“How many times are you going to ask me the same question?”
“Until I get the truth.”
The car, I thought suddenly in alarm. What if they’d found our car at Synapsis and somehow traced it back to me? I tried not to panic. The car belonged to some mech I barely knew, who had contributed it for general use when he arrived at Quinn’s estate. There was nothing connecting it to me.
And that’s all you care about, right? Jude taunted in my head. You. Who cares what happens to anyone else?
“Were you in Synapsis at the time of the attack?” the detective asked impatiently.
“Of course not,” I said. Think frivolous, I told myself. Think oblivious, superficial, bitchy. In other words, Think Lia Kahn. If I could will myself back to that person, the org Lia Kahn, who would never have been caught dead hanging out with Jude and his lackeys, much less running errands for him in a slummy corp-town, if I could convince myself, then I could convince her too, and she would let me go home. Or wherever. “Why would I be slumming in a corp-town?”
“Why slum in a city?” she countered. “Odd choice of field trip for a pampered little rich girl like you.”
“Um, because the city is wow?” I suggested with a giggle. “You can do anything.” Wide eyes, dim smile.
And maybe it was working. Because Ayer gave up her pacing and sat down across from me at the narrow metal table. The interrogation room was small and spare, without the mirrored wall I expected from the old-time vids. But the mini-cams posted in each corner got the message across pretty clearly: Someone was watching. Ayer propped her elbows on the table and folded her hands. She rested her chin on her knuckles. “So you just snuck into the city last night to have a little harmless fun?” she prompted, almost kindly.
I nodded.
“And things got carried away?”
“It was like, I just wanted to take a pic and post it on my zone, you know?” I babbled, as if I was too nervous to filter my words. “Because last time I snuck into the city, Cass and Terra didn’t believe me, like I’d just make something up, and okay, it’s not like I actually went into the city, but I think it should count if you just, you know, get close enough to see. And smell it, if you know what I mean.”
“I thought you mechs couldn’t smell,” Ayer said thinly.
“Right. Um. I mean, that was before. But I’m a… skinner now, right? So I figured I could do it, and I just asked this guy if I could take a pic of us together, and he totally freaked out and went all crazy on me, like he was on some kind of schizo shocker trip, and then I’m, like, tied to a chair.”
“Must have been pretty scary,” Ayer said.
I nodded again, eagerly—maybe too eagerly. “So can I go now?” I asked. “I mean, I don’t want those city guys to know I got them in trouble or anything, so…”
“Just to be clear, you went sightseeing in the city by yourself. To play at slumming for a few hours. For fun,” the detective said, standing up again. The sympathy was draining from her voice. Fine. As long as she thought I was a repulsively self-absorbed rich bitch and not a mass murderer. Let her hate me all she wanted. “And you’re certain you went nowhere near Synapsis Corp-Town?”
I forced myself to laugh, hoping it didn’t sound as artificial as most of my attempts in that direction. “Who’s going to be impressed if I go to a corp-town?” I scoffed. “I mean, the city, that’s one thing. That’s slamming. But a corp-town?” I wrinkled my nose. “That’s just, like, where they grind fish crap into food or something. What would I do in a place like that?”
“I can think of a few things,” the detective said in an icy voice. She stroked a finger across her ViM. The gray wall lit up with images of the corp-town attack. I looked away—then abruptly looked back, confused. How would an innocent person react? Was I supposed to be so horrified I couldn’t stand it? Or should I act fascinated, like someone who hadn’t seen it in person, who hadn’t stepped over bodies while trying to escape?
I am innocent, I reminded myself. I shouldn’t have to act.
Somehow, the more time that passed, the less I believed it.
“Don’t I get a lawyer or something?” I asked.
She narrowed her eyes. “Have you done something that would require a lawyer?”
I wondered how many noobs actually fell for that one. “Do you know who my father is?”
“We know a great deal about you, Lia.”
“Then you know I’m not some idiot city slummer you can bully into giving up my rights.”
Detective Ayer raised her eyebrows. “What kind of rights do you think you have?”
“Same as everyone else.”
“Same as every org, you mean?”
I kept my face blank.
“‘Org.’ That’s the term you and your friends like to use, am I right?” she asked, too pleased with herself. “And you skinners prefer to call yourselves ‘mechs.’”
I shrugged. “So?”
“Seems rather hostile,” she said mildly. “Inventing a slur for everyone who’s not like you?”
“More hostile than ‘skinner’?” I shot back. “Or how about ‘Frankenstein’? That one never gets old.”
“Call yourself whatever you want. But ‘org’…” She shook her head. “I don’t know, I hear that word, and it sounds to me like you’re trying to denigrate humanity. Convince yourself that you’re somehow superior.”
“That’s a lot to get from one syllable,” I said.
“Context counts,” the detective said, swiping her ViM again. The mech vid popped up on the wall screen, my face smiling into the camera, delivering her succinct manifesto. You orgs want a war?
Detective Ayer froze the frame. “Do you want a war, Lia?”
“Of course not!”
“Is that you in the vid?”
“I already told you it’s not! I’ve never been to that corp-town or anywhere near there.” No DNA, I reminded myself. No fingerprints, no biomatter, no nothing that could connect me to the corp-town.
“It must be strange, sharing a face with a murderer,” she said casually. “Or maybe it doesn’t bother you, the murder of forty-two orgs?”
“It bothers me.”
“But maybe the ends justify the means?” she suggested.
“What ends could justify that?”
“You tell me.”
We glared at each other. There was no way I’d look away first.
“Let me lay it out for you, Lia,” the detective said finally. “It might not be you in that vid. But I think it is. I can read people—”
“I’m not people,” I said sourly. “I’m a skinner, remember?”
“A skinner who was picked up in a city. Tied to a chair by a bunch of city rats? Now tell me, what’s a sweet little girl like you do to get the slummers so angry?”
“You’ll have to ask them,” I said.
Her lips quirked. “I’m afraid they’re unavailable for questioning.”
I didn’t let myself dwell on that one.
“Some people—some orgs—don’t need a reason to hate me,” I said, the “you should know” clear in my voice. “It’s enough that I’m a mech.”