False Hearts (38 page)

“I know who you are,” I say. “I know your dreams and desires. I know what you’ve done.”

I imagine Ensi wearing the face he was born with. I imagine Ensi as a young child. I imagine him as the man who has just joined the Ratel, hungry for revenge and power. The three acts of his life: child, Brother, King.

The true Ensi drops the knife. It disappears before it hits the ground. He feels the dream warping, wrenching away from his control.

The air vibrates with energy, and green, crackling lightning flashes overhead. A bolt comes down and hits me, and I scream as it sears my skin. Where it struck my shoulder, fractal burns appear, snaking down my arm like tree branches. The energy travels through me.

Three more bolts of lightning hit the floor of the chapel, creating rents in the fabric of the dream. The sulfur smell of the swamp returns, mingling with the ozone scent of lightning and thunder. The holes in the dream widen.

Child. Brother. King.

I bring forth the three versions of Ensi from the dreams. Ensi, a small boy of eight, his arms spindly. Ensi as the Brother, about to leave the Hearth. Ensi as he looks now, just after he killed a man and left the persona of Veli Carrera behind. None of the three do anything. They stand, waiting for my instruction.

The King of the Ratel looks at his past selves in fear. I take the threads of the dream in my mind. I have no idea what I’m doing. I am only instinct, a result of Mana-ma’s training.

The knife appears in my hand again, cold and reassuring, but I no longer need it. I send the three simulacra toward Ensi. He backs away, pressing against the chapel wall. He’s gone gray, beads of sweat on his forehead. He glances at me, then away, as if he can’t stand to meet my eyes. He’s not the leader of the Ratel, the man who’s tortured many men and women to death, been responsible for many more. He slides down the wall, landing hard. He’s a frightened man, a broken man, huddled with his arms around his knees, completely unable to face himself.

The three versions of him open their mouths wide. Red light pours from their throats, and then the same green muck emerges. Ensi closes his eyes, scrabbling for his own threads of lucid dreaming. Some of the muck pushes away, but I redouble my efforts.

The child, the Brother, and the King wrap their arms around the true Ensi. The green liquid covers them all, until it forms a perfect sphere. Another bubble of memory, sealing the King of the Ratel within.

The chapel ceases shaking. The lightning fades.

I go to Nazarin. He’s awoken, and watched the whole thing.

“What do we do now?” I ask. “How do we leave?”

“You do it,” Nazarin says. He sits up slowly, coughing. One eye has swollen shut.

“Yes.” I gather the remnants of the shattered dream around us. I press my forehead against his. “Wake up.”

*   *   *

I open my eyes, and then close them immediately against the brightness. Everything hurts. My entire body feels as though it’s been charred. I wheeze, my tired lungs struggling to take in oxygen.

“Nazarin?” I croak.

“Taema.”

I almost cry in relief.

“Is this real?” I’m so afraid that we haven’t escaped. That we’ve been launched into another memory, another subset of Ensi’s mind. I open my eyes again, ignoring the pain of the light.

We’re in the room Ensi took us to after he captured us on the pier. I’m strapped into the Chair, the bindings pressed tight against my arms, my torso, my forehead.

I hear rustling and just manage to turn my head. Nazarin pulls himself upright, struggling from his bonds. He rips the electrodes from his skin. The mechanical sound of his heartbeat on the monitor flatlines. Mine still beeps, steady despite the lingering fear.

I turn my head in the other direction. Ensi is strapped into his own Chair. His body is still alive, but the line on the monitor showing his brain function barely moves at all.

I did that.

Nazarin limps over and begins to untie me. His face isn’t as swollen as it was in the dream world, but it’s livid with bruises. Tracks of blood have dried from his nose, his ears and even the corner of his eyes. The whites of those eyes are red with broken capillaries, but his gaze is clear.

“Nazarin,” I whisper.

He leans close to take the strap off my chest. “I never told you my real name, did I?”

“No.”

“It’s Aziz. Aziz Keskin.”

“Aziz,” I echo, tasting the name on my tongue. He smiles at me. I smile back. After all that has happened, we’re able to smile at each other. He helps me sit up. I peel the electrodes off and throw them away, then lean against him, my head spinning. My ankle hurts. He wraps his arms around me, holding me close. I can feel his heartbeat. We both smell of sweat and blood and fear.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” I say.

