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

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  I shuck off the last of my uniform and climb into the decon unit. There are no implants this time, so it goes by quickly, although it leaves me feeling like I’ve been slimed. I step out and hasten to get my clothes. Cyrus is already naked and ready to take my place.

  While he is decontaminating, I ask Leopold, “No secret enhancements or slow-acting poisons, huh?”

  He glances at me briefly, then turns back to the pod’s holographic controls, checking Cyrus’s readings. “Mr. Brighton, if you had been carrying illegal enhancements, you would not have emerged from the decon unit conscious. Or perhaps alive, depending on the circumstances.”

  I choke. “Um… thanks for the warning on that.”

  “Would a warning have made it less stressful?”

  I guess not. Then I stare at the pod that holds Cyrus captive, hoping he hasn’t done something illegal that will set it off. My pulse starts pounding while the blue light flashes through the seams of the pod, until finally, it hisses and cracks open, disgorging a naked and disgruntled but very much alive Cyrus. I have the sudden urge to hug him but judiciously hold back.

  “Glad to see you made it,” I say instead. I decide not to mention the hazards of the pod. I’ll tell him later, after I’ve survived the Showcase. Assuming I’m not a sobbing wreck in my studio.

  I brush that thought aside. Cyrus finishes dressing, and Leopold ushers us to a door on the far side of the room. It’s another garrison of steel.

  Leopold gestures to the security lock. “Your implant will grant you access to the holding room. Beyond that, at the appointed time, you’ll be given access to the staging area. You will wait there until it’s your time to go on stage.”

  I nod to show I understand.

  “Good luck to you, Mr. Brighton,” Leopold says. “I will be watching your performance with great interest.”

  That makes me frown, and Cyrus gives him a dirty look. He probably thinks Leopold is trying to play some kind of head game with me. My pulse beats in my palm as I hold my implant up to the scanner. It slides open the door for us.

  Cyrus and I step into a tiny, white room. It’s empty, just four walls and two doors—one in, one out. The one behind us shushes closed.

  We wait.

  When the other door doesn’t open immediately, Cyrus says, “You can do this, Eli.” He’s staring at the door.

  I keep my eyes there, too. “Cy, I want you to know, I never meant for this… I mean, if Marcus turns us in…” I swallow. I can’t even picture what exile will mean for us.

  “Shut up. No matter what happens, we’ll take care of your mom. Together.”

  I look sideways at him, but he’s still staring at the door, waiting for some signal that it’s time.

  Then he slips a half-grin to me. “Seattle was getting boring anyway.”

  I let out a breath. “You’re only saying that because you’ve dated every legacy girl even close to legal age.”

  Cyrus resumes his staring contest with the door.

  My heart starts to beat on my ear drums in the silence. “Which reminds me,” I say, trying to keep the nerves at bay, “you should take it easy on Basha.”

  That rips his attention from the door. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I saw you exchanging saliva.”

  His eyes go a little wide.

  “Oh, come on, it’s not like I didn’t see it coming. Just, you know, don’t treat her like yesterday’s news. At least until we’re done with the competition.”

  He frowns and looks back to the door. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  He strides up to the door, looking for a lock. “When do you think—”

  A loud tone from the door cuts him off. He steps back as it swooshes open. There’s a larger room beyond it, empty except for a couple of chairs, and on the other side of a glass wall… the stage.

  Cyrus and I stride into the staging room. There’s no sound from outside, but the bright daylight streams in, flooding everything. The stage is enormous, even bigger than I imagined when hiding out underneath it. Our windows must be one way, because the artist on stage doesn’t seem to notice we’ve arrived. I expect to see Thompson, but instead it’s a painter I don’t recognize. I can see his hands shaking, a paintbrush in hand as he stands in front of his canvas. I can’t see the work, just his face, and it’s lit with glory, like he’s in some kind of trance that’s just now reaching its peak. Behind him, ascenders fill a stadium so huge it blocks the sky.

  My mouth is hanging open.

