“I want you to stay away from my mother.” I turn my back on her, mostly because I don’t want her to see the tears that are threatening to spring out of my eyes. “I think you should leave now.”
“Eli, please—”
“He said it was time for you to go.” Cyrus’s words are clipped. “Last I heard, this space belongs to Eli. He decides who comes and who goes. I can call security if you’d like.”
I can’t believe I’m letting Cyrus throw Lenora out, but I am. I stare at a spot in the floor and focus on reining in the torrent of emotions rushing through me.
The whisper swish of her feet across the floor finally forces me to look. The door slides open, and Marcus waits just outside. She brushes past him, but he catches her arm and brings her back. Ribbons of dark gray are writhing across her body, but with his touch, they dissipate. He strokes her cheek and gently presses his forehead to hers. She relaxes into him, eyes closing. A flush of pink swells through her body, flowing into his, and they’re locked in one of those ascender-only embraces. The kind that left her breathless before.
The kind I can never have with her.
The door slides closed.
I ball up my fists. My body is one rigid cord of anger.
“Something about this doesn’t make any sense—” Cyrus stops as I stomp past him to the half-paint-smeared canvas—my pathetic attempt to conjure a work worthy of ascendance. I drive my fist through it, smearing paint up my arm and letting out a guttural sound. It only amplifies my rage. I fling the canvas against the wall. It splatters the ascender-tech surface with paint. The canvas falls to the floor.
Then I feel it: like an incoming hurricane has sucked all the air out of the room behind me.
I turn into it. “Cyrus—”
I’m in a brightly lit studio. All glass, everywhere glass. It reminds me of Lenora’s house, but the man seated before me is human. His gray scraggly beard carries flecks of the blue lilies he’s painting. I slowly realize that the stone floor is cold on my bare feet as I inch toward him. He doesn’t see me. His strokes are minute, deliberate. The work itself is spectacular. Familiar. I know this piece, but I can’t place it. It’s old, like the man. Ancient. Beautiful. Masterful…
“Eli!” Cyrus’s face is in mine. He’s shaking me. “Eli, wake up!” He has me by the shoulders, squeezing so hard it hurts.
“Hey, ease up!” I struggle away from him, but my limbs don’t work right. Like I’m half-asleep while standing up.
He releases me, eyes wide. “You’re back.”
“Yeah.” I reach my hand up to rub away the ache at my temple and stop when I see a brush. There’s paint everywhere. On my hand. On the brush. On my arm. My other hand is covered in it, too, swirled hues of darkened red, like I’ve been finger-painting in blood. “Oh no.” I look up at Cyrus and see Marcus standing behind him.
They’re both eyeing me like they think I’ve gone stark raving mad.
I slowly turn around, a sense of dread crawling up my back.
The canvas is drenched in paint. Reds and browns and oranges. I have to blink several times before I can bring it into focus.
It’s a muddy hole with a body in it. A slender brown body splashed in blood and lying bent like a doll that has been dashed to the ground in anger. A broken doll. Even before I stumble over to it… even before I search the tiny, perfect details of her lips, her fingers, the spindly strong lengths of her legs… I know.
It’s Kamali.
And she’s dead.
I drop the brush.
A wave of vertigo sends me to the floor after it.
I can’t get the painting of Kamali out of my mind.
Cyrus and Marcus helped me get back to the apartment. It’s not far, but the aftereffects of the fugue are worse this time—I don’t know why. Maybe because Cyrus yanked me out of it. And I don’t miss the fact that it’s happening more frequently now: that has to be a good sign. Maybe there’s hope of mastering it, but right now, it’s all I can do to lie on my bed and wait out the shakes. The ascender-tech sheets don’t know what to do with my tremors: they keep moving away, then coming back, trying to adjust. It ripples a strange pattern in the shiny fabric. I stare at it, but in my mind, all I see are Kamali’s dead eyes.
