False Hearts (False Hearts #1)(57)

“We’ll see what they say in any case. The drawing’s good.”

I feel a strange little rush of pleasure at that. “So, if this is all true, then there could be a link between the Hearth and the Ratel. Maybe Tila found that out. And that’s why she went after them.”

I fight down a rush of nausea. Even if this is why she did it, why didn’t she tell me? Why didn’t she ask me to help? And if Vuk was actually Adam, why the hell would she kill him? She loved him just as much as I did. Wouldn’t she try to help him instead?

Tila was stupid, brash, and left me behind. She never used to leave me in the dust … but then, she never used to have a choice in the matter.

I look back at the autopsy and the police report to distract myself from the racing, circular thoughts I have no answer to. As I make sense of the words, I gasp. “Did you see this?” I ask.

Nazarin leans over my shoulder.

It’s a report from one of Mia’s neighbors, saying she was acting strangely yesterday and this morning.

“Like a totally different person,” the woman said. She didn’t give her name to the police. “She’d been singing really old songs from the 1960s, said she was giving up Zeal, moving away. She seemed happy, but also sort of manic? I thought she might have still been high, her eyes were so glazed.”

“She wanted to quit? This makes things so much sadder,” I say, nearly choking with grief.

Nazarin frowns. “Something’s weird about it, though. We saw her physical stats. She was really far gone, to change so suddenly.”

“Maybe I got through to her.”

“What do you mean?”

“In the dreamscape, just before we left, I told her she could be better if she wanted to be. Remember? I told her to try and be good again.”

Nazarin’s face goes still.

“What is it?”

“Nothing.” He gets up and leaves me, confused, at the kitchen table. I can hear him hitting the punching bag in the gym.

About an hour later, he asks if I want to go for a walk, for some fresh air. His eyes dart imperceptibly to the wallscreens.

I agree, put on my coat, and we head out into the night. Nazarin turns on a White Noise, a tiny device the size of a fingernail, which will distort any nearby cameras trying to record our conversation. I wish we could use it in the safe house to speak freely, but the SFPD would wonder at the scrambled readings. We walk along the darkened streets, leaning close. Nazarin has his hand in his pocket, and I know it’s curled around a gun.

Whatever he’s about to tell me, he doesn’t want his employers to know, either.

“I’ve been developing a theory, over the last few months. I’ve been trying to find more definitive proof before I go to the SFPD.”

“About what?”

“I think Verve does more than simply giving people access to dreams.”

I focus on him. The light from the streetlamps plays across his face, casting dark shadows.

“I think,” he says, each word heavy and deliberate, “that some lucid dreamers can influence the Vervescapes and change personalities. I think … you might have done that to Mia. And I think the government realized that and they killed her, not the Ratel.”

I take a few steps, trying to process the information. It doesn’t want to process. “Fuck.”

“It makes sense. I’ve seen other Knights or Pawns in the Ratel suddenly change personality completely. They wouldn’t seem to know me, even if we’d spoken the day before. Think how dangerous that makes this drug.”

“Whether it’s in the hands of the Ratel or the government.”

“Exactly.”

“So you think … the Ratel overwrote Adam’s personality, and made him Vuk?”

“Yes. I do.”

“What does this mean for us?”

“It means we stick to our original plan for the SFPD. It’s all we can do.”

“If we take the Ratel down, though, then the government will have Verve.”

“Yes.” He doesn’t look happy about it.

“There is no good and evil in this scenario, is there? There’s only bad and worse.”

We keep walking through the streets for hours. At some point, Nazarin’s warm and callused hand takes my own. I don’t pull away.





FIFTEEN

TILA

I feel sorry for those still left in the Hearth.

I’ve tried to put the Hearth behind me and to forget as much as possible. But I don’t think I can ever forget. Not completely. All those people, following Mana-ma’s rules set out in the Good Book, listening to her sermons, their voices rising up in song. Did they really think that by following those rules they’d achieve salvation, and have their pick of next lives in the Cycle?

I never knew how many people were actually happy there, and how many people were just pretending. How many knew the truth of Mana-ma?

Mardel discovered it, in the end. True enough, he stopped drinking alcohol. The problem was, he also stopped drinking everything else.

No one noticed right away. I heard my father comment that Mardel looked weak and wasn’t able to pull his weight in the fields, but he put it down to alcohol withdrawal. By the third day, Mardel was badly dehydrated. They tried to make him drink water, but he’d start shaking and spit it out. They managed to force some down him. We tried another Meditation, urging him to drink water rather than alcohol. It didn’t quite take, not like the first time. Perhaps our fear lowered efficacy. He lingered a few more days. Then he died.