Wired (Skinned, Book 3) (22 page)

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He cleared his throat. "Your mother is worried about you. Both of you."

"Is she still living with you?" I said.

"Of course."

"Then she can't be too worried."

"Lia ..."

"Don't say that."

"What?"

"My name." He'd given me that name, after his dead grandmother. It meant "bringer of truth." But when he said it, it meant
I created you. I named you. I own you.

"I'm not going to beg, Lia. I'm sorry--deeply sorry. You will never know how much. I recognize how difficult it is to forgive, how much strength it takes--"

"So I'm weak?"

"I can see this is useless," he said. "I shouldn't have come."

"Now we agree."

"I don't know what more I can say. I'll do whatever I can to make this up to you, Lia, but I'm not going to beg. I have my limits. I'll always be here, when you change your mind," he said, like it was a foregone conclusion I would. He'd always been this condescending, I realized. I'd just been too oblivious to notice or too desperate for his approval to care.

He walked away.

He had limits, all right. Limits on his capacity to be human, much less a
father
. I believed he was sorry. I believed

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he truly wanted me to forgive him. He just didn't want it as much as he wanted to preserve his pride. If he actually loved me, he wouldn't hesitate to beg. He wouldn't give up so easily. He wouldn't stand there so stiff and proud. He would be broken, like I was broken.

He wouldn't have walked away.

"He doesn't even want my forgiveness," Zo said, sad and small on the other side of Jude.

"Would he have gotten it?" Jude asked.

But Zo was in her own world; I could hear it in her voice. Jude didn't exist for her right now. Neither did I.

"He didn't want it," she said, sounding distant. "He didn't even ask."

There was nowhere to go. We let the car drive us in circles while we sat quietly, facing away from one another, staring out the window or, in my case, at our reflection. Zo broke the silence. "You know what I like about you being a mech?" she asked, then answered her own question. "It's a lot quieter. You don't do that annoying mouth-breathing thing anymore."

"What?"

"You were a total mouth breather, and it was really heavy sometimes, like--" She sucked in and blew out loud lungfuls of air to demonstrate.

"Did not!"

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Jude laughed. It was quiet, and it was over almost as soon as it began, but it was something.

He turned away from the window. "What other charming habits have you been keeping from me?" he asked, a pale imitation of his formerly smug self.

Zo took the opportunity to begin cataloging the many offenses I'd committed against her over the years: the bathroom hogging, the finger tapping, the throat clearing--and what could I do but jump in with a list of my own? Running out of those, we soon found ourselves drifting into a debate over the merits--or lack thereof--of my former friends and, inevitably, Walker, our shared boyfriend, as Jude egged us on. For a moment things seemed almost normal, Zo slipping seamlessly into the annoying tagalong role she'd played back when all she'd wanted was permission to follow me around, and Jude, plainly enjoying the swapping of sisterly grievances, switching his allegiance minute by minute, the better to keep the banter going. But joking about Walker, his stubble, his breath, his brain, which seemed capable of understanding only one rudimentary concept at a time, was a little too much--less because it was weird to be dishing on a guy who'd logged time in both of our beds, more because thinking about Walker made me think about the one who'd followed him, and I wasn't ready to think about Riley yet.

I fell silent. They didn't push it; they changed the subject. It was strange, I thought, barely listening to their debate over some celebrity gossip Zo had seen on a stalker zone, the way three

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people who'd spent so much time hating one another could function so seamlessly as a unit, understanding the things that weren't said, knowing what to ignore and what to pretend so we could all make it through the ride to nowhere. There was even a moment, Zo teasing Jude about knowing something he shouldn't have unless he'd been secretly perusing the stalker zone himself, when it didn't feel like we were pretending at all. It felt like maybe normal was within reach again, somewhere on the other side of all our disasters.

That was the moment, that first glimmer of inexplicable hope, when Sari's text came in, priority level high:

Come home

Something wrong with Riley

The apartment was cleaned out. Sari's stuff--which had been splayed over the furniture and floor--was gone. Along with mine and Zo's. The small pile of possessions we'd amassed since abandoning Casa Kahn was nowhere in sight.

Sari was gone too.

You notice the strangest things, the most trivial details, when everything's falling apart.

Your eye takes in everything, too much: the fecal brown of the walls, the play of light across the windows, the sounds puncturing the silence, a gasp, a shriek, and an empty hole where your voice should be, but you have no words.

You have no words and you have no volition as your legs

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carry you to a body sprawled on the floor, facedown, arms crooked, everything still.

And, finally, you find your scream. "Riley!"

I was on my knees, cradling his head, the day repeating itself with different players. He lay motionless, eyes closed. His uplink jack lay beside him, like he'd been holding it when he fell. Sari had left him like this. Helpless.

"Riley!" I screamed again, thinking, hoping, that maybe, for whatever reason, he'd shut down for the night on the floor instead of the bed; that if I yelled loud enough, if I turned him over and slapped his face and shook him, then he would open his eyes. But if he'd just shut down, the first scream would have woken him. There was no such thing as mech deep sleep. There were just two basic options: On.

Off.

Zo tried to pull me away, but I elbowed her backward. Déjà vu. Like no matter how we started, someone would end up on the ground, someone would get pushed away, someone would be on her knees, desperate.

But Jude was stronger. He took my arm and yanked me to my feet.

