False Hearts (27 page)

He attacks me and I smash him with the chair, grunting with the effort. He barely staggers, and then reaches out and grabs the chair so hard that I have to release it.

“Stop it!” I bellow at him, even though I’m not supposed to speak. He gives a shout, more of a roar, and hits me hard on my shoulder and I drop. I cry out and roll out of the way just before he brings the chair down again, and it shatters into splinters. I grab a broken leg, sharpened to a point. Snarling, enraged as I was in Mia’s Vervescape, I thrust up.

Blood spurts from the wound, drenching my hands. The green-haired man sputters. He no longer looks angry. He looks scared, and hurt.

“Oh God,” I say, over and over again. “Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.”

He falls right on top of me, driving the splinter of wood deeper into himself. His blood seeps onto me. I push him away. He’s so heavy. I crawl away and throw up, retching until there’s nothing left. When I’m done I sit back on my heels, wrapping my arms around my knees and shaking. I’m surrounded by three dead bodies, splatters of blood and sick marring the perfect white of the room.

Now, even if Tila hadn’t killed Vuk, I’ve killed someone. I’m no longer the woman I was a week ago. I’m no longer an engineer and someone who follows the rules. I’m a murderer. I say it out loud. “I’m a murderer.” I almost choke on the words, but I force myself to say it again. “I’m a murderer.” My throat is raw from vomiting and screaming. I want to curl up and disappear.

I close my eyes tight. My heart is still beating far too calmly. I tear the glasses from my face and throw them across the room, ripping the electrodes from my body by touch.

“Open your eyes,” a man’s voice says.

I obey. The room is now completely empty but for the cooling pile of my own vomit beside me. There’s no red woman, blond man or green man. It’s as if they never existed. They never did.

Instead, in front of me is Ensi.

The leader of the Ratel.

He’s tall, leanly muscled, with skin a little darker than mine and close-cropped, curly hair. It had been longer in Tila’s sketch. He wears a collarless blue silk shirt and black trousers, and looks almost like a priest.

He holds out his hand. “Up you come. Time to talk.”

I take his hand.

EIGHTEEN

TILA

I didn’t know how to approach Mom and Dad about escaping the Hearth. Neither did Taema.

Hey, Mom. Hey, Dad. Can you ignore all your beliefs and help us abandon you?

They hadn’t been born in the Hearth, though. They knew the world outside—or at least they had known it, thirty or so years ago. They were the only ones who could get us out.

We were going to die soon if we didn’t do something. We felt tired all the time, and our ankles had swollen so much we had to wear old shoes of Mom’s, and her shoes were ugly. We never wanted to eat. I’d wake up in the night and Taema’s breath would be all hitchy. Sometimes she’d even stop breathing and I’d hold my own breath until she started up again.

I could feel our heart thumping beneath our skin all the time, like it was a fish trying to jump from the surface of the lake. Every day, it was getting harder to do basic things. Mom had to help dress us. Dad, embarrassingly, had to help bathe us because Mom wasn’t strong enough to haul us up. Now we had even less privacy.

So after dinner one night, we confronted them. They were doing the dishes, Dad washing and Mom drying them and putting them away, humming to themselves. They were still very much in love with each other. Still are, I hope, though I haven’t seen them in a decade. Seemed a shame to ruin the nice moment.

We’d agreed that I’d do the talking. We knew some hard things would have to be said, and Taema wasn’t up to it. Her fingers were digging into my ribcage and she was shaking. I was nervous too, but in this I was the stronger twin. I wasn’t afraid of saying things to our parents that might make them cry, if it meant we’d get what we wanted. Needed. A lifeline.

“We don’t want to die,” I started, cutting right to the chase.

Our parents stopped humming.

Dad turned off the water carefully. “What, Tila?” Even though he’d been facing the other way, he knew it was me. He and Mom came through and sat on the couch across from us. My mom pushed her curly hair back over her shoulder. My dad worried his lower lip with his teeth the way he did when he was nervous. Their faces were tight, trying to keep any emotion from sneaking out.

“We don’t want to die,” I repeated. “And we don’t have to, if we can leave the Hearth and get to the city. Can you help us do that?” I kept the emotion out of my own voice.

