The Legacy Human (Singularity #1) (Singularity Series)

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  I don’t know. I always assumed the procedure would simply happen… and then I would be one of them. The nanites would take me, purify me, transform me into something… more.

  I didn’t consider there might be some part of the more already inside me.

  The painting of Kamali stares at me from the corner of the studio. I’ve propped it up on one of the low cabinets. I can’t stand to cover it or put it away. At the same time, I can’t look at it. She’s dead and broken, her blood mingling with the mud. My face burns with the shame that something inside me would envision her destroyed. Maybe that’s why I can’t put it away. A penance of sorts for the part of me that, for some twisted reason, wants that to happen.

  My inner ascender.

  A lightness infuses me. I can suddenly see it: that inner thing, the living thing that wants to beat its way out of me. The fugue state.

  I sweep the pencil rapidly across the canvas now. The form of the fugue is at the edges of my understanding: it feels like a tsunami of emotion, a rage and a flurry of action, but what shape is that? What color? How would it express in paint?

  The pencil scrapes and carves a figure, half formed, half exploding out of the canvas.

  Something pounds on my door.

  For a moment, I think it’s my pulse beating in my ears, but when I look, a brown face peers in my window, which I forgot to dial down.

  It’s Kamali.

  My heart lurches. I rise so fast, my chair tips backward and falls. I look rapidly between the live, earnest, beautiful face of Kamali at the door, and the dead pallor of the one I created on canvas in the corner. My pulse races as I judge the angle, but I don’t think she can see it.

  I rush over to the art cabinet, use my implant to scan it open, and rummage to find a sheet. Then I hurry and throw it over the painting, hiding my shame. A brown and red edge peeks from the bottom, and I spend precious seconds tugging and adjusting and making sure there is nothing showing. When I finally stumble to the door to key in Kamali, I’m breathless and probably look as guilty as if there were bloody paint still dripping from my hands.

  She frowns and takes a step back. “Are you okay? I can come back later.” She peeks around me, but all she can see is the nearly blank canvas with a few lines of charcoal. And a knocked-over chair.

  “No, I’m fine. Please, come in.” I sweep my hand to welcome her. The heat of my shame burns from the corner, like the painting is a roaring fire that only I can feel. I steel myself against looking at it, afraid I’ll give away my own guilt.

  Kamali glides in, still frowning. “You seemed, well, kind of panicked when your sponsor found you in my studio. What happened?”

  I grimace. “It was just some ascender drama.”

  She nods. “I just wanted to see if having me model helped… you know, if you were able to access your art again.” She frowns at my barely marked canvas.

  “I just got started.”

  She looks at me, timid. “Can you tell me what it is?”

  “Not really.”

  She nods again, but I don’t think she understands.

  “I mean, I could tell you, if I had any idea myself.”

  Her face lights up, a playful grin breaking out and stealing my breath.

  “Wait.” I hold a hand up, as if I can freeze her expression in place. “That is what I need, right there.”

  “What do you mean?” She frowns.

  I don’t answer, just rush over to lift my chair, whipping the pencil from where it’s tucked behind my ear and starting to sketch. It’s not the smile I want to capture, but the feeling that it brings out in me, like something inside has brightened. I sense Kamali behind me, peering over my shoulder as I rough out the shape of a man, only it’s dominated by a bursting forth of… something. The feeling ebbs as I become more conscious of her. I stop sketching. The black smudges suddenly seem coarse and childlike.

  “Don’t stop,” she says, behind me.

  I give her a sheepish look. “It’s hard for me to hold onto the feeling.” Which isn’t exactly true. I don’t know how to directly access the fugue state, the thing I’m trying to portray on the canvas. But even the concept of an inner ascender feels just outside my grasp.

  Her eyes light up. “I have an idea.” She lifts the canvas from the easel. “I have a place I’d like to show you.” She turns and heads for the door.

