Estranged (13 page)

Kalei had imagined Tusic to be
straight-laced, but now this girl was telling her that they ran
around high as a bird? She couldn’t believe it. Kalei wasn’t sure
she believed anything that came out of Shenaia’s mouth. But that
being said ... Kalei found that she had about as much information
on Tusic as she did on SWORDE: not much. Perhaps even
less.

Kalei asked, "If it was so great, then
why'd you leave?"

Shenaia shrugged. "Eh, it's over. Oh!
I've got it!" Shenaia emerged with a flowing summer dress. "Put
this on!"

"It's almost winter, you
idiot."

"So. We're Estranged, sis! The cold
can't hurt us!"

Shenaia had a point. While Kalei still
felt hot and cold, it didn’t really bug her anymore. The steady
throb of the darkness made it simple to block out a trifling
discomfort such as the weather. Still. A summer dress? Kalei stood
and walked over to another rack where the labels indicated her
size. She grabbed jeans, a black tank top, and a jacket. Then she
went to the bathroom to change.

"Spoil sport!" Shenaia called after
her. “Hey! Take a shower before you put those on!”

Kalei obliged. She didn’t want to, but
she knew it was necessary. She stepped in under the faucet and the
hot water slid down her shoulders and turned black before it
slipped into the drain. A year’s worth of dirt and grime would do
that.

As she worked, Kalei’s heart was
weighed with stone. Not only that, but her arms and legs felt like
they were twenty pounds heavier, and every movement felt like a
chore. Nonetheless, she raised her weary arms to wash the shampoo
into her hair, and she slid them to her face to scrub the grime off
of her skin.

Where Lecia had blown her brains out,
Kalei’s hair was growing back as a short accumulation of fur hidden
beneath what remained of Kalei’s longer hair. Kalei pulled at the
longer strands, but the dense mass of knots wouldn’t yield. Kalei
wrenched and yanked, and as the tangles held firm, her frustration
grew.

Finally, she gave up. She sank down to
the shower floor and began to cry beneath the water. Her sobs were
covered by the sound of the water, and her tears were washed away
even as they appeared on her cheeks. The shower allowed her to be
utterly alone with her misery.

At the heart of it all, she missed
Fenn. There were other people she had cared about. Her nieces, her
old coworkers, her partner... But not like Fenn. Nothing could make
her life whole the way Fenn did.

Kalei laughed to herself. Yeah, there
had been days when she wanted to strangle him for spilling water
all over the bathroom floor. But now... Kalei watched as the water
from the shower splashed against the side of the tub and turned
back to travel toward the drain... Now she would give anything to
see his puddles.

A harsh knocking came at the door.
“Kalei! Stop taking your sweet time and get your ass out here! I
wanna see you in your new clothes, girl!”

Kalei shut off the water and walked
over to the sink. She grabbed the porcelain with both hands and
looked at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were red and swollen but
fierce as they glared back at her. Her skin was pink and raw where
she had scrubbed it, and her brown hair sat piled atop her head in
a massive lump. As she looked at herself, the grief in her eyes
slowly turned to rage, and from rage into pure hatred. She reached
past those hateful eyes as she opened the cupboard. It held an
array of toiletries, tweezers and such, and on the top shelf
sitting next to a couple bottles of baby powder, she spotted a
cardboard box with the picture of an electric razor. Kalei decided
the knots in her hair weren’t worth dealing with.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Trust

Shenaia was thrilled with Kalei’s new
haircut. “I knew I liked you! Man, you should’ve let me do it,
though. I could’ve made it look so good!”

“
It’s shaved. How could
you have possibly shaved it any better?”

“
There are lots a’ ways to
shave a head. You make some parts shorter, longer – it coulda
looked good! You shoulda told me!”

Kalei shrugged. “There was nothing to
tell. I did it, it’s over.”

Shenaia pouted. “Fine.” She started
walking toward the door and waved for Kalei to follow. “C’mon.
Let’s go play hooky before teacher comes snoopin’ for
us.”