Mom’s face crumpled, and Dad put his arm around her. “My girls,” he said, his voice breaking. “I wish we could. But no one leaves the Hearth.”

“Mia did. We remember.”

It’d been hushed up, but even as children we heard the rumors. I’d forgotten about them until we started thinking of leaving. She’d left. On purpose. No one ever found out how she’d escaped.

Our parents looked away.

“Please. You have to help us … we’re dead if we stay.”

“If you escape…” our mother whispered, “you’d be apostate. You’d be damned. Surrounded by all that technology … all the Impure…”

Next to me, Taema flinched. “That’s true,” I said. It wasn’t worth telling them we—I, at least—didn’t believe in the tenets of the faith anymore. Damn, they’d been so brainwashed in the last sixteen years, with Mana-ma battering away at their brains like the rest of us. Could I even break through? I pushed on ahead.

“We’d rather be alive and damned than dead and saved. Please. We don’t want to die.”

Though for me, it was more that I didn’t want Taema to die. I knew more than her. I knew if we did get out and found a doctor to fix our heart, there was a chance we wouldn’t both survive. Of course there was. Medicine out there was really advanced, but it wasn’t infallible. I just had to hope that if death took one of us, it took me and not her.

Dad pressed his lips together as he thought.

Shit, I miss them so much. They were good parents. They did their best by us. Even then, when they knew that if they helped us they’d never see us again, they still risked their jobs and their faith to help us.

“What about smuggling them out in the supply ships?” Dad asked Mom. “We could hide them…”

She shook her head. “Mana-ma would find out that way, as so little goes back out.”

“Even if we bribe them?”

“With what? Hand-stitched quilts? Those few credits we have from thirty years ago are worthless now.”

“What goes out to the city? Just blankets and apples and stuff, right?”

Our mother looked uncomfortable. Next to me, Taema rested her head on my shoulder. She was especially tired today.

“Yes,” Mom said. “Plus several boxes I’m not allowed to open. If they get paid for any of it, I never see the money. Mana-ma packs those boxes herself, so there’s no way to sneak you out in those.”

“Doesn’t that … worry you? That she’s sending stuff out and you have no idea what it is?”

“She must be doing God’s will in one way or another.” My mother did not sound convinced as she gave us a tremulous smile. Dad looked worried.

“You’re both doubting her, aren’t you? At least a little bit.”

Taema’s head rose from my shoulder as she stared at them.

“We’d never…” Mom trailed off, unable to complete the lie.

“The closer we get to the top,” Dad whispered, “the more we see. The more we aren’t able to unsee.”

He wouldn’t elaborate more than that. This conversation was going very differently than how I’d thought it would.

“We’d have to go behind Mana-ma,” Dad said. “It won’t be easy.”

“Can you do it?” I asked.

They looked at us as though we were crazy for asking. “Of course.”

“Will you come with us?”

A pause. My parents exchanged a glance. “We can’t. It’d be too hard to sneak all of us out. We can do more good here.”

I lost it then and started crying. So did Taema. Mom and Dad came and put their arms around us. Nothing would ever be the same as before our heart attack. Or before we found that tablet and realized that there was a whole world out there, and this one was fucked. Maybe, even if our heart hadn’t been weak, we would still have tried to escape. I’d like to think we would have. Somehow.

Taema finally spoke up. “Thank you,” she whispered.

They kept their arms around us, kissing the tops of our heads.

Our heart kept skittering in our ribcage. If they were going to save us, they would have to do it soon. If they were going to be able to do it at all.

*   *   *

The worst part was waiting.

I was never very good at waiting. I’d rather barrel in head first and figure it out later.

Our parents were formulating a plan, but didn’t tell us the exact details. They said it’d be safer that way. It made Taema and me feel guilty and confused—what would Mana-ma do to them, or us, if she found out we were trying to leave? I imagine she’d been furious when she found out that Mia left. None of us were meant to speak of her, in any case; just like nobody spoke about the Brother.

It was hard going through day-to-day life when we could barely move. We started sleeping more and eating less. We needed canes to support us when we did try to walk.

It was terrible.