  I have no idea what she’s doing, but I tuck the pencil behind my ear and follow her out of my studio. She briskly strides down the hall, full of purpose. Her footfalls are silent in the delicate dance slippers that match the bright red of her uniform. After two turns, I’m already lost—I still don’t know the layout of Agon. I make a mental note to fix that tonight.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “Somewhere different.” She glances at me. “Sometimes it helps me focus.”

  I nod. I’m willing to try anything, especially with her. We pass door after door of studios, mostly empty. Everyone must be at dinner.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  She smirks. “We’re not even there yet.”

  “Thank you for checking on me,” I elaborate. “And for trying to help—” I cut off as we round a corner. Cyrus and Basha are at the end of the hallway… kissing.

  I shoot a look to Kamali, but she appears as nonplussed as I am.

  “Well,” I mumble, “that happened a lot faster than I expected.”

  Cyrus and Basha have finished their kiss, but his hand is on her cheek, and they’re whispering. They’re standing in front of an open access panel with a darkened space behind it. It’s about half the size of a regular door, and the panel sits propped to the side. Basha and Cyrus haven’t broken out of their cozy little embrace long enough to notice us. Kamali takes me by the elbow and pulls me out of sight of the new lovebirds.

  “I should warn you about my friend, Cyrus,” I say in a low voice. “Correction: I should have warned you earlier about my friend, Cyrus.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s older than me by a couple of years,” I start, wondering how much I should reveal in the interests of protecting Basha and how much Cyrus will pound on me for letting his reputation loose in the fresh hunting grounds of Agon. Not that he should be looking for girls here. He’s supposed to be helping me win. This mollifies my conscience. Slightly.

  “Basha’s dated older guys before,” Kamali says.

  “Yeah, well…” I rub the back of my neck. “Cyrus is a great guy. A really great guy. He’s like my brother. You should know that first.”

  Her eyebrows arch up. “What should I know second?”

  “He’s not the type to stick to one girl at a time. Or even, sometimes, two.”

  Kamali smiles wide. “Basha has broken more hearts than I can count.”

  It’s my turn to look skeptical. “Basha? Little Basha? The wide-eyed Arabic girl who hangs out around you and bumps into people when she’s not looking?”

  “If you think that bump was accidental, you don’t understand Basha at all.”

  “Wait… what?” I look for signs she’s pulling my leg, but there are none. “You’re kidding,” I try.

  “I am very much not kidding.” She laughs quietly. The sound is entrancing. I decide I need to find more ways to make her laugh in the future. “If social gymnastics were an Olympic sport, Basha would take the gold every year.”

  “Okay.” I’m still not sure she’s quite taken my meaning.

  Kamali tilts her head toward me. “I probably should have warned you guys about her. Basha has this funny idea about having to kiss a million guys before she’ll find the right one.”

  “A million.” I’m not even sure what to think now. No matter how much flirting Basha does—and now that I think about it, she’s friendly with everyone—there’s no way she could take the gold from Cyrus in the love-em-and-leave-em category. For him, it’s definitely all sport, and I don’t know if Basha realizes that kissing Cyrus isn’t anything serious… to him.

  K
amali smirks and peeks around the corner. “Coast is clear,” she whispers, then tugs me into the hall. Sure enough, the access panel is back in place, and Cyrus and Basha have disappeared. I can’t tell if they went into the wall or retreated down another hallway. Whatever they were doing—besides the kissing—I’m sure it wasn’t legal. It makes me cringe that Cyrus is dragging Basha into whatever his plans are, even as Kamali is legitimately trying to help me.

  Kamali kneels by the access panel, which is now seamlessly integrated into the wall. If I hadn’t seen it open, I would have never known it was there. Kamali taps the panel in four different spots with some kind of pattern that springs it out from the wall.

  All right, then. I’m sure tapping into access panels breaks some kind of ascender rule, but clearly Basha brought Cyrus here, not the other way around. Then I remember what Cyrus said about Basha linking him into this darknet thing. All of which gives me a sigh of relief—maybe Cyrus isn’t dragging her into his schemes after all.

