False Hearts (False Hearts #1)(17)

Kim holds out her arms and he gathers her into a bear hug, lifting her off the ground. She whispers something in his ear, but I can’t hear it.

“Thanks a million, Kim,” Detective Nazarin says. “You ready, Tila?” he asks me.

And now I am Tila, for all intents and purposes. At least legally. But for all that I know my sister better than anyone, I’m not her.

“I’m ready,” I say, though I’m not sure I’ll ever be.





SIX

TILA

The first cracks between us happened long before the surgery, although Taema would never admit it. When we were little, we were two halves of the same coin. We’ve gone so far from where we were. So far from that long-ago innocence.

Life was simpler in the Hearth, before we knew for certain it was a prison.

Supply ships came to Mana’s Hearth every two weeks, and it was always a big deal for us. A glimpse into a world that wasn’t ours.

As soon as we heard the distant roar of engines, we’d find somewhere to watch the ship set down. The men and women, dressed in strange uniforms that clung close to their bodies, looked so different from us as they directed the droids to unload the crates.

It was the droids that fascinated Taema—a lot more than they did me. They weren’t something we had on the Hearth, of course, and I thought they were freaky. The blocky machines looked roughly like humans with blank faces, but moved with much less grace as they unloaded the crates onto the lawn and then walked back up into the ship and powered down. Just like that. They moved around, and then they looked dead.

They didn’t say anything about droids in the Hearth school, but Mom and Dad had told us a little bit about them. Kept stressing that they weren’t “sentient.” That they didn’t have feelings, and were just machines made to do humans’ dirty work.

“Why make them look human, then?” I remember asking. Surely having more than two arms would be better for lifting. Taema and I often found our extra limbs handy.

My parents didn’t have an answer to that.

We usually stayed out of sight of the supply ships. Obviously the droids didn’t care, but the humans from the city stared something awful when they realized we weren’t hugging—that we were connected. Say what you like about Mana’s Hearth, but at least they treated everyone equally. When we were younger, this one guy from the supply ship came up to us and actually reached out like he was going to touch the spot where our flesh joined, but I bit him. He jumped back and put his finger in his mouth, sucking the blood. Taema didn’t even tell me off for it; she was just as mad. After that, it was just easier to stay hidden and watch secretly.

One day, after the ship took off, we noticed they had left something behind on a rock. We shuffled closer. It was a piece of tech. We’d seen them using things like it—it was called a “tablet.” It wasn’t meant to be left behind. No tech was. The only machines me and Taema had ever seen were the supply ships and the droids, and almost everyone in the village stayed well away when the city folk landed. Sometimes our mom would come and speak to them, relay requests or whatever, but that was it. After the supply ship took off, others would then tiptoe down the hill, performing Purifying rituals with burning sage and whispered prayers, before they could bring themselves to take the supplies back to their homes.

I reached down for the tablet.

“Tila,” my sister said. “It’s forbidden.”

I ignored her, still trying to reach down, but Taema stayed stubbornly straight. I pulled harder, until she grunted in pain, but she didn’t budge.

“Come on,” I wheedled. “We have to turn it in to Mana-ma, don’t we? We can’t leave it here.” Really, I just wanted to hold it, at least for a moment.

With a reluctant sigh, she leaned forward. I wrapped my hand around the metal and glass.

“You’ll get in trouble for touching it with your bare skin,” she warned.

“So will you.”

“Exactly. I’ll have to be Purified along with you, and you know burning sage always makes me cough.”

I looked around nervously. How long before people came?

“Let’s go to the tree, first,” I said.

“So you can look at it?”

I didn’t answer.

“It’s Impure,” she whispered, her brow furrowed.

I started toward the trees and she followed, her legs stiff and straight.

“We shouldn’t do this,” she kept whispering. “Mana-ma wouldn’t like it.”

“Mana-ma doesn’t need to know.”

“She knows everything.”

I felt a little bit of guilt, but I squashed it right down.

The tree was our favorite spot in the forest. We went to it whenever we really wanted to hide from everyone else in the Hearth. In the compound it was hard to ever be truly alone, but out in the woods there were only the redwoods and the birds. Our tree was an old, hollowed-out redwood, struck by lightning a long time ago. We shuffled inside, smelling the old smoke and damp greenness of the forest. I loved it there. When we were younger, we’d had tea parties or played cards, whispered secrets, stashed things we didn’t want to share. It was our safe space.

I held the tablet in front of me, turning it this way and that. It felt so smooth, hard and cold. It seemed alien.