Cyrus drops his gaze, but just shakes his head. When he looks up, he says, “Eli, it doesn’t matter. Whatever the girls are involved in isn’t going to impact you. The only thing that matters is winning, right?”
He looks to me for confirmation, but all I hear is the girls part of his speech. “So Basha is involved too?”
“Basha, Kamali, Delphina… I’m not sure who else. It doesn’t matter, Eli. Not to you.”
Then I realize: the hideout. They weren’t making out or dancing there—they were hatching their dissenter plans. Under the stage.
I stand up, pace away from Cyrus, then turn back. “Kamali tried to recruit me. She wants me to throw the medal back in their faces if I win.” I cross my arms and lean back against the frame of the bed, avoiding Cyrus’s piercing gaze. Kamali’s words about my soul, about losing me to the ascenders… I don’t like how they conjure up visions of my mom, thrashing in the bathtub. It makes me squirm inside, like my stomach is chewing itself into pieces.
“Well, obviously you’re not going to do that.”
My shoulders are tensing up again. “I’m just saying, I don’t think she’s going to help me.”
Cyrus stands up from his chair and strides over. He hovers, like he can menace me with his larger bulk. I just glower up at him.
“You could say you’re considering it,” he says.
“What the—”
“Just say it. Then get her to do her dance or whatever else it is that turns your artistic gears.”
“It doesn’t work that way.” I can’t draw inspiration from Kamali while simultaneously lying to her and trying to con her about joining the resistance. That’s not going to bring out whatever is lurking deep inside me, waiting to create great art.
But Cyrus misunderstands. “We don’t know how it works.” He’s talking about the fugue now. “That’s the problem.”
He has a point.
Cyrus lays a hand on my shoulder and leans in. If he wasn’t practically my brother, I might find it intimidating. As it is, I’m just burdened by his expectation that somehow, some way, we’re going to figure this thing out.
“Tell her about the fugue,” he says. “Tell her you can’t win without it. It’s not a lie. Ask her to help you figure it out, because God knows, I can’t figure you out to save my soul.”
I frown and peer up at him. “Your soul? What, are you a believer now, too?”
He steps back and gives me a hard look. “Are you going to do what it takes to win this, or not? Because we can go home now, if you want.”
I don’t miss that he dodged my question, but I file it under Things to Harass Out of Cyrus Later, and say, “Okay. I’ll ask Kamali for help.”
“Good man.” He gives me a nod and turns to the screen. “While you and Kamali work on the fugue, I’m going to check out your competition.” He brings up a page with a gorgeous girl on it. “Katya Petrova. From St. Petersburg. Works in acrylics like you.”
The girl has the wintry, blue-eyed beauty of a fresh snowscape. She has to be under eighteen if she’s competing, but her serious expression is that of a grown woman. And the clingy all-black artist attire in her pre-competition bio picture shows she has the curves of a woman, too.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say.
“Just doing my job, Eli.” Cyrus’s eyes are glued to the screen, so he doesn’t see me shake my head. “Don’t you have some painting to do?”
I let out a sigh and turn away. “I’ll be in the studio, if Marcus comes here first,” I call over my shoulder on the way to the door. Cyrus just grunts in response. I know he’s shoving me out the door because he thinks my best bet is with Kamali. And I know he’s still looking for a way to cheat—maybe his ability to score with every female within miles will come in handy after all. Although the idea of him distracting my competition, throwing her off her game with his less-than-honorable romantic overtures, still makes me queasy.
As I key open the door, I remind myself that it doesn’t have to be fair.
None of this is fair.
All I need is to win.
My feet snag on invisible friction points on the spotless floor.
My progress toward Kamali’s studio could only be slower if I was actually standing still. I’ve already stopped by my studio to pick up a sketch pad, but if I stall any longer, the dinner hour will be here, and I may not even catch her in time. I know Cyrus is right—she drags inspiration out of me, she’s a future gold-medaling artist in her own right, and I’ve already painted her once in the fugue state… although I’ll die before I show her that. But there’s no denying there’s a connection: she’s somehow key to figuring this thing out.
