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  Semitranslucent lettering appeared before her eyes.

  Persistent Gore settings may not be changed in Story Mode.

  Another alert appeared as soon as the first dissolved.

  Oh, Miyo, you’ve cut yourself! The sight of blood makes you woozy.

  Penalty: -1 to Speed, -1 to Dexterity, -1 to Perception

  Duration: Until your wound is sealed.

  Objective: Seal your wound to stop the bleeding.

  As the letters dissipated, the world dimmed a few degrees and everything went fuzzy at the edges.

  Carina knew she wouldn’t have cut herself in the real world. Even ignoring the fact that her fingernails were not razor-sharp claws, she was too used to avoiding contact with her scars when they were acting up. This must somehow be a part of the game. She reached for her cheek to test the wound, then stopped with her fingers in front of her face.

  Embedded in the tip of the index and middle finger of both hands was a blade, honed to a razor’s edge. Her thumbs, ring fingers, and little fingers were bladeless. She tapped her thumb against the flat of her index finger’s blade and felt the impact in her finger bone.

  “Skinner fingers,” she said, and immediately her superimposed memory banks corrected her—“Flesher fingers.” Skinner tribes didn’t exist in the fictional world of Tsunami Tsity.

  Carina turned in a circle, looking for anything resembling a med kit or dresser where she might find some KwikStitch to close the cuts on her cheek. Her head reeled with every movement, and the slight spinning didn’t stop when she did. She felt drunk.

  Careful not to cut herself again, Carina pressed the palm of her hand to her forehead. “How much Dexterity did I have before the penalty? One?”

  “Miyo, how many times are you going to make me call you?” Qiva yelled. “I swear to Envishtu, if you’re not out here in the next ten seconds…”

  A prompt flashed in the same semitransparent lettering:

  You can’t go out looking like that, Miyo!

  Objective2: Use makeup to cover your wound before facing your mother.

  Current objective failed in 10…9…8…

  Carina glanced around the room, head still reeling. Piles of clothes lay heaped around the floor of the bedroom, thrown across every surface, and strewn into the en suite bathroom.

  How was she supposed to find anything in all this crap?

  “I mean business, young lady!” Irritated footsteps stalked down the hall toward her.

  Current objective failed in 5…4…3…

  The world began flashing an alarming yellow-orange as the timer ran down.

  “Just give me a second!” Carina glanced down at the bloody nighty, then around the room. Clothes everywhere. Miyo was wardrobe-spoiled. The superimposed memory banks confirmed it with the slight twist of bias from the person the memories belonged to: Miyo’s parents thought she was wardrobe-spoiled. Carina called to Miyo’s mother, “I’m looking for my favorite shirt. I really wanted to wear it today.”

  In the hall, Qiva gave an overly dramatic sigh. “I keep telling you, if you would just let the slaves hang things up when you’re done with them, you wouldn’t have to look for them every day. When I was your age, my parents never would’ve let me get away with a room that looked like yours.”

  The countdown reset itself, and Miyo’s mother’s footsteps returned to the kitchen.

  Current objective failed in 129…128…127…

  Carina relaxed. Careful not to use her bladed fingertips, she whipped off the blood-spattered scrap of lace that passed for nightwear in this game and pressed it to her cheek. The cuts felt relatively shallow. They should be easy to close with a little KwikStitch.

  FleshGlue, the memory banks corrected. The developers probably hadn’t gotten the rights to use brand names in the game.

  Walking to the bathroom felt like wading drunk through chest-deep water. Complicating matters was the fact that the light didn’t come on automatically. Carina finally found an old-fashioned finger switch set in the wall and flipped it to On. The click resonated in her finger bones. The blades heightened her sensitivity to everything she touched. She didn’t just feel things with her skin anymore, she felt them with her meat and bones. It was nice.

  In front of the salvaged-wood vanity, Carina stopped cold. She couldn’t look away from the huge spotty mirror.

  She was beautiful.