I slapped him, harder than I'd hit Riley, harder than I'd hit anyone. "What did you do to him?"

"What? I was with you all day!"

"You must have done something, when you fought--broke something, you must have--"

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"Lia.
Stop.
" He grabbed my shoulders, held them steady, so much stronger than me, hung on no matter how hard I thrashed. He waited for me to stop, to face him--and eventually, there was no other choice. The only sound in the apartment was Zo's uneven breathing.

"I'm calm," I said, trying to sound it. "Let go."

He did.

I was calm, and I would force myself to stay that way, until I got Riley whatever help he needed. Then I would figure out who to blame.

It was the last place any of us wanted to go, but there was nowhere else.

We loaded Riley into the car. Gently, although there was no need to be gentle. I tried not to wonder whether he was awake in there, if he knew what was happening. I lifted his eyelid, not sure what I expected to find. All mechs had a glimmer of gold at the center of each pupil. Riley's had gone black.

That means nothing,
I thought, as we sped toward BioMax and tried not to worry about what they would do when we arrived. What else could they do after everything that had happened but punish us--punish
him
. I was certain they'd turn us away.

They didn't.

This has happened before,
I thought, as we waited in a cramped hallway while the techs worked on him, and I tried
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to forget what was happening three or four floors below us, machines with our minds and our memories following orders, obeying commands.

What was the last thing I said to him?
I thought, and hated myself for not remembering, because the truth was I hadn't said anything; I had watched Riley and Jude break each other, and then I had watched Riley leave. No comment.

I didn't understand why they were helping us, and when the tech emerged from his little room, apology fixed on his face, I waited for him to tell us it had been a mistake, word had come down from on high that Riley was not to be touched.

I couldn't look at the guy's face.

They had tossed three flimsy chairs into the hall for us, and we sat while the tech stood. There was no confusion about who was in charge.

"We've done everything we can think of," the tech said, "but we've had no success waking him up. I've never seen damage like this before. The neural matrix is completely fried."

He said it like he was talking about a damaged exhaust pipe on a used car.

"I was afraid of that," Jude said. "So how long's it going to take to get another body? Or can you reuse this one?"

The tech swallowed hard. "Someone's coming down to talk to you about that."

"Why don't
you
talk to us about it?" Jude said, an edge to his voice.

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"I'm not really qualified to--"

"What's wrong?" I said. "Tell us. We can handle it."

Lie.

The guy laid it out in a flat, toneless voice. "This has never happened to us before. The servers are supposed to be incorruptible. But ..."

"But what?" That was Jude, and I wanted to press a hand over his mouth, because if the tech didn't say it, it couldn't be real.

"But the files have been corrupted. Something must have happened during the uploading process, some kind of bug; we don't know yet. Whatever fried his neural matrix also destroyed his backup copy on the network server. It's been completely deleted."

Deleted.

Not dead.

Not gone.

Delete.
Verb, meaning: to eradicate, obliterate, wipe away.

To expunge. To remove.

To erase.

It
had been erased.

It
, the file, the ones and zeros that had comprised a life.

The world narrowed and slowed, until there was no one but the tech, nothing but his bulbous face, his chapped lips curled up in a sickly smile, like if he pretended it was okay, we would all follow suit, and go happily on our way. I tried.

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Tried to focus on the bald patch just above his left ear, the scar slicing through one of his eyebrows, which must have been some kind of vanity mark, as all scars were these days, but it didn't make him look dangerous, just defective.
Bad call
, I thought, and tried to feel sorry for him, but I couldn't feel anything.

Then, suddenly, I understood. This was just another game, more leverage, jostling for position. Corporate make-believe. "You're lying," I said. A deep calm radiated through me. "Riley's fine."

Jude's eyes were open and unseeing. He lowered his head. Zo laid her hand on top of his, and he let it sit there, like he couldn't be bothered to care.

"Don't you get it?" I asked him, almost giddy. "It's a trick. To shut us up." I laughed. "How stupid do we look?"

"Why would I want to shut you up?" the tech asked, confused.

"Not you," I said. "Them."

He was obviously getting nervous--which meant I was onto something.

He cleared his throat. "Maybe you didn't understand--"

"We understood," Jude said dully.

"No,
I
understood," I said. "You're giving up."

"Lia, it's not a trick."

"How do you know?" I asked, hating him. He'd always believed there were no limits to what orgs would do--but he'd

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chosen now to believe what he was told? Now, when it made no sense? Why couldn't he just believe
me
?

"He's not gone," I said. Mechs lived forever, from one body to another, one copy to another. It was what separated us from the orgs; it was our defining, constitutive quality.

Machines cannot die.

"Let her see him," Jude said.

The tech shook his head. "We don't--"

"Please."

"Fine," the tech muttered, and opened the door for me. "I am sorry."

The door closed, and I was alone in the room. Riley was still, stretched out on a long metal table. Not Riley, not anymore. A body. Its eyes were open. Its face was slack.

I didn't know what I was supposed to do. Cradle his body in my arms. Press my lips to his. Brush his hair off his face. Stand by his side and hold his hand.

But I didn't do any of it. Not because I didn't want to, or because I feared he wouldn't want me to, but because he wasn't there anymore. Maybe I'd known when I had first seen the body lying on the floor. And if he could be erased so easily from the body, it was all too easy to imagine he'd been erased from everything else.

That the body was just a body. Would always be just a body.

That he was gone.