Blood Zero Sky (11 page)

~~~

N-Dance
, the neon sign above the door reads.

A few years ago, places like this were absolutely taboo. Then some new study came out touting the benefits of dancing for people who spend their days crammed behind desks in uncomfortable swivel chairs. Apparently, it improves these people’s spirits. Who’d have thought? So the board grudgingly allowed a few test dance clubs to be built. Judging from the tremendous revenue they bring in, N-Dance clubs are probably here to stay, unless they’re found—as Jimmy Shaw expected they might be—to be dens of nefarious activity, in which case they’ll be shut down again. High-credit-level workers like myself are strongly discouraged from patronizing N-Dance clubs anyway, just on general principle, and every time I round this corner of the alley I fear I’ll see the neon sign dark, the sidewalk empty. As I round the corner this time, I’m relieved to find the sign still intact, for tonight at least.

A few pale, meek-looking youths stand out front, chatting and stirring their fruit-juice cocktails nervously. Alcohol, of course, is forbidden.

Suddenly, my attention is ripped away from these teenagers. There, beneath the doorway, bathed in the red light of the neon sign, stands one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. Her strong, smooth legs are revealed by a slightly-shorter-than-dress-code-length skirt. Her hair falls around her tanned face in dark ringlets.

She stands there, looking bored, next to a muscular guy in a cheap suit.

The minute I step into the streetlight, her eyes snap to meet mine.

Something passes between us, some primal message, an energy so powerful that if it were harnessed it could probably power a fighter jet.

She says something to her beefy companion, and he glances at me, too. Then, without a moment’s hesitation, she turns, still watching me until the last moment, and disappears into the club.

I’m reminded of the story of Odysseus—the part where he passes the sirens, those beautiful women who live in the middle of the ocean and sing pretty songs to draw sailors onto the rocks, where they die. Someone in my position should be very careful going out in public dressed like this, much less pursuing forbidden relations. I know that. But this girl has the allure of one of those sirens. Somehow, the thought of drowning with her doesn’t seem half bad.

I follow her inside at something just short of a run.

Thank you, May Fields, a three-hundred-dollar cover charge has been added to your account. Have a blessed day,
Eva says.

Lights slash across the walls, rending the darkness. Murmuring men crowd the bar, leaning too close to distracted-looking women. On the dance floor, couples turn and gyrate. There among them is my siren, looking exquisite, dancing alone. She sees me, gestures for me to come to her. And I do.

Welcome, Miss Fields, a one-hundred-dollar dancing fee . . .

God knows I’m no dancer, but for this girl I’ll try. Her eyes seem to flicker in the strobe light as she watches me, as I watch her. Her body moves like mercury. Her hands trace my lapel, pull me toward her. Now, she moves against me.

She brings her lips to my ear.

“I knew you were different,” she says, and takes my hand.

She could lead me into a meat grinder now and I’d follow her. Instead, she pulls me into the ladies room, into a stall. It’s all too perfect to imagine. Here, where the light is better, she’s even more beautiful that she had been in the darkness of the club. But my eyes close. Already my lips are on hers. Already, my hands are moving, down her side, to her hip.

I can feel her heartbeat against me. Her breath. Her hips moving against mine. I feel her lips on my earlobe, then the words: “I’m sorry.”

Of course, that makes no sense. “What do you mean?” I ask breathlessly.

That’s when the stall door swings open. Five squadmen stand there, laughing. Behind them, I see the muscular guy, my siren’s friend from earlier, grinning smugly. The siren steps out of the stall, straightening her skirt.

“I told you it was a woman,” she says to her friend.

One of the squadmen pulls out his IC, which beeps as it reads my cross.

Sorry, May Fields,
Eva’s electronic voice says,
a five-hundred-thousand-dollar depravity fee has been added to your account.

The squadmen, still chuckling, begin to file out. I hear one of them as he turns to my siren: “Nice work. The HR credit will be in your account by Monday,” he says.

HR credit: the money you make for turning someone else in.

