Rupture (16 page)

“Dad thinks she’s ready for another kata,” Rigon says.

Simone thinks that sounds more like a question than a statement.

Mom stops her dance and moves to the balance bar up against the mirrored wall. She sets her leg on it and recovers her breath. “She is.”

“Just remember, sweetie,” Rigon says, “if you don’t make it, no biggie.”

“I’ll make it.”

“She’ll make it,” Mom says, then walks over and looks Simone up and down like she might have the mumps. “Why not now, dear?”

Simone claps her hands together. “Yes, yes, yes. I can do it. I can do it.”

Rigon steps away, as if he might leave. But he just crosses his arms, smiling, like he wants to see it. “Go ahead, little one. Show us.”

And Simone moves flawlessly through her mantras until she reaches the plateau of the kata of summoning where body and mind begin its separation. When she breaks through, she feels the lords for the first time. They are massive and magnificent, great beings of light who fill her heart with joy.

“Yes, dear,” her mother says. “These are your guardians: your Lords of Light. Worship them and love them, and they’ll love you back and protect you.”

Simone remembers looking up at her mother with a love that defines the next few years. These are wonderful years as she masters the mantras and katas, until her mother says, “Now you must put your lords aside. You don’t need them anymore. To complete the critical kata of summoning, you need only yourself.” Mother and daughter begin their battle of wills. The true believer and the heretic.

Soon Daddy will be gone, the war will come close to home, and her mother will return from overseas with illegal and dangerous ideas about shedding the body to free the mind. The ultimate source of power. “Besides,” her mother later lets slip, “disembodiment is what your father worked his entire life to achieve, that’s what the Protocols are for, and that’s how I’ll find him.”

* * *

“My mother’s a nightmare,” Simone said. She rolled over and found Kimberlee sitting at her desk chair, thumbing through Simone’s new digital tablet. Rigon had already captured the partial copy of Joss and eradicated it—so no worry there. He’d left a new tablet for her when he’d learned she’d destroyed her other.

“She seems cool enough to me,” Kimberlee said. Simone rolled her eyes. Kimberlee added, “My mom sits at home and drinks all day and yells at my dad.”

“It’s not like that at my house. We’re Wellborns. We do the impossible.”

Kimberlee giggled, obviously still tipsy.

Simone sat up. “What do the others think about what happened?”

Kimberlee set the tablet down and moved to the bed. “Hutto didn’t say much, but he probably liked seeing you taken down a notch. You did come on pretty strong on your first day. Everyone else seemed to feel sorry—”

“—for me?” Simone stood and glared at her friend like it was her fault all the bad things in the world every happened. “God!”

“Take it easy,” Kimberlee said.

Simone paced. “I can’t believe my mom finally did that to me. She’s been promising me it would happen for years. I never believed her.” She saw her bucky and went to it. She looked it over, with a touch of love. “You’re not to blame.” She ran her fingers over its lifeless metal. It had shrunk to the size of a solid marble. “I’m not a joke.”

Kimberlee shook her head. “I know.”

“They don’t,” she said, signaling the entire campus, who must all think she was a wacko.

She’d been limited from fully channeling and summoning for too long because her mother wouldn’t teach her the final mantras and katas. She had to commune with her lords at a distance, always using the bucky, feeling them so close, but never manifested. Even when she would climb out of her bucky and stare at herself in the mirror, seeing the minor changes like the wide eyes and the slightly elongated skull, the extended arms and legs, she knew those were just traces of what her lords were. She always waited an hour or so for herself to return to normal, always wondered what a full transformation would look like.

Simone hated her mother at the moment because she feared her mother was right. “I’m not a joke. I’m just ... incomplete.” She pulled her shirt off. “And I have this.”

The brand had settled into her skin like someone had taken a marker to her. It was smooth, unlike from a heat wound. Hers emerged from the dermis upward, and looked more permanent than any tattoo. The mark was finally beginning to appear without any swelling. She was sure now what the letters were. In clear relief: SWML.

Could it be my father’s initials, she thought, Skippard Wellborn …ML?

Simone stood in front of the mirror and regarded herself. She reached into the desk and pulled out a pair of scissors. Without thinking, she snipped off her left pigtail, then the right.

