Skinned (21 page)

“To what?” I spat out. But I knew. To him. To grabbing him again. To his body. To our bodies, together.

To
feeling.

I took another step back.

“To letting go,” he said. I couldn’t believe he was back to that, spewing his bullshit, like I was a dutiful member of his flock. “I told you, it’s the key to accepting what you are—”

“Spare me.” I hated him. This wasn’t about me, I realized. Not for him. This wasn’t about need, about raw
want
. Not for the high and mighty Jude, who’d risen oh so far above all those nasty org instincts. This was just about his stupid campaign. His pathetic philosophy. This was just about him being right. About me being wrong.

“Don’t do this,” he said again, closing his hands over mine. But I was done.

“Go.” I felt as cold as I sounded.

“You don’t want that.”

I met his eyes. They were, as always, unreadable. Like mine. “You. Don’t. Know. What. I. Want.” Nice and slow, so he would understand.

“Maybe not.” Jude shook his head. “But neither do you.” He pressed something into my palm—the sharp-edged cube, the one he’d called a dream. “Not yet.”

I looked down at the tiny black box, turning it over and over in my hands.

When I looked up again, he was gone.

I’m not stupid.

I wasn’t stupid then, either.

I didn’t trust him. I didn’t trust his little black box or his mysterious “program” or his unshakable convictions. Least of all those.

On the other hand, I didn’t have much to lose. And I had too much I wanted to forget.

I uploaded the program.

There was a brief burst of flickering light, then nothing.

For several long minutes, nothing.

Then the world started to glow.

Pain first. Pain everywhere. Nowhere. I was nowhere. It burned. I burned. Pain like the fire, pain like the flames peeling away my skin. Hot, searing hot. Then cold, like ice. Steel.

I was standing. I was spinning. I was lying on my back. I floated in the sky. Stars shot from my fingertips. Trees bowed at my feet. I was leaping off a cliff, I was in the water, in a whirlpool, sucked below. I was drowning. I was flying.

I was in the black. But the colors shimmered. They exploded from the dark.
I
was color. I was light. I pulsed green, I sang out purple, I screamed red. I cried blue. The monsters swarmed out of the deep. Spider tentacles and red eyes, and they wanted me to die, and I wanted to die, and I was death, black and empty, bottomless, null.

I would destroy them. I would destroy them all.

It began at the center of me, at the center of it all, small and warm and glowing, a sun, and it swelled. It grew. I tingled with its warmth. There were no words, not for this. This was beyond words. This was cool grass brushing a bare neck. This was dark-chocolate ice cream melting on a tongue. This was his body, heavy on mine, his breath in my mouth, his skin on my skin. It was everything, it was life.

It was over.

Nothing was left but an absence. And his voice, which I understood, as I came back to myself, was only in my head.

“If you’re listening to this, I suppose that means I was right. You’re welcome.”

I was lying on my back. I didn’t know how I’d gotten there. The sky looked close enough to touch, but I knew that was just the heavy, gray clouds. I reached out anyway. Nothing but air.

“You’ve just experienced an electrical jolt to your limbic system—or at least, the circuitry that mimics an organic limbic system. It overwhelmed all the mood-simulating safeguards, cycling through a random series of preprogrammed emotional stimuli. Take the most intense b-mod you’ve ever experienced, multiply it by a thousand, and—Well, I guess now you know what happens.”

I closed my eyes. I felt like I had a headache, but that wasn’t possible. I didn’t get headaches, not anymore. Still, something felt swollen and tender. Fragile. Fuzzy. I wanted the voice to stop.

“Direct stimulation of the cortex is the best way to simulate intense emotion and sensation in mechs. It supplies you with the somatic responses you miss while conscious, all those nasty animal responses to emotion. Some say it makes you feel like an org again.”

I had never felt so empty. I wanted it back, all of it. I needed it. I wanted to live in that world of darkness and light, where I had been frightened. Angry. Happy. I had been alive there, and I wanted to return. I wanted to stay.

“
I
say it’s better than the orgs will ever know. And admit it or not, you agree.”

