Mom and Dad spent several hours that night telling us all the outdated information they knew about San Francisco and the outside world that the Hearth hadn’t taught us. Even though Taema and I had already learned some of it from our contraband tablet (still hidden under our mattress), we were both totally overwhelmed. It was so much information that we couldn’t take it all in. Mom and Dad were desperate to try and give us as much of a head start as possible, so we didn’t say anything and just listened.

That night we lay forehead to forehead on the bed, looking at the bandages on our wrists.

“We’re already Impure, I guess,” Taema whispered. She looked so young, so vulnerable, and I hated that I must have looked the same way.

“The Pure and Impure stuff is bullshit, Taema.”

Her mouth twisted. She knew that on some level, but she couldn’t help her gut reaction. That the technology she’d been taught was evil her whole life was now implanted under her skin. “It’s really happening, isn’t it?”

“Once we’re gone, we’ll never come back,” I said, and I felt both triumphant and a little sad. For all Mana-ma and the Hearth’s philosophy weren’t for us anymore—especially me—it was the only place we knew. Our friends were here. Our parents. Our whole way of life. Through that tablet, we’d only had a little peek into the window of the Real World. Everything was going to change.

We fell asleep that night knowing our time in the Hearth was coming to an end.

25. Taema

TWENTY-FIVE

TAEMA

It’s time for my shift in the Verve lounge in a warehouse down by the docks. The reminder came through on my implant, on an untraceable line. This week, Tila’s shifts are Monday and Wednesday.

Nazarin’s on security duty. They’re trying to arrange his Test, and he’s bending over backward trying to find excuses for it to be delayed until after the drop.

As I take the MUNI through the glowing green tunnels, I can’t stop thinking about the Test. All the images that flashed before my eyes, the smells, the confusion. The simulated murder that had seemed so real. Murder. The word that seemed so ugly when I first heard it, but now I’ve acted out homicidal violence in two simulations. I’m about to dive back into another Vervescape, and who knows what or who I will find there.

Once I’m at the warehouse, I force myself to push the macabre thoughts from my mind. I have to focus on being Tila again, one of the newest lucid dreamers in the Ratel. A Rook.