“Don’t worry,” Cyrus says. “I’ll convince Kamali she got it all wrong. Basha will help, if for no other reason than she doesn’t want Kamali upset any more than we do. Especially right now. Come on, their apartment is right around the corner.”
“What?” But he’s already slipped around the bend. I force my legs to unlock and follow after him. “Cyrus, wait.” I round the corner, but he’s already pounding on their door. My legs aren’t quite up to fully-functional-running yet, but I arrive before the door opens and yank his arm away from pounding again. “She’s got enough to worry about right now, with the medal ceremony and everything. She’s probably better off just hating me and moving on.”
He gives me a look like I’m pathetic. “You really don’t know anything about women, do you?”
I give up and lean against the wall next to the door, trying to think of what I can possibly say to Kamali when she answers it.
Cyrus keeps knocking. After a minute, we both realize no one is answering.
I push away from the wall and stare at the door. “I don’t like this, Cy.”
“Me either.” The scowl on his face is darkening by the moment. “Maybe they’re at the studio.” He doesn’t wait for me, just takes off in a half-jog down the hallway. I lurch after him, commanding my legs to move. The studio isn’t far, but Cyrus has pulled enough ahead that, by the time I arrive, he’s already peering in the window, which is dialed to clear. His scowl is two shades worse.
“They’re not here.”
“The Lounge?”
“Not open.” He turns away from the door. “Maybe they’re at Delphina’s.”
Before I can respond, he’s sprinting down the hall again. I stumble after and try not to lose him. Delphina’s in another wing of Agon, so it seems like we go on forever. We pass a security bot patrolling the corridor on the way, but it doesn’t bother with us. Finally, Cyrus stops and bangs on another door. I count my heavy breaths as we wait… but there’s no answer.
“I thought for sure the shiny pants would wait until after the ceremony.” His voice is tight with what we’re both leaving unspoken. I press my lips together, trying to think of where they could be. Any explanation except the one that’s stabbing icicles of fear into my chest. The ascenders have already taken them away.
“Let’s go back to our room,” Cyrus says, taking off down the hall again. He calls back over his shoulder, “We can find out more there.”
I limp after him, winding through the hallways again. We take a different route, and this time we see more people. Storia and drama agonites, most solemn. All losers in the lottery of the games. No ascenders to be seen; they’ve already abandoned their agonites. Competitors who are now just legacies again, figuring out how to live the rest of their mortal lives.
Kamali and Delphina and Basha are nowhere to be seen.
When we get back to our apartment, my body is finally back to normal, or nearly so, but it feels like a vise is clenched around my chest. My mind is spinning all kinds of scenarios of what has happened to the girls. They could be under questioning about the resistance. Or maybe just locked away. Or kicked out. They could be sitting, exiled, on a crumbled road at the outskirts of LA, for all I know. But I do know there are nomads that lurk at the edges of the cities, just outside the police bot patrols. I’ve never seen them, just heard about them, but the stories aren’t pretty. The outskirts are definitely no place for three underage girls.
Cyrus is at the screen, hacking in to see what he can find out, but the frustration on his face says it’s not much. In one corner of the screen, the artems competition is winding down. It won’t be long before they start the final tallies.
“Maybe they’re just somewhere preparing for the ceremony,” I say, more wish than actual belief it’s a possibility.
“Basha would have told me,” he says, still searching the pages. “She said they were supposed to stay in their rooms, for security purposes. They’re medalists. They’re not too popular inside of Agon right now.”
“Then how did Kamali manage to get into the staging area to see me?”
“Her sponsor helped us out.” He pauses. “I’m not finding any mention of anything here.” He swipes the pages he was using off the screen with a grunt of frustration.
A strange toning sound starts pinging. Cyrus searches the screen, but it’s not coming from there. “What is that?”
I scout around and find it’s the holo phone Marcus gave me. I frown at Cyrus, but he says, “Answer it.”
I tap the small button.
