“As long as he shows me how he did that it.”
“Then don’t argue, Amichai. If you want to break into the black market, do it on your own time.”
“Whose side are you on?” I grumbled.
“The smart side.”
I missed the old Peaches, the one who cuddled with me on darkened rooftops. But I finally saw Peaches through Dare’s eyes: was she the crazy rave-dancer, the business broker, or the uncertain girl who sometimes shared secrets?
I wanted to believe the quiet, meaningful girl who’d kissed me was the real Peaches. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that the quiet girl was a luxury Peaches allowed herself once business was done – like a single chocolate at the end of a meal.
“You still haven’t Shrived for me, Damrosch,” Gumdrool said, shoving me ass-backwards onto the Shrive Point. “I need to ensure you’re clean enough for the LifeGuard to take you.”
Resigned, I put on the hood. From the inside, I could see the knife marks where Mr Fiore had carved a cross – presumably to make his Shriving more acceptable to Jesus.
I pushed the button. What is the longest your fingernails have been? What is the smell of rubbing alcohol? How many birds have you seen flying?
When the scan completed, we watched the five icons.
“It’s taking a long time,” Gumdrool said.
“That’s how long it always takes for him,” Dare replied. I whispered a silent thanks for covering for me – this was longer than even my last Shrive. “But Amichai always comes up Venal.”
The machine dinged, as if to contradict him. Dim amber illuminated a straight stick figure. Mortal.
I knew why. “Sins of the goddamned Flesh,” I muttered.
14: CONVERSATIONS WITH CRIMINALS
* * *
Dare and Peaches backed away from me.
“It’s a, a temporary thing.” Dare wiped his palms on his jeans. “Some folks, you know, have a Mortal stage. Like, uh, Great-Grandma Mi-Yong…”
“Who got kicked out of the family business,” Peaches said, giving me a look that said, I care for you, but I don’t think I can help you now.
“I’m still here, guys,” I said. They flinched. “I haven’t changed. It’s the voiding show, is all. The dead now associate me with a show about criminals. I’m subliminally tainted…”
Would that taint fade, in time? Even the hoariest swindlers at the Blackout Parties Shrived Venal. It took a lot to Shrive Mortal.
How will you help Izzy now? I thought.
“Aw, void it!” Gumdrool ripped the Shrive Point off the wall, aimed it at me – and then smashed it on the floor instead. The hood shattered, the scratched cross breaking apart.
“What the void?” Dare shrieked. “You’re damaging Mr Fiore’s property! We’re contractually obligated to keep everything functioning!”
“This is useless! How can I get into the LifeGuard if I’m–”
Then he seemed to think better of speaking plainly in front of someone Mortal.
“Wait, wait.” Peaches’ fingers clutched the air as if she could gather the shards of this plan back together. “It’s salvageable.”
“Mortals can’t get into the LifeGuard,” Gumdrool said, slumping onto the plastic couch. “It’s useless – useless…”
I sat down numbly. I’d just ruined Izzy’s whole life.
No, that’s Mom and Dad, I thought. They screwed her over by being too self-absorbed.
And you didn’t? a tiny voice shot back.
“Here’s how we fix it.” Peaches held up her hands, did a small pirouette to gather her thoughts. “You’re not just using Amichai as a security expert, Ian. You’re redeeming him.”
“Redeeming how?”
“I mean, isn’t that what you’ve been doing all along? Hunting for threats to the Upterlife. Your Junior LifeGuard experience is just the starting point – you’ve been secretly assembling a squadron of loyal citizens. And when you found this… this NeoChristian branch, you told Amichai this was his chance to turn his life around.”
“I told you,” Gumdrool wailed. “Mortals can’t get into the LifeGuard!”
“It’s a PR problem,” she said. “Amichai’s bad Shrive is about perception, so… we change the perception.”
“How?”
