False Hearts (False Hearts #1)(42)

“Ready?” Nazarin asks. Lying supine, his face doesn’t look so harsh. His features look almost tender.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I say.

The orderly has connected the wires on our Chairs, so that we’ll feed into Mia’s program when the drug hits us. Couples and such will do it sometimes, so that they can revel in the Zealscape together. The thought makes me sick. “Sweet dreams,” says the orderly.

I feel the prick of the syringe.

Then we’re gone.





ELEVEN

TAEMA

I don’t like the inside of Mia’s head.

Everything in the dream world has a soft quality of washed-out gray and muted reds, blues and browns. I’m standing outside a building, gazing up at its broken windows. It’s a scaled-down version of the tower complexes in San Francisco, all steel, concrete and glass, five stories tall instead of fifty. The sky is dark, the clouds bruised black, blue and purple. Warm wind blows my hair, and the air smells like a storm is about to break. I’m wearing the mini-dress I wore to Zenith, for some reason, and the straps of leather dig into my legs. I can see, hear and feel everything, but it’s dampened in the way of dreams.

“Nazarin?” I call out, but there’s no answer.

Up above, the angry, frozen sky rumbles. Rain begins to fall, and my dress is soaked, my hair plastered to my head. Like Tila on Thursday night. Shivering and alone, I go into the house. Mia will be inside. Some part of me feels it.

The lobby of the minuscule apartment complex is empty. Crumpled leaves on the ground crunch beneath my feet. I climb the stairs, following the vague prickle of intuition that leads me to the top floor.

I hear the screams first.

The door opens for me into a barren room as long as the building. The concrete floor is cracked, the paint on the walls peeling off in layers. Exposed wires hang from the ceiling, and a flickering overhead light casts a harsh light on the two figures before me.

One is Mia. She’s strong here, as she no longer is in real life. Her bare arms ripple with muscle, the fitted jumpsuit hugging her full breasts and thighs. Her hair is long, like it was in Mana’s Hearth before she left when Tila and I were eight. But she is a long way away from the gentle woman in soft dresses that I recall. This Mia’s face is twisted in rage and bloodlust, and she’s wielding a scalpel stained with blood.

I shudder, my hand involuntarily going to the scar beneath my dress. Mia’s tool falls, and she bends over. My eyes finally rest on the other figure.

It’s Mana-ma.

Our former leader has collapsed to the ground. She’s alive, breathing hoarsely. The black robe she wears is heavy with blood. On her back, she gapes at the cracked ceiling, her mouth opening and closing. Mia has cut out her tongue. It lies next to her like a dead fish.

I cry out, stumbling away.

Mia pauses in her terrible work, her eyes meeting mine. Her face goes slack in surprise.

“Taema.”

I’m dressed as Tila. I have her face, and her tattoo snaking down my thigh. Despite this, Mia still recognizes me.

“Why are you here?” she asks. “You’ve never been in my dreams before.”

That’s a comfort, I guess. She’s never wanted to kill me. Mia’s covered in blood, and the broken shell of a replica of the woman who leads Mana’s Hearth cowers beneath her.

“Mia. Something’s happened to Tila. I need your help.”

“You’re … not part of the dream?” Mia seems confused.

Mana-ma gives a strangled gasp, more of a high wheeze. Without batting an eyelid, Mia brings down the scalpel into Mana-ma’s neck. The colors of the warehouse grow brighter, sharper, until they’re hypersaturated. I step back, horrified.

Without realizing what I’m doing, I focus on that mental state I found while in Meditation at the Hearth. The clear, calm stillness. “Stop,” I say. Mia’s eyes widen, but her hand jerks back, taking the scalpel with her.

“You don’t tell me what to do! Don’t make me do what I don’t want to!” she shrieks.

Did I make her do that?

Blood spurts out of Mana-ma, and once the blood—the reddest blood I’ve ever seen—leaves her body, it turns from scarlet to black. The dark oil rises, covering Mana-ma’s corpse, and then the figure collapses into a puddle. It reminds me uncomfortably of the spread of blood of the crime scene recreation.

The scalpel is still in Mia’s hands. I hold up my own hands, spread wide, to look unthreatening. “No, I’m not part of the Zeal,” I say. “They couldn’t pull you out, so I took a small dose and came in.”

Mia shakes her head. “I don’t know if I can believe that. They all say they’re real when they’re not. Either way, you shouldn’t have come. You’re too innocent for the Zealscape. Especially mine.” Her face creases in a grin, and I take another step away. She is utterly transformed from the woman who took us in just after the surgery, when we were weak as kittens and just as innocent in the ways of the world. I remember the way she pushed my hair back from my face, kissed my forehead goodnight. She took us to museums on weekends, patiently explaining so many things to us that we didn’t understand. Mia, my second mother in many ways, is looking at me like she wants nothing more than to stick that scalpel in my eye.

She shakes her head again, mystified. “Can’t believe a girl who escaped the Hearth would ever step foot somewhere where they mess with your brain. Didn’t you have enough?”