Vicarious (7 page)

I attack again—a fist to the chin, a side arm to the gut. “Is there something specific on your mind?”

Gideon blocks both punches. “I just don't want you to get hurt.”

I pause a split second to ponder the irony of that and end up on the ground.

When the hour is up, it is Gideon lying on his back half outside the chalk square and I'm standing over him. A smile plays at his lips as he allows me to help him back to his feet. We bow to each other, remove our headgear, and then descend the stairs back to the penthouse.

Gideon gestures toward a Tupperware container on the kitchen counter. Inside are two rolls of
gimbap,
vegetables and fish cake wrapped in rice and seaweed.

“You made breakfast already?” I ask, surprised. I usually end up rolling gimbap or preparing some other small meal for us.

“I woke up early,” Gideon says. “Unlike you.” He smiles to show me he's teasing. “So I assume last night went all right?”

“Things went mostly as planned.” There's no point in telling him about the gun going off. He'll see it soon enough and I'd prefer to delay any forthcoming lecture as long as possible. I wash and dry my hands and take the gimbap to the dining room table. I slip one of the quarter-sized pieces into my mouth as I take my usual seat. “Jesse has the flash drive with the downloaded information. Sorry—I forgot to get it from him.”

“Hmm. There's something different about the way you're saying his name.” Gideon's dark eyes cut into me like scalpels. I can almost feel him folding back layers, exposing secrets. Could he possibly know about what happened with Jesse in the kitchen? No—if he'd awakened, I would have heard him skulking around.

I swallow hard. “You're imagining things.”

“Good.” His smile is sharp and fleeting. “You have a long time for boys and dating. Better you finish your studies and learn to protect yourself first.” He settles into the chair across from me and helps himself to a piece of gimbap. “How are your new courses going?”

“Fine. I think I'll enjoy Physics and World Literature. Calculus might not be quite as interesting, but I see no reason why I won't be able to get an A in every class as long as I work hard.”

“Excellent. You make me proud.”

I lower my eyes. Gideon is thirty years old, only twelve years my senior, but the closest thing I have ever had to a father. My real father left before I was born, or at least I assume he did.

I remember only my mother and Rose. One day when I was two or three, my mother woke us early and bundled us into our best clothes. She carried a basket with both hands, water and food for the journey. Rose walked beside her, her right hand wrapped tightly around my left one. We walked for hours and then took a train to the city. The ride stretched into eternity. The car was crowded with passengers—old leathery men with gnarled fingers and yellowing nails, school kids in their navy uniforms, mothers holding white-wrapped screaming babies. I was tired and hungry, but each time I reached for the basket of food, my mother slapped my hand away.

The mountains became rolling plains dotted with trees. Then Seoul rose up without warning, clusters of shacks bleeding into skyscrapers of metal and glass. Shortly after we disembarked, my mother stopped in front of a building and told us to wait on the steps for her. She disappeared into the lobby and never came back out. The building turned out to be the Singing Crane Orphanage. Staff members found us later and brought us inside.

When I was younger, I used to fantasize about why she left us there. I let myself believe she was a spy or a secret princess, that she abandoned us for our own protection and would come back for us once it was safe.

But now I know the reality is probably much simpler. She was too poor, too alone. She couldn't take care of us anymore.

I eat another piece of gimbap.

Gideon goes to brew some tea, but then his phone rings. His jaw tenses as he listens to someone on the other end. “She's with me,” he says. “We'll be right there.”

“What is it?” I can tell by the sound of his voice that something bad has happened. I grip the corner of the table to steady myself.

“That was Sebastian. We need to go down to Escape.”

Sebastian “Baz” Faber is Gideon's head of security. When he's not at Gideon's side, he works out of an office in the club. “Why? What happened?”

Gideon's hands tremble a little as he slips his phone into his pocket. “There's been a break-in.”

*   *   *

Baz
peers out through the clear glass of Escape's front door. He's former military like Jesse, but he looks more like a stockbroker in his immaculately pressed dark suit. His bronze skin has paled slightly to match his slicked-back blond hair.