Marcus’s face pops up to float above the device. “Eli!” he says, like he’s surprised to actually see my face. “I’ve been trying to reach you. Where are you?”
“Um… back in our room?” My eyebrows lift. I expect him to say something about the painting—even if I kicked him out, he’s still my sponsor. “Where are you?”
“Nearby,” he says. “I’ll be there soon. Just sit tight. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll come get you.”
I throw an alarmed look to Cyrus, who is shaking his head and looks like he wants to crush the holo phone with his bare hands. “What do you mean, you’ll come get me? We’re still waiting for the final tallies.”
“Right.” Marcus looks off screen at something. “I’ll meet you at your room. We’ll watch the tallies together before we go.”
With that, his holo head projection blinks out of existence.
“Something is seriously not right.” Cyrus grabs the holo phone out of my hand and starts hacking into it.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling your mom.”
The worried look on his face sends an avalanche of fear cascading through me. “You said she was all right.”
“She was when I called her before. But that was before the girls went missing. And before your sponsor started acting even crazier than normal.” Cyrus finally brings up a connection. It rings and rings. There’s no answer, not even a message.
“She’s not answering because she’s sick.” I run both hands through my hair. “Marcus said she was in a coma.”
“Marcus is a shiny pants liar.” Cyrus clicks the phone off. “No answer means it’s disabled.” His voice is quiet and dark, filled with a deep anger I’m just starting to feel.
“Why would they do something to my mom’s phone?” I don’t want to voice what I’m really thinking. Why would they do something to my mom?
“Because they don’t want you contacting her.” Cyrus runs a hand across his face. “This is bad, Eli.”
Anxiety is climbing up my throat. “Call Riley. Get him to check on my mom.”
“Right. But this thing’s useless for that.” Cyrus tosses the phone to me, and I shove it in my pocket. He heads back to the screen. “I should be able to go through the darknet to reach Riley’s black market net. Or reach someone who can tap into it. I’ll encode a handshake, so Riley will know it’s me, then have him send someone physically to the apartment. We need to get eyes on your mom without being tracked.” He glances at me while his hands work the pages. “It’s going to take a while, Eli.”
I rub my temples with both hands, cursing my own stupidity. We should have had someone watching my mom all along. Someone not an ascender. Instead, I left her in the care of an ascender-controlled med bot. Why did I trust the ascenders with anything?
Just as Cyrus finishes with his darknet message, one of the other pages flashes an announcement about the games.
“Cy…” I say, but he’s already on it.
He swipes the tallies to fill the screen. First musica is up, nearly forty competitors this year. They shift and sort, and the winner emerges: a dark-eyed Asian girl I don’t recognize. After a small amount of commentary, the field for artems appears. It’s the smallest cohort, only sixteen of us. I swallow as I find my picture and watch it move across the screen, surviving the winnowing, round by round. It quickly narrows to just a few, including me and the winsome Katya. I hold my breath until we’re the final two�
�� and then Katya’s picture fades.
I huff out my breath, not quite believing it, even as I stare at my intake picture huge on the screen. I won. I took the gold. I’m going to ascend. A small, hysterical laugh escapes me. Cyrus’s hand lands on my shoulder, and he pulls me into a rough, backslapping hug.
Then he grips my shoulders with both hands. “You did it, man.” He’s fighting a smile, like he’s not sure if he’s entirely won my forgiveness.
“I couldn’t have done it without you, Cy.” Tears prick my eyes as I realize: we’re going to save my mom.
He breaks into a grin and grabs me for a lung-squeezing hug. Over his shoulder, I see the image of my picture flash, something scrawled across it. I pull back from Cyrus and stare at the screen through blurry eyes.
Disqualified. It’s written in large red letters across my face, but a fog suddenly hits my brain, and I can’t take it in.
“What the hell!” Cyrus yells at the screen. He pulls up the volume, and the announcer is saying something about information coming to light regarding the mysterious death of Aaron Thompson, seventeen-year-old agonite from Seattle, also the home of gold medalist Elijah Brighton.
