The Body Market

by Donna Freitas

  I glanced over at Trader.

  He was frantically tapping his fingers across that little screen that controlled the plug, his calm replaced by urgency. Then he was leaning over Skylar and mumbling things that I couldn’t quite make out. Skylar had at least stopped shaking. “What are you doing now?”

  “None of your business,” he said.

  “If it has to do with Skylar, it’s my business. You’re communicating with her aren’t you? Can you reach her? Is she okay?”

  He chuckled. “A few minutes ago, you told me there was nothing going on between you two. Now she’s your business. What changed?”

  “She’s important to me. I want her safe.”

  “Why?”

  “I have my reasons.”

  “Give me one of them and maybe I’ll consider telling you what’s going on.”

  I thought about dangling a tidbit about my sister but decided against it. Then Skylar convulsed before growing still—deathly still. Trader sighed with relief at this, but I didn’t trust him. Not one bit. I looked down at Skylar’s messages again. I didn’t trust any of these people either, but I knew Skylar did, and I didn’t like that she’d put her life in Trader’s hands and his hands only. I tapped out a reply to everyone who’d messaged Skylar, even the girl named Lacy.

  Even Rain.

  If he really cared about her, he’d come to help.

  Dear friends of Skylar, it began. You seem as worried about her well-being as I am. I took her to see someone named Trader. She’s right now plugged in and possibly headed into the App World and things don’t look so good here. Both for her safety and that of everyone else, I think she needs you. Below are the directions to our location.

  I tapped these in as clear as I could make them.

  Come soon, I finished, hit Send, and set the tablet aside.

  Skylar seemed exactly the same as before, or I thought so at first. Then I noticed something slightly different.

  Her cheeks had grown rosy.

  Seeing her skin flushed with life was better than the opposite.

  I sat down in one of the chairs and determined to be patient.

  Skylar came back to me once already.

  She’d come back to me again.

  30

  Skylar

  familiar choices

  I WALKED AND walked and suddenly I was surrounded by doors.

  One, two, three, four . . .

  Eleven. I counted eleven.

  I didn’t see the landscape shift or notice the exact moment when everything changed. All I knew was that it did.

  The room with the doors seemed to be in a house, or maybe a mansion. It was long and narrow and the floors were marble. Elaborate gilded crown molding lined the walls at the top and the bottom. The ceiling was ornately decorated with frescoes of women in flowing coral gowns and scholars convening with their books. Angels flew overhead between each scene and great crystal chandeliers threw light over everything. A breeze flowed from somewhere, causing the tiny glass crystals to chime against one another.

  I’d been here before.

  But when? And where was it?

  A feeling crept across my skin.

  Dread. It was dread.

  My vision blurred again, then it cleared.

  I walked from one end of the room to the other, trying to figure out why this place was familiar. It was so long that in a way it was more of a hallway than a room, but one wide enough to host a dinner party and elaborately decorated enough to host something fancy. The doors weren’t ordinary doors either. They didn’t match, and not just in terms of paint color. Their sizes, their frames, their styles were all so vastly distinct that they seemed to belong to different worlds altogether.

  Different worlds.

  One of them led to a different world.

  The App World.

  Exactly where I was meant to go. My reason for being here.

  Everything came rushing back, and the clarity I’d sought and the knowledge of why I was here came with it. I’d plugged in and I was between worlds.

  Trader was monitoring me right now.

  Kit, too. Kit was waiting for me to wake up again.

  Trader instructed that once I took control of the dream, I needed to conjure a door, which I had, obviously. He just didn’t say anything about conjuring this many doors. Oh well. It was still a dreaming state, if a lucid one. Maybe this was just the sort of thing that happened. But which door would lead to the App World?

  The tallest, narrowest one was made of a polished metal, so much so that it gleamed in the light. Another was covered in mirrors, and I caught various flashes of my reflection in it as I passed by, a knee, my hand, the side of my face. There was a carved wooden door, with bright-red paint lacquered across it; one that seemed to be made for a child, with a rainbow-colored hot air balloon adorning it; and another that looked like it might be solid gold. I stopped before this one.

  Could this be it?

  Something was definitely on the other side.

  I heard muffled voices and put my ear to the golden surface. I was tempted to push through it but then I heard something that chilled me and I leapt back, stumbling.

  I righted myself.

  Slowly, I returned to the golden door. Pressed my ear against it one more time.

  “You promised me this would work!”

  “I believed it would—”

  “Well, it hasn’t!”

  “If you give it time—”

  “I don’t have time! The buying has already been delayed for days!”

  “But the girl—”

  “—means nothing to us, obviously!”

  I jerked backward.

  One of the voices was a man’s and I didn’t know it.

  But the other one I knew as well as my own.

  Jude. It was Jude’s.

  My heart pounded behind my ribs. My chest shook with it.

  This is just a dream, I reminded myself. It’s not real.

  I’m in control here, I thought next.

