I’d gained Riley. I’d gained time, lifetimes, a brain that could be eternally copied, a body that could be repaired, refreshed, exchanged. I’d trained myself not to think about whether it had been an even trade.
As I’d trained myself not to think about how things would have been different, with Zo in the car, me safe at home.
“I’m not going back inside,” Zo said, voice muffled. It was too dark to see if she was crying, and I knew that was the only reason I’d been allowed to stay. “Not ever.”
“Okay.”
This is not about me, I reminded myself. Not tonight.
“So what now?” I asked.
There was a pause. “I don’t know.” Zo puffed a hot breath against the glass, fogging up the window. Then smeared a finger through the condensation. A lightning bolt Z. For a second she was five years old again, and I was seven, and we were fighting sleep on a long drive, staking our claim on the foggy windows, painting names, flowers, faces—and then watching them disappear. We’d made a competition of it, who faded away first, who lasted. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
Without asking, I reached across her and keyed in a set of coordinates, started the car. “Yes, you do,” I said, like a big sister should, fixing things.
What I knew about myself: Given the chance back then, I wouldn’t have gotten in the car. I wouldn’t have saved her.
At least this time, I could try.
Zo stopped me before I could knock on Riley’s door.
“Isn’t it kind of rude for us to show up in the middle of the night?” Zo asked.
“It’s no big deal.”
When she didn’t follow it up with the obvious dig about how often I did that kind of thing, I really began to worry.
“Maybe we should go,” she said instead.
“He’ll understand.”
“He doesn’t even know me.”
I had to laugh. “After that dinner the other night? I’d say he knows you.”
Zo laughed too, and it sounded good. But it didn’t last long. “Maybe I should wait in the car.”
I resisted the urge to take her arm. It was like herding a stray cat. You had to lure it in carefully, let it think the whole thing was its own idea. Or just grab it by the neck and toss it inside.
I knocked.
It took only a moment for Riley to appear. He opened the door just wide enough to slip out, then shut it again behind him. “Hey. What are you… everything okay?” He seemed off-kilter, like we’d woken him, but of course mechs didn’t sleep; we shut down at night as a matter of convenience and convention, switching ourselves back on with instant alertness. Noise “woke” us, as it did orgs. But there were no dreams to shake off; there were no dreams.
“No,” I said. “Not okay. But—” I glanced at Zo. She looked zoned out, and I wondered if she’d swallowed a handful of chillers in the car, or if it was just shock. “Can we talk about it in the morning? We need a place to crash.”
Riley paused. “I told you, the place is a mess…”
“Riley, this is an emergency.”
He didn’t move. Like he couldn’t see that this mattered more than some unwashed sheets.
I pushed past him. “Whatever you’ve got in there, it can’t be—” I stopped. Stopped talking, stopped moving.
It wasn’t a what.
It was a who.
The girl splayed on Riley’s bed had spiky red hair, bad skin, and no shirt. Her feet were kicked up on his pillows; her head lolled over the foot of the bed. She tilted her head back, watching me upside down.
“Was wondering when I’d finally see you again,” Sari said, with a sly smile like she’d been prepping the line for weeks, waiting for the perfect moment to deploy it. “Welcome to our home.”
5. HOMEWRECKED
“What is she doing here?” I hissed.
“She was sleeping,” Sari drawled. She didn’t bother to sit up. Or put a shirt on over the flimsy red bra.
I hooked a finger in Riley’s collar and tugged him toward the door. Zo dropped onto a couch in the corner, her face blank, her eyes empty. “Leave her alone,” I warned Sari. Then dragged Riley outside and slammed the door behind us. And slammed it again, for good measure.
“Well?”
Riley did his strong, silent thing, trying to stare me down. Not tonight.
“Say something.” The apartment had only one real room. Small, flimsy partitions separated the living space from the kitchen from the bed. There was only one bed.
He risked a half smile. “Something?”
“What is that girl doing in your bed?” Half naked.
Did every relationship turn into a cliché? I resented the triteness of it almost as much as I resented the girl on the bed. Half-naked ex-girlfriend—hot, org ex-girlfriend—on the bed. Lying, defensive boyfriend. It didn’t take a genius to finish the equation. One plus one equaled girlfriend storming out in anger, boyfriend groveling for forgiveness. I’d played the scene plenty of times before. With Walker—given his Pavlovian flirting with anything of the double-X variety—I’d had it memorized, and could deliver my lines in thirty seconds flat.
But Riley wasn’t Walker. And storming away wasn’t so easy when you had nowhere else to go.
“She needed a place to crash.” Riley gave me a pointed look. “You know how that is.”
“Don’t.”
“What?”
“Pretend it’s the same.”
“You need something. She needed something. That’s all I’m saying.”
Sure, exactly the same. Except that Zo was my sister, and Sari… the last time I’d seen Sari, she’d demonstrated her loyalty to Riley by double-crossing him, kidnapping me, and generally doing everything she could to help out the guy who wanted him dead.
She’d also made it painfully clear that “old friends”—Riley’s words—wasn’t exactly the most accurate description of their previous relationship. And that while she might not want him back, she had no tolerance for the prospect of someone taking her place.
“So she’s staying here,” I said.
“Nothing happened. It’s not—”
“So she’s staying here.”
“Yeah.”
“How long?”
“Until she can find a—”
“No. How long has she been here?” Sleeping in his bed. Wearing his T-shirts. Or not wearing them.
“A few days,” he admitted.
“She just showed up on your doorstep.”
He hesitated. “I brought her here.”
“You brought her here.” I hated how I sounded. Rigid with cold fury, like someone else I knew.
“I told you I went back to the city a few times,” Riley said. “During the vidlife.”
A few times. He’d told me once. But I let it pass.
“I found her in one of those abandoned houses, right on the edge. You remember?”
I remembered. Enough to know that if he’d found her there, it was because he’d been looking. “You told me no one lives there.”
“They don’t. Not if they have any other choice. But Gray kicked her out. Said he couldn’t trust her anymore after what she did.”