Everyone is gone now, and the bathroom door slams behind them. I’m still standing there, stunned. As the stall door drifts toward me, I realize the cross commercial is playing on the imager screen embedded in it. In the heat of the moment, I hadn’t even noticed.

Face it,
the voice-over says.
It’s your identity!

I punch the screen as hard as I can and watch it shatter.

—Chapter ØØ9—

Darkness.
Chirping.

My body feels as heavy as cast iron. My eyelids might be slabs of lead. I could sleep here forever and that would be just fine with me. In sleep, there are no decisions to make, no mysteries to unravel, no moral conundrums to face. If only I were to stay asleep for the rest of my life, I might never have to remember last night’s humiliation or yesterday’s confusion. In sleep, I could forget about Clair and Ethan, my father and Dyanne, Blackwell and that damned siren at the dance club. God, I would love to sleep forever.

Except last night, I dreamed of black triangles coming out of an African sky.

Chirping.

Slowly, my eyelids drift open.

Sunlight, deliciously warm but painfully bright, floods my ninety-fourth-floor apartment. I’m sure birds are singing somewhere, but not up here. Even if they were to fly this high, you still couldn’t hear them through the thick, blast-proof windows. Whatever is chirping isn’t them.

Then I realize: someone’s calling. I grab my IC off the bedside table and think
Answer.

“This is Fields,” I croak.

“May! Are you okay? I’ve been worried.” It’s Randal.

I throw my N-Mystique series goose-down duvet over my head in frustration. I love Randal, but I’d much rather be passed out right now.

“I’m fine,” I say.

“You’re on the imager. Turn on the news.”

Instantly, I throw off the duvet and look at the far wall of my room. I think the words
Imager, on. News.
The imager in the wall responds to my thoughts, and there I am on its premium 3-D holo-display. I’m on the rooftop of the Headquarters building with Clair, her white gun pointed at me. Cut to us, jumping out of the helicopter. Cut to me, looking determined, walking down the hall toward Blackwell’s office. I wait for the next cut, the one that will show me at N-Dance, getting humiliated in a bathroom stall, but instead, they cut back to Patty Patrone, the news anchor.

“Miss Fields, of course, is the daughter of legendary N-Corp CEO Jason Fields.” The abundance of curls on her head bounce with emphasis on each syllable. “Mr. Fields couldn’t be reached today for comment, but VP of HR Timothy Blackwell had this to say . . . ”

They cut to a shot of Blackwell at his desk, looking more serious than a snowman at the equator. “Miss Fields is a loyal employee of this Company, as her father has been for many years before her. If she did help this anarchist murderer escape, she clearly did so under coercion. In any case she’s safe now, and HR is conducting a full investigation.” He stares down the camera after the last sentence, letting the full weight of his words sink in before they cut back to the news studio.

“In other news . . .” Patty continues without pause, and I think
Imager, off.

The screen obeys and goes dark.

So, someone at the Company wants the world to know that I was involved with Clair and the bombing. This isn’t like the old days Dad used to tell me about, when reporters ran around town trying to dig up stories to report. That would be laughably inefficient. N-Media simply decides what they want people to think, then they report stories that will make them think it—without the burden of having to worry about the facts. There are no other news organizations to contradict them anyway. What they say is the truth is the “truth.” I always knew that was how it worked, and it never bothered me much before. After all, what reason would my own Company have to lie to me? That, of course, was before I saw McCann’s imager footage. And before N-News started doing stories about
me
.

“May? You still there?” Randal says. I completely forgot he was still on my IC.

“Yeah,” I mutter. “I’m here.”

“They’ve been running this stuff for the last few hours,” he says. “I tried to call, but you didn’t answer. Are you at work?”

“No, I decided to rest this morning,” I say. Tardiness carries some major financial penalties, but what do I care? Let them send me to a work camp if they want to; I can’t be expected to concentrate on a stupid ad campaign with everything that’s happened.

What’s going on? Why did those anarchists kidnap you?”

“I’ve got to go, Randal.”

“B-b-b-but, May—”

End call
, I think, and the IC disconnects.

I inhale deeply, and then expel the lungful of air, trying to steady my shaking hands. It doesn’t work.

