“Can I get you a refreshment, sir?” The bot knows I’m human, so it doesn’t try to transmit messages to me, but Lenora told it to treat me like an ascender. Which means I can ignore it. I pick up my pace, careening around the corner to the front door, only to pull up short when I see who’s there.
Another ascender. And Lenora. And they’re…
I drop my gaze to the glistening steel floor under my feet. I didn’t know Lenora had taken a second. Most ascenders pair, of course—some forever, some just until they find someone more compatible. I would have realized Lenora had an ascender lover, if I’d thought about it for more than two seconds.
I’d never let myself think about it for more than one.
Now I’m frozen, awkward, while they embrace in the doorway.
I peek up. They’re still hand-to-face, absorbed in each other. They haven’t noticed me yet… which means they’re engaged in something a lot deeper than just hello. I cringe as a swirl of color dances over his skin and flows into hers where they touch. Ascenders are hooked on all kinds of sensory input to begin with—as far as I can tell, they’re outright sensation junkies—but when they’re physically connected to each other… well, I’m not exactly sure what they’re doing, but Lenora’s reaction is enough to make my skin heat.
As I watch, Lenora’s second lazily opens his eyes and trains them on me.
I give a start as I realize I’m caught. My eyes automatically avert again, but the only way out is through the door. The one they’re standing in front of.
I grit my teeth.
It takes ten interminable strides, but by the time I reach them, he’s released her. I’m sure Lenora’s second is attractive for a male—all the bodyforms are. He has the classic, rugged kind, the one that projects a physical prowess that’s almost laughable given the strength their bodyforms naturally possess. He strikes me as all wrong for her. Shoulders too large. Face too pretty. Eyes too cold with the way he’s giving me a look that could freeze steam midair.
Or maybe that’s the look I’m giving him.
“Oh,” Lenora says. Her voice is thick, like whatever haze he’s induced in her is still buzzing. “Elijah.”
My stomach curls into a knot that makes me want to punch something.
“I’m just leaving,” I say, looking at him, not her.
His amused annoyance makes it clear I’m one step up from the household bot.
“Marcus, this is my artist-in-residence, Elijah.” Lenora’s voice has lost its tremble.
I give him a nod. He ignores me and returns his attention to Lenora, lifting a hand back to hold her cheek. It’s clear from the way he’s looking in her eyes, his facial expression: he’s transmitting something to her. Talking to her, ignoring me.
I manage not to snarl. “I’ll work on a new piece, starting tomorrow,” I say to her.
She nods absently, absorbed in whatever he’s saying. He pulls her closer, re-engaging in their embrace. It leaves enough of the doorway clear that I can slip out. Which I do as quickly as I can.
Turns out, I left my dignity behind after all.
I jam my boot into the door of the tram to keep it from closing.
It screeches but lets me board. I leave the rusted-out platform behind, but my face is still hot from the encounter with Lenora and her second.
I stalk down the aisle between the rotted seats. This is a legacy-only tram—just stepping inside means trading the pristine world of household bots chasing dust particles for the grimy world of what’s left of humanity. The car is empty except for a girl with bedraggled hair in front and a twitchy guy in the farthest seat back. The girl’s eyes are wide—she can’t be more than fourteen—and she quickly ducks her head, avoiding my anger-filled gaze.
I sigh. She probably thinks I’m storming down from a high. A lot of legacies bliss out on whatever makes them forget they’re the hairy ape evolution passed by… and they’re no fun to be around when they’re coming down. The police bots keep everyone from killing each other—most of the time—but there’s still a lot of humanity that fails to be even close to human. Their redeeming quality is their DNA, not their behavior.
The girl really shouldn’t be traveling alone.
I smile at her, but she keeps her head down, hunched over a weathered brown satchel that looks rough enough to be gray market trade. She probably bartered another legacy for it or traded her chit-allowance. Definitely not bot-made, in any case. She’s clutching it like I might steal it straight out of her trembling arms. I stride past and take a seat far enough away to not seem like a threat.
