Page 13

EON

I ’d stayed at the clinic after Dev left, not wanting to go all the way back to my apartment deep in the bowels of Magenta before the job tonight.

I tried to get ready, but my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

I’d poked myself painfully putting in brown contacts, and after the second time I smeared mascara across my cheekbone, I threw the wand in the sink, clenching the sides of the steel bowl until my knuckles went white.

Professor Tanaka’s kind face was seared into my vision, even with my Vysor lying on the counter behind me.

When I was her student, I thought she was the coolest person in the entire world. Headstrong, unapologetically rebellious, and always meeting my problems with a laugh. I idolized her, even after I saw what that rebelliousness earned her.

I remembered the last time we talked. She found me late one night while I was reconstructing data from coma patients’ brain scans on an Elysium University supercomputer—our little off-the-books project.

We’d agreed I would come in after hours, no one to bother me, no one to question what I was doing.

It had been a few months since I’d lost my scholarship—lost my place at Elysium—but Tanaka had done what she could to keep me working.

To anyone passing by, I looked like a grad student burning the midnight oil.

But no one ever came around, and no one ever asked why my eye and fingers were twitching as I immersed myself in cyberspace.

She sat next to me in silence, the only light in the room from the holographic terminal screen I had open, data piling up as the computer churned.

She’d been drinking. The glass was still in her hand. I don’t think I had ever seen her drink before—not even at the lab parties.

I shouldn’t have pried. Hell, if she’d been anyone else, I wouldn’t have cared at all back then. But I still idolized her then.

“Rough day?” I asked.

“Grant was denied.” She took another sip from her coffee mug that read World’s Best Teacher , the fumes of hard alcohol wafting over to me.

“Sorry to hear that.” What else was there to say? I knew what was coming next.

“I can’t afford to keep you on. You know I have to give priority to my students who are still enrolled at the university.”

“I get that.” I didn’t look at her. A long silence stretched between us, the only sound the faint whirring of the cooling fans in my display’s hardware.

“Are you still working down at that…club?”

“Girl’s gotta eat.” And pay off medical debt and support her other habits—but the professor didn’t need to know that.

“I don’t like that.”

“It’s just a job, and the pay is good.” Far better than what she’d been paying me, to be honest. I couldn’t survive without it. My pinky twitched.

“Is that the only reason?” I finally looked at her. Her gaze was fixed on my fingers.

“Yeah. At least there, they don’t keep me locked in a basement, hidden from your colleagues.

Wouldn’t want them to know your best work comes from a dropout.

” Harsh words, but I really didn’t care.

I didn’t care about anything then, except where I could get my next fix—when I could let the Flux sing in my blood.

I only kept working for her so I could surf the Elysium Net high as a kite.

Their cyberspace was second only to what the corps had, and at night it was all mine.

I’d let the Vector and Flux build inside me until I was barely more than the void, where my memory faded, and it was just me and the machine.

But even that wasn’t enough anymore. Nothing made up for the fact that I was alone.

That despite a constant stream of bodies and faces who claimed to need me more than anything else, I had absolutely no one.

The silence between us stretched into discomfort, the only sound my nails on my favorite keyboard, making minor adjustments to the simulation on the screen.

“I must seem ancient to you, and by all accounts, I am.”

I stopped typing and looked at her. “Professor, I’m not sure what—”

“I remember before, when no one had Flux. Before we even had Stellarium. The fossil fuel age. The world was so fucked up then—or at least, that’s what I thought.

They sold us on the idea that if we just had clean power, everything would be better.

Society would be better. The world that was burning, saved.

War, averted. Then Stellarium fell out of the sky like some sort of fucking Bible story.

But now…” She stared into middle space before shaking her head, the coffee concoction in her mug sloshing.

“God, I really sound ancient right now, don’t I? But you and your generation, you’re the future. You and all the other kids with Flux—I have to believe it means something. That you’ll fix this world.”

“I didn’t take you for a believer, Professor.”

At that, her face twisted. “Not in the way so many are. But yes…I believe—in something, at least.” A long pause.

“You’re electroteknik. I’ve never met anyone else with that Flux.

You can use it in cyberspace, can’t you?

That’s why you’ve always been so good at this.

” It wasn’t a question. As such, I didn’t answer.

She swirled the liquid in her mug, her eyes distant again. I knew that look. It was the look of someone staring at something broken and trying to decide if it was worth saving, or already too far gone.

“The problem isn’t technology, you know,” she said after a moment. “It’s people. We’ve always been our own worst enemy. The Stellarium didn’t change that—it just made the knives sharper and the walls higher.”

“Sounds like something that needs to be broken, rather than fixed.”

To my surprise, Tanaka laughed softly, though there wasn’t much humor in it. “Sometimes breaking things is the first step to building something better.” She took another long sip from her mug. “I want you out of that club.”

“I didn’t really come here for a lecture on modesty. If you’re looking for a model citizen, I’m not it. I’m not good at all.”

She interrupted me. “It’s not about that. I couldn’t care less who you share your body with. It’s more about…” Her gaze drifted to my fingers again. “Your mother isn’t doing better, is she?”

At that, I closed off, ready for whatever little heart-to-heart she thought this was to be over. I turned back to the screen and stream of data flickering across it. Then warmth spread through my shoulder as her frail, wrinkled hand came to rest there.

