The Body Market

by Donna Freitas

  Skylar’s gone.

  This knowledge reverberated in my chest. Followed by a name.

  Rain Holt.

  Of all people, Rain Holt has to be the guy Skylar wanted to make jealous. That made the possibility of my staying with her turn to dust. He was notorious the very moment he stepped into the Real World, like some young version of his father. Heroic, people called him, just because of his name and his decision to unplug. He got whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it, half the Keepers bowing down before him because of his mere existence.

  Apparently, what he wanted included Skylar.

  The look in his eyes when he saw her today . . . and the look he gave me afterward. There was jealousy there. He was jealous that the two of us showed up together.

  A smile stretched across my lips at the memory.

  Then the cottage appeared on the hill and I sped toward it.

  As I pulled up the drive, still dusty with snow from the tall banks on either side, there was a flicker of movement in my peripheral vision. I came to a halt and the sound of the engine died.

  That’s when I saw him.

  The man’s arms were crossed over his chest, his thick body standing guard before my front door. He was so tall he nearly cleared the frame.

  “Where is she?” he barked. “You made promises.”

  I walked up the path and stood in front of him, crossing my arms to match his. He might be bigger than me but I wasn’t afraid. Fear was a powerful motivator, I’d always thought, but eventually you had to overcome it or you wouldn’t survive. “Hello, Jag.”

  The cold whipped around us, blowing snow into the air. When the crystals were caught by the rays of the sun they gleamed like diamonds. If Skylar was here, she would marvel at the beauty of it all. My heart twisted in my chest.

  I was wrong.

  I could feel fear. I did feel it.

  For Skylar.

  Jag’s eyes narrowed. “Where. Is. She?”

  I cocked my head and stared hard at him. “Where’s who?”

  “Quit messing around. You know exactly what happens if you lie to us.”

  Everything in my body wanted to flinch but I held steady. “I don’t have her,” I admitted. Jag’s lips curled into a snarl, but before he could respond I spoke again. “But I will. I will soon.”

  “You’d better. Or you’ll never see your sister again.”

  Jag stepped aside, straight into the snow, cutting through it like it was nothing. He disappeared around the side of the house.

  “Bye, Jag,” I called after him, forcing a laugh into my voice, acting like the irreverent asshole he expected me to be, as though I wasn’t the least bit worried about the situation I’d gotten myself into.

  Because of a girl.

  Not just any girl, went my brain involuntarily.

  There came the sound of a car roaring to life and soon Jag was racing away. Only after he was gone from view was I able to take in a breath. My entire body slumped with the release of so much tension. When I’d told Skylar about my sister, about my plan to get her back, I’d left something out.

  Something major.

  My sister wasn’t simply a part of the Body Market. Getting her back involved more than raising enough capital to purchase her or even stealing her away in a heist.

  The head of the New Capitalists was holding my sister.

  Jude, in other words.

  And the only way she’d let Maggie go was if I handed over Skylar.

  A sister for a sister was how Jag, Jude’s lackey, had put it.

  That was the deal.

  That was the trade.

  I opened the door and walked into the lonely house.

  17

  Skylar

  beautiful little weapons

  THE ROOM WAS just as I left it.

  Big sprawling bed. Too big for one person. The drawers full of clothes from the previous owner, clothes I’d co-opted like everyone else in their own rooms. Windows that looked out onto the beach and a big glass door with a set of wooden steps that led to a path over the dunes. Today the sand was swept with drifts of snow rising up over the tall grass and cattails, giving the entire room an eerie, pale-blue glow. This place was beautiful and it had been mine ever since my first visit, but I still missed the tiny cottage perched along the sea. I took the jar of sea glass Kit had given me and set it next to my bed.

  Shouts and laughter from the party still sounded faintly. Soon the sun would set, the darkness bringing with it an icier cold. I wondered how long everyone would last before coming back inside. I sat down on the bed, thoughts tumbling through me about returning here and saying good-bye to Kit, about the boy at the Body Market waking up on his own. The girl in that room and who she could be. How I’d put the knife back in its place on the table and decided right then that I never wanted to throw another. Not even to protect my own life. Not unless . . . not unless someone else’s life depended on it.

  Living in a virtual world had turned our bodies into something like machines, altered our brains so drastically that we could react like video-game warriors, wired to do things instinctively, like kill.

  I no longer wanted to be a killer.

  I didn’t want to be a video-game warrior either.

  I just wanted to be human. Human and real.

  Just a girl. A normal girl with a normal life.

  Right.

  There came a soft knock on my door.

  I sighed. I really didn’t feel like answering more questions about what happened while I was away. The knocking continued, more urgently now. I got up and answered the door.

  My heart softened when I saw who was standing there. “Hi, Zeera.”

  She was wringing her hands. “You said—”

  “I know, come in.” I shut the door behind her. “It’s good that you’re here.”

  The two of us went and stood by the tall glass windows, looking out onto the snow-covered dunes. Zeera leaned against the glass. Her tall frame was reflected across it like a ghostly twin that mimicked her every movement. Her mouth tightened into a thin line. “Do you know something about Sylvia?”

