He looks away and powers up the hovercar, taking off toward the safe house. We don’t speak, both gazing at San Francisco and its flashing lights spread out before us, lost in our own thoughts. I lean my head against the window, my eyes fluttering shut as I doze fitfully.
Once we’re back in the gingerbread house, it’s growing late. I want nothing more than to crawl into bed and pull the covers over me, but Nazarin has to hook me into the Chair for a few hours. Then it’ll be time to call Tila’s friends—as her—and tell them why I won’t be answering their pings for a while.
I sway with exhaustion. All the mental and emotional stress has now compounded with the physical. I pop a few Rejuvs and let Nazarin strap me into the Chair. It brings back memories of my engineering training and waking up with facts and numbers in my head, but not being able to move. I push them away.
I want my sister. I want to hold her close, to tell her everything, to have her tell me it’ll be all right. When I’m anxious and my mind moves too quickly, she rubs the back of my neck, easing out the tension, her words soothing in my ear. How many times have I fallen asleep to the sound of her voice?
Tila is not here, and she’s the reason I’m doing all this. My whole world has tilted on its axis. Memories of my sister are now tainted by all the lies I know she’s told. I didn’t see it. How could I not have seen it? How can I ever hope to trust my own judgment again?
“OK,” Nazarin says, drawing me from my thoughts, setting the electrodes on my skull and lowering me down. He even draws the blanket over me, which is an oddly touching gesture. I am shivering, but more from unease than cold. Nazarin takes out the needle, prepping the Zeal and melatonin mixture which will help ease the learning. It’s a much lower dosage of Zeal than they use in the lounges—just enough to prep the implants to receive the information.
“We’re starting you off with general Ratel info,” he says. “What we know, so will you. The hierarchy, the main businesses they’re involved in, the identities we’ve managed to scrounge. Some recordings of interrogations, that sort of thing.”
After my nap, I’ll be a Ratel expert. I wonder if they’re going to have to wipe all this information after this investigation is over, but I decide not to ask now. They can take info out almost as easily as putting it in, these days.
“I have to go out tonight after dark, take up my cover,” Nazarin says. “But I’ll be back by dawn.”
“What do you do for them?” I ask.
“This and that,” he says. “Mostly I deliver Verve or act as security.”
So he saw my sister when he was picking up or dropping off the wares. He’s about to go into the place I’ll soon join. I close my eyes and hear the whirr as the machine starts. I can hear the low beating of blood through my mechanical heart in my ears.
“I’ll wake you up in two hours. I’ll just be in the next room doing paperwork.”
“All right,” I say, already drifting away as the Chair gives off melatonin.
A calm, robotic female voice is the last thing I hear:
Brainload initializing.
*
There are two people in the interrogation room.
A man chained to the table looks haggard, like he hasn’t slept in days. He has the same shaved scalp, bisected with scars, as Nazarin. Usually, in these informational dreams in the brainload, the person has no sense of self. But I always remember who I am, and that I’m dreaming. The other man, a detective, I guess, stands tall, but he seems tired. His sandy-colored suit is wrinkled, as though he’s slept in it.
It’s almost like I’m an invisible ghost in the room with them. I can imagine what it looks like to walk around. The scientists who examined Tila and me said that was why we retained so much more—because we could visualize and fit things into patterns more easily than those who couldn’t control the recordings. Other people can learn to do it, but because of Mana-ma’s training we’ve been doing it since we were small, even if we didn’t realize it at the time.