False Hearts (31 page)

She laughs. “Yeah, it’s tacky as hell, but I don’t care. A girl’s gotta have a hobby.” She was serious when she let us in, but now she’s striving for lightness. It’s forced. Underneath she’s as scared as we are.

At the end of the hall, Kim presses her fingertip to the sensor and the door slides open. We step through into her lab.

Though the lab is small, it’s fitted with the best equipment, stuff I would have killed to have in my lab at Silvercloud Solutions. The Chair bolted to the floor in the middle of the room reminds me uncomfortably of the Zealot lounge.

“All right, who’s going first?” she asks.

“Me,” Nazarin says, to my relief. He sits in the Chair, and Kim straps him in.

“I don’t know why I’m doing this,” she mutters to herself.

“Yes, you do.”

“Don’t kid yourself, babe,” she says, pinching his cheek. “You’re not my type.”

She winks at me and I smile a little.

“OK, then. You want to prove to yourself you can do it. I’ve appealed to your professional pride.”

“That’s a bit closer, but you forget, I’ve done this before.”

“I guess that’s a comfort,” Nazarin says. “You won’t leave me blind and deaf.”

“Most likely not.”

Neither of them mentions Juliane. I have the feeling they rarely speak about her, even though she’s a shared link between them. Too painful for them both. Better to banter and tease, even when they’re both terrified.

“Now shut up,” she says, without rancor. “I have to concentrate.”

He dutifully shuts up as Kim attaches the last of the wires. It is almost exactly the same set-up as at the Zeal lounge, and I say so.

“Where do you think they got the idea for it, buttercup?” she asks. “Who do you think helped develop Zeal, if not the biohackers? Grade A Sudice merchandise right from the start.”

It’s rather obvious now that I think about it, but I know nobody who did Zeal, except Mia. My throat twinges as I think of her. She didn’t have a funeral, and even if she had, no one would have come.

Kim turns on the screen on the table next to the Chair, her quick fingers dancing as she brings up the various controls. It only strikes me now how dangerous this all is.

Kim is going to hack into Nazarin’s brain.

“Does it hurt?” I ask. Switching my identity had been easy and painless. This isn’t a chip in a wrist. Implants are wired right into your brain.

“It won’t be pleasant, I’m sorry to say.” She fills a syringe with unidentified liquid. “Why do you think we don’t have our implants set to record as standard? Be able to keep our memories and replay them in their entirety whenever we want?”

“No idea.”

“We’re not meant to remember every little thing. If we were, that’s what our brains would do. They’re not meant to store so much. They can be overwhelmed. Even brainloading is too much for many. Not every brain can do it. But non-stop recording? I am part of a Sudice project that works on it.” She pauses, looking haunted. “Some subjects end up going crazy, and some brains shut down. Aneurysms. Strokes. Poof. Gone.” She snaps her fingers. “So it will probably be nixed pretty soon. Most of us involved in the project are glad it hasn’t been easy, to tell the truth. You know why?”

I shake my head.

“It makes people vulnerable. People already try to hack into implants all the time—send adverts and things. Imagine hacking into your very being. Your very self.”

I lick my lips. And what would the government do with that power?

“The government are trying,” she says, echoing my thoughts. “Boy, are they trying. They fund all our research, and it isn’t cheap. If brain recording worked better, you can bet your bottom dollar that we’d all be recording, all the time. I mean, surveillance is old as time.”

She drifts off, fiddling with something, and then sets the code to process. “Anyway, it’s been abandoned for widespread use now, until they can figure out how not to fry people. Maybe at some point we’ll crack it fully. Until then, I developed a way to turn it on for anyone, at least for a little while. A back door.”

A back door into my brain. “Do you have to … use it often?” Forced brain recording. It sounds barbaric.

“Very rarely.” Her eyes go distant and blank. I swallow. I wonder what she’s had to see, had to do, but I don’t ask. Easier to think of her as a brilliant, eccentric woman with a penchant for nicknames and bobblehead figurines.

She shakes her head, coming out of it. “Not many people know about brain recording. You didn’t for sure, did you, tulip?” Kim asks Nazarin. He’s lying back in the seat, his eyes half-lidded. Whatever Kim gave him, he’s relaxed and high.

“Educated guess.”

“Smart boy,” she says fondly. His eyes flutter and he’s out cold.

Kim sighs. “Here we go.”

