“I was not a bitch!”
Now she laughed like I really had said something funny. “Right. And neither was I.”
“Well… I wouldn’t go that far.”
“I blame genetics,” she said. “Look where we came from.” Zo joined me at the desk, peering down at the blank ViM screen. “So, what are we looking for?”
I didn’t answer—I was stuck on that word, “genetics,” the one that seemed to imply, in her mind, some common thread linking us together.
“Well?” Zo prodded. “Or should I call our father down to help?”
“No!” She’d said “we.” It didn’t guarantee I could trust her, but it meant I could try. “There’s something on there that I need to find out.”
“I’m going to need more details, if you want me to find it for you.”
“No point,” I said. “He’s got a thumbprint lock.”
“Of course he does,” Zo said. “Which is why I”—she pulled a strip of clear adhesive off the underside of his desk—“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 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 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.”
“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.
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.