Page 153 of Coldwire
I straighten up at the thought. A year ago, when Chung speculated about bringing me downcountry, he mused that no one would even know I hadn’t been born organically human.Unless they opened your head to find only data chips instead of brain matter.He clearly brought the plan into effect. If NileCorp ended up naming me after Eirale, then this is the original’s genetic material they used for 3D printing. They installed my neural network on the chips. And when Kieren restored my memory, he slammed my entire lifetime as Lia in there too.
I roll my shoulder, trying to ease the cramp there. Medaluo’s agents took my clothes and gave me a dreary white uniform to wear. They took myshoes with the tracker inside, and I haven’t a clue whether it’s even emitting anymore. My feet stay bare against the cold floor. My toes have gone numb.
In this body, I can bruise. I can bleed to death. I can board a ship and ride through rough waves and make a visit to Temple Island. I don’t really want to go upcountry ever again if that puts me at risk of getting divorced from this feeling—this sense that I amreal, despite everything.
The door finally opens, startling me out of my reverie.
“Sorry for the delay.”
The woman comes in speaking Atahuan. She’s Medan, but her speech is like mine, an accent that possess the smoothness of growing up in Atahua. Her pantsuit is pressed and pristine, not a wrinkle appearing even when she drags the chair out from the other side of the table and takes a seat.
I know her. She’s the woman who stepped out in Threto. The one who directed us to the abandoned apartment, the one who traced the infinity on her collar to indicate her employment under NileCorp.
I freeze. What is this? Has Medaluo’s federal bureau been infiltrated? Or was she undercover in NileCorp?
“My name is Poppy Kam,” she says, lowering the glasses that were sitting over her head. “But just call me Poppy. I hate formalities.”
Slowly, I sit up straight.“Kam?”I echo.
“That’s right.” She makes no indication that the name is anything special. She hums under her breath while she scrolls on her glasses, her long nails tapping down on the table. Her hair doesn’t budge from behind her ears. It’s tucked with such orderly smoothness that there must be droves of pins in the layers keeping the strands straight. I can’t gauge her age. She could be anywhere between twenty and forty.
“Why don’t we start here?” she says. “What do you remember of your installation?”
The room grows colder.
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
She waves up and down. “This body.”
I stay aloof. “I didn’t realize there were so many terms for birth these days.”
Poppy lifts her glasses a half inch. She eyes me. “Is that how we’re playing it?”
“I just feel like a lot of people would bristle to hear childbirth calledinstallation.…”
A sharp metallic sound clatters on the table. She’s produced a scalpel from her suit jacket. It lands just out of reach from my fingers.
“Shall we test that?” she asks. “Let’s cut into you.”
“Blood and guts,” I return strongly.
She picks up the scalpel. The blade glints from the floodlights shining in the corner. She’s really going to do it, I realize when the tip touches the back of my arm, pressing in. It breaks skin. Pain shoots up my limb, stings so badly that I can’t help but try to tug myself away, resist against the handcuffs, find some sense of safety.
“Stop, stop,” I hiss.
Poppy withdraws the scalpel. She pauses. The wound is very small. No longer than a fingernail, no deeper than a beesting.
“Let’s try your head next.”
“Enough,” I demand. “I don’t remember much of the process. I have a vague sense of being put in. That’s it.”
“That was easy, wasn’t it?”
Her tone is far too casual for a Medan officer. I don’t know who I’m talking to right now, NileCorp or Medaluo.
“It’s interesting,” Poppy continues. “To have succeeded in making so much trouble for them as Lia Ward that they figured they needed to invent a whole new backstory.”
I attempt to splay my hands. The handcuffs hold my wrists in place. A windowless Medan facility is perhaps only the second-worst place to be after a windowless NileCorp facility. At least in Medaluo, they don’t have as much to threaten me with.
