False Hearts (16 page)

I never bought that, but it’s the endless question of nature versus nurture. Free will versus predestination.

Sudice developed Zeal at first as a virtual reality game in which to act out fantasies. They discovered the extra benefit by accident, that if people acted out violent urges, when they came out, vicious tendencies were dampened. The neural pathways are reworked, suppressing the amygdala, or the prehistoric “lizard” brain we’ve had since we crawled out of the ocean. It worked on those with so-called violent brains, and those without. Overall, people were calmer, happier. Perfect citizens. Zeal lounges became all the rage.

Sometimes I wondered what Mana-ma would have to say about all that.

The first time doing Zeal is a rite of passage, one my sister and I missed. When we tried it later, it was anticlimactic. All the dreams seemed but pale echoes of what we saw during Meditation back at the Hearth, or when we closed our eyes each night.

“The government and Sudice are both terrified of Verve, aren’t they?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“The same drug, but stronger, more powerful, a better high and people wake up not calmer, but angrier. More prone to lash out. San Francisco has peace now, but how peaceful would it be if people weren’t kept dampened by Zeal?”

I wonder if I’m pushing too far, saying that. It sounds critical of the government, his employers. Nazarin only smiles sadly. “I don’t want to find out, do you?”

I don’t say the other thing I’ve wondered, from all the information I’ve brainloaded: what happens if the government gets hold of Verve? Dangerous as it is, it lets people see into others’ dreams remotely. And what if there’s more it can do?

“How did the Ratel develop Verve?” I ask.

“We think it’s Ensi himself who designed it. The genesis is from Zeal. He took it and twisted it somehow. The man is a genius.”

“And where did he come from?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?”

“How deep do the Ratel run?” I ask out loud, more to myself than to Nazarin, but he answers.

“Deep. They’ve got their little tendrils everywhere. Right now, in a way we’re fighting a losing battle. Getting rid of the Ratel completely will likely never happen. What we have to do is have the upper hand, choke off their stronghold before Verve becomes too widespread.”

I understand. “And the easiest way to do that is to get to Ensi. Cut off the head.”

He gives me a sidelong glance. “Exactly. This is the best chance we have.”

A sentence from one of the captured men in my brainloads comes back to me
: There are some who don’t agree with Ensi. Some who want him dead.
It had seemed obvious to me—of course every organization has those who resent their leaders. The Hearth taught me that. But now I wonder if there’s more. “Unrest?”

“Yeah. That’s my primary goal. I’m seeing who might be thinking of causing trouble and gently encouraging them, but in a way they don’t suspect me as the cause. Division will make it easier to find a chink in their organization. Not easy, let me tell you.”

I rub my temples, the flashing lights of Mirage getting to me. “This keeps getting more and more complicated.”

“That’s how I’ve felt ever since I went undercover. The deeper you go, the crazier everything seems to be.”

“But you’ve still never met Ensi.”

“No. I’m too much of a Knight. There’s an upcoming party they’ve invited me to, though, this weekend. He’s meant to be there. After two years, I might finally meet him.”

“I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to help with all of this.”

“To be honest, a lot of it depends on how far Tila has delved into the inner circle. The fact she rose to working in the Verve lounge so quickly is impressive, but it’s difficult to see the bigger picture. Sometimes she seems to be a relatively little fish, despite being a dreamsifter, but other times I suspect she’s almost reached upper management.”

A shiver runs down my spine, and my flesh breaks out into goosebumps. Tila not only involved with the Ratel, but in deep? Without telling me, without asking for my help. Why has she done this in the first place? What does she hope to gain? Money? Tila’s never struck me as greedy, not in that way. What, though, do I really know about her? She’s been living a whole different life. I bite back a sob.

“Let’s go see what this Mia can tell us, if anything,” he says.

“And if she’s plugged in, we have to go in? Instead of waiting for her to come out?” That’s the part that gives me the biggest pause. I don’t want to go into her dreams and see what her deepest, darkest desires are. I had a secondhand view, watching her relapse, and that was awful enough. Zealscapes can be unpredictable—especially, I hear, in these off-grid lounges. For some, they’re almost like the real world. For others, they’re twisted nightmares. I fear Mia’s will be more like the latter.