A wiry, dark-skinned man wearing thick glasses hurries over to us—Adebayo, the club manager. “Thank goodness you have arrived,” he says in his clipped Nigerian accent.

“What happened?” Gideon pulls a lighter and a tin of clove cigarettes from his pocket.

Adebayo wrings his hands, sweat beginning to bead on his high forehead. “I cannot believe it. Our security is more than adequate. The odds are astronomical. If you calculate all the permutations of the recent burglaries in the area…” He trails off when he sees that all of us are staring at him. He used to be a statistics professor at a local university until he lost his tenure for taking bets on a school athletic event. Even though that was years ago, he still thinks obsessively of things in terms of their odds.

Baz gestures toward the back of the club with one of his meaty arms. “You guys need to see this.”

We follow him across the main floor, past a row of vintage arcade games and the card tables where the college kids role-play. A narrow corridor at the back of the club leads to the ViSE rooms, where customers can enjoy their favorite recordings in complete darkness and silence.

And then there's the back office, which has been trashed.

I step into the room and survey the carnage. The file cabinet lies on its side, sheaves of paper splayed out across the floor. The desk drawers have been ripped from the desk and emptied across the long counter that runs along the back of the room. The cabinet where we keep the ViSEs, headsets, and neural editor has been stripped of its contents, one wooden door hanging askew on its hinges.

Jesse appears in the doorway, the flash drive from last night in his hand. “Hey,” he says. His jaw drops. “What the hell?”

“Break-in,” Gideon says. He steps forward and takes the flash drive from Jesse's outstretched hand.

“They took everything,” I say.

“Everything but the cash.” Baz gestures at the safe in the corner of the room. It appears to be undisturbed. “But it gets worse.” He holds up a small envelope with two words written on the outside:
Who's next?
“No fingerprints on it. Or on this.” He folds open the flap and a silver necklace falls out—a rose pendant. My sister's rose pendant.

But there's something else in the envelope too. A small blue memory card. A ViSE.

“I truly hope it is a forgery.” Adebayo pushes his glasses up on his nose.

“What is it?” Gideon asks. He exhales a long stream of sweet smoke.

Baz hands the memory card to Gideon. “It's Rose,” he says grimly.

 

CHAPTER 8

I grab
for the card, but Baz pulls his arm away. “Gid needs to play it first.”

“Why? She's
my
sister.” The destruction swirls in my peripheral vision, the mess of papers, the cabinet door hanging open.

Gideon exhales another ribbon of smoke. He looks back and forth from Adebayo to Baz. “I assume someone has a headset available?”

Adebayo pulls a collapsed headset from his back pocket and hands it to Gideon, who unfolds it and inserts the memory card. Adjusting the headset to fit, he settles into the desk chair and lets his eyes fall closed. After only a few seconds, he plucks the cigarette from his mouth and grinds it out on the wooden desk.

“Terrible,” Adebayo says. “How could something like this happen?” He laces and unlaces his fingers as he looks at me. “Such a beautiful young girl, your sister.”

“What
is
it?” I whisper, not wanting to cause overlay for Gideon. “Is she all right?” I look from Jesse to Baz to Adebayo to Gideon, my panic growing as I consider each worried expression.

Gideon raises one index finger to his lips and I fall silent. All I can do is watch him vise … and wait. At one point his face contorts; at another he furrows his brow. But he doesn't speak. The red numbers of the desk clock creep upward. One minute. Two minutes. Five minutes. Five lifetimes.

Suddenly Gideon opens his eyes and blinks rapidly, as if he's not quite sure what happened. Then he removes the recording from the headset and stares at it for a moment, his jaw tightening in concentration. “Who has a tablet?” he asks. “I need to verify something.” I reach out for the ViSE, but he shakes his head. “You don't want to play this, Winter.”

“Yes I do,” I say, even though when Gideon and I disagree, he always ends up being right. He doesn't answer. Instead he takes the tablet computer Baz hands him and inserts the memory card into a micro slot on the side. The room goes quiet as we all stare at him.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

Gideon taps at the screen and watches a stream of ones and zeros scroll past. “Hoping this isn't real.” He taps again and the numbers convert to letters. It's all meaningless to me. I try to glean information from his expression, but his face remains neutral as he works.

