False Hearts (False Hearts #1)(79)

TAEMA

We’ve come to see Kim again.

We haven’t gone back to that empty safe house; instead, we’re going to her home. She seems nervous as she opens the door and ushers us inside. She’s been sworn to secrecy. At the moment, not even Sudice is meant to know what she’s about to do to us. If they find out she’s lied, even if it’s on behalf of the SFPD, she could easily lose her job.

Nazarin knew, without a doubt, that she’d do it. His former partner, Juliane Amello, had been her partner as well. Her wife. She died, and Kim wants answers, too. Or at least retribution.

“Well, no point wasting time in pointless pleasantries or offering you a cup of tea,” she says. “Might as well come through to the lab.”

We follow. I had forgotten how tiny Kim is. At the safe house, she wore a simple suit, but now she’s wearing something made of strips of fabric in all the colors of the rainbow, and it billows behind her as she walks.

Her home is large and sumptuous. As she’s one of the most talented biohackers in the world, this doesn’t surprise me. What does surprise me is how cluttered it is. On the way here, Nazarin told me that Kim collects old memorabilia, specifically from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, before the Great Upheaval. I think he told me so I wouldn’t be quite so taken aback when I saw it all.

Most of the cheesy knickknacks from the past have been recycled by now, but Kim hunts down the remaining ones and probably pays a lot of money for the lurid plastic and metal figurines that seem to stare at us as we walk through the lounge. Superheroes and celebrities I don’t recognize, cartoon animals with eyes far too large for their faces. It all seems strangely alien to me as someone who grew up in the Hearth. There, nothing was made by robots or replicators and toys were hand-carved and took weeks to make. Here, in San Francisco, so much was ordered and then recycled the next day. Clothes worn once, plates made of compostable material. Cherishing things from the past was rare. I mean, what in the world was Hello Kitty?

“Like ’em?” Kim asks, noticing my stare. “I got the biggest collection on the West Coast.”

“They’re … interesting,” I say.

She laughs. “Yeah, it’s tacky as hell, but I don’t care. A girl’s gotta have a hobby.” She was serious when she let us in, but now she’s striving for lightness. It’s forced. Underneath she’s as scared as we are.

At the end of the hall, Kim presses her fingertip to the sensor and the door slides open. We step through into her lab.

Though the lab is small, it’s fitted with the best equipment, stuff I would have killed to have in my lab at Silvercloud Solutions. The Chair bolted to the floor in the middle of the room reminds me uncomfortably of the Zealot lounge.

“All right, who’s going first?” she asks.

“Me,” Nazarin says, to my relief. He sits in the Chair, and Kim straps him in.

“I don’t know why I’m doing this,” she mutters to herself.

“Yes, you do.”

“Don’t kid yourself, babe,” she says, pinching his cheek. “You’re not my type.”

She winks at me and I smile a little.

“OK, then. You want to prove to yourself you can do it. I’ve appealed to your professional pride.”

“That’s a bit closer, but you forget, I’ve done this before.”

“I guess that’s a comfort,” Nazarin says. “You won’t leave me blind and deaf.”

“Most likely not.”

Neither of them mentions Juliane. I have the feeling they rarely speak about her, even though she’s a shared link between them. Too painful for them both. Better to banter and tease, even when they’re both terrified.

“Now shut up,” she says, without rancor. “I have to concentrate.”

He dutifully shuts up as Kim attaches the last of the wires. It is almost exactly the same set-up as at the Zeal lounge, and I say so.

“Where do you think they got the idea for it, buttercup?” she asks. “Who do you think helped develop Zeal, if not the biohackers? Grade A Sudice merchandise right from the start.”

It’s rather obvious now that I think about it, but I know nobody who did Zeal, except Mia. My throat twinges as I think of her. She didn’t have a funeral, and even if she had, no one would have come.

Kim turns on the screen on the table next to the Chair, her quick fingers dancing as she brings up the various controls. It only strikes me now how dangerous this all is.

Kim is going to hack into Nazarin’s brain.

“Does it hurt?” I ask. Switching my identity had been easy and painless. This isn’t a chip in a wrist. Implants are wired right into your brain.

“It won’t be pleasant, I’m sorry to say.” She fills a syringe with unidentified liquid. “Why do you think we don’t have our implants set to record as standard? Be able to keep our memories and replay them in their entirety whenever we want?”

“No idea.”

“We’re not meant to remember every little thing. If we were, that’s what our brains would do. They’re not meant to store so much. They can be overwhelmed. Even brainloading is too much for many. Not every brain can do it. But non-stop recording? I am part of a Sudice project that works on it.” She pauses, looking haunted. “Some subjects end up going crazy, and some brains shut down. Aneurysms. Strokes. Poof. Gone.” She snaps her fingers. “So it will probably be nixed pretty soon. Most of us involved in the project are glad it hasn’t been easy, to tell the truth. You know why?”