Her eyes clocked overtime as she got into the story. “A Mortal, using formerly illicit videomasking technology to hunt down Upterlife-hating terrorists! Led by… by… one of the best and brightest Junior members of the LifeGuard! You’re not just two boys, but a movement to redeem the lowliest of criminals! Drumgoole’s Squadron!”
“That’s the kind of story Mr Wickliffe would love…” Gumdrool said hesitantly.
“I’ve got connections in SEO news-seeders. The automated pickups love tales like this. Once this permeates the deadosphere, you’ll both be heroes.”
“But…” I said, knowing there was always a catch.
“You can’t call the the dead ‘ghosts,’ Amichai. Ever. That slur’s a soundbite disaster waiting to happen.”
“…And?”
“We have to get the LifeGuard actionable information, now,” she said, chewing her hair thoughtfully. “You guys have to be big damn heroes – otherwise, the story risks spinning as two kids stumbling across a terrorist cell. And we need more people involved, to feed the idea of this being a movement.”
“Great,” I said.
“Before Amichai’s Shrive, you could have gotten away with a couple of blurry video feeds. But now? You’ll need sentry locations. Maps. Blueprints.”
I followed her gaze over to Dare.
Dare was too busy picking pieces of broken Shrive hood off the floor. When the silence caught his attention, he dropped them, holding his hands in a timeout “T.”
“No.” Dare backed away. “No, no, no.”
“She’s right, dude,” I said. “We need blueprints. You can look at a building and intuit its layout.”
“Look, Amichai, it’s been fun helping you film stunts. But branch servers? That’s real danger.”
“We map and withdraw,” I protested. “I need to get there for Izzy, I’m not going to do anything crazy–”
“You know what branch zealots do when they get ahold of you, Chai? They torture you. For months. And once your brain’s reduced to a gibbering, unreliable wreck, that’s when they upload you.”
“That’s an urban legend,” Peaches said.
“And you –” Dare leveled a finger at his sister “– are not as smart as you think. I know my sister. She’s always overreaching, Amichai. You don’t want to be there when her plans collapse.”
“Dare,” I said, “Do it for Izzy. You just have to scout the perimeter, tell us where to send the troops in…”
He shook his head. “She’ll be fine, Amichai. Izzy’s always made you paranoid–”
“Paranoid?”
“Look, I get your parents left. It sucks. But just ’cause you need a guardian angel to keep you in line doesn’t mean… I mean, life’ll suck for Izzy, sure, but it sucks for everyone. I know you’re convinced she can’t get by without you, but…
“But you’re the one who’s broken, man. You got into this whole mess because you need to make Big Statements. Drop the histrionics. Carve coral for sixty years. Life’s for checking in and checking out.”
“And Izzy?” I asked. “Sixty years of self-hatred?”
He rolled his eyes. “She does her job, she’ll be OK. A couple hundred years in the Upterlife, that shit rolls right off.”
I wanted to slap Dare. He crapped his pants whenever his relatives rang. How dare he lecture me?
Peaches patted Dare on the shoulder. “When you’re right, you’re right. I’ll get you some plaster. Start fixing that wall.”
“I was just tidying up,” he said. “I don’t work here any more.”
“Sure you don’t.” Peaches gave him a good-natured eye roll. “You said it: we check in and check out. You’re Mortuary for life, kid. Did you really think you�
��d escape our relatives?”
Dare looked shocked. “What? You know I’ve got my architect application in.”
“…sixty long years getting nagged by our aunts and uncles, never sleeping because they’re waking you at three in the morning to fix the mortuary, wishing you could do anything they’d approve of…”
“I just told you, I’ve got my application in–”
“Get real, kid,” she snapped. “Half the world just died. Who the void needs new buildings?”
“But I’m talented. I do great work.” The words sounded plaintive, as if he was reciting someone else’s words from rote memory –
– and then I realized he was reciting me.
“Yeah,” she scoffed. “Let’s assume they want to train living kids to do something that nobody needs and the dead can do. That leaves, what… maybe three architecture slots a generation? If you had that kind of talent, don’t you think one of our grand-aunts would have encouraged you?”