“Oppa!” I say a bit forcefully. “What is it? What is on that recording?”

He swipes at the screen and the tablet goes dark. “I need to speak to Winter for a moment.”

Baz, Adebayo, and Jesse head for the door.

“Jesse. Stay,” Gideon says. Jesse turns and leans against the wall, his hands jammed in the center pocket of his hoodie. He looks like he'd rather be anywhere but here. Gideon gestures at the chair next to him. “Winter. Sit, please.”

I want to refuse. There is too much energy coursing through me to be still. But something in the sound of his voice makes me obey. I lower myself into the chair next to his. “Just tell me,” I say, trying to sound brave.

Gideon's face is ashen. “I'm sorry. Your sister is dead.”

“What?” I shriek. “No. I saw her yesterday. She can't be. I don't believe you.”

Gideon removes the memory card from the tablet. “I can tell by the neural sequences on this recording,” he says softly. His eyes are wet.

I've never seen Gideon cry.

Never.

“She can't be dead. I would know.” I hold out my palm. “Give me that. I need to see what you're talking about. I would feel something if she were gone, right? I would
feel
something.”

Gideon blots his eyes on the sleeve of his dobok. He breathes in and out slowly, his gaze locked onto mine like we are the only two people in the world. “Are you certain you want to play this? It's the kind of thing you might not be able to unremember.”

No, I'm not certain. I am highly uncertain. In fact, I know I don't want to play it. I just want to rewind back to yesterday when Rose was leaving the apartment, tell her not to go or go along with her.

“I have to,” I whisper. I have to because I know my sister isn't dead. If I play this recording, I can fix things. I can point out how it's all a mistake. A misunderstanding. Some sort of horrible lie.

“All right.” Gideon slips the memory card back into the headset and hands it to me. He turns to Jesse. “Do not leave her side. I'm going to find Sebastian so we can review the security videos. I'll be back.” He strides from the room.

I slip the headset on and adjust the prongs to fit, painfully aware of Jesse staring at me. “I'm going to a ViSE room,” I mutter. “I can't concentrate here.”

“I'm coming with you,” Jesse says.

“Fine.” There's no point in trying to object. Gideon told him to watch me and Jesse is as loyal as I am. Gideon probably saved him too, pulled him out of some miserable post-military existence and gave him a chance to feel human again.

I retrace my steps down the corridor and enter one of the small, dark rooms. I slide into what looks like a dentist's chair and recline the head until I'm comfortable. Jesse pulls the door shut behind him, plunging us into total darkness. It's like someone lowered the lid of a coffin—complete sensory deprivation.

I hit the
PLAY
button on the headset.

I'm sitting in a hard-backed desk chair in what looks like a hotel room. Textured white walls. Heavy gray curtains. A crack in the plaster runs from the floor to the ceiling. A queen-size bed takes up half the room.

A shudder moves through me, independent of the ViSE. I have known many rooms like this.

“I'm here, Winter,” Jesse says. I don't answer. Pain plays at the edges of my consciousness. I have to focus on the recorded world, not my own.

There's a girl tucked partially beneath the navy and gold coverlet, a girl with a shiny blond wig that sits crooked on her head. She's wearing a red dress adorned with sequins and lace.

I will it not to be Rose. Her dress had fringe. This can't be her.

I rise from the chair and move closer to the girl.

It's unmistakably Rose
.
Either I'm remembering her dress wrong or she must have changed clothes at some point.

A masked figure stands over her motionless body. He strokes her forehead with one gloved hand, pushing tendrils of her blond wig back from her face.

As I steel myself for what I might see next, I try to decipher information about the body I'm inhabiting. I'm fairly certain the recorder is a man. My face feels hot and tight like he's wearing a mask. The glimpses I've caught of his clothing are unhelpful. Black pants. Black gloves. He could be anyone. My stomach churns as I balance the dual realities.