False Hearts (7 page)

“What’s it to be this time, sweets?” she asks. Her gaze flicks to me, assessing me from head to toe, before she focuses on the detective again. “Better not be too trying. I have back-to-back meetings all afternoon and if you tire me out, I’ll nap through them.”

“Identity switch,” he says. “This is a sensitive matter. I saw you returned the confidentiality agreement to HQ.”

“I’m hurt you don’t trust me,” she pouts. “When have I ever let you down?”

“Never. I trust you implicitly.”

In contrast to their earlier banter, he’s serious here, and she feeds off it. Dr. Mata looks at me again. “OK. What’s up?”

“Kim, this is Taema Collins. Her sister, Tila Collins, has been accused of murder.”

Dr. Mata’s eyes widen. “Civilian?”

“Not exactly,” he replies. “Tila Collins is implicated with the Ratel. Last night she was caught and accused. You know what I’ve been doing with myself the last few years.”

“Yeah, being an idiot and playing with fire. I’ve told you time and time again you need to get out of that game.”

“You speak sense as always, but I can’t. Anyway, I never would have been able to do what I’ve done without you.”

She blows him an air kiss. “Damn right. So you’re being taken into protective custody or something?” Dr. Mata asks, addressing me for the first time. “Need a new identity to lie low?”

I shake my head. “Not exactly. Tila and I—we’re identical twins, you see.”

Her eyebrows rise. She looks between us, and her sharp mind fills in the blanks. “Well. That’s a first for me. Switching sisters. You got all the paperwork in order?”

Nazarin nods.

“OK then. Let’s get started.”

She motions for me to come closer, and I do. She takes hold of my wrist, turning it over. Her hands are cool and dry. “Thank you, Dr. Mata—” I begin.

She waves her free hand. “Call me Kim.”

“Kim.” She meets my eyes and grins. There aren’t a lot of people who smile genuinely in San Francisco. She holds nothing back, and I can’t help but return the gesture.

She takes a little electrode from a box in her pocket and fastens it right over the tiny mark where the chip lies under my skin. Her eyes unfocus, and on the blank white tablet in her hand is code only she can see. Before long, she has full access to my identity. I shiver, realizing that if she wanted to she could wreak complete havoc with my life. She senses my nervousness.

“Don’t worry, buttercup, your identity is safe with me. You don’t have anything I don’t already have ten times over. Hmm.”

“What?” I ask.

“Your chip wasn’t put in at birth. You’ve only had it for ten years.” Her gaze is piercing. I want to look away, but I don’t. “And no record before that. How’d that happen?”

“I’m from Mana’s Hearth.”

“No shit!” she exclaims, her head jerking back. “Really? Your sister, too?”

“Yes. We came here when we were sixteen.”

She meets my eyes, still holding my wrist. “Well, before, I thought you were cute and must be at least a bit interesting, to be hanging around with Sugarcube here.” She jerks her head at Nazarin. “Now, I find you endlessly fascinating.”

I can’t help but laugh a little.

“And what’s this?” she says, noting the top of my scar.

I pull down the collar of my shirt a few inches. “My sister and I were conjoined until we left.”

She whoops. “Now you’re officially one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. When this is all over, I’m taking you out for a drink. Sound good?”

“All right.” I smile, but it fades. I can’t help but wonder if I’ll even return to a normal life after this.

“Come on, you charmer,” Nazarin says. “Can you do the switch?”

She scoffs. “Can I do the switch? That’s just insulting.”

She cocks her head, sending the projection of code onto the wall.

There we are, up on the screen. All those numbers represent our identities. Me and Tila. Side by side. I wonder what she’s thinking about, just now, in her cell. I wish she’d speak to me, and I don’t understand why she won’t. Nazarin says she chose not to, but what if they aren’t letting her speak to me? Hope flares within me at the thought. Or perhaps she thinks by keeping quiet she can protect and shield me from all this. Does she realize I’m caught right in the thick of it?

Dr. Mata waves her fingers, moving code around so quickly I can barely follow. She clicks her tongue against her teeth. “There. Done.”

I blink. “That’s it?”

