False Hearts (23 page)

We were in bed late one night when I finally asked the question I’d been wondering ever since we had the attack: “They could fix our heart out there, couldn’t they?”

Taema was silent for a moment, and then ran her fingers through my hair. I loved it when she did that. I found the faint tickling so comforting. I ran my hand through hers, offering comfort back.

“They could,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter. Mana-ma won’t let us go.” Getting past the swamp was difficult, even with a boat. And Mana-ma had eyes everywhere. My sister didn’t say it, but I knew what she was thinking: if we got out, we’d be Impure. Despite everything, she still believed a hell of a lot more than I did. It was so frustrating. Couldn’t she see how messed up this place was? It made me angry at her.

“Some have made it out,” I whispered. “Remember Mia? She left, even though Mana-ma didn’t want her to.”

“Nobody knows how, or what happened to her.”

I was quiet for a bit, feeling the coarse, curly threads of Taema’s hair. She could annoy me so much sometimes, but obviously I didn’t want to lose her. Death did scare me something fierce. Because it’d be the first time I’d be alone.

I also knew that we had to leave the Hearth, or we didn’t have a shot. Taema hadn’t wanted to research conjoined twins on the tablet. She was afraid of what we might find—though I didn’t understand what exactly she thought that might be. So when she fell asleep and the tablet was still on, I’d researched on my own.

I knew that everyone out there could change how they looked, and that most did. There was very little obesity, few eating disorders, unsightly scars or pockmarks or missing limbs. Everyone was whole. Perfect. And I knew that out there, there were no conjoined twins. I couldn’t find any, not anywhere. Maybe they were all aborted, never even had a chance to live, or “fixed” as soon as they were born.

So even if we did get out, how would people react? It explained the way the people in the supply ships acted around us. Even those grunt monkeys supervising the drones were all beautiful. But getting out still seemed better than sitting here, waiting to die. I knew we only had one chance of getting out, although neither of us wanted to put them in such a tight spot:

“Mom and Dad will know.”

SIXTEEN

TAEMA

The next day, I’m alone.

Nazarin’s gone to the other safe house to check in with his SFPD superiors. He’s going to dig into plastic surgery records at a bunch of flesh parlors, to see if Vuk has any official history there. It’s useless—if Vuk was actually Adam, then he won’t have an official record of even existing, much less getting plastic surgery.

Tomorrow Nazarin has a busy day with the Ratel, as it’s not long until Saturday, the night of the party, and there’s lots to do. Saturday is the night when he might finally meet Ensi, face to face.

I can’t reconcile the image of Adam, that sweet boy, grown up into a hardened killer. Maybe I’m wrong about it all, but I don’t think I am. But then, what do I know about people? My sister could be a murderer too, and I can’t forget how I acted in Mia’s Vervescape.

I can’t stand to think about what happened in that twisted nightmare. Ever since we left the Hearth, I’ve worked hard to fit in: get a good job, buy an apartment, pay my taxes. I don’t stand out, except for my scar. I never wanted to be that strange girl who used to live in a cult. In a world obsessed with perfection, I didn’t want to be known only for having spent sixteen years as a conjoined twin. My goal has always been to stay out of trouble.

Now I’m headfirst in it.

Nazarin’s been undercover this whole time, balancing training me and his work with the Ratel. I don’t have long before I’m to go in.

Being alone is forcing me to consider what’s going on. I don’t have a job. I quit my last one, and turned down going to China. I want nothing more than to sit with numbers and calculations, or fly out over the bay to visit the machines I helped design, and view the city from the top point of a VivaFog. I want to forget about people, and stay with the machines and their cold logic. Maybe after this is all over, I can go back. I hope so.

I have permission to return to my apartment for clothes, so I leave and ping Nazarin with a message of my whereabouts. I take the glowing green MUNI, the ads flashing on the tops of the train. Halfway there, though, I change course; I don’t want to go to my place. I get off, take another train, and head for my sister’s apartment instead. After all, her clothes fit my cover better than my own.