“I’ve been making money selling my plans…”
“To nouveau-dead, still in love with the living. Once that fad passes, you’re back in the hands of our great-grandparents.”
“No. No. I’m better than that. I can get out of here!”
“I thought you were eager to live your boring life out to its end, brother. So what happens when you’re not special?”
He turned to me, lost. “Amichai. You’ve seen my plans. You told me they were beautiful…”
Peaches had set him up… leaving me to knock him down. And I’d like to tell you I did the right thing.
But he’d just told me to condemn Izzy to sixty years of hell.
“Dude.” I shook my head, pretending to be diplomatic. “You do good stuff… for a kid your age.”
Dare looked like I’d punched him. I’d always been the one who’d boosted him, and now I’d yanked him down. I felt sick.
I cleared my throat, starting to tell him that no, I’d lied, he was brilliant…
But if I reassured him, I’d lose Izzy. I needed this to work so I could protect Izzy, both here and in the Upterlife. And…
And wouldn’t the PR help Dare? He’d even asked me to plug him! The amateur architect who helped bust open a NeoChristian branch… that’d get customers lining up to buy his plans. This was a win-win for everyone.
So why did I feel sick?
“Come with us,” Peaches said, slipping her arm around her brother’s shoulder. “We’ll make you a hero.”
“We’re your only hope, Dare.” I crossed my arms and turned away – as if he needed me more than I needed him.
Gumdrool gave me an admiring nod. That was the worst.
“…all right,” Dare said. His shoulders slumped inwards, like a collapsing building. “Tell me what I need to do.”
“Come with us.” I took Dare’s hand, already trying to think up ways to make up for what I’d just done. But it was too late.
15: FEEDING MY SISTER’S LAST HOPE
* * *
I brought Izzy some plums from Central Farm. She bit into one hungrily.
“Why does fresh food always taste so good in the hospital?” she asked, wiping the juice off her chin.
“If they made hospital food taste good, everyone would stay.”
She polished off the plum. They’d worked her so hard in physical therapy today that she barely had the strength left to hold the fruit, so she dropped the pit onto the bedsheet and then craned her neck around to lick the juice off her fingers like a cat.
“So, uh, I guess Mom and Dad went back to adventuring,” I finally said.
“It was good to catch up with them. And they promised they’d check in more often.” She shrugged, exhausted. “We’ll see.”
“How can you…” I swallowed, not knowing who I was angrier at, them or her. “How can you stand their bullshit, Izzy? They always say they’ll be here for us, and they never are–”
“I don’t expect much from my family, Amichai. I just appreciate them when they’re around.”
She reached for another plum.
“…listen, Izzy,” I said. “I’m gonna be… out of town for a few days. I’ll be fine, but I’ve… I’ve got a lead on something that could really help us both.”
“Is it related to fixing your problems with Sins of the Flesh?”
Crap. “…maybe.”
“My superiors asked about you when I was in the LifeGuard academy, you know.”
I hadn’t known. I shrunk back into my chair in embarrassed silence. Izzy kept eating the plum carefully, chewing slowly as she considered her words.
“Yeah. My drill sergeant brought in the updates that Mr Beldon had sent her. They called me in for meetings, showed me videos. They asked me what I thought your punishment should be.”
“What’d you tell them?”
“I said that it wasn’t the living’s job to decide.” She finished off the plum, let that pit tumble out of her palm. “And that the dead were a far better judge of when you got out of control.”
“Oh, for…” I realized what she was getting at. “I didn’t Shrive Criminal, Izzy. I’d never have screwed up so badly that they’d send you in to investigate me…”
She scooped the pits up, dropped them into an overflowing trashcan. “Mortal is bad enough.”
“I wouldn’t normally be Mortal! It’s just, you appear on TV before billions, and it contaminates the dead’s opinions…”
“But you’re not stopping there, are you?”
Her clear gaze was filled with the worst kind of disappointment: the kind that had never been steeped in hope. She’d just quietly assumed I’d keep stepping out of line – and of course she’d been right.