“Oh my god!” Kimberlee yelled, jumping off the bed. “You-Did-Not-Just-Do-That!”

“My mom always told me I’d never summon my entities until I grew up.”

“What?”

“Fine, then,” Simone said, now facing her friend in just a bra and a baggy pair of pants like some hip-hop dance girl ready to start poppin’. “I’ll do it on my own then.”

“What is summoning?”

“It’s crackin’ psy-sorcery transformation magic that’ll blow your mind.”

“Transformation?” Kimberlee was standing now and looking at the door like maybe she should run for it. Transformation was about the worst thing you could say to her, and Simone knew it.

“Relax,” Simone said. “You’ll be all right ... you’re in the Cybercorps Program.”

“So are you.”

Simone faced her friend but tried to keep her anxiety in check. “My mom wants me to do this on my own. Fine. I’ll show everyone what I am. The Sterling School won’t know what hit them.” By now Kimberlee was edging her way to the door. “Maybe it’s better if you leave. I’m feeling … dangerous right now.”

Kimberlee drew on some hidden reservoir of strength. “Maybe the Program is a good thing.”

“Without my lords, I’m lost. When they don’t talk to me I feel awful.” Simone shook her head. “My mother offers me only self-reliance.”

Kimberlee perked up. “How can that be bad?”

“What happens when you’re not strong enough to be self-reliant?”

“I gotta go.” Kimberlee glanced one last time before stepping out and shutting the door behind her. “Take it easy, will you?”

Simone felt all her indignation and resistance crumble after her friend left. She returned to bed and sat against the wall with her knees under her chin, her bottom lip trembling. Her mother was just down a path at faculty housing in a humble but comfortable bungalow kept just for her. Her mother was waiting—she’d said so. She’d be available at any time in the night, if her daughter wanted to come to her. They both knew what that meant. The critical final steps to the kata of summoning awaited, but Simone was angry she would have to do it without her lords. That was the requirement: complete independence. Her mother wanted her to make the attempt, and do it right away.

“So that we can fight the brand’s makers,” she’d said. “And we will have to fight them.”

“You mean I will?”

“We will.”

But her mother had left without any advice, direction, or sympathy for what was to come. Simone knew why: Her mother believed the threshold that Simone had to cross had to be done alone, with no guidance, otherwise it would not work.

You want independence, she thought. I’ll show you.

Simone started by kicking off her baggy pants. She examined herself in the mirror in only her bra and panties. Damn, she hated the fact she looked just like her mother, and now with the shorter hair, they were nearly identical: medium height, solid athletic build with firm breasts, enough of a curve in the waist to suggest hips, and enough ass she knew boys always looked when she wore shorts. She stood on her toes and checked out her backside. Yep, that’s why they always looked. She was happiest with the shape of her legs: lean, solid, strong. She sniffed under her arms and didn’t smell bad enough for a shower.

A few powders here, a few shots of perfume there, and she threw on her favorite little black dress. She had a pair of pumps she loved, but never wore, and put these on.

She smiled at herself and went fishing for some lipstick. She had that on in under a minute. She ruffled her short hair so that it stuck out at all angles and gave herself a delicious smile she knew confused most guys.

Perfect.

She picked up her tablet and sent Hutto a direct message:
I need to talk to you, now. Meet me out back by the swing sets.

* * *

The swing sets were at the end of a short, winding path of mulch behind the dorms. They were hidden in shadows formed under a few hickories. Their creaking branches blew in the night wind, causing enough sound to muffle any noise. Hutto came creeping down the trail but paused when he saw Simone. She said she wanted to meet him and that it was urgent. What else could he do but hurry?

“Surprise surprise,” he said when her swing brought her into the moonlight. “You cut your hair … and you look hot.”

“I hate my mom.”

Hutto laughed. “You’ve got issues, I guess.”

“You have no idea.”

“What’s with the dress and heels?”

She kept kicking, each time her legs flashing in the moonlight. She saw him staring. “You like them?”

Hutto laughed, and she laughed with him. Soon, he was swinging as well, each time noticing those amazing legs of hers.

