False Hearts (False Hearts #1)
Laura Lam
False face must hide what the false heart doth know.
—William Shakespeare, Macbeth
PROLOGUE
TAEMA
San Francisco, California
This is the first time I have ever been alone.
The first time I have ever woken up to silence and emptiness next to me. The only sounds in the room are the beeping of the heart monitor and my own labored breathing.
It isn’t supposed to be like this.
Groggy from the medicine, I raise my hand to hover over the hot wound, throbbing even through the pain of the IV. It is the first time my hand has been able to linger three inches above my own chest. Below my shaking fingers is the deep cut that will heal into a thin seam from just below my collarbone to right above my navel. Beneath the newly grafted skin and reconstructed breasts is a titanium sternum—bulletproof, so they say—and half of my ribs are made of the same substance. Below that metal sternum is my new, false heart. The old heart is gone, cut out and replaced with an upgraded model that will never tire. I can almost imagine I can hear its mechanical ticking.
This is the first time I’ve ever been lonely.
The doorknob to the recovery room turns. My automated heartbeat doesn’t quicken, though the old, fleshy one would have. I still feel the thrum of adrenaline. The door opens, and for the first time, I see my own, moving reflection. My full mirror image. The same brown skin, the mane of curly hair. The same long nose and dark eyes, features hollowed in fear and pain. My twin, Tila.
Are my knees that knobby? I ask myself, almost laughing from the ridiculousness of the thought. The drugs still rush through my system, and everything is dreamily gold-tinged.
She’s trailing her IV with her. I can barely move, so she shouldn’t be up, but Tila doesn’t let a small thing like pain stop her. I’m surprised she hasn’t triggered the alarms. She probably disabled them—she’s always been clever with her hands.
We’re not supposed to see each other for a few days, so we grow used to being separate. As usual, she’s ignored all the rules and advice and followed her own heart. It is really her own heart now. She creeps closer, her bare feet swishing along the floor.
“T?” she whispers.
“T,” I answer. We always call each other T when we are alone. I close my eyes, a tear falling down my cheek. What have we done?
Painfully, I move over on the bed as best I can. We haven’t just come out of surgery, if the date on the wallscreen is correct. They put us in a medical coma for a few days to speed up healing. I find the fact they can do something like that more than a little frightening. Neither of us has ever been to a hospital before this. There aren’t any in Mana’s Hearth.
Tila slides into the bed. On her chest, in mirror image of mine, is the same wound that will one day become a scar. Beneath her false sternum is another new, false heart. I wonder if they are set to the same rhythm and even now beat together.
Gently, we turn onto our sides, pressing our foreheads together. Then and only then can we fall back asleep, in the position we have fallen asleep in for the last sixteen years. Now three inches of emptiness separate us, when before there had been nothing, and our heart had beat as one.
ONE
TAEMA
Ten years later
I’m starting where it all falls apart.
Tila is late for dinner.
We meet twice a week, once at her place and once at mine, though lately it’s always been at my apartment in Inner Sunset. She says she’s staying late at work, but I never know if that’s true. I hate it when she keeps secrets. It used to be that we couldn’t.
Outside, fat drops of rain drum against the glass window. The sunset has faded to darkness, a few stars just bright enough to shine through the San Francisco fog. I pace across the living room, peering at the blurred view of the city skyline, the green shimmer of the algae farms in the bay, the lights of the hovercars flying past. I paid a lot extra to have the penthouse for this view, but at the moment it does nothing for me. All I can do is be irritated at my sister.
Back in the kitchen, I push the curls from my face. I use my auditory implants to ping Tila, but there’s no response. I turn on the wallscreen, but the moving images and sounds irritate me, and I shut them off. The scar on my chest twinges. It’s psychosomatic. There’s no way it could actually hurt, not after so many years. I rest my fingertip on the top of the rough line of healed skin. It’s been almost a decade to the day since the surgery.
I sigh and set out the food, the time flashing in the corner of my ocular implants until I send it away. Her shift at Zenith supposedly ended over an hour ago. She works at the hostess club at the top of the TransAm Pyramid. Not a bad gig, but not for me. I don’t think I’d be as good at pretending.
I’ve made Tila her favorite curry, adapted from a recipe from the Hearth. I could have ordered it from the replicator in the corner of the kitchen, but I needed the distraction of doing something with my hands. It’s time to tell her I quit my job this afternoon, and I accepted a new job offer I couldn’t refuse—in China. I don’t know if Tila will want to come with me.
Or if she should.
The doorknob turns. I stand and rub my palms along my skirt. Tila flies in, disheveled and wild-eyed. Her short, teal hair is wet and plastered to her skull, contrasting with my brown curls. Her clothes are flashy where mine are plain. Her face is different than mine now too, from trips to the flesh parlors. They’re not drastic changes, but we no longer look identical.