Broken Mirror (27 page)

“Why did you call off the drop?” Elena asked.

She hated interrogations and the stupid and ineffectual cruelty of her dickiemates. There wasn’t much she could do about it, though. The Puros wouldn’t pay a Corp for information
—
their principles forbade bribery
—
so they had to rely on other tactics.

The Corp’s expression was sullen and bitter, and he was starting to sweat.

Unfortunately he appeared neither scared nor in pain. Chico tried cutting, squeezing, and breaking, and nothing seemed to affect the Corp. It was like he was numb all over, like his pain receptors were broken
—

“I got it!” Elena said as she grabbed Chico’s shoulder. She spun him toward her and smiled into his confused face. “He doesn’t feel anything. Look!” She tugged hard on the young man’s ear for effect. His head snapped to the side, and his teeth almost caught her fingers.

“Try that again, gums,” Chico warned. He casually knocked a baton against the Corps’ lips hard enough to split them. The Corp spit blood and looked away sullenly.

“This isn’t working. We need to scare him.” Elena unclasped and removed her belt and handed it to Chico, miming how to use it to block the flow of air.

Chico nodded, wrapped the belt firmly around both fists, stepped behind the Corp, and started strangling him. The Corp’s eyes bulged, and the muscles in his face seized. Elena walked into his field of view, but the panicked Corp didn’t see her at all.

Elena grabbed his ears and pulled. “Hey! Listen up! He’s going to strangle you until I tell him to stop.”

Chico watched her, waiting for the signal.

Elena said, “Not yet. A few seconds. Or maybe a few more. I’ve got time.”

The Corp wheezed and strained unsuccessfully to draw a breath. His face turned purple and appeared to swell. Elena nodded to Chico, and he let up. Ragged breaths wheezed out of the Corp’s throat, and he began to cough.

“You either tell me why you called off the drop, or he’s going to squeeze again. And again. Your brain cells will die off. All your buddies’ drugs won’t help. He’ll keep going until you’re a drooling vegetable. What do you say?”

Chico looked at the Corp with an excited grin that turned Elena’s stomach.

The belt touched the Corp’s neck. His face caved, becoming just another scared dickie. “Wait!” he pleaded. Words spilled out of him alongside gobs of spit. His eyes were dark black pools of fear. “I don’t know why. We got the word. No more deals with the Puros. Everyone knows now. You’re off limits.”

“Why? Who gave the order?” Elena leaned in, then gagged. He was giving off some sort of gross half-metabolized oily odor, a by-product of whatever substances he was taking. “Why?” she repeated, backing away and blocking her nose with her thumb and forefinger. She couldn’t stand his stench.

Both Chico and Davinth were staring at her with heads cocked. Gooseflesh rose on her skin. Neither of the guys was plugging his nose. They acted as if the smell wasn’t there.

And it
wasn’t
, she realized, her heart pounding.

The smell was in her head.

Flashes from previous stimsmoke highs slammed into her, and she sunk to the ground and leaned against one of the metal struts holding up the ceiling. She should have realized it sooner. The smell was an artifact of synesthesia, a side effect of stimsmoke that no one had bothered to explain to her. Maybe other users didn’t quite understand it. Not everyone had a friend with mirror resonance syndrome.

The Corp spilled his guts to Chico and Davinth, naming names and describing the hierarchy of a local Corps franchise
—
she barely heard what he said. Instead she smelled his fear and desperation. Elena watched and said nothing. She didn’t think she could stand up.

Chico looked over at Elena, mouthed, “You okay?”

She waved at him to keep going.

“It goes way up,” the Corp was saying. “Maybe as far as the king. All we hear is, ‘Push the stims! Push the stims!’ And ‘no arms for the Puros.’ Anyone caught in a deal gets his head bashed in.”

Chico asked, “Who else are you going to sell to?”

“No idea. But I can find out for you. Just don’t kill me.” He looked at Chico with pleading eyes. “Or choke me again.”

Elena stood, grasping the metal beam to haul herself up. She beckoned to Chico and pulled him to the side of the room. She wanted to release the Corp, but he refused. He slipped the belt around the Corp’s neck and tightened it.