I feel the blood drain from my face.
An image of Thompson on an autopsy table appears next to my picture on the screen. Then both our pictures fade, and Katya’s serious artist face appears.
She’s their new gold medalist.
I have to brace myself against the head of my bed.
Cyrus is cursing and stomping around our room, but all I can feel is an arctic chill settling into my bones. Someone killed Thompson and set me up for it. Someone who didn’t want me to win. Someone who was willing to do anything to keep that from happening.
Lenora.
I feel dizzy, like my brain has split into two pieces, and they’re both swimming in a frothy sea of surreal. Cyrus curses the ascenders in ever more colorful language, but I’m unmoored from reality. I ease to sitting on my bed.
I had the gold. And then I lost it. My one shot at ascending gone before I even had a chance to believe it. And I’ll never have another one. My mom will die of the disease that’s ravaging her body. I’ll live out my short human life and follow after her. Being the best wasn’t good enough, not when the ascenders have their own games they’re playing. The bitter unfairness of it wells up to choke me. I can feel the fury growing, like a volcano building pressure under a sheet of ice.
Before it can erupt, I hear a snatch of something else the announcer is saying. I slowly turn to look at the screen. Pictures of Kamali and Delphina loom large.
“Cy.” My voice is a whisper, but it cuts off Cyrus’s tirade, and he takes in the screen. The announcer says something about never in the history of the games has there been such a sweeping round of disqualifications. But that the gold medalists from drama and storia have been found to have “known ties to dissenter organizations.” Their pictures fade and are replaced by their runner-ups.
“Oh no.” The words leak out of me, and somehow this is the final blow. I’m not going to ascend. Kamali won’t get her chance to defiantly throw the medal in their faces. I’ll never see her again, except maybe as cell mates in an ascender prison. My mind goes blank at that, refusing to see it. Cyrus is still staring at the screen, slack-jawed, like his worst nightmares have come true.
There’s a pounding at my door.
It jolts me, and I’m on my feet. I throw a wild look at Cyrus. “Security bot?” I mumble, my heart just now jumping into my throat and pulsing there, making it hard to speak.
The door pounds again.
“A security bot would just open the door.” Cyrus eyes the still-closed entrance.
I start towards it, then hesitate. “Marcus?”
Cyrus nods. “He must have already known. Maybe shiny pants will be good for something after all, if he can keep us out of prison.” He tilts his head toward the door for me to answer it.
I hurry over and key it open. But it’s not Marcus.
Lenora pushes past me so fast I’ve barely registered that she’s no longer in the doorway when she calls from deep inside my room, “Close the door, Elijah!”
I don’t close the door, but I turn wide-eyed, looking for Cyrus, afraid she’s going to do something to him. Or me. She could kill us both before we even knew what was happening.
Cyrus edges away from her, positioning his large body between me and her. A nice gesture, if I wasn’t more worried about her taking him out.
“Eli, please!” Lenora says, and I decide she’s not here to kill us. Not yet, at least.
I slide the door shut. I’m speechless, but I can see Cyrus putting it all together.
“You murdered Thompson as a backup plan, in case Eli won,” he says, voice full of restrained anger.
“I didn’t murder Thompson,” she says, but the guilt on her face tells me Cyrus isn’t that far wrong. “But I did arrange for some new evidence that connects Elijah to the murder. I’m sorry, but I had to do it. Eli, I tried to warn you—” She cuts herself off and strides over to me, brushing past Cyrus like he doesn’t even exist. Which ramps up the anger building inside me.
“You got what you wanted,” I say bitterly. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”
Her perfectly sculpted face draws down in sadness. “This isn’t what I wanted. But I couldn’t let them kill you. And that’s what would have happened. They would have pretended to let you ascend, but you would have been part of the one percent who didn’t make it. If by some chance they allowed you to ascend, it would only have been because the most important part of you had been destroyed in the process.”
