Wired (Skinned, Book 3) Read online

  "Of course he does," Zo said. "Which is why I"--she pulled a strip of clear adhesive off the underside of his desk--

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  "keep the nanotape imprint easily accessible. Sure you don't want to tell me what you're looking for?"

  I gaped at my sister, who, last I checked, had slept through every comp-sci class she'd been forced to take. Where had she learned about nanotape? And where had she gotten her hands on some?

  "Well?"

  "Stuff about the accident," I admitted. "Anything you can find."

  "Somehow I don't think Dad's the type to write weepy poetry about his personal tragedies, if that's what you're hoping for," Zo mumbled, but she entered in a password, pressed the nanotape to the thumb pad, and the screen flashed to life. Zo bent over the keyboard and began typing furiously, whipping through files with dizzying speed, not just the obvious news vids and porn, but locked subroutines that unleashed hidden archives and multilayered data dumps.

  "I didn't know you were so good at this stuff," I said, because it seemed easier than asking why she was helping me.

  "When did you know anything about me?" Zo said, with a flash of anger. She didn't look up until her fingers stopped flying over the keyboard. "There. Done. Everything."

  Everything included several files that my father must have thought he'd deleted. Maybe he'd slept through his comp-sci classes as well, or at least the one where they'd taught that most fundamental of rules: Nothing is ever deleted. Not for good, at least. There were dozens of memos, warnings from

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  BioMax that he was running out of time and better make his choice, references to payouts and consequences, and an ultimate response from our father, with the access code to the car's navigational system and a time his daughter was guaranteed to be in the car: 3:47 p.m. A time I recognized and remembered, because it was the time of the accident.

  There had been a day, not long after my download, when my body had frozen. In the middle of a crowd--in the middle of a step--I'd shut down, turned into a statue, unable to walk, unable to move, unable to do anything but think and watch. I could see people staring at me, swirling around me, and I knew I was nothing more than an object to them, easily ignored, easily circumvented. Easily broken.

  That was how I felt, watching the words swim across the screen.

  I am a machine, I thought, the emotions simmering below the surface, the kind of emotion--the tidal wave kind--that I was always chasing, because it would prove I was still alive. I can shut this down.

  I couldn't. Not the knowledge, not the understanding, and not what came next.

  I couldn't cry, or shake, or collapse.

  But I could scream.

  My parents were downstairs in seconds. My mother, bleary-eyed and wild-haired, rushed into the room, compelled by

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  some vestigial maternal instinct to throw her arms around me. She stopped herself at the last second, repelled by the force field of reality, of what I was now and who she was and all the space that had swelled between us. Her hand rigid, she patted my shoulder awkwardly, once, twice, her hand barely touching the synthetic skin. "What's wrong, Lee Lee?" She hadn't used the nickname since I'd left rehab.

  Even in a bathrobe my father looked imposing, ready for business. He stood ramrod straight, and I could tell he was gauging the moment, trying to decide exactly when and how to ascertain what we'd been doing in the forbidden zone.

  "I'm going upstairs," Zo said, her voice as colorless as her face.

  "No." I pointed to my parents, then to the small leather couch pushed up against the wall. "You two, sit." Then to Zo. "You, stay. We're doing this. All of us. One last perfect Kahn family meeting."

  I don't know why they listened. But my mother did, dropping to the couch with a soft thwap. Dubious but obedient, my father joined her. He lowered himself gracefully, back straight, feet firmly planted on the floor, leaning slightly forward, as he'd always taught us to do when we wanted to give the impression of paying attention. "It's late; we're all tired," he said. "Whatever this is, perhaps it's better done in the morning." Like he knew what was coming.

  I shook my head. "Now."

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  "Leave it," Zo said quietly. Not an order, a request, which wasn't like her. I was tempted. But I couldn't go to bed in this house, under the same roof as him, not after what I'd read. It had to be now, or it would be never, because once this was out, I was never coming back.

  "I know what you did," I said, staring at my father. "We know what you did."

  Innocent men defend their honor; that's what he'd always taught us. Only a guilty man stays calm in the face of accusation.

  But my father stayed calm in the face of everything.

  My father.

