“Oh, Tila,” I murmur aloud. She is in deep. She’s been doing this for months. And she’d come to my apartment, pretending she was only a hostess at Zenith. I should be hurt. I should be angry. It’s as if I’ve moved through that, to the other side. Now I’m only sad, disappointed, and still deeply afraid.
All day I read the notes, until I have everything memorized. I take breaks to practice in the gym using the virtual reality overlay, dodging imaginary foes, aiming imaginary weapons. I brainload as much as I can on hacking into implants and hiding information within them, with the hope that the government will not discover what I have hidden.
Thursday melts to Friday. Nazarin stumbles in close to dawn, and I wake slightly as he turns off my Chair. It’s only later that day I manage to build up my courage to tell him something in the notes I have to mention before we go to the party.
“I’m going to be Tested tomorrow at Xanadu,” I tell him over coffee.
He’s slept perhaps three hours, and looks drawn and haggard. At my words, he glances up sharply. “What makes you say something like that?”
“I’ve, um, found Tila’s notes at her place.” I give him handwritten, printed-out translations. I’ve left out the information about the government and Sudice, for our later protection, and a few other things where I didn’t understand what they meant and feared they could be dangerous. Everything else is there, and our handwriting is similar enough he doesn’t question it.
Nazarin reads the notes right there. I sip my coffee, watching his bowed head, the way the light through the bay window highlights his cheekbones. When he’s finished, he holds his head in his hands. “Shit. This changes everything.”
We prepare even more intensely. There’s a hint of desperation in the detective—he doesn’t turn off the brainload to let me have uninterrupted REM. There’s no time. Nazarin trains me, and my muscles grow stronger. I can run faster. The SFPD sends still more information to my brain. Out there in the city, my friends are going on with their lives, and so are Tila’s.
I meet the team who will be watching us from outside Xanadu. It’s only four people, because they’re still containing how many within the SFPD know about Tila and me. I recognize the Indian-American officer who helped bring us in that first, awful night. Her name is Officer Jina Shareef. Her handshake is firm. Officer Oloyu is there, though he’s only helping part-time. The rest of the time, he’s up wherever they’re holding my sister. I want to ask him how she’s faring, but I’m afraid of the answer. The other two have worked on undercover operations, including with Nazarin, many times. Their names are Detective Lucas and Detective Tan. Both have the large, blocky look of bodyguards, and of men who know how to use a gun. The officers will be watching surveillance, and all four will be posted near the Xanadu, a hovercar at the ready if we need a quick escape.
The morning of the party, I read through the notes one last time. I don’t think there’s anything more for me to learn from them. The puzzle pieces have fallen into place.
All we know of the Test is it’s another lucid dreaming assessment, perhaps to let Tila into the next level of the Verve lounge. No one knows what the Test exactly entails. Not Nazarin. Not the SFPD. Not Tila, though I expect she had some inklings that never made it onto the pages. We’ve done all we can.
But we won’t know if it’s enough until I pass or fail.
Tila was after Ensi. The leader of the Ratel. Though I still don’t see why, or how she could ever have thought she could take him down. All I can do is get closer to the quarry at the party in Xanadu.
SEVENTEEN
TAEMA
The Xanadu is just off Union Square.
I wonder who the billionaire Alex Kynon really is, for it’s a pseudonym wrapped in many layers of bureaucratic red tape and obfuscation.
I’ve wandered through Union Square so many times, especially around Christmas. Tila and I would always come here to see the lights. The giant Christmas tree in the center, the man-made ice rink where people zipped to and fro on old-fashioned ice skates. The city tries to trap the past like an insect in amber. It doesn’t really succeed in capturing a sense of what it must have felt like—not with those hypermodern fashions the men and women wear as they bustle about, actually shopping in person for the sheer nostalgia of it, droids following behind carrying their wares—but I do appreciate the effort.
Nazarin and I discussed our plan over and over before I left. We’ll take different MUNI trains, arriving at Union Square at different times from different directions. We’ll enter the party nearly together, though. Tila and Skel have been seen flirting with each other at previous parties, so we can act friendly, but won’t linger together too much. Nazarin is hoping to network, and speak to one of the discontented members of the Ratel, try to become closer to him. He tells me the name, keeping his promise not to hold anything back: it’s Leo, the man that Tila wrote about in her notes.
My objective is to do the Test, try not to die, and find out what happens at the next level of the Ratel.