Slowly, Shinji shook his head. “No.”
“Well, we’ll just have to see this in action, won’t we? I think we should put that to a test! Who will test Shinji’s nerves of steel?”
A big man strode up to Shinji. He was white, and broad-shouldered, and badly sunburned. He took off his jacket. His shirt was barely holding his muscle in. Under the thin cotton stretched across his right shoulder, Javier thought he saw a Navy tattoo.
“So you won’t feel this, then?”
He punched Shinji square in the jaw. Shinji reeled. Javier waited for the pixels to arrive, for the image to de-rez. But it didn’t. Shinji stayed standing, and so did he. Shinji shook it off, and so did he.
“No,” Shinji said. “I didn’t feel that at all.”
“Oh, my God,” Javier murmured. This was what it was like, not to have a failsafe. This was how it felt. At least, he thought it must be. It was the closest he’d ever been.
“Are you sure?” the white guy was asking. He punched Shinji right in the gut. “How about now?”
Shinji bent double. He coughed. He spat. “It’s uncomfortable,” he said, “but it doesn’t hurt.”
Javier looked at the surrounding humans. “Shouldn’t…” They looked at him, pointedly. Then they looked back at Shinji.
Shinji was getting the fuck beat out of him.
“Nothing,” he was saying. “Nothing. Ever.”
“Stop!” Javier shouted. He wriggled in between the humans and marched up to the cart. “Stop it! This is sick!”
“Why?” the one doing the beating asked. “He can’t feel it. He’s fine.”
“I’m fine,” Shinji said, and spat out a tooth.
The white dude kicked him in the groin. “You should try it,” he said, as Shinji worked to stand up. “Go on. Give it a go.”
Around him, the crowd applauded. He waited for the applause to diminish, but it didn’t. “Do it!” one urged, and the urge became a chant: “Do! It! Do! It! Do! It!”
He looked at Ringmaster Rory. She winked.
This was the test. It had to be.
They were giving him a chance to hurt a human being in a consequence-free environment. They wanted to know if he was tempted. The spider had said it was a new exam, and that made sense. Because if one clade could lose its failsafe, so might all the vN clades, one day. If and when that ever happened, the Mechanese authorities probably wanted only those vN who had never once felt any inkling of violence in their hearts for humanity. They wanted lovers, not fighters.
“It’s OK,” Shinji said. “Just get it out of your system.”
“No one would blame you,” Ringmaster Rory said. “Maybe if we told you more about him? He beat his grandmother to death with a tire iron. But then he got confused – he didn’t know what to do with her. The blood leaked down to the unit below, and here we are.”
“I’m getting early release.” Shinji’s voice was thick with blood. “For doing this. For participating.”
We think of the key, each in his prison.
He reached down to help Shinji up.
“It’s not that easy, pal.”
The punch landed in the back of his head with the kind of force that would have instantly concussed an organic human being. For Javier, it meant a stumble to the floor that quickly became a high jump to the rafters. They were so high as to be invisible, and painted a midnight blue to blend in with the projection of a night sky, but they were there. He used his legs as leverage to swing himself up into an upright position.
“Aw, no fair,” the white guy said. “Come on down here and take it like a real man.”
But he wasn’t a real man, and, he realized, he had never been happier about that fact. “Let me out!”
“Come on down here, buddy. The test isn’t over.”
“Yes, it is! I passed!”
Ringmaster Rory took off her tophat. She put it on Shinji’s bleeding head. “Come on, now, Javier. We all know that’s not true.”
Oh. Shit.
“Did you think we wouldn’t find you?” she asked. “Did you think we weren’t watching you? We couldn’t get to you on the plane, or at Holberton’s house, or even on that stupid low-tech bike, but we have you now.”
“I haven’t done anything to you,” Javier said. “Let me go.”
Ringmaster Rory laughed. “You started all this, Javier. You’re the one who couldn’t keep it in your pants. You’re why Portia’s loose. You’re why FEMA is poisoning the food supply. They’re going ahead with it, you know. A prospective formula is already online. People are printing it themselves.”
“I’m sorry,” Javier said. “I’ve lost a lot, too. Remember?”