by Alex London
He looked at himself in the mirror. His face, his skin, his scars. He dropped the patch Knox had given him onto the marble counter unused. He wasn’t going to change his skin, even if it was a risk. He was done giving that away. It was his and his alone, from now on.
He dressed in the shiny pants and the undershirt Knox had given him—no more retro queercore, sorry, Egan—and looked at himself in the mirror. He looked almost like an Upper City kid, the heir to some data mining fortune. Except for the metal writing on his arm. He grabbed the gray pullover, covered his arms, and opened the bathroom door.
A wall of sound slammed into him. At first he thought it was a massive engine roaring to life, and then a swell of thunder, a storm rising, a sonic hurricane. The music rose and fell, searching out harmony and then sweeping it away almost as soon as it had been found. What instruments could make these noises? There was nothing electronic about it, nothing processed. The only organic music he knew came from the fiddlers and drummers around the Valve, cheap music, unlicensed, so always short-lived. But this . . . he’d never heard anything like it. It was alive, and, at the same time, seemed to steal the life out of him, absorb him, consume him. He couldn’t tell where the music was even coming from. It was everywhere; it had become the world.
Knox had four different holos up and was moving them around, sweeping and spinning, pulling out lines of code and dropping them into each other, or tossing them aside to vanish in flashes of light. His motions almost matched the music. His body swayed and his hips rocked over the chair that he was perched slightly above, not quite sitting, not quite standing. Syd never would have thought the kid he saw at the party was capable of this intensity or grace. Syd couldn’t tear his eyes away.
Where the Nadia projection had been on the wall, there was now a holo of some man in a black-and-white outfit with long tails and bow tie standing on a platform in front of a field of musicians. He was waving his arms around in the air and it was like he was controlling the music. His motions on the projection almost matched Knox’s motions as he worked on hacking the datastreams.
Knox appeared to sense the shift in the mood of the room. He shot a glance at Syd, then turned back to his screen. Syd looked at the floor, hoping Knox hadn’t noticed him staring. The volume of the music went down and Syd felt a little diminished for the lack of it.
“This thing is glitched,” Knox said. “But I’m glitching it right back.” He laughed and spun one of the projections before shoving it away and bringing up a new one. “You’re going to be Frobisher Wick in about five minutes.”
“Frobisher Wick?”
“What, the name not to your liking?” Knox twisted another projection around. “You want another orphan name? I can make you Jane Eyre, if you’d be happier, but I just don’t think you have the breasts for it.” He laughed and kept working.
Did he know about Syd? Was that some kind of Chapter 11 insult? Or was Knox just crazy?
“Laugh a little, Syd,” Knox said. “Life is too short for perpetual misery.”
“You would know,” Syd replied, “about short life expectancies.”
Knox stopped working. The muscles in his jaw flared and he clenched his teeth. He closed his eyes. “I’m trying to help you. You don’t have to be such a knockoff.”
Syd seethed quietly. He needed Knox for his escape and that meant he had to put up with the insults and the sarcasm in silence. For now.
“We aren’t done yet.” Knox changed the subject. “I still have to get into the SecuriTech router files and find someone else to tag with Mr. Sydney Carton.”
“Wait?” Syd came up behind him. “You mean the system is going to think someone else is me, and . . .”
“Go looking for them,” Knox said. “Yeah. That’s how this works. You have to feed the beast. Data doesn’t just vanish. It flows. You can’t stop it, but you can . . . uh . . . redirect the flow. Like that river that ran through the Valve.” He looked back at Syd and saw the horror on his face.
He spun around all the way to look Syd right in the eyes. “Look, I can tell you’ve got some kind of moral thing going on right now, but it’ll be fine. The company will track this new you down, run them through a few hoops, and straighten everything out. They’ll realize they have the wrong guy and cut him loose.”
“How do you know?”
“That’s the system,” Knox said, not unkindly. More like someone who had never been on the wrong side of it.
