by S. W. Clarke
Fallen. The hestur had fallen. Veda moaned, swung herself onto her side with drunken uncertainty. “Please.” She lifted her head, eyes on the old man. Brynhild’s father. “Bring him in.”
But the old man didn’t answer her, because Veda had done and said none of those things—only imagined them. And this time she couldn’t be sure if she was actually climbing to her knees, crawling past where Galen lay sprawled and unmoving except for the heave of his chest. Outside, she knew, the creature was in the act of dying.
“No, girl,” the man said, stepping between her and the door. “I won’t have ye freeze us all. Don’t you know autumn’s on us? Lucky I let you loons in.”
She felt a hand touch her arm, glanced under her armpit. Galen, his head lifted. His skin had turned blue and purple, snow coating his black hair. “It’s okay,” he breathed. “It’s okay.” He had started to disintegrate, bits of him floating up and up to the slanted wooden rafters. Was she imagining that, too?
No—the countdown had hit 00:00:00. It was done. Veda set her forehead on her hands. She had failed the player in the snow. She had failed the hestur. But she and Galen—and maybe Amy and Eli—had survived.
Survival, she was learning, was a ruthless business.
Issverold dissolved around her, all of it swept into a multi-hued helix. Even Galen had dissolved, left Veda in a void. No giants, no storm, no fire. But Veda still thought, still felt. She floated in this half-world that reminded her of her own mind, the place she so often lived with her eyes tight shut. A seed of terror sprouted in her: was this forever? Had she died? But she ignored it, focused on the only thing she could control: her thoughts.
Was she still inside the game? It wasn’t clear. There was no Sicora hovering at the periphery, but Veda was still in. The liminal space bore a timelessness that reminded her of nights in the pod, the quiet and unbroken emptiness. And so while she was alone in the darkness, it wasn’t unfamiliar. In fact, it was comforting.
A memory came to her. She was four and she walked with Mother down a sidewalk. No cane; they held hands. Had Mother actually once held her hand? And she was fascinated by how old the hand felt in hers, the pillowy softness of the fingers, the gradations of the fingernails, which weren’t smooth so much as like vertical strips of glass pieced together to make an approximation of a fingernail. And she stopped, cast her eyes up to where she imagined Mother’s face was. She’d been taught this: to look at people, appear to meet their eyes. Humans liked that. So she did, and she said: “Did you know you’re going to die someday?”
In Veda’s memory, there was no pause between this line and Mother’s reply. The woman was still sharp, certain, her mind untangled by elderliness. “And so will you, Veda.”
It struck her like a wood bat: she would die, too. She was both infinite and not, young enough that life was a long, unsnipped strand before her, old enough to know that Mother didn’t lie about things.
She would die. Maybe she had died, and her mind didn’t know the difference between death in Issverold and death in life. Everything else had felt real enough, so why not this? And with this thought, the seed grew inside her, that immobilizing terror. She wasn’t ready. Not yet. She knew a great and unaccomplished thing still waited inside her. Veda just needed time. Time to bring it into the light.
Light. Her eyes opened to the glorious and familiar blankness of the world. She heard the medical beeping of her own heart, Anya’s voice: “You’re out now. You’re out.”
She waited while the woman’s fingers ripped, tugged, yanked her free of all the parts that had allowed her to enter the game. “Can you hear me, Veda?”
Veda nodded.
“Do you feel okay?” Anya pulled the retainer from her mouth, and Veda was surprised to feel her own saliva dribble across her cheek. She could feel. The woman dabbed a tissue at her face. “You don’t hurt anywhere?”
Veda shook her head, though in truth her head ached as though she’d hit another sidewalk. A pulsing, persistent pain, but she wasn’t about to risk getting herself medically removed from the game. Not now.
“Can she speak?” A man’s voice; she didn’t recognize it.
“She’s blind, not deaf,” Anya said. Veda was surprised by the woman’s defensiveness.
Dress shoes tapped on the tile. “Let me hear your voice, Veda.”
