Torn

  “Shut up.” I wasn’t waiting for him anymore. I was waiting for my mother. To slap him. To beat him. To hug me. To run away from all of us. But she did nothing. “Well?” I glared at her, willing her to fight back. To pick a side.

  But she didn’t. She didn’t even cry.

  We were a whole family of machines.

  Were, as in past tense, as in we had been a family.

  Now we were nothing.

  Zo was slumped in the driver’s seat, cheek pressed against the window, face melting into the thin layer of frost coating the glass.

  I pulled open the passenger door and got inside.

  “No talking,” she said.

  “Got it.”

  I don’t know how long we sat there. I don’t know what she was thinking. I was trying not to think. Part of me wanted to start the car, get the hell away from the house before our father came out and said something that suckered us into going back inside. But the rational part of me, stronger now as the waves of rage ebbed away, knew that would never happen. He’d surprised me tonight, more than once. But he was still M. Kahn, our father, and he wasn’t going to beg.

  We were safe in the driveway, for as long as Zo needed to stay there.

  Zo needed.

  Like Zo needed me to fill in for her that day.

  It had been a long time since I’d let myself go there. For everything that had happened between the two of us, I’d kept that locked away somewhere, too deep and dark to dredge up into the light. But now … It was supposed to be her.

  Sisters were supposed to protect each other. Especially big sisters. I should have been glad it was me instead of her. If I believed the things I said on the network every day, believed that mechs and orgs were different but equal, believed that each form offered its own rewards, I shouldn’t have cared. So I’d exchanged one life for another. I’d lost nothing but pointless nights zoned out on bliss mods, cackling with Cass and Terra and all the interchangeable orgs who couldn’t deal with a mech in their midst. I’d lost a boyfriend who could barely tell the difference between me and my sister, or at least didn’t care which of our tongues was in his mouth. I’d lost a family I was better off without.

  I’d gained Riley. I’d gained time, lifetimes, a brain that could be eternally copied, a body that could be repaired, refreshed, exchanged. I’d trained myself not to think about whether it had been an even trade.

  As I’d trained myself not to think about how things would have been different, with Zo in the car, me safe at home.

  “I’m not going back inside,” Zo said, voice muffled. It was too dark to see if she was crying, and I knew that was the only reason I’d been allowed to stay. “Not ever.”

  “Okay.”

  This is not about me, I reminded myself. Not tonight.

  “So what now?” I asked.

  There was a pause. “I don’t know.” Zo puffed a hot breath against the glass, fogging up the window. Then smeared a finger through the condensation. A lightning bolt Z. For a second she was five years old again, and I was seven, and we were fighting sleep on a long drive, staking our claim on the foggy windows, painting names, flowers, faces—and then watching them disappear. We’d made a competition of it, who faded away first, who lasted. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

  Without asking, I reached across her and keyed in a set of coordinates, started the car. “Yes, you do,” I said, like a big sister should, fixing things.

  What I knew about myself: Given the chance back then, I wouldn’t have gotten in the car. I wouldn’t have saved her.

  At least this time, I could try.

  Zo stopped me before I could knock on Riley’s door.

  “Isn’t it kind of rude for us to show up in the middle of the night?” Zo asked.

  “It’s no big deal.”

  When she didn’t follow it up with the obvious dig about how often I did that kind of thing, I really began to worry.

  “Maybe we should go,” she said instead.

  “He’ll understand.”

  “He doesn’t even know me.”

  I had to laugh. “After that dinner the other night? I’d say he knows you.”

  Zo laughed too, and it sounded good. But it didn’t last long. “Maybe I should wait in the car.”

  I resisted the urge to take her arm. It was like herding a stray cat. You had to lure it in carefully, let it think the whole thing was its own idea. Or just grab it by the neck and toss it inside.

  I knocked.

