False Hearts

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In memory of my father,

Gary Lyle Richardson (1945–2015).

You were weird and wonderful, and I’m glad you were able to read an early draft of this before you rejoined the Cycle.

False face must hide what the false heart doth know.

—William Shakespeare,
Macbeth

PROLOGUE

TAEMA

San Francisco, California

This is the first time I have ever been alone.

The first time I have ever woken up to silence and emptiness next to me. The only sounds in the room are the beeping of the heart monitor and my own labored breathing.

It isn’t supposed to be like this.

Groggy from the medicine, I raise my hand to hover over the hot wound, throbbing even through the pain of the IV. It is the first time my hand has been able to linger three inches above my own chest. Below my shaking fingers is the deep cut that will heal into a thin seam from just below my collarbone to right above my navel. Beneath the newly grafted skin and reconstructed breasts is a titanium sternum—bulletproof, so they say—and half of my ribs are made of the same substance. Below that metal sternum is my new, false heart. The old heart is gone, cut out and replaced with an upgraded model that will never tire. I can almost imagine I can hear its mechanical ticking.

This is the first time I’ve ever been lonely.

The doorknob to the recovery room turns. My automated heartbeat doesn’t quicken, though the old, fleshy one would have. I still feel the thrum of adrenaline. The door opens, and for the first time, I see my own, moving reflection. My full mirror image. The same brown skin, the mane of curly hair. The same long nose and dark eyes, features hollowed in fear and pain. My twin, Tila.

Are my knees that knobby?
I ask myself, almost laughing from the ridiculousness of the thought. The drugs still rush through my system, and everything is dreamily gold-tinged.

She’s trailing her IV with her. I can barely move, so she shouldn’t be up, but Tila doesn’t let a small thing like pain stop her. I’m surprised she hasn’t triggered the alarms. She probably disabled them—she’s always been clever with her hands.

We’re not supposed to see each other for a few days, so we grow used to being separate. As usual, she’s ignored all the rules and advice and followed her own heart. It is really her
own
heart now. She creeps closer, her bare feet swishing along the floor.

“T?” she whispers.

“T,” I answer. We always call each other T when we are alone. I close my eyes, a tear falling down my cheek.
What have we done?

Painfully, I move over on the bed as best I can. We haven’t just come out of surgery, if the date on the wallscreen is correct. They put us in a medical coma for a few days to speed up healing. I find the fact they can do something like that more than a little frightening. Neither of us has ever been to a hospital before this. There aren’t any in Mana’s Hearth.

Tila slides into the bed. On her chest, in mirror image of mine, is the same wound that will one day become a scar. Beneath her false sternum is another new, false heart. I wonder if they are set to the same rhythm and even now beat together.

Gently, we turn onto our sides, pressing our foreheads together. Then and only then can we fall back asleep, in the position we have fallen asleep in for the last sixteen years. Now three inches of emptiness separate us, when before there had been nothing, and our heart had beat as one.

ONE

TAEMA

Ten years later

I’m starting where it all falls apart.

Tila is late for dinner.

We meet twice a week, once at her place and once at mine, though lately it’s always been at my apartment in Inner Sunset. She says she’s staying late at work, but I never know if that’s true. I hate it when she keeps secrets. It used to be that we couldn’t.

Outside, fat drops of rain drum against the glass window. The sunset has faded to darkness, a few stars just bright enough to shine through the San Francisco fog. I pace across the living room, peering at the blurred view of the city skyline, the green shimmer of the algae farms in the bay, the lights of the hovercars flying past. I paid a lot extra to have the penthouse for this view, but at the moment it does nothing for me. All I can do is be irritated at my sister.

Back in the kitchen, I push the curls from my face. I use my auditory implants to ping Tila, but there’s no response. I turn on the wallscreen, but the moving images and sounds irritate me, and I shut them off. The scar on my chest twinges. It’s psychosomatic. There’s no way it could actually hurt, not after so many years. I rest my fingertip on the top of the rough line of healed skin. It’s been almost a decade to the day since the surgery.

I sigh and set out the food, the time flashing in the corner of my ocular implants until I send it away. Her shift at Zenith supposedly ended over an hour ago. She works at the hostess club at the top of the TransAm Pyramid. Not a bad gig, but not for me. I don’t think I’d be as good at pretending.

I’ve made Tila her favorite curry, adapted from a recipe from the Hearth. I could have ordered it from the replicator in the corner of the kitchen, but I needed the distraction of doing something with my hands. It’s time to tell her I quit my job this afternoon, and I accepted a new job offer I couldn’t refuse—in China. I don’t know if Tila will want to come with me.

