False Hearts (False Hearts #1)(59)



Now I’m headfirst in it.

Nazarin’s been undercover this whole time, balancing training me and his work with the Ratel. I don’t have long before I’m to go in.

Being alone is forcing me to consider what’s going on. I don’t have a job. I quit my last one, and turned down going to China. I want nothing more than to sit with numbers and calculations, or fly out over the bay to visit the machines I helped design, and view the city from the top point of a VivaFog. I want to forget about people, and stay with the machines and their cold logic. Maybe after this is all over, I can go back. I hope so.

I have permission to return to my apartment for clothes, so I leave and ping Nazarin with a message of my whereabouts. I take the glowing green MUNI, the ads flashing on the tops of the train. Halfway there, though, I change course; I don’t want to go to my place. I get off, take another train, and head for my sister’s apartment instead. After all, her clothes fit my cover better than my own.

The door opens at my VivaChip, which makes me realize I would have had to use a key at my own place. Tila’s home is a dump, though I’m not sure how much is her usual disarray and how much is from the SFPD searching the place. As I set down my bag, I feel like an intruder, even though I’ve been here countless times before.

I decide to set things to rights—though it’s really an excuse to go through her things, thoroughly and systematically, in case there are any more hints.

Tila stores things in almost the same places I do. Her underwear is in the same drawer, though everything’s just thrown in. Her jeans and skirts are likewise crumpled. I take the time to fold them and put them back, arranged by color. I don’t find anything but clothes in the drawers or closet, and I take a few to bring back with me to the safe house. My fingers hover over the green dress she likes, but the memories of Mia’s mind are too strong, and I leave it on its hanger.

There’s nothing but dust under the bed. No gun beneath the pillow, no grenades in the bedside table. What was I expecting?

I give up and sit on her bed, sighing. I snuggle under the cover, missing Tila so much it’s a physical ache. I’m angry at her, I’m terrified for her, and I’m a little terrified of her and what she might have done. But I’ve never gone so long without speaking to her, or seeing her. The blankets even smell like her perfume—lily of the valley. I press my nose into the pillow.

I allow myself to cry about it all. I’ve kept most of it bottled up close inside, trying to stay strong, to dampen everything through Mana-ma’s training; but I can’t do it anymore. It hurts too much. It’s not pretty tears. I’m keening and sobbing, my nose running almost as much as my eyes. I rock back and forth, clutching the pillow to my chest. I feel like a lost little girl. I don’t know how to save Tila. I don’t know if I can. I don’t know if I will. If I don’t figure this out, then my sister will go into stasis. I can’t even imagine never seeing her again. I really would be ripped in two.

It takes a long time before I stop crying. I sit up, sniffling, and take a tissue from the box on the bedside table. Beneath the tissue box is Tila’s sketchbook. Still sniffling, I take it and rest the book on my knees, flipping through the pages.

She loved to people-watch. She used to say she liked to record the people that surrounded her in her sketchbook. “It’s different than a picture. This is more honest,” she’d say, bending over the paper to shade in an eyebrow. She never used a tablet, always drawing the way she had at the Hearth, with pen and paper. “So many people. And we don’t really know what makes them tick. So few people we really, truly know in this world. With the rest of them we’re just pretending. But when I’m drawing them, I feel like I can find something about them that’s real. That maybe they didn’t want me to see. Sometimes I feel like I’m pretending with everyone except for you, Taema.”

I turn another page. Here are hosts and hostesses from Zenith—I recognize Pallua, Leylani and a few of the others, either that I saw that night or from the police information brainload. There are a few of her favorite clients—beautiful men and a few women, smiling and holding glasses of champagne. Their names are neatly printed next to them in our alphabet. Nadia. Jeiden. Locke. Men and women with money to burn to stave off their loneliness.

Here are total strangers. People Tila would sketch in cafes and restaurants. I can remember when she drew the old man at the bar down the street—not that he looked that old (hardly anyone in San Francisco does), but you can still tell when someone’s over seventy. Something about their eyes.

This man was always there, at the same seat at the bar, with the same glass of SynthScotch, staring into the distance with the withdrawn look that meant he was accessing his ocular implant. We often used to wonder what he was reading or watching, lost in his own little world, not moving except to raise the glass to his lips or lift his finger for a refill. I remember how my twin looked, bent over the sketchbook as she shaded in his features, while I sat across from her sketching out calculations for whatever project I was working on. Companionable silence.

I close my eyes tight, not wanting to cry again. But I don’t have any tears left. I make my way through the rest of the house, looking under the sofa cushions, in every kitchen cupboard, all the various nooks and crannies.

In the middle of the kitchen, I stand up, my eyes wide. Why hadn’t I remembered?

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