The Body Electric - Special Edition (12 page)

twenty

I slam my palm on the screen, pausing it. My legs give out and I sprawl on the cold, dusty floor, my chest heaving.

I don’t want to believe this is true.

I examine the digi strip, but it’s secure and sealed—it can’t have been tampered with. And Akilah would never fake her death, not like this.

The evidence is right here in front of me, but it’s impossible. There have been no reports of her death.

But the image of her body, torn apart by bombs, is burned into my retinas.

And… I
just
spoke to her. Not that long ago. She’s fine. She’s fine, she’s fine, she can’t be dead.

With a shaking hand, I start the last vid stored on the digi strip. The date—with the official time stamp authenticating it—glows darkly. One week after Akilah’s death.

The image is of a military bunker of some sort. Cots line the building, and it appears as if the camera is propped up on a pillow, pointing to the center of the room. Jack and a few other men are talking to someone, but I cannot see the person’s face. Then the crowd shifts.

I gasp aloud, my heart stuttering.

Akilah walks before a group of military men. She stands straight and tall—on both her legs. She has no scars. No sign that she was injured, let alone killed.

The group of people are just far enough away that I can’t hear what anyone’s saying, just that it appears as if Akilah’s giving orders. I glance at her uniform. She now has six stars shining on her chest. A few weeks ago, she was barely an officer; now she’s nearly a general.

Jack breaks off from the group talking to Akilah and rushes to the camera and the cot it rests on. He does something I can’t see, but when he turns around, I notice a gold necklace in his hand. The fortune cookie necklace. I touch my own, warm from my body heat, and my fingers curl around the metal, squeezing it. Jack rushes back to Akilah and hands it to her.

The gold chain dangles through her fingers. She looks up at Jack, confused. Says something. I strain my ears, but there’s no sound this time other than muffled, indiscernible voices. Jack says something else, as if he’s trying to explain, but Akilah just shrugs as she leaves the group. The other men snap to attention, saluting Akilah, but Jack just stares at her as she passes a rubbish bin and drops the necklace in it.

The screen fades to black. It slips from my numb fingers.

“What does this mean?” I wonder aloud. That Akilah is dead… but she’s not? She’s fine—but different? She hasn’t seemed different. But she hasn’t said anything about dying, either.

There’s one sure way to find out. I stand up, tapping my fingers on my cuff. My eye and ear bots connect to the cuff, and soon a hologram of Akilah fills my vision.

“What’s wrong?” she asks immediately.

I wipe my face with my hands, feeling the grime smear against the tear tracks. “Akilah—you’re okay, right?”

She laughs—nervously, still worried about my obvious distress. “Yeah, of course I am. What happened? Is it your mother?”

I shake my head, swallowing down the fear and sorrow that had risen inside me. I give her a watery smile. “I was just… someone lied to me,” I say. “I’m sorry to bug you.”

Akilah grins at me. “No worries,” she says. She leans forward, reaching for something I can’t see.

“Akilah?” I ask, my voice hollow.

She freezes and leans slowly back, focusing her attention on me. “Yes?”

“Where’s your necklace?”

She stares at me, confused.

I reach up, tugging the silver chain of my fortune cookie locket out, swinging the charm toward her. “Where’s yours?” I demand.

Akilah touches her neck, but there’s nothing there but the collar of her shirt. “I… um…” Her mind’s racing, as if she has no idea what I’m talking about. I narrow my eyes at her. That necklace was the symbol of our friendship. She got special permission from her commanding officer to wear it under her uniform because she didn’t want to take it off, ever. And she didn’t even notice it was gone?

“I didn’t want to worry you,” Akilah says in a rush, as if she’s reading lines from a play. “It broke, but it should be fixed soon, and—”

“I have to go.” I sever the connection without another goodbye.

My mind’s reeling. My best friend would
never
just forget about our necklaces. Inside the fortune cookie locket is a small digi strip, one we made together. We both
swore
to never take it off.

It makes no sense that she doesn’t have it. But it also make no sense that she died, and came back as the kind of person who’d throw away the locket as if it means nothing.

“Jack?” I call, striding across the room. “This was
not
‘answers.’ You need to start speaking,
now
.”

I throw open the door to the room he said he’d wait for me in.

It’s empty.

“Son of a—” I mutter.

The window’s open, a warm breeze blowing. I race to it. It’s low and easy for me to hoist myself over the ledge and drop down on the street on the other side. I gaze around, trying to find Jack, but he’s long gone.

twenty-one

Great. I had one lead—one person directly connected to the terrorist attacks PA Young warned me were imminent. One. And instead of calling the police the second I saw him, I let myself be distracted by his lies and fall into a confusing world where nothing makes sense.

I need answers.

Jack’s idea of answers just led me to more questions. I can’t ask Mom; I can’t risk triggering an attack or making her upset. Ms. White knows as much as I do.

I need answers from the person pulling the strings.

A giant fountain rises up in the center of the plaza in front of Triumph Towers. Everything here—except the glittering steel-and-glass towers—is made of gray granite and marble imported from Italy—a stark contrast to the dusty brown limestone that nearly every other building in Malta is made of. And the water here, rather than the blue of the Mediterranean, is golden like honey. I’m not sure if the water’s been dyed, or if it’s just a clever trick of the light, reflecting the bronze base of the fountain up through the water.

