12. Open Wounds

“I gotta say, that’s not really funny—”

“I am not being funny. I am being forthcoming.”

“You know, most people say something else.” Flippo looks desperately at his crew. Angela attempts to march into the picture. She is stopped by a figure overseeing the shutterbugs.

“Yes?” Barley says, unsettlingly calm.

“Uh, yes. They say their parents, or a mentor, or they mention someone famous like James Bowen. I mean, James Bowen is a big one, honestly.” The broadcast keeps rolling. Flippo knows he’s got the stream of a lifetime going, and no doubt he’s going to milk it for all it’s worth. As for myself, I’m two bad seconds from drowning in my own sick.

Sonnet fills my field of view. He gestures for me to sit. I do, finding the chair in my headroom, and I breathe, and my vision brightens. He crouches beside me, and we watch the rest unfold together. Were we meat, I would wind myself around his arm, clamp it like driftwood. But we are not, and so my nails leave marks in my palms instead. I want it to end there. I want MultiCo to shut the whole thing down. They offer no such mercy, and neither does Barley.

“James Bowen,” she repeats.

“Yeah,” says Flippo, “Look, if the guy you mentioned—”

“Ariad.”

“Right, if he’s real, then he’s a terrorist and a murderer. Sure, some edgy kids make him out to be some kind of hero, but how can you say that? I mean, after the attacks that took who knows how many lives in life support shutdowns and smartcar crashes. Plus taking connection away from millions of people who needed it for work, to feed their families. How can you support that?”

Barley smiles. I have not seen her smile. I do not like it much.

“If I had said James Bowen, founder of MultiCo, was my role model, would you have asked me if I support the assassination of labor leaders? Would you have assumed I support environmental negligence? Would you call me a lover of bigots? Would you say I am insensitive to the suffering of James’ first business partner and cofounder, a certain tech pioneer whose name is now lost?” Barley does not speak like this. She has obviously practiced her words. She may be off Angela’s script, but I don’t doubt there’s a script she follows even now.

“No,” she answers her own questions, “you would have assumed I value his courage, and the way he started from nothing to build an empire eclipsing the sun. As I was saying, Ariad—”

The room vanishes. Someone finally pulled the plug. Angela calls.

“OK, obviously that was a lot,” she says to me, and to Sonnet, who she’s called in as well, “I’m assuming you didn’t know this was coming.” I shake my head and Sonnet makes a noise between laugh and whimper. “Right, so I’m going to need you both to sit tight while we sort this out. Don’t talk to anyone about what you just heard. Actually, it might be best if you take the rest of the day off. Stay away from Naturata until you hear from us.”

I look to Sonnet. I want to talk where no one else can hear. That’s not an option, obviously. And if we could, what is there to say?

“What’s going to happen to her?” I ask. Maybe not a wise question.

Angela stares at me sweetly. “I can’t say. Seriously, though, don’t worry about it. We can handle a little drama. You’re with Ranzio, remember? We’ve got you.”

My spine goes cold. I nod, chance another look at Sonnet, who does not look at me, and disconnect from everything. My mind fills the black with stars. I lift the depowered headset, eventually, and let light fill the bleed’s open wounds.

I go for my phone first. Force of habit, maybe. Another screen to plug the hole. No updates yet on the Cashout Guru channel. If I had to guess, Edmondo’s team is pleading for them to delete all records of the interview. I leave Rahmat several messages. Looking at the wall of text I’ve dropped, I wish I could delete it all and start over, or at least trim the ranting run-on sentences. She says she’s coming over. I don’t care enough about the sorry state of my apartment or my own appearance to stop her.

I have done not much more than put dishes in the sink and rinse my face when she steps through the threshold. She comes in carrying a basket of spiced potato-stuffed buns. I pull the seat out of my headroom for her and prop myself up on my bed, where she passes by the chair to join me.

“My mom made these,” she says, passing me the buns. Warmth and aroma waft up into my face, the scents of fresh-baked bread and cumin mingling in my nostrils. My stomach twists. I have missed real food. The first bun goes down in heavy, awkward chunks. The second, I remember to chew.