  Even in the dimmed perception brought on by Miyo’s squeamishness, she could see thin silvery lines crisscrossing Miyo’s face and body like traces of spider silk—more like the faint memories of cuts than actual scars.

  Current objective failed in 121…120…119…

  Carina laughed and shook the awe off. People didn’t scar like that in the real world; they ended up looking like she did or worse. But gamers could dream, couldn’t they? She opened a drawer on the old vanity and started digging. Once she was finished playing through this game, she had to ask Nick how many hours he’d spent undressing Miyo when he played.

  Carina found FleshGlue in the third drawer, and spent several cautious seconds sealing Miyo’s cuts. To keep from slicing the tube open, Carina had to pinch it between her thumb and the last knuckle of her index finger. Maybe there was something to those claims that VR increased real-life dexterity.

  The prompt flashed again:

  Phew! Your cuts are sealed!

  Reward: Penalties to Speed, Dexterity, and Perception lifted.

  The world brightened and came back into focus.

  Objective: Hide your wounds before facing Mom.

  Current objective failed in 50…49…48…

  Rusty tins covered with peeling paint and First Earth symbols were scattered around the vanity top. Carina found one filled with foundation and scooped a little bit out with her finger blade before seeing the applicator lying nearby.

  She sighed in Miyo’s voice.

  After rinsing her fingers off under the faucet, she tried again, this time with the appropriate tool for the job. It was awkward. In real life, Carina avoided makeup like the plague—it made her scar feel too hot and her skin feel nasty—but she found that if she didn’t think about it too hard, Miyo’s superimposed memories took over and guided her through the application process.

  Slowly, the silvery scars and newly sealed cuts disappeared under the facial spackle.

  Much better, Miyo! Your face looks wound-free!

  Reward: +1 Appearance

  Hint: Appearance points affect other characters’ feelings toward you. A higher Appearance skill increases a character’s desire to help you and/or believe you.

  Carina blinked away the hint and checked the countdown.

  Current objective failed in 29…28…27…

  It was still running. She had achieved the objective. What else did it want?

  Silly Miyo, you’re still naked! You can’t go out like that!

  Objective: Get dressed and meet Mom for breakfast.

  Well, the game made a good point.

  Without the penalties handicapping her, it was much easier to get back to the bedroom. Carina rifled through the piles of clothes, her finger blades catching on the various leathers, until she came up with a high-cut skirt and a low-cut shirt. Miyo didn’t seem to have anything more practical.

  Current objective failed in 17…16…15

  She slipped the clothes on as quickly as she could, taking care not to slash herself, cut the clothing to ribbons, or screw up her makeup in the process.

  “And they liked this game?” Carina grumbled under Miyo’s breath as she stepped into a pair of soft leather shoes. “It’s just being a vain teenage girl.

  Current objective failed in 6…5…4…

  The world started flashing yellow again.

  Carina jogged out of her room and down the hall. She dropped onto a cushion across the fire pit from Miyo’s mother with one second to spare.

  The countdown timer disappeared and the world regained its normal colors.

  Qiva, an elegant-look
ing older woman with an equally heavy mask of makeup, raised an eyebrow and pointed one bladed finger at Carina’s chest. “That’s not your favorite shirt.”

  The kitchen strobed red and an alarm sounded. The formerly translucent prompt flashed in huge, solid letters.

  CAUGHT IN A LIE!

  YOU FAILED!

  Everything went black.

  ***

  The world faded in, and Carina found herself staring up at the ceiling of Miyo’s bedroom.

  “Miyo?” Qiva called. “Are you still in bed?”

  Carina sighed.

  TWO:

  Jubal

  NB 11:17:12 I need to hire you.

  I received and read Nickie-boy’s message a little past eleven in the morning on a Friday. After contacting my archeo-technomancer and hiring him to build me a crawler that would recognize First Earth characters and cut the search-time of the library of ancient texts I’d recently come into down to about two or three days—as opposed to the two or three years it would’ve taken me to read through each text myself—I took a shower, trimmed my stubble from Hungry Bullwolf back down to Ruggedly Handsome Devil, ate some double-chocolate caramel cookie-crunch bars, watched a couple naughty Pay-to-Remove-the-Pixelation holos with the pan-platform unscrambling app I’d downloaded, then cleaned and organized my machining shop downstairs.

