False Hearts (False Hearts #1)(81)

He sits up slowly. “I feel like I’ve been hit by a hovercar.”

“You nearly said hi to Saint Peter. You have too many bugs in your brain. As soon as this op’s done, come to me. I’ll get them out.”

“I like ’em.”

Her eyes go distant again. “No. Get them out. I spend my life doing this, but sometimes I wonder if we’re doing too much to our brains too fast. The more I find out about the mind, the more I realize I don’t know and probably never will.” She presses the bridge of her nose with her fingers. “That was too close, sweet pea.”

Nazarin reaches out and puts a hand on her shoulder. “I’m OK, Kim. I’m OK.”

Kim gives him a hug, clutching his broad back. There’s something between them. Nothing romantic. It’s that sort of friendship where the term “friend” doesn’t seem strong enough.

She pats him on the cheek. Her eyes shine with tears. “Your vitals are all good. You’ll need some eye drops to heal the whites of your eyes—you look a fright.”

She unhooks him from the machine. He stands up, but his knees are shaking. He leans against a metal bench of the lab, looking at me from under shadowed brows.

Kim motions to me. “It’s your turn now, Taema. If you still want to. I can understand if you don’t, after all that.”

This is the last thing I want to do. She sees it in my face. I look to Nazarin, but his gaze is inscrutable. He’s not weighing in. It’s up to me.

It’s another risk, but I’ve taken so many risks. For a moment, I do wonder if this is one risk too many. If this is my limit, and I can’t do any more.

I can do more. For Tila. For me.

Can we find what we need? Record proof that Ensi is the head of the Ratel? Find out where he stores Verve and what his plan is, and stop it in time? It feels impossible.

“It’ll be OK,” Kim says.

Tila’s words come to my lips again. “You can’t promise that.”

“No, I can’t. You’re right. Your implants are newer than his, and you have far fewer. Your heart functions on its own software so it’ll stay steady. I’ll have less trouble getting your implants to behave. That I can promise.”

Nazarin’s gaze is steady. His breathing returns to normal. He gulps a glass of water. I can tell what he’s thinking, it’s so clear on his face. We’ve come so far …

I close my eyes and clear my mind, a small Meditation. I bow my head down to my chest. I block out all sound, all sight. I focus on the soft whisper of my breath. In. Out. In. Out.

I can do this.

I sit in the Chair. Kim straps me in tight, and prepares another syringe.

She gives me a kiss on my cheek. She smells of antiseptic and artificial cherries. “See you soon, sweetness,” she says, and sticks the syringe in my arm.





TWENTY-THREE

TAEMA

My senses scramble. I float in space, but sight is sound and sound is touch and all is strange and beautiful. I feel butterfly wings on my taste buds and fireworks of feathers explode on the backs of my eyelids. Heartbeats pulse against me, crashing waves sending me bouncing against the soft red walls of my own skull. I feel the flashes as the neural dust within my mind sparkles, changing, merging into what I need it to be.

Memories fire at me, without warning, without prompting. I’m six, eating roasted butternut squash, laughing with Tila as Mom tells us a story over dinner. I’m ten, reading as Tila sleeps beside me. I’m seven, and we’ve fallen by the lake. I’ve scraped my hip, the pain blooming as though it’s just happened. We’re trying to drag ourselves upright but we keep slipping in the mud. Tila’s panting next to me, and above the birds call. She looks at me, and her eyes are deep and as familiar as my own.

“It’ll be OK,” she says.

“You can’t promise that,” I say, and I’m out of the memory, back in the Technicolor of my mind. A weird, fractured bit of a memory floats to me. That first moment I saw Tila after the surgery. Standing, unattached. Her own person. Yet as soon as she could, she’d come back to me. She’s threaded through my mind. Everywhere I turn, there she is. Tila. My Tila. I see her and I realize: neither of us is the good twin. Not anymore. We never were. Tila is simply my other half. Not my better half. Not my worse half.

Then everything goes dark.

It’s quiet, and warm.

I wonder if I’m dead. The same thing, perhaps, has happened to me as happened to Nazarin. Maybe I’m flatlining on that chair in the lab. I can’t feel my body.

I float there, not thinking, just existing. It’s … nice. I don’t feel afraid. I don’t worry about anyone. Not Nazarin. Not Ensi. Not my sister. Not myself.

Being dead isn’t so bad.

During our binge on religious texts once we were free of the Hearth, I remember reading a paper that argued we don’t have souls. We’re nothing but neural pathways and electric pulses, fatty white and gray matter. Once the organ that houses thought dies, there’s nothing left. Nothing drifts up to heaven or down to hell. Floating there, in the dim dark, I’m not sure if the author’s right or not.

I felt something similar to this when our heart failed at the Hearth. I remember darkness coming, but I was too afraid to embrace it. I ran away. I never saw that light at the end of the tunnel, like they say. Tila said she saw it, in Confession with Mana-ma. At the time I thought she was lying, but maybe she wasn’t as afraid as I was. Maybe she spent some time in this quiet place.