“Those things you said in your messages,” Rahmat talks while I eat, “they don’t really sound like Barley, from what I’ve heard.”

I swallow. “No.”

“Why would she go and do that? You’re so close to the finals! If this gets out, will they even let you play? What was she thinking? This could—”

“I know.” I take another bite. My appetite is a miracle, considering.

“Sorry, that’s probably not very helpful.” Why the sadness in her eyes? This isn’t her mess.

“It’s alright. I don’t need you to pity me.”

“What?” Her chin firms. “I’m not. Quinn, why would I pity you? You’re the most successful person I know. You have like, a million fans, and probably a million MultiBucks. Do you know anyone else in Sparks with that kind of clout or money? I’m angry for you, Quinn. I don’t want your teammate to blow everything up, when I know how hard you’ve worked to get this far.”

I lie back on the bed. I have invested in only a few nice things for my apartment, and this mattress is one of them. It holds me like rain. Like the rain outside, streaking my small round window, though the downpour out there is thicker than plain water. More like sleet. My phone rattles on the countertop once, twice, and more, impossibly far from the warm comforter beneath me.

“Let me get that for you.” Rahmat moves for the counter. There’s nothing I can say in time. It is not so far away, in reality. Only two or three steps from the bed. I don’t think she means to answer. “Oh,” she says, when Pops breathes through the speaker. Not her fault. She’s never worked one of these, I guess. I sigh and reach for the phone.

“Pops,” I say, tapping the speaker icon so I can lay the phone on my stomach and listen. Rahmat will hear too, then, I suppose. Right now, I can’t see why that would matter.

“You been avoiding me,” he says. I groan. I thought he’d given up. Why call now? And this is how it always goes. He opens with guilt, then dares to wonder why we don’t talk more. I check in when I can, still. He is entitled to no more than that.

Rahmat’s presence at my side prevents me from voicing these thoughts, and that might be for the best.

“What’s up?” I say instead.

“Wanted to hear your voice, and tell you good job on that game.”

“Thanks.” The game was a week ago. It cannot be his only reason. I wait.

“Yeah, well.” A pause. Then “Oh,” as if his true reason has only just occurred to him, “by the way, you gonna come by soon?”

“Pops, you know how it is. My schedule’s packed. I barely sleep—”

“They gotta give you a couple hours off sometime.”

“If this is about groceries, you have my card.” He starts to protest. “No,” I say, “No, don’t worry about it, I’m fine. Get what you need.”

“You ain’t listening. I got food.”

“Can it wait, then? It’s really, really not a good time to—”

“Please.” Something about his voice stops me. I consider relenting, just so Rahmat does not think I am cruel. Then I think of the steel in Barley’s eyes, and the coming consequences I must find a way to withstand.

“I’ll call you later. There are some things I need to sort out first.”

“Quinn—”

I hang up.

Blood drums my skull. I wrest control of my breathing, going into a silent four-count. I have faltered in my meditation practice these past weeks, but the breathing technique remains useful.

“So,” Rahmat says, “What’s next?” She sits up stiff.

“I talk to Barley if they let me. Find out what the hell was going through her head.”

“You really have no idea?”

“What are you getting at?” I recoil at the sound of my own voice. I don’t know where the aggression’s coming from.

“Nothing, I’m just surprised she would do that for no reason.”

“Yeah.” I haven’t told Rahmat about the breaking or the parley. She doesn’t need to know. And those still aren’t good reasons to go and praise some mythical terrorist.

“I mean, it could kill her career, right?”

“It has killed her career. Maybe mine too. You don’t get away with saying shit like that, not where MultiCo can hear.”

“Do you think they know?”

“I’ll find out soon enough.” My stomach wrenches with a gurgle, causing Rahmat’s face to curl in worry. “Sorry,” I say, “I’m probably not great company right now.”

