by A. L. Davroe
“Gee, thanks.” I give him a playful punch on his side, but I understand what he means. Without my staged death, the arrangement between Bastian and Sadie would never have been made.
“It’s not as though I don’t love you, Ella.”
I nod. I’ve always known Bastian loved me, but I always suspected it was slightly displaced. “But the love you have for me is different than what you have for Sadie. Isn’t it?”
Bashful, he nods. “I didn’t think there were different kinds. There’s love and then there’s love.”
We’re both quiet for a long time, each of us deep in thought. Eventually Bastian says, “I’m terrified of being a father. I have no good examples to work off of.”
I bite my lip. He’s right. Not his adopted father, Simon, who only adopted him to look good to my mother. Not his uncle, my father, who buried his head in a virtual world and got mixed up with rebellions that endangered his family. Not his biological father, an abusive slap-patch addict who sold Bastian to a Doll House and whored out Bastian’s little sister, Ava, for credits. Sometimes I think Bastian took to being so big brotherly with me because he no longer had Ava to look out for. Or perhaps he wanted to protect me where he couldn’t protect her. “Just be yourself, Bastian. Love that kid as much as you love Sadie and everything will be okay.”
“Will it?” he wonders. “Is everything going to be okay? When everyone blames us for what happened and we don’t even have a home anymore?”
How to answer that? The past year of my life I spent as a prisoner in my own home. But it no longer felt like home. Consciousness in Evanescence took a back seat to going into Nexis, being with Guster. I sacrificed everything to be with him, only to find he’s had another girl in Real World all along. I don’t understand; he’d wanted to meet in Real World. Uncle Simon had claimed that Gus had come to him trying to find me. Are his feelings for Delia not as strong as I think? Does he love me more? Can I let him walk away from her in favor of me, knowing her feelings for him are so strong? Can I survive letting her have him? I close my eyes, willing the tears not to fall. “What’s that stupid thing Dad always said? Home is where the heart is?”
Bastian smiles. “Yeah, I think that’s what he used to say.”
“I envy you,” I say. “Your heart is right here. Right with you. And it’s only getting bigger. Even though all that awfulness happened back there in Evanescence, even though Uncle Simon is dead, I think you managed to save your true home from all of that.”
He stops short, making me stop, too, and we stare at each other for a long time. Bastian has always had the sort of face that was too heavy and angular to really be called handsome. At least, not in the Aristocratic sense. But with my new eyes that appreciate the natural beauty in people, I can see his Natural features for the comeliness they represent, even with the Mods and Alts he’s added to hide them over the years. He lifts his hand, smoothes it over my curls. “You really do have a beautiful mind.”
A sudden stabbing of hurt in my heart and insecurity in my belly make me look away and hide my face in my arm. “I don’t feel all that beautiful.”
He sighs in a way that lets me know he’s annoyed. “Shadow?”
“His name is Guster,” I correct. “And I’m sad about Delia, too. About getting between the two of them.”
“I don’t really understand how you can come between the two of them. You’ve been dead to all of us. Trust me, I know they both thought you were dead. That’s what they bonded on initially. I was there. So, how did the unflappable Shadow come to fall in love with a dead girl?”
“It’s a long story.”
He glances around, takes a few steps away from me. “We’ve got time.”
I tell Bastian all about the accident where I lost my legs and subsequent captivity. He knows some of that part since Sadie has told him what she knows already. When I get to explaining Nexis and my experience in the game, he stares at me in fascination. He stares like a Programmer should, enrapt in my experience, sometimes interrupting to ask questions about the tiniest details. He’s incredibly interested in how my extracurricular codes were integrated into other avatars, whose specifically timed deaths at key locations unlocked security levels that no known person had even gotten close to.
“Aunt Cleo was a genius, I’m telling you. What a way to plant a virus! Designing the game to mirror Evanescence’s Main Frame OS then programming it to superimpose itself over the Frame once it was released. You didn’t have to even try to circumvent the G-Chip’s security measures because it’s so convoluted, the G-Chip wouldn’t have picked it up.” He shakes his head. “Even when they had a freaking chip implanted in your mother’s brain and monitored her day and night, she still managed to bring them to their knees.”
