“The Pure and Impure stuff is bullshit, Taema.”
Her mouth twisted. She knew that on some level, but she couldn’t help her gut reaction. That the technology she’d been taught was evil her whole life was now implanted under her skin. “It’s really happening, isn’t it?”
“Once we’re gone, we’ll never come back,” I said, and I felt both triumphant and a little sad. For all Mana-ma and the Hearth’s philosophy weren’t for us anymore—especially me—it was the only place we knew. Our friends were here. Our parents. Our whole way of life. Through that tablet, we’d only had a little peek into the window of the Real World. Everything was going to change.
We fell asleep that night knowing our time in the Hearth was coming to an end.
TWENTY-FIVE
TAEMA
It’s time for my shift in the Verve lounge in a warehouse down by the docks. The reminder came through on my implant, on an untraceable line. This week, Tila’s shifts are Monday and Wednesday.
Nazarin’s on security duty. They’re trying to arrange his Test, and he’s bending over backward trying to find excuses for it to be delayed until after the drop.
As I take the MUNI through the glowing green tunnels, I can’t stop thinking about the Test. All the images that flashed before my eyes, the smells, the confusion. The simulated murder that had seemed so real. Murder. The word that seemed so ugly when I first heard it, but now I’ve acted out homicidal violence in two simulations. I’m about to dive back into another Vervescape, and who knows what or who I will find there.
Once I’m at the warehouse, I force myself to push the macabre thoughts from my mind. I have to focus on being Tila again, one of the newest lucid dreamers in the Ratel. A Rook.
The outside of the warehouse is boring, blocky concrete. A faded sign once proclaimed “Geary Hovered Automobiles,” but it’s faded and tagged with moving graffiti. A stylized bunny holds knives and does a cartwheel above the old image of a hovercar, over and over again.
Malka opens the door before I can even knock. I can’t help it; I start and take a step back in alarm. She narrows her eyes and smiles at me. She’s wearing a long dress of artful folds, like a Grecian tunic.
“Hello, canary,” she greets me. “Come on in.”
I cross the threshold.
Inside, I expect it to be as dilapidated as the outside, but instead it’s bright and fresh as a hospital room.
Malka leads me down the long hallway. Her heels click on the tiles, her hips swishing back and forth. She glances over at me. “I’m glad you’re feeling recovered. We’ve missed you, the past few shifts. Could have used your expertise. Now you’re all Tested, though, we can trust you with more than the menial dreams, canary girl.”
Like Kim, she seems to be fond of nicknames, but there the similarity ends. Kim is warm and genuine, and everything about Malka is carefully engineered. She gives a throaty laugh and stops by a door. It opens with a soft exhalation of air. “In you go. Think of this as part two of your Test. What can you do with a juicier dream?”
I step in, my palms damp with nerves. Inside is a Chair, far smoother and sleeker than the ones in Mirage, or even in the training room at the safe house. A man lies down, strapped in. He doesn’t seem to be there against his will. Next to him is a second, empty Chair.
I look closer and jerk with surprise.
“Thought you’d recognize him,” Malka says, smiling. If I’m the canary, she’s the cat with the cream.
“This is … Mr. Mantel.” The owner of Sudice, Inc. One of the most powerful people in the world. He was technically my boss’s boss’s boss’s boss. I’ve only seen him from afar a handful of times in my years working for Silvercloud. It’s so incongruous, seeing him plugged into a Chair in this secret Verve lounge run by the Ratel. Does the government know?
I put my hand up to my necklace, pretending to fiddle with it. While Malka gazes down at the man’s supine form, I press the hollow of my throat. One. Two. Three.
I swallow against the nausea and the migraine.
“You see why trust is important to us,” Malka says smoothly. “No one else may know that he comes here. And no one will learn of it, will they?” The tip of her tongue darts out to wet her red lips.
“Of course not.” My breathing is shallow. I force myself to fill my lungs. It doesn’t help. I still feel as though I can’t breathe.
Hold it together, Taema. Hold it together.
“Are you all right?” Malka asks with false concern.
“Fine,” I say with a little half-smile. “Just … amazed to meet the man in person. So to speak. I’m to … go in?” I eye the second Chair.
“Yes. You observe the dreams, I observe you, and we see how you do. Another Test, as I said, yet this one is not quite so … complicated.”
I give a strangled approximation of a laugh. “Let’s hope I do as well.”
“Yes. Let’s hope.”