“Hey, don’t worry about that, I’m here—”

“Rahmat.” I breathe deeply once again to steady my voice. I think through my next words carefully. The first that spring to mind are pointlessly venomous. I fear myself, when I am like this. If I’m not careful, I’ll lash out and ruin another good thing.

I don’t have to say more. Her brow pinches, she nods to herself, collects the bread basket, and walks to the door. Before the knob turns, she looks back. “Tell me how it goes?”

“For sure.” I even manage a smile for as long as it takes her to close the door.

---

When the phone rings again, I think of my mother. She spent a lot of time talking into the same one, in the last few months. She knew, I think, and she wanted to make closure with as many people as she could. Pops was sure she would pull through. It was easier to think that way, so I was sure too. I should have known. I should have done more. When I told Pops so, and tell him sometimes still, he shushes me.

“Don’t think it,” he says, echoing these words across the better part of a decade, “Ain’t nothing you could change.”

And that was always the problem, wasn’t it? If my mother fell ill today, I could buy her the nicest room in the hospital. I could pay for evaluations and analyses to find the killer inside her before its work was done. But then, I was chewing through the last exams of co-op and pleading for admission into private polytechnics. I was on my way. I was close.

It was some kind of paper on acoustics I was writing, something excessive for the expectations of my co-op courses, something I hoped would impress professors, when she called me over. I came out of the bleed’s shallows into my cluttered room. My eyes hardly needed adjusting. Leaving the bleed used to be easy.

She sat in the living room, neck craned in a book.

“Would you go get me one of those fudge cookies?” Her eyes had that wanting glint, reflecting the focused beam from the lamp beside her reading chair. I hesitated. “I know your daddy keeps them in the cupboard.”

“Ma, you know you aren’t supposed to.” I felt like her parent, saying that. Felt wrong.

“Please,” she said, “I just want to taste something sweet.”

I shook my head then. “You want something else? We have those kale chips the internet said—”

“No, I’ll be fine. Getting a craving, that’s all. Don’t mind me.”

“Are you sure?”

“You know how it is to want something bad.” She folded a page corner and closed her book, then looked up at me. Can’t remember what she was reading, only the dog-eared pages that suggested it wasn’t her first time through. “How are the finals going?”

“All fine,” I said. My work was more than fine, but I didn’t like to brag, not around her.

“I’ll bet,” she said, hearing my understatement for what it was, “You hear back from any of those big schools yet?”

“Decisions won’t come for a while longer.” And she’d have been the first to know, after me.

“They’re not ready for you.” It sounded like an insult the way she said it, though I knew better. “You still praying, Quinn?”

“What, praying to get in?” I smirked.

“Couldn’t hurt,” she said, quieter, “Hey, why don’t you sit with me a while?”

“Why?” Rejection phrased as a question. Later I would turn it over in my head and cringe, wishing I had seen the precious value in her time.

“You’re not too old to hang out with your mother,” she said, and I stayed to appease her. I took a seat on the floor. Her study had another chair, but the carpet was warm and soft and stored more memories.

“Everything OK? Is it getting worse?” I asked, keeping my eyes up so I didn’t see the stump of her recently missing toe.

“Don’t worry about me. I want to hear about you. How are things with Zeke?” She closed her eyes as if my voice were music while I told her about developments in a relationship that would not survive her death. I told her he was getting into politics lately. How it made him hard to be around when he was agitated, but more focused as well.

She nodded. “The world is nonsense,” she said, “You gotta find something that makes sense and hold onto it.”

“I don’t know.” The world made enough sense. There were clear structures. Pathways, ladders to climb. Of course, there were exceptions. Structures I couldn’t parse. Opaque social customs and binaries. But mostly, things fell into an order I could follow.

“I do know,” she replied, opening her eyes to see through me in a way no one else has, “You’re a problem-solver, and you’re smart, and I’m not just saying that because I’m your ma. You think you’ll always have the answer. Well, one day, maybe you won’t. There’ll be questions you cannot answer and issues you cannot fix. When that happens, promise me something.”

“Sure.”

“Tell me you’ll be kind to yourself.”

