UnWholly (Unwind Dystology #2)(87)

And for a moment, within the fury she feels toward the people who created him, Risa realizes that Cam, as much as all the kids who were unwound to make him, is a victim too.

“Why are you here?” she asks him.

“I have lots of answers to that one,” Cam says proudly. “ ‘The sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.’ Carl Jung.”

Risa sighs, exasperated. “No—why are you here, in this place, talking to me? I’m sure Proactive Citizenry has more important things for their beta test to do than talk to me.”

“Where the heart is,” he says. “Uh—I mean—I’m here because this is my home. But I’m also here because I want to be.”

He smiles at her, and she hates the fact that his smile is sincere. She has to keep reminding herself that it’s not his smile at all. He’s just wearing the flesh of others, and if it was all peeled away, there’d be nothing in the center. He is little more than a cruel trick.

“So did your brain cells come preprogrammed? A head full of ganglia implants from the best and the brightest?”

“Not all of them,” Cam says quietly. “Why do you keep holding me responsible for the things I had no control over? I am what I am.”

“Spoken like a true god.”

“Actually,” he says, returning a little bit of her attitude, “God said, ‘I am that I am,’ if you’re going by the King James version.”

“Don’t tell me—you came programmed with the entire Bible.”

“In three languages,” Cam says. “Again, not my fault, it’s just there.”

Risa has to laugh at the audacity of his creators—did it occur to them that filling him with biblical knowledge while playing God was the ultimate hubris?

“And anyway, it ain’t like I can regurgitate it verbatim, I just got a workin’ knowledge of a whole lotta stuff.”

She looks at him, wondering whether the sudden change in speech pattern from advanced-placement to country-casual is a joke, but she can tell it’s not. She supposes as connections spark through the various and sundry bits of his brain, he kicks out all kinds of talk.

“May I ask you what made you change your mind?” he asks. “Why did you agree to the operation?”

Risa looks away. “I’m tired,” she tells him, even though she’s not, and shifts to face away from him. Even this action of rolling sideways in her bed was something she could not easily accomplish before the operation.

When it becomes clear that she’s not going to answer him, he asks, “May I come see you again?”

She keeps her back to him. “No matter what I say, you’ll come anyway, so why bother asking?”

“Well,” he says as he leaves, “it would be nice to have permission.”

She lies there in that position for a long time, trying not to give a foothold to any of the thoughts swimming through her mind. Finally she dozes off. This is the first night she dreams of the avalanche.

? ? ?

Roberta is off somewhere taking care of business on the day Risa first walks—and only a week after waking up, instead of two. It’s a day that brings to a head all her conflicted emotions. She wants this to be a personal moment, not something shared, but as usual, Cam comes uninvited.

“Milestone! This is a momentous occasion,” he tells her cheerily. “It should be witnessed by a friend.”

She throws him an icy gaze, and he does a verbal backpedal.

“Aaaand since no friends are present, I’ll have to do.”

A male nurse who looks more like a steroid-pumped boeuf grabs Risa’s upper arm and helps her swing her legs off the bed. It’s an unearthly sensation to actually feel them cantilevered out over the floor. She bends her knees shakily until she feels the tips of her toes touch the wooden floor.

“They should have a rug on the floor,” Cam tells Nurse Beefcake. “To make it softer for her.”

“Rugs slip,” Nurse Beefcake replies.

With the nurse holding her on one side, and Cam on the other, she rises to her feet. The first step is the hardest. It’s like dragging her foot through mud, but the second step comes with remarkable ease.

“Atta girl!” says the nurse, like he’s talking to a baby taking her first step—and in a sense she is. She has no balance whatsoever, and her knees feel like they’ll give out at any moment, but they don’t.

“Keep going,” Cam says. “You’re doing great!” By the fifth step, she can’t hold back the visceral joy she’s been suppressing. A smile fills her face. She becomes short of breath and giggles giddily at the simple joy of walking.

“That’s it,” says Cam. “You’re doing it! You’re whole again, Risa! You have a right to enjoy it!”

And although she doesn’t believe that’s true, she can’t fight the moment. “The window!” she says. “I want to look out the window.”

As they turn slightly to angle toward the window, Nurse Beefcake tentatively lets go, and now it’s just Risa with her arm around Cam’s shoulder and his arm around her waist—and she wants to be furious that she wound up stuck in this position with him, but that feeling is overridden by giddy sensory overload from her feet, her ankles, her shins, her thighs; parts of her body that just a few short days ago felt nothing at all.