  Kamali opens the panel and climbs in, bringing my canvas with her. She gestures for me to follow. I hesitate, but apparently this is something the girls have been doing for a while. I hurry through before someone can catch us in the act. We’re in a giant room, two stories tall and as big as the Lounge, with a black foamy material covering everything. A cluster of chairs gathers a few feet away. Kamali pulls the panel back into place from the inside, and we’re left in total darkness.

  A blue light appears in front of me, lighting up Kamali’s face. She’s grinning. “Tap your implant three times fast.”

  When I do, it lights up as well. It’s not much, and it bathes everything in an eerie blue cast, like we’re demons in an underground lair, but it’s enough to see by. She glides over to the chairs, setting up two facing each other. Even those simple movements are a dance. Kamali so clearly carries her art with her everywhere, in every turn and step. When she sits, it’s like a butterfly alighting on a leaf. She props my canvas on her knees and holds it with her delicate fingers on either side. Her face would seem too thin, except I know the rest of her body is pure muscle in pursuit of her art.

  She’s likely the most beautiful easel I’ll ever have.

  “Do you know where we are?” she asks.

  “Um… no?” I blink and realize I’ve been staring at her for far too long. “I can barely keep track of where we are outside the walls.”

  Her smile is bathed in blue light. “We’re underneath the stage.”

  “Really?” I look up as I take a seat, even though I know there’s nothing but blackness above me. The weak light of our implants doesn’t reach far.

  “Sometime tomorrow, you’re going to stroll out right above us and give the performance of your life.” Her voice is quiet, almost reverent now. “I come here to picture it. Play it out in my mind. I even dance down here.”

  An image of that flashes across my mind like a guilty dream: Kamali shucking off her uniform and dancing in the darkness beneath the stage, lit only by the ghostly, whirling blue light of her implant. My face heats.

  “Plus the darkness helps me focus.” She scoots her chair a little closer, so the canvas is within my reach. “Now… what were you trying to draw before?”

  My fugue state. But I can’t say that. “That thing inside me that creates my art.” I reach forward and sketch lightly on the canvas she’s holding. “In a way, I’m drawing you. You’re my Muse. Or at least… you help me connect with it.”

  She’s holding so perfectly still, the canvas doesn’t move even with my faster strokes with the pencil.

  “How do I do that?” She’s curious to the point of intensity.

  “I don’t know. It just happens.” I flick a look at her then concentrate on the figure taking shape under my pencil. “My sponsor says I need to bring out my inner ascender. I figure that has to be approximately the same thing.”

  I pause, the sketch nearly finished. I long for my paints, although the color would be completely washed out in the blue light.

  Her face pinches in. “Do you think we have souls, Eli?”

  I blink, hand frozen on its way back to the canvas for a couple more touches. “Uh… maybe.” I haven’t really thought about it, but I don’t want to offend her either. “Do you?”

  She nods, and her long fingers move along the edges of the canvas, flexing gently like she’s searching for just the right way to hold it. The rich brown of her skin is now dark blue, and the translucent white nails at each fingertip gleam like tiny spotlights. The urge to draw a detailed sketch of her hands in the surreal lighting wells up. I realize I’m ogling her hands while she’s not speaking, so I drag my gaze back up to her eyes. She locks me into an intense stare, like she’s trying to pierce whatever soul I might have. I swallow, but don’t look away.

  “My soul is one of the few things I’m sure of,” she says.

  “You’re a believer, then?” It’s not something you normally ask someone, especially a legacy. Believing isn’t a crime, but it makes you suspect… and raises the possibility you might be illegally gathering with others, like my mom and the Christians. Or any of a dozen other sects that practice strange rituals in secret to worship whatever god they think their souls belong to.

  “I believe there’s something inside each of us that touches the divine.” Kamali smiles, and it tugs on my Muse, drawing it out. My hand itches to move across the canvas, but she’s still fixing me with those eyes, so I resist. Besides, her words are tumbling through my mind, mixing and blending with the ideas already there.