The painting is disturbing and chilling… and, without a doubt, my best work yet. Her eyes alone are some kind of magic. They stare at me from the canvas, as dead as her broken and lifeless body but, at the same time, they’re alive with some kind of ghostly movement. As if she’s accusing me from beyond the grave. Kamali spoke of how not dancing would feel like death to her. My fugue state just put that into acrylics. It’s logical, and maybe she really is my Muse. It still disturbs me.
I force myself to sit up and listen to Cyrus and Marcus as they debate our next move.
“Sketching the dancer brought something out of him,” Marcus is saying quietly. “Arrange for them to spend more time together.”
Cyrus has his arms folded with his back to the giant screen in our room. “I thought you wanted him to stay away from other competitors.”
“He needs to stay away from Thompson,” Marcus says tightly. “If the girl is his Muse, that’s different.” He glances at me. “I want you back in the studio. The Showcase is tomorrow, and I want you to practice this piece. Expand upon it. See where you can take it.”
I glance at Cyrus, who is stony-faced. Somehow Marcus hasn’t figured out that this isn’t something I can do on demand, and Cyrus hasn’t enlightened him.
“Maybe I should save The Broken Artist for the competition.” My rough voice should be a clue that I’m not entirely recovered yet. Plus it’s hopeless for me to try to reproduce the painting. Not that I’d want to, even if I could.
“The name certainly fits.” Cyrus gives me a steely look, like he thinks I’m the Broken Artist. Which is also pretty clearly true.
“Besides,” I say, swinging my legs off the edge of the bed and blinking away the vertigo. “I thought the Showcase was just a pre-game exhibition. Only the competition votes count.”
“Everything counts.” A swirl of blue next to his collar says I’m testing his patience. “From the moment you are born, the records of your training, your patrons, all of it weighs in. Every aspect of your life is already being discussed, analyzed, and interpreted by the viewers, in person and over Orion. The competition is still the biggest influence on the vote, but everything from your birth records to the Showcase can sway voters.”
I stand up on unsteady legs, but they hold. “Yeah, well, I hope this isn’t hinging on my birth records. Because then we might as well go home.”
Marcus shakes his head. “Your petty human concerns will all be swept away once you ascend. From the ascenders’ perspective, it’s all about discerning your potential. You have to demonstrate your essence.”
“My essence? What does that even mean?” My head’s still fuzzy from the fugue, but Marcus isn’t making any sense.
He seems annoyed that I’m not getting what he’s saying, but it would help if he stopped speaking in riddles. “Your essence is that essential spark within. The one you bared while creating the The Broken Artist.”
Cyrus and I exchange a look. Marcus is talking about the fugue state. He thinks it’s just some kind of internal “spark” I can tap into at will. Or somehow “bare” to the world, like it’s a switch I control rather than a possession that controls me.
I grimace. I’ll be lucky to master the fugue state before the final competition, much less the Showcase. “Look, I don’t think recreating The Broken Artist is the way to go for the Showcase. It’s a little… I don’t know… disturbing for a Showcase piece, don’t you think?”
He gives an elaborate sigh, which seriously rubs me the wrong way. “That is precisely what you want in the Showcase. Your human senses are extremely limited in this regard. You need to trust me when I tell you that the more radical your art, the better. You have to push boundaries. They’re looking for something that will jump the g
ap.”
“The gap?” I rub my temples, trying to clear out the fuzz, so I can have a hope of understanding what Marcus is telling me.
“The very large chasm between your present state and the ascender you will become,” he explains, like this should be obvious. “Your competition art needs to be something that transcends your human restraints, the biology that’s holding you back.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” My head is definitely pounding now.
“Forget about human art—every ascender is an artist, and that’s the standard they will be judging you by. Ascender art explores what it means to be ascended and how that is different from the humanity we’ve left behind. You need to reach for that. There’s a reason why we have these games, beyond fulfilling that residual need for creation.”
“To make up for ascenders who die in hideous hyper-rail accidents?” Cyrus asks. I think he wants Marcus to leave so we can get to the real strategizing.
Marcus gives him a look of disgust. “Ascenders don’t die in accidents.”
“Right, you upload. Sorry, I’m just a stupid human. Carry on.”
