The Rift Uprising, page 18
He immediately gets up off his seat and folds his arms. Then he cranes his own neck to look at mine. “Seriously?” He doesn’t even try to hide his amusement. I can tell that he is struggling not to laugh.
“Yes, and if you call me Sookie I will hit you in the face.”
Ezra does nothing but raise his eyebrows. “Were they like Nosferatu vampires, or Count Dracula types, or eeesh . . . Were they sparkly?”
“They were extremely good-looking, pale-skinned people with fangs. And I don’t want to talk about it. Ever. I got the disk.” I open my palm and he walks over to me and grabs the quarter-sized object. He holds it up and squints at it.
“Huh,” he manages to say.
“Well . . . That’s a super-encouraging observation. Please tell me that I didn’t let some guy suck me off for nothing.” I wince as soon as the words leave my mouth. “That came out wrong. You know what I mean.”
Ezra grimaced. “Unfortunately, yes. I know exactly what you mean and, also unfortunately, there is no way that I can unhear that sentence or unsee the lovely visual that accompanied it.” Ezra circles the silver disk with his thumb. “I’m going to need some time with this. I have to find a way to take it apart and run some diagnostics. It’s a good thing I asked you to get all those ‘nerd tools,’ as you called them.” Ezra takes the disk back to his desk and begins examining it under a large magnifying glass, the round kind, with attached lights.
“No, I think it was actually you I was calling a nerd and a tool.”
“Ha, funny. I want to get started on this right away. Why don’t you take this flash drive with all the Immigrant languages files you asked me to hack? I know you’d probably prefer me to just download them into your brain Matrix-style, but since you have a photographic memory, it might actually be quicker for you to go the old-school route. I also printed out that list that you wanted, which I kind of wanted to ask you about. But first, should I sharpen this pencil into a stake?” he says, holding up a no. 2. “Just in case you don’t like my line of questioning?”
“Aww, honey, if you want me to break your fingers, all you need to do is run them through my hair,” I say with a sadistic grin on my face.
Ezra pales.
“Too much?” I ask, only half joking.
“Yeah, a little.”
“Sorry. It was a weird day. Ask me whatever you want.” Ezra gets up once again and walks toward me with some papers and the flash drive.
“You wanted all the names of the Immigrants in the Village who have been charged with at least one violation of non-cooperation of the humanization agenda. I just want to know why. I mean, I think I know, but I also think it’s important for us to be absolutely clear and up front about everything.”
I take the papers from his hands, as well as the flash drive. “I’m not going to free them, if that’s what you’re wondering. At least not yet.” There are a few seconds of silence as Ezra eyes me warily.
“Come on, Ryn,” he sighs. “People like me—actual people—okay. But snake people? Praying mantis guy? Out in the world they would create absolute chaos. I’m not saying I agree with how the ARC is handling this, but I don’t think the species in the Village should just be let out to fend for themselves. They wouldn’t last five minutes out in the real world.”
I stare at him in disbelief. “Wow. Stockholm syndrome much?” I shake my head and put out my one empty hand as if to stop him from speaking further. “So only ‘actual people’ deserve freedom? On one hand humans are supposed to be the pinnacle of evolution, but on the other we can’t trust them with the idea that there are other species on this planet without them all turning into KKK members? Which is it? You’ve spent time with other Immigrants: Do you think you’re better than they are?”
Ezra’s lips disappear into a thin, firm line. “I never said that. Don’t put words into my mouth.”
I’m frustrated and tired. It occurs to me that I am taking this out on Ezra. I have to stop making assumptions. I have to start being more empathetic but somehow stay unemotional. How am I supposed to do that? At the moment, everything feels impossible. “Look, I’m sorry . . . I don’t know what you think. I don’t even know what I think for sure. Relax—I’m not going to go all freedom fighter tomorrow and throw open the gates of the Village. But I don’t like it there. The whole thing feels wrong, instinctually. And seeing as their best hope is a map to the Multiverse—which, let’s be honest, could be years away, if ever—all I’m looking for is intel. If you get caught, if you have to go back, it might be nice to know that there are people there who we can trust.”