“I’m okay,” Veda said. She expected to sound as she did in Issverold, her throat dry, lungs frozen—but her voice came out smooth, natural. “Did something happen?”
“You were a bit slow disconnecting from the game,” the man said. “About ten minutes slower than the others.”
Ten minutes; four hours in Sicora.
“Who are you?” she said.
“Sorry about that. I’m the staff doctor, Noam Rinehart.” Veda felt his hand touching hers, and she reflexively gripped it to shake. “They keep me on hand in case anything crops up during or after your time in the capsule. Can you sit up for me?”
Veda pressed herself to a seat. She pretended her legs were still unresponsive from the drug and gripped them one at a time to slide them off the bed.
“I’m going to touch your head now,” he said, and before she could respond, his fingertips probed her temples, slid along her scalp and to the base of her skull. He tugged her ears, thumbed open her lips. When he’d finished, he and Anya stepped outside the room. Probably they thought these doors were soundproofed, and maybe they were for people who didn’t rely acutely on their hearing.
When the door closed, Veda followed, her ear pressed to it. “She’s sensitive,” Rinehart said. This seemed to agitate him. “You should have told me.”
“You have her chart,” Anya said. The woman gave nothing; Veda was starting to admire her.
Rinehart’s dress shoe scuffed the floor. “She shouldn’t have been let in at all.”
“So what, then?”
“She’s popular with Mizuki and the fans, right? They won’t want to lose her from the testing. We might have to send her back if it comes to it, though. I want a neural report from today, and going forward.”
Anya must have nodded; she went silent. Rinehart’s footsteps sounded. Veda felt her way back to the bed, tried to recreate her exact seat. When the door opened, she turned her face, half-lidded. She heard Anya’s breathing.
“Am I in trouble?” Veda asked. She was amazed by how easily she affected the fear, the uncertainty, the shyness. This was what made humans call her “darling” and “sweetie.” And after everything that had happened to her, Veda didn’t feel so much like that person. Maybe once, but now she was...popular? It was almost funny: Veda Powell on a SwitchTV stream.
“No,” Anya said. She approached, pressed the aural aids into Veda’s hand. When she left and the door had shut and she heard only the noise of the respirating AC unit through the ceiling, Veda closed her eyes.
She was still in the trial. Somehow, despite herself, she was still in it.
Amy waited for her in the dorm. This time she didn’t accost Veda, who found it quiet enough she figured she was alone. Instead, she allowed Veda to make her way to her bunk. When she’d set her hand against the frame, Amy’s voice sent such a surprise through Veda she knocked her head on the frame when she straightened. “Hey—oh, geez.” Veda heard footsteps, felt a hand on her head. “I forgot for a second.”
“You forgot I’m blind?”
“No—yes. I mean, it’s weird, you know? When we’re in Sicora, everything’s different.”
“Yeah,” Veda said, “it’s weird.”
“Listen, we need to talk. First I want to show you something. Can I have your hand?”
Veda nodded, and Amy took her right hand with both of hers. “Kneel down for me.” And when she did, Amy set Veda’s first finger to the horizontal panel of the frame. Her fingertip touched a groove in the wood, followed it with automatic precision. R. There was another letter: I. She kept going, but by the time she’d reached the third letter she knew what the rest would be. RINGER.
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Veda dropped her forehead to the panel’s edge. “I found it the first night,” she said. “I didn’t understand then. But when we were in the last world, I understood what the compass meant.” Her hand went into her pocket, and out came the note. “Do you recognize this?”
Amy took the note from her, unfolded it. After a moment, she pressed it back into Veda’s hand. “After Circle, we’re going to request an hour off campus. Tonight you’ll know everything we know. Until then, keep it copacetic. Be normal.”
Normal. Veda had mastered normal, but right now—when Sarai and Jess came into the dorm—she was terrible at it. She stood, took a crooked seat on the bed. Amy had already slipped into the bathroom.
Sarai greeted them with the same discomfiting ease. “Hey, survivors,” she said, as though she hadn’t come after Veda on a warg. As though she hadn’t tried to bring the hestur down in the snow. As though they all bore a kinship to one another.