“That’s it, buttercup. You’re now officially your sister, Tila Collins.” She takes the electrode off my wrist and rubs the skin with her thumb.

“That’s scary, how easily you could do it.”

“Don’t worry. I’m one of only about three or four people in San Francisco who can do it at all, let alone that quickly. I helped invent VeriChips.”

I rub my thumb over the chip, covered by a thin layer of skin. “Well, thank you,” I say.

“No prob. But remember, when you’re done dipping your toes into danger, come meet me for that drink and I’ll reset your own identity.”

“I will.” I’m not sure if it’s an invite for an evening of chat or a date. I don’t mind either way.

Kim pats me on the shoulder, and then goes over to Nazarin. “You better not get her hurt, Naz. She’s way too innocent for the shit you’re about to throw her into.”

My stomach flutters. He looks at me, then away. “She’ll be fine.”

Kim holds out her arms and he gathers her into a bear hug, lifting her off the ground. She whispers something in his ear, but I can’t hear it.

“Thanks a million, Kim,” Detective Nazarin says. “You ready, Tila?” he asks me.

And now I am Tila, for all intents and purposes. At least legally. But for all that I know my sister better than anyone, I’m not her.

“I’m ready,” I say, though I’m not sure I’ll ever be.

SIX

TILA

The first cracks between us happened long before the surgery, although Taema would never admit it. When we were little, we were two halves of the same coin. We’ve gone so far from where we were. So far from that long-ago innocence.

Life was simpler in the Hearth, before we knew for certain it was a prison.

Supply ships came to Mana’s Hearth every two weeks, and it was always a big deal for us. A glimpse into a world that wasn’t ours.

As soon as we heard the distant roar of engines, we’d find somewhere to watch the ship set down. The men and women, dressed in strange uniforms that clung close to their bodies, looked so different from us as they directed the droids to unload the crates.

It was the droids that fascinated Taema—a lot more than they did me. They weren’t something we had on the Hearth, of course, and I thought they were freaky. The blocky machines looked roughly like humans with blank faces, but moved with much less grace as they unloaded the crates onto the lawn and then walked back up into the ship and powered down. Just like that. They moved around, and then they looked dead.

They didn’t say anything about droids in the Hearth school, but Mom and Dad had told us a little bit about them. Kept stressing that they weren’t “sentient.” That they didn’t have feelings, and were just machines made to do humans’ dirty work.

“Why make them look human, then?” I remember asking. Surely having more than two arms would be better for lifting. Taema and I often found our extra limbs handy.

My parents didn’t have an answer to that.

We usually stayed out of sight of the supply ships. Obviously the droids didn’t care, but the humans from the city stared something awful when they realized we weren’t hugging—that we were connected. Say what you like about Mana’s Hearth, but at least they treated everyone equally. When we were younger, this one guy from the supply ship came up to us and actually reached out like he was going to touch the spot where our flesh joined, but I bit him. He jumped back and put his finger in his mouth, sucking the blood. Taema didn’t even tell me off for it; she was just as mad. After that, it was just easier to stay hidden and watch secretly.

One day, after the ship took off, we noticed they had left something behind on a rock. We shuffled closer. It was a piece of tech. We’d seen them using things like it—it was called a “tablet.” It wasn’t meant to be left behind. No tech was. The only machines me and Taema had ever seen were the supply ships and the droids, and almost everyone in the village stayed well away when the city folk landed. Sometimes our mom would come and speak to them, relay requests or whatever, but that was it. After the supply ship took off, others would then tiptoe down the hill, performing Purifying rituals with burning sage and whispered prayers, before they could bring themselves to take the supplies back to their homes.

I reached down for the tablet.

“Tila,” my sister said. “It’s forbidden.”

I ignored her, still trying to reach down, but Taema stayed stubbornly straight. I pulled harder, until she grunted in pain, but she didn’t budge.

“Come on,” I wheedled. “We have to turn it in to Mana-ma, don’t we? We can’t leave it here.” Really, I just wanted to hold it, at least for a moment.

With a reluctant sigh, she leaned forward. I wrapped my hand around the metal and glass.

“You’ll get in trouble for touching it with your bare skin,” she warned.

“So will you.”

