***
By the time I get home from school, I am ready for an argument.
“Sulan, what is this?”
I stand in the kitchen, eating corn straight from a can with a pair of chopsticks. Mom marches in, holding out her tablet. She gets notifications every time a new test score is posted.
“It’s a seventy-three percent on my math test,” I say, not bothering to look at the tablet. Riska purrs, expanding his wings luxuriously.
“There is no excuse for this,” Mom says, her jaw tense. Her face used to bear scars from her days as a merc, but Dad had them buffed out as a birthday present a few years ago.
“What’s the point of a good grade?” I ask, shoving corn into my mouth. “Claudine and Mr. Winn have seen the test score on my entrance exam. Everyone has already decided my future.”
Global’s exam for Virtual High School is famous. Passing one is like winning the equivalent of an Olympic gold medal for your brain. Some kids spend years studying for it. Mom tricked me into taking it; I was homeschooled at the time, and she played it off as just another test.
I scored 100 percent. I was only twelve.
Mom’s lips tighten, her eyes narrow, and her brow furrows. When her mouth opens, I know she’s about to ream me. Right before she speaks, her tablet beeps, signaling an incoming call.
Mom and I both look at the tablet; we don’t get a lot of calls.
“Someone from Global,” Mom says, scanning the caller ID tag. Her irritation slides away. Her voice rises ever so slightly in pitch, and there’s eagerness in her eyes. I know we’re both thinking the same thing: Dad.
Mom answers. “Hello?”
I rise up on my tiptoes, trying to see over the top of Mom’s tablet. I expect to see Dad’s face looking out at us. Instead, I see manicured eyebrows, perfectly sculpted brown hair, and a fake smile.
I jerk back from the tablet. Riska growls.
“Ms. Hom.” Claudine’s chipper voice sounds tinny coming from the tiny speaker. “How are you this evening?”
Mom’s transformation is instant. Emotions are stripped off her face, replaced with a carefully constructed smile. The muscles of her arms and neck tense, but her face is perfect. If I didn’t know Mom better, I would say she’s afraid. Except that Mom doesn’t get afraid.
“Good evening, Miss Winn,” she says, the archetypal polite housewife. “I’m doing well, thank you. And you?”
“Very well. Do you have a few minutes? I would like to have a quick conference with you and your daughter.”
Riska growls again. Mom throws me a panicked look; I’m not sure why Claudine makes her react this way, but I understand what Mom wants. I duck and race out of the kitchen and down the hall. I pull Riska off my shoulder and toss him onto the bed, then shut the door on him. He immediately starts yowling, as he always does when we’re separated.
“She’s in her room,” I hear Mom say from the kitchen. “Let me call her.” She raises her voice. “Sulan! Sulan, please come out here.”
I wait ten seconds, then pad back into the kitchen.
“Yeah, Mom?”
“Miss Winn is on the line. She’d like to speak with us.” Mom motions me over. She’s propped the tablet up against the kitchen backsplash. We stand side by side at the counter.
Claudine uses her avatar, even when making phone calls. Her perfect, serene face gazes out at me, a creepy juxtaposition to her hard eyes.
“Hello, Miss Hom,” she says cheerily. “Did I pull you away from your studies?”
I don’t look at Mom, but I feel her tense beside me. I dredge up my most polite voice.
“Just looking over my notes from quantitative genetics,” I say. “Dr. Nguyen is giving us a test day after tomorrow.”
“Nice to hear you are applying yourself. I wish we could see the same amount of dedication in your calculus class.”
I know it takes all of Mom’s willpower not to look at me.
“I was disappointed to see your score on today’s test,” Claudine says. “I think we all know you can do better than a seventy-three percent.”
“I was distracted by your announcement, Miss Winn,” I say, hanging my head and trying to sound contrite. “I didn’t focus on the test as well as I should have.”
“With your gift, Miss Hom, that’s not a very good excuse.”
I bite back a retort and keep my eyes downcast to hide my resentment. This isn’t my first talking-to by Claudine, and I’ve found the quickest way to end them is to play along.
“Life gives us choices, Miss Hom,” Claudine says. “You are being given a world-class education. I hope you elect to take advantage of it.”