“Hey, Waters.” Amy’s voice sounded muffled as the shower started.
“I can’t believe there are still four of us,” Jess said. She had fallen to her bunk.
“Two to each group: you and me, Veda and Amy,” Sarai said. She was brushing her hair, the fibers a velvet sweep through her untangled locks. “I heard Veda got a mount.”
As though she didn’t know. But, as Veda had begun to understand, what occurred in the game and outside the game were kept separate. Different rules, different stakes. On the campus, Sarai performed a strange sort of theater, and so Veda would, too. She closed her eyes. “I did.”
Jess’s bed creaked as she rolled toward Veda. “You were in the capsule a while, weren’t you?”
“Only a little bit longer than you.” That was true, if they were going by real-world time.
“They brought in the doctor when I was on my way out,” Sarai said. “Seemed serious.”
“They had to do a blood test to figure out the source of Veda’s badassery,” Amy called from the shower.
“Did they figure it out?” Jess asked.
Veda shrugged. “I think my badassery is still in question.”
“Last year, I took down the best dupe to ever play this game, you know,” Sarai said. “Well, to a single hitpoint.”
“Don’t, Sarai,” Jess said.
“It’s okay,” Veda said, surprising herself. “Even we call each other dupes. Prairie Powell, right?”
“Weird. Are you all named Powell?” Sarai said.
“A lot of us.”
“Prairie could have won,” Sarai said. Veda sensed a rare note of respect in her voice. “She was that good.”
“The way she saved Amy from that execution…” Jess began.
In the shower, Amy was uncommonly silent.
“It was amazing,” Sarai said. “And then she blew herself up. Ka-plow.”
“Seriously, Sarai.” Jess’s voice had fully lost its honey now.
But something sharp already brewed in Veda. It reminded her of those moments in Sicora, the cruxes at which her decisions mattered, what Amy described as the times when Veda seemed cool. “Yeah, she did,” Veda said, her eyes now open on what she knew was Sarai’s face—almost as though she could see her. “And she won the level, too.”
“In pieces,” Sarai said. But Veda doubted that was true: why would they have replaced her if she’d died in the level? Why not just send her home?
“Okay, Waters.” The spray in the shower stopped, the knob turning. Out came Amy Park, her bare feet slapping on the wood. “I’ve been wanting to see how fat your lips can get with a little tenderizing.”
“Oh please, do get yourself kicked out,” Sarai said.
“Hold up, Amy,” Veda said, lifting a hand. “How did you go out during that trial, Sarai? Wasn’t it—”
“I was two-timed,” Sarai said simply. “And that’s why I never trust someone who changes sides.”
“It isn’t two-timing if I’m not on your side anymore, Waters,” Amy said.
“You aligned with the dupe. You’re doing it again. I’d trust you as far as I can throw that service admin, which is all of about two feet. There’s your warning, Veda Powell: there’s only one person in this room whose allegiance is only to herself, and she’s dripping onto the floor next to you.”
For once, her tone wasn’t gracious at all.
And Amy was no longer so quick-tongued. She started to speak and then stopped. And as Sarai and Jess left, she still dripped onto the floor.
Veda kept her eyes straight ahead; she didn’t want to make Amy feel watched. Without willing it, her mind had returned to that moment in Herathor’s cabin, when Amy had wanted to stay, to let Galen and Eli fend for themselves in Issverold. And though she’d eventually chosen to go with Veda, it wasn’t her first choice—she’d only agreed when Veda had threatened to go alone.
Veda knew Sarai’s game. She knew the other player had tried to insert a wedge, and it had worked. Sarai Waters had found the seed and she’d watered it. All the same, Amy knew things about Prairie. Whatever her intentions, Veda knew she needed her help.
“It’s okay,” Veda forced herself to say. “I know she’s wrong.”
Amy sat next to Veda. “I switched sides because she’s awful.”
“You don’t have to explain.”
“She doesn’t trust Jess, either. She probably doesn’t even trust her brother. And you know the difference between her and ‘dupes’?”
