False Hearts (False Hearts #1)(77)

“Because there’s going to be a drop in a few days.” I project the scanned pages of Ensi’s notebook onto the wallscreen. He squints.

“I have no idea what any of this means.”

I walk him through what I found in the planner. He also has no idea what the link between the Hearth and the Ratel could be, beyond inheriting occasional men and women without identities that Ensi can brainwash into working for them.

“We still don’t definitively know if that’s what they did,” I say, thinking of Adam, the way he’d smile more on one side than the other. The way he loved to play with the younger children, and how he loved to go swimming in the lakes with the others, turning back to wave at us as we watched from the shore, unable to join him. He’d never harm another person.

Everyone has a darker side.

I still think there must be more to it than that. Adam was sixteen when he supposedly died. How could he change that completely? I suppose being torn from everything you’ve grown up with could do that. I remember how confused Tila and I felt. How it was like we were drifting, unanchored, in this strange new world we knew nothing about. Is that enough?

“Verve,” Nazarin says. “He’s rewriting personalities.”

Rewriting personalities. I still don’t know if I believe I changed Mia in any way in the Vervescape. Maybe it was only my words that got through to her, rather than a deeper sort of push. Imagine not remembering who you were. Becoming exactly what Ensi wanted you to be. A weapon. An assassin. A tool.

The only reason he didn’t do it to me in the Test is because it doesn’t work on lucid dreamers.

“You can’t do the Test,” I say.

Nazarin’s eyebrows lift. “You think he’ll change me.”

“Of course he will. Your loyalty doesn’t matter if it’s not completely guaranteed. He can make sure you never dare to cross him.” I think of the Zealot lounges where he experimented. “I worry he might have found a way to reprogram people on a wider scale via Zealot lounges by now. He’d start with his own people and then cast his net wider, wouldn’t he?”

“That’s what my superior says. He has other sources in other areas. We are certain he can expect them to amass an attack sooner rather than later.”

“We still haven’t been able to get any coverage. All recording devices were dampened in Xanadu, and they’re dampened in the Verve lounge. We can’t pin anything on him, even though we saw him gun down insurgents and splatter us with the blood.” I look up at the wallscreen. “Does the notebook help?”

“It’s a start, but not enough. They’re too carefully intertwined for us to barrel in now. Ensi will disappear, along with the Verve, and it’ll still trickle its way to the masses. We need concrete proof we can show the public, to turn everything against him. A few scanned pages with some acronyms won’t do that.” Nazarin licks his lips. “That’s where this new tech from Kim comes in. It might record, even if we’re somewhere the signal’s jammed. It’s dangerous, but it might work.”

“I don’t understand,” I say. Nazarin is animated, driven. It should scare me, but it doesn’t. It’s infectious. My fingernails trace across my scar.

If we succeed, we’ll take down the biggest mob in the city. The government and Sudice will be in our debt. That’s not what I care about; it’s a side effect.

I’m going to find out what you were up to, Tila. Once and for all.





TWENTY-ONE

TILA

Do you know why they really built that swamp around the Hearth? I mean, the “why” is pretty obvious, I suppose—to keep some people on one side of it and everyone else on the other—but there were events that led up to it.

I can’t tell you everything about them because I don’t know that much. I’ve managed to gather bits and pieces over the years, but I still don’t understand how they all fit together.

I’m going to tell it like a story, try and sensationalize it, fill in some gaps. You know when they have documentaries and then the camera goes all fuzzy and golden-tinged if it’s a reenactment of a good event, and dark and dreary if it’s bad? This is the dark and dreary kind, and I guess I’m the dramatic voiceover.

First, here’s roughly how Mana-ma tells the story when she’s lecturing about the evils of the Impure. I’m sure she’s told this story dozens of times in sermon:


Mana-ma’s Cautionary Tale

One night around twenty years ago now—let’s say it was dark and stormy, because what else could it be?—a man from the Impure outside world snuck into the Hearth. In those days, there was just a fence rather than a swamp. There were signs everywhere saying that the fence was charged, but it was a lie. We didn’t want to be surrounded by the new generator that would have been used. Surrounded by an Impure circle, the Hearth would feel just that much more trapped. Makes no sense, if you ask me, since the Hearth was already surrounded by, you know, the entire Impure world.

So this bogeyman came into the Hearth from San Francisco, creeping and sneaking his way closer to the main settlement. Mana-ma took great delight in explaining how horrible he looked, with green hair and metal studs, moving tattoos and Impure clothing, none of it made from good cotton, silk or leather.

Why did he come? Let’s see … perhaps he ran out of money and thought he’d be able to steal from us. (That would have been a failure—we didn’t have anything worth anything, except some vintage stuff in not-too-good condition. Well, at least that’s what I thought at the time.) Mana-ma said he thought he’d be able to get away with a crime more easily here. And that was maybe true, but she left out how low crime in the evil, Impure world really was, which would have made a few people wonder if it was really that bad if it was so safe.