I said I would.

So much for that.

---

Twenty long hours after Barley lit her fire, Edmondo brings us back into the bleed. Today his windows are shuttered, and the room is lit only by bulbous lamps glowing the same crimson shade as the Ready Room, which cast deep shadows beneath his brow. Two low chairs face the desk opposite him. He leans forward.

“Please, take a seat.” He sounds hollow. Sonnet and I exchange a look and obey. He makes us sit like that for a minute or so, staring into the middle distance between us, daring either of us to speak first. Eventually, he speaks again. “I do not envy you. It is apparent that your captain cares very little for your welfare. She knew you would suffer for her misdeeds. It does not sit well with me, personally, but, as you might expect, these things are no longer entirely in my hands.” He does not appear to relish this. Maybe he means it. “You will not reach the finals. You will give a respectable performance and perhaps place in third, but you will not qualify. You will not go out of your way to engage the Vogues. You will do what you can, with all due subtlety, to ensure they take the second qualifying slot.” Overdogs taking first goes without saying.

A disgusted noise comes out of Sonnet. “You made the deal.”

“We have made decisions in the best interests of the company. They are in your best interests as well, believe it or not. Each scandal has been averted, so your reputations should remain intact. Getting to the final four is respectable.”

“That mean you changed your mind? You’re keeping us on next season?”

“Nothing of the sort,” Edmondo sneers, “You, my boy, will be traded to the Cutting Edge. IVADA’s looking to restructure their team after this year’s subpar outing. As for you, Google, there’s an opening on Volpe’s Screensavers with your name on it.”

“And Barley?” I hear myself saying.

“You would do well to care less for her. She has no future in Bank It!. She is fortunate we arrived at an agreement with those ‘Cashout Guru’ grifters, or else she would have more to contend with than a mere career change. MultiCo does not take these things lightly.”

I cannot disagree. I cannot leave her out to dry either. “Until the season’s over, she’s on the team.”

Edmondo waves my comment away. “A technicality. She is suspended from all Naturata activity until your next game.”

I nearly ask how he could possibly enforce that kind of blanket suspension, then realize with a sick feeling climbing my throat. She’s still in Turin, at Ranzio headquarters. They can cut off her access. They can make her a prisoner.

“Good.” Sonnet seems to have reached the same understanding. He does not share my repulsion.

“Hold on,” I say, rushing my words, “We can’t practice without her. There’s still more time to work on our counters. The next week is critical—”

“I’m afraid you haven’t been listening,” Edmondo drums his fingers, “You do not need to train, because you do not need to optimize your performance, because you are not moving forward.”

“Why not?” I can’t control the anger bleeding into my voice between grit teeth. “Because you say so? What do we have to lose?”

“Plenty, I assure you. Google, you work for us, remember. If you do as you’re told, you may still have your job. A lucrative position, I might add. And Sonnet, your position is not so dissimilar.” He turns to the short, lanky young man beside me. The man whose hands ball into fists, clenching the unreal corners of leather chair arms. “You depend on your broadcast for earnings, correct? Where would you turn for a livelihood, if your viewership dried up in light of the controversies we have thus far kept at bay? I understand your employment opportunities are limited.”

We’ve earned a major sum in MultiBucks this season, but how far will that go? Taking into account my rent, utilities, and the share I cover of Pop’s expenses, I’m set for the next five years or so. More if I find on-and-off contract work. But it’s not about the money. Not for me. I know it, and Edmondo knows it.  

“Fine,” I spit, “We’re yours. But we’ve gotta do this right. Do you want us to really sell this? The fans will notice if we’re rusty. They’re going to have questions.” I sit up straight as I can in the squat chair. “An obvious game throw is gonna make things worse for you.”

“Let them complain. Who will listen?”

“Fuck you, Edmondo.” Not my words, though I’m thinking them too. Sonnet’s. “This is wrong. This isn’t the game.”