“Depends on how long she has left. If she has more than twelve hours, we can’t wait that long.”

“And if we do go into the Zealscape, you think I’ll be able to lucid dream,” I say, looking nervously at the entrance to Mirage. Most of the time, when people plug into other people’s dreams, they’re carried along helplessly by the other person’s fantasy. They can’t really change much. It’s why most people do it alone. Nazarin hopes if I can lucid dream I might be able to affect things, at least a little. The problem is, lucid dreaming might not always change the reality in a way you’d like.

“Yes. This serves two purposes. Question Mia in the Zealscape, if we must, and see how you fare within the dreams. I’m certain you’ll be able to manipulate things, judging by how you’ve integrated the brainload.”

“Maybe.” I’m noncommittal. And frightened. Years of training at the Hearth—it should be easy. I have flashbacks to those shared dreams. I can almost taste the bitterness of the drug as Mana-ma gently placed it on my outstretched tongue.

“Will it hurt?” I ask. I remember so much pain. And mental pain is so much more painful than the physical.

“It hasn’t hurt me.”

“And you haven’t become addicted?” That’s another fear. I only tried Zeal once or twice, but it was years ago. What if I’ve changed since? What if I go into the Zealscape and come out of it to discover my brain is flawed and that I’ll want nothing more than to go back in? It’s a stupid fear, perhaps. I’ve seen scans of my own brain. I know all synapses fire normally. That doesn’t mean I couldn’t still love the violence. That doesn’t mean I couldn’t grow to need it.

“No,” he says. “I’m not addicted. But I think about the Zealscape, sometimes. The power. The freedom. I think anyone who’s tasted it does, even if their mind isn’t hardwired for violence.”

Nazarin’s been undercover for a while. I’m sure he’s had to commit violence, and not just as a false member of the Ratel. As a detective, he’ll have seen things, done things that would be difficult to forget.

“OK,” I say, squaring my shoulders. “Let’s do this.”

My nervousness doesn’t fade as we walk toward the door. I’ve never been in a Zealot lounge, and I’ve no idea what to expect. I wonder what Mia knows. If anything. I can’t help but wonder if Tila wrote Mia’s name on the table to send me off the path and keep me out of harm’s way. It’s the sort of thing she would do.

Nazarin knocks on the door and exchanges words with the guard behind the hatch, a man with a face that’s lost a fair number of fistfights in its time. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but the man looks me up and down, assessing me. Does he think I’m an addicted Zealot? The door opens with a metallic groan.

“Come on,” Nazarin says, holding out his hand. With the barest hesitation, I take it and duck inside.

The Zealot lounge is dark, with red lights tracing the path to the back. The front is the waiting room, but dim enough to obscure faces. Zealot lounges do not scan your VeriChip at the door. You pay with actual coins. Anonymity guaranteed.

We wait our turn. Nazarin goes up to the woman behind the bulletproof glass of the counter. She’s chewing gum, blowing bubbles and popping them wetly. They murmur through the intercom, too low for me to hear. The addicts near me twitch in the darkness. Their fetid breath floats through the air, their fingers spasm on the fabric of their clothes. A woman leans close to me and smells my neck.

“You’re new to this,” she whispers. She’s lost most of her teeth. Her glazed eyes stare at me above dark bruises.

“First time,” I manage, fighting the urge to lean away.

“I don’t know whether to be envious or sorry for you,” the woman says. She could be my age, but she looks older. Her skin hangs from her wasted muscle. Her hand clutches the coins for her trip.

I lean away from her, wondering what this woman does in her Zeal-fueled dreams. I’m sure if I knew, it’d make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

Nazarin returns. “Come on,” he says. “We’re up.”

“It’s my turn,” the woman says, but weakly, as if all her fight has fled. She stares at the wall. I can feel the other Zealots’ eyes on me, even if I can’t make out their faces.

“I’ll see you in my dreams soon enough,” the woman says, her voice distant.

“I don’t doubt it,” I say, shivering.

I stand, and Nazarin takes my elbow, leading me through the dark.

An orderly is there, wearing a reassuringly white lab coat. It’s less comforting when I’m close enough to see it’s grimy about the cuffs. “The woman you wish to speak to is in too deep to take her out,” he says.

My muscles stiffen.