  Knowing that I would have that crawler in four days really cut down on the feeling of urgency, but didn’t get rid of it entirely. When I ran out of things to do, I got on my wristpiece and pulled up articles on PCM. The only new bit of information was that an instance of beautiful corpse plague had jumped continents to a previously uninfected people who hadn’t had contact with anyone dying of PCM. Obviously, that didn’t rule out contact with anyone who carried the disease but couldn’t contract it.

  By the time I closed out of the articles, it was just after seven that night. Nick hadn’t sent any new messages. He wasn’t going to tell me why he wanted to hire me over wristpieces.

  Not that I blamed him. There were all kinds of infoserv apps out there that would let nefarious characters read your messages and use them against you. I have one—the SilverPlatter. I use it for checking Carina’s messages.

  Thinking about that had me reaching for my wristpiece again, but I stopped myself when I realized what I was doing. Carina would message me back when she finished Tsunami Tsity. I wasn’t going to check her messages over and over again while she was playing just so I could see that she was too immersed in the game to read them or get back to anyone.

  Although I did wonder whether Nick’s console populated your message list while you played. Receiving messages in the middle of the game could pull her out of the story and completely ruin her experience.

  I pulled up the SilverPlatter app and checked Carina’s messages. A few bulk sends from the Guild, all unread, and my message, also unread.

  Good, she wasn’t reading while she played. When she finished playing, she would get my message, we would go get some biscuits and gravy, then she would thank me for making her play Tsunami Tsity by telling me all the ways it had moved her and begging me to tell her all the ways it had marked me.

  A feminine sigh pulled me out of the imagined scene. My flame kigao, a pubescent human female rendered entirely in roiling orange-red fire and burning impurities, floated nearby.

  “Hey, sister, unless the electricity’s about to go out, I don’t need you editorializing,” I told her.

  The kigao drifted closer, a look of true concern in wide eyes the color of burning blood.

  I closed out of Carina’s messages and exited the SilverPlatter app. “I know what I’m doing.”

  My kigao hugged her arms around her midsection.

  I ignored her and reopened Nickie-boy the Dickie-boy’s message.

  NB 11:17:12 I need to hire you.

  He hadn’t sent it until after Carina started playing.

  I tapped my socked feet on my authentic wood floor, then took a deep breath and blew it back out. I wasn’t going to take Nick’s job, whatever it turned out to be, but I did need to know what he wanted done while Carina was indisposed. What was he trying to hide from her?

  Probably something idiotic and sentimental like stealing the Devil’s Eye Loupe from the Boxmaker so he could give it to Carina as a wedding present.

  As stupid as the sentiment behind it might be, a job like that would be exciting. Nobody could get into the Boxmaker’s workshop without being invited. It would be an even greater accomplishment than stealing Crangel’s sledgehammer.

  Additionally, it had been a while since I’d taken a contract. Before I was diagnosed, however long ago that had been. I wasn’t good with the passage of time, but it felt like years had gone by. Since then, all of my focus had been on trying to find a way to steal my life back from the jaws of untimely death. My brain was starting to get blue balls from all of this endless intellectual foreplay.

  I wouldn’t make any significant progress on finding the Garden of Time until the technomancer finished building my ancient text crawler—four days from now, if he could be believed. Then the progress would happen all at once. A quick contract might be just what I needed to scratch my itch.

  I slapped my thighs a few times each, alternating back and forth. There was also the possibility that whatever Nick wanted to hire me to do was dangerous. The kind of job a meathead knight might get killed on if he made the wrong move or if his thief buddy threw him under the barge. Bad stuff happens on missions. It happens all the time.

  “Hmm. Hmm hmm hmm.”

  I stood up, walked across the kitchen, and poured myself the last cup of Old Castle ebony roast from my percolator. I took a gulp, letting the coffee burn a path across my tongue, scald my taste buds, and leave a heady smoke trail down my throat.