I just can’t think of any reason why she would help me. Especially after I practically ran from her revelation about throwing away her ascendance. That thought burns some kind of hot jealousy inside me: it’s the one thing I’ve ever wanted, and she’s going to toss it back in their faces.
A scuffle down the hall draws my attention as I round a corner. Two groups of red-uniformed agonites are on the verge of a fight. They each seem to be holding back an instigator. Taut, angry words are being thrown back and forth, made mostly of spittle and low-register growls. I can’t make them out, but there’s no mistaking their meaning. Threats. Intimidation. Beet-red faces to match their uniforms. They can’t do anything to each other now that the competition has begun, or they’ll all be disqualified. So their frustration bounces off an invisible barrier between the groups, spiraling the tension even higher.
Two red-uniformed ascenders appear out of nowhere, arriving with such startling speed that the human tension crumbles. I retreat around the corner before I have to witness whatever is going down next. Maybe I can take a different route to Kamali’s studio… except I’m still map-stupid when it comes to the layout of Agon. After I debate and stall and consider going back for Cyrus, I peek around the corner again. The drama crew and their patrons have dissipated, leaving the corridor empty and silent, as if they were never there. The metallic whisper of a security bot’s stride echoes down the hall just before it comes around the far corner.
I hold still, frozen as it walks toward me. But I’m not brawling in the hallway—I should have nothing to fear—so I stride down the hall as if I belong there. I pass the bot without looking at it, and it doesn’t slow down as it whispers past.
When I arrive at Kamali’s door, I hesitate again. Twice, I go to knock, then stop, trying to wrangle words in my head that make some kind of sense. Finally, I peek in the window instead.
She’s dancing.
The tension that’s locked in my shoulders eases out as my eyes drink up her movements. This is a different kind of dance than before. Sharper. Angrier. She flicks her hands while suspended in the air as if to rend the molecules apart by the splayed force of her fingers. And her costume steals my breath: it’s not the nude one or the barely-there blue one, but a red-and-orange blur that makes her look more like a living flame than a person. Sheer color is painted across her limbs and floats free on wisps of gauzy fabric. She’s a fire sprite come to life, burning oxygen in a blaze that doesn’t consume her, but rather lifts her straight out of humanity and into something more.
My mouth is hanging open, something I realize a split second before Basha’s face appears in the window. I stumble back, and the door slides open. Music spills out of the studio then cuts off as if strangled.
Basha braces one tiny hand on each side of the door frame, blocking the entryway with her slender frame and a fierce look. Her eyes glint with reflections of the hallway panel lights.
“Yes?” It’s hardly a question; more of an accusation. The cheerful, bright Basha is gone. This one looks like a mother tigress protecting her cub with fangs and unsheathed claws.
I rub the back of my neck. Kamali must have told her what happened. She’s standing at the music station with her back to me. “Could I… I would like to talk with Kamali. If… if she doesn’t mind.” I’m convinced Basha is going to slide
the door shut in my face.
Instead, she looks past me, searching the hall. “Where’s Cyrus?”
“Um…” This catches me off guard. “Back in our room?”
Basha flicks a look back to Kamali, then me. Her normal smile comes back full-force. “He probably needs some company!”
“Uh…” An image of Cyrus drooling over pages of Katya on the screen pops into my head. But I need Kamali alone. “Okay.”
Basha throws a look to Kamali again, then slips out the door. I grimace at her retreating back, hoping Cyrus wipes the screen before he lets her in.
Kamali arrives at the doorway, quiet, inspecting me. “Did you have some questions?”
I swallow. She thinks I’m here about the resistance. “Can I come in?”
She sweeps her hand, the tendrils of her costume following in the wake. I step inside, and she keys the door closed behind me. She remains nearby, calm, expectant.
It’s causing my shoulders to hunch up again. “Kamali, I can’t do what you’re doing. I told you before. My mom is sick.”
