Skinned (29 page)

I turned my back on him, watching the clouds stream by the windows. Even now there was something disconcerting about being up in the air without a pilot. Self-navigating cars were the norm—these days, only control freaks drove themselves—but the self-piloting planes were fresh on the market, powered by some new smarttech that, according to the pop-ups, was the world’s first true artificial intelligence. Unlike the smartcars, smartfridges, smarttoilets, smarteverything we were used to, the new tech could respond to unforeseen circumstances, could experiment, could
learn
. It could, theoretically, shuttle passengers at seven hundred miles an hour from point A to point B without breaking a sweat. It just couldn’t smile and reassure you that if a bird accidentally flew into the engine, it would know what to do.

Not that there were many birds anymore.

Especially where most of the AI planes were destined to fly, the poison air of the eastern war zones. This was military tech; action at distance was the only way to win without having to fight. Thinking planes, thinking tanks, thinking landcrawlers equipped with baby nukes saved orgs from having to think for themselves. Saved them from having to die for themselves. Not many had credit to spare to snatch up a smartplane of their own for peacetime purposes—but as far as Quinn was concerned, no luxury was too luxurious, especially when Jude was the one placing the request.

The ground was hidden beneath a thick layer of fog, and it was tempting to imagine it had disappeared. “Flying’s getting old,” I said, keeping my back to Jude.

“For you maybe.”

“We need to find something better.” More dangerous, I meant. Wilder, faster, steeper.
Bigger
.

“You want better?” He slipped a small, hard cube into my palm. “For later.”

“You know I don’t do that crap.” But I closed my fingers around it.

“For later,” he said again. So smug.

I just kept staring out the window, wondering what it would feel like if the plane crashed. How long would we stay conscious, our mangled bodies melting into the burnt fuselage? Would we be aware as fuel leaked from the wreckage, lit by a stray spark? What would it feel like at the moment of explosion, our brains and bodies blasted into a million pieces?

I would never know. The moment this brain burst into fire, someone at BioMax would set to work retrieving my stored memories, downloading them into a newly made body, waking me up to yet another new life. That “me” would remember everything up to my last backup and nothing more. No flying, no crashing, no explosion.

For the best, I decided. Maybe when it came to dying, once was enough.