  Cyrus grabs my face in both hands, turning me away from the spectacle. “You can do this, Eli,” he says again. His face is only inches from mine. “You have to do this. You’re going to go out there, and you’re not going to think about who’s watching, or what’s going to happen next, you’re going to focus. You’re going to do whatever crazy mojo you do to get that fugue state rolling, and you’re going to paint the best freaking work you’ve ever done. Understand?”

  I nod and pull out of his grasp.

  I struggle to breathe normally.

  The artist before me walks off stage, away from us, and a bot follows behind, bringing his work. Another bot rushes in with a replacement canvas and paints.

  Those are for me.

  The door of the staging room tones and slides open. A rush of noise, fresh air, and heat sweep in. The applause for the artist is deafening, like an earthquake of appreciation has arrived to shake all of Agon. I feel it riding up and down my bones.

  I step through the door and out onto the stage.

  The sun is even more blinding on stage.

  From the outside, the staging room isn’t merely a bank of one-way windows—it’s a towering mirror that reflects back the thousands of ascenders filling the stands. The roar of the crowd fades. My foot catches on the dull, black surface of the stage, and I stumble. I right myself just as I reach the easel. It’s in the middle of a tiny platform at the focus of the stadium.

  There are so many ascenders, all packed together, and the stadium is so vast, my brain has a hard time taking it in. Some of them have traveled from the other side of the globe to experience this first-hand in their custom bodyforms, but most have just downloaded to the cheaper rental bodyforms fabricated just for the Olympics. Custom or rental, their multicolored skin catches the light and glitters like a thousand angels have alighted to watch me paint.

  I can’t see their individual faces, but I’m sure they can see mine. All they have to do is enhance their vision, but if that isn’t enough, the soft buzz of a dozen camera drones flits around the stage to capture my performance for the pleasure of all Orion. Above and below, at eye-level and hugging the floor, the insect-sized bots capture every angle of my face, the heaving of my chest, the slow dampness forming at the edge of my hair. The hum of the drones isn’t enough to mask the sound of the multitudes—their rustling movements create a wind of sound that buffets me.

  I stand at the focus point, the small black spot of attention at the center of the stadium, and stare back at them. The cadence of their sounds is wordless, but it still forms words in my mind. Does he have it? Does he have it? Does he have the gift?

  I understand why the artist before me painted with his back turned to them.

  I take the chair and turn it away from the crowd. The noise ceases, like a held breath, and the sound of my own breathing rushes in my ears. They still stare at me from their reflections in the staging room windows, but they’re easier to ignore now that the canvas is in front of me. A palette and paints wait on a tray that floats with some kind of maglev tech next to me.

  I pick up the pencil.

  Focus, Eli. I hear Cyrus’s words in my head. I’m sure he’s watching, too.

  I push all of it away and think about Kamali. I picture her human-powered flight, more like a true angel than the host of ascenders behind me. She has it, that ascender-within, that gift I know they’re looking for. I’m merely a thief stealing a flicker of her light to i
gnite my own torch.

  The pencil in my hand drags across the canvas, but I can see the lines before they appear: charcoal strikes against the pure driven snow. It’s the work I’ve been trying to perfect for eighteen hours straight, dozens of tries, all miserable, but this one… I picture Kamali in her human form, a shroud of flesh covering the potential inside her. I pull that light out from within her, only it’s my own body that’s bursting on the canvas, rent apart by the potential trapped inside.

  I sketch it quickly, just broad strokes, because I want to get to the paint. The colors are what will make this come alive, not just a skeleton of charcoal and promise, but the solidity of blues and whites and a yellow incandescence that I hadn’t seen before. A brightness like the sun that’s warming my face, causing trickles of sweat to creep to my jaw then itch their way down my neck. I use my shoulder to wipe it away, not wanting to stop the brush strokes, not letting the heat from the sun set this piece into finality before I’m done with it.