Ezra nods his head slowly and then goes to sit back down. It’s not good for us to be so close when the discussion is this heated. “Good call,” he concedes. “Strategy. You’re a soldier and I get that’s what you do. I also know that you aren’t used to people questioning you, but I’m always going to speak up if I feel like you’re making a mistake. I don’t follow orders. I take polite suggestions.” Ezra grins charmingly, immediately lightening the mood.
“Great. I’m going down to my room. I’ll bring up some dinner in a couple hours, so get cracking. Please.” I start to move the bookshelf and then I turn away again to face him. “We’ve only got about fifteen or sixteen hours left before they realize you’ve gone. Ticktock, Ezra.” I know I am being brusque, mostly because he’s right. I’m not used to being questioned. I’m not used to feeling like I don’t know what’s going on. And I’m especially not used to feeling powerless.
I retreat into my room, put some music on, and look at the list. I don’t recognize any of the names, except one: Zaka. This makes me smile. I knew there was something about him I liked. In honor of him, I start with the Sissnovar language. Ezra had been right. Although I would have preferred a direct download into my chip, I do have a photographic memory and an excellent ear. This will take time, but all things considered, maybe it should. Lately I’ve been thinking that I take entirely too much for granted. It’s immature.
I start with the simple translations of nouns. I work up to verbs. I order the pizza and deliver it to Ezra, who has opened the disk but is so absorbed in it that he barely looks at me when I drop off his food. I work on the reptilian language through the night. I listen to the pronunciations included in the lexicon, saved as an endless stream of MP3s. I wonder about how this information is coded onto our chips and then routed through our brains. How does it work? It’s so complex. How in the hell is Ezra going to figure it out in just a few days?
After about six hours, I have a solid grasp on the language. I could start another, but I decide to close my eyes for a bit. I think about what a crazy day it’s been and mentally run through it. I stowed a hot guy fugitive in my attic, had my first kiss, was bitten by a vampire, got stitches in my jugular, and learned a new language. Impressive. I spend so much time being annoyed at having to lead a double life that it is only just recently occurring to me that it is actually twice as full as a regular person’s life. I didn’t choose it, but maybe it’s time to start enjoying the things I can choose. I fall back on my bed and close my eyes. I am asleep in seconds.
I GUESS I MUST HAVE gotten a couple hours of sleep in when I hear Ezra’s voice at my door. Wisely, he has chosen not to enter my room. He has not shaken me awake. I guess he’s seen those movies, too, the ones where the war veterans always almost kill someone whenever they are awakened abruptly. I wouldn’t have done anything—unless I was having a really saucy dream, which I’m pretty disciplined about not having. It’s good that Ezra is following protocol with the not touching, although it might just be a few short hours until that’s a thing of the past.
I know—I shouldn’t let myself hope. But I do just the same.
“Ryn, wake up and come upstairs. I’m ready to run a diagnostic with the disk.” I hear the exhaustion in his voice. I can only imagine how sleep deprived he must be. Once we’re done, he has got to get some rest. I’m going to insist he gets at least ten hours. He probably won’t listen to me, though. I’ll have to ask nicely. Hey, if this works maybe we can get in bed together. Not for sex or anything, just holding and cuddling . . .
I roll my eyes. Not even I believe that one.
“Okay, I’m coming.” I go to the bathroom and brush my teeth. I quickly examine the bandage on my neck. My super-stellar healing powers have kicked in. There is more suture than wound. Good. I know Ezra wants to get started, but we both need some coffee and food. I yell up into the attic that I’m going to get some and then I go down to the kitchen. I quickly assemble some toast and cereal. I put it all on a tray with the coffees I’ve made. I notice that Ezra has been down here at some point because little things are out of place. I check the dishwasher, where he has dutifully put his plates and cups. I’m so relieved he’s not a slob. I had never really imagined what it would be like to share my life with a guy. Now that these odd circumstances have made that happen, it’s hard for me to believe that I would even notice something as mundane as dirty dishes, but I’m a neat freak. I suppose your basic personality doesn’t change even when you’re thrown in the deep end of life-altering change.
