Dissolution

Chapter 5 - The Small Print

It was dark by the time I got home. If it had been cold before, the air now was like breathing frost. I bumped up the lighting in my eye implants as I hopped off the board and locked both it and my bag into its security bracket with a quick scan. I didn't honestly think the corpless would make it all the way out here without being caught by our patrols, but my mother had always been worried about living outside the CBD.

I took a few slow breaths. Despite the cold, I was sweating. My body knew what was coming, even if I'd been trying to ignore it. Both of them would be home by now. It was going to be ugly. The Auctioning would hit them just as hard as it had hit me. And then, on top of that, I'd have to tell them I was leaving ANRON. That I was going to try to sell myself to MERCE.

I strode up the short path quickly so I couldn't think about hopping back on my skimboard and programming it to go anywhere but here, this small innocuous house with its thin walls and its empty silences. The scan read me before I could knock. The door slid open and I heard my mother's steps hurrying down. She was close. She must have been tracking my UConn.

"Maddie!" she exclaimed, as if in surprise. A rush of artificial warmth swept in from behind her. She took my face in her rough, cracked hands and I felt the fragility of her skin pressed against my cheeks. "How much did you go for?"

I opened my mouth . . . and nothing came out.

Luckily—and as she was very good at doing—my mother completely misinterpreted my silence. "Oh, of course," she laughed. "You want to tell us at the same time. Well, hurry up then! Your father's waiting."

She floated away, giddy with excitement. I followed her through the hallway and into the kitchen like I was going to my execution. I paused at the edge of the dining room and waited for it to connect to my UConn. It was currently dark to me: I could barely see the outline of my father sitting at the table, waiting for us. And then suddenly it synced. The room lit up in whites and blues—ANRON colors—and the scent of roasted chicken hit my senses like a punch to the mouth.

Dad rose. "Maddness!" he laughed. The nickname was enough to make me suddenly feel three years old again. I hugged him, pressing my face briefly into the rough fabric of his vest. I felt his fingers shaking lightly across my back. He pulled away and grinned. "I hope you're hungry. We bought your favorite."

I was starving. But I was also nervous, and the combination made me feel nauseous. One glance told me that my mother had splurged on PERCO's premium range. My heart sank. I loaded up my plate and gamely shoved a whole spoonful of the paste into my mouth. The moment it hit my taste implants, I closed my eyes.

"Thank you," I said, and I could only hope that she could tell how much I meant it. "It's delicious."

Mom relaxed, smiling. For a while, it felt like the sound of spoons scraping plates was all there was in the world. And the taste brought me right back to the time I'd scored at the top of the Experimental leaderboard for six months running. Dad had taken me skimming—I'd laughed as he'd tried to gamely outrace me. Mom had bought dinner and we'd eaten it overlooking the river.

I swallowed past the buttery thickness now and felt the knot in my chest ease. Maybe everything would be all right. Maybe the food would work its magic and put us into that pleasant, sated state where we didn't have the energy to argue, and I'd just tell them and they'd nod and accept, and then everything would be . . .

"So, how was your Auctioning?" Dad blurted out.

My daydream imploded. I put my fork down, took a breath, and then choked for a moment as the taste of herbed butter threatened to come back up.