“Exactly. I’ll have to be Purified along with you, and you know burning sage always makes me cough.”

I looked around nervously. How long before people came?

“Let’s go to the tree, first,” I said.

“So you can look at it?”

I didn’t answer.

“It’s Impure,” she whispered, her brow furrowed.

I started toward the trees and she followed, her legs stiff and straight.

“We shouldn’t do this,” she kept whispering. “Mana-ma wouldn’t like it.”

“Mana-ma doesn’t need to know.”

“She knows everything.”

I felt a little bit of guilt, but I squashed it right down.

The tree was our favorite spot in the forest. We went to it whenever we really wanted to hide from everyone else in the Hearth. In the compound it was hard to ever be truly alone, but out in the woods there were only the redwoods and the birds. Our tree was an old, hollowed-out redwood, struck by lightning a long time ago. We shuffled inside, smelling the old smoke and damp greenness of the forest. I loved it there. When we were younger, we’d had tea parties or played cards, whispered secrets, stashed things we didn’t want to share. It was our safe space.

I held the tablet in front of me, turning it this way and that. It felt so smooth, hard and cold. It seemed alien.

I found a little button on the side and pressed it, and the screen came to life in vibrant greens, blues and yellows. We both gasped.

How had the people from the city worked it?

I pressed it with my finger.

Words appeared on the screen:
No implants detected. Use manually? Y/N
.

“I’m going to press yes,” I said.

“You know you shouldn’t. Mana-ma says it’s evil.”

Sometimes she drove me nuts. “For God’s sake. You can’t tell me you’re not even a little curious.”

Taema set her mouth in that stubborn line we both make when we’re not budging.

“If God didn’t want us to look at it, it wouldn’t have been left there,” I tried.

“It’s a test. That’s what Mana-ma would say.” She bit her lip. I knew she was curious, almost as curious as me.

“Come on, T,” I said, my voice singsong. “We’ll just take a quick look, then we’ll turn it in to Mana-ma. She never needs to know we took a peek. We’ll learn just a little more about the world outside.”

We’d spent hours tossing possibilities back and forth about what the rest of the world was like—even if my sister was far more interested in the rules of the Hearth than I was, always quoting the Good Book to me when I broke a rule. When I plucked my eyebrows:
God created us as he wanted us. In his eyes, there are no flaws. To change your body is sacrilege
. When I said I wished we could leave behind the Hearth and go to a city with proper skyscrapers, whatever they were:
God has laid out his plan for us in the glory of nature
. When I complained about going to the meadow with the rest of the Hearth:
One must Meditate to remain Pure and open to God’s gifts
. Over and over, even though we both knew it was all an act. Behind closed doors, she wanted to know what the world was like, just as much as I did.

Taema sighed.

I pressed the Y on the tablet.

The screen stayed lit, but neither of us knew how to work it. There was nothing taught about this in the commune. We understood a tiny bit more than others about life outside the Hearth: our parents were (still are?) pretty high up in Mana-ma’s inner circle, so they knew plenty and they shared some with us. They weren’t meant to and they were sinning by doing so, but they said they wanted us to be prepared, “just in case.” So we knew that there were things called wallscreens, and flying hovercars that looked like smaller supply ships. That there were buildings made out of smooth stone called concrete. No matter how hard we tried, though, we couldn’t imagine it. Not really. So we weren’t
totally
ignorant about the big wide world out there—just mostly. And that chafed me.

I rested the tablet against the inside of the tree. I had no idea what to do next. I tapped it again, but nothing happened. I knew that it was a link to the outside world, that I could learn all I wanted to, but I didn’t know how to start.

I tapped it once more, grinding my teeth in frustration.

“Maybe you have to speak to it,” Taema said, her voice so small. “I heard them talking to it before.”

That was right. They’d say “tablet” first. I kept a finger on the screen. “Tablet. Search,” I tried, speaking louder.

A new window opened, showing a blinking box.
Enter search parameters
flashed above it.

I looked to Taema for guidance, but she only shrugged, the movement pulling against the skin of my chest. I rested my face against my sister’s, our cheekbones touching. My knees were shaking with excitement. Taema’s shook too, but more with fear.