I wanted him to shut up. I wanted him to keep going. I wanted him to come back, I wanted a body to match the voice, hands and shoulders and neck and lips. I hated myself for wanting it.

“See you soon.”

W
hat’s this for?” Auden asked when I gave him the box wrapped in silver foil. He’d been avoiding me for days, but I finally cornered him at lunch. He’d found himself another secluded corner to hide in, far away from mine.

“I just wanted to,” I said, feeling a little awkward. I couldn’t say I was sorry, not really, because then we would have had to get into what I was sorry for. And neither of us wanted to touch that because we both knew: I was sorry for not wanting him the way he wanted me. But that meant I couldn’t tell him the other part of the truth, that I needed him. It didn’t matter if he was an org and I was a mech; it didn’t matter what Jude thought. Jude who was like me, but didn’t understand me at all. Who knew nothing.

Auden opened the box. He pulled out a gray bag with a smart-strap that would heat up whenever a new message came in. The front flap had a full-size screen and the back doubled as a pocket and a keyboard, perfect—as the pop-up had said—for the stylish guy who needs to link on the go. Not that Auden was stylish, or did much of anything on the go, but it looked good. Definitely better than the ragged green sack he toted around everywhere.
I
might not have been cool anymore, but my taste still was.

He looked confused.

“Thought you could use a new one,” I said.

Auden didn’t take it out of the box. “You shouldn’t have.”

“I wanted to,” I said again.

“Really, you shouldn’t have.” He sighed, and finally picked up the bag, flipping it open and glancing inside before placing it back in the box. He didn’t even notice the smart-strap much less the board and the screen. “But thanks, I guess.”

It looked like the symbolic approach wasn’t working. Did he not get that I was trying to spare him even more embarrassment? Shouldn’t he be
grateful
?

Especially since, when you think about it,
he
was the one who should have been apologizing. I wasn’t the one making unreasonable demands or throwing a temper tantrum when I didn’t get what I wanted.

But I’d lost the moral high ground when I’d given in to Jude. Even if Auden didn’t know—could
never
know—I knew.

“I’m sorry about before,” I said. If he really wanted to talk about it, then fine. We’d talk.

“You don’t have to—”

“I wish it hadn’t happened.”

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” he said.

“No, I’m glad you did.” Lie. “We should be honest with each other.” Lie number two. “And what I said? About wishing I could go back to the way things were before? I can’t…I can’t take that back. But, Auden, you have to know, you’re the only good thing that’s happened to me since the accident. The
only
thing.” Truth.

Except for yesterday,
some rebellious part of my brain pointed out.
Except for Jude. Except for what he did. And what he gave me.
But that was nothing. That was already forgotten.

Lie number three.

“You don’t have to say that,” Auden said.

“I do.” I smiled nervously. “Are we okay? I really need us to be okay.”

“Me too,” he said, and gave me a tight hug.

Now or never, I decided. “So, now that we’re friends again…any chance you want to do me a favor?”

Auden let go, laughing. “Now I get it. That wasn’t a gift, it was a bribe.”

“No! Well…maybe a little.”

He sighed. “What do you need?”

“Jude and the rest of them are going out again tonight.” I winced at the expression on his face, stranded somewhere between suspicion and disgust. “I want to go. I thought maybe you’d come with me.”

“Back to the waterfall? Are you crazy?”

I shook my head. “They’re doing something else tonight. I don’t know what. It’s some kind of big secret.”

“Maybe you didn’t hear me the first time: Are you crazy?”

“You’re the one who talked me into going last time,” I pointed out. “Remember all that stuff about facing up to my fears, meeting people who were like me and could understand what I’m going through?”

“Remember how it turned out that Jude was an asshole and all his little followers were daredevil nut jobs who thought killing themselves might be a fun way to pass the time?”

“They weren’t trying to kill themselves,” I said.

“They were doing a pretty good imitation of it.”

“Auden, you know it’s different for us.”

“
Us?
Since when—”

“You know what I mean,” I snapped. “It wasn’t that dangerous. They were just having fun.”