My stomach bunches up. She’s sounding like Kamali, and it’s sending my head sideways. “What are you talking about?”
Lenora takes my hand in hers. It’s cool and soft as a newborn’s cheek. I’m so thrown by all of it, I let her lead me to the bed, where she sits and beckons me to sit, too. She’s wearing a thin, blue jumpsuit, the fabric of which resembles my sheets, shifting to fit her bodyform no matter which way she moves. Cyrus frowns from across the room, but he’s waiting to hear what she has to say.
“Eli, you’re the most important thing in the world. Not just to me. To the world.”
“I… don’t understand what you’re talking about.” She is crazy talking.
Lenora turns over my hand, so it’s palm up, then traces the lines in my palm up to my fingertips. “You are unique, Elijah. Your body is human…. Well, mostly human.”
I blink. “Mostly human?”
She smiles a little. “Do you remember the last time you were sick?”
“It’s been a while.” The truth is, I don’t get sick. I mean, I get tired sometimes, run down. But I don’t get the standard virus that floats through Seattle every year.
Her smile grows. “You’re lying. You’ve never been sick a day in your life. I would know. I’ve been charged with tracking your progress from the beginning.”
“The beginning of what?” But the shivers are raising goosebumps on the backs of my arms. I’m not sure I want to hear what she’s going to say.
“We simply called it The Question,” she says, and there’s a weird glimmer in her eye, like she’s glad to be finally saying it out loud. “And you were going to be our answer.”
I jerk my hand out of hers and stand up. “Either start making some sense or get out.” I fling my hand toward the door.
She stands and calmly regards me. “You were born seventeen years ago, through natural birth to Agatha Brighton. There is no recorded father on your birth record, Elijah, because… you don’t have a father. At least, not the way most humans do.”
I seriously consider whether ascenders can go insane. Like, literally, have a mental illness or malfunction or whatever.
Before I can think of something coherent to say, she continues, “You were part of an experiment to create a new Singularity, a second one, one that would fix the errors, the mistakes, of the first. One where human and machine wou
ld be seamlessly integrated at the molecular level to bond them together in a way that would sustain the one thing we lost the first time around. Or at least may have lost. That’s The Question, you see. Is that one thing, the only real thing that matters, still present within us? Or was it forever lost in the Singularity? There are many among us who believe in it, but we can’t prove it. And not for a lack of trying.”
“A soul,” Cyrus says. “You’re talking about your soul.” But he’s looking at her like she’s crazy, too.
“Your soul.” Her eyes glitter again. “Your spirit. That spark of the ineffable that is more than just mind or personality or creative impulse. It’s your connection to the divine.” She trains her gaze on me. “You, Elijah, are that connection. A bridge, not just between human and machine, but between our existence and a higher plane.”
A bridge. I take a step back, the weight of that word thudding into my stomach like a punch to the gut. “I’m not… I’m not that…” I struggle to deny it, but the words are getting tangled up on the way out.
“You think Eli is a bridge? Between you and… God.” Cyrus says it like he’s quite certain she’s mentally ill now. And I want to believe he’s right, but the coincidence… that the craggy old man in my vision or dream or whatever it was called me the bridge. Then I realize… the ascenders have done something to me. They could have programmed these dreams in me, making me have the fugue in the first place. Whatever delusional ideas Lenora has about why they did it—or how I’m her answer to The Question—she obviously believes I’m not entirely human. And that the ascenders made me that way.
I can’t think of any reason for her to lie about that.
“What did you do to me?” I ask in a whisper, horrified. My legs feel weak, and I brace myself against the wall. My mind is still grasping at it. Casting back. Thinking about how long the fugue has been going on. How long I’ve been… different. “You said you did this experiment. When?” I lurch toward Lenora until I’m staring her in the face. “When did you do this to me?”
The Legacy Human (Singularity #1) (Singularity Series) Page 23