~~~

With no other options available, I do what I do best: go to work.

Two hours after Randal’s call, I sit in a meeting room with my team as Miller plays several rough vid sketches of the new IC campaign.

“Well, what do you think?” he says eagerly as the last one finishes playing.

Before anyone responds, they all look at me. Of course they do; I’m the boss. Everyone likes to pretend it’s not because of my dad, that I’m really that good at what I do—and I
am
good—but as I sit in that chair with all their eyes on me, the truth becomes painfully obvious. They all despise me even more than they envy me. And they despise me because they’re afraid. Afraid I could select one option on my IC and have their credit level downgraded. Select another one and have them repossessed. And as their boss, I suppose I could. Which is why no one dares to give their opinion of the presentation before I do. The problem is, I didn’t see one bit of it. All I saw were images of Clair, Ethan, McCann, Randal, my dad, Dyanne, Kali, all swirling in a carousel of confusion around me.

“May?” Miller prompts.

When confused, I’ve always found it best to respond with anger.

“Am I the only one in this entire building who has an opinion?” I shout. “What the hell are you all being paid for?”

Everyone’s head droops and they become incredibly interested in their ICs. I’ve just opened my mouth to berate them further when I see
him
walk by through the glass wall of the conference room. He wears a cheap-looking suit. His hair is slicked back and the black cross on his face stands out in stark contrast to his pale skin. It happens so fast that I hardly recognize him; he could be any one of the millions of tie-men I’ve met wandering the halls of the Headquarters building, except for his piercing blue eyes, which catch mine for a half second as he passes by. They’re familiar. Then I realize, this is no tie-man.

It’s Ethan.

Without slowing, he continues on his way, disappearing down the hall.

Suddenly, the world seems to spin. My head feels light.

Carter is saying something about keeping the campaign cohesive, when I stand, mutter, “Excuse me. Let’s take lunch,” and bolt out of the conference room.

My calves ache as I rush down the hall in my high heels, moving as fast as I can without breaking into a run. The hallway curves, and for a moment I’m afraid I’ve lost him, but after a few minutes, I catch a glimpse of him, hustling away from me in the distance. My heartbeat quickens.

Fifty yards ahead of me, he turns down a side hall and I turn too, then he turns left down another corner. Jogging now, I glimpse him slipping through a wood-paneled door near the end of the hall.

When I reach the door, I notice that unlike all the other doors in the Headquarters building, which bear signs that say things like Conference Room K3 or Media Room H14, this one is unmarked. I take a quick glance over my shoulder to be sure no one is watching me, then place one hand on the knob and turn. Cool air wafts from the hallway beyond, brushing over my face.

I go to take a step forward then hesitate.

This guy is a dangerous criminal,
I remind myself. An unprofitable. An anarchist. If I were smart, I’d call Blackwell right now and have him dragged off to prison, so I could collect the HR fee. Who knows, on a big anarchist like him, it might be big enough to buy that new speedboat, the N-Aqua Thunder.

But no. That’s not why I’m following him. It isn’t
want
that’s compelling me toward him; it’s
need
. A need as compelling as a starving man’s need for food or a lonely woman’s need for love. I need to know the truth.

So I step over the threshold and close the door behind me, finding myself in a long, windowless hallway. To the left, to the right, it extends interminably, but there’s no sign of Ethan. So, I pick a direction and start walking.

At first, I just hurry forward, listening for the sound of footsteps, staring ahead, hoping to glimpse Ethan around the next corner. But gradually, I begin to notice my surroundings—and I’m shocked. I’ve never seen conditions as bad as these except for the few times in my life that I strayed into the low-low-credit-level housing. The paint here is drab. The carpet is threadbare and stained. Above, water leaks from a black, mold-stained ceiling tile into a bucket. Paint peels from the walls. The carpet is worn, unraveling. This corridor, I surmise, must be for cleaning, maintenance, and security services—though in all the years I’ve been coming to the Headquarters, I never knew this passage existed.

When I turn the corner, I almost run into a man in an N-Service uniform pushing a trashcan on wheels, and my guess is confirmed.

“Excuse me, did a tie-man just go down this way?”

The man nods, giving me a strange look. Whether it’s because he’s never seen a woman like me in this hallway or because he recognizes me from the imager—who knows? I press onward. For about a hundred yards, there’s nothing. No windows, no turns, no doors, no signs of Ethan.

