Being in that tub was the most relaxing thing I’d ever done. I couldn’t believe I’d waited half my life to try it. Penny sat on the other side of the tub with a bottle of something called grappa, which was clear, came in a tall bottle, and tasted horrible.
“I totally needed this,” Penny said, cracking her neck and leaning back. “I’ve been cooped up in that hellhole for days.”
“Hellhole?”
“Yeah, that man-girl they assigned me to,” she said. “That’s where I’ve been. I had to camp out there until we got her set up. I’ve been sleeping on a secondhand couch.”
“She let you stay there?” Penny laughed.
“Hell no. She didn’t know I was there. It was three days of babysitting and memory manipulation. It gets exhausting after a while.”
“Oh.” I wanted to ask her if she wasn’t afraid of getting beaten up or worse, but it was obvious that she wasn’t, and I was kind of embarrassed to admit that I would have been. I’d seen Calliope up close, and she scared me more than most guys.
“Fortunately, she’s as stupid as they come,” Penny said. “It’s like using a sledgehammer on a nail, with her. Anyway, that’s why I haven’t been around much.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it isn’t. You’ve been through some major stuff lately. I wanted to be here.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I just didn’t say anything. The truth, though, was that I was really glad she showed up.
“That thing with Ted …is that what you meant to happen?” I asked.
“It was all you. Nothing was planned.”
“What did happen?”
“You shut him off.”
“Like a machine?”
“Kind of.”
She took another drink and looked me in the eye through the steam.
“You’ve got a particular little talent there,” she said.
“I killed him.”
“Are you sorry you did?”
“No.” In the back of my mind, I had this feeling that Karen would have been upset if she was alive to know what I’d done. But she wasn’t, thanks to him. “I should have done it sooner.”
Penny nodded and smiled. She took a swig off of her long-necked bottle.
“I’m really sorry it happened,” she said, “but at least you get it. Not everyone does, but you get it.”
“Get what?”
“That there are people like Karen and people like Ted. People like your friend; they want to make things better. It’s good that they do, but the problem is that people like Ted won’t ever change on their own. You saw it when you looked inside him. People like him get in the way. Someone’s got to make the hard decisions. You get that.”
“If I’d done it sooner …”
“You can’t change it now. Next time you won’t wait. You can honor her that way. I’m sorry, but it’s the best you can do.”
I was starting to like Penny a lot. I worried at first about hanging out with someone like me, but it turned out to be really great. I could actually talk about the things I did and saw, and she understood. She’d been through it too.
More than that, though, she made me feel included. I’d been on the outside my whole life. It was nice to be on the inside, for once.
“Nicely done with that revivor in the alley, by the way.”
“Thanks.” I was so drunk that the thing in the alley felt like a dream. Had I told her about that?
“Gun work out okay for you?”
“Yeah.” I thought it would have a big kick, but it didn’t. It was light and easy to use.
“I picked it myself. Top-of-the-line.”
I thought it might be too small to do much good, but it stopped the dead woman cold. It made me think back to that time the revivor got into my apartment and grabbed me. It was so strong, I couldn’t do anything to stop it. It killed my neighbor, almost killed Karen, and took me away. I was totally helpless. There was nothing I could do. It was different in the alley. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t control the revivor. The gun changed everything.
“Is it really okay to just kill that woman?”
“Who, Calliope?”
“Yeah.”
“Let me tell you something about her,” Penny said. “We looked into her background, and you know what we found? She was raised in a state-run orphanage, but her mother didn’t drop her off there; she sold the fetus off to one of those church-run facilities, where they grew her to term in a jar. That name of hers was randomly generated by a computer. How do you like that?”
“Really?”
“Those places don’t have the room for all the ones that come in. The computer runs a lotto to weed them out when space gets tight. It’s all based on genetic profiles and all automatic, so no one has to feel guilty. You know how many times she got passed over while she was there?”
“No.”
“Thirteen times. Thirteen! That’s beyond luck. She shouldn’t even be alive. She was born to do this.”
I nodded, but I wasn’t sure.
“Look, if it bothers you, think of it this way—she’s going to save a lot of people. Doesn’t that make it worth it?”
“Is she really going to stop it from happening?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Will it work?”
“There’s a chance that it will.”
“So it might not.”
“It beats doing nothing,” she said. “Anyway, it’s not even just about this one incident. Even if the city survives, look around it. It’s rotting from the inside. The people who live in it are sheep who sell themselves to their government, literally. Their votes haven’t meant anything for years. We didn’t make it that way; they were living under the illusion they had any say in what went on for as far back as anyone can remember. Things were never going to change, not until we came along, not until we got organized. All Fawkes and his people can think about is their precious freedom. It’s ridiculous. They’re not free. They never were.”
“I guess.”
“People like Fawkes, they need to be removed. With them out of the way, things will start to get better. We won’t get credit for it and we’ll never get thanked, but things will get better.”
The bubbles and the heat had me sleepy and kind of giddy.
“Anyway, you’d be crazy not to love the perks,” Penny said. “The living arrangements, the clothes, the cars, the food, booze—everything. It beats scraping by.”
“…and you really think I might be this person?” I asked. “You really think I might be the one Ai is looking for?”
“I really think so.”
She grinned, nudging me with her foot under the water.
“You’re like me,” she said. “We’re not just one of them. We’ve got something even a lot of our own kind doesn’t have.”
“We do?”
“It’s like anything else; some people are better at things than others. Not everyone can do what you did to Ted. We’re a cut above, you and me. We’re elite.”
It sank in for the first time then. I wasn’t sure if it was the heat or the booze, or if I was just finally coming to
