Robin Wasserman - Shattered

Bustling back and forth through a room stuffed with equipment—and at the center, four pallets with four bodies stretched across them, nude, motionless, the skin on their bare skulls stripped, exposing the wiring within. Wiring that was connected to machines, piping data to oversize monitors. Four mechs, and even though the telltale blue hair was gone and we were too far to see her face, I knew. Ani, I mouthed, and Riley nodded, his fingers tightening around the sill.

And hovering at her side, anxiously watching the man whose hand was shoved in her skull: the Honored Rai Savona.

We watched for long minutes, as if time was going to give us some glimmer of understanding. But it didn’t, and eventually Zo released a long, low whistle. Time to go.

“They cart them back to the Temple every morning,” Zo said once we were a safe distance away. “For the vids. Then back here every night. If it helps, I’m pretty sure the skinners have no idea what’s happening. I saw them up close once—they’re long gone. Totally checked out.”

It didn’t help.

I wanted to charge through the glass and throw them all over my shoulder, carrying them to safety. It was a fantasy. But maybe that made sense: This was a nightmare. “What the hell is he doing ?”

“He’s trying to figure out a way to kill them,” Zo said once we were a safe distance away. “All of you.”

“Not possible,” Riley said. “Not for long, at least. Our minds are backed up.”

“Savona turned on her,” I said, barely listening to the two of them, still seeing the mechs laid bare on those gurneys. Remembering what Jude had said about lab rats. “She threw herself away for him, and he did that to her.”

“What? Your former friend, the Brotherhood’s newest recruit?” Zo shook her head. “Not exactly. She’s a volunteer. Savona talked her into offering herself up for ‘the Cause.’”

“Which is?” Riley prompted her.

“I repeat: He’s looking for a way to get rid of you, for good,” Zo said. “And he’s getting close.”

“And you’re helping him,” I said.

“Right. I’m helping him. By bringing you here.” Zo shook her head. “This isn’t what the Brotherhood’s supposed to be about. This isn’t why I joined.”

“Don’t tell me you’re surprised?” I asked incredulously. “The whole point of the Brotherhood is to get rid of the mechs.”

“No! We don’t want any more of them to be created. And we want to make sure the ones who still exist can’t hurt us. Restrictions. Sanctions. We don’t want to kill them.”

“You can’t kill a machine,” I reminded her. “You just shut it off. I’m not human, right? I’m not your sister. That’s what you said.”

“You’re not,” Zo said. “But…” She rubbed her hands furiously over her face. “I don’t know. You’re something , okay? You talk like her and you act like her and…” Zo sighed. “It’s just enough. Enough death. Enough .” Her voice hardened. “You should get out of here,” she said. “Before someone sees you.”

You don’t even see me, I thought.

“Come on.” Riley looped an arm around me, tugged me toward him. “Let’s go.”

“Auden doesn’t know,” Zo said suddenly. Awkwardly, with the same shamefaced half smile she used to flash on my birthday, when she would shove a gift in my face, then run away before I could open it.

“Know what?”

“What Savona’s doing. I’m not supposed to either. But Auden’s clueless. Thought you’d want to know.”

“Thanks, Zo.” I wanted to hug her.

Not because of what she’d done tonight or what she’d just said or because when I had last hugged my father, I had let go too soon. Like I let go of everything too soon.

Because she was still my sister, even if I wasn’t hers.

Because she still didn’t want me. But she wanted me to live.

It was Jude’s idea to fly. Anyone could be listening, he said, glancing up at the ceiling, where we all knew cameras were hidden behind the plaster. No one can be trusted . He didn’t have to say her name; we were all thinking it. If Ani could turn—Ani, who’d been with Jude from the beginning, who had been beyond suspicion, who knew all our secrets—then maybe anyone could.

So we went to the mountains. Just the three of us, Jude, Riley, and I, in Quinn’s plane. Jude had somehow managed to cut Quinn out with just enough subtlety that she hadn’t tried to fight him on it, or maybe she’d just run out of fight. We found an untouched landing spot, a snow-covered valley between the low, rolling peaks, miles from civilization, miles from anything but more mountains and more snow. And we jumped.

Once we were in the air, surfing the wind, nothing mattered but the thunder in my ears and the pressure shifts that buoyed me up and down, the frigid slipstream flowing past, the ground hurtling closer as I angled my body down, coming in safely this time, not too fast, not to steep, no more recklessness than necessary, time slowing down as I plummeted and floated at the same time, and everything else—Zo and Ani and Auden and the Brotherhood—floating away from me as surely as Riley and Jude were, black and violet blots against a gray sky, disappearing into the clouds.

I landed soft and shallow, kicking up a mushroom cloud of snow. Jude and Riley were already down, wriggling out of their flight suits. By silent agreement, we gave ourselves a moment to recover from the flight, to ease back into ourselves, exchange the freedom of release for the strictures of restraint, to absorb the fact that the subzero temperatures, the snow beneath us and fluttering around us, the frost already forming on our eyelashes, provided no discomfort. The awareness of cold, the knowledge of it, but with no more discomfort than a thermometer might feel. Registering the sensation without experiencing it, that’s what it meant to remember ourselves and so we sat there under the heavy gray sky, staring up at the dingy white slopes, our bare fingers plunged into the snow, remembering.

And then I told Jude everything.

And not just about what we’d seen with Zo. Jude had to know what Savona was capable of; he had to know what Savona had done in the corp-town and what he’d threatened to do next. I told him the truth. All of it.

“No one died,” I said, keeping my eyes on Riley’s face, begging him not to be angry that I hadn’t told him sooner. “Savona was behind the attack, just like we thought, but the deaths were staged.”

Riley didn’t move, didn’t speak, but his hand closed over mine with a gentle pressure. Jude didn’t react.

“We can’t go public,” I said quickly, before he jumped to the obvious conclusion. “We can’t let him kill all those people.”

It was like Jude hadn’t heard me.

“You’re sure Ani was in there?” he asked. “Did she see you?”

“I told you, no one saw us,” I said, exasperated, not wanting to repeat what I’d told him about Ani’s condition or remind him that she probably wasn’t seeing anything anymore.

“How do you know it wasn’t a setup?” he asked after making Riley run through everything Zo had told us a second time. “The org might have just been showing you what they wanted you to see.”

“The ‘org’ is my sister. And she was telling the truth,” I said. “I can tell.”

“Oh, you can tell? Why didn’t you say so.” Jude groaned and let himself flop back into the snow. “You dragged me all the way out here for this?”

“ You dragged us out here,” I reminded him. “And I’m telling you I trust her.”