I wonder which dingy Orion-sponsored housing complex she lives in: some are tougher than others. Legacy cities may not be much, but they’ve got nothing on the barbarism of Oregon’s dissenter reservations. The holograms I’ve seen are pretty horrific: roving bands of crusaders, cult camps, and no police bots to stop the bloodshed. Seattle may have its share of human dreck, but at least the life expectancy is more than thirty.
Rain drizzles down the windows as the tram lumbers along the line. By now, Lenora’s glass ceiling must be flecked with a thousand tiny puddles haunting her from above. Ascenders have an aversion to water of any kind. Not that there’s any danger of frying or browning out. Some bodyforms are even built to swim. The net says it’s more of an instinctual thing. A voice buried somewhere in the depths of their artificial cortexes whispers, rain is dangerous. Like the human fear of the dark—even though it’s not the dark that kills you, but the things hiding in it. Maybe Lenora’s gone to the net room and buried herself in the cognitive physics studies that take up her time when she’s not making mystical landscapes with holo paint.
Or maybe she’s in the bedroom with her second.
I glower at the seat in front of me: it has a crack with the padding bleeding out. It’s not the kind of thing that will get repaired. The ascenders give us just enough of everything to stay alive—minimal food, adequate shelter, and all the free virtual reality simulations you could want. The upkeep on a legacy-only tram doesn’t figure in the top million things important to them. I’m sure whatever Lenora and her second are doing, I’m just as long forgotten.
I’m so absorbed in my thoughts, I almost miss it when the twitchy guy lurches past me. He’s holding the seats as he goes, whipping his head back and forth. A jolt of alarm rips me out of my fixation on the seat: he’s a reality-freak. The side-to-side thing… either he’s really admiring the scenery or he’s trying to trigger a refresh on his virtual. Only the guy isn’t hooked up—which means he’s lost his totem, and he still thinks reality will bend to his wishes.
He pauses at the girl’s row and scowls.
I’m up out of my seat before I can think. If he believes he’s still in virtual, who knows what he’ll try. The girl is trying to melt into the side of the tram, holding her flimsy satchel like a shield. I surge forward and catch the guy just as he goes for her. I shove him hard, and he goes down, catching his jaw on the edge of the seat. He’s stunned enough that he stays down.
“Come on.” I gesture the girl out of the seat. My stop is coming anyway.
She shakes her head.
“Do you want to stay here?” I ask, giving a pointed jab of my thumb to the downed reality-freak.
She shakes her head again, but it’s more of a quiver. Then she edges across the row. I help her up, but she jerks back from me. The freak is up on his hands and knees.
I hoist him up by the arm. “Sorry, man. Didn’t see you there. Why don’t you have a seat?” I shove him into the row next to us, rough enough that he stays. He looks up at me, dazed, then goes back shaking his head.
Great.
I hustle the girl past him. We make it to the exit just as the tram stops. The rain holds its breath as we spill onto a street darkened with it. The girl’s in such a hurry to get away that she trips and splays out on the pavement. I don’t know where she thinks she’s going—this is my stop, not hers, and there’s nothing here but business more dangerous than the real
ity-freak. As she pulls her satchel from a puddle, it spews out a couple dozen paint brushes, all different sizes and bristles. Lots of legacies do creative work, but that’s way too many for her own use. I bend down to help her, but her soft brown eyes squint with suspicion.
I back off and stand up just as the tram pulls away. It floats her hair into her face. She blindly gropes for the rain-soaked brushes. I don’t need any new brushes—Lenora provides me with everything I need—but my mom could use a few. And I just earned a hundred chits I wasn’t expecting.
“I don’t suppose those brushes are for sale?” I ask.
She swipes the hair out of her face and examines me with an eye that would do a grizzled gray-market trader proud. Then she gives me a short nod.
“How much?” I appraise them, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll get some no matter what.
“Half a chit.” Then she adds quickly, “But they’re all real sable!”
“Is that right?” Half a chit is a lot for synthetics, but a real-fiber brush is worth more than a month of allotment chits. I own a few, but only because Lenora bought them. If the girl actually had sable brushes, she wouldn’t be selling them for half a chit.