  It took only a moment for Riley to appear. He opened the door just wide enough to slip out, then shut it again behind him. “Hey. What are you … everything okay?” He seemed off-kilter, like we’d woken him, but of course mechs didn’t sleep; we shut down at night as a matter of convenience and convention, switching ourselves back on with instant alertness. Noise “woke” us, as it did orgs. But there were no dreams to shake off; there were no dreams.

  “No,” I said. “Not okay. But—” I glanced at Zo. She looked zoned out, and I wondered if she’d swallowed a handful of chillers in the car, or if it was just shock. “Can we talk about it in the morning? We need a place to crash.”

  Riley paused. “I told you, the place is a mess …”

  “Riley, this is an emergency.”

  He didn’t move. Like he couldn’t see that this mattered more than some unwashed sheets.

  I pushed past him. “Whatever you’ve got in there, it can’t be—” I stopped. Stopped talking, stopped moving.

  It wasn’t a what.

  It was a who.

  The girl splayed on Riley’s bed had spiky red hair, bad skin, and no shirt. Her feet were kicked up on his pillows; her head lolled over the foot of the bed. She tilted her head back, watching me upside down.

  “Was wondering when I’d finally see you again,” Sari said, with a sly smile like she’d been prepping the line for weeks, waiting for the perfect moment to deploy it. “Welcome to our home.”

  HOMEWRECKED

  “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

  What is she doing here?” I hissed.

  “She was sleeping,” Sari drawled. She didn’t bother to sit up. Or put a shirt on over the flimsy red bra.

  I hooked a finger in Riley’s collar and tugged him toward the door. Zo dropped onto a couch in the corner, her face blank, her eyes empty. “Leave her alone,” I warned Sari. Then dragged Riley outside and slammed the door behind us. And slammed it again, for good measure.

  “Well?”

  Riley did his strong, silent thing, trying to stare me down. Not tonight.

  “Say something.” The apartment had only one real room. Small, flimsy partitions separated the living space from the kitchen from the bed. There was only one bed.

  He risked a half smile. “Something?”

  “What is that girl doing in your bed?” Half naked.

  Did every relationship turn into a cliché? I resented the triteness of it almost as much as I resented the girl on the bed. Half-naked ex-girlfriend—hot, org ex-girlfriend—on the bed. Lying, defensive boyfriend. It didn’t take a genius to finish the equation. One plus one equaled girlfriend storming out in anger, boyfriend groveling for forgiveness. I’d played the scene plenty of times before. With Walker—given his Pavlovian flirting with anything of the double-X variety—I’d had it memorized, and could deliver my lines in thirty seconds flat.

  But Riley wasn’t Walker. And storming away wasn’t so easy when you had nowhere else to go.

  “She needed a place to crash.” Riley gave me a pointed look. “You know how that is.”

  “Don’t.”

  “What?”

  “Pretend it’s the same.”

  “You need something. She needed something. That’s all I’m saying.”

  Sure, exactly the same. Except that Zo was my sister, and Sari … the last time I’d seen Sari, she’d demonstrated her loyalty to Riley by double-crossing him, kidnapping me, and generally doing everything she could t
o help out the guy who wanted him dead.

  She’d also made it painfully clear that “old friends”—Riley’s words—wasn’t exactly the most accurate description of their previous relationship. And that while she might not want him back, she had no tolerance for the prospect of someone taking her place.

  “So she’s staying here,” I said.

  “Nothing happened. It’s not—”

  “So she’s staying here.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How long?”

  “Until she can find a—”

  “No. How long has she been here?” Sleeping in his bed. Wearing his T-shirts. Or not wearing them.

  “A few days,” he admitted.

  “She just showed up on your doorstep.”

  He hesitated. “I brought her here.”

  “You brought her here.” I hated how I sounded. Rigid with cold fury, like someone else I knew.

  “I told you I went back to the city a few times,” Riley said. “During the vidlife.”

  A few times. He’d told me once. But I let it pass.

  “I found her in one of those abandoned houses, right on the edge. You remember?”

  I remembered. Enough to know that if he’d found her there, it was because he’d been looking. “You told me no one lives there.”