“Exactly. What kind of person thinks that’s fun?” He scowled. “A seriously messed-up person. Or a person who can’t think for himself.”

“Or maybe a person who’s not a person at all. Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“No!” Auden sighed. “You know I don’t think that way about you. I just don’t get why you’d want to go back. What’s the point?”

I wasn’t sure why I wanted to go back.

It wasn’t because I wanted another dose of whatever Jude had to give me. I’d promised myself it wasn’t because of that.

“They’re trying to test their limits,” I told him, “and to explore the possibilities of this thing. To enjoy it a little. Is that so bad?”

“When did you start talking like that?” he asked.

“Like what?”

“Like…I don’t know. Like
him
.”

“Look, if you don’t want to go with me, I’ll go by myself,” I said, annoyed. “No big deal.”

“It is a big deal,” he said. “Whatever they’re doing, I’m sure it’ll be dangerous. And stupid. I’m not letting you go by yourself.”

“I don’t need you to protect me,” I said, even though that’s exactly what I’d asked of him—and I’d asked knowing he would never be able to say no.

“Too bad. That’s what you’ve got.”

“What’s the point?” Auden asked.

“Because we
can
,” Jude said. “Because why not?”

Auden pulled me away from the group. He was still carrying his hideous green bag. “This is a bad idea.”

“You’re the one always talking about the people stuck living in the cities,” I said. “Don’t you actually want to
see
one?”

“Not like this,” he mumbled. “Not by ourselves. At
night.
” But I knew I had him.

There were ten of us, including me and Auden. Again, no one had wanted him to come along, but I’d insisted, and Jude had gone along with it. As before, everyone else went along with Jude.

“You can leave, if you want,” I offered, and I was almost hoping he would take me up on it. I wanted him there, I did. But even I knew he didn’t belong.

Auden shook his head. “You know the city people; they hate mechs more than anyone,” he said. “Most of them die before they hit forty, and you’re going to live forever. You really think that’s a good combination?”

“I think Lia trusts me,” Jude said, appearing behind us and resting his hand on my shoulder. I shook it off. “Maybe you should give her a little more credit.”

I glared at him. “Don’t touch me.”

He just smiled. “I’ll give you two a minute,” he said. “We’re leaving in five. Stay or go.”

Once he was gone, Auden gave me a weird look. “What was that?”

“What?”

“The two of you.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” He headed back toward the group of mechs waiting for their field trip to begin. “Let’s just go.”

We took two cars. Jude and Auden sat in the front seat of ours, not talking. I squeezed into the back with Quinn and some guy whose name I didn’t hear the first time—and didn’t get much chance to ask a second time, since he spent most of the ride with his tongue down Quinn’s throat. I looked out the window.

The skyline carved dark, jagged chunks out of the sky. The car sped along swooping bands of concrete, a purposeless, unending sculpture of roads that dipped over and under one another, splitting, merging, crisscrossing; so much space and all of it empty. Even without the curfew no one would be stupid enough to enter a city at night. And no one who lived there had a car. That would have guzzled too much fuel; that would have made it too easy to get out.

We parked on a narrow street. Without a word Quinn and the other mech began collecting armfuls of debris from the gutter while Jude pulled a stained beige tarp from the trunk and draped it over the car. The gutter trash went on top.

“Best way to keep it safe,” Jude explained. Across the street the passengers of the second car were doing the same.

It was eerily quiet. The dark buildings shot up on all sides, and I reminded myself that at least some of them were full of people, staying warm, staying dry, staying off the streets after curfew. But everything was so still and empty, it was hard to imagine that anyone was alive here. The group moved stealthily, stepping lightly, staying clustered in a pack. Only Auden breathed.

“What now?” I whispered.

“We look around,” Jude said. “And we try not to get caught.”

Caught by who?
I wanted to ask. But I didn’t really want an answer.

This city had been lucky. No major bombings, so no radioactive debris. Too far east for the Water Wars, too far north for the flooding. They’d gotten hit by the Comstock flu strain, but no worse than any of the other population centers, and in the last bio-attack, before the cities cleared out for good, they’d lost less than a million.