“I couldn’t agree with you more.”

We stand, leaning on each other. We look down at the fallen King of the Ratel.

“Should we kill him?” I ask. I feel nothing at the prospect of it. I already killed him off, bit by bit. Now, it would be more or less getting rid of the shell.

“I want to. I really want to.” He turns from Ensi. “Let’s not cross that line. I think we’ve avenged enough today.”

We start to hobble toward the door. Our guns are hidden in a cupboard, and Nazarin passes me one. We keep them in our hands, at the ready. My tongue keeps niggling at the molar, now missing its strip and the virus. My mouth tastes of iron.

Nazarin opens the door, darting his head out and back, gun held up by his ear. “It’s clear.”

We leave that awful room behind, staggering against the walls. We don’t seem to have any lasting damage, but my brain still feels … confused. Senses still don’t seem anchored to this plane of reality. My brain is still recording, but I don’t turn it off yet, despite the headache. I guess I can handle it better than Kim’s subjects. I swear, the white of the walls tastes like lemons. The squeak of our shoes against the floor feels like fear. I can’t trust what I see. Only Nazarin feels real. Aziz.

We’re so disoriented, so very focused on getting out into the fresh air, away from this place of terror, that we don’t think about alarms. As soon as we open the outer door, high, piercing wails sound. It’s too much for my raw, mixed senses. I clap my hands over my ears, screaming, adding to the cacophony. Nazarin cries out too, but recovers before me. He takes my arm. The King of the Ratel had not taken us far. We’re still on the pier. I can even see the cranes where Ensi and his men were earlier that night, the storage crate we hid behind.

There are the men that had been with Ensi. Standing guard. With them is Malka. The Queen.

Mana-ma, wearing a poor soul’s body.

She wasn’t there before we went in. Ensi must have sent notice. Was she on her way? Was she going to join us in the dream world, and visit one of the missing members of her flock? Or did she only come when things went wrong? Is her true body lying supine back in the Hearth?

Malka, or Mana-ma, is the first to see us. She raises her head and meets my eyes, and I can read her expression:
You’ve failed this Test.
She wishes it was me, her, and her sword in a soundproof room.

She yells a warning, and the men run toward us.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” is all I can think to say, staring at them. I’m so tired.

Nazarin takes my hand, pulling me with him behind the nearest crate. He shoots over the top of the crate and ducks down. There’s a distant cry of pain. Nazarin shoots again. No cry of pain. I can only seem to stare at the gun in my hand. A bullet ricochets against the metal of the crate with a crack that seems to hover in my vision, a riot of yellow, red and orange. It’s beautiful.

My sister’s voice is in my head:
Get your gun, T. You have to get your gun.

I’m imagining it, but it’s comforting to hear just the same. The gun still lies in my numb fingers. More shots fire. I can barely see. My head is splitting. There is a ringing in my ears, like tinnitus. Another shot. Where is Nazarin? Is he all right?

I clutch the gun to my chest, and the cold metal grounds me. Nazarin is next to me. A bullet has grazed his forehead; his Kalar suit didn’t have a hood. Blood pours down the side of his face, but it hasn’t stopped him. He shoots and dodges, shoots and moves. Another bullet hits him, and he falls. I can only hope it’s the force of the bullet that felled him, not that it’s breached the not-always-infallible Kalar.

Shit, shit, shit, shit.
I can’t tell if I’m thinking it or saying it out loud. Gunshots still pepper the storage crates. I unlock the safety of the gun and put my finger on the trigger. My hand shakes.

I peek over the crate, and then dart back. There’s only one person left: Mana-ma. It’s fitting. Her against me.

I gather the last of my strength and bravery and stand up from behind the barrier. I try to gather my senses together to make sense of the world again. I fire off shots, my vision still blurry enough that I’m not sure if I’m aiming at her. The shots focus me.