  “They don’t. Not if they have any other choice. But Gray kicked her out. Said he couldn’t trust her anymore after what she did.”

  “He must have pretty high standards.” Gray had been her replacement for Riley—at least until it was no longer expedient. Then she’d screwed him over too. If she’d succeeded, I would be lying somewhere in a heap of spare parts; Gray would be dead.

  “I found her half starved, hiding in a closet from some assholes who were trying to—” He stopped, shook his head. “She’s a friend. I couldn’t leave her there.”

  I remembered a windowless room, ropes digging into my wrists and ankles, chaining me to a chair. Sari’s thug looming over me, his ass resting on my knees, his breath puffing against my cheek, his grubby fingers on my skin. “She’s not my friend.”

  “You don’t get it.”

  It was the unspoken assumption between us, that his life had been hard where mine was soft, and that made him strong where I was weak. It made me less than. I was tired of the whole thing. No, I’d passed tired a few miles back. I was done.

  “I get it,” I said. “Fine. She’s your friend. You had to help her. So why not let me help you do it? Why not tell me? I could have found a place for her, found some credit—”

  “Your father’s credit?” he asked sourly. “I think I’ve taken enough of that.”

  The mention of my father brought the whole nightmare to life again. And Riley didn’t even know, because we were wasting our time on this. But fighting was easier than saying it out loud.

  Fighting was the easiest thing of all.

  “I’m not my father,” I said. “I could have helped.”

  “So now you know. Help.”

  I didn’t have an answer for that one.

  He snorted. “Right.”

  “Okay, you win. You’re awesome. I’m heartless. She’s an angel. Does that cover it?”

  “I’m not throwing her out.”

  “I didn’t ask you to.”

  “There’s nothing to be jealous about,” he said.

  “Got it.”

  “See, this is why I didn’t tell you. I knew you’d be like this.”

  “Like this?”

  “But I told you,” he said. “It’s nothing.”

  “And I told you, got it.”

  “She’s just a—”

  “Riley. Read my lips. Not. Jealous.”

  I wasn’t. It was a surprise to me too. Yes, Riley was trustworthy, and no, I didn’t really think anything was going on with Sari—certain as I was she would have preferred it otherwise—but when I was an org, that kind of cold reasoning had traditionally been beside the point. But relationships had been different when I was an org. Even when it was someone who’d barely mattered, there’d been a need, a charge beneath the surface when we were together, a vacuum when we were apart. Reasoning was beside the point. The point was the fever, needing the weight of his arms around you, needing flesh, needing to crawl inside him, to lose everything, even yourself—especially yourself—in the joining of body to body, skin to skin.

  It was different now, because I was different now. The body was a body, and, for all practical purposes, it was a rental. It didn’t come equipped with needs. I wanted, but that was different. That was in my head, and that was rational, which was why I could think coolly and calmly through the reality of who Riley was and what he would and wouldn’t do. Sari fell into the latter category. I didn’t need to worry about his intentions; I worried about hers.

  “It didn’t occur to you that Wynn sent her?”

  “It did. He didn’t.”

  “Because she said so.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And she’s never lied about Wynn before.”

  Years ago, when Riley was a kid, he’d stolen something from Wynn, and Wynn’s people had struck back, coming after the thief—and settling for the next best thing, Jude. Bashing him into the ground while Riley hid. Which meant, as far as Riley was concerned, it was his fault that Jude had spent most of his life in a wheelchair, dependent on Riley, begging for scraps. But it was also Wynn’s, and Riley had held on to that until he couldn’t hold on anymore. That’s when he went after Wynn with a gun. And shot the wrong guy.

  Wynn was never going to forgive the person who murdered his brother. Which made him a threat—and last time I saw him, Sari was his weapon of choice.

  “I’m not letting him stay at my place,” Riley pointed out.

  “She might.”

  “Why, because you can’t trust a city girl? But you can trust me?”