Marcus shakes off Cyrus like he’s an annoying fly. “There are a small number of ascenders who take their lives or otherwise have to be put to storage, thus leaving room for replacements. But that’s not what I mean.”
Cyrus arches an eyebrow at me. I return it and immediately wonder what would make an ascender want to end their guaranteed immortal life.
Marcus keeps talking. “The main purpose of the games is to find the spark. The ascender within, waiting to break free. You have to move your audience by baring it. Ascenders are somewhat obsessed with the idea of this spark… past what is truly rational. It drives more than you might suspect.”
“And this relates to the Showcase piece how, exactly?” asks Cyrus.
Marcus gives one of those dramatic sighs that usually makes me want to punch him, but for once, I understand it. Cyrus doesn’t get it, but I do: I have to move them. Demonstrate the ascender within. And the Showcase will be just as important for that as the competition.
“The Showcase,” Marcus says, “is the counterpoint to the competition. The day of the competition you’ll have to bring everything you have to your art. It’s your peak performance. But in the Showcase, you’re given room to experiment. To show the breadth and depth of what you can do. It should be a piece fundamentally different from your competition piece and that illustrates another aspect of your potential.”
Cyrus and I exchange quick looks. This is all kinds of messed up. If I manage to induce a fugue for the competition, the result will be completely random. There’s no way to plan a Showcase piece that will balance it. And whatever I pick, the result isn’t going to move the ascenders who are watching. Except maybe move them to laughter at how awful it is.
“Fantastic,” Cyrus says. “You got that, Eli?”
“Sure,” I say, even though I have no idea what he means.
“All right, then,” Cyrus says to Marcus. “Why don’t you let Eli and me take it from here?”
Marcus frowns. “We still have much to discuss.”
“Sure, sure we do,” Cyrus says. “How about you come back after dinner?”
“Cyrus just thinks I need to rest some more.” Seems like a handy excuse.
“Perhaps I should call for a med bot.” Marcus’s frown digs deeper into his bodyform’s forehead.
I work up a smile for him. “No, I’m fine. I’ll take a quick nap, then hit the studio, okay?”
“We’ve just had our limit of ascender assistance for the day,” Cyrus throws in.
I give him a warning look, but Marcus is already headed for the door. He pauses at the threshold. “I’ll check back with you in the studio after the dinner hour.”
“You got it, boss.” I give a small wave.
His frown is almost a scowl by the time he leaves.
The door slides shut. “So what are we actually doing?” I ask.
Cyrus’s hands are up, already tapping into the screen. “Figuring out how to cheat.”
I scowl. “I thought you were going to help me with the fugue.”
“I’m thinking it’ll be easier to just eliminate the competition.”
“Cyrus…”
He smirks as his hands fly over the holographic controls. “Relax, bro. I’m not going to poison Thompson’s soup. I just want to know who you’re up against. Maybe mess with the competitions’ heads. Throw them off their game.”
“I don’t know.” It’s one thing to try to master my own art. It’s another thing entirely to tamper with someone else’s.
Cyrus gives a low whistle, looking at the screen. “Man, you are one popular guy.”
I shuffle over. Cyrus has a dozen vids going at once. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, a good chunk of the darknet thinks you’ve got a chance at winning this thing.”
“Darknet?” I ask, eyebrows raised.
Cyrus smirks. “Basha linked me in. It’s like Riley’s black market net back home, but this one’s worldwide. Anyway…” He points to a table of statistics. “Three-to-two odds of you taking the gold.”
The table of numbers swims in front of me, the squiggles barely comprehensible. I can’t decide if it’s the aftereffects of the fugue or the dizzying idea that I might win.
“They don’t know about the fugue.” I gesture to the screen. “Otherwise, I’d be the long-odds bet, not the favored one.”
“Does Lenora know about the fugue?”
“I’m not sure if she realizes I pass out and go into this whole hallucinogenic state. She knows I can’t produce that level of art on demand, for sure. The first fugue I had in front of her was with Marcus there. Regardless… you should probably bet against me. You’ll clean up.”