Or if she should.

The doorknob turns. I stand and rub my palms along my skirt. Tila flies in, disheveled and wild-eyed. Her short, teal hair is wet and plastered to her skull, contrasting with my brown curls. Her clothes are flashy where mine are plain. Her face is different than mine now too, from trips to the flesh parlors. They’re not drastic changes, but we no longer look identical.

It isn’t until she rushes to me and clutches the front of my shirt, on either side of my scar, that I realize she’s covered in blood. She’s wearing a man’s coat I don’t recognize, and it gapes open, dripping onto the floor. Her light blue dress is splattered red, the rain smearing it into a garish watercolor.

My mind takes a beat to process it. “Are—are you hurt?” I ask, trying to pull back to go for the first aid kit. But if it’s that much blood, she might need more than bandages. Fear rushes through me, and I can’t seem to catch my breath.

She doesn’t answer right away. Her mouth flaps open, and then shuts. She lets go of me, backing away from the door. “Not my blood. You have to help me, T. Oh God, you
have
to help me.”

I tense.
Not my blood.
“If it’s not your blood, whose is it?” My breath comes faster, hitching on the inhale. My sister feeds off my fear, grabbing my shirt so hard the fabric rips. “What the hell is going on, Tila?” I ask.

Expressions of fear and guilt flit across her face like shadows. “Please, Taema. Please. I have to get out of the city right now. Both of us do. Hide out somewhere. The Sierras? If only Mana’s Hearth would let us claim sanctuary.”

Mana’s Hearth is exempt from Pacifica jurisdiction. That she would mention
going
back
, despite everything that happened ten years ago, and that she wants to bring me too, is what tells me just how serious this is. “Tila, slow down. What have you done?”

“I haven’t done anything, Taema. It didn’t happen the way they’ll say.” I can see the whites of her eyes, the tension lines around her mouth. Despite her surgery, her face reminds me too much of that last day in Mana’s Hearth when we thought we would die in that redwood forest.

The tips of my hands tingle and my vision swims. “OK. OK.” I force myself to try and calm down. “What
haven’t
you done?”

Sirens sound outside the high-rise apartment. I startle—you hardly
ever
hear them in San Francisco anymore. They’re growing louder.

Tila presses against me. “Oh God, they’ve found me. Must have tracked my VeriChip. I knew I should have torn it out. Can I hide? There must be somewhere I can hide!”

Her panic is infectious, but I have to be the pragmatic twin she expects. The twin she needs. “No point. All the police will have infrared sensors. If you didn’t do this, then it’ll be fine, right? They’ll take you in for questioning and then let you go.” I don’t want to be the calm twin. I want to grab her, shake her, demand she tell me what has happened and whose blood she’s wearing.

Tila only sobs, resting her hand just below my collarbone, right on my scar. I rest my hand on hers. I can feel the mechanical beating of her heart. Despite our obvious terror, our hearts beat at their same, steady pace.

“It’ll be all right, T,” I say. “I promise.”

She looks at me, dangerous and untamed. I barely recognize her. “You can’t promise that, T. You can’t promise that at all.”

Red and blue lights flash outside the window. A police hovercar floats outside the balcony, rain falling off its sides. The searchlight illuminates the room, paralyzing us in the bright beams. Three police jump down onto the tiny balcony, their boots splashing in the puddles on the concrete. Tila’s shaking, burrowing close to my side. I wrap my arm around her, but I’m shivering just as badly.

They open the sliding glass door, but too hard. The glass shatters. Fragments spill into my living room, as if the rain outside has crystallized.

“SFPD!”

“Really, now,” I say, looking at the glass and rain scattered across the living room. Fear shifts to anger. “Was that necessary?”

The police look between us. They are all wearing bulletproof Kalar vests over their sleek, dark blue uniforms. Cops almost never wear Kalars, not in this city that prides itself on its lack of crime. The whites of their eyes shimmer in the light with their extra implants.

An Indian-American woman with curly hair tamed in a knot at the nape of her neck clutches her gun, shifting her stance. The other man, white and brown-haired with a face so generically good-looking I’ll forget what he looks like as soon as he leaves the room, begins to make a perimeter of my apartment. Perhaps he thinks extra backup is hiding behind the couch. The last man, their leader, is black with a gold tattoo I can’t make out peeking over the collar of his uniform. He narrows his eyes at us, focusing on Tila and her teal hair: “Tila Collins?”