  “Do you think this soul, this divine thing inside of us… do you think it can control us?” I can’t tell her about the fugue—she’ll think I’m crazy or worse—but I can’t help wondering if she has some answer for me. Some way to summon the thing. My inner ascender. My soul? I’m not sure what it is, but bringing it out is the key to everything.

  “Your soul doesn’t control you, Eli. It is you.” She’s watching me carefully, judging my response.

  “But it’s a separate thing, right?” I press, even though my doubts are churning up, trying to stop my words. “I mean, there’s me…” I gesture to my body and my head. “…who’s an idiot a lot of the time and bumbling the rest…”

  That draws a smile out that almost obliterates my train of thought.

  I stumble into finishing. “…and then there’s that other part. The one that can create art. It’s almost as if it’s outside of me. Like it comes from somewhere else.”

  “The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.” She sounds like she’s quoting someone.

  “Delphina?” I ask. It sounds like her.

  That smile captivates me again. “Yes. But she was actually quoting a pre-Singularity French writer, Émile Zola. He was the friend of a painter you may have heard of—Cézanne?” Her smile curls into a smirk, and I hear her French accent for the first time. English is the language of the post-Singularity world, with legacies too few to have language barriers, but I’m sure Kamali speaks French, given her family history. Her pronunciation of the famous French post-Impressionist painter is full of a lilting French accent as well as French pride.

  “I hear he could be moody and bled his emotions into his work. Sounds like my kind of guy.” I return her smirk.

  “Yes, well, Émile could be dark as well. But he understood that the gift isn’t something separate from you. It’s your work that brings the gift into the world, not the other way around.”

  “Are you sure you’re a dancer? I think maybe you really belong in storia.” I give her a wry grin, even though her words are sinking my heart. I want to summon the gift, the fugue, but I don’t want to own it. I don’t want to think the part that painted Kamali bleeding and broken on the ground is actually part of me. At least… it’s not a part I want to keep.

  Instead of smiling in return, her face falls serious. “The gift belongs to you, Eli. The ascenders don’t have anything like it. That’s why they seek it out from you.�
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  I nod. “My sponsor says they’re looking for that spark, that inner ascender. I know you have it.” I smile again, but her face remains cold. “I’m just not sure I do. Or that I have it in any form that might actually show up for the competition.”

  “You want to win.” She says it like it’s not obvious. Like it’s not the reason why we’re all here.

  I arch my eyebrows and don’t answer.

  “Why?” Her face is so serious that it steals some of her beauty and turns it into power.

  I’m distracted once again by the idea of painting that expression, and it takes me a moment to respond. “My mom is sick.” It’s not like there aren’t a hundred other reasons, but that’s the only one that really matters. “The only cure is gene therapy.”

  Kamali’s steely expression disappears, and empathy washes out of her in a gush. I can see it taking hold of her body, hunching her shoulders, drawing her delicate feet in. “Thompson said… I thought he was just harassing you.”

  My shoulders are suddenly tense. The thought of Thompson taking the gold, ascending with his conniving parents, while my mother quietly dies in Seattle…

  Kamali’s watching me intently. “Eli, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  “It’s not you.” But it comes out too rough. I lean away from the canvas and let my pencil hand fall to my lap. I close my eyes briefly and take a breath.

  “You may not believe you have a soul, Eli, but I do.”

  I open my eyes again and look at her: all earnest beauty, believing in something that’s vapor and mist and, at the same time, may be real enough to knock me out like an oncoming train.

  “I don’t know about souls. And I’m starting to doubt whether I have an inner ascender as well.” Actually, I’m afraid my inner ascender is more powerful than I can handle. And not exactly benevolent, given my painting of Kamali.

  “I think you need to paint to find out.”

  I nod my agreement. I don’t know if I have a soul, but whatever is inside me is responding to her in ways I don’t even understand. And painting is all I know how to do.