Kalei followed. “Hey, you’ve been here
a while, right?”

Shenaia stepped out into the hallway
and checked both directions as she said, “Yeah.”

Kalei casually asked, “Do you know if
there are any computers around here?”

Shenaia’s eyes brightened. “Just one.
But, girl, you wouldn’t believe how big this thing is!” She slapped
her hands together. “Yeah, dat’s a good idea. Erit will never find
us there. Follow me. I’ll show you where they hide the brains
‘round here.”

Shenaia took Kalei further down the
hall and stopped in front of a set of elevators. After seeing the
elevators in the foyer, Kalei didn’t see any reason to trust these
deathtraps. Quite frankly, she didn’t think Shenaia was going to
prove her otherwise. “Why don’t we take the stairs?”

“
The stairs won’t take you
there. Trust me.” Shenaia hit the call button and the doors to
their left slid open.

What was Erit’s first rule again?
Kalei climbed into the elevator.

Once the doors shut behind them,
Shenaia pulled out a small service key. “Hehe, took this off Walker
the other day. Dumb bastard, probably doesn’t even know it’s
missing!” She put it into the hole beneath the buttons, turned it,
and hit “12” and “13” at the same time.

“
Two floors?” Kalei
asked.

“
Nope, just one. Ever
heard of nine-and-three-quarters?”

Kalei was baffled. “You
read?”

“
Of course I read! I may
be street, but I ain’t stupid. I call dis floor
twelve-and-a-half.”

“
Twelve-and-a-half?”

“
What? You got a problem
with that?”

Kalei shrugged. “Nope, no
problem.”

“
You judging?”

“
I’m not
judging.”

With a light
ding!
the elevator doors
opened. As the doors receded, Kalei found herself looking at a vast
library of computer servers. She only knew what they were from the
documentaries she had watched with Fenn. Otherwise, they just
looked like tall metal cages with shelves of black boxes inside.
The boxes themselves weren’t featureless; they had ports and
buttons and small lights ranging from a dull yellow to bright
green, and several menacing red ones. Server after server lined the
walls like ominous sentinels, blinking and whirring at them from
the chilly room. A narrow aisle stretched between them and Kalei
and Shenaia followed it to an opening in the collection. Beyond the
aisle was a small space about ten feet wide and twenty feet across
where all the servers had been moved aside to form a small room. In
the far corner stood an office chair and a plain oak desk, just
four legs with a flat surface to hold a black keyboard and mouse.
Behind the peripherals sat six thin monitors, stacked above one
another in rows of three and angled toward the chair. From behind
the screens, dozens of wires cascaded to the floor and slithered
off into the forest of hardware.

“
What do they do with all
this?” Kalei asked as she peered into the shadows between the
towers.

“
This is how they control
Downtown. Keep da fence juiced, spy through ev’ryone’s fancy
jewelry...”

Kalei stopped investigating and looked
at Shenaia. “Fancy jewelry?”

“
Yeah, didn’t you notice?”
Shenaia tisked and rolled her eyes. “Sis, since when do you wear
studded earrings?”

“
Those are the only kinds
I wear.”

“
What?” For some reason,
Shenaia seemed to find this offensive. “Fine, but since when do you
wear them one at a time? Didn’ you notice the stud in your left ear
when you were shaving your pretty little head?”

Kalei had noticed. At the time, she
had written it off; there was no telling what had happened during
the year and a half she was high.

Kalei put her hands into her jacket
pockets. “What are you getting at?”

“
That, girlie, is how they
watch you.”

“
What?”

“
Yeah, they watch all the
Estranged that way. That ain’t no earring. That’s a
camera.”

That was it. Kalei was sunk. If the
thing in her ear really was a camera, then that meant they knew
about Lecia, they knew about Tusic, they knew about her
plan...