I looked back at her, and the Vector in my system let me catch every single micro expression, every twitch of her face. I watched as she decided I was too broken to fix.

“I’m going to ask you to do something. Something I can no longer do—hell, maybe something I never could have done. But you can. And you say you’re not good, but I know you’ll say yes.”

“Is it legal?” I asked.

“No.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“Very.”

They’d just told me there was nothing they could do to help my mom. My debt was insurmountable. And now I didn’t even have this job to scrape some semblance of meaning from. All I had was the void—and it was waiting with open arms.

Fuck it. Might as well go out with a bang.

“I’ll do it.”

That was the last time I’d seen her. She’d connected me with Taos, another former student of hers. It had been obvious immediately why she’d sent me. Taos wasn’t completely incompetent, but she was far from capable. I’d been ready to die, ready to let the lights and electrons carry me away.

Until he nearly killed me.

Until I realized death wasn’t the answer.

I’d felt every cell in my body fight back, and it had felt right—like waking up after months of sleepwalking.

It wasn’t about him. It was about me.

I’d felt something beyond the numb haze of Vector and the empty echo of flesh sold by the hour. I’d felt alive, even as I nearly died. The synchronization of our Flux had just been the catalyst that jolted me back into my own skin.

I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about that feeling. I’d spent the last six months chasing it, learning everything I could about him. Waiting for my chance to get revenge for all those lives taken—while still craving the feeling of his hand around my throat…

I shook my head and looked at the girl I once was looking back at me in the mirror. Top of her class. Poster child for the university’s diversity campaigns in cyber engineering. An outlander girl, daughter of an agricultural worker, who’d climbed her way to the best university on the West Coast.

That was until she’d needed help. Until the floor had fallen out from under her.

Grades slipped. Probation. Scholarships retracted. Dismissal. Not because she wasn’t capable—but because she was drowning in medical bills, working full time, and trying to keep up with an academic load designed for someone with no outside responsibilities.

They’d wanted me when I was shining. And when I faltered, they reminded me who I really was under all that shiny chrome exterior. Street trash. Not worth the effort.

So I found a job where everyone wanted me. Where all I had to do was dance and fuck and the money poured in.

I clenched the edge of the sink again, eyes on the reflection staring back.

I’d pulled out my old Elysium University button-up, tied it at my waist and paired it with a tight skirt.

My hair was dyed back to its natural deep brown.

The only difference from that hopeful student was the brown contacts covering my violet eyes—a Flux mutation too recognizable to leave exposed.

I looked in the mirror and saw a girl who was hopeful, polished, with no hard edges. I barely recognized her.

Tonight, she was who I would be.

I was good at changing myself into whoever everyone else needed me to be.

People thought being a sex worker was about sex—and sure, it was—but most clients didn’t really see you.

They saw a mirror of themselves. They just wanted someone to listen.

I’d learned quickly how to mold myself into whatever persona they needed.

It came easily. I’d been hiding my true self since I was a kid.

I’d probably spent more time talking to clients then fucking them.

Probably.

Tonight I wasn’t me. Tonight I was bait. My trap was set—now I just had to get those kaijin pendejos to walk into it.

Because six months ago, staring death in his face, I realized I wasn’t ready to disappear after all. Because my mother deserved better.

Because I did too.

Mercy met me outside the bar looking hot.

Stunning, in fact. Her warm olive skin glowed under the hot pink neon of the bar sign flashing overhead.

She was 5’2”—if you were generous—and all curves.

Her tightly curled hair was dyed dusty pink at the tips, perfectly matched to her lipstick.

She wore a tight pink dress with ridiculous cutouts, walking the razor’s edge of trashy—perfect for what I had in mind.

I filled her in on what she needed to know.

“Girl, what the hell are you wearing?” She eyed my outfit with theatrical distaste, and I chuckled. “You a university girl again?”

“I am tonight.” I winked at her.

A sly smile curled her lips. “Just out here slumming it in Magenta, huh? Can’t say I blame you—we have the most fun. That why you changed your hair too?”

“Yeah, but enough questions, Mercy. We’ve got work to do. You know your guy?”

She swiped at her Vysor, taking one last look at the image I’d sent her, then nodded. She flicked it away and her expression slackened instantly, like she’d already taken a few too many hits that night. She was a pro—I’d learned a lot of tricks from her.

“Let’s get to work, chica.” She held out her palm, and I slipped her half of tonight’s payment in hardcreds. She counted it, then raised an eyebrow at me. “Girlfriend treatment?”

I nodded.

She pressed two fingers to her lips and blew me a kiss. “Only for you, E.”

She spun and walked past the bouncer at the door without even pretending to stop. I followed, trying to get my racing heart to slow the fuck down.

I could feel my Flux spiking and took a deep breath. I couldn’t let it show—couldn’t leave behind anything that might identify me. I counted down from four, again and again, slow breaths, until my heart eased and the static fizz of Flux faded.

“You okay, E?” Mercy had turned around, giving me a concerned look.

“Yeah. Just a bit of nerves. Been a minute since I’ve had a job.”

She took my hand and gave me a soft smile. “I’ll buy you a drink. Come on.”