  I saw it all, in his face, in my mind. I remembered the sound of his voice when he was disappointed and when he was pleased, the winks across the table at my mother's expense, his smile on the sidelines of a race, his hands wrapped around mine, lifting a trophy together, placing it on his mantel. His pleading tone as he begged--always dignified, but begging nonetheless--his peers to change their stance on the mechs, to understand his pain, and his miracle. His anguish as he'd begged God for a second chance.

  And now I understood why he'd had to invent a God to believe in: so he would have someone to apologize to, when he should have been apologizing to me. All that time, I'd thought he regretted the download--that even though he'd finally accepted his daughter, the machine, he'd never forgiven me for existing.

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  When it was himself he'd never forgiven, for making me this way.

  For killing me.

  "I've done many things," he said. "You're going to have to be more specific." A man, innocent or guilty, shows no fear. He'd taught us that, too. Man or woman, he was always careful to add. You'll be as much of a man as I ever was. Maybe more.

  I would show no fear.

  I would not stop.

  "I saw the files," I said, and because watching him was so useless--and so infuriating--I shifted my attention to my mother. As weak as he was strong, she would react. She would see exactly what it was she'd married, what she'd allowed near her children. And wonder why she hadn't stopped him. "Someone tampered with the car's guidance system. Someone programmed that accident. Because you ordered them to."

  My mother's eyes widened, slightly. Slowly, she turned toward my father, waiting for him to deny it. He didn't.

  Zo stood exactly where she'd stopped, midway between us and the door, like she was the statue. Unwilling to stay, unable to leave.

  "You did this to me." In my head I imagined saying this with cold steel in my voice, showing him how little I cared for what he'd done. How little power he had over me, and how little I regretted losing all he'd taken away. But that's not how it came out.

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  It came out hysterical, like a child having a temper tantrum, my voice climbing higher, my fists balled. Only my eyes didn't betray me, and only because they had no tears.

  "You killed me!"

  I could see it in her face: My mother was still waiting for him to deny it.

  He didn't.

  "It was blackmail," he said. He couldn't even look at me. Instead he turned to Zo, stupid enough to think she would offer a safe harbor. She won't help you, I thought, feeling almost sorry for him. And then he kept talking, and the sympathy leaked away. "There was some ... unsanctioned behavior on my part. Funds were shifted. Temporary ... aberrations in the balance sheet."

  "You were embezzling," I translated, disgusted. "Stealing. You, the honorable M. Kahn, who used to punish us for sneaking extra cookies after dinner because it was dishonesty unbefitting a Kahn."

  His head bobbed up and down, almost imperceptibly.

  "Look at me," I snapped. "Not her; not the floor. Me. Look at what you did to me."

  Again he obeyed.

  I wondered if someday, looking back, I would at least take pleasure in that. I'd finally beaten him. But it didn'
t feel that way. It didn't even feel like he was in the room with me. This person, this craven, beaten-down thing, seemed like a defective copy, designed to bear judgment in his place.

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  "They found out about it," he said. "They blackmailed me. I would have gone to prison, lost everything. You would have lost everything." It was almost a whine. Believe me, it said. Understand me. Forgive me.

  Never.

  "What would you have done without my credit?" he asked, eyes hopping from me to Zo to my mother, searching for refuge. "Any of you? There wouldn't have been anything left. You would have ended up in a corp-town, working off my debt. I couldn't let that happen."

  My mother rested a hand on his knee. I wanted to slap her.

  "So instead of giving up your money, you gave up your daughter?" I asked. I'd never felt anything like this before, not since the download: an emotion that was so pure, so real. This was different from sex, from fear or pain, different even from the dreamers, with their direct connection to the emotive centers of the brain. Like jumping from a plane, like stabbing myself, this blotted out any awareness of artificial nerves and conduits, stripped away the fake flesh and the mechanical organs, left me bare and exposed, nothing left but words and anger.

  "They didn't want money," he said. "It wasn't about that. They wanted support for the download from someone like me, someone people would listen to. The whole program was about to go down in flames; they were still waiting on approval for the download as a voluntary procedure and didn't think it was going to come through; they needed someone who would

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  never give up ." He choked out a noise that sounded almost like laughter. "I suppose they found some poetic justice in it, turning the download's biggest enemy into its biggest supporter. I engineered the legislation that would outlaw the technology, and then ..."