“I know,” she says. “She’s not the only one, you know.”
I frown, not sure what she means by that.
Kamali folds her hands and stares at them for a moment. Her flame costume extends halfway across the backs of them, leaving just her fingers bare. They’re delicate and long, and I have a crazy urge to reach out and touch them to see if they’re as soft as they look.
I pull my gaze back up to her eyes, blinking away my guilt for thinking about her hands instead of her words. Then I have a horrible thought. “Do you have someone who is sick, too?” I can’t even fathom her choice then—giving up ascendance when it would save the life of someone she loves.
“No,” she says coolly. “But there are plenty of others who get sick and die every year from diseases the ascenders could cure. I’m not doing this for myself, Eli.” She’s talking about refusing the medal now. “I’m doing it for every legacy. Every dissenter. Every soul that’s kept in poverty and treated like a thing, a treasure that has to be locked away in a museum, instead of a person. Until every human has the same rights as ascenders, including the right to ascend if they so choose… until then, no one should ascend. No one should give them what they want, not while they treat us like pets. Or worse.”
My stomach twists more with every word coming from her lips. It was a bad idea for me to come back. “I… I get why you want to make a statement about that,” I say, even though I don’t, not really. What does she think it’s going to accomplish? “But this is my mom we’re talking about.”
Her liquid brown eyes warm a little. “I never knew my mom. She was banished when I was little.”
My stomach wrenches some more. She’s not going to understand this. “I’m sorry about that—”
“I’m not.”
“What?” I stall out.
“My mom was…” She looks at her hands again. “It’s complicated.” She lifts her gaze to me. “But it’s good that my mom and dad left Paris. Being legacy was bad for them.”
I don’t understand, but I’m not going to push it. “Did the caretakers raise you, then?” I repress a shudder, and my mind skips around, wondering if that’s why she’s doing this. To get back at them. Legacy children aren’t allowed to leave with their parents when they’re exiled; the children are considered too great a treasure. That’s part of the punishment actually, breaking up the families. And the orphans are usually placed with caretaker bots, raised with all the finest love that a sub-sentient machine in a humanoid body can provide. It’s pretty messed up, and those kids end up being the kind you don’t want to meet in a dark alley.
“No, the caretakers didn’t get me,” Kamali says. “There was a special circumstance in my case. I was allowed to live with an aunt.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. Even so, she has to still be mad about that. “Is that why you joined the resistance? Because your parents were banished?”
She raises her eyebrows, and I guess it was kind of an invasive question. But I really want to know.
“Not directly,” she says.
I wait, but that’s all she seems inclined to say about it. “Look, I’m sure you have your reasons for… doing what you’re doing.” I can’t bring myself to say the words. I’m not even sure what the right words are for it. Throwing away your life? Committing suicide? Because that’s what it boils down to: saying no to eternal life. “But I didn’t come here to join your resistance. I can’t. But I do need your help.”
She frowns a little, like I’m not making any sense.
“I need to win this, Kamali. I need it for my mom. And I’m not going to be able to because…”
Her deep brown eyes have grown soft. I have all her attention.
“Because I can’t make art when I’m conscious.”
Her brow squishes up in an almost comical way. Like she thinks I’ve taken one of those street drugs the down-and-out legacy kids cook up in their bathrooms. Blast or Jolly or Seven or whatever the latest is that excavates their minds and makes them forget that they’ll never amount to anything more than pets, so they might as well spend their lives in a blissed-out haze until they die in a drug deal gone bad or cross a police bot wrong on a dark night.
“Not being awake is going to make it hard to get up on stage,” she says, like she thinks I’m kidding, but she doesn’t really get the joke. “And I saw that painting you did of Thompson. You looked like you were pretty awake for that.”
My mouth drops open. “That wasn’t Thompson!”
She narrows her eyes. “If you say so.”
I run my hand through my hair, grabbing a fistful on the way, like I want to tear it out. “You know what? Never mind.” I turn to go, but the door stays shut. She has to key me out.