I agree. My mother was a genius. As were my father and even Uncle Simon. The terrifying part is that I’m the next generation of Drexel. I have the cells that made them who they are. And they trained me. Made me into them whether I wanted to be a Trickster or not. And I lived up to what was expected of me, proved my genes work just as well—better. Dad gave me the codes, after all, codes neither he nor Mom nor Uncle Simon had managed to crack. And I cracked them.
“So, that explains why Shadow is all mixed up. He thought you were dead in Real World, and you were just a manifestation of his internal wants and needs in Nexis. He never thought you were actually real. Never thought he’d actually meet you, so why not have a relationship with Delia? Seems harmless.”
“Until you factor in that he knew I was a Real World player. He’d asked to meet me in Real World, Bastian. He’d even gone to Uncle Simon trying to find out who I was.”
He rubs his chin. “Hmmm. Maybe he knew he loved you more than her? Maybe he wanted to be with the Real World player of you more than Delia?”
“How could anyone not love Delia? She’s wonderful.”
Bastian’s voice drops. “Seems to me like you don’t know her anymore. Trust me when I say this, Ella: the girl who was the Delia Haverfeld you knew is not the same. I saw firsthand the kind of transformation she went through after you died, and it had nothing to do with the amount of Mods and Alts. She changed on the inside. Became dark, cut-throat, and cunning. She’d do anything to anyone to get what she wanted, because she didn’t care about anyone anymore. I even helped her.”
I turn back to him, squint in the dying luminescence of the light-stick. “What?”
He shakes his head. “I helped her with some programming. Things meant to help her cheat and advance. I did it because I felt so bad for her, saw how far she fell after your death. But now I wish I hadn’t. Not at the cost of your happiness.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She’s a brilliant Programmer. Almost as good as you. It doesn’t surprise me that Carsai would ask her for cheat codes. Though, she didn’t have enough access to the game to develop the codes without help.”
“You helped her get Carsai into Quentin’s game?”
“Something like that,” Bastian hedges. “Quent’s game was locked up tighter than the Main Frame. Neither of us could access it, our chips wouldn’t allow for it. I doubt even you could have. But Delia developed something just as good, and I helped her plant it.”
I lift a brow, waiting.
“She figured out how to manipulate the game. Get it to give players everything they wanted.”
“The game was meant to do that anyway,” I reason.
He shakes his head. “Not everything. She figured out how to manipulate other avatars, AI and Real World players alike. She gave Carsai an AI version of Quentin. And after that, she had people lined up for blocks looking for her services. For the right credits, you could infiltrate anyone’s game, you could destroy someone’s game, you could influence anything that happened inside their game. She could do anything, so long as it didn’t involve Quentin Cyr’s real avatar.”
“Because he had special defenses,” I mutter. “But no one else was safe.” I shudder, thinking of how awful
it would have been if, in a fit of mass inspiration, Uncle Simon had decided to hire Delia to throw my game, make me lose my companions—Guster in particular—in an effort to push me over the edge and make the deal to plant the virus with him. Worse yet, what if Delia had sensed Guster was cheating on her with someone in the game and decided to end it before he left her? “How bad was it?”
“She would do anything anyone wanted, as long as they had the credits to pay for it. She was credit driven. Needed Alts and Mods like a drug. I think she didn’t want to live in her own skin anymore.”
I chew my nail. “That doesn’t sound like her at all. And why would Guster love someone like that?”
“Because he’s the same?”
I frown, knowing he’s right. Gus had even admitted to hating his own skin. He loved me for being an idealized version of what should be, and her for being a real-life version of what was.
“Everyone is weak,” Bastian continues. “We all make mistakes. Even Delia.”