What does a world-class education get people these days? It gets them executed on public media. It gets them blown up. It gets them shipped off to live in a cinderblock prison.
When I don’t say anything, Mom steps in. “I assure you, Miss Winn, Sulan will apply herself to her studies. I will see to it.”
She gives me a look. I glare up at her.
“I am relieved to hear it,” Claudine says. “We have great hopes for you, Miss Hom. We expect you to follow in your father’s footsteps and lead this company’s product development someday. Remember that as you make your choices.”
I finally look at Claudine. Why is she going on and on about choice? Does she really think I have any choices?
For a brief second, I wonder if she knows about the Cube. I dismiss the idea almost immediately. If she knew about the Cube, she wouldn’t talk in riddles. She’d cut off my exploits like an executioner.
Claudine’s hard eyes meet mine, her big smile still plastered to the face of her avatar. She ends the call without a word. The tablet screen goes black.
Beside me, Mom lets out a long breath and leans against the counter for support. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen Mom rattled by Claudine. Her discomfort disturbs me far more than Claudine’s displeasure.
I edge out of the kitchen. Mom whips around.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“To meet Hank.”
“Oh, no you don’t.” Mom charges past me.
I rush to overtake her, but Mom is fast. She beats me down the hallway and bursts into my room. Riska explodes through the doorway, flying at me with a wild yowl and bristling fur. He smacks right into my chest, digging his claws into my tank top and rubbing his nose against my chin.
“No more Vex until you start applying yourself,” Mom says, marching out of my room and waving my Vex set in the air.
Riska pauses in his snuggling just long enough to hiss at her.
“What about Hank?” I say. “She needs my help with homework.”
“You need to spend a little more time worrying about your own homework. You can worry about Hank when your grades improve.”
“Did you know about the Livermore Lab?” I say to her back.
Mom freezes.
“You knew,” I say. A cold, furious sweat breaks out along my arms and lower back. “You knew.”
Mom turns to face me. Riska leaps out of my arms and dive-bombs her. Mom, still ingrained with whip-quick reflexes, twitches aside and avoids him. It would be gratifying to see her get annoyed with him once in a while, but she never does.
“Yes,” she says. “I’ve known about the Lab for a while. I wasn’t allowed to tell you.”
I open my mouth, a hundred different things gathered on the tip of my tongue. Instead, I look her right in the eye—and slam the door shut in her face.
7: Touch
My rage threatens to swallow me. I deal with it by taking a nap. I fall asleep on my stomach, Riska curled up on the small of my back.
When I wake up, it’s dusk outside. I feel a little better after my argument with Mom; at least I got a chance to blow off some steam. A glance at the clock tells me it’s six in the evening. I flip over on my back, spilling Riska onto the covers.
This is not the first time Mom has taken my Vex set. I can acc
ess all my study materials on the tablet, but that doesn’t help Hank. Equally important is getting to the Cube for my first official sparring session with Gun. No way is Mom going to stand between me and my training.
I rummage around under my bed. I shove aside some old stuffed animals and pull out an old Vex set. I stole it out of the tech recycling bin in our underground parking garage a few months ago—my contingency plan for a situation just like this.
I pause before slipping on the set. If Mom walks in on me, she’ll implode. There’s no lock on the door, so I slip a chair under the handle.
“Bite me if she tries to get in,” I whisper to Riska. He arches his back under my hand, purring.
I jump into Vex and head to Café Blu. I study with Hank for an hour. Billy shows up around the time I head to the Cube. I leave them huddled together over four tablets, Hank negotiating for another hour of study time before they move on to Billy’s Collusion Underground project. That Hank is willing to relinquish any study time is a measure of how much she likes Billy.
When I arrive in our locker room, Gun is already there. He lies on the concrete floor, head cradled on one well-muscled forearm. A video holograph plays over his head, but I can’t tell what he’s watching from this angle.
“Hey,” I say, smiling a greeting.
“Hey.” He looks up, returning my smile. “How was your day?”
I shrug. “Got in a fight with my mom. Ate some canned corn. You?”
He laughs. “I had a round with my old man, too. You ever watch these old reruns?” He gestures to the holograph playing over his head.