It’s not easy to manage the tray on the tiny ladder. I get near the top, then put the tray on the floor and shove it forward with my hands. I get the rest of the way up and retrieve the tray, backing into the bookshelf so that it swings open. I place the breakfast on the bed and notice that Ezra has set up the desk chair away from the monitors. Immediately, I wonder what it is that he doesn’t want me to see. I have been happy this morning, hopeful. Now, looking at that chair, scuffed and wood worn, I realize that I might not like the answers Ezra finds. There is a secret in my brain and it could reveal itself to be much darker than I ever imagined. I shouldn’t be happy. I should be nervous as hell, and suddenly I am.
I say nothing as I sit down. I take my hair and scoop it up in my fingers, twisting it into a bun so that it’s perched on the top of my head. Ezra stands in front of me. He’s grabbed the coffee and is holding the mug in his hands. He looks worn. The purple smudge of bags beneath his eyes makes them look even bluer.
How is that even possible? How can exhaustion make this guy look even better? I’m supposed to be the superhuman here.
“First of all, I want to manage your expectations,” he begins grimly. “I don’t have an MRI machine or medical equipment. I won’t be able to see the actual synapses firing in the exact locations inside your brain. What I have been able to do, though, is write a very basic program that will allow me to see—in binary only—the information that is being transferred from the disk. It will take me a while with that data to understand it enough to write more code. Nothing is going to change today. Baby steps.”
I sigh. Of course. I don’t know why I let myself get so excited. I look at Ezra, and the way he’s looking back at me, and then I remember why I let myself get so excited. I sigh again. Ezra’s going to need to hook me up several times to understand the complicated software in the chip.
“But you did manage to figure out how to use the disk to get my chip to talk to your computer. That’s impressive, Ezra. It must have been difficult. Thank you.” I hope he can’t tell exactly how disappointed I am.
“It’s a pretty complex little system, but what I’m going to do now, in layman’s terms, is kind of like a jacked-up Bluetooth. Okay?” I nod. “Good—here we go.” Ezra puts down his coffee and then picks up the disk off the desk. I know his first instinct is to attach it to me, but that would be a very bad idea. I don’t want Ezra anywhere near the back of my neck. I hold out my hand and raise my eyebrows. He nods silently and I attach the disk. I hear the magnetic part of it make a little click. I sit very still.
Ezra moves behind me. I hear him typing. Over and over again his fingers tap on the keyboard. I wait five minutes and then ten. Ezra mutters to himself. His finger strokes seem to be more aggravated.
“Well,” he says finally. “Shit.”
I turn around. I wrap my legs around the front of the chair and put my arm on the back of it so that I can rest my chin there.
“What is it?” I stare at the monitors. They are blank.
“Pick up your foot,” he commands.
I do so and we look at the screen. Nothing.
“Punch something in the air.”
An odd request, but I do it, and still the screen remains blank.
“Okay, I’m going to try to get you to do something Citadelish. Can you do, like, a handstand on that chair?”
I don’t say anything. Instead I move the chair away slightly and I grip the sides of it with both hands. I carefully lift myself off the floor, raising my legs as slowly as possible so that I don’t knock anything over.
“Balance the other side, will you? With your arm or foot,” I ask. I begin to slowly lift up a hand and quickly Ezra grabs the chair so that it doesn’t tip over. I figure anyone, really, could do a handstand on a chair, but a handstand with only one hand—not so easy.
“You can come down now,” Ezra says quietly.
I gently lower my hand and feet and then stand up. I push the chair back to Ezra and he sits down on it. I sit on his bed and look at the toast. I am not hungry anymore. I know that something is wrong.
“It’s not working, is it?” I manage to say softly.
“Ryn, the program works. The code is solid. I’m going to say something to you, and I’m going to need you to stay calm.”
I narrow my eyes. I thought we had this discussion before. The worst thing you can say to someone is “stay calm.” It never works. It just adds unnecessary drama.
“Fine.”