When we were feeling stronger we’d walk through the path in the woods until we reached the swamp. The air smelled thick and fetid, cutting through the scent of crushed pine needles. There were no boats on the island, for no one ever needed to leave, at least according to Mana-ma.

We ran our hands along the ferns, their leaves tickling our hands. We wanted to leave the confines of the Hearth more than anything, but we were also so scared.

“What do you think it’ll be like?” Taema asked. She always asked that when we were alone. Now that we’d decided, and even though deep down the crisis of faith was getting to her, I could tell she was daydreaming about it all the time so that she didn’t have to focus on the here and now. I kept wanting to pretend it was perfect on the other side, that we’d have wonderful new lives. The problem was, I’ve always been too much of a cynic to believe in happily ever after.

“It’ll be the best,” I reassured her. “We can do anything we want. A whole fresh start. The world is our oyster!”

“What does that even mean?”

“No idea. It was in one of your books I borrowed.”

She laughed weakly. Up overhead, the supply ship flew for its first drop in three months.

Taema shifted uncomfortably next to me, pulling on our shared skin. “Should we go see it?”

I shook my head. I didn’t want to risk anyone seeing us hanging around there this time.

The last time.

NINETEEN

TAEMA

“Tila,” Ensi, the leader of the Ratel, says with a smile. Like so many in San Francisco, he looks hardly older than thirty, but I’m sure he must be at least ten years older or more. Perhaps significantly more.

He’s not quite as classically handsome as many men I’ve seen in the city—most likely intentionally. The crescent moon tattoo by his eye glows slightly green.

I’m still shaking. “What’s going on?”

“I Tested you.”

“The others … they weren’t real?”

“No. Mere images projected from those electrodes and your ocular implants.”

“I haven’t killed anyone,” I whisper. I can’t believe how relieved I feel. I’m light-headed with it.

“Have you not?” He smiles in a way that makes me wonder, with a sickening feeling, if he knows about Tila and Vuk already. If he knows
everything
.

I force myself to appear calm and collected, like I haven’t just completely lost it in that white room. But how was that possible? It seemed so real. Not even virtual reality games were that realistic. Only the Zealscape. I shudder. “Did you drug me?”

“A little.”

“What with?” The thought of being drugged without my permission or knowledge is unnerving, to say the least.

“A Verve derivative.” My breath catches. That derivative doesn’t need a Chair. I feel invaded.

He smiles, as if amused by my distress. “If he had been a real person, you would likely have killed him just the same.”

I feel very cold. “Did I pass your Test?”

He smiles. “You did. You didn’t hesitate to do what’s necessary. Many who move up the ranks traditionally would have come across this situation in different ways. Your situation is … unique. After all, we’re already well acquainted, aren’t we? This was really just a formality.” He moves closer to me and holds out his arms, expecting me to go into them, as I have before. Or so he thinks.

Oh. Shit.

What if this is a trap? If I pretend to recognize that closeness, am I caught, or is it the other way around? The questions whizz through my mind, as quickly as possible. I don’t have long, so I choose, praying that I’m right.

I step into his arms. “Ensi,” I murmur.

The arms wrap around me, strong and muscular. He’s a head taller than me, and rests his lips on the top of my head. It’s strangely tender. I’m shaking, but hopefully he thinks it’s from the aftermath of the Test rather than the fact I’m terrified of him.

I’d thought my sister had met him before, or at least seen him, close enough to sketch him well. Now it seems my sister’s done significantly more than that.

Goddammit, Tila. She couldn’t just infiltrate the Ratel, she had to go and sleep with the leader of it? There was no mention of it in her notes. This makes everything about ten times harder.

Or it might make things easier, depending how I play it. My mind whirrs, scheming and plotting just like my sister’s would have.

“So what now?” I ask, smiling, although I’m hoping that he doesn’t expect me to jump into bed with him anytime soon. I may be able to fake Tila, but I’m not sure I’m
that
good an actress.

He smiles, full of secrets. I look at his hands, long and thin. With a twitch of his little finger, he could order my death. He’s responsible for so much misery. Yet he’s still oozing charisma as he holds my upper shoulder, and I feel caught in his trap and angry that there’s no easy way out of this.