Robin Wasserman - Frozen

Our lips collided.

I clawed at his shirt, digging into the fabric, struggling for the fake, silvery skin that lay below. His lips were rough; his kiss was rough. Hard and angry, or maybe that was me, hating him, wanting him, wanting his hands on my body—anyone’s hands on my body—even if it didn’t feel the same, it felt right, it felt , for the first time since the accident and the fire and the darkness, I felt , and I sucked at his lips, and he bit down, a sweet, sharp pain, and I imagined I could taste the iron-tanged blood on my tongue.

But there would be no blood.

I shoved him away.

For the second time that day I wished I could throw up.

He came toward me; I jerked away.

“ Don’t touch me.”

I couldn’t believe I had done it.

I wanted to do it again.

I had to get away.

“Don’t do this,” he said, an edge in his voice. “Don’t question it, not now, not when you’re so close.”

“To what?” I spat out. But I knew. To him. To grabbing him again. To his body. To our bodies, together.

To feeling.

I took another step back.

“To letting go,” he said. I couldn’t believe he was back to that, spewing his bullshit, like I was a dutiful member of his flock. “I told you, it’s the key to accepting what you are—”

“Spare me.” I hated him. This wasn’t about me, I realized. Not for him. This wasn’t about need, about raw want . Not for the high and mighty Jude, who’d risen oh so far above all those nasty org instincts. This was just about his stupid campaign. His pathetic philosophy. This was just about him being right. About me being wrong.

“Don’t do this,” he said again, closing his hands over mine. But I was done.

“Go.” I felt as cold as I sounded.

“You don’t want that.”

I met his eyes. They were, as always, unreadable. Like mine. “You. Don’t. Know. What. I. Want.” Nice and slow, so he would understand.

“Maybe not.” Jude shook his head. “But neither do you.” He pressed something into my palm—the sharp-edged cube, the one he’d called a dream. “Not yet.”

I looked down at the tiny black box, turning it over and over in my hands.

When I looked up again, he was gone.

I’m not stupid.

I wasn’t stupid then, either.

I didn’t trust him. I didn’t trust his little black box or his mysterious “program” or his unshakable convictions. Least of all those.

On the other hand, I didn’t have much to lose. And I had too much I wanted to forget.

I uploaded the program.

There was a brief burst of flickering light, then nothing.

For several long minutes, nothing.

Then the world started to glow.

Pain first. Pain everywhere. Nowhere. I was nowhere. It burned. I burned. Pain like the fire, pain like the flames peeling away my skin. Hot, searing hot. Then cold, like ice. Steel.

I was standing. I was spinning. I was lying on my back. I floated in the sky. Stars shot from my fingertips. Trees bowed at my feet. I was leaping off a cliff, I was in the water, in a whirlpool, sucked below. I was drowning. I was flying.

I was in the black. But the colors shimmered. They exploded from the dark. I was color. I was light. I pulsed green, I sang out purple, I screamed red. I cried blue. The monsters swarmed out of the deep. Spider tentacles and red eyes, and they wanted me to die, and I wanted to die, and I was death, black and empty, bottomless, null.

I would destroy them. I would destroy them all.

It began at the center of me, at the center of it all, small and warm and glowing, a sun, and it swelled. It grew. I tingled with its warmth. There were no words, not for this. This was beyond words. This was cool grass brushing a bare neck. This was dark-chocolate ice cream melting on a tongue. This was his body, heavy on mine, his breath in my mouth, his skin on my skin. It was everything, it was life.

It was over.

Nothing was left but an absence. And his voice, which I understood, as I came back to myself, was only in my head.

“If you’re listening to this, I suppose that means I was right. You’re welcome.”

I was lying on my back. I didn’t know how I’d gotten there. The sky looked close enough to touch, but I knew that was just the heavy, gray clouds. I reached out anyway. Nothing but air.

“You’ve just experienced an electrical jolt to your limbic system—or at least, the circuitry that mimics an organic limbic system. It overwhelmed all the mood-simulating safeguards, cycling through a random series of preprogrammed emotional stimuli. Take the most intense b-mod you’ve ever experienced, multiply it by a thousand, and—Well, I guess now you know what happens.”

I closed my eyes. I felt like I had a headache, but that wasn’t possible. I didn’t get headaches, not anymore. Still, something felt swollen and tender. Fragile. Fuzzy. I wanted the voice to stop.

“Direct stimulation of the cortex is the best way to simulate intense emotion and sensation in mechs. It supplies you with the somatic responses you miss while conscious, all those nasty animal responses to emotion. Some say it makes you feel like an org again.”

I had never felt so empty. I wanted it back, all of it. I needed it. I wanted to live in that world of darkness and light, where I had been frightened. Angry. Happy. I had been alive there, and I wanted to return. I wanted to stay.

“ I say it’s better than the orgs will ever know. And admit it or not, you agree.”

I wanted him to shut up. I wanted him to keep going. I wanted him to come back, I wanted a body to match the voice, hands and shoulders and neck and lips. I hated myself for wanting it.

“See you soon.”

“What’s this for?” Auden asked when I gave him the box wrapped in silver foil. He’d been avoiding me for days, but I finally cornered him at lunch. He’d found himself another secluded corner to hide in, far away from mine.

“I just wanted to,” I said, feeling a little awkward. I couldn’t say I was sorry, not really, because then we would have had to get into what I was sorry for. And neither of us wanted to touch that because we both knew: I was sorry for not wanting him the way he wanted me. But that meant I couldn’t tell him the other part of the truth, that I needed him. It didn’t matter if he was an org and I was a mech; it didn’t matter what Jude thought. Jude who was like me, but didn’t understand me at all. Who knew nothing.

Auden opened the box. He pulled out a gray bag with a smart-strap that would heat up whenever a new message came in. The front flap had a full-size screen and the back doubled as a pocket and a keyboard, perfect—as the pop-up had said—for the stylish guy who needs to link on the go. Not that Auden was stylish, or did much of anything on the go, but it looked good. Definitely better than the ragged green sack he toted around everywhere. I might not have been cool anymore, but my taste still was.

He looked confused.

“Thought you could use a new one,” I said.

Auden didn’t take it out of the box. “You shouldn’t have.”

“I wanted to,” I said again.

“Really, you shouldn’t have.” He sighed, and finally picked up the bag, flipping it open and glancing inside before placing it back in the box. He didn’t even notice the smart-strap, much less the board and the screen. “But thanks, I guess.”

It looked like the symbolic approach wasn’t working. Did he not get that I was trying to spare him even more embarrassment? Shouldn’t he be grateful ?