They’d been lucky.

Not lucky enough for anyone to stay, at least voluntarily, but that much was true for all the cities. Who would be crazy enough to stick around an energy-poor, germ-ridden death trap if they had enough credit to get the hell out?

We wandered down the broad, empty avenues, flashlight beams playing across the pavement. I tried to imagine what it would be like to live in a place where the lights went off two hours after sunset, where you could only link in once a day if you were lucky enough to find a screen that worked, where the punishment for energy theft was death.

I couldn’t.

There wasn’t enough to go around, I reminded myself. Of anything. There wasn’t enough energy for everyone to stay wired all day, every day. There wasn’t enough fuel or enough road for everyone to own cars. There weren’t enough cows—at least not enough free-range, grass-fed cows, now that you weren’t allowed to raise anything else—for everyone to eat meat. There wasn’t enough space for everyone to have a kid. Either we would all have to suffer—or some would have to sacrifice.

I was just glad it was them and not me.

I was also glad my power cells were fully loaded. There was no wireless web of energy here, and if something happened, if I somehow got left behind, there would be nowhere to recharge. After a few days I would just…fade out.

“Those used to light up,” Auden whispered in my ear, pointing at the thick, empty screens papered across almost every building. “Like giant pop-ups. Telling people what to buy.”

“What a waste of energy,” I whispered back. Maybe these people deserved to live in the dark.

Our feet crunched with every step. Crushed glass, I decided, as we passed broken window after broken window. Everything here was broken.

I wanted to go home.

A distant howl cut through the silence.

“What was that?” I whispered, freezing in place.

“Just a dog.” Jude didn’t bother to whisper. “Fighting it out for who gets to run the place. Like the rats and the roaches haven’t already won.” He turned sharply to the right, leading us down another wide avenue, its gutters flowing with trash. Auden was breathing shallowly and, for the first time, it occurred to me how the place must stink, with its mounds of garbage heaped on urine-stained pavement. “This way.”

Two blocks later we heard the scream. High-pitched, piercing, it went on and on and—it stopped. It didn’t fade away. It just stopped.

That was no dog.

We went deeper into the city, and I tried not to wonder how we would find our way out.

Jude stopped short in front of a building so tall it blotted out most of the sky. “Last stop for orgs,” he said, staring at Auden.

Auden glared back. “Meaning?”

“Building’s locked down, and all those biosensors…” Jude smirked. “You don’t want to start panting and get us caught, now do you?”

“I’m supposed to wait out here while you…do what, exactly?”

“Just taking a look around. We’ll be back before you get too scared.”

“I’m not scared,” Auden said fiercely.

Jude shrugged. “Great. Then you don’t mind if we—”

“You’re not going with them?” Auden half-said, half-asked, grabbing my arm.

I paused. “I don’t have to. I can wait down here with you…if you want.” I knew I should stay.

But I didn’t want to.

“No.” Auden closed his eyes for a moment. “You’re the one who wanted to do this. So you should do it. All the way.”

Jude chuckled softly. “Funny, she never struck me as an all-the-way kind of girl.”

I ignored him.

“You sure?” I asked Auden.

“Yeah. Go.” He gave me a weak smile. “Be careful.”

“You too.”

Jude and one of the other guys, the tall, brooding one named Riley, bashed open one of the doors, and we crept inside. It was even darker in there, a broad space smudged with shadows. A screen glinted in the beam of someone’s flashlight, and then another and another. This is where the city people came to link in, I realized. It explained why the building was locked down. It didn’t explain what we were doing there.

Jude led us to a bank of elevators, and we waited as Riley pried open a control panel and dug his hands into the mess of wiring.

“Isn’t the electricity shut off?” I asked.

“They keep it running low-level in this building,” Jude said. “For the hardware. Easy to tap into if you know what you’re doing.”

“And he knows what he’s doing?” I said, nodding toward Riley.

“He knows a lot of things. You don’t hear any alarms going, do you?”

I shook my head.

“Thank Riley.”