I stand there, numb and stupid, unable to move or speak. The guard on the holo disappears, and the brown-suit lady takes a cautious step away from me. Marka puts her hand on my arm again, this time more firmly.
“It’s all right, Zelia.” She gives me the tiniest shake of the head, a quiet plea to come with her.
A door down the hallway opens. A gigantic uniformed guard with a neck twice as wide as his head marches toward me. He’s got a medicated air gun in his hand.
“A lot of fuss for someone so small,” he says. His eyes are unsympathetic, clinical. I swallow and try to control my breathing. A smile eases onto my face, but it probably looks like a grimace.
“I’m sorry,” I babble nervously. “I’m really not crazy, and I’m not on drugs. I have a sister. Her name is—”
The lady quickly signals the guard, who takes my shoulder and head and pushes them to the floor in half a second. I crumple into the carpet, kissing the residue of a thousand office shoes.
“Umf!” I say. Well, I tried to say “Stop it!” but the carpet translated my words. Dad was wrong. The rule isn’t Don’t rock the boat. It’s Shut up, then don’t rock the boat.
“Shall I take her to the eval unit or detox?” the guard says, bored. His hands feel like a thousand pounds of meat on my scrawny hundred-and-five-pound body.
“Please let her go. She’s my responsibility now,” Marka says, her voice firm.
Yes, yes, help me, please. The facial rug burn is starting to kill me, when suddenly, I’m released. I stand up, brush off my clothes, and plaster on the sanest expression I can muster.
“I’m sorry. I must be really . . . underslept, is all.” Everyone watches me warily. I shake my head, trying for pity. “The stress of losing my dad, you know.”
Both women nod with satisfaction, happy that I’ve returned to the land of the sober and mentally sound. Marka wears an expression that says I just dodged a gigantic cannonball. The guard puts his dinner-plate-sized hand on my shoulder.
“Why don’t we get you back to your room, miss?” he says, more a statement than a suggestion.
Marka gives me a helping smile. “It’ll be fine, Zelia. I’ll finish the screenwork. Gather up your things from your room, and then—” She doesn’t say the rest, but I read it in her eyes.
I’ll help you find your sister. I promise.
MARKA PUTS THE MAGPOD ON AUTO and sits in the back with me. The seats are soft and every surface is polished. There are buttons to which I normally have no access, for things like candy and vitamin elixirs. Marka reaches over and hits a pharma button, and a small patch slides out of a tiny drawer. She hands it to me.
“Here. It’s for the headache.”
“How did you know I needed this?” I say, touching the tender spot where that red-headed, druggy-halitosis guy played basketball with my skull.
She tilts her nose up a touch. “I can . . . just tell.”
I stick the patch to the back of my neck.
“Is that your sister’s?” Marka asks.
I nod. In my lap, Dyl’s purse sags open and I touch the contents delicately. She’s got a whole universe in here I never knew about. Some of it is expected, like the styling pen, half-dozen hair accessories, and a tiny rotating makeup palette. But there’s also a doll-sized lace pillow that Dad bought her on her sixth birthday. One of the frayed ribbons is knotted to a gold necklace that belonged to our mother. Dyl used to wear it before it broke in half. There’s also my silver baby ring. I remember giving it to her years ago when she’d begged so hard, and I couldn’t say no. I flip the pillow over to find Dad’s ring tied to a ragged ribbon on the other side. Her whole family represented by useless, broken bits of cold metal.
The wedding ring upsets me the most. I know it’s just an object, but it hurts to think she doesn’t even have this to comfort her, wherever she is. I dig deeper into her purse and my hand touches a hard edge. It’s a book—a real one. I remember hearing how carrying books was the new fashion. Vintaging, they call it.
I’ve also got her holo stud, fished out of the bathroom corner. It’s still brand-new-looking. I’m dying to turn it on and see what she’s stored on it, but there’s no time. What’s worse, there’s no Dyl.
“How’s the pain?” Marka asks, reaching toward me.
The pain. I pull away from her. I lost a dad and a sister, and she’s still asking about a stupid bump on my head. Our trio has vaporized. Together with Dad and Dyl, we were three points in the universe, a connected plane. Without them, I’m a single point in space. Unanchored and directionless.
Tears creep to the edge of my eyes. Marka doesn’t say anything, just waits. Like she’s been through this before. Maybe she calms down crying orphans on a daily basis, along with drinking her morning coffee and watching the news.
“I am sorry. Truly I am.”
“Look,” I say, “thank you for taking me out of that place and for the medicine. But I want to know what happened to my sister. She was drugged. I’m sure of it.”
Marka takes a long time to answer. Finally, she meets my eye and takes a light breath, which I match automatically with my own.
“You’re right. But it wasn’t any drug that you’ve heard of.” The magpod takes an abrupt turn as we start heading farther away from central Neia. Here, the only tall buildings are those that hold up the agriplane, along with the narrow, plasticized beam supports sprouting above every other intersection. They splay upward like a waiter’s hand holding a tray of cocktails. A few holographic ads whizz by, offering the newest, latest holo studs for sale—cornea implantable. Other mags drive by, calm and orderly on the street.
“Please. I’m going kind of crazy here. Nothing makes any sense to me.”
“We can’t talk in here. It’s too public.”
At this, I rub my eyes because now I think she’s gone crazy. We’re alone in the magpod. At least I think we are. Granted, like all magpods, it isn’t privately owned. They’re for general use, tiered in their luxuriousness based on how much you can pay.
“Here we are.” The magpod slows to a stop outside a large building, one of the agriplane support buildings that crop up every twenty blocks or so. It rises a thousand feet to abut the plane, and the façade is all smooth, reflective glass, save for several blister-like bulges of windows here and there that must look like fishbowls from the inside.
I follow Marka out of the pod, which returns to the daytime traffic and disappears. The hazy midday light soothes my eyes, but the tangy scent of metal magpod lines in the road is sharp. Marka must not like it, because she covers her nose.
She walks to the entrance of the building, then speaks into a square etched into the wide glass doors.
“Marka Sissum.” She places her fingertip in the square’s center, and the doors open. Except for a single white transport door, the rest of the lobby is nothing but mirrors. Even the floor and ceilings. It’s hard to tell where the lobby ends with the endless reflections. My multiple mirror images (small, dark, worried) follow me as I head for the transport door. Marka stops me.
“No, that’s not for us.”
I look around. There are no other doors. Marka walks up to a mirrored wall on the left and stares at her own reflection.
“Ready,” she says.
“Your password?” her reflection asks.
Whoa. I swear the real Marka didn’t say that. But her reflection did. How is that possible?
The real Marka answers herself. “Pygmy hippopotamus.”
“I hope you aren’t referring to me,” I say.
Marka shakes her head seriously, and her reflection is suddenly bisected by a black vertical strip that widens. It’s a door to another transport.