  My strokes are rapid and getting faster. Moving the color, touching the shadow, making the light that bursts out from inside me even more eager. I stop, then touch again. I stop again and push the chair back, looking at it from several feet away. It’s a boy being lifted off his feet, legs dangling in the air as his chest bursts with the brilliance of his inner ascender. The pain flings his arms wide, his body cracked open for the light to spill out. His inner self is breaking free, and the torment on his face wrenches my chest in the very same spot where the yellow-white acrylics have hollowed out his soul, baring it for everyone to see. There’s something missing… something not quite right… I take the pencil and sketch the bare outline of another person in the lower right-hand corner. It’s so light you almost can’t see it, a pale gray wisp of a thing, half-formed. Incomplete. It’s watching the boy.

  I can’t decide if I’m the watcher or the watched. I think I’m both.

  I push back and look at it again. There’s no question at all—it’s the best work I’ve done outside of the fugue state. And it’s reached the zenith of what it can be. Complete. Any more will only mar the piece as a whole. I set the pencil down and stand to face the crowd, a hot glow still burning in my chest. That’s where I’ve pulled it from, the true source of the painting: a soul that only Kamali believes I have.

  I wait.

  The crowd murmurs; a slow rise and fall of wordless conversation; a smattering of applause.

  My chest caves: they don’t like it.

  I stare dumbly at the crowd, at the buzzing drones, at the winking sunlight from the dustless maglev stadium seats and the beautiful perfection of the ascenders seated in them. I slowly turn back to the painting.

  My finest work. It holds everything I have to give. And it’s not good enough.

  My head floats above my body, watching as my hand reaches to take the still-wet canvas from the easel. I automatically hold it by the frame in back, taking care with the fresh surface, even as my mind concocts the many ways in which it can be destroyed. Should be destroyed. Ought to be obliterated so it doesn’t serve as a beacon for my failure for a single second longer.

  I slowly walk from the stage.

  A door opens in the mirrored wall, welcoming me back into the darkness. I hear a bot whispering behind me, bringing the rest of the supplies. I step across the threshold, swallowed by blackness until the door closes, and my eyes adjust to the relative dimness of the hallway.

  I’m not in the staging room. I’m somewhere else inside the cloistered halls of Agon, next to some glowing-white wall just like all the rest.

  And I’m lost. In every sense of the word.

  My arm aches from holding the painting carefully away from my body. I set it down. Maybe the bot will take it away. Maybe not. I walk away from it, not looking back.

  I wander the halls. They’re empty. It’s like the dream where you search endlessly for something tremendously important, but you’re stuck in an inescapable maze. The maddening frustration builds with each locked door, each fruitless attempt. Only I’m awake, and the tension boiling inside me is a distant storm on the horizon, black and threatening and ready to roll in and obliterate everything that I am.

  Somehow my body knows Agon better than my conscious mind, because as I near a door with the window dialed to clear, I know it’s Kamali’s studio. I rush to peer inside, half afraid I’ll find her sobbing on the floor like the girl before, but when I get there… she’s not alone.

  Delphina has her arms wrapped around Kamali’s neck, hugging her. Kamali has to bend down, her elegant dancer form so much taller than Delphina’s short, muscular one. They’re both wearing their performance outfits. Kamali’s dress is barely there, long wispy strips of blue-and-white fabric that float around her body and brush against Delphina’s ripped and charcoaled uniform. I want to think their hug just a comforting embrace, not the kind that comes with more at the end, but it still surges up a strange kind of jealousy. Not just that Kamali might be more than friends with Delphina, but that they both are exactly the kind of legacies the ascenders want. I can too easily see them in that same embrace, only ascended, wearing bodyforms with heightened senses that would make that touch more intimate than any human could ever experience.

  My stomach wrenches with bitterness and longing, but before I can tear myself away from watching, Kamali opens her eyes and sees me staring through the door’s window. I rapidly debate leaving, but she’s rushing to let me in, so I’m stuck.

  She keys the door open. “Eli!” She’s breathless. “Are you finished?”

  I have a hard time getting my mouth to form words. “Yes.”

  “How did it go?” Her big, brown eyes roam over me, as if the signs of my Showcase performance might leave marks on my person.

  “Badly.” The word is a whisper, but she hears it.