“But how do you know?” Syd repeated. “What’s the difference to them? One Valve kid’s life isn’t worth spit. They’ll send him off to Sterling in my place before they admit to a mistake.”
Knox didn’t have an answer, so he asked his own question. “Do you want to get away or not? I could just as easily message SecuriTech that you’re right here, in our house, and you’d be at that work colony before sunrise. No one else. Just you. Your call.”
Syd’s nostrils flared and his eyes blazed, but he just nodded.
“Good.” Knox spun around and turned the music back up and got to work again.
Syd sat down on the bed and listened to the rise and fall of the music. He felt his eyes closing, pressed down by the weight of the day. He couldn’t believe that the Atticus Finch incident had only been that morning, that he’d been in Mr. Baram’s shop that afternoon, and that this life he was in was separated from that one by the tiniest bridge of time, although he could never cross back over it. He knew he was falling asleep in Knox’s house and that he could easily wake up in Sterling, but he didn’t care.
He just needed to close his eyes for a minute.
Over the music, Knox could hear the occasional grunt and groan from the sleeping figure on his bed. His proxy turned and thrashed in his sleep, but Knox didn’t wake him. His dreams, like everyone else’s, were his own.
So were his nightmares.
[19]
SYD HAD THE NIGHTMARE he always had.
He was on a steel table, strapped down, but also, in the impossible metaphysics of dreaming, watching himself on the table from a metal balcony above. The table was on a factory floor. Rusted machines littered the space, some toppled on their sides, their ancient robotic grasper arms forever gaping open. The floor shimmered with bits of broken glass. Outside the factory he heard screaming.
On the table, he squirmed.
Figures rushed in. They wore white suits with hoods, goggles, and rubber boots. Their hands were covered with blue latex gloves. They wheeled in a new machine, shimmering with polished metal. There was a small plexi tube coming off it and the figures lifted him from the table and shoved him in. He was a baby. Just a baby.
Outside, the screams grew louder. He heard explosions.
He tried to reach out from the balcony, reach down to rescue himself, but he was too far away. As he leaned over the railing, as he stretched out his arm to save himself from the tube, he began to fall. He fell and he fell and he fell.
And he was inside the tube. The air was close and hot. He cried and wailed like a baby. He was the baby. He wanted to explain that he did not like it in the tube. He wanted to explain that he was afraid, but he had no words. Only wailing.
Bright lights shone down on him. Their heat burned.
“This is the way,” a voice said. “The only way.”
“We’ll lose him,” another voice said.
“We need to lose him,” the first voice responded.
“Not forever.”
“One way or another.”
That’s when he saw the needles. Three of them, two on his left, one on his right. They moved in from the sides, sharp points like a monster’s teeth. They touched his skin. He screamed. They pierced him. They went in deep and then blood flowed out from one of them. His blood.
He felt the blood leaving him. He cried out. Inside his plexi tube, he could still hear explosions. His blood came back to him from the other side, two needles pumping it back in. When it entered, it burned.
“No,” he said. “It burns me.” B
ut still his words came out as the wails of a child.
Suddenly, the men around him fell. First one, writhing on the ground, shaking and spitting. Then another. Shrieks and explosions everywhere. The dead soon outnumbered the living.
And then Syd was back on the balcony again, watching from above, but the bright lights had blinded him. His vision was spotty. A man took the baby from the tube, stepped carefully over the bodies.
Suddenly, the man was beside Syd on the metal walkway. His face was hidden beneath a white hood, his eyes behind goggles.
“One more,” the man said. Then he tossed the baby over the railing.
When Syd reached for it, the man grabbed Syd with his blue-gloved hands and bent Syd’s ear back. He pulled out a needle and jabbed it behind Syd’s ear, punching it through the birthmark, through the bone. The needle pierced his brain. Syd screamed.
The man whispered to the needle: “Yovel.”
Then, he jumped over the railing. The man fell beside the baby, and Syd felt it in his own bones as only one small body hit the factory floor.