“What’s your story?” she asked.

“Me?” he replied, acting interested in the conversation. “I got sent here because I messed up, just like you—”

“I got sent here because my mom has big plans for me. Oh, and that thing at Ellington.”

“What did you do?”

“Knocked down a well … telekinetically. What did you do to get here?”

Hutto didn’t want to talk about the kid he’d accidentally killed when he’d lost control. But the kid had been coming to his father’s fight club, acting all tough. And the sparring match wasn’t meant to be that intense, but the kid kept mouthing off and saying all sorts of bullcrap, and Hutto had had enough of it, and when they’d finally started, Hutto lost control in front of everyone, even his mom ... and the boy ended up dead, and there was a mix-up, and the medical personnel shipped him to the wrong hospital, one for regular people with no Rejuv Facility, and he wasn’t packed in ice or tanked in the critical first twenty-four hours, and he died.

“We were talking about you,” he said. “You did that with your mind?”

She saw his unwillingness to continue. “More complicated than yet, but yes. I had a really bad day one day,” she said, still swinging. “The guy I was dating was being a jerk, a big one, and I was in PE playing basketball, except I hate basketball. Our coach kept telling me to dribble. The entire time I was moving through my psy-katas in my mind—”

“Katas like in martial arts?”

“No,” she said, realizing he had no idea what she meant. “It’s more like modern dance ... or break-dancing. They’re movements that unlock the Protocols in Cyberspace.”

“The what?”

“They’re just odd-looking.”

“Okay.”

“I was trying to ignore my coach and thoughts of my boyfriend, and then I just said ’screw it’ and began my psy-kata dance right there on the basketball court. Coach saw me poppin’ like a robot on speed, freaked out, and sent everyone to the showers but me. When she started lecturing me on the benefits of physical activity, I lost it. I told her, ‘You better start running because I’m going to bring this building down,’ except by then my voice had changed and my lords were emerging. I took out the north wall, and most of the ceiling, and all the interior offices on the other side. No one was hurt, thank god, but I didn’t care at that time. I was happy with myself when it was over, but my mother, well, she said it was time I grew up and sent me to Sterling. Those plans of hers are for me.”

“And for us?”

“Looks like it.”

He waited to see what she was hinting at, but she didn’t explain. She kept swinging and giving him tantalizing views of her legs. Hutto tried not to stare, but he was sixteen years old and full of testosterone and jerking off about three times a day. He couldn’t help it if girls threw themselves at him. His actual last
girlfriend
had been a woman promoter in the fight game who he’d thought of as his girlfriend but who flew him to New York City just for sex. His father had thought he was going up there to train with his brother, Nisson. The woman stole his virginity two years ago. It was illegal, and he could fry her for it, but she was so damn cool, and hot. Things got weird and she said goodbye. Hutto missed the guilt-free sex, that’s for sure. Most girls his age weren’t that easy.

“You look tired,” Hutto said. “I’m pretty good at massages. Let me see your legs.”

She stopped swinging and looked at him with the sort of smile he could usually read. But this one seemed more aggressive than he expected.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing.” She put her right leg on his knee and twisted the metal chains to face him. “You’ve never met a girl like me.”

“Like you?” He smirked. “After what I saw tonight, I agree.” She kicked him, hard enough for him to catch her ankle, and remove her pump. “What?”

“What you saw tonight was me taking it from my mother. She humiliated me on purpose.”

“Why?”

She moved her leg so he could rub her foot. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Looks like it does to you.” She relaxed, just a little. “You’ve got great muscle tone.”

“What a charmer,” she said. He started to move his hand up her leg. “Not so far, buddy.”

She acted like she might take her leg back. But she didn’t.

He tried to keep it on his knee and away from the raging hard-on in his pants, while at the same time feeling an indescribable urge to let her foot rub against him. She began talking again, but he only pretended to listen as a battle raged in his head.
Keep it on my knee versus let it touch my ... for just a second. Which one? The knee or ...
he almost gave in, but she pulled her foot back to his knee. He groaned a little and saw that she saw it and also saw her teeth flash. A smile, he thought. She’s enjoying this, the little tease.