Veda didn’t answer; her face remained impassive, her eyes straight ahead.
“Funnily enough, you all trust other people more than we trust each other—and a whole lot more than most of us trust you.”
And though she wasn’t very practiced at this sort of thing, Veda set her hand on Amy’s back, offered her a soft and welcoming silence. In Veda’s mind, Amy Park’s true nature needed time to play out, and she would give her that.
Twenty-Five
“You want to leave the Pyro campus to go to… Big Stax?” Jon asked.
“The question is,” Amy said, “who doesn’t want to go to Big Stax?”
Veda kept silent; Amy and Galen had told her they would take care of getting her off the campus for an hour.
“Veda needs a burger and fries, Jon,” Galen said. “She’s a fast food admin, remember? They’re engineered with an addiction to the stuff. She needs it.”
Veda kept her mouth straight. That was patently untrue—she actually would be happier never to eat at Big Stax again—but she was impressed, amused by this side of Galen; he was actually a pretty good fibber.
“Now?” Jon asked.
That was her cue. “Now,” Veda said. Her fingers curled to white-knuckled fists at her sides.
Jon let a long exhale that whistled through his teeth, sat on his bed. “No kidding. Well, I’m going to need each of your thumbprints—three times.”
As it turned out, getting off campus involved signing an even longer form than getting onto it. The gist, Veda realized as she skimmed the braille, was if she talked about the game with anyone, even Galen and Amy, she’d be sued. Fast and hard, without mercy. As a clone, she suspected something else might happen to her—a replacement, a fake Veda. But of course, that wasn’t in the form.
“Get thee to thine processed meats and sugared drinks,” Jon said as Veda handed the tablet back to him. “Pour out all your gossip, how you think Jon is just so swoony and how much you hate that Sarai Waters taking the best bunk, but remember,”—and here his tone went so serious it raised the hairs on Veda’s arms—”do not talk about this game. If I were you three, I wouldn’t even think about Sicora.”
Was Jon implying something? Veda nearly exchanged glances with Galen before she remembered she couldn’t see his face.
“Sure, Jon,” Amy said, one hand going around Veda’s shoulders. “No problem.” And she led Veda from his bedroom, Galen on her other side.
Of course, they were going to do just that.
Veda circled her drink cup in her hands. They had wolfed their meals i
n silence, and Amy now sat silent beside her in the booth, Galen across. Around them, the kiosks chirped with orders and completed meals. Veda could almost pretend she was back in Columbia with Sybil, back to her life. The whole Sicora thing might have been a dream, except—
“It was me,” Galen said. Veda’s face lifted to the sound of his voice. This was reality. “I gave you the note that night on the street. I wanted to tell you everything, but Pyro sent people to my apartment when the first trial was over. They didn’t say as much, but they made it clear that they’d sue me if I talked about anything—especially my involvement with Prairie.”
“Same,” Amy said. “Two big guys, of course. And my family doesn’t have money.”
“We knew if we talked about her on the campus or in the game, they’d kick us all out of this trial,” Galen said.
Veda lifted her hand; she needed the both of them to slow down. Her mind had been circling that night, the note and the man who had handed it to her. “No,” she said, “that was a different person. He had a different voice.”
“It wasn’t, Veda,” Galen said.
Veda’s hand dropped from the cup, the palm flat on the table between them. “You used a voice mod.”
“I didn’t want to take any risks. I didn’t know you—all I knew was you were Prairie’s sister, and she’d asked me to deliver that note to you. I’m sorry it took me six months. Amy and I tried to go back into the game alone, but it didn’t make a difference...”
So that was why they’d come back to Sicora five times in the past year. Veda tweaked the cup’s straw, pressed it in and out of the lid with a loud squeaking. “What happened to her?”
She sensed Amy adjusting herself, pulling one leg up to orient herself toward Veda. “I wasn’t sure until I saw the compass—it was a hunch—but we know now that Prairie didn’t run away.” Her voice lowered, her face close to Veda’s ear. “She’s here.”
