This was the point never included in our newbie speeches, never raised at all, not explicitly at least, but always effectively communicated by Jude to each and every new recruit: Contributions weren’t required—but they were always welcome.
“I wasn’t invited,” I said, stalling.
Ani whacked me lightly on the shoulder. “Come on.”
Okay, so everyone knew d-day parties were open to all. And I’d long since gotten over my aversion to celebrating download anniversaries, at least when it came to other mechs. I planned to let my own slip by without the streamers and linked dreamers and rousing choruses of “Happy Death-day to You.”
But I suspected Ani wasn’t going to leave, not unless I left with her—and maybe disappearing into a noisy crowd wasn’t the worst idea. In the quiet, it was too easy to hear Auden’s voice. I believe it didn’t mean to hurt me.
He’d never been a good liar.
Quinn’s estate was an odd mix of ancient and modern, brick and stone mingling uncomfortably with glass and solar-paneled steel. It wasn’t that unusual these days to see structures that straddled the architectural ages. Tacky owners remaking a perfectly good house in their own image, a jumbled mash-up of trends past their sell-by date, plus a little old-school charm to offer a hint of respectability. But Quinn’s parents had had plenty of taste—unfortunately, they’d had significantly less luck and had died before the renovations were completed. I like it this way, Quinn told me once, explaining why she’d never finished the job. Like it doesn’t care about being one thing or another. It’s okay being everything at once.
The mansion didn’t have a fairy-tale ballroom, but the domed observatory in the south wing came close enough. Nearly thirty feet across with ceilings almost as high, the observatory offered a superb view of the night sky through its windowed walls and dome, even if the stars had long ago disappeared behind a layer of thick red clouds. Now the dome was lit up with flickering projections—not, I was relieved to see, glamour shots of Brahm’s nude mech form (a new trend in d-day commemorations). Instead, it was a live feed from the pool house, the writhing bodies of linked dreamers smeared across the sky.
Music pumped and a few mechs twirled in the center of the observatory, their rhythmic movements mirroring the wild gyrations of the dreamers projected above them. Several others were playing at slam, a mech riff on rugby that forewent the ball and the scoring in favor of mass tackles, often propelled by sneaker jets. Points were awarded for style and speed of collision; losers were often required to relinquish an article of clothing. Judging from the flesh on display, they’d been playing for a while.
“Should we congratulate the death-day boy?” I asked, scanning the crowd for Brahm.
“I think he’s busy,” Ani said sourly, jerking her head at the wide metal stump at the center of the room, which Quinn claimed had once held a massive telescope, before the cloud cover rendered it useless. Only the base had been left behind, a vestigial artifact, its metal skin glowing in the flickering lights, an altar to the party gods. And perched on top, two bodies in their death-day suits, swaying in time to a music none of us could hear—the divine offering.
“You want to get out of here?” I asked Ani, as Quinn stuck her tongue down Brahm’s throat.
Ani shrugged. “Everyone deserves a d-day kiss, right?”
“You want me to go up there and drag her off him?” I said, only half-joking. “Because I will.”
Ani shook her head, her face a rictus of pleasant disinterest. I dragged her across the room, dodging the slam players and positioning us against the windows, hoping she’d have a strong enough self-preservation instinct to turn her back on the room and look out at the night.
When she didn’t, I put my hands on her shoulders and did it for her.
“Tell me this doesn’t bother you,” I challenged her.
Ani met my eyes without flinching. “She does what she wants.”
“And that’s okay with you?”
“Jude says—”
I pressed my palm flat against the window, blotting out a hand-shaped chunk of the orchard spread beneath us. The window was ice against my synflesh—Brahm liked his temperatures extreme. “Forget what Jude says.”
“But he’s right,” Ani said quietly. “Monogamy’s an org thing. We shouldn’t be trying to make it work for us. We’re better than that.”
“Fine, let’s say you’re right. So who else is on your list?” I turned my back on the window and peered into the crowd, trying to pick out faces in the murk. But the only person I recognized was Jude, leaning against a wall, arms crossed, eyes on me. Even from this distance, even in the dim light, I saw him see me, smile—and turn away.
“I don’t have a list,” Ani said.
I shook my head and faced the window again. “Exactly. So why does Quinn get to have one?”
“It’s not like that,” Ani insisted. “She missed a lot. She’s just… enjoying herself.”
“So what’s Jude’s excuse?” I muttered under my breath.
Too loud—she heard me.
“He missed a lot too,” Ani said very quietly. She refused to ever speak about Jude’s past, or Riley’s. It was the only thing she wouldn’t back down on. They’d been there when she needed them, protectors, Jude especially. Like the big brothers she saw in vid-lifes, she’d once confessed, the kind of no-questions-asked reliability that she’d always assumed was imaginary, and beyond even the realm of imagination for someone like her. She would, and did, talk about this unseen aspect of Jude ad nauseum. You don’t know him like I know him—it was her go-to explanation for everything. “But I don’t think it’s about that for him. I think he’s just—”
“A man whore?” I suggested.
She laughed, looking around guiltily as if he could hear us. “He’s trying to prove something,” Ani said.
“Whatever. As long as he doesn’t try to prove it to me.” Apparently mech guys were as disgusting as org ones. You’d think BioMax could have improved on the defective male brain, but if you believed what they said, they wouldn’t know how to even if they wanted to. Apparently, replicating was easier than altering. It was hard, getting people to change.
Ani looked surprised. “You mean you two haven’t…?”
“Are you kidding?” I shuddered. Resisting the urge to turn again, check to see if he was watching me. “Not. Interested.”
“If you say so.”
“Look, I realize you all worship him or something, but—”
“Not worship,” Ani cut in. “Admire.”
Right. Admire. That’s why they all followed him around like groupies, doing and saying anything to weasel further into his favor.
They?
I told the voice in my head to shut up. It was different with me. I understood what Jude was trying to do, and I believed in it. That was different than believing in him. Believing in people was nearly as useless as believing in some invisible all-powerful guy who lived in a cloud. People were unreliable, even the mechanical ones.