I lie down on the floor beside him, pillowing my head with my arm. It takes me less than five seconds to recognize the footage.
“Merc, season twelve, episode seven,” I say. “I love when Morning Star and Black Ice take out those ten guys with the staple gun and pressure washer.”
Gun raises his eyebrows in surprise. “I thought you said you weren’t here to reenact Morning Star and Black Ice fantasies?”
“I’m not. But I’ve seen all the reruns. I’ve even watched all the cut footage.” I turn my head to grin at him.
“Ever been to Black Star?” he asks.
Black Star is a famous cult club dedicated to Black Ice and Morning Star. A lot of fans hang out there, spouting theories on the real-world identities of the pair. There are lots of Vex sites dedicated to the Merc duo.
“No, I’ve never been,” I say. “I’ve always wanted to go.”
“You’ve got a Cloak now,” Gun says. “Someday, we’ll go. Every night they reenact a scene from one of the episodes. Here, this is the part I wanted you to see.”
In the holograph hovering above us, Morning Star kicks open the door of a stairwell and prowls onto a rooftop. She wears a black merc jumpsuit that reveals a tall, slender figure covered with taut muscles. Her black hair is twisted into a tight bun at the nape of her neck. She is tall, gorgeous, statuesque.
The white SmartPlastic mask conceals her face, a single gray star on the left temple its only adornment. Weapons seem to be a part of her. She wears tranq guns, gas grenades, and laser knives programmed to wound, not kill. These may have been real competitions, with real merc situations, but no one ever died.
Morning Star stands in the darkness. Brilliant stars hang in the sky. A firework explodes above her, filling the night with a temporary flash of red, white, and blue.
As the firework fades, another figure appears on the edge of the building, hauling herself over the side.
“Took you long enough,” Morning Star says as the other figure scrambles into view. A voice distorter alters her tone, preserving her real-world identity. “You should have tried the stairs.”
The figure opposite her is a hand shorter and fuller-figured, but every bit as muscled. Her name is Wren, her namesake painted across the forehead of her mask. Wren hunches slightly, breathing hard from her climb.
Morning Star and Wren stand ten feet apart, sizing each other up. Then, before Wren can fully recover, Morning Star attacks. She flies forward, her leg hitting Wren squarely in the chest. Wren lands hard but throws the momentum into a back roll and rises gracefully to her feet.
Gun and I lie side by side on the floor. I watch, transfixed, as the two women fight with their hands and feet. Fireworks rain upward, illuminating them. They are beautiful, like two dancers.
The match lasts a good ten minutes, until Morning Star rams Wren’s head into the stairwell door and knocks her out cold.
Black Ice shows up in a stolen helicopter. He’s gorgeously tall, with broad shoulders, light-brown skin, and a crew cut. His SmartPlastic mask is pure black. He picks up Morning Star, and the two of them fly away into a sky full of fireworks.
“I love this episode,” I say, sighing happily.
“Morning Star and Wren used a lot of kickboxing moves,” Gun replies. “I thought we could start by practicing some of those techniques. What do you say?”
“Yes, please.” I can’t believe this eagerness expanding through my body. I’ve never felt this excited about learning before.
“Come on. I’ve reserved a workout room for us.”
I follow Gun into the hall, which is dark gray and lined with steel doors. We climb several flights of stairs. Other members come and go from their locker rooms. Gun, as always, gets appraising looks; I get sniggers and smirks. We ignore everyone. We arrive in a hall that looks a lot like the others, except the doors are spaced more widely apart. Gun leads me into the one marked T-89.
The room is a gray cube. Mounted on the wall beside the door is a tablet computer.
“We use this to call up any training gear we need,” Gun says, gesturing. “Handguns, nunchucks, whatever. We can even change the setting, if we want to work out in a different terrain. Here, I put this together for you.” He pulls out a folded white piece of paper. “It’s a workout routine for the real-world. It will help increase your strength and endurance.”
“Thanks.” I take the paper and slip it into a pocket. I can’t wait to get up tomorrow morning and work out.
“You should see results pretty quickly, if you’re disciplined,” Gun says. “Did you bring your Touch?”