Cyrus frowns and swipes the stats away. “Your attitude needs an adjustment. And the ascenders aren’t stupid, Eli. In fact, I’m pretty sure they know more than we do. Which includes your ascender girlfriend, sorry, patron.”
I grit my teeth. “I think it’s clear whose girlfriend she really is.”
“Right.” Cyrus narrows his eyes. “Then tell me why she’s trying so hard to stop you from competing.”
I look away, heat rising in my cheeks. “Look, I’m not proud of—”
“Eli.” Cyrus’s sharp tone makes me look back. “She doesn’t want you for a domestic. She’s working way too hard on stopping you for it to just be that. Man, that doesn’t even make sense. If that’s what she wants, she’ll have plenty of takers—”
He stops at the look on my face.
“Not that you’re not awesome enough to be a domestic,” he says, dripping sarcasm. “But there’s something more going on here. If you weren’t so…” He gestures up and down at my clothes, still splattered with bloody paint. “…messed up, you’d see it. When this is all done, I’m sending you to therapy or something. Right now, you need to clear out the fog and win this thing.”
“So why do you think she doesn’t want me to compete?”
He frowns and turns back to the screen, swiping up some data again. “I don’t know. But we need to figure it out. So we know how far she’ll go to stop you.”
I glower, but I see what he means. “We know she offered to break ascender laws to stop me.” I don’t mention the obvious: that she already bent the law pretty good in buying my art with untraceable chits.
“Exactly.” Cyrus sighs, scanning the screens. “And we’re not going to let the rules stand in our way, either.”
I don’t know what Cyrus is thinking. “If we get caught, I’ll be disqualified. Even if I somehow manage to pull off a fugue state, they won’t let me ascend.”
Cyrus drops his hands from manipulating the screen and turns to me. “Don’t worry about that.” He has a dead serious look. “Whatever I figure out, trust me, they’re not going to know what happened. You go back to the studio and work on finding your inner ascender or whatever Marcus was talking about. I’ll meet yo
u for dinner.”
I frown. “Just be careful.”
He smirks and turns back to the screen. “The shiny pants haven’t caught me yet.”
Which only makes my gut hollow out. I have no idea how Cyrus can rig this, but if we’re caught, we’ll both be exiled from Seattle. “Thanks, man.” It feels completely inadequate to say it out loud.
He doesn’t answer, just flicks his hands in angry swipes, bringing up and sifting through some kind of data that I don’t understand. I back away, turn, and head toward the door.
Before I reach it, Cyrus says, just loud enough for me to hear him. “We’re going to win this thing. For your mom.” His eyes are still glued to the screen, but I nod anyway.
For my mom.
My inner ascender.
I need to move the ascenders watching the performance tomorrow. For all the time I’ve spent wanting to ascend, I’ve never really considered whether I had what it took to be an ascender. I drag my pencil in a large sweep across the canvas. It catches, leaving a smear of charcoal in an arcing line.
It means nothing to me. Yet.
My inner ascender.
I know how the ascendance procedure works, or at least as much as they let legacies know. Nanites are injected into your brain. Microfilaments intertwine with your neurons, enhancing your neural capacity. The stories from the Singularity, back when everyone could opt into ascendance, tell what happens next: those artificial neurons create an enhanced consciousness that feels like transcendence. Then there’s a wild surge of… thoughts, I guess. Creativity, maybe? Some kind of mental superhumanism. The stories speak of giant leaps of insight right in the transition… and they paint a pretty horrifying picture of what happens when the procedure goes wrong. When humans burn too bright, and their minds melt down in the process. That isn’t a metaphor, either: their gray matter literally liquefies into a kind of molten consciousness. It pools at the bottom, turning their skulls into custom-made urns.
I always wondered what caused some to die. Was it a flaw in their brains? Or did their neurons grasp too readily onto the change, with thoughts so transcendent they exceeded the capacity of the flesh to hold them?
The Legacy Human (Singularity #1) (Singularity Series) Page 12