Elena took a step forward on wobbly legs. The floor seemed to vibrate under her feet, and shadows crowded her vision. She took another step and stumbled to her knees, retching. The sounds of the Corp struggling washed over her. She couldn’t stop Chico. In between heaves of her belly, Elena wished that Victor would return her feed requests. If stimsmoke mirrored his condition, he might be able to talk her through getting clean.

***

The smack of a juicy insect exploding on the windshield brought Elena back to the present.

She wished she could be honest and tell him how her life had changed when she had moved to the Republic of Texas, how much she hated it at first, the time she spent careening between depression and stimsmoke. How she’d been saved by the Puros, how she’d relapsed, and then how his family had saved her again.

She wished her life hadn’t taken the turns it had. But her actions had consequences, and she had to live with them no matter how dark and shameful.

She should tell Victor about Lucky and Bandit. He deserved to know the truth.

How would he take it? Would he forgive her for lying?

Elena glanced over at Victor. His hair needed combing. He probably hadn’t showered in days. His hands gripped the steering disk as if he were holding onto a lifeline. She couldn’t blame him for the mess her life had become. But if he’d been there for her, even a little, maybe she wouldn’t have needed the Puros.
Oraciones
in Portuguese-influenced Spanish repeated themselves in her head.
Los Puros sonao limpios, salvos, amadaos. Unidos, hastao lo ultimo
. She pressed a palm to her heart and breathed in calmness.

Still, it could have been different. If his family hadn’t rescued her, she would never have been to the clinic in New Venice. She wouldn’t have rejoined the Puros and learned about the arms embargo. And she wouldn’t have tortured the young Corp
—
that was the tipping point, when she lost control of stims again.

“Are you still not taking your medication?” she asked.

He flashed her an angry look.

“I’m not criticizing. I’m asking. How do you feel?”

“It’s hard to describe. I’m me again. I’m in my body, feeling like me, feeling . . .” He paused, breathed deeply, then began again, “When I was on Personil, it was like there was a layer in between me and the world, between me and myself. Mostly I felt numb, except when an episode came and broke through, and I could finally feel
something
again. It’s different every time. Colors or sounds or feelings take over, and I don’t
—
I’m not myself anymore. That’s when the blankness comes. It swallows me up.”

“And then?” He made it sound as if she’d experienced only a fraction of what it was like for him.

“Most of the time it’s nothing. Nothing at all. I’m gone. But sometimes, right before the blankness hits, it’s like the universe opens up. I feel . . . Dr. Tammet called it euphoria, but it’s more than that. It’s like I’m going somewhere beautiful and dazzling, and that’s okay, because it’s all the same, everything is part of the same stuff: me, the world, all the stars and galaxies, we’re all one.”

Elena relaxed into her seat. Blankness didn’t sound all that bad. It sounded like a release from a world that required so much just to keep going.

They were nearing the foothills. The flat valley floor had given way to gently undulating land, though the road continued due east. Trains heading to the resorts of Lake Tahoe, carrying SeCa elites to their vacation homes, sped past every minute or so.

She looked at Victor. His eyes scanned the contours of the road as he drove. He didn’t need to know about her past. He wouldn’t understand.

Although if she confessed to him about using stims, she could tell him about the good parts of being a Puro: the community, the farms, how they had tried to help her get clean and succeeded for a time. How being with them felt real and grounded. He needed a refuge like that, a place to start again. But he wouldn’t be able to see past the violence. Maybe she could prepare the way by describing the dickie violence spreading across the Texas prairie as the Corps’ fault. Everyone knew the Puros were only defending themselves.

And maybe she could ask him why a street drug spreading through the Republic of Texas produced his syndrome’s exact symptoms.

“What’s it like in the R.O.T.?” Victor asked.

Elena sucked in her breath. She contemplated the possibility that Victor was indeed psychic, but dismissed the fantasy. Still, it was uncanny the way his question tracked her thoughts. Maybe she had dropped too many hints about how much the Republic of Texas had changed her.

“It’s simpler,” she said. “People are more normal. More normal than here, I mean. They want to be left alone. Their attitude is screw everyone else, we’ve got our own problems. In SeCa someone is always in your business, trying to fix things, but messing them up worse instead. People in Texas believe in autonomy. It’s not just a political thing. It’s a way of life. Except . . .”

“Except what?”