“Isn’t it?” Edmondo cocks his head and smiles. “You’ll see your captain again in a week. Until then, practice as much as you deem necessary. Angela is working to clear your schedule. If you want to pester someone with more questions, you are welcome to speak with her.” Edmondo clicks a button under his desk, and the call ends.

---

I walk to clear my head. I need the sun and the cold. My sliver of meatspace isn’t meant for pedestrians, so I walk along concrete medians. My eyes sweep the ground, searching for stable footing amidst the rippling cracks. No one maintains these roads. Traffic is light. Mainly it’s oversized trucks and the occasional amphibious all-terrain vehicle. All commuting to or from the greenblocks, most likely. I sweat, and the chill air burns my lungs. I move in a hurry, though I have no particular destination in mind.

On a flatter stretch of concrete, I chance a look back. I can still see my apartment tower. Its square gray-and-brown exterior shadowing the parking lot and street below. Its soulless guise leers at me, as if it were erected to mock the sentiment that this world of solids is somehow more conducive to life than Naturata. This is the real, it seems to say, beige and unfeeling. Even in the greenblocks farther north, the color is domesticated. It doesn’t hold a candle to the wild neons of the bleed.

I need the game. There’s nothing like it.

Who knows, I wonder? How high does this go? If it stops at Edmondo, the situation might not be so desperate as it seems. Maybe Sonnet and I could plead our case at Ranzio’s highest rungs. Maybe we could worm our way to Calliope Cambria’s ear. She’s a fan—Edmondo has admitted as much. Doesn’t matter what he thinks if we get the company’s head on our side. Edmondo’s never liked us. She’ll see the whole thing as a thinly veiled vendetta, if we frame it right.

Now it’s my turn to play the other side. I look for the holes in my prior line of thought. They’re not difficult to spot. The first is Angela. She’s complicit. At the very least, she knows enough to play damage control around the “bug” in my fight with the Vogues. Edmondo wouldn’t trust an auton with anything under the table. Not if the buck stopped with him. Assuming Edmondo is at fault also assumes he’d risk his career to help us reach the finals, and that’s just not him. So what can we really pin on him? Bargaining with the Vogues—a process we started anyway—and keeping the bug under wraps, all probably with the permission of someone above him. Nothing that would hurt him more than it would hurt us.

I also have to consider the way it looks. I’m the one who wiped the Vogues, and I saw how it really happened, then buried the truth. As a Tough Shell, I also stand to gain more than most by messing with the game. The three of us would be top suspects for any proven meddling.

Of course, given recent developments, Barley might be more suspicious than I am. I have not let myself think about her until now. Imagining her feels like putting my hand in a fire. We had a kind of confidence, I thought. She opened up, didn’t she? She spoke of her history. For Barley, that had to mean something. In the moments after she said the name that choked her audience, I bargained. I thought maybe her account was compromised. Maybe a Ranzio employee had entered the wrong headroom and decided on a poor-taste prank. Maybe the whole exchange would turn out to be a bit orchestrated by Angela ahead of time. These hopes died fast. If it weren’t truly Barley, she would have been there beside us at Edmondo’s desk today.

Then there’s Sonnet. If he’s dirty, no one’s sniffed it. He’s maybe the closest I have to an ally in all this, and he seems to want nothing to do with me. Can’t blame him. I struggle to imagine the pangs of Barley’s betrayal doubled.

My eyes have lingered on the ground too long. I should be looking far, making my eyes really work. My view lifts beyond the crabgrass that blisters the pavement to rusted-out structures that used to be a spice-processing complex. Above everything, sunset marbles the sky. I breathe deeply of the crisp, unconditioned air. It makes me cough, but it feels right. I know what comes next. I turn back, face up to the darkening sky.

When I return, I call Sonnet.

When he does not answer, I leave a message. I consider as I write how this might hurt me. A meeting would be better. Even if Ranzio would have someone listening in, they’d have to reveal as much—and have the ability to prove it was justified—in order to use the conversation against us. Text is a whole lot more cut and dry. When I send the message, I leave a permanent mark on the record.

That might help, actually. Sonnet will see I’ve put myself at a