  But was I? Was this really just a dream? Something born of my imagination?

  Right then, a sharp pain seared through my head.

  I blinked. I breathed.

  Tried to bring everything into focus.

  I looked around again, finally realizing why this room was familiar. Aside from all of the strange doors, it was exactly like one of the rooms I’d walked through in Jude’s mansion. Why, of all places, would my brain conjure this one?

  Technology altered our chemistry, this was a fact. It altered our brains in ways we could not predict or control.

  This was also a fact.

  But . . .

  I breathed deep once more. Shook away the thoughts firing through my head. I’d come here with a very specific task and I’d gotten sidetracked. I could puzzle about this later on with Trader.

  My eyes fell on another door, one I hadn’t yet reached.

  It was way at the end of the room.

  I started toward it and then felt pulled along, like it was a wave that wanted to draw me under. The second I was close enough to see it, to really take it in, I knew that this was the door I was looking for, the one I was meant to conjure. It was boarded up, the wood splintered and graying. The sharp ends of nails stuck out of it in places and it looked ready to fall apart.

  I smiled.

  Only a door that led to Trader’s house in Loner Town would look like this.

  On the other side of it was the App World.

  My heart leapt, my limbs were light, like they might float, all the pain of before dissipating. My brain seemed full of champagne. It took me a minute to realize what I was feeling.

  Excitement.

  I was excited to go to the App World.

  Home.

  I was excited to go home.

  This word lifted through me as though caught on a breeze. I grasped at it, took it, held it in my hand, and then that hand was actually reaching for the door, ready to pull back those boards that stood
in my way of doing just this. Right now.

  I was so very close.

  But then I yanked my hand back.

  I promised Trader I wouldn’t go through. Not yet. But the door, it was like a magnet that drew me in, or an App designed just for me, poking my shoulder, buzzing around my head, daring me to download it.

  I took a heavy step backward, my feet like lead.

  Then another.

  With each step my entire body got a little bit lighter.

  I’m in control of this, I reminded myself.

  It was time to go back to the Real World.

  The farther I got the quicker I could walk, and soon I was turning around and the room I remembered from Jude’s mansion faded until the landscape changed and I was by the ocean again, but this time the coast was rocky and I was following a road, one that rose up a hill, at the top of which was a tiny cottage. A single tree stood in the front yard, barren of its leaves, its branches sharp against the backdrop of the horizon.

  Here it was. The Real World. Trader said I would know it when I saw it and he was right. The signpost had appeared to me as Kit’s house. I went straight up to the front door and didn’t stop to knock, didn’t wait or even hesitate. I reached for the knob, turned it, and went right on inside.

  “Kit?” I called out as I went. “I’m home.”

  I was gasping. Everything was dark.

  “Kit?” I called out again.

  My voice sounded far away. My eyes were heavy, my limbs were heavy. My torso felt like it was pinned down by something. Like I was being held underwater.

  Something had my hand.

  Maybe I’d made a mistake.

  Maybe this was still a dream.

  What if I couldn’t find my way out? What if I couldn’t find my way back?

  “Kit?”

  I worked my eyes, pushed them as tight as they could close and then did my best to slide them back open. Finally, finally, I could see. At first it was blurry, but eventually my sight cleared.

  Kit blinked back at me.

  Those dark eyes were full of . . . everything.

  He held my hand.

  “You came back,” he said, just like before, but different this time, too.

  I just wasn’t sure how.

  31

  Skylar

  stepping through

  THE ROOM HAD grown dark, but not so much that I couldn’t make out the other faces all around me.

  So many faces.

  Slowly, I sat up.

  There was Kit, of course. He still had my hand.

  Trader, too.

  But others had appeared in my absence. Adam and Parvda, Zeera and Rain. And Lacy. She looked slightly disappointed. Maybe she hoped I’d never wake again.

  Rain was staring at my hand clasped in Kit’s.

  Kit eyed me another moment, then let go. “Are you all right? You didn’t seem like it for a while there.”

  “You couldn’t wait for us, Skylar?” Rain asked, before I could answer him. There was anger in Rain’s voice—anger and jealousy. All the goodwill that built up between us before I left Briarwood seemed to have vanished. “You had to do this immediately?”

  I rubbed the back of my neck. It ached. My forehead throbbed. “It’s not like we have time to waste,” I countered. “Everything was right here, ready.” I glanced at Trader. “And I had a teacher eager to help.”

  Trader’s eyebrows arched. “Teacher?” he repeated, sounding skeptical. But a smile played at his lips. “You did it, Skylar, didn’t you?”

  “I did,” I told him. “At least I think so.”

  Trader’s smile grew. “It must be in our genes, sis.”

  I smiled back, despite the fact that every part of my body ached. Maybe Trader would turn out to be the sibling with whom I could have the relationship I’d always longed for. If he was in love with my best friend from home, then maybe this was possible.

  Zeera sat down on the floor next to the cradle, and Parvda joined her.