  “You’re not like her.”

  “I’m exactly like her.”

  I shook my head.

  “You don’t want to see it,” he said.

  “You come from the same place,” I said. “But you’re not the same. Not anymore, at least.”

  “Right, because now I’ve got you, and you’ve got your daddy’s credit. Happily ever after.”

  He didn’t know anything.

  But whose fault was that? The fight went out of me. “I’m sorry,” I said, because that’s what you say, even when you’re not. “Can we stop?”

  He paused. “I should’ve told you.”

  I shrugged.

  “She’s safe,” he added.

  I hugged him. Stiffly, awkwardly, but it was better in his arms than out of them.

  “I need you safe,” I said.

  “I am.”

  “I need you.”

  He laughed and gave me a quick kiss. “You’re Lia Kahn, remember? You don’t need anyone.”

  • • •

  It was a long time before we were ready to talk again. The night was cold, as usual. Riley held me, and waited for me to be ready to explain why I’d come, and why I’d towed my sister along. I could see her through the narrow window, curled up on the couch, head under a pillow. Sari was burrowed into a sleeping bag on the floor. I was tempted to stay outside with Riley, holding his hand in mine, staring up at the dim red glow of the midnight sky.

  Riley stroked my hair. “You can tell me,” he said. And finally, I did, all of it—everything I’d found on my father’s ViM, everything my father had said, everything he hadn’t.

  “I’m sorry,” Riley said.

  “That’s horrible,” he said.

  “Tell me what I can do,” he said.

  And he wrapped his arms around me, and I leaned my head on his chest and imagined he was breathing.

  “At least now you know what kind of man he is,” he said. Was I supposed to be grateful that he stopped himself from saying the actual words “I told you so?” “You don’t have to defend him anymore, or listen to him. Now you know he’s nothing to you.”

&
nbsp; He didn’t get it. He was right that I would never know what it was like in the city. But it worked both ways. He didn’t have a father. And so—I felt horrible for thinking it, spoiled and ungrateful and unfair, but it was true—he didn’t know how it felt to lose one.

  I stood up. “Let’s go to bed.”

  Riley shut down, and I let him think I would too. But I stayed awake. Listened to the unfamiliar hiss of breathing, in and out, in and out. Held myself still beneath the weight of Riley’s arm, as his body molded itself around mine. Tree branches scraped the window, and I watched their shadows play on the wall, seeking animals—monsters—in the flickering dark. A lizard, devouring a snake. A dancing bear with bloody jaws. A ghost.

  Zo’s eyes fluttered beneath her lids. I hoped she wasn’t dreaming about our father. I missed dreaming. But I didn’t miss nightmares.

  I stayed awake, and I tried to think of what I should have said to my father. The accusations I should have lodged against him, the graphic descriptions of burning and crushing and breaking, the tears of betrayal that, thanks to him, I couldn’t shed. But there was nothing. No words. In my head, in the dark, I faced him again and again, and every time there was only silence. There was only me turning away, walking out the door, closing it in his face. I didn’t want to yell at him, or listen to more of his explanations, let him find the elusive, magic excuse that would change everything.

  I didn’t want to talk to him. I wanted to hurt him. And words wouldn’t do it.

  Another lesson the great M. Kahn had taught us: Words were words, they meant nothing. Facts counted. Deeds counted. Objects counted. Like metal, like concrete. The laws of physics: an object in motion stays in motion until met by an external force. Like a truck.

  Laws counted.

  For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

  So I lay awake in the dark, and I reacted. I planned.

  And by the time the room lit with the red-orange glow of a rising sun, I knew what to do. Words wouldn’t destroy him.

  But I could.

  The apartment got significantly more crowded when we were all awake. Zo barricaded herself in the bathroom for at least an hour, while Sari stood sentry duty outside it, her back to the living room and her glare locked on the door as if she were practicing her X-ray vision. Every few minutes she would rap loudly; the time in between was spent muttering new and innovative strings of curse words under her breath.