“Yeah.” I dig into my other pocket and pull out the packet of pills.
“You sure you want to do this?” he asks.
“Positive.” I toss one green pill into the air, catch it in my open mouth, and swallow it.
The technology works immediately. Awareness tingles along my scalp. The feeling travels the length of my body, seeping across my neck, shoulders, chest, and arms. It sinks down and down, sliding over my knees and anchoring in my feet. The sensation is like warm sunlight coming out from behind the clouds, creeping over every square inch of me.
I am aware of my own body mass, of the floor beneath my toes. I pinch my arm and feel the answering spider bite of pain. I stretch for my toes and feel the pull in my calf muscles.
Vex is a world that consists of sights and sounds. And now, with a single pill, I have feeling. Touch hacks into the Vex headset and accesses my parietal lobes, the part of the brain responsible for processing sensory information. This allows me to share the physical sensation of my avatar. I won’t be leaping around my bedroom, but my body should develop fighting reflexes—muscle memory—if I train enough.
Before I realize what I’m doing, I reach out and touch Gun’s arm. It’s thick and solid beneath my fingers.
“It’s working,” I breathe. “I can feel you.”
His blue eyes are intense as he stares down at me. I recall that he is supposed to be a big brother. I pull my hand back and drop my eyes.
Gun, watching me, shifts. “I think I better take one of those, just in case,” he says. “I don’t want to hurt you on accident. I’m pretty strong.”
I pass him a pill. “Have you tried these before?”
He grimaces. “Once. A few years ago.”
I don’t press him for more information; I learne
d my lesson yesterday. If I don’t ask about his real-world life, I won’t have to tell him where I go to school, or who my father is. I want him to see Short Stuff, the girl in the Meat Grinder who took out a larger opponent with a rock. I don’t want him to see the math nerd.
I bounce up onto my toes. “Is it working yet?”
He nods. “Yep.”
“So where do we start?”
“Basic drills first. Here, check these out. I made them for you.” He producers two golden bracers and hands them to me.
“What are these for?” I turn them over in my hands.
“I call them Marstons. Named after the man who created Wonder Woman. Know who she is?”
I shake my head.
He grins at me. “She’s a comic book heroine from pre-’Fault days. She wore indestructible golden bracers on her wrists.”
“You sure know a lot about dead writers,” I say, thinking of the old war book he quoted to me yesterday.
He laughs. “I collect pre-’Fault books. Irritates the piss out of my old man.”
“Are these things really indestructible?”
“Metaphorically. I’ve modified them a bit. They won’t deflect bullets, but they will help you train.”
“You’re a programmer?”
He shrugs. “It’s a hobby. Here, put them on.”
I hesitate. There’s a small release button on the outside of each Marston. Even so, it occurs to me that I could be making a very big mistake. Here I am, full of Touch and hanging out with a guy three times my size, about to put on things that resemble handcuffs.
I ignore the paranoia and snap them around my wrists.
Without warning, Gun swings a fist at my face.
I squeal. The Marston yanks my arm up to shield me. Gun’s fist connects with my forearm.
“Ow!” I yelp as pain runs down the length of my arm.
Gun laughs. “See? You’re indestructible. I programmed the Marstons with kickboxing moves. Here, let’s try again.”
This time he swings with his other fist. My opposite hand snaps up, blocking the blow, and again I feel the shudder of impact down my arm.
“Perfect,” he says. “Repeat. Bend your knees. Keep your weight on the balls of your feet.”
He throws punch after punch. He keeps the attacks simple and predictable, aiming between my head and waist.
At first, the Marstons do all the work; they carry my arms into the protective positions. It’s all I can do to tense my muscles against Gun’s blows and to keep from falling flat on my rear end.
Then I start to understand the moves. I understand what Gun and the Marstons are teaching me.
I begin to watch Gun’s body, to watch his muscles and predict where his next attack will fall. The bracers are weighed down by my slack arms. The first time my arm leaps up of its own accord, Gun can tell. He pauses to grin at me.
“That was you,” he says.
“I think I’m getting it,” I say. I’ve never felt so accomplished. I don’t think I’ll ever stop smiling.
“You’re only just beginning,” he replies. “Again.”