False Hearts (36 page)

She looked at us, taking in Taema’s head lolling against my shoulder. I could tell what she was thinking: she’d already lost us. She knew that during our last Confession, when I fucked with her and freaked her out.

“You might as well let us go,” I said. “You can say we died in the forest.”

“But what if I let you go and you find a way to survive?”

“I guess that’s a risk you take. We’re not doing so hot right now, anyway.” I sucked in a breath. “Do you want us to die?”

“I want you to follow God’s plan. If you weren’t meant to die, your heart wouldn’t be failing.”

“Maybe God wants us to leave your godforsaken Hearth and go to the city.”

She leaned down, close to me. There was no one around.

Her ageless face gazed down at us. Would she raise her arm in benediction, or would the hand hold a knife?

“It didn’t have to be like this,” she said. “It all could have been different.”

“Well, this is how it is. So what are you going to do?” I glared up at her. “The power’s in your hands, I guess. You going to kill us here? Do nothing for a few minutes? That’s all it’ll take.” Already my vision was wobbling, going dim. My chest hurt, and my fingers were numb. I wanted her to go away and leave me to die in peace.

“You want to go out into the Impure world?” She sneered down at me. “Very well. I’ll let you go. You can never return. Never contact your parents or your friends. You’re cut off from here in every possible way. I know that the big, wide world out there will chew you up and spit you out, until you wish you could come crawling back. But you can’t. You’re apostate. You’re dead to the Hearth.”

“You done?” I asked wearily.

She glared at me for a long time before she finally moved away, her robe whispering against the forest floor. She turned her back on us and made her way through the forest to her Hearth. She’d made her point. We couldn’t hide things from her, even if we tried. Our choice was final.

I spat in the direction she had taken.

I looked up toward the spaceship. We heard the low whistle of an owl—Dad’s signal. Oh God. If Mana-ma knew about our escape, would she hurt my parents for helping us?

I tried to move, but Taema was so heavy, and I was so weak. We weren’t far. I could see the ship through the redwood trees. A little door came down, but as much as I tried to move toward it, I was too weak. Our heart beat so loudly it seemed to be the only sound in the world.

I collapsed against the dirt, defeated. So close and yet so far.

I heard a clicking, whirring sound.

With my fading vision, I looked up into the face of one of the droid supervisors, her machine at her side. “You’re the ones we’re meant to pick up?”

I managed to nod.

“Shit,” she muttered, and then she hauled us up by the shoulders and dragged us toward the ship, the droid assisting her. I watched our legs trail through the dirt. She kept under the cover of trees, looking around nervously. I didn’t have the breath to tell her that she didn’t need to bother, that Mana-ma had already found us and let us go, at least for now.

She put us in the ship and closed the hatch behind us. All sound cut off, and we were in a hallway. Everything was made of metal. I’d never seen that before. Looking up, we could see the metal crosshatches, the boots of people walking past and the wheels of droids.

“I’ll get the medic,” our savior said, and took off at a jog. All fell silent and then I heard the low roar of the engine. I hadn’t expected it to echo all around us, from all directions at once. And I could tell when it left the ground.

“We’re flying!” I whispered to Taema. But she couldn’t respond.

I slumped on the floor, my arms around her, tears running down my face. “Please,” I kept gasping. “Please.” I actually prayed. Prayed to a God. Not Mana-ma’s. My own idea of a God, one who wasn’t a total asshole.

A group of people came running down the metal hallway. About five or six, their footsteps and voices echoing all around me. I was barely conscious. For a moment, when the unfamiliar faces peered down at us, I wondered if they were going to toss us out like so much junk. But my first experience with those from the outside world after we’d actually left the Hearth was kindness.

They’d never seen conjoined twins, and they looked at us with a mixture of awe and fear. They touched us gently, as if afraid they’d break us. I was almost all gone by then, but I still remember those soft fingers laying us down in the sick bay. I could see a gray fog with vague shapes and hear distorted sounds, but that’s it.

A mask was put over my face and I could breathe better. My vision cleared, but I still felt so very weak. I wrapped my arms around Taema and closed my eyes, pressing my face against her neck.

The last thought I had before I fell unconscious was that I really, really didn’t want us to die. Not when we were so close to that big, wide world out there.