His words remind me of my own role in everything. My desperate attempt to reunite with Gus made me accidentally kill so many people. The memory brings images of the attack, and the images bring acid sizzling to the back of my throat. I swallow hard and shake my head to dislodge them. “I know what you mean.” Desperate, I turn back to Bastian. “I know I was manipulated into planting that virus, but I still feel guilty. Still feel responsible. Am I ever going to be free of these feelings?”
“I ask myself that every day.”
I lower my brow. “What did you do? I could swear by the expression on your face you had no idea what was going to happen with that virus.”
“With the virus, no. Simon never trusted me enough for that. But Zane did trust me.”
I lift my head, interested despite myself. “Zane?”
“Zane was the liaison between Lady Cyr and the Disfavored rebels outside.”
“Makes sense.” His documentary on the Disfavored provided the perfect alibi. He was certainly the type to be part of a plot to overthrow the current regime. He was always outspoken, championed the Disfavored, and spoke of starting fires. He had even encouraged me to start fires.
“One of his main goals was to gather intelligence on how the Nexis gaming houses influenced the Disfavored. I made tweaks to the game based off of his recommendations. The goal was to get the Disfavored as discontent with the Aristocrats as we could.”
“So, my Dad’s game caused the Disfavored to rebel as well?”
He wrinkles his nose. “More like, opened the door for the opportunity to cause the Disfavored to rebel. The game the Disfavored got was very different than the one you played. Zane and I made sure of it. We worked together almost daily.”
“I thought you hated each other.”
Bastian grins, shakes his head. “Clever ruse. It was important Zane didn’t appear to have any influence on the development of Nexis.”
I scoff. “Right, because covering my father extensively and actively courting me wasn’t attracting enough attention already.”
He narrows his eyes. “Believe it or not, it wasn’t. At least not to President Cyr. He knew about Zane’s arrangement to marry you. Given the relationship between Lady Cyr and your mother, it would have only been natural.”
I pull my hand away from the wall I’ve been running it along. “Lady Cyr? What does she have to do with Zane?”
“Oh,” Bastian breathes. “Zane was Lady Cyr’s son.”
I blink, dumbfounded, and then automatically deny it. “That makes no sense. As firstborn, he would have been heir to the Presidency of G-Corp. Quentin is the only known son of the Cyrs.”
“Of the Cyrs, yes. But Zane Boyd isn’t President Cyr’s son. Lady Cyr had him before she and the President were married. Before she was Kit Cyr, she was Kit Boyd. Kit and Zane were refugees from Adagio. Like your mother. That would also mean they were Naturals. Like us.”
Suddenly feeling a little sick, I cover my mouth. The last moments at the ball in Bella Adona play out in my head—Zane grabbing my hand and shoving Bastian and me into the aerovator then grabbing Sadie and shoving her in, too. Guster saying they couldn’t fit any more. Zane saying, “Just one more! My mother! And my brother, where’s my brother? Someone find them!” Quentin appearing at the sound of Zane’s panicked voice asking, “Is Mom in there?” The grave expression in Zane’s eyes when he says, “No.” Then the chaos of more gunfire, a bloody body falling in on us. A struggle between Zane and Quentin, then Zane tossing Quentin into the aerovator like a rag doll—like a little brother—as he turns to go look for their mother.
The door slamming.
Quentin screaming to get back out, to get to Zane, I realize. Because he must sense Zane is sacrificing himself. The stark terror in Quentin’s eyes, his screams that rattle my insides even now, the insane grief that forces him to attack a steel door with his bare fist. Then more gunshots. Quentin’s collapse into a crying fit in front of everyone, dignity lost. The moment Quentin Cyr fell from godhood and became a human to me.
I find a thousand little tiny things that tie Zane and Quentin together. Little, furtive glances at parties. Favoring comments on The Broadcast. The obvious way the Cyrs avoided speaking to Zane at social events. Some of their physical features, hard to see under Customization, Mods, and Alts, tie Lady Cyr to her two sons. Even the fact that I was drawn, above anyone else in Evanescence, to both of them. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it sooner,” I gasp.
