Hive was not offering us solutions. They had made the quest for inner peace and human connection a marketable product, and our value as human beings was soon going to be measured by our ability to buy it. The peak of human development was to not be human at all. To be as far away from anything real and therefore anything uncontrollable as possible. Because that was the point of the Programs. Controllable, singular realities.
“Anya,” Theo was calling me now, a tremble of futile anger in his voice. “Are you even listening to me?”
I shut my eyes for a moment, raising a hand to my throbbing temple. “Yes, I’m listening. I believe you were telling me how difficult my life is going to become if I don’t return to a job that I hate.”
“Well, you can’t survive on morality alone, Anya. I’m sorry. But you can’t.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?” I exploded. “I spent the last year in asimulated reality, Theo. Do you understand this? Do you understand the level of misery required for people to want to forget their own lives? To be anywhere but here? To notbeat all? I have to try a different way. I have to try and give my life a modicum of meaning. Otherwise, what is the point of having it? And if I fail, then I fail. I will start over. I did it once. I can do it again.”
I braced myself, expecting Theo to break out in yet another razor-edged argument, to make me wonder if I really was talking crazy.
But, for once, unbelievably, he said nothing. He seemed too disappointed in me to continue with this conversation at all.
Clutching the edge of my towel, cold against my flushed body, I finally released the confined breath from my lungs. “Can I get dressed now?”
Theo closed his eyes as if he couldn’t bear the look of me anymore. “Do whatever you want, Anya,” he muttered, turned around, and dissolved in the haunting whiteness of the apartment.
Chapter Twenty
Outside, it was evening already, and rain was drumming lightly against the bedroom window, the water holding the city lights in falling.
I was curled up on the stiff leather armchair before it, dressed in Theo’s soft clothes and staring at the unlighted screen of my phone. I couldn’t help but compare it to that tiny flip phone I had Inside, obsolete in reality for decades now. How I wished to have it again, to be able to dial Kai’s number and hear his voice, hear him grumble to me,You just like making me worry, one last time.
There was nothing I wanted more than to be able to preserve that life, to have it packed and gathered around me like an armor. To make it physical. Was it unnatural to crave physicality when all physical things were meant to decay? Was Lawrence right to see the future as a thing of the mind alone, an intangible cerebral experience?
Looking for an answer, I was about to type the words ‘Kai Alwyn Park’ into the search interface when Theo knocked on the door.
With my heart pounding as though I were about to get caught doing something terrible, I locked the screen and pressed the device to my chest, condemning the room in absolute darkness for the second it took Theo to crack the door open.
“Why are you sitting in the dark?” he asked under his breath, moving his fingers over the touchpad next to the door to turn on the lights before coming over to set a cup of tea on the little table next to me.
With arched brows I looked at him, and he quickly explained, “Peace offering.”
Letting my phone slip in the space between my thigh and the armrest, I took the steaming cup between my palms, accepting the apology.
“Thanks,” I murmured, carefully tasting it. Chamomile and a dollop of honey. My favorite. Because he wanted me to know that he remembered.
“So,” he began, crossing his arms and leaning on the wall with one shoulder. “I was thinking—”
“Wow, you still do that?” I teased him, hoping for relief, for friendship. Because I also wanted him to know that I remembered.
Humorously, he rolled his eyes and continued, “If you really want to do this, you should let me help you.”
“And how will you do that, Fraser?”
“Sell the apartment. Move in with me. Let me take care of the bills, and you try to go back to the Public Defender’s Office, do your pro bono work in the meantime. Whatever.”
Whatever.And yetIwas the heedless romantic?
“Although I do appreciate you and your hero complex, I’m afraid you can’t just throw money at this problem,” I cooed.
He smiled, irresistibly. “But I like throwing money at your problems.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s also some kind of complex. A control thing, probably.”
“So many issues,” he sighed at the ceiling, self-deprecating, but never really. “Remind me again why you were with me?”
“Your body, obviously.”