“
But those things are
useless as shit!” Shenaia said as she plopped down into the chair.
The joints creaked beneath her weight, the wheels protesting as she
dragged herself closer to the desk. “Them cameras are never
pointin’ in the right direction, they’s always buried beneath piles
of hair, they’s fuckin’ useless as—”

“
How do you
know?”

Shenaia looked over her shoulder at
Kalei. “I’ve played around with the system a bit.” She turned back
to the computer and pulled the keyboard closer. “The thing ain’
exactly password protected. Guess they figured the fancy elevator
was enough.”

If they were as useless as Shenaia
said, then perhaps... Kalei asked, “Do they save the video? I mean,
for multiple days?”

“
Damn right they do. What,
you think these big-ass computers are just for looks? Here, lemme
show you.” Shenaia started clicking and typed a command or
two.

The five outer monitors continued to
show various feeds from the city: a burnt-out storefront bobbing up
and down as the camera moved, a motionless pile of bodies in a dim
hallway, and a few more that were too dark to distinguish. In all
cases, the feeds were black and white, but the definition was
crystal clear. In the top left monitor, a small blue window
displayed a series of numbers and codes in green, all of which
meant nothing to Kalei, but it was the lower middle monitor where
windows began closing and opening. The first few windows closed
before Kalei could see what they were, and then another opened with
a blue background and grey square that prompted “Identification Tag
Number” with a blinking cursor in a white box waiting for the
response immediately below.

Shenaia spun the chair around and
said, “Turn around. Lemme see the back-uh yo earring.”

Kalei didn’t like the idea of turning
her back to Shenaia. “Why?”

“
So I can see yo tag
number.” Shenaia turned away and “tched” again. “Fine, I’ll use
mine.”

“
No, wait.” Kalei turned
until Shenaia could see the back of her left ear. If she wanted to
find out how much SWORDE knew, then this might be the only chance
she would get.

“
Yeah, now we
talking!”

Kalei turned back around when she
heard typing at the keyboard.

“
A’ight, when do you want?
Any day, any time. We got a whole year to play with!”

Kalei feigned contemplation. “Let’s
start out with... yesterday at about—” she thought back to the
display on the phone during her conversation with Landen. “Four
a.m.?”

Shenaia looked at Kalei. “Really? No
‘what happened the day I got tagged?’ Not even curious about dat
huge ice storm when ev’ryone was all snugglin’ up to one
‘nother?”

Ice storm?

Kalei shook her head. “Just do
it.”

Shenaia “tched” again. “Fine, is yo
cam.”

Shenaia entered in a few commands and
then the video in the top screen flickered and switched to a new
image. In this new shot, all they could see was black with
occasional patches of lighter grey.

“
Dammit! See what I mean?
Yo hair was in the way.” Shenaia fast-forwarded and rewound, but it
was all the same. “This is bullshit. Give me another
day!”

Instead, Kalei asked, “Does it have
audio too?”

“
Nope. Shit, I’m glad they
don’.” She gave an exaggerated shudder. “That video woulda been
hella worse with audio.”

“
What video?”

Shenaia glanced back at Kalei and, for
the first time since Kalei had met her, she seemed uncomfortable.
Her mouth curled like she had just eaten something bitter and her
eyes looked over Kalei’s face and then quickly darted away as she
turned to face the desk again. She drummed her fingers nervously
against the wood a couple times before saying, “Look, Terin didn’
want me to tell, but—” She spun back around and paused when she saw
Kalei again. She chewed on her lip for a moment, then sighed and
said, “Shit, you’re goin’ to find out anyway. You and Mar are
probably the only ones in the whole damn town who didn’ see
it.”

“
Shenaia, what are you
talking about?”

“
Uh—” Shenaia spun the
chair again and made two revolutions before she stopped and said,
“Look, you know when them Estranged attacked yo place? Some son a’
bitch broke into the CNB news station, used their system to hack
the ear cams, and then streamed the attack onto ev’ry screen in
Celan.”