  She throws her arms around my neck, and I nearly jerk back from surprise.

  “I’m so sorry,” she says, but my senses are filled with the heat of her bare arms touching my neck, the warm press of her body against mine, the soft tickle of her costume on my arms as they try to figure out what to with her suddenly in them. Before I can actually hug her back, she’s gone. She’s pulled all the way back across the threshold of her studio, leaving me standing outside of it.

  She looks earnest. “Did you hear?”

  I’m still recovering from the drive-by hug, but her words don’t make any sense. “Hear what?” Then my heart lurches. Was my performance so bad they’ve decided to actually kick me out?

  Her lips press together, and she glances back to Delphina, who has stalked over to stand behind her. I work hard not to shrink away from her glare.

  Kamali hesitates, then says, “Thompson is dead.”

  The words are like a smack to the face. “What? But he was…” …on the list ahead of me. Only now I remember: he wasn’t on the stage when we got there.

  Delphina gently nudges Kamali aside, standing in front of her, protective. “He was found in his room. Face down in a puddle of drool and drugs.” Her anger is a cold chill that crosses the air between us. “Did you do this, artem?”

  “Do what?” I ask, confused. “Wait… you think I killed him?” I’m mystified and outraged, but a sick horror slices through me, like Delphina’s cold anger has seeped into my chest. Did Cyrus do something… terrible… to help me? Did Marcus? It’s possible. If I’m honest, it’s more than possible. Cyrus isn’t a killer, but I’m not sure how far he would go. And Marcus… there’s no reason for me to believe that he wouldn’t do whatever was necessary for me to win.

  “I… I didn’t do anything, I swear.” I beseech Kamali with my eyes. “I swear, I didn’t know anything about this until just now.”

  I think she believes me, but she says nothing, just bites her lip. Delphina is appraising me like she can’t decide if I’m a fool or a viper whose head she should cut off.

  “I want to win,” I say to Delphina, trying to convince her, knowing that Kamali will hang me, or not, on De
lphina’s judgment. “I need to win. But I promise you, I could never do something like that.” Which is true, even though I’m not at all sure it wasn’t done on my behalf.

  She gives me a long look, then a short nod.

  My shoulders drop down.

  She looks to Kamali. “Tell him.”

  Kamali nods.

  I wait for her to say something, but she doesn’t. Delphina slips past me and strides down the hallway, leaving us behind without another look.

  I turn back to Kamali. “Tell me what?”

  She reaches out to tug on the sleeve of my uniform. “Come inside.”

  I frown, but don’t argue. Just inside the threshold, she uses her implant to key the door shut behind me.

  She looks into my eyes. “Delphina thinks you can win.”

  “Okay.” I have no idea why Delphina would think that, other than she hasn’t seen my Showpiece yet.

  “Can you keep a secret, Eli?”

  I give her a sideways look. “Maybe.”

  “This is the kind of secret that if the ascenders knew, I could end up like Thompson.”

  My eyes go wide, and I flit a look to the closed door behind me. “Whatever you and Delphina are involved in… I can’t believe the ascenders would kill you for it. I mean, send you into exile, sure, but they don’t kill legacies.”

  “Someone killed Thompson.”

  She has a point. “Could have been an agonite,” I say. “Not that I’m saying I know who did it.” I pause. “Look, whatever your secret is, it’s safe with me. I know lots of people who do illegal things. I may have done a few of them myself.” When her eyes narrow, I speed up. “Not like killing people illegal. Just, you know, breaking a few ascender laws on tech and that sort of thing. Whatever you’re doing, I’m not going to rat you out to the ascenders.”

  She nods. “I told Delphina I think you’re going to win.”

  There’s something inside me that softens with that, a melting sort of feeling. Then I realize it’s not faith in my talent that makes her believe that.

  “You think I’m going to win now that Thompson is dead.” If he had died after the Showcase, it would have thrown everything into jeopardy—but whoever killed him knew to kill him at precisely the right time to take him out of the running and leave the field wide open for me. It turns my stomach.