  “What was it like?” Parvda asked.

  Zeera pulled her long hair back from her face. “Were you able to cross the border?”

  When I shook my head no the room began to spin and I wanted to retch. “I didn’t even try. Trader made me promise not to.”

  Trader reached up and pulled a long string that hung from the ceiling. A light went on and a soft glow fell across everyone. “Now that you know your beloved girl”—he was looking at Rain as he said this—“is alive and well, can you give her some space? I have a debriefing to conduct so she can go back.” He went to his workstation to look for something.

  Adam’s eyes widened. “Go back? Right now?”

  Lacy snickered. “Just let Skylar do what she wants. Seriously. She will anyway.”

  I twisted around in the cradle to look at Adam. “I need to. We have to figure out how this works and if we can somehow code the process for the App.” I stretched my arms, then bent them a couple of times at the elbows. Why was I so sore?

  Meanwhile, Zeera was talking animatedly to Trader. They were studying the tiny tablet Trader used when I’d plugged in. Zeera took the device into her hands and tapped the screen. Then she came over to me, her eyes bright. “I know how to do this, Skylar. Your idea is going to work. When you plug in again, your brain is going to give me all the coding we need for the App.” She held up the device. “This not only measures your vitals and your brain waves, it records them. The technology is amazing!”

  I laughed at her enthusiasm.

  “And Trader knows how to make the App download so it works like a virus through the market,” she went on.

  He came and stood next to Zeera. He looked down at me. “Before you go running over the border to the App World, Skylar, why don’t we talk about what happened first. Did you see the door I told you about?”

  Everyone else in the room quieted at this.

  Trader held out his hand and I took it. Gingerly, I lifted myself from the cradle. My limbs groaned. Another wave of dizziness passed over me. Shifting between worlds seemed really hard on the body. When I was standing again Trader let go. “It took me a while to take control of the dream,” I began.

  “That happens,” Trader said. “Each time, you’ll get better at it.”

  “But eventually I found the door. Your door, I’m sure of it. It was boarded up and falling apart.” Trader nodded, a bit smug. I nearly rolled my eyes. He was obviously proud of his dilapidated lodgings. “Here’s the thing,” I went on, thinking back to the long narrow room in which I’d found myself. “I didn’t just see one door, I saw lots of doors.”

  Trader’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean exactly what I said. You told me to conjure a door, but I guess I conjured a whole bunch to be safe?” When Trader didn’t nod, or seem to understand, I did my best to clarify. “I ended up in a room full of doors. I counted eleven.” Trader was shaking his head. “What? Is that weird? Did I do something wrong?”

  He seemed unable to process this. “For all the years I’ve been shifting, there’s only been one door. You decide your destination, and that is the destination that becomes available to you. Only that one. Conjuring the one door is difficult enough, never mind conjuring eleven.”

  Slowly, I brought my right knee up to my chest, then my left, massaging the muscles in my thighs. “Well, you’re basically walking through a dream, right? That’s what you said. And dreams are strange.”

  Trader considered this. “I suppose.” A shiver ran through him. “There are just . . . rules to shifting. The process is always the same and there’s always only a single door.” He looked at me sharply. “You swear you didn’t go through any of the others, right? So you don’t have any idea where they led?”

  I shook my head. “No. I already told you I didn’t.”

  “Good,” Trader said. “Only go to mine. The others could be dangerous. You have no idea where they might take you.”

  “Well,” I began, “I did put my ear to one
of them.”

  Trader’s eyes rolled toward the ceiling. “Skylar! I told you not to even touch the door, never mind a different one.”

  “I know. They’re, like, magnetized or something. They want to pull you through all on their own. They’re difficult to resist.”

  Trader looked exasperated. “Exactly why I told you not to get close.”

  “Don’t you guys want to know what I heard?” I asked everyone else.

  “I do,” Kit said quietly.

  “Me, too,” Parvda said. She nudged Adam.

  “Tell us, Skylar,” Adam said.

  I caught Trader’s eye. “I overheard someone having a conversation. It was Jude.”

  “There’s no way,” he said.

  “I know my sister’s voice. Our sister,” I corrected.

  A murmur went across the room at this.

  “But Jude’s in the Real World,” Zeera said.

  Rain had been hanging back in the shadows, but now he stepped into the light. “As far as we know she is, but maybe that circumstance has changed.” He looked from me to Trader, back to me again. “What if Jude knows about the glitch? There’s no reason to think that she wouldn’t. She’s a powerful person with powerful connections. What if you found a door that leads to Jude in the App World?”

  A little part of me shrunk, considering all of this. “Maybe,” I whispered.

  Trader was nodding. It was surprising to see him agree with something that came out of Rain’s mouth. “If Rain is right, and you happened to catch Jude while she was in the App World, then maybe if you go back things will have changed. There’ll be fewer doors available.”

  “Or more,” Zeera offered. “Depending on what Skylar’s subconscious conjures.”