  "And then you got caught."

  He nodded.

  "That doesn't even make sense. Why not just blackmail you into supporting the download? Why would they need"--I gestured at my body--"this?"

  "They needed my support--but they also wanted to punish me," he admitted. "The cruelty was excessive. Unnecessary. But they didn't give me a choice."

  "Bullshit. You chose this."

  "They promised me she wouldn't die," he said, lamely, in that same voice I'd heard him use when he was praying. Choked, miserable, weak. "She'd just have a different life, they said. A better one."

  The worst part wasn't the things he was saying, or the fact that he actually expected understanding, maybe even forgiveness, even though he hadn't bothered to apologize. It was that he refused to look at me or speak to me. Not just as if I weren't in the room, but as if all his promech preachings had been nothing more than a show, blackmailed out of him. That as far as he was concerned, his precious daughter, the one whose life he'd basically sold off to the highest bidder, was gone.

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  I exploded. "Stop talking about me like I'm not here!"

  "He's not talking about you," Zo said, with eerie calm. "He's talking about me." She gave me a wry, sickened smile. "What am I always telling you?"

  "It's not always about me," I said mechanically, not thinking about the words because I was suddenly thinking about the other thing she always told me: that I was our father's favorite. I was thinking about the day of the accident.

  I was thinking about the fact that I wasn't supposed to be in the car.

  Zo was the one with the shift at the day-care center; Zo's key card had started the car, so we could ensure there'd be no record that I had gone instead. In her place.

  Seeing me finally get it, Zo nodded.

  "No wonder you hate me," she said to our father, her voice steady and toneless, like she was the machine. "She was supposed to live. But you got stuck with me instead."

  He didn't answer her.

  Say something, I begged him silently. Fix this.

  Like he was still my father, who could fix anything.

  Instead of a monster who couldn't do anything but destroy. And couldn't even do that right.

  The silence stretched on too long. Zo walked out of the room. Seconds later the front door slammed.

  "I'm sorry," my father said. Too late.

  "Shut up." I wasn't waiting for him anymore. I was waiting

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  for my mother. To slap him. To beat him. To hug me. To run away from all of us. But she did nothing. "Well?" I glared at her, willing her to fight back. To pick a side.

  But she didn't. She didn't even cry.

  We were a whole family of machines.

  Were, as in past tense, as in we had been a family.

  Now we were nothing.

  Zo was slumped in the driver's seat, cheek pressed against the window, face melting into the thin layer of frost coating the glass.

  I pulled open the passenger door and got inside.

  "No talking," she said.

  "Got it."

  I don't know how long we sat there. I don't know what she was thinking. I was trying not to think. Part of me wanted to start the car, get the hell away from the house before our father came out and said something that suckered us into going back inside. But the rational part of me, stronger now as the waves of rage ebbed away, knew that would never happen. He'd surprised me tonight, more than once. But he was still M. Kahn, our father, and he wasn't going to beg.

  We were safe in the driveway, for as long as Zo needed to stay there.

  Zo needed.

  Like Zo needed me to fill in for her that day.

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  It had been a long time since I'd let myself go there. For everything that had happened between the two of us, I'd kept that locked away somewhere, too deep and dark to dredge up into the light. But now ... It was supposed to be her.

  Sisters were supposed to protect each other. Especially big sisters. I should have been glad it was me instead of her. If I believed the things I said on the network every day, believed that mechs and orgs were different but equal, believed that each form offered its own rewards, I shouldn't have cared. So I'd exchanged one life for another. I'd lost nothing but pointless nights zoned out on bliss mods, cackling with Cass and Terra and all the interchangeable orgs who couldn't deal with a mech in their midst. I'd lost a boyfriend who could barely tell the difference between me and my sister, or at least didn't care which of our tongues was in his mouth. I'd lost a family I was better off without.

  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."

  112This 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."r />
  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."

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  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.

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  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."

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  HOMEWRECKED For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

  What is she doing here?" I hissed.