“No!” Ani screamed. “Stop!”
“That’s for the kick in the balls, skinner,” the man grunted.
I waited for another blow, but it didn’t come.
And when I opened my eyes, the guards had retreated, lined up a safe distance away, weapons aimed. Ani knelt at my side. “You’re fine,” she said. “You’ll be fine.”
I touched my fingers to my face, lightly, half expecting to feel a crater of dented flesh. But mech bones were tough. My face was still there. I was still there.
“Just get out of here, Lia,” Ani pleaded. “They won’t hurt you if you just go.”
“Oh, I don’t think she’s ready to go just yet.” Rai Savona melted out of the shadows, his black eyes flashing with the pulses of blue light. “If you don’t mind stepping into my office for a moment?” he said politely, as if I’d arrived for a business meeting.
Ani’s eyes narrowed, accusing. “You said she’d be safe.”
“And you thought you could trust him?” I VM’d, disgusted.
“She’ll be with me,” Savona assured her. His voice was the same one, honeyed and smooth, that he’d been using for years to woo Faithers. His eyes were the same ice. “What could be safer than that?” I followed his glance to the guards, whose weapons were still at the ready. Whose eyes were on Ani.
She grabbed my arm, trying to hoist me off the ground.
“Get off.” I knocked her away. I didn’t need her to lean on.
One step at a time: I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, waited for the world to balance. I imagined I could feel my brain knocking around loose in my head, wires frayed and jangling. But that was an indulgence. That was the ghost of org weakness, refusing to die. I was a mech, and I was intact. I rose to my knees, planted one foot on the ground, then, with effort, pushed myself upright on two feet. Gravity defeated.
Ani wouldn’t look at me. Savona wouldn’t look away. “If you’re done with the melodrama, we have a few things to discuss.”
“After you,” I said, forcing myself not to stare in the direction that the dead man had disappeared. That wasn’t important now. What mattered was getting through this, and getting out.
Except I no longer believed that was going to happen.
Ani touched my arm. “Lia—,” she began and stopped. She just stared at me, eyes wide.
I waited.
Nothing.
I shook my head, then followed Savona into his office. Left her behind.
Savona’s office was nothing like Auden’s. The latter had been simple, almost austere, its only ostentation the antique desk at the center of the room. Savona’s desk was twice the size and state-of-the-art, a wide, nearly transparent slab with network vids and zones dancing across its surface. The walls were illuminated with pics of Savona with his wealthy patrons and starving acolytes, interspersed with golden plaques and tributes. I was surprised he hadn’t equipped the room with the same glowbars that lit up his stage, so that he could labor beneath a golden aura.
The door locked behind us with an audible click.
“Taking a risk, aren’t you?” I asked. “Trapping us in here alone together? My body’s replaceable. How about yours?”
“I don’t expect you to attack me. You’re too curious about what I have to say.” He settled onto one of the couches and gestured for me to take a seat on the other.
I stood.
“If you think you can turn me like you turned Ani—”
“Not worth my time,” he said. His dark eyes gave nothing away. There was something familiar in his expression, I thought. It was the lazy pleasure of a cat batting a mouse between its paws, gauging whether the rodent would be more fun dead or alive. “Now, don’t you have a question for me?”
“I don’t need to ask you anything,” I snarled. “I know what you did.”
“Oh, really?” He chuckled lightly. “I highly doubt that.”
“That man out there—”
“Jackson?” Savona’s lips widened into a predatory smile. “Good man. Works himself to the bone in the Synapsis mining operation.”
“He’s supposed to be dead.”
“His lovely wife and four children will be disappointed to hear that,” Savona said wryly.
“How?” I asked. “That’s all I want to know.”
“Why should I care what you want to know? If I’m this diabolical genius you imagine, do you expect me to just confess?”
Mostly, I didn’t expect that I’d be leaving the Temple any time soon. I imagined myself locked in a room again, access to the network jammed—maybe my own brain jammed, neural network overwhelmed by high-voltage shocks, lying on a dirty floor, eyes open, brain closed, hidden away long enough that anyone who might care to look for me would forget to bother.
But without hope, there’s no point in fear.
“Deny it all you want,” I told him. “But I’m going to find out what’s going on. What you did.”
“You saw what was done to your friends,” he said.
I shrugged.
“But you’re not afraid.”
“Machines don’t feel fear,” I said. “They don’t feel anything. Remember?”
“I seem to recall your father’s a rather powerful man,” he said. “Maybe you suspect he won’t allow anything bad to happen to you. You’re thinking to yourself that your skinner friends know you’re here, and if I attempt to hold you here, your loving father will intercede.” He gave me a thin, knowing smile. “Or maybe you expect your poor friend Auden will save you.”
“You don’t know me very well,” I said coldly. He wanted an unfeeling machine? He could have one. “So I should probably mention that I hate people telling me what I’m thinking.”
“Hate’s such an ugly emotion.”
“Funny, then, that you spend so much time spreading it around.”
“I wouldn’t expect something like you to understand the nuances of human emotional experience.” The preacher tones were back. “The Brotherhood of Man is an organization of love. We embrace that which is noble in the human spirit. Ours is a mission of purification and distillation. Elimination of corrupting elements and parasites clinging to the social organism.”
“But you don’t hate,” I said sarcastically. “Because that would be wrong.”
“I’ve told you before, Lia,” he said. “I bear no ill will against you—any of you. Not every problem is its own cause. Hating the symptoms won’t help us cure the disease.”
“Tell me whatever it is you want to tell me, or let me out of here,” I said. “Since I can’t actually die of boredom, my options are pretty limited.”
“Fine, let’s talk about the unfortunate attack at Synapsis.” Savona stretched out on the couch, lacing his hands behind his head.
“Fine. Talk.”
“Let’s say, hypothetically, there was no attack.” He closed his eyes, smiling like he was having a particularly pleasant daydream. “Or not a serious one, at least. Let’s say the toxin was plain old Naxophedrine, causing discomfort and unconsciousness but no fatalities.”
“But I—” I stopped myself, suddenly realizing how stupid I’d been, revealing the thing I’d tried so hard to hide. That I had been present for the attack.
“But I was there!” he cried in a high, mocking falsetto. “I saw them die!” He opened his eyes and sat up, leaning toward me. “Did you? Did you really?” He pressed a hand to his eyes. “You can’t always believe what you see.” And when he pulled his hand away, his eyes were bleeding, a trickle of red running down each cheek.
I was proud of myself for not screaming.
Savona wiped away the blood or whatever it was. “It’s a brave new world, Lia. Anything’s possible. You should know that.”