Katharine McGee - The Thousandth Floor

Lights. A flask of something strong being passed to her. She took a sip without tasting what it was. A touch on her hip— Hiral , she thought, pulling his hand closer in invitation. But then she saw Hiral a few rows forward, jumping and punching at the sky with Andrés. She spun around only to see V’s face whirl up out of the darkness. He held up another gold patch, an eyebrow raised suggestively. Rylin shook her head. She wasn’t even sure how she’d pay him back for the one she’d already taken.

But V was already peeling back the adhesive on the back side. “No charge,” he whispered, as if reading her thoughts, or had she spoken them aloud? He reached down to sweep her hair back from her neck. “A little secret: The closer it is to your brain, the faster it kicks in.”

Rylin closed her eyes, dazed, as the second wave of drugs snapped through her. It was a razor-sharp rush, setting all her nerves afire. She was dancing and somehow also floating when she sensed a vibration in her front pocket. She ignored it and kept jumping, but there it was again, drawing her painstakingly back into her awkward, physical body. Fumbling, she managed to grab her tablet. “Hello?” Rylin said, gasping as her breathing became irregular, no longer in time with the music.

“Rylin Myers?”

“What the—who is this?” She couldn’t hear. The crowd was still buffeting her back and forth.

There was a pause, as if the speaker couldn’t believe the question. “Cord Anderton,” he said finally, and Rylin blinked in shock. Her mom had worked as a maid for the Andertons, back before she got sick. Dimly Rylin realized that she did recognize the voice, from the few times she’d been up there. But why the hell was Cord Anderton calling her ?

“So, can you come work my party?”

“I don’t … what are you talking about?” She tried to shout over the music, but it came out more like a rasp.

“I sent you a message. I’m throwing a party tonight.” His voice was fast, impatient. “I need someone here—to keep everything clean, help with the caterers, all the stuff your mom used to do.” Rylin flinched at the mention of her mom, but of course he couldn’t see. “My usual help bailed last minute, but then I remembered you and looked you up. Do you want the job or not?”

Rylin wiped a bead of sweat from her brow. Who did Cord Anderton think he was, summoning her on a Saturday night? She opened her mouth to tell this rich, entitled asshole to shove the job right up his—

“I forgot,” he added, “it pays two hundred nanos.”

Rylin choked back her words. Two hundred nanodollars for just one night of dealing with drunk rich kids? “How soon do you need me there?”

“Oh, half an hour ago.”

“I’m on my way,” she said, the room still spinning. “But—”

“Great.” Cord ended the ping.

With a herculean effort, Rylin pulled the patch from her arm, and then, wincing, ripped off the one on her neck. She glanced back at the others—Hiral was dancing, oblivious; Lux was wrapped around a stranger with her tongue down his throat; Indigo was sitting on Andrés’s shoulders. She turned to go. V was still watching her, but Rylin didn’t say good-bye. She just stepped out into the hot stickiness of the night, letting the used gold patches flutter slowly to the ground behind her.

ERIS DODD-RADSON BURROWED deeper under her fluffy silk pillow, angry at the ringing that was playing incessantly in her eartennas. “Five more minutes,” she mumbled. The ringing didn’t stop. “I said snooze!” she snapped, before realizing that this wasn’t her alarm. It was Avery’s ringtone, which Eris had long ago set on full override, so that it would wake her up even when she was sleeping. “Accept ping,” she mumbled.

“Are you on your way?” Avery’s voice sounded in her ear, pitched louder than usual over the clamor of the party . Eris glanced at the time, illuminated in bright pink numbers in her lower left field of vision. Cord’s party had started half an hour ago and she was still lying in bed, with no idea what to wear.

“Obviously.” She was already halfway to her closet, shimmying out of her oversized T-shirt as she picked her way through discarded clothes and stray pillows. “I just— ow! ” she yelped, clutching a stubbed toe.

“Oh my god. You’re still home,” Avery accused, but she was laughing. “What happened? Oversleep your beauty nap again?”

“I just like making everyone wait so they’ll be that much more excited to see me,” Eris answered.

“And by ‘everyone,’ you mean Cord.”

“No, I mean everyone. Especially you, Avery,” Eris said. “Don’t go having too much fun without me, ’kay?”

“I promise. Flick me when you’re on your way?” Avery said, and ended the ping.

Eris blamed her dad for this one. Her eighteenth birthday was in a few weeks, and today she’d had to visit the family attorney to start her trust fund paperwork. It was all excessively boring, signing countless documents with an official witness present, taking drug and DNA tests. She hadn’t even understood all of it, except that if she signed everything, she’d be rich someday.

Eris’s dad came from old money—his family had invented the magnetic repulsion technology that kept hovercrafts aloft. And Everett had only added to the already-massive fortune, by becoming the world’s premier plastisurgeon. The only mistakes he’d ever made were two expensive divorces before he finally met Eris’s mom, when he was forty and she was a twenty-five-year-old model. He didn’t ever talk about those previous marriages, and since there were no children from either, Eris never asked about them. She didn’t really like thinking about it, to be honest.

Stepping into her closet, she drew a circle on the mirrored wall, and it turned into a touch screen that lit up with her closet’s full inventory. Every year Cord threw this back-to-school costume party, and every year there was a fierce and unspoken competition for best costume. She sighed and began sorting through her various options: the gold flapper dress, the faux-fur hood her mom had given her, a hot pink sequinned gown from last Halloween. None of it seemed right.

Screw it , she decided. Why was she trying to find a costume anyway? Wouldn’t she stand out more without one?

“The black Alicia top,” she announced to her closet, which spit the item into the output chute at the bottom. Eris pulled the top on over her lace bra and stepped into her favorite suede pants, which she knew made her ass look fantastic. She snapped a set of silver cuffs on her elbows and reached up to yank out her ponytail, letting her strawberry-blond hair fall around her shoulders in a wild tangle.