When I finally come upon a door, I poke my head through and find myself looking into a hallway, B hall, not far from my office. There’s the triple-thickness carpet, the diamond-pane glass, the titanium-composite office chairs—all the beauty modern design can muster. I’ve walked down that hallway a thousand times, immersed in sunlight and enamored with the spectacular view, never knowing that this shabby, windowless world existed on this other side of this thin wall the whole time, like a parallel dimension.

I watch a few tie-men and women hustle past, but there’s no sign of Ethan, so I pull my head back into the drab maintenance hall and continue my search. After a few minutes, I come upon a bank of elevators. The digital display above the doors shows that one of the elevators is going up—and Ethan might be on it. I push the call button but am too impatient to wait. Instead, I hurry through a stairwell door nearby and charge upward. After ascending three stories, I find myself in front of a door labeled rooftop access. I open it, and sunlight splashes across my face.

I’ve probably lost Ethan now, but what does it matter? With one more step, I’m among the clouds. The view takes my breath away. An ethereal landscape stretches before me, grand mountains of mirrored glass and steel rising from a valley floor made of puffy, gray cloud.

This is what I’ve been looking for. This place. This peace. Heaven.

I look left, then right. No Ethan. I could almost believe I never saw him at all. In this place, he and the conflict he represents seem like nothing more than troubling dreams, dissipating in the morning sun. Why couldn’t I forget them? Forget everything, and just live?

Suddenly, a daring thought enters my mind: I’ll walk toward the edge of the roof. To the very edge. My body shivers with excitement. It’ll be like standing on the prow of a ship sailing on an ocean of cloud. . . .

There is no sound but the scuffing of tiny roofing pebbles under my polished pumps. The wind fills my lungs, infusing me instantly with its life. I realize that I’ve been holding my breath and wonder for how long. My heavy brow feels lighter and the knot of tension I didn’t even realize I was holding in my stomach unclenches. Approaching the edge of the roof is like discovering a brand-new country. I’m Columbus on the shore of America, Alan Shepard on the moon. The wind tugs at my N-Elita blazer, and it snaps like a banner in the breeze.

At the roof’s edge now, I stop and look down. Suddenly, my feet tingle violently and my knees feel like toothpaste. Dizziness washes over me, and I panic. The N-Corp Headquarters stands over 207 stories high. One gust of wind and I’d be gone. . . .

But I don’t step away from the edge. I don’t let myself. Below, through the tendrils of cloud and smog, I can see tiny people milling about the courtyard below, looking like grains of sand tussled by a gust of wind. What would it be like to fall from this here? For a second, you’d almost fly. . . .

“You’re breaking Company policy,” a voice says, almost in my ear.

I start so badly, I almost tumble off the edge. My balance regained, I wheel on the owner of the voice. Already, my face is flushed with rage and embarrassment.

There, smiling, is Ethan. “This area is off limits,” he says.

My heart pounds from the scare he gave me. “You bastard! I almost fell off! Are you trying to kill me?”

“If I wanted to kill you,” he says calmly, “I’d have just given you a little push.”

He seems pleasant enough—even happy to see me—but adrenaline from the fright he gave me is still coursing through my system, filling me with a jittery anger. I look around the rooftop, making sure there are no HR cameras there.

“Did you want to talk to me about something?” I ask him gruffly, “or you just get a kick out of scaring the shit out of people?”

Ethan paces away from me, gazing out from the edge of the rooftop. “Language, May. Company could fine you for that, too. Plus your little stunt at N-Dance. . . . At this rate, you’ll never end up a Blackie.”

I was irritated before. With that comment, I’m furious. “What do you want?”

He grins. “Your autograph. You’re a celebrity, May. You’ve been on the imager all day. I wonder why.”

“Because you had me kidnapped,” I almost shout. I take a deep breath, trying to regain my composure. “Why are you here?”

“To give you answers. Isn’t that why you went to see your father last night?”

Okay, so Ethan knows I went to see my father. He had me followed after I left his camp, just like he was having me followed before I went there. Fine. Clair told me in the helicopter that he was trying to recruit me, so the fact that they were scoping me out makes sense. But my mind returns to the first part of his statement. About getting answers.