“How long until she can come up for air?” Nazarin asks.

The orderly’s eyes unfocus as he checks his ocular implant. “Fourteen hours at the absolute minimum.”

Shit.

“We don’t want to wait that long.” A sly passing of credits from Nazarin’s hands to the white-gloved orderly’s.

“Like I say, I can’t take her out without killing her, and I doubt you want that.”

That’s an option? Good God.

“But I can put you guys in a shared dream with a small dose, if you want,” the orderly continues. “You’ll have to deal with a lot of crossover, but you should be able to speak to her if you really go for it.”

I knew this was a likely outcome, but I’d been hoping to avoid it, yet it all has a feeling of inevitability. Deep down, I think I knew I’d have to visit Mia’s dreams tonight.

Nazarin senses my dismay and leans close. “The sooner we interrogate her, the sooner we can get to the bottom of this. You can find out what Tila was up to.”

Cheap ploy, Nazarin, but effective
. “Is it dangerous?” I whisper.

“Of course it is. But you’ll be fine. You’ll be in control.”

“You’re lying.” I follow him down the corridor anyway.

*   *   *

Within minutes, I’m strapped into the Chair. It’s different from a brainloading Chair. Bulkier. More wires. It feels like a cage.

We’re in the same room as Mia, in Chairs on either side of her. Nazarin paid extra for privacy, so the fourth Chair is empty. I turn to look at Mia. She looks so small, with so many wires poking out of her arms and neck. People who sign up for long trips have to be catheterized. Her mouth is pulled into a faint grimace, showing yellowing teeth. The wrinkles in her brown skin are deeper, the cheekbones more prominent. She’s wasting away, like so many Zealots have before her, and so many others will. She doesn’t eat enough, doesn’t drink enough, and eventually, her body will give up. The government doesn’t step in here, though they’re meant to care for each and every citizen. How many people truly realize this is what’s happening, right under their noses? Why isn’t anything being done?

It’s a very small percentage of people who become addicted to Zeal on their first try. Those that do come out and are completely changed by what they’ve seen. What they’ve done. They can’t wait to plug in again and be who they are in their dreams. Real life can cease to have any meaning. If they have money, they fritter away their savings. If they run out, they receive unemployment, and the amount they receive is just enough to keep them in Zealot lounges. They spend enough time in the real world to eat some NutriPaste, perhaps clean themselves, go to the bathroom, and then they’re back to their nearest Zealot lounge, huddled in the darkness, waiting for the cold prick of the syringe to send them back to dreamland.

I still can’t help fearing I’ll like the dreams so much that I become someone who can commit murder. Someone like Tila could be.

No. Don’t think about that.
But that re-creation of a holographic Tila stabbing Vuk, wrenching the blade up into his heart, haunts me just the same.

The orderly puts on a mask. It’s just for show—for all of Zeal’s dangers, there’s no risk of infection, even in a shithole like Mirage. He plugs us into the slots on the wall, starts up the program.

“Ready?” Nazarin asks. Lying supine, his face doesn’t look so harsh. His features look almost tender.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I say.

The orderly has connected the wires on our Chairs, so that we’ll feed into Mia’s program when the drug hits us. Couples and such will do it sometimes, so that they can revel in the Zealscape together. The thought makes me sick. “Sweet dreams,” says the orderly.

I feel the prick of the syringe.

Then we’re gone.

ELEVEN

TAEMA

I don’t like the inside of Mia’s head.

Everything in the dream world has a soft quality of washed-out gray and muted reds, blues and browns. I’m standing outside a building, gazing up at its broken windows. It’s a scaled-down version of the tower complexes in San Francisco, all steel, concrete and glass, five stories tall instead of fifty. The sky is dark, the clouds bruised black, blue and purple. Warm wind blows my hair, and the air smells like a storm is about to break. I’m wearing the mini-dress I wore to Zenith, for some reason, and the straps of leather dig into my legs. I can see, hear and feel everything, but it’s dampened in the way of dreams.

“Nazarin?” I call out, but there’s no answer.

Up above, the angry, frozen sky rumbles. Rain begins to fall, and my dress is soaked, my hair plastered to my head. Like Tila on Thursday night. Shivering and alone, I go into the house. Mia will be inside. Some part of me feels it.