“Wait,” I say. “You’re really not calming me down here. Are we going to go insane or die?”

She meets my eyes. “I’m very good at this. Yes, there’s still a chance. Nazarin understands the risks, and he wants to do it. Do you? You have a choice.”

“Give … give me a minute.”

“Sure. You can see what happens with Nazarin. Then decide.” She looks down at Nazarin, runs her hand over the rough stubble of his head, and then presses a button on the Chair.

Nazarin goes rigid. Sweat beads on his skin almost immediately, leaving tracks down his temples. Kim frowns at one of the wallscreens, her fingers dancing over a projected keyboard as she studies code that means nothing to me, for all my courses in software engineering. With a flick of her wrist, a map of Nazarin’s mind appears, floating over her head like a nebula.

Kim zooms in on the occipital lobe and the auditory cortex first. I remember when people first mentioned implants to me, I thought they were just one machine, firmly glued somehow to the brain. Really, there’s a main receiver and dozens, hundreds of little implants scattered through the brain. They call it neural dust. Microscopic little computers, no thicker than a human hair, all taking the data from the brain and feeding in data from the outside world.

Nazarin has more implants than me. “What are those?” I ask, pointing at the various other parts of his brain also speckled with neural dust.

She frowns as she concentrates, changing the view to focus on the tiny machines. “They put them in when he went undercover. Extra receivers for brainloads. Implants to help memory in the hippocampus, extra occipital lobe implants to help retention and processing. There’s more in the brain stem and cerebellum to aid with coordination—you’ll notice he’s not clumsy, and very fast when he needs to be. So they’re there, and they help, but they don’t record the way you two need the brain to record. It makes this tricky, though. There’s a lot of little bits of metal in his head. Now stop talking.”

I snap my mouth shut. Kim’s barely blinking. Her fingers gesture as she imparts code to the tiny metal specks in Nazarin’s brain.

Machines beep—Nazarin’s heartbeat speeds up, warning alarms ping. Nazarin arches on his Chair, his mouth open in a silent scream. He jerks as if he’s having a seizure, spittle flying from his mouth. The veins in his neck stand out.

His heart flatlines.

“Shit, shit, shit!” Kim’s fingers fly faster.

“What’s happening?” I have my hands over my mouth. I dart forward but Kim snarls at me to stay back. Nazarin is already turning grayish. His eyes are open and bulging, their whites red with burst capillaries.

“Shut up!” Kim takes another syringe and stabs it into his heart. I watch, unable to think, unable to speak.

I don’t want him to die.

Nazarin’s heart starts again, and he gasps, his breathing hoarse.

“Oh, thank Christ.” Kim slumps against a counter. “I told them, I fucking told them not to ask me to put in so many!”

Nazarin’s eyes are still open and staring. “Is he OK?” I ask.

The skin around Kim’s eyes and mouth is tight. She doesn’t answer. My mouth goes dry. I stay quiet, watching her work, clasping my hands together and whispering incoherently. It isn’t a prayer, not really, but maybe it’s a whisper to the universe, a hope that things will somehow work out all right.

Three minutes pass, but it feels like three hours. Kim nods, and the map of Nazarin’s brain disappears. Nazarin slumps against the seat, his eyes closed again, breathing through his mouth. He seems calmer, but he’s still dripping with sweat and twitching. Kim injects him with another syringe, this time in the shoulder, and the frantic beating of his heart slows. After another minute, his eyelids flutter.

He sits up slowly. “I feel like I’ve been hit by a hovercar.”

“You nearly said hi to Saint Peter. You have too many bugs in your brain. As soon as this op’s done, come to me. I’ll get them out.”

“I like ’em.”

Her eyes go distant again. “No. Get them out. I spend my life doing this, but sometimes I wonder if we’re doing too much to our brains too fast. The more I find out about the mind, the more I realize I don’t know and probably never will.” She presses the bridge of her nose with her fingers. “That was too close, sweet pea.”

Nazarin reaches out and puts a hand on her shoulder. “I’m OK, Kim. I’m OK.”

Kim gives him a hug, clutching his broad back. There’s something between them. Nothing romantic. It’s that sort of friendship where the term “friend” doesn’t seem strong enough.

She pats him on the cheek. Her eyes shine with tears. “Your vitals are all good. You’ll need some eye drops to heal the whites of your eyes—you look a fright.”