“There is no signal emanating from the implant in your head. Well, there is, but it’s not linked to your brain.”
I lean forward in frustration. “I don’t understand. There has to be a signal. You’ve seen what I can do. So, obviously, the Roone technology stumped you. It’s no biggie. You need more time with it. Maybe I can even swipe something else from medical that will help,” I offer. He’s tired. After he gets some rest, he’ll figure something else out.
“I am not wrong. I am telling you—I am linked to your implant. It is sending out a signal, but that signal is registering in a way that is not consistent with brain activity. There is nothing in your implant that is controlling a single one of your impulses.”
“That can’t be right.”
“That’s what I’m saying. But I started with basics. I should have been able to track your blood pressure or heart rate. Not in actual vitals, but in a binary that should have come up immediately. When you move, when you did that awesome thing with the chair—nothing. There is definitely a piece of hardware in your skull, but whatever it is, it’s not giving you superpowers. It’s not giving you anything.”
I jump up off the bed, take off the disk, and put it back on the desk. “I don’t get it,” I say. “I think I would have remembered being bitten by a radioactive spider. Or how awesome it was being raised on Paradise Island with my Amazon sister Wonder Woman.”
“This isn’t funny,” Ezra says with a groan.
“No,” I say, all flippancy out of my voice, “it really isn’t, Mr. MIT, Mr. I Can Fix You. You messed up somewhere. Obviously. I’m a cyborg, not a superhero.” I fold my arms. He’s wrong. He has to be. “Okay, then. Let’s just, for arguments’ sake, say that you’re right. Explain how on Earth—and I mean literally, on this particular Earth—I could possibly do the things I do.”
Ezra paces for a few seconds, then sits on the bed. He runs his hands through his hair and looks up at me. “Here’s what’s interesting to me about this. Your whole life is one giant lie. It’s not just that no one in your family or your other friends know what you are, but they don’t even know about the most significant scientific phenomenon in history that is just miles away from their own home.” Ezra drums a single finger on his thigh. He’s agitated, but he’s playing it as cool as he can. I don’t blame him. I wouldn’t want to piss someone like me off, either. And he’s certainly doing a better job at it than I am. “And then you have ARC,” he continues, “your bosses, whose acronym alone sounds like a super-evil society. They put people in internment camps. They modify the prisoners’ behaviors in an attempt to make every species they encounter human. They create teenage super soldiers who guard a portal to the Multiverse on the sly, but your first instinct is that I’m wrong.”
I look down. I process what Ezra is saying. He is totally right. I’ve been sold on the whole idea of the implant for so long, I take it as a given. The most logical explanation is that it is, in fact—in the face of the evidence before us—a lie.
“So what did they do?” I ask, knowing that my voice sounds desperate and small.
“I don’t know. Drugs? Gene therapy? Demonic possession? I have no idea. I don’t even have the equipment to try to figure it out. I’m sorry, Ryn.” He looks sorry. He looks devastated. All he wants to do is help me. He’s told me this incredible news and he can’t even hug me, which right away makes me think harder.
I start to pace now: three steps forward, three steps back. “Wait—wait a minute. If there isn’t a chip that’s controlling my body, then why can’t I, or we . . . How is it possible that we can’t touch?”
“Again. I don’t have the answer. But if it’s not technological, then it’s psychological. If it’s psychological, then ARC did something . . . they—”
“Don’t finish that sentence,” I say quickly. I can’t bear the thought of him saying what we both suspect. “Oh my God,” I whisper. It’s too terrible a thought. It’s so ugly I almost want to faint.
“I am so sorry, Ryn.” Ezra gets up off the bed. He reaches out to me. “Just. Let me . . .”
I jump back from him, my arms out, ready to push. “Don’t,” I say softly. “Don’t even think about coming near me right now. If anything happened to you—now that I know it’s not some evil thing in my head, but it’s actually me, I couldn’t live with myself. Not that I’m doing such a stellar job living with myself right now.” I put my hand on the bookshelf. “I have to go.” There is an ominous tone in my voice. I don’t care.
