Soft and hard. The feel of a foot sinking into a chest.
“She was still alive,” he said. “Mouth wide open.”
“Like she was screaming.”
“It sounds stupid,” he said. “I know. She was just trying to breathe, but…”
“It looked like she was screaming.”
“I stepped on her,” he said. “And I didn’t stop.”
“We couldn’t have helped her.”
“You wanted to stop,” he said.
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” I reminded him. “I froze. You got us out of there.”
“And straight into hell,” he said.
I rested my hand on top of his hands. He stiffened.
“Thank you for waking me up,” I said.
He pulled his hands out from under mine. Stood up. “You would’ve woken up if I was here or not. Just good timing.”
“Probably.”
There was a loud scratching sound at the door. “Psycho Susskind,” he said. “You want me to let him in?”
“What’d you call him?”
“Isn’t that his name?” he asked.
Yes, but it was my name for him, mine and Zo’s. Weird to hear it come out of Riley’s mouth.
“He doesn’t seem too crazy to me,” Riley said. “Maybe you weren’t feeding him enough.”
“Have you seen him?” I laughed. “The last thing that cat needs is more food.”
Riley grinned. “He never turned me down.”
“You were feeding him?”
“Didn’t think you’d want him to starve,” Riley said.
“Sorry,” I said. “You shouldn’t have to take care of my cat.”
So I had a cat again. I hadn’t even wanted one the first time around. Zo and I had begged for a puppy. But when our father showed up with psycho Sussie, we knew better than to do anything but smile and say thank you. And then pretend not to be disappointed when we tried to pet him and he hissed and ran away.
“Someone had to. But I think he misses you,” Riley said.
“Doubtful. But you can let him in.”
Riley obviously couldn’t wait to get away from me, and I couldn’t blame him. I reminded him of everything we both wanted to forget.
He opened the door and the cat slipped in. A moment later, nodding a silent good-bye, Riley slipped out.
Susskind was gray with thin black raccoon stripes streaking his fur and a long strip of black trickling down his spine and tail, a reverse skunk. If you looked closely, you could see the gray was speckled with white, like a permanent dusting of dandruff. His eyes were a pale, watery green, the color of wilted celery. All of which made for one extremely ugly cat.
He curled up against me, butting his head into my arm. Pet me, in catspeak. Love me. But every time I gave in and stroked his fur, Susskind would stiffen and creep away. It was only when I gave up that he would return, nuzzling my hand, digging his claws into my leg, giving me those cat eyes, which, unlike a pitiful puppy-dog gaze, bore no neediness or desperation, just a pale green watchfulness. We repeated the cycle a few times, head butt, purr, escape, return, until he judged me worthy and lowered his bulk onto my lap. Now he gave me a different look. I’m ready, it said. I deserve it.
What are you waiting for?
So I rested my hand on his soft coat, rubbing slow circles into his warm, ample belly. When I was a kid, Susskind’s fur had looked irresistibly soft. I’d longed to run my hands through it—but he always ran away before I got the chance. Now the fur barely made an impression. The synflesh wasn’t designed to appreciate that kind of subtle sensation.
He let out a guttural purr and clawed my arm. That felt good.
“Did you really miss me, you psycho?” I whispered.
He rested his paws on my knee, then lowered his head onto them. His eyes narrowed to slits. Naptime.
“I think I’ve slept enough,” I told him. But I sat there with him, my hand on his back, rising and falling with the even breaths.
I hadn’t been a cat person back when I was a person. But then, Susskind hadn’t been a person cat. Orgs were as repulsive to him as they were to Jude. Whatever I was now, he approved. No questions asked. Even in catspeak.
“I missed you too.”
Something to remember about cats: They’re not your friend. If you ever came across a giant dog, some kind of mutant puppy towering twenty feet off the ground, the dumb thing might knock over a few trees while it was doing its yippee-yay-a-new-friend happy dance, but the worst thing it would do is lap at you with its giant tongue and maybe drown you in dog slobber.
A giant cat would bat you around for a while between its giant paws.
And then eat you.
You can’t blame them; it’s just the way they’re built.
12. TEMPLE OF MAN
My zone was flooded.
I’d dropped out for this long once before—just after the accident. The voices and texts had piled up, digi-gifts heaped on an electronic shrine. Fake presents from fake friends, as it had turned out. But at least I’d been missed. Not that it had given me much comfort at the time. It was hard to remember that Lia Kahn, the one who still thought she was socially invincible. I had what everyone wanted—the right clothes, the right friends, the right look. I had the shiniest toys. And the one with all the toys decided who else got to play.
No one told me that when right turns wrong and your shiniest toy turns around and screws your sister, all that power disappears, along with everyone else. Game over.
I had a new zone now. New zone for a new body and a new life, and this one was sparse. I’d created it with Auden, chosen the avatar that he preferred—blond hair, silver skin, gray eyes, the face a merge of the old Lia and the new one. After Auden had finished with me, I’d kept the av. But it didn’t have much to do these days. I wasn’t zone-hopping or trying to up my pathetic Akira score. The stalker sites had never really been my thing, and they’d gotten even duller since the election—it was one thing to have a president in and out of rehab, so dropped on downers she barely noticed the difference, but this new guy had some kind of body-worship fixation, and there were only so many nude self-portraits you could gawk at before they just got old, six-pack abs or not.
I may have been watching the vidlifes, but that didn’t mean I wanted to link in with other fans, trading chatter about Lara’s latest hookup or whether you could still see Cord(elia)’s Adam’s apple, post snip-tuck. I had no use for music anymore—this brain, although it was supposed to be an exact copy of the biological version, processed melody as noise. And once I got used to the emptiness, I stopped posting vids and pics. It wasn’t just that I had nothing to show off. I had no one to show off for. None of the other mechs were any more into their zones than I was. Quinn claimed she’d gotten enough of the network after all those years chained to a bed, seeing the world through a screen. Growing up in the city, Jude and Riley barely had zones in the first place—they didn’t seem to get why you’d want them. Only Ani was obsessive, posting pics of everything and everyone, trying to disguise her disappointment when we didn’t cross post on our own.
Mostly, I used my zone for the same thing that Jude used his for: finding myself. And not in the weeping, wailing, soulsong kind of way. I had turned my zone into a digital scrapbook, a patchwork of all the vids and rants about how us evil skinners were determined to take over the world. Know your enemy, my father used to like to say. When you are the enemy, I guess that translates to Know yourself.