“Unless you need synthetics,” she adds more quietly, ducking her head. “I’ve got those, too.”
“I’ll take those two.” I point to the fan brush in her hand and a dagger-tipped one still in the puddle. My mom will love them, even if they’re not real sable.
The girl hands them over and digs out her phone. I authorize payment with a quick, “Transfer one chit,” while it reads my face. The girl beams, staring at her phone as the chit goes through. I stuff the brushes, handle down, in my back pocket.
The next tram trundles toward us in the distance. The gray blanket that hangs overhead threatens to drop wet misery on us again, but the tram will be here in less than a minute.
I gesture to the remaining brushes still scattered on the ground. “Are you okay?”
She gives me a shy nod and hurries to pick up the rest.
I wait until I can see the tram is empty, then I smile my goodbye. The girl keeps ducking her head, but I get a small glimpse of a smile. I make it to the overhang of the nearest building just before the skies loosen. I stick to the shelter of the abandoned storefronts as I stride away.
All the buildings in this part of town are supposed to be empty—abandoned by legacies and ascenders alike. I can’t decide if that’s ironic or fitting: Seattle was ground zero for the Singularity a hundred years ago, not that you could tell now. Shadows lurk in the corners of the boarded windows, all carefully calculated to mask the lively black market inside. The Orion-sanctioned gray markets are all within the city. Most ascenders long ago moved away to sunnier places, and the few who stayed behind live at the outer rim. That leaves a dead zone in the middle. Perfect for black market trades, intentionally or not. And with the ascenders, you never know. They could have some advanced-brain-level reason for allowing the black market to exist even while pretending it doesn’t. Figuring them out is beyond me.
I hurry down the street. A half mile later, I reach a door that’s the same as all the others. I slide back a panel and let the camera read my face.
“Sun Tzu,” I say to it, hoping I get the pronunciation right. Cyrus always picks the most unpronounceable passcodes. The door clicks unlocked. The screech of the hinges echoes down the street, and I hope there’s not a police bot within hearing range. I slip inside.
The cramped shop is a cross between a tech wonderland and biohack exhibit. Cyrus tells me it was once a shoe store, but now it mostly looks like a junkyard of the illicit and bizarre.
“Eli, my man! I didn’t expect you until later.” Cyrus doesn’t own the place, he just acts like it. He’s big in a muscular way, and a good three inches taller than me—both of which might be intimidating, if he wasn’t practically family. His parents were murdered for chits in the complex he grew up in, and he’s been a pain in my side, and my best friend, ever since he moved in with his grandfather next door. When the old man passed, Cyrus became the older brother who beat on anyone who pushed me around. And there was no lack of that in our childhood.
Cyrus is standing behind the glass display case, holding some hardware. He gives it over to Riley, the actual owner, who raises a leathery hand to wave. Riley’s been in the black market trades more years than I’ve been on the planet.
“Hey, Riley,” I say. “How’s business?”
“I’m still here, ain’t I?” He shakes his head, like that’s the stupidest possible question. Riley’s tech takes the shop off the normal surveillance grid, but that’s no guarantee someone won’t leak his operation. “No thanks to you,” he adds, giving me a dirty look.
I know how much trouble I bring into his shop, so I just nod.
Cyrus strides around the end of the glass counter case. It’s littered with implants, some subdermal and simple, like phones and vision enhancers, some more serious mods, like a heart and a slimy thing that looks like a liver. All of them are Class One felonies waiting to happen. But they’re nothing compared to my black market meds. If the ascenders had any idea Riley was trafficking in genetic drugs, we’d all be exiled from Seattle. If we were lucky. The ascenders don’t normally practice capital punishment for the legacy dreck in their cities, but “putting down” a dangerous human isn’t unheard of.
“Hey Cyrus,” I say as he approaches, glad for the distraction from Riley’s glare.
Cyrus is giving me a disappointed look. “Man, where’s your painting? I can’t fence something without the goods, you know?”
“I sold it.” The last thing I want is to say who I sold it to—I’ll never hear the end of it.
“Sold it?” He looks hurt. “To who?”