TWENTY-EIGHT

TAEMA

Something is wrong.

Or, at least, it’s not what Ensi had planned. I see the tall, towering redwoods of the Hearth. The sky is full of rainclouds, and the luminescent green fog of the bay floats through the air. I smell sea salt and old smoke. It is more vivid than anything I’ve ever experienced.

It’s almost exactly like that shared dream forest my sister and I visited along with everyone else in the Hearth after we took the little pill from Mana-ma’s hand.

I’m not bound. Neither is Nazarin. I don’t see Ensi. This isn’t where we were meant to end up. This definitely isn’t where Ensi would send us to torture us. This is too … peaceful.

“Were you able to dose him with what Kim gave you?” Nazarin asks.

I nod.

He looks around, and then glances at his hand. He frowns. I blink, and a gun appears in his hand.

“It worked. That tooth was full of nanites that worked their way deep into his implants and biochemistry.”

I take a shuddering breath. “How did Kim learn to do this?”

“Sudice’s labs and a brilliant brain.”

We start walking through the woods, cautiously. We don’t see Ensi, but he’ll be here, somewhere.

“How’d you meet Kim?” I ask, keeping my voice low. “Through Juliane?” We both scout our surroundings, but I want to focus on something other than the fact I could die at any moment.

“I met Kim the first time the SFPD hooked me up with her to put in my memory mods. She met Juliane the same day. Juliane and she hit it off right away, started dating. Then they married, and they were one of those married couples that just worked. You saw them both together and you could only hope to have something like that someday. We both helped each other heal when we lost Juliane. I think if we hadn’t had the other person to lean on, we might have both been broken by it.”

We reach a break in the trees and a small clearing. The forest has shifted into an alien landscape. The sky is somehow night and day at the same time; shafts of sunlight-moonlight make the now silver bark of the dream redwoods shine, and the needles are turquoise and vermilion. Even the soil is tinged blue and purple. I listen for birds, but all is silent and still.

“I told the SFPD that they should use Kim to help me in my undercover op,” Nazarin continues. “She’s the reason I haven’t been caught and killed before now. She wants Ensi taken down just as much as I do. Maybe more. I loved Juliane, but my love can’t compare to Kim’s. Not even close.”

We’ve passed through the other side of the clearing, and the forest towers over us once again. I feel so small, so insignificant. It’s as if Nazarin and I are the only people in this Technicolor twilight world.

“Kim knew even if we got proof that it’d never be enough. She’s been developing that false tooth for a long time. Used us, in a way, I guess, though I can’t blame her. I would have done the same in a heartbeat.”

Like you used me.
The unspoken words hover between us, almost a presence. I can’t really blame him, either. It was my choice, too.

My nerves are on edge. I keep waiting for the world to turn dark and ugly. For the mandrake demons to grow from the ground and reach for me, for the sky to burn, for Ensi to appear with a scalpel, pin me down and cut me open.

“So we should be able to manipulate this place? Even you, though you’re not a trained lucid dreamer?” I concentrate, and make a knife appear in my hand. It seems solid and I feel better holding it. It was far easier than when I was in Mia’s dream world, or even Alex Mantel’s.

I remember Kim telling me about the nanites after she’d fixed my tooth:
This will hack into Ensi. Once you dose him, he’ll have little control over the dreamscapes he creates. When he goes in to take his pleasure and revenge against someone, he goes in deep, leaves nothing back. If he dies in one of his creations, he’ll be brain-dead.

It was supposed to be a long con. Eventually someone would realize they could affect the dreamscape, fight back and get rid of him for us. I doubt she expected him to go in so soon after he’d dosed, bringing us with him.

“What happens if we kill him while we’re still in here?” I ask.

“Kim never said.”

“Well, shit.”

“Yeah. Guess we’ll find out.”

I feel like something should have happened by now. The cyber forest is eerie, but not as frightening as Mia’s demons with the faces of people I grew up with. It’s such a strange echo of Mana’s Hearth.

I crane my head and peer through the branches up at the violet sky. Where is Ensi hiding? Does he know we’re here?