The door opens at my VivaChip, which makes me realize I would have had to use a key at my own place. Tila’s home is a dump, though I’m not sure how much is her usual disarray and how much is from the SFPD searching the place. As I set down my bag, I feel like an intruder, even though I’ve been here countless times before.

I decide to set things to rights—though it’s really an excuse to go through her things, thoroughly and systematically, in case there are any more hints.

Tila stores things in almost the same places I do. Her underwear is in the same drawer, though everything’s just thrown in. Her jeans and skirts are likewise crumpled. I take the time to fold them and put them back, arranged by color. I don’t find anything but clothes in the drawers or closet, and I take a few to bring back with me to the safe house. My fingers hover over the green dress she likes, but the memories of Mia’s mind are too strong, and I leave it on its hanger.

There’s nothing but dust under the bed. No gun beneath the pillow, no grenades in the bedside table. What was I expecting?

I give up and sit on her bed, sighing. I snuggle under the cover, missing Tila so much it’s a physical ache. I’m angry at her, I’m terrified for her, and I’m a little terrified of her and what she might have done. But I’ve never gone so long without speaking to her, or seeing her. The blankets even smell like her perfume—lily of the valley. I press my nose into the pillow.

I allow myself to cry about it all. I’ve kept most of it bottled up close inside, trying to stay strong, to dampen everything through Mana-ma’s training; but I can’t do it anymore. It hurts too much. It’s not pretty tears. I’m keening and sobbing, my nose running almost as much as my eyes. I rock back and forth, clutching the pillow to my chest. I feel like a lost little girl. I don’t know how to save Tila. I don’t know if I can. I don’t know if I will. If I don’t figure this out, then my sister will go into stasis. I can’t even imagine never seeing her again. I really would be ripped in two.

It takes a long time before I stop crying. I sit up, sniffling, and take a tissue from the box on the bedside table. Beneath the tissue box is Tila’s sketchbook. Still sniffling, I take it and rest the book on my knees, flipping through the pages.

She loved to people-watch. She used to say she liked to record the people that surrounded her in her sketchbook.
“It’s different than a picture. This is more honest,”
she’d say, bending over the paper to shade in an eyebrow. She never used a tablet, always drawing the way she had at the Hearth, with pen and paper.
“So many people. And we don’t really know what makes them tick. So few people we really, truly know in this world. With the rest of them we’re just pretending. But when I’m drawing them, I feel like I can find something about them that’s real. That maybe they didn’t want me to see. Sometimes I feel like I’m pretending with everyone except for you, Taema.”

I turn another page. Here are hosts and hostesses from Zenith—I recognize Pallua, Leylani and a few of the others, either that I saw that night or from the police information brainload. There are a few of her favorite clients—beautiful men and a few women, smiling and holding glasses of champagne. Their names are neatly printed next to them in our alphabet. Nadia. Jeiden. Locke. Men and women with money to burn to stave off their loneliness.

Here are total strangers. People Tila would sketch in cafes and restaurants. I can remember when she drew the old man at the bar down the street—not that he looked that old (hardly anyone in San Francisco does), but you can still tell when someone’s over seventy. Something about their eyes.

This man was always there, at the same seat at the bar, with the same glass of SynthScotch, staring into the distance with the withdrawn look that meant he was accessing his ocular implant. We often used to wonder what he was reading or watching, lost in his own little world, not moving except to raise the glass to his lips or lift his finger for a refill. I remember how my twin looked, bent over the sketchbook as she shaded in his features, while I sat across from her sketching out calculations for whatever project I was working on. Companionable silence.

I close my eyes tight, not wanting to cry again. But I don’t have any tears left. I make my way through the rest of the house, looking under the sofa cushions, in every kitchen cupboard, all the various nooks and crannies.

In the middle of the kitchen, I stand up, my eyes wide. Why hadn’t I remembered?

I
do
know where Tila hides her secrets.

She showed it to me once, not long after she moved in. It was to be her version of the cookie jar, where I could leave her messages if I was passing by. Such a childish game, but I’d appreciated it. Yet in all the months she lived here, I never left her any messages. I kept meaning to, but never did. Hers were always so clever, so thoughtful, and when I tried to think up a return message, they all seemed unbearably dull. She never mentioned the lack of baubles and notes. I never knew if she was hurt by that or not.

