, plotting his next strike on the skinners… or maybe staring out the window, watching the night, wondering how he’d ended up here. Because that’s what I was wondering, sneaking like a thief, draped in black and raiding a nest of God-fearing vipers who’d prefer me erased, in body and mind. The night had a dreamlike quality, and I half expected to wake up to find that Auden and I had rendezvoused at our favorite grassy hiding spot behind the high school and fallen asleep, dreaming up a new and horrible life.

But machines don’t dream. Not that kind of dream, at least, the kind that ends in a gasping, blissful, sweat-stained and then I woke up .

Motion-sensitive lights in the floor cast the hallways in a dim glow as we passed, but apparently, foolishly, weren’t tied into any kind of central security processor. Because the hallways stayed empty, our path to Savona’s office was free and clear. Ani stopped in front of a door that looked no different from any of the others. “This is it,”she VM’d. There was a slim key panel along the frame. She keyed in a code.

I was wrong, I thought as the door swung open. This is actually going to work.

An alarm screamed.

The hallway flashed blue.

Blue, not red like the corp-town, but for a moment, in the keening wail of the alarm and the faces lighting up in the dark, I was back there again, hearing their screams, though there had never been any screams.

The Brothers approached from both ends of the hallway and streamed through the open office door. We were surrounded.

Five of us, ten of them, all in Brotherhood robes. All with guns raised, glinting in the flashing blue light.

“Don’t you pay attention in church ?” Sloane snarled at the one closest to her. “We’re machines. You can’t hurt us.”

“Don’t test us,” he said.

“Whatever.” Sloane muscled past the guy and took off running down the hall.