He woke with a start. His finger went to the spot behind his ear, touching it to be sure no needle was there, no hole. He exhaled. He was in the dark. It took him a moment to remember where he was.
He was in Knox’s room in an Upper City mansion. The music had stopped. A display said the time was 4:02 a.m. The lights were off.
And Knox was gone.
[20]
SYD FOUND KNOX CROUCHED in the hallway on the other side of the door.
“What’s going on?” Syd whispered.
“Shhhhhh,” Knox hissed. “Someone’s just pulled up to the house.”
“Guardians?” Syd’s heart raced.
“Probably just my father. No one’s inside yet.” He looked back at Syd. “Don’t make another sound. I have to turn the activity assistant back on.”
“Did you . . . ,” Syd started.
“Yeah, I finished. The house won’t recognize you. But if my father sees you, he won’t need a datastream to know who you are. So just shut up.”
Syd moved to the door and stood behind Knox, listening. They couldn’t see anything in the hallway, but they could hear the front door open and the sound of footsteps.
“Welcome, Mr. Brindle, Dr. Elavarthi, Guardian Eighteen Seventy-four A,” the house said. “Welcome, Mr. Alvar—”
“Disengage activity assistant.” Knox’s father cut the program off.
Knox’s whole body tensed.
“Did they just say a Guardian is here?” Syd whispered.
“Shut up,” Knox said again. “My father never turns the assistant off. I have to get a closer look.”
“What? Why?”
Knox slipped down the hall. Syd cursed to himself and followed him. He was still barefoot and his feet sank deep into the cool plush carpet. They crept along the hallway until they were crouched above the grand double-height living room.
Syd just wanted to get out of there. It’d been a mistake to run off with Knox. He should have found Egan or gone back to Mr. Baram. Now he was caught up here and getting away was getting complicated.
A tall man strolled into the center of the room below. Knox’s father. He wore a tailored tan suit and had the same square jaw as his son. His hair was perfectly combed and flecked with gray, like the smelter ash from a scrap yard. His eyes were hidden behind dark glasses.
There were two men standing with him, both of them in suits, and one woman with her back to the room, looking out of the window. Even from behind, she seemed to command the eye’s attention. A Guardian.
“What is he doing here?” Knox whispered to himself.
“Your father doesn’t live here?” Syd didn’t know what to make of Knox’s statement.
“Shh. Not him.” Knox grabbed Syd’s arm and squeezed it, hard, to get his point across. He pointed to the bald man next to his father. “That’s Xiao Alvarez.”
“Who is—” Syd started, but Knox raised an eyebrow and glanced at Syd’s arm, and he knew. He rubbed the spot where they’d branded him.
Alvarez. Marie Louise Alvarez. That was her father.
The boys listened to their conversation below.
“My son and his proxy are missing,” Knox’s father said. “It appears they were seen together at a party just a few hours ago. And now, nothing.”
“Your son will turn up eventually,” Marie’s father said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “He always does.”
“We’re in trouble here” said Knox’s father. “That proxy . . .”
“Carton,” said the third man, who must have been Dr. Elavarthi. “Sydney Carton.”
“Right, Carton,” said Knox’s father. “He was never supposed to find my son. There’s no way.”
“Your son’s kidnapping doesn’t change anything,” said Marie’s father.
“For me it changes everything. How did this proxy with no social capital locate and abduct my son? He’s a swampcat who knows no one and whom no one knows.”
Knox’s eyebrows wrinkled as he listened. At least now he knew that Syd hadn’t lied. He wasn’t working for Knox’s dad.
“My concern is not for your son, Brindle,” Marie’s father said. “We had a deal, you and I. I expect you to honor it.”
“We have bigger problems than your stock options.”
“That’s no excuse to back out of our agreement, not after what my family has been through. You wanted to teach Knox a lesson, and you have. Maybe even more than you expected. I imagine if being kidnapped doesn’t straighten him out, nothing will.”
