Dissolution

Chapter 10 - Citizen Erased

Walking back felt like I was stepping through a dream. Time slid past me like the river. Without a UConn to distract me, seconds stretched into hours. My half-melted clothes dried to a stiff crisp. The river had leached away the colors and the shape, leaving them soft and withered. It felt like they might disintegrate at any moment. I hoped they didn't. I couldn't exactly just stroll into a shop and scan my UConn at the moment.

Although . . . perhaps I could almost pass as human again. The swelling had gone down in the cold. I tried not to think about how I was healing so fast. My skin was still angry and the wind prickled uneasily over my bare scalp, but I'd seen stranger things. Carly, with her bright yellow skin and her cat eyes, was relatively normal for someone who worked at Entertainment Limited, and she only warranted an appreciative second glance these days because she was so naturally gorgeous underneath it.

I'd wanted something like that once—a whole body do-over. Black with stardust, maybe. Or silver. Given it was expressly forbidden in my contract, it had been just a dream—like leaving ANRON—but it had been fun to fantasize and plan what I'd do when I moved to MERCE.

"Bright purple," Jake had suggested with a completely straight face. "Blue with stripes. Green with diamonds."

I'd laughed and pushed him away. We'd been lying on his bed watching Ads after work. I'd felt like staying in and just losing myself for a while in a different world. And it was a different world; his room was the opposite of mine. For one, he didn't have piles of electronics stacked against his walls. No, it was exactly like him. Neat. Carefully ordered. A little small—his mother was owned by DRAYTH and his father by PERCO—but still well-loved. "I don't even like purple."

He'd kissed my nose. "Doesn't matter. Whatever you choose, you'll still be you."

I wondered if he would recognize me now. If my parents would. Thinking of them made something in me catch. I remembered the sound of something hard striking flesh and my father's groan of pain through the wall. But the suits had come after me almost immediately, hadn't they? They hadn't had time to hurt him again?

I went back in time to that lonely spot where I'd crouched outside and listened to my life ending. I replayed it in my head. The footsteps. The shouting. The thud. Something hot burned in my eyes. He'd fought for me, in the end. The thought hurt like a jab to the ribs. I couldn't think about it anymore. I hoped he was all right. That both of them were.

The city came closer. I kept an eye out for DRAYTH mercs or soldiers, my heart in my mouth. I didn't dare walk on the roads where they patrolled, so I crept along the banks of the river that had both killed me and saved my life, hoping they were looking further downstream. The land rolled and dipped around me, until it started inexorably rising. Above me, I saw the vast silhouettes of the warehouse district and heard distant chatter. There was the crash of moving pallets and the whir of machinery. Feet occasionally pattered closer to the edge, but nobody looked down.

I kept walking. I hit the DRAYTH sector next, with its rows of neat apartments clustered close around the entrance to the Underground. Here people glanced around and watched each other, but I was close enough to the city now that most of them looked at me once and then looked away. Every time I saw a crop of mousy brown hair, I froze. But it was never Eleika. I was painfully glad—I didn't know what I'd do if I saw her. Or if she saw me. I breathed deeply, trying to quiet my jumping nerves. I was out for a walk. I was just out for a walk.

The DRAYTH sector faded away. After that, I walked under the shadows of houses that could have been mine. ANRON, HARLIN, MERCE. I reached the path angling up toward the bridge and resisted the temptation to look for my skimboard. I knew it would be gone. I wouldn't be able to use it anyway.

I climbed the sightseeing path until I was at the bridge. I crossed it, feeling like a ghost. I took the walkway this time, heading up the hill, moving slower and slower. I was tired. Everything still hurt. And my body didn't want to cross that barrier, didn't want to turn that corner where the hovercar had pulled out, didn't want to see . . .

I put one foot in front of the other. And then, before I was ready, I was back in the city.

It crept up on me, closer, closer, and then suddenly I was there. Back in my previous life, before the Auctioneer had shaken her head and two suits had shown up at my door. The CBD spread out before me, the ANRON and MERCE towers marking the path to the central Promenade. Even further away, the Shareholders' sector gleamed in the late morning light. If I ignored the taste of ash and the prickling pain across my skin, I could pretend that nothing had ever happened.

Except that I couldn't turn my UConn on without bringing every suit and merc down on me within twenty seconds.

I gritted my teeth and pushed forward. The city was packed. I belatedly remembered that it was Saturday. I could barely see the shops and their gleaming windows for the press of bodies. No wonder the path had been so empty. Everyone was already here.

I bit my lip and tried to stay calm. Nobody was looking for me, surely. As far as they knew, I was dead. And not even Mom would recognize me now. I was safe here in the city. I was safe.

That's what I told myself as I walked down to the city center. That's what I told myself as the streets turned into avenues and then into the Promenade, clustered thick with people and shops and dazzling Ads. And that's what I kept telling myself, right up until the moment that suddenly, all around me, the lights turned off and the big Promenade billboards went black.

I couldn't have said what Ads they were cycling through today, but I felt the lack of them like a hit, like a sudden vacuum. The fear rushed back. What was happening? The screens hadn't gone black since . . .

Since I was four, and HARLIN had announced that their systems had been attacked.

Right on cue the screens flickered back to life with the flat royal blue of our emergency announcements. If my UConn had been on, the message would have beamed directly to my feed. There was the solemn sound of a voice clearing. I recognized it immediately as the same voice that had told me to "stop, to stop my vehicle now." It rolled over the hushed crowd, over everyone frozen in place as they stared up at the nearest screen like children. Its gravity made the world seem to drop.

"ATTENTION, CITIZENS OF UNILOX. BE ALERT BUT NOT ALARMED."

Alert but not alarmed. Alert but not alarmed. Alertbutnotalarmed. I heard the echo as if I was in a chamber, a locked room. Unilox had five levels of emergency. I didn't know what to think about ranking as a Level 2 threat. Not that anybody else was acting like it. People around me started crying out, gasping, as if the world was about to end. I looked around desperately, but there was nowhere to hide. The voice rolled on, inexorable. "A CRIMINAL HAS ESCAPED OUR SECURITY FORCES. HER WHEREABOUTS ARE UNKNOWN."

A huge image stretched across the screen then, suspended over the emergency blue, and it took me two stupid seconds before I realized that I was staring at a picture of myself. The security cameras outside Unilox Hall must have snapped it the moment I ran out of the Auctioning. My eyes were huge in a pale face. I looked guilty, ashamed. I stared back at myself. Had it really been only yesterday? I felt a sudden, awful sympathy for that girl, whose world had been shattered by a single word. Who thought she was worthless because she hadn't been Auctioned.

"HER FULL SERIAL NUMBER IS XKC2501PT121. SHE WAS LAST SEEN WEARING PURPLE IMPLANTS, MODEL C71, NEAR THE RIVER."

The emergency announcer paused for emphasis, or maybe for breath. I couldn't tell. Maybe it was a machine. "HER ASSETS HAVE BEEN FROZEN, BUT THE CRIMINAL REMAINS ARMED AND DANGEROUS. I REPEAT: THE CRIMINAL IS ARMED AND DANGEROUS. DO NOT APPROACH HER BY YOURSELF. IF YOU SEE HER OR TRACE HER SCAN, PLEASE REPORT IMMEDIATELY TO ANRON LIFE LIMITED FOR A TWO THOUSAND CREDIT BONUS."

The transmission cut out, ended. And everyone around me went insane.