Ania takes it in stride, though, as always. “I think it would be best to stay out of this main sitting room—”
“Sitting room?” I say before I can help myself, then cover my mouth and gesture for her to go on.
“Since this is where the staircase from the first floor leads, this is the first thing my parents see if they decide to come down,” she finishes. “There’s a gaming room back here, a guest bedroom, my bedroom, and a kitchenette. You can survive down here without being seen for quite a while, I think.”
I let that sink in for a moment. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, knowing Ania has been living in such spacious luxury the whole time we’ve known each other, while the rest of us shared one bedroom in an apartment in the orphan district. Not that I want any of it. It feels weird, like I’m going to break something or get it dirty if I touch it. I’ve always known, of course, but there’s a difference between knowing and seeing.
I knew the second she walked into the tech shop where I worked six years ago, with her fancy babysitter. I was newly twelve, barely able to work two hours a day by law. The babysitter looked around with her nose in the air, obviously appalled at the cramped quarters, dust, grease, solder fumes, and whatever else. Ania, though, looked around at everything with wide eyes, her expensive training hardware clipped around her wrist and her curls bouncing as she scrambled from one display to another. Her clothes were new and clean, her steps light, the heels of her fancy boots pinging like falling coins across the shop floor.
Twelve-year-old me was enchanted, and immediately wanted to show off. “Are you here to have your ware fixed? I’m the best there is, promise.”
The babysitter cleared her throat delicately. “This shop was recommended to us by a friend of the family, but I see she must have been mistaken. Come, Ania, we won’t be letting a child fix your techwitchery hardware.”
She said “techwitchery hardware” like she’d read the term once in a textbook long ago, the verbal equivalent of holding dirty laundry pinched between two fingers as far from your face as possible. The shop owner, Mr. Ailiano, gave a big belly laugh. “Oh, your friend didn’t steer you wrong, and Dizzy there won’t be doing the fixing, though she is certainly smart as a whip and will probably be better than me before much longer. I’d be happy to take a look at your ware and give you an estimate, free of charge. Let me see, girl. I’ll give it right back, promise.”
Ania removed her ware with gentle grace and placed it in the man’s hand without seeking the approval of her babysitter first. In fact, when she turned around, she had a bit of a smirk on her face. She rolled her eyes and jerked a thumb back at her nanny.
“Ugh,” she mouthed, and I had to cover my face with both hands to hide my giggles. It was the first time I’d laughed all week, and though I normally hated rich people, I found I couldn’t stop myself from chatting with Ania. Before she and her nanny left with her expertly fixed ware, Ania had slipped me a comm code and mimed typing. Message me.
And I did. And we’ve been friends ever since, even through my nasty comments and bloody knuckles, even through Ania’s acceptance into a fancy private school while I was stuck at Kyrkarta Polytechnic, a zombie drone in front of a computer terminal in a classroom with three hundred other kids. Even through Ania’s discovery of my little side hobbies: crawling through locked and abandoned buildings, hacking the accounts of public officials for fun, and stealing maz for Remi to use in their weaving.
We’ve stuck together. A fancy bedroom (even bedrooms, plural) shouldn’t change that. And yet, I feel it more intensely than I ever have before. Ania lives here. Here. And as she leads us into the next room and removes her shoes to place them delicately on a hand-carved shoe rack, a new thought occurs to me. She probably brings her school friends here.
My gaze flits across the room: gaming systems with multiplayer games, a holodeck board game system, more couches that look too pristine to sit my lowly ass on . . . and framed photos of Ania sitting in this very room with two other well-dressed, perfectly styled people our age, wearing the uniform of her private school.
Yep, that stings. But nowhere near as bad as the photo of Ania and a lean, blonde girl in winged eyeliner, wearing matching university sweatshirts and holding up their acceptance letters.
Ania is going off to university with this girl. She’s leaving me in the dust, alone, but she’ll be anything but alone.
She’s my best friend, but I’m apparently not hers.
And why should I be? I’m the girl who gets in fights. I’m the girl who can’t have an emotion without wanting to punch a wall. I’m the girl who screwed up our last job so badly that I killed people.
While I’m having my private meltdown, Jaesin and Remi remove their shoes and set up shop in front of Ania’s wall array, which holds an enormous screen with curved sides. Remi sinks to the couch and scrolls through the collection of games with an open mouth and unblinking eyes, arms limp with exhaustion.
“Oh, you are so going down,” they say to Jaesin, who snatches up one of the wireless controllers and syncs it to his deck and lenses.
“Please. I played this game all the time back at the home and you know it. I dominated in our intrahouse league.”
“That was years ago, and I’ve been playing the deck version for months. You’re gonna eat it so hard.” Their words are strong, but only their eyes and the tips of their fingers move. They’ve gone into full energy conservation mode.
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from lashing out. We all have our own way of dealing with things, and they apparently need a distraction more than they need to know how we managed to screw up and kill people. Those two are like bickering siblings on the best of days. Put a video game between them, and we’ll be lucky if they don’t bring the cops down on us from all the shouting, no matter how tired Remi is. Speaking of which . . .
“Aren’t your parents going to be able to hear us down here?” I ask, finally meeting Ania’s gaze.
“It’s pretty soundproof. We should be okay if we can keep those two under control,” she says with a sharp side-eye at Remi and Jaesin. “This isn’t a long-term solution, though. We need to talk about what we’re going to do. Even if the news cycle dies down and they stop actively looking for us, you won’t be able to get a job or an apartment in this city, and you won’t be able to show your face out on the streets.”
I sit down hard on the couch and put my head between my knees. “Damn, Ania, just lay it all out there, why don’t you?”
She winces. “Sorry, but it’s all true. I know it’s a lot, but the longer we wait, the harder it’s going to be to get out of this mess.”
The noise escalates as Jaesin and Remi get deeper into their game, shoving each other’s avatars off moving platforms and dashing for the same powerups. Ania looks to the ceiling and shakes her head, then stomps over to them.
“You’re going to get us caught the second my parents get home! Should I just call them and tell them you’re here? Do I need to take the video game away from you like a babysitter?”
Jaesin and Remi both duck their heads with sheepish looks. Remi pushes their controller away and hits the power button.
“Yeah, you probably should take it away, actually,” they say, the picture of innocence . . . until they lower their voice and mutter to Jaesin, “This isn’t over.”