“Don’t get sarcastic with me!” Knox’s father pulled off his dark glasses and got right in the bald man’s face. His eyes were green, like Knox’s but a crueler green. Storm green, like the sky before the monsoon came in. They made Syd uneasy.
“I did what was best for my son,” he said. “Knox needed a wake-up call and I arranged one. I thank you for your cooperation and you will be compensated for your troubles.”
“Arranged?” Knox whispered. His father had arranged what? The accident?
Knox felt a chill. Of course. His father was a security expert. He wouldn’t have left the CX-30 access code as 1-2-3-4-5 unless he wanted Knox to take it. And the only reason he’d want Knox to take it would be to teach him a lesson. Could his father really have done something that extreme? How would he have gotten this guy to give up his daughter? It couldn’t have just been a bribe. Although, if the bribe were big enough . . .
“What have you done now, Dad?” Knox whispered.
Syd glanced over at him. He didn’t feel exactly sympathetic, but he was following the conversation below well enough to know that as far as fathers went, Knox’s wasn’t one to envy.
“Hey, maybe you’ll get lucky and the swampcat will just kill him,” Marie’s father said with enough acid in his voice to melt steel. “You won’t have to negotiate.”
Knox winced. His father looked as if he was about to hit the bald man. He clenched his fists and his chest swelled inside his suit. Syd would not have wanted to bet against Knox’s father in a fistfight against anyone, let alone the little bald executive in front of him.
“You will never speak to me like that again,” Knox’s father commanded. “Or your family will go through far worse than you have these last few days. Do not forget to whom you are talking. If I’m willing to arrange a car crash to teach a lesson to my only son, imagine what I could do to you, about whom I do not a give a damn.”
“Apologies.” Xiao Alvarez held his hands up with his palms out, surrendering. He even took a step back. “I went too far. The strain of the last few days has been hard. Of course I want you to get your son back safely. And we cannot have this proxy running off. Of course. Apologies.”
Knox’s father exhaled loudly. He didn’t break eye contact with Marie’s father until the bald man had to look at his feet, just to escape the withering stare. Knox knew that stare well.
“The proxy will be located.” The Guardian steppe
d up to Knox’s father, diverting his attention. She did not flinch at his gaze. “We have teams conducting a thorough investigation.”
“Yeah, real thorough,” Knox whispered under his breath. Syd couldn’t believe his patron. He’d just learned that the whole accident had been a setup. A girl had died to try to teach Knox to behave himself, and still, he made sarcastic comments. Syd knew that the sooner he got away from this kid and his family, the safer he would be.
Knox’s father slid his glasses into his jacket pocket and he sighed. He hitched his pants and sat, gesturing for the others to join him. Marie’s father and Dr. Elavarthi sat. The Guardian remained standing.
“What about the friend?” Knox’s father asked. “Egan something or other.”
“We haven’t been able to locate him yet,” the Guardian said.
Syd exhaled with relief. At least Egan was safe. For now.
“You think the boy will make contact? Were they lovers?”
Knox shot Syd a questioning glance. What did his father mean, lovers?
Syd looked away.
Oh. That. At least it explained the kiss back in the club.
“We don’t think they were,” Dr. Elavarthi said. He brought up a holo of Egan’s face. He poked around, displaying all kinds of data. “Although we don’t have a lot of information on their childhoods, the proxy appears to have been interested in another East Coast orphan, Atticus Finch, a fellow student at Vocational High School IV.” He swiped his hand along the projection, zoomed in on an image of Atticus.
Syd looked down at the image and felt his shame double. It wasn’t a good picture. Atticus was much better looking in real life.
“We’ve questioned him,” said Dr. Elavarthi. “But the feelings were not mutual, to put it generously.”
“We are monitoring known meeting points for homosexual activity,” the Guardian added.
Blood rushed to Syd’s ears. His personal life, everyone he knew and everything he felt, was being discussed by these executives in an Upper City living room, like they had the right to know everything about him.
