Firstlife

“Might Equals Right, eh?”

My derision causes him to tap faster. “One decision can change your circumstances, Miss Lockwood. Just one.”

I smile a little too sweetly at him. “One bullet can change yours.”

The smile he gives me is just as sweet. “Up to this point, I’ve been easy on you. Keep pushing, and you’ll see my worst.” He reaches into his pocket and throws what looks to be a black button at me. A button that hits the floor because I don’t even try to catch it. “Almost forgot. This is from your mother.”

Why would she give me a button?

He leaves at last, locking me inside the room.

My tears long to break free, and my knees long to buckle, but I maintain my tough-as-nails attitude. The cameras...

With a trembling hand, I pick up the button. A flash-scribe, I realize. A way to send a recorded message. Now I’m even more confused. What does the mother who abandoned me, not visiting for seven months, wish to say to me?

Ignoring a swell of eagerness—have to know, now, now, now!—I stuff the device in my own pocket and stumble to Bow to check the fetters for locks. I find none. Good. I can free her, but oh, it’s going to hurt.

What’s a little more pain, right?

The outside of both cuffs is heated, and—I hiss—by the time I press the release button on each one, seven blisters decorate my fingers and palms.

The glow of the metal dwindles, the needles on the inside of each device detaching from bone and ejecting from her skin.

Clink, clink. The cuffs fall away, but she doesn’t wake. I’m glad. I’m not in the mood to deal with her.

With a curse, I tumble onto my squeaky mattress and stare up at the ceiling. Life sucks.

A muted scream suddenly echoes from the floor, and I jolt.

Isn’t Clay, isn’t Clay, isn’t Clay. He’s safe. He made it out.

Will I?

The flash-scribe is practically burning a hole in my pocket, my eagerness overtaking me. I withdraw the device and press my thumb into the top. As soon as my print registers, my mother’s voice fills the cell.

“Hi, Ten. Bet you never expected to hear from me, huh?”

My heart thumps against my ribs, and my gut clenches.

“I know I haven’t come to see you in forever, but there’s a very good reason for that. A beautiful secret. One that’s taught me how to be a mother again. I’m sorry, sweet girl. I’m sorry for everything, and I love you, I really do. Your dad loves you, too, but he’s scared of losing his job and—well. That’s not your problem. We’ll be coming to visit you soon, and it’s my hope we’ll take you with us when we leave.”

Hope flares, only to die a quick death. This is a trick. Has to be.

A baby cries in the background. My mom says, “Shh, shh,” as if there’s a human being with her rather than a television, and I frown. No one under the age of eighteen—besides me—has ever been allowed inside the house. My mom’s rule.

And I get it. She prefers not to look at what she isn’t allowed to have: another kid. She wants one as fervently as I want a sibling—someone to love me unconditionally, just because I’m me, not because of what I can do. But, long ago, the realms made a deal with the human governments. To prevent overcrowding in Secondlife, where spirits can live for centuries, even millennia, there is a one-child-per-family limit during Firstlife. In return, the realms share their advanced technology, like this flash-scribe.

My mom clears her throat. “I’ve got to go, sweetheart. I know I screwed up with you, but I’m going to give my—child a better life. You have my word.”

Why the hesitation before child?

I toss the device across the room. She doesn’t love me. She can’t. And there’s no way my dad even likes me.

Are you sure about that?

A memory takes center stage in my mind. My dad carries me on his shoulders as I stretch my arms overhead, doing my best to capture a star in the sky.

“Almost got it,” he says with a laugh.

My mom claps and calls, “You can do it, sweet girl.”

All right, maybe they loved me once. The emotion has withered. Like my heart.

A moan escapes Bow. A second later, she comes up swinging, panting for breath. Her gaze is far from disoriented as it finds mine.

“Are you okay?”

Her first thought is of my welfare? Even though I did nothing as the guards knocked her around? My guilt returns. “I’m fine. What about you?”

“Fine, no thanks to Killian.”

I remember the way he raced past her. “What’d he do?”

“Doesn’t matter.” She plays with the edge of her blanket. “Vans is right, you know. At least about this. One decision can change your circumstances.”

“I know, but—” Wait. “How do you know what he said?”

“The body—I mean, my body—might have been drugged, but I was still aware.”

How’d she manage that? I’ve been drugged before, and I was out for the count.

“Sign with Troika, Ten.” Those copper eyes beseech me. “You’ll never regret it.”

“Prove it. Give me a guarantee.”

“My word isn’t good enough?”

No. “Why do you want me, anyway? Why do they?”

She inhales deeply, exhales sharply. “Have you ever heard of a Conduit?”

“Yes. Someone or something used as a means of sending something from one place or person to another.”

“Right. And in Troika, a Conduit is the highest type of General, second only to King. Conduits are rare and precious, powerful both here and there. They absorb sunlight from Earth—which is more than just heat and illumination—and direct the beams to the realm. There are whispers about you,” she says, only to go quiet.

“Whispers suggesting I’m a Conduit?” Someone rare and precious? Powerful? I laugh at the absurdity. “Wrong.”

“How do you know?”