Her hand lands on my arm. “I’m sorry.” The steeliness is gone from her voice.
I should yank out of her grasp, but I like the feel of her delicate hand on my arm too much.
“I know you didn’t kill Thompson. I do, Eli.”
I let her tug me back around. “I don’t know who killed him, but it wasn’t me. And my Showcase piece… that’s the best I can do, Kamali. The very best.”
She’s close and doesn’t pull away, but her brow scrunches up again. “I thought maybe you were thrown off by Thompson being found dead.”
“I didn’t even know.” I pause, trying to figure out how to explain it. “The only way I can paint something like Lady in the Light is when I’m in this fugue state.”
The scrunch falls off her face, replaced by something a lot less charitable. “You use?”
“No!” I pull away this time, pressing my back flat against the door and banging my head on it. I close my eyes briefly, and when I open them, Kamali’s judgmental look is replaced by one of concern.
“Tell me,” she says quietly.
“Sometimes I’m overtaken by this… fit. It’s like a seizure or something. I black out, or go into some alternate dream mode, and while my head is completely somewhere else, I paint. I make unbelievable art. I can’t control it. I don’t understand it. But if I don’t figure it out, there’s no way I can possibly win.”
Her eyes are wide and wondering now. She probably thinks I not only use drugs, but that I’m on them right now. Or I’ve used so many drugs that it’s triggered a psychotic break.
“I can’t join your resistance, so I’ll understand if you don’t want to help. But you’re the only thing that’s ever…” Inspired my Muse? Triggered something inside me? I swallow and look away from her intense gaze. “It’s like I told you before. Somehow you connect me to it. I thought maybe you could help me figure out how it works before the competition.” I focus on my feet, heels nearly backed against the door. I can’t look at her face. I don’t want to see her expression when she tells me no.
“Okay.”
I look up. “Okay?”
“I’ll help you.”
My eyebrows hike up, and for
a moment, I’m speechless.
“On one condition.”
My face falls.
Her full lips thin out as she presses them together. “It’s not that bad. I just want you to… consider it. Think about what the resistance is really about. If I help you figure out this fugue thing, and you win, think about what else we could accomplish if we stick together.”
“Kamali, I can’t—”
She holds up a finger. It doesn’t quite touch my lips, but it effectively freezes my words anyway. “And if you decide to ascend anyway… promise me you’ll return the favor.”
“Return the favor?” I frown, but then the light bulb goes on. “You mean… help the resistance? After I ascend?”
She nods.
I hadn’t thought of it before, but once I’m there, once my mom is safely ascended, there’s no limit to what I can do. The ascendance procedure doesn’t reprogram your brain, at least, it’s not supposed to. I guess I don’t really know. But in theory, all it does is enhance you to the point where you are on level with the ascenders. The bodyforms come later, but even then… you’re still you. Once I’m there, I can do anything any other ascender could do. And helping out Kamali and her friends would be the least of what I would owe them. And maybe… just maybe… if I win, I can convince her to change her mind and join me. Before it’s too late.
I keep those thoughts to myself and smile a little. “You know what? That’s definitely something I can do.”
I bask in Kamali’s wide smile.
Kamali sits cross-legged across from me.
We’re in the middle of her studio, the sketchpad across my lap, blank. Our knees are nearly touching, and the only reason I’m not hyperaware of that fact is that Kamali’s holding me in an intense stare-down.
“How many total?” she asks.
“Five or six.” It’s six, but the last fugue-state painting is of her.
“Is it five or is it six?”
“Five.”
“Ages?”
I think for a moment. “Seven, ten, fourteen, sixteen, seventeen.” And seventeen again, counting Kamali’s. They’re becoming more frequent, which kind of freaks me out. I don’t know if it’s the stress of my mom being sick or the fact that I’m trying harder to access the fugue, but something is changing. I’m getting closer to figuring this thing out… I can feel it.
The Legacy Human (Singularity #1) (Singularity Series) Page 17