“It’s a mission for the LifeGuard,” I said carefully. “If it goes well, they’ll give me a job.”
Izzy had memorized all the ways someone could get into the LifeGuard. “Spontaneous promotion from civilian” wasn’t on the list.
She shook her head slowly, the same soft shake of denial she gave Mom and Dad whenever they promised they’d talk to the judges tomorrow…
“It’s not Criminal,” I assured her. “It’s dangerous, but it’s not Criminal. And Peaches thinks it can work.”
“Peaches says that?” It was galling to see that Peaches had more credibility than I did around here, but at least it bought me some breathing room.
“OK. Cards on the table.” I hunched forward on the bed, moving so close she had no choice but to look at me. “I don’t want to do this. You know I never wanted to be in the LifeGuard. And this… adventure… will have me going up against some nasty people.”
They torture you, Dare had said. For months.
“Then why, Amichai?” She ran her hands through her thatchy hair. “Just calm down and let this blow over. The dead will forgive you in time, I’m sure of it…”
“I will stop.” I cupped her cheek. “I’ll give all this up and tend coral for the rest of my days. All you have to do is look me in the eye and tell me you’ll be all right if I do nothing to help you.”
She squared her shoulders as best she could, considering her shoulderblades were now lopsided. She sucked in a deep breath, quivering with terror, considering sixty years of painful labor without an escape.
And I realized that, despite the trouble my misadventures had gotten me into, they’d given my big sister some weirdass form of hope. I’d tie dyed the orphanage, I’d smuggled ponies into her room – and even though she hated the way I fought the system, she secretly loved the way I got away with things she’d never thought I could pull off.
I was her magic in the world. And if I stopped fighting, something terrible within her would collapse.
She scrubbed tears from her cheeks with her wrists. “I don’t want to need your help.”
“It’s OK,” I told her. “It’s OK. You want another plum?”
She nodded slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
I put the fruit into her hands, feeding her. We talked about small stuff, exchan
ging old family jokes and harmless gossip. I held her hand until she fell asleep.
Then I left for Little Venice.
16: THE CITY THAT REFUSED TO DROWN
* * *
Little Venice was where New York had drowned five years ago, and the waters still stank of dead bodies.
We would have drowned, too, if Gumdrool hadn’t been there to save us. Owing my career to that sonuvabitch was hard enough, but owing him my life? I gained respect with each block, because he guarded our passage.
Little Venice’s streets were hip-deep in spillover from the Atlantic Ocean, a thick muck choked with the Bubbler’s stink and liquefied corpses and rotting seaweed – a dead town that swallowed bodies and vomited out glutinous sickness. You could see dead men’s bones fused to old shop windows, all engulfed in creeping mutant coral like yellowed sharks’ teeth.
Yet Gumdrool scouted ahead through the ruins. He’d procured thick neoprene hip-waders and elbow-length gloves so we wouldn’t die of infected cuts. He taught us the landscape, explaining each danger, helping us recognize the safe paths among the teetering skyscrapers.
If my attention wandered, he’d whack me on the head. “Watch!” he’d say, with the air of a man training a dog.
And lo, turns out I’d nearly stepped into a flooded manhole lined with razor-sharp coral.
I hated looking dumb in front of Peaches, but seeming foolish in front of Gumdrool? Agony. But he was right to hit. My gall drove me to learn faster, which meant Gumdrool’s whap-an-Amichai techniques were effective.
That made me despise him even more.
He whapped Peaches, too, told her to stop dancing her way through the water. The only one he hadn’t clouted was Dare, who walked numbly in whatever direction Gumdrool pointed.
“Aren’t you worried about your brother?” I asked Peaches, as Dare lowered himself unquestioningly into an alley brimming with slimy water. “You were pretty harsh.”
“He’s always been a drama queen.” She swigged from her canteen, rinsing Little Venice’s taste from her mouth. “He’ll thank us when this is done.”
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