Elena watched dirt fields pass by. The ghost tang of stimsmoke lolled in her mouth. She couldn’t tell him yet.

She said, “The R.O.T. is missing something. It’s like a blank canvas. In SeCa you’ve got a lot of people with competing ideas. Lifestyle designers, techies, New Catholics, deep ecologists, sex cultists. The list goes on and on, you know? But in the R.O.T. there’s no ideology. Maybe there was before the Repartition, but now people don’t even believe MeshNews reports, like all that stuff is from another planet. You see a lot of strange things creep up.”

“What do you mean, ‘strange things’?” He looked at her, his expression that of a curious little boy. She’d confused him. He knew nothing about everyday violence and poverty and the blind faith that grows in such fertile soil.

The things she had seen . . . It was like the two of them were living in different universes. He wouldn’t understand. With enough time, if she told him bit by bit, maybe she could enlighten him. Maybe then he would understand when she told him that she was spying on him. Until then she’d have to live with the aching feeling in her gut that she was betraying him. “People need to believe in something bigger than themselves,” she said. “There’s always someone selling a dream. So you get cults rising up. People believing in supernatural stuff. Not like, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we could talk to ghosts?’ They really believe in it. Other stuff too.”

“What other stuff?”

She could tell him about the flood of stims the Corps had unleashed to hook as many people as possible and their enticing lies about the effects: unlimited energy, visceral fantasies, and the feeling that everything was as it should be. They never talked about synesthesia, mood imbalances, addiction, and nauseatingly powerful déjà vu.

Tomorrow she would tell him everything. First she needed time to figure out what to say.

“Never mind,” she said.

They reached the Trans-SeCa Highway, the main route through the mountains for a thousand kilometers to the north or south. Few other cars traveled the road with them, even though it was midday on a Friday. An anticontraband drone hovered and tracked the traffic, including three other cars and theirs, forcing them all to slow down and submit to the scan.

The drone moved on.

When they reached the eighty-kilometer tunnel that traveled underneath the Tahoe Forest ridgeline and terminated at the border with the Organized Western States, they turned off the highway. They continued along an old surface route through the wreckage of Truckee. Elena pointed to an abandoned shack to distract Victor, fished around in her bag, and slipped a Dirac stunstick into her pocket where she could get to it more easily if she needed it.

They stopped to refill the car’s biofuel tank at a service station on the edge of town. An attendant bumbled out of his kiosk and unspooled the hose. Victor held up his MeshBit to pay, but the attendant just laughed at him. Elena paid the man with some of her cash.

Elena wandered across a broad expanse of asphalt. Victor’s gaze followed her, worrying her. Maybe he was interested. Or maybe he suspected her deception.

She looked down the road at the town’s remains. Few shops welcomed customers anymore. The Sierra Nevada Tunnel that ran somewhere underneath them provided a more convenient east-west connection between SeCa and the O.W.S., as well as a better connection to North Tahoe City through a southern spur of the tunnel. Without through-traffic the town of Truckee had withered.

The Corps had an outpost around here, Elena knew. Most of the residents abandoned the town following the tunnel’s construction. Only investment by a few adventurous and bargain-seeking union pension funds had saved the town from complete collapse. Then some Corp-affiliated dickies took up residence in abandoned homes and cabins, cultivating off-permit marijuana in the summer months and cooking stims in labs throughout the year, which started several forest fires, one of which had ravaged most of the main street. It was never rebuilt. Elena shifted uncomfortably at the thought of stims nearby.

When they got back in the car, Elena considered telling Victor about her stunstick.
No, better to wait. I’ll tell him everything, eventually, when he’s ready.

After the failed assassination attempt that resulted in his wife’s death, President Lincoln, who had long suffered from depression and anxiety, and now found himself confined to a wheelchair and suffering from chronic pain, became maniacally focused on dismantling the sources of Confederate power. The South was occupied by Union troops. Plantations were partitioned and bestowed upon former slaves. Businesses were seized and turned over to cooperative ownership. The apparatus of government was purged of anyone disloyal to the Union. Abuses of power and human rights violations against white former elites were common during this period, and federal forces brought in on this pretext did nothing to stop them. Reconstruction rolled on relentlessly until nothing was left of the South’s traditions, or its prejudices.