  “I have to go out anyway,” I said, and took another deep drink. One more finished off the cup. “Got to get more coffee.”

  ***

  I messaged Nick on the way down to my loft’s first floor. By the time I’d made it to my Mangshan—the gorgeous copper and cobalt crotchrocket parked between my classic Culebra and rodded-out Pelotas Negras—Nick had gotten back to me agreeing to meet me at the diner immediately. He must’ve been staring at his wristpiece, waiting for me to respond.

  Interesting. Very interesting indeed. Of course, I hadn’t expected Nickie-boy to be as tight-lipped as Carina had been when she first hired me, but I also hadn’t expected an open display of desperation. That smacked of something more intense than a surprise wedding present.

  I threw on my jacket, pulled on my helmet and ventilator, and motored the ’Shan out into the icy night.

  Acid sleet pocked and plinked off of my helmet. I shrugged farther down into my jacket. We were right on the edge of winter, sure, but I didn’t remember it ever being quite this cold before. Either that overdue climate shift the meteorology blogs were always talking about was finally getting its glacial ass in gear or the PCM had reset my body’s temperature sensitivity to “hyper.”

  Luckily, Taern’s gridlock was at an all-time low, so I was making good time. At this rate, I would only be flash-frozen when I got to the diner.

  Fire exploded through my body. Molten slag flowed through my veins. Icy impurities sublimated in a puff of steam under the perfect, relentless heat. I could taste it, so spicy, so sweet, so hot. I could wrap that fire around my body like the arms of a burning lover and lie in it forever.

  My eyes snapped open, then flinched shut, blinded by yellow-white light. Blaring horns. Screaming tires. The world tipped on its side.

  My left shoulder, hip, and ankle hit the asphalt, whipping my head down after them. My helmet bounced off the road. Rocks and pavement ground against my jacket and sneaks like sandpaper. Cars, trucks, cargo carriers, and cabs flashed through my vision, but all from the ground up.

  Wrong angle. This was the wrong angle.

  A light pole flashed past my face. Then the ’Shan, sliding off at an angle on its side. Spar
ks flew from the foot peg. I spotted the rockcrete barrier in the ’Shan’s trajectory a second before they collided.

  “No!”

  The nose of the ’Shan hit the barrier with a crunch. It jumped a little, then dropped back down. Perfectly still. Deathly silent.

  “No, no, no.” I heaved myself to my feet. I stumbled the first couple steps, then broke into a run.

  “Hey, buddy, are you okay?” someone yelled.

  “Fuck off!” Everything was tinged with yellow. I smelled ozone.

  I knelt beside the ’Shan. The left Suma Cum Forte handgrip hung torn and ragged from the handlebar. A jagged piece of the front fender had snapped off when it hit the barrier and was embedded in the front tire. I could hear the air leaking out. A fat swipe of road rash had destroyed the tank’s scale-finish copper-and-cobalt paint job on the slide side. The foot peg was chewed up and steaming in the damp, icy night air.

  “Seriously, buddy, I think you need to get checked out. I reported the wreck. FirstMedix should be here in a second. Can you hear me, bud?” A hand landed on my shoulder. “You’ve been in a wreck. There’s—”

  I whirled around and hit the handsy bastard as hard as I could. My knuckles popped with the impact.

  The guy lurched away from me, cursing and holding his face. Some faraway part of my mind registered that I had just punched someone. I’d never punched anyone before in my life.

  I went back to my baby. Carefully, tenderly, I pulled the piece of fender out of the front tire, then lifted the ’Shan to its wheels.

  “You’re okay.” I swung a leg over, kicked it out of gear, then tried to start it. “Come on. Come on, baby, you’re okay.”

  It took three times before the ignition finally caught. The ’Shan roared to life.

  “Attaboy,” I said, patting its unscathed side. I knew it couldn’t be dead. I took care of my ’Shan. Only goons and adrenaddicts were careless enough to kill their crotchrockets—that was why they didn’t deserve to have nice things.