“You weren’t meant to,” Bastian quietly remarks. “The stipulation for Zane being able to live in Evanescence was to deny any link with Lady Cyr. He became a ward of the city and she became the First Lady. All of their meetings were top secret. Of course, it became easier once he was older and on The Broadcast shadowing the Cyrs, meeting with them for exclusive interviews, becoming close friends with the heir to the presidency.”
“They were so close,” I say, thinking of Quentin’s expression when the guns went off on the other side of the door. Less than two feet separating him from his brother’s body being riddled with holes. “How can you get that close without having grown up together?”
“Zane and Quentin hit it off from the moment Lady Cyr finally told Quentin about Zane. They became more so after they started working toward the rebellion. It was their family project, a way to reunite because without President Cyr, she’d be able to acknowledge Zane as her son and elevate him as Co-President alongside Quentin.”
I shake my head. “No one suspected? What about the other refugees from Adagio?”
Bastian forces a smile. “What other refugees?”
My stomach drops. “There were other refugees from Adagio weren’t there?”
“Sure,” he says with a shrug. “But when that door finally opened after months of them camping out in the tunnel, the only bodies left standing were your mother, Lady Cyr, and Zane. I don’t think the former President would have ever let them in, so let’s be thankful he met with an untimely end. Some say at the hands of Quent’s father himself. And who knows why he wanted them inside so very badly. Considering he married one and gave the other one of the most prestigious positions available through Central Staffing? I’m willing to guess he knew they could provide valuable new information and training that would revolutionize our city.”
“I’m sure the end result was not what he had in mind,” I mutter.
He takes a deep breath. “No, probably not. But you can’t expect anything else from Lady Cyr. Not after everything G-Corp put her through. Her first husband died in that Undertunnel. She watched the other refugees eat him just to stay alive as they waited for the gate to open. Zane was on his deathbed, and she and your mother practically sold their souls to get him the medical treatment he needed. A three-year-old child’s life in exchange for chip implants and servitude to G-Corp. It was all a power play to President Cyr. More came after for Lady Cyr. Mods and Alts, genetic therapy, forced marriage, repeated rapes and beatings. Having her first son cloistered away from her so that she
barely saw him. Having to stand by as her second son was Customized and mutilated so that he didn’t even look like himself anymore. That’s just what I know, I’m sure it’s worse. Your mother was lucky she ended up with someone like Uncle Warren who loved and cherished her to a fault. Even so, that still ended in both their deaths. I’m not at all surprised Lady Cyr and her sons plotted to destroy both the President and his empire. And I’m glad I helped them escape, even if it ended in this awful way.”
“When you put it that way,” I breathe, now feeling awful for ever thinking Quentin was just another Aristocrat. “I suppose I am, too. To some degree. But the rebellion came with a heavy toll.”
“I’m sure Quentin feels it. Personal vendettas often come with collateral damage. And they backfire, but I’m sure he never imagined he’d be walking this path alone. I’m sure he feels very lost and abandoned.”
“He’s not, though. He’s got Gus. And the other Dolls. And the Aristocrats.”
Bastian smirks. “Somehow I doubt they give him half the comfort he needs. Responsibility is a heavy burden. I bet he’s happiest when he feels he can just be himself, and I guarantee there are very few people he feels that way with.”
I never really thought of it like that. How one could be surrounded by a room full of people, but still feel vastly alone. One can be trapped in a dark corner of one’s own mind, unable to get out because everywhere one goes there’s a wall of expectation and obligation. How strange that must feel.
PART THREE:
Ella Finds Treasure in The Waste
chapter eleven
Post-American Date: 7/5/232
Longitudinal Timestamp: 11:36 a.m.
Location: Disfavored Tunnel System
The tunnel narrows out and ends up ahead. “What’s that?” I ask, pointing in front of me.
Bastian steps up close. “Some kind of blockade?”
I step up to it; examine it in the fading glow of the light-stick.
“Here.” Bastian snaps a new light-stick to life, adding blue to my fading purple.