She unhooks him from the machine. He stands up, but his knees are shaking. He leans against a metal bench of the lab, looking at me from under shadowed brows.

Kim motions to me. “It’s your turn now, Taema. If you still want to. I can understand if you don’t, after all that.”

This is the last thing I want to do. She sees it in my face. I look to Nazarin, but his gaze is inscrutable. He’s not weighing in. It’s up to me.

It’s another risk, but I’ve taken so many risks. For a moment, I do wonder if this is one risk too many. If this is my limit, and I can’t do any more.

I can do more. For Tila. For me.

Can we find what we need? Record proof that Ensi is the head of the Ratel? Find out where he stores Verve and what his plan is, and stop it in time? It feels impossible.

“It’ll be OK,” Kim says.

Tila’s words come to my lips again. “You can’t promise that.”

“No, I can’t. You’re right. Your implants are newer than his, and you have far fewer. Your heart functions on its own software so it’ll stay steady. I’ll have less trouble getting your implants to behave. That I can promise.”

Nazarin’s gaze is steady. His breathing returns to normal. He gulps a glass of water. I can tell what he’s thinking, it’s so clear on his face.
We’ve come so far
 …

I close my eyes and clear my mind, a small Meditation. I bow my head down to my chest. I block out all sound, all sight. I focus on the soft whisper of my breath. In. Out. In. Out.

I can do this.

I sit in the Chair. Kim straps me in tight, and prepares another syringe.

She gives me a kiss on my cheek. She smells of antiseptic and artificial cherries. “See you soon, sweetness,” she says, and sticks the syringe in my arm.

TWENTY-THREE

TAEMA

My senses scramble. I float in space, but sight is sound and sound is touch and all is strange and beautiful. I feel butterfly wings on my taste buds and fireworks of feathers explode on the backs of my eyelids. Heartbeats pulse against me, crashing waves sending me bouncing against the soft red walls of my own skull. I feel the flashes as the neural dust within my mind sparkles, changing, merging into what I need it to be.

Memories fire at me, without warning, without prompting. I’m six, eating roasted butternut squash, laughing with Tila as Mom tells us a story over dinner. I’m ten, reading as Tila sleeps beside me. I’m seven, and we’ve fallen by the lake. I’ve scraped my hip, the pain blooming as though it’s just happened. We’re trying to drag ourselves upright but we keep slipping in the mud. Tila’s panting next to me, and above the birds call. She looks at me, and her eyes are deep and as familiar as my own.

“It’ll be OK,” she says.

“You can’t promise that,” I say, and I’m out of the memory, back in the Technicolor of my mind. A weird, fractured bit of a memory floats to me. That first moment I saw Tila after the surgery. Standing, unattached. Her own person. Yet as soon as she could, she’d come back to me. She’s threaded through my mind. Everywhere I turn, there she is. Tila. My Tila. I see her and I realize: neither of us is the good twin. Not anymore. We never were. Tila is simply my other half. Not my better half. Not my worse half.

Then everything goes dark.

It’s quiet, and warm.

I wonder if I’m dead. The same thing, perhaps, has happened to me as happened to Nazarin. Maybe I’m flatlining on that chair in the lab. I can’t feel my body.

I float there, not thinking, just existing. It’s … nice. I don’t feel afraid. I don’t worry about anyone. Not Nazarin. Not Ensi. Not my sister. Not myself.

Being dead isn’t so bad.

During our binge on religious texts once we were free of the Hearth, I remember reading a paper that argued we don’t have souls. We’re nothing but neural pathways and electric pulses, fatty white and gray matter. Once the organ that houses thought dies, there’s nothing left. Nothing drifts up to heaven or down to hell. Floating there, in the dim dark, I’m not sure if the author’s right or not.

I felt something similar to this when our heart failed at the Hearth. I remember darkness coming, but I was too afraid to embrace it. I ran away. I never saw that light at the end of the tunnel, like they say. Tila said she saw it, in Confession with Mana-ma. At the time I thought she was lying, but maybe she wasn’t as afraid as I was. Maybe she spent some time in this quiet place.

I feel the edges of myself slipping away. I imagine my body disintegrating. My skin sloughs away, my veins lift from my muscles, spiraling out into infinity. My muscles unravel into thin tendrils. Just my bones are left, and even they begin to break down, scattering like snow. I’m now just my mind, my metal sternum, my mechanical heart.