  I reached out and placed my hand on her arm, saw the way we were connected in the glass. “Yes,” I started.

  Her eyes flickered to mine. “Just tell me. I can take it.”

  I nodded. “Well, the good news is, I found her.”

  Zeera brightened, then immediately wilted again. “But the bad news is, you found her at the Body Market,” she guessed. “Am I right?”

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I wanted to get her out of there that moment. But I put down a deposit. To make sure no one else could take her.”

  Zeera swallowed. Her face drained of color. “A deposit?”

  I bobbed my head once. “I gave the man selling her all the money I had. And I promised him far more than he was asking for when I came to pick her up.”

  She slumped against the glass of the windows. “How . . . how did she . . . seem?”

  “Perfect, Zeera,” I assured her quickly. “She seemed utterly healthy and perfect. Peaceful. Like she was having a nice dream,” I added, deciding to leave out the part about which section of the Body Market featured Sylvia. Or the skeeviness of the man. I hoped he’d keep his word and she would still be there when I came for her again.

  A single tear ran down Zeera’s cheek. “What if he sells her to someone else anyway? And then she’s gone for good?”

  I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Not at first. “Don’t think like that. We’re going to get her back. We are.”

  Another tear rolled down Zeera’s cheek, followed by a stream of them. “But you don’t know that. We can’t know that. She might be lost forever.”

  I put both hands on Zeera’s shoulders. “I’m going to do everything in my power to get her back. Just like I’m doing with Inara. And everyone else at the Body Market, for that matter. That much I can promise.”

  Zeera nodded, but her eyes were swimming. “I’ll do whatever
I can to help, too.”

  “So . . . Lacy and Rain, huh,” I said after a while.

  Zeera raised her shoulders in one big shrug. “He finally gave in, I guess.” She studied me a moment. “Are you upset?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know,” I said. “Not as upset as I once might have been.”

  She nodded.

  “More perplexed, maybe, than anything else.” Through the window I watched the tips of the tall grass that stuck up from the snow sway in the wind. “I know they have a long history, and that Lacy’s been chasing Rain for years. But he’s always resisted—or at least that’s what he’s told me. And Lacy . . . Lacy’s just . . .”

  “—not as bad as you think,” Zeera cut in.

  My eyebrows arched. “No?”

  Zeera shook her head. “She really isn’t.”

  “You two have become friendly.”

  “Yeah. That’s been going on awhile though.” Now Zeera’s eyebrows arched. “This is the first you’ve noticed?”

  I shrugged. “I guess I’ve been kind of checked out.”

  “Well . . . are you back now?”

  I thought about how to answer. Before I could admit that I wasn’t sure how long I’d stay, Zeera spoke first.

  “We need you here,” she said.

  I was shaking my head. “I don’t know, Zeera.”

  “All right,” she said, slowly. “So. Tell me what you do know, then.”

  “Well, I came out of this fog I’ve been in,” I began, thinking through my next words carefully. “There was something about the storm, about everything that happened around it, that made me remember the old Skylar. I feel like myself again. So in that sense, I am back. And I want to help. I’m going to help.”

  “But . . . ,” Zeera supplied.

  “I’m not sure what that means yet. I’m not sure who I trust anymore.” I sighed. “I don’t think I belong here. I might need to . . . go my own way. And soon.”

  “Like, how soon?”

  I looked away. Thought about Kit. “Like, immediately?”

  Now it was Zeera reaching out to me. “You can trust me, you know.”

  The light was seeping from the room as the sun set. “Can I?”

  “I might be friendly with Lacy, but you can count on me.”

  I switched on the bedside lamp. “Okay, so, in the vein of counting on you, I have a favor to ask.”

  “Already?” she said with a small laugh. Then her eyes grew serious. “Anything. I’ll do whatever I can, especially if it leads to helping Sylvia. What do you need?”

  “Can we discuss those little devices? Those tiny weapons you’ve got in the vault,” I corrected.

  She studied me. “Yes,” she said, hesitant. “What about them?”

  “How long will it be before they’re up and running?”

  “Not long,” Zeera said at first. Her eyes darted around the room. Then guilt flashed on her face and her resolve seemed to crumble. “I mean, I’m not supposed to share this with anyone.” She glanced toward the door, as though someone might be on the other side, listening to our conversation. “But they’re kind of up and running already.”

  I rolled my eyes. “And Rain has one, right?”

  “Yeah.” She started digging around in her pocket. She pulled out a slim, rectangular screen and held it between us. “So do I.”

  I leaned closer to get a better look. The screen lit up. It glowed blue, and rippled when Zeera touched it. The surface reminded me of the Water Tower in New Port City. “Wow,” I said, unable to tear my eyes from it. “It’s almost . . . beautiful.”

  Zeera looked at it with pride. “Isn’t it?”

  She transferred it to my palm and the light suddenly dimmed. “Oh no! What did I do?”

  Zeera laughed. “Nothing, don’t worry.” She pressed a button at the bottom and the screen came back to life.

  “I remember learning about these in Real World History, and all the division they caused between families and loved ones, all the anger and hurt feelings, all the obsession,” I said. “But I never thought I’d see one in person, or hold one in my hand.”