I tilt my head back, scanning the roof of the tallest tower, wondering briefly if PA Young is up there, looking down at all of us.

If anyone can tell me what’s going on, it’s her. I’m just not sure how much I trust her. Jack’s digi strip was convincing—maybe there is something going on in that so-called Laboratory Facilities. And that’s government run—which means PA Young isn’t telling me everything.

But… how do you stride into the most secure building in the world and demand answers from the woman who runs the largest global government in history?

Auto-taxis from Mdina and Rabat crowd the corners of the streets, but no vehicles are allowed directly in front of the plaza—safety first. Nearly everyone in the plaza has their eyes glued to their wrists—some are on calls with others or going over their schedules or reviewing notes for the workday. The tourists are holding their wrists up, lining up photos on their cuffLINKs. The only people not staring at their cuffs or with silver eyes showing their nanobots are the security force. Dressed in all-black, the officers stand at attention, their eyes skimming the milling crowd for any trouble.

I twirl my own necklace through my fingers as I stand before Triumph Towers. Before, I had always looked at these buildings with a sort of patriotic pride—they’re gorgeous, skyscrapers that are both magnificently tall and also beautifully built. But now they seem ominous. Glittering in the sunlight, but still—ominous.

A piercing, high-pitched laugh echoes through the plaza, and I’m not the only one who spins around in the direction of the little girl in the neon-bright pink dress who’s half-hiding behind the statue at the base of one of the towers. An older man carrying two cups of a gelato lunges at the girl and she skitters away to her mother, laughing, before racing up to the man and snatching the chocolate gelato cup. I squint, but it’s not until the man turns and sits on the base of the statue beside his daughter that I realize who it is.

Representative Belles.

He looks so different here from when I saw him earlier, after the reverie. He seems lighter, somehow, as if he has no worries. The little girl in the bright dress doesn’t stop bouncing around and spinning as she eats her gelato, and the representative and his wife smile fondly at her. She tries to do a pirouette while balancing a huge dollop of gelato on the little shovel-like flat spoons the android vendors dole out, and chocolate plops down the front of her pink dress. She looks on the verge of tears until Representative Belles swoops down, whispering something in her ear and sending her into a gale of giggles.

The corners of my lips twitch up. The representative seems nice.

I hope he’s not a traitor.

I hear a small buzzing sound just before I feel a jab of pain in my hand. I smack my wrist automatically, and my palm comes away smeared with the guts of a fat bumblebee, the stinger embedded into my skin, already puffy and swelling.

“That looks like it hurts,” a voice says.

My stomach drops, and I swallow nervously as I lift my eyes.

And see Dad. Real Dad.
My
Dad.

I don’t know how I could have been tricked by the hologram tracker program earlier, even if for just a moment. It was nothing compared to Dad standing in front of me right now. He’s
real
. His hair moves in the gentle sea breeze, his chest rises and falls with each breath, a heartbeat thrums at the vein on his throat.

I leap up, throwing my arms around him. This is Dad. He’s warm and real and
here
.

“How… how?” I stammer, clutching the sides of his arms. “You… you’re
dead
.” I whisper the last word, dreading the sound of it on my lips.

“Ella,” he says, his voice trailing off. My name spoken in his voice is heaven; my heart leaps and I want nothing more than to live in this moment, me, holding onto Dad, real and in front of me and clearly, obviously, not dead.

“What happened?” I say. “Was it fake? Your death? Are you in hiding? Is that why you couldn’t come to me and Mom, why you disappeared? We thought you were dead, Dad, we thought—” My voice cracks, and words fade.

“Ella,” Dad says again, and something twists in my stomach, something sickening. A whisper of doubt rises in my mind, but I push it down, my fingers seizing against Dad’s linen jacket, holding him tight, keeping him here.

“What’s going on?” Tears are streaming down my face now. “You were dead, and now you’re not, and Akilah’s dead, and then she wasn’t.” A horrible fear enters my mind. “You’re not like her, are you? Do you remember me?” I giggle, a hysterical, bubbling sound. “Of course you remember me, you said my name. You’re real. You’re Dad.” I say the words for me as much as him.

I search his eyes. “You’re alive.” Saying the words makes me—finally—accept them as true. Nothing else matters. With Dad back, he can cure Mom. He can help me solve this terrorism problem. He can fix everything.

“Ella…”

“Please!” I cry, “Say something other than my name!”

“Ella.” Dad’s voice cuts through every other sound in the plaza. “Ella. You have to wake up.”

twenty-two

My eyes open blearily. I’m on a thin mattress in a small but richly decorated room that smells of musk and wood oil. I’m wearing all my clothes, even my shoes, but a knitted throw covers the lower half of my body.

For a while I just lay there, staring at the taupe wall with heavy wooden accents. My father was there in front of me.

But he wasn’t really.

I… I hallucinated. That’s the only answer. I know he’s dead—I know he’s dead, but seeing Representative Belles with his family while I was thinking about Dad…

…But it was so
real
.

I could
feel
him. Touch him. I heard him. He was
there
.

But he wasn’t.

It all happened in my mind.

I’m going crazy
. My stomach twists and I curl up in the fetal position. I did this to myself. Those extra nanobots I injected into my body so I could help Mom with her reverie, the ones that gave me the ability to go into other people’s reveries…