“I’m sorry, Cyrus. I’ll give you your commission, I promise.”
He waves that away. “I don’t care about… wait.” He cocks his head to the side and examines me like I’m a refurbished implant someone’s trying to foist on him. “You didn’t… you gave it to her, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t give it to anyone.” I should just come clean now. He’ll drag it out of me eventually.
“You did,” Cyrus says like I just admitted to it. “You gave your hot patron your painting. Man, what am I going to do with you?”
“I didn’t give it to her!”
He shakes his head then slides his arm around my shoulder, holding me in a classic one-arm Cyrus-giving-advice hug. I’m tempted to shove him away, but it’ll be over faster if I don’t.
Riley ignores us and flips through a tiny screen he’s pulled from his pocket, but Cyrus still drops his voice. “You gotta get over this thing with your patron. It’s just sick, man. You need to get yourself a real girl, the all-human kind. One that’s soft in all the right places, you know?”
The sensation of Lenora’s faux red hair brushing my face comes rushing back. “She’s soft,” I whisper before I can pull the words back in my mouth.
Cyrus looks horrified. “You know that for a fact?”
“No.” I shrug his arm off and push him away. “I’m not a wonder hack like you, but I read the net. I know basic tech. Their bodyforms are just as pliable as—”
“Eli!” He throws out his hands. “She’s an ascender. You’re legacy. I know—” He stops, sighs, and lowers his voice. “I know you want to be her second, man, but it’s not going to happen. It doesn’t happen. Ever. With anyone. You’ll never be anything more than… than her domestic. And that’s no good, bro.”
A domestic. A human pet. Useful for companionship… and less noble purposes. It’s one of the few things that legacy law prohibits. I don’t know if the ascenders have laws against it, but the only thing that’s worse in the legacy world is to interbreed.
I glare at Cyrus. “Remind me again why you’re my friend.”
He gives me a pleading look. “Because I’m the one who’s going to finally get you a real date.”
I blow out my anger in a long sigh. I know
Cyrus is just looking out for me, but he hates the ascenders. I get it: he has a talent for tech in a world where all the best tech is banned, and the only legal trade open to legacies is handicrafts like the girl’s brushes. There’s a reason Cyrus is in the black market, not the gray one.
I roll my eyes at him rather dramatically. “I think you date enough girls for the both of us, Cy.”
He puts a hand on my shoulder. “And that’s something that is supremely sad. A tragedy. A travesty against the brotherhood of teenage guys everywhere.” He straightens, full of mock outrage. “Who am I? A tech-head. No better than a bot, except I have a keener sense of style. You, on the other hand…” He gestures to my clothes, which consist of black work pants flecked with paint and a shirt that’s starting to fray at the edges. “Look at you! You’ve got that downbeat, artsy look going all day long. You’re moody. And you flipping paint, man. You’re a creative. Girls lose their minds for that stuff, and you just waste it. You’re killing me.”
I can’t help the grin. “I can get you a really good deal on a paint-spattered shirt.”
He covers his face with his hands. Behind them, he mutters, “I weep for what’s left of humanity.”
I have to bite back a laugh.
He drops his hands. “So tell me the truth, bro. Did you sell it? Because I’ve got the meds if you’ve got the cash. You know I’d lay down my life for your mom, but I can’t front the money for this on my own.”
And that’s the real reason I put up with Cyrus—not just because he can get my mom the meds she needs, but because Cyrus would do anything for her. And she loves him like a son.
“No, no. I’ve got the money.” I pause a beat. “Lenora bought the painting. A hundred chits.” I grit my teeth, waiting for the backlash.
It doesn’t come.
Instead, Cyrus’s eyebrows slowly inch up his forehead. “A hundred chits?” He draws out the words. “Are you sure you didn’t do something for her other than… paint?”
I hit him. Not hard. Just a punch to the shoulder. It bothers me that it happened without me even thinking about it. He cringes under the blow, hand clamped over the spot. But he’s laughing. Shoulders heaving with silent hilarity.
The Legacy Human (Singularity #1) (Singularity Series) Page 2