The first few miss, but then a bullet hits her in the arm. She folds forward. She’s wearing a Kalar suit, but I’ve still hurt her. I aim again, and hear the crack of her gun. I squeeze the trigger and start to move back behind the crate. Everything slows. Mana-ma crumples, the bullet hole over her third eye beginning to weep.

I watch, almost disinterestedly, as the bullet she fired hits me straight in the chest. It does not puncture the suit, but I feel the impact against my metal sternum. My mechanical heartbeat slows.

Then stops.

THIRTY

TILA

I don’t remember actually arriving in San Francisco.

Taema and I were out cold, but we woke up in the ambulance hovercar. The attendants pulled back the window screen, and even though I felt the worst I’d ever felt in my life, I remember how beautiful San Francisco looked the very first time I saw it. The sun was just setting, and it was like seeing a whole new planet, alien and strange. Tall buildings full of people, others full of trees, cars flying through the sky, bridges linking the lands across the water. It was so
big
. I knew billions of people lived out here in the world, but it was still something else, this city where over a million people lived, flying and seeing straight out to the horizon, tiny people walking down below. This new world seemed infinite.

At the hospital, they stabilized us and Taema woke up. I started crying when she did. I was so scared that she wouldn’t.

The doctor who spoke to us had the same mild confusion about us as the rest of the people out here. We were so lucky, though. He knew our VeriChips were brand new, and he later quietly found someone who would be able to advise us about claiming sanctuary from Mana’s Hearth and make our identities real.

He was one of the most attractive men I’d ever seen. I hadn’t grown used to how everyone was perfect in the city yet. I kept doing double takes as we went down the corridors of the hospital on our way here. It almost made me wonder if there were no humans in the city, and everyone was a robot. There were differences in height and some in weight (though nobody was too thin or too overweight), but everyone had unnaturally symmetrical features.

The doctor kept staring at where we were conjoined, but I guess he’d have reason to, considering what he was proposing. Everything we saw was new and strange. So shiny. I didn’t know how to describe any of it or what any of it was called. I missed my parents and wished they were here with us. Mana-ma must have realized what they’d done. How would she punish them?

“You have to go into surgery immediately,” the doctor said, cutting right to the heart of it (ha, ha). When he spoke, I kept getting distracted by the pretty curve of his lips, the way the blond stubble was just beginning to come in on his cheeks.

“What will you do?” Taema asked, evidently less blinded by his beauty.

A flash of emotion crossed the doctor’s face. Discomfort? It was gone before I could tell.

“How much do you know about life in San Francisco?” he asked.

I remember thinking it was a strange sort of thing to start with. I thought he’d talk about the intricacies of whatever he was going to do to us. Though it’s not like I knew what doctors did. I’d never met one before.

“Only a little,” I said.

“Well,” he began. “I have read up on where you’ve come from. It must feel almost as if you’ve traveled into the future.”

It sort of did, though I hadn’t really thought of it like that. We hadn’t seen enough of this new future yet.

We nodded noncommittally.

“There are no cases like yours anymore,” he said, and I could tell he was choosing his words with care. “The fact that you’ve survived in relatively good health as thoracopagus twins with rudimentary medical care is extraordinary. You therefore have a choice to make. We can operate and fix you, but the team I’m working with wish to separate you. Two separate hearts. Two separate bodies.”

I felt what little blood there was left in my face rush away. Separated? Of course we’d thought about it, but we’d never considered it a real possibility. My feelings were all tangled.

“The way San Francisco is now, you would perhaps find it very … challenging to remain together. People would not be cruel, necessarily, but you’d be stared at wherever you went. It would be difficult. Very difficult. I tried to convince them to let you stay together, if you choose, but they wouldn’t agree to it. And I can’t do it alone, not even with the help of drones. I’ll leave you to discuss, but there isn’t much time. We need to operate, and soon.”

He nodded at us and left, closing the door behind him.

“We have to do it,” Taema said.

“I don’t think we
have
to do anything.”

“The team won’t operate if we opt to stay together. They just won’t do it. But they won’t let us die, either. That doctor made it seem like a choice, but I don’t think it’s really a choice at all.” She saw through it all.

“Do you want to separate?” I asked her.

“I don’t know. Not really. Or I wish we had more time to decide. We don’t. I do know I want us both to live.”