I gather the last of my strength and bravery and stand up from behind the barrier. I try to gather my senses together to make sense of the world again. I fire off shots, my vision still blurry enough that I’m not sure if I’m aiming at her. The shots focus me.
The first few miss, but then a bullet hits her in the arm. She folds forward. She’s wearing a Kalar suit, but I’ve still hurt her. I aim again, and hear the crack of her gun. I squeeze the trigger and start to move back behind the crate. Everything slows. Mana-ma crumples, the bullet hole over her third eye beginning to weep.
I watch, almost disinterestedly, as the bullet she fired hits me straight in the chest. It does not puncture the suit, but I feel the impact against my metal sternum. My mechanical heartbeat slows.
Then stops.
THIRTY
TILA
I don’t remember actually arriving in San Francisco.
Taema and I were out cold, but we woke up in the ambulance hovercar. The attendants pulled back the window screen, and even though I felt the worst I’d ever felt in my life, I remember how beautiful San Francisco looked the very first time I saw it. The sun was just setting, and it was like seeing a whole new planet, alien and strange. Tall buildings full of people, others full of trees, cars flying through the sky, bridges linking the lands across the water. It was so big. I knew billions of people lived out here in the world, but it was still something else, this city where over a million people lived, flying and seeing straight out to the horizon, tiny people walking down below. This new world seemed infinite.
At the hospital, they stabilized us and Taema woke up. I started crying when she did. I was so scared that she wouldn’t.
The doctor who spoke to us had the same mild confusion about us as the rest of the people out here. We were so lucky, though. He knew our VeriChips were brand new, and he later quietly found someone who would be able to advise us about claiming sanctuary from Mana’s Hearth and make our identities real.
He was one of the most attractive men I’d ever seen. I hadn’t grown used to how everyone was perfect in the city yet. I kept doing double takes as we went down the corridors of the hospital on our way here. It almost made me wonder if there were no humans in the city, and everyone was a robot. There were differences in height and some in weight (though nobody was too thin or too overweight), but everyone had unnaturally symmetrical features.
The doctor kept staring at where we were conjoined, but I guess he’d have reason to, considering what he was proposing. Everything we saw was new and strange. So shiny. I didn’t know how to describe any of it or what any of it was called. I missed my parents and wished they were here with us. Mana-ma must have realized what they’d done. How would she punish them?
“You have to go into surgery immediately,” the doctor said, cutting right to the heart of it (ha, ha). When he spoke, I kept getting distracted by the pretty curve of his lips, the way the blond stubble was just beginning to come in on his cheeks.
“What will you do?” Taema asked, evidently less blinded by his beauty.
A flash of emotion crossed the doctor’s face. Discomfort? It was gone before I could tell.
“How much do you know about life in San Francisco?” he asked.
I remember thinking it was a strange sort of thing to start with. I thought he’d talk about the intricacies of whatever he was going to do to us. Though it’s not like I knew what doctors did. I’d never met one before.
“Only a little,” I said.
“Well,” he began. “I have read up on where you’ve come from. It must feel almost as if you’ve traveled into the future.”
It sort of did, though I hadn’t really thought of it like that. We hadn’t seen enough of this new future yet.
We nodded noncommittally.
“There are no cases like yours anymore,” he said, and I could tell he was choosing his words with care. “The fact that you’ve survived in relatively good health as thoracopagus twins with rudimentary medical care is extraordinary. You therefore have a choice to make. We can operate and fix you, but the team I’m working with wish to separate you. Two separate hearts. Two separate bodies.”
I felt what little blood there was left in my face rush away. Separated? Of course we’d thought about it, but we’d never considered it a real possibility. My feelings were all tangled.
“The way San Francisco is now, you would perhaps find it very … challenging to remain together. People would not be cruel, necessarily, but you’d be stared at wherever you went. It would be difficult. Very difficult. I tried to convince them to let you stay together, if you choose, but they wouldn’t agree to it. And I can’t do it alone, not even with the help of drones. I’ll leave you to discuss, but there isn’t much time. We need to operate, and soon.”
He nodded at us and left, closing the door behind him.
“We have to do it,” Taema said.