I go to her spare bedroom, grunting as I pull back the bed. Another reason I didn’t leave messages: it’s harder to get to than a cookie jar in the kitchen. Tila was always the more paranoid of us, though, and now I understand why.

I can’t see any evidence that the police moved the bed, and the cubbyhole she built behind it seems untouched. I take the key she gave me from my purse and put it into the lock, and the door swings open.

Inside are another sketchbook and a datapod. The pod is only the size of my thumbnail. I want to bring it up on my implants right away, but I’m also afraid of what it may contain.

I open the sketchbook. The first few pages are blank, but near the end, the pages are filled.

The style is looser, more abstract. It’s how she draws when she’s drawing from memory rather than from a model. These faces, though still beautiful and symmetrical in the way of San Franciscans, are harder. Some have scars or predatory tattoos. Hissing snakes inked around a neck, the fangs of the open mouth framing a cheekbone, the forked tongue tasting the skin. They look like criminals. Their names are written next to them, too. A fair-haired man named Hatchet. A Japanese woman with long, sleek hair named Haruka.

The next page has a more detailed drawing of a man with the too-smooth skin and haunted eyes that mark him as older. He has a luxurious mane of dark curls around his face, high cheekbones and symmetrical features that are purposefully not perfect. The mouth is wide, the nose long and thin. He has a mole just under his left eye, with a tattoo of a crescent moon around it. Next to the sketch is the name in our secret alphabet: Ensi.

Here he is. The King of the Ratel. I lean close, until my nose almost touches the paper. I memorize every detail about him. This is who Tila was after. Who I am now after.

I turn the page. There is Malka, the Queen of the Ratel, supermodel beautiful, dark hair in long ringlets around her face, a quizzical smile on her face. A few pages later, among other hardened-looking criminals, is an unmistakable sketch of Nazarin. He looks crueler here, his eyes shadowed by his brow, the scars on his head sharper. His sketch is detailed. She’d drawn this from life. The name next to him is “Skel.”

Nazarin himself has told me he’s met her a time or two before, so it shouldn’t surprise me that he’s there with the other members of the Ratel, but it’s still so strange to see a sketch of him done by my sister. There’s a familiarity to the drawing that gives me pause.

I close the sketchbook and go to the kitchen. I log into my messages on the wallscreen. I want to turn something on and zone out and forget about my life, at least for a few moments.

Of course, it’s Tila’s account on the screen, not mine, because my VeriChip is under her identity. It makes me wonder: did they change Tila’s chip too, and, legally, is it Taema who’s in prison and Tila’s who’s free? Or is she a non-person at the moment?

I shake my head. Curiosity gets the better of me and I delve into her inbox with the same systematic ruthlessness as her apartment. Everything is squeaky clean, nothing stands out. I enable the motion sensors and flick my hands, bringing up her remote storage. I go through each folder, taking my time. I grab a glass of Synthehol white wine, knocking it down far quicker than I should. I stop once I feel a little fuzzy around the edges, numbing the pain.

It takes me a long time to go through my sister’s files. I look through all the photos, many of us together, smiling identical smiles. I spend a lot of time looking at the ones from our trip around the world. I got a big return on the initial investment in VivaFog when it was officially bought by the city, and I used some of the money to take three months off work and take Tila with me around the world. We went absolutely everywhere: Jakarta, New Cairo, New Tokyo, Auckland … so many places with such vivid memories. No country we were remotely interested in went unvisited. It changed both of us, seeing things so far outside of our limited realm of the Hearth and San Francisco. So many different ways to live.

Nothing suspicious is there. That’s because it’ll all be in the datapod.

I finally pick it up again. Such a small thing, nestled into the palm of my hand, the swirling designs on the metal like a seashell. I sigh, and put it in my ear.

The datapod connects to my auditory implants and begins to download information directly to my ocular ones. I focus on the white expanse of the table. The information within is for my eyes alone.

A folder called “Eko” flashes before me, a misspelling of her Zenith name. Within are some files with gibberish titles. I pour another glass of the ersatz wine and drain half of it, and then open the top file.