  “I know,” Zeera said. “It’s kind of crazy.”

  “It’s hard to imagine something so small and so pretty could end up being so . . . destructive. That it would require people to choose between their bodies and virtual life, one or the other.” I ran a finger across the smooth surface, wondering if the screen might feel like the ocean, too, or if my skin would sink into it like water. Instead, a bunch of little pictures slid across the screen. “Now what did I do?”

  Zeera peered over my shoulder. She was smiling like she had a secret. “Skylar, you are never going to guess what those are.” I studied the images. “Come on,” Zeera pressed. “Think. I bet you can figure it out.” Zeera’s excitement always returned in the face of technology.

  “All right.” I turned my attention to what I was seeing on the screen. There was a storm cloud with a lightning bolt through it. There was a fat red heart. There was a cartoonish-looking cat dressed up like a person. There was a square image of a beautiful bedroom. The list went on. I stared and stared, wondering what they could represent, why anyone would have tiny photographs of such random things. There was even what looked like an angel’s wing, long feathers fanning out from the center of a blue border. I smiled at that one, reminded of Inara.

  Then something clicked.

  “No way,” I said, astonished.

  “Tell me.”

  “But it’s . . . it’s crazy what I’m thinking.”

  Zeera was shaking her head. “I bet it’s not.”

  “Okay, fine.” I geared up to spit it out. If Zeera laughed, she laughed. “Are these little things . . . are they . . . some kind of . . . are they Apps?” I barely got that last word out.

  Zeera squealed. “Congratulations! You guessed right!”

  My jaw dropped. She was being serious.

  “You are looking at the original Apps,” she said. “Like, Apps 1.0 or Apps 0.5 or something. The prototype of the App as we eventually experienced it in our virtual lives and in our brains.”

  I returned my attention to the little icons. They were so static. Nothing at all like the ones at home that would swirl and dance, lunging at you to steal attention away from the others, downloading into your body, changing your physical appearance, your abilities, what happened in your mind. I pressed my finger into the heart, curious what would happen. I pressed and pressed. But . . . nothing. “They’re broken, I think.”

  “Kind of,” Zeera said. “When I got the device running, the icons were already loaded onto it. They just . . . popped up as I began playing around. Believe me, it took me a while to understand what I was looking at, too. They’re just . . . remnants, I think, stored there by the old owner of the device. The images are kind of, like, ghost Apps or something. They no longer have any content. Or, maybe they just can’t connect where they’re supposed to, because the connection itself is gone.”

  The two of us stared at the tiny screen, marveling at this piece of ancient technological history we held in our hands. I swiped my finger across it again and the icons disappeared. I turned to Zeera, the edges of an idea forming. The tablet in my hands might be ancient history, but in the Real World, any technology beyond basic electricity was a major advancement. “What if we . . . ,” I started, and trailed off, trying to comprehend what was shaping up in my mind. That half-formed idea from earlier—it tugged at me again, harder now.

  Ever since Rain, Zeera, and I spoke about the boy who woke up in the market, I’d been thinking about Trader and his power to unplug himself and others, about the App he’d created that allowed us to move between worlds. But the something else nagging at me was something that Jude, of all people, had said to me when I woke up in her mansion and saw her for the first time. It struck me as so strange at the time that I remembered it word for word:

  But your body, it just doesn’t want to stay under. It’s like . . . it’s always wanting t
o shift between states. Between worlds.

  Was it possible this young boy didn’t want to “stay under” either? That his body or more likely his brain naturally wanted to “shift” between worlds? Is that what had happened to me all those weeks Jude held me captive, weeks that until now seemed like one long, nightmarish dream? I’d thought they just drugged me to keep me unconscious, but maybe they had been trying to plug me back in and my brain was somehow resisting the plugs? I hadn’t wanted to go to the App World, had fought going the entire time—that much I knew. But was it possible that my body and mind had simply refused to go? That it had overridden the plugs? And if this were true, could we harness that resistance somehow?

  Could we . . . code it? Into something downloadable?

  “What, Skylar?” Zeera pressed.

  “Okay,” I began, trying to give words to all that I was thinking. “What if we could invent a new App? One that, I don’t know, could help us take down the Body Market?”

  Zeera’s eyes widened. “Tell me more.”

  “Well, the New Capitalists have turned back on the—what did you call it? Wi-something?”

  “Wi-Fi,” Zeera supplied.

  I nodded. “Yes! The Wi-Fi. And Wi-Fi is the old, Real World way that people used to connect to the virtual, right?”

  “Correct,” she said.

  “So . . . what if we can find a way to use this technology against the New Capitalists? Like . . . what if we created an App that could wake up all the bodies? One that could override the plugs?”

  Zeera tapped her chin. “That would be some App.”

  “It’s probably impossible,” I said, realizing how ridiculous the idea sounded now that I’d said it out loud.

  But Zeera’s eyes had come alive with activity. “No . . . maybe not. It’s actually pretty intriguing. Maybe we could design something that downloads automatically into the bodies at the market, kind of like a virus, one that would run through the network of plugs the New Capitalists control.”