I start to recognize the tree formations. I grab Nazarin and lead him to the left, to the thin track through the forest that my sister and I have taken so many times. But the redwood forest I grew up with is merged with the dream forest of mercury-dipped trees and their vibrant needles.

I stop. There’s the hollowed-out tree that Taema and I used to go to when we wanted to get away from everything. Perfectly rendered in the code of this corrupted dream world. Where we went just after we found the tablet. Where we found out the world outside was vaster than we had ever dreamed.

There is a tiny pinprick of light in the middle of the darkness.

“We have to go inside,” I say, my voice small and far away.

Nazarin doesn’t question me. He follows me as I move closer, crouching on my hands and knees and crawling inside. Sure enough, it’s like
Alice in Wonderland
.

I take Nazarin’s hand and we fall down the rabbit hole together.

*   *   *

Ah. Here’s the nightmare.

The phosphorescent green fog is here, too, but this is a swamp rather than a forest. It is a re-creation of the barrier around the Hearth that no one was meant to cross. It smells of bilge water and sulfur, of decomposing plants and bodies.

In front of us is a boat. We step into it, and it begins to move. Things swim in the deep—creatures with white teeth, scales and long, slithering tails.

“It’s like we’re crossing the river Styx to the underworld,” I mutter.

“As long as there’s not a three-headed dog.” Nazarin is alert, watching for any threat. Unconsciously, I move a bit closer to him.

As the ship takes us through the swamp, large opalescent bubbles shimmer ahead of us, resting on the water. We’re heading straight for one, and there’s no way to steer. Nazarin wraps his arms around me, as if he could protect me if it was dangerous. I wrap my arms around him, just as tight. We slip through the barrier, and it feels greasy against my skin.

We’re in a memory.

Zeal and Verve. Dream worlds and heightened memories.

I’m no longer looking at the scene through my own eyes. Ensi is young, perhaps twelve years old. The memory is from his point of view. Like when we played the recording in Kim’s lounge, we can sense some of his experiences and emotions.

He’s in the Hearth. I recognize the view of the lake from the cabin window. He’s playing with a little girl, and it’s Mana-ma. They’re playing marbles, and Mana-ma’s tongue sticks out of the side of her mouth as she flicks one marble toward another. They hit each other with a click. “See?” she says. “You have to have a plan, to figure out the next move.”

Ensi takes his turn, scanning the marbles. Flick. Click.

“Good,” she says, smiling at him, and Ensi beams back.

The boat moves through to the other side of the bubble and we’re out, but not for long. We enter another memory. Ensi’s older now, perhaps late teens or early twenties. He’s standing behind the pulpit as Mana-ma lectures, her face rapturous as she turns it toward the stained glass of the church. The Brother stares ahead, thinking about God, and a higher power. If His will is really what Mana-ma proposed.

The sermon ends, and the Brother follows Mana-ma. They go to the Confession room. Mana-ma sets out a chessboard, and they play as they usually do, but the Brother isn’t in the mood for strategy.

“I don’t see why I should leave you. Isn’t my work for God here?”

Mana-ma rearranges her robes about herself. She’s only recently taken up the title from her predecessor. She must be about the same age in this memory as my sister and I are now.

“God spoke to me. This is the way to do His will. You have a brilliant mind. You are interested in the sciences, but you’ve learned all you can here. You are meant to go on this journey into the unholy land, and bring glory to us. I am not sure exactly how, but He has told me you will find your way. You have my full support, and my faith in you.”

Ensi moves his pawn forward. Mana-ma captures it.

I have a feeling Ensi programmed this world, a personal Vervescape separate from where he torments his victims. A place to categorize his memories, but now they’re bleeding into each other, his past and his present colliding.

As Ensi’s memories merge, Nazarin and I are thrown into slivers of his life. After coming to San Francisco, he looks into a mirror after shaving. He isn’t as beautiful then. His nose is bigger, his hair not as full, his chin a little weaker. He is Veli Carrera, the man I saw projected on the wall in Mantel’s Vervescape. He doesn’t like this world, how loud and strange and Impure it is. He presses the razor against his wrist. He wants to go back to the redwoods, and back to Mana-ma. At the same time, the lure of knowledge calls him, and he knows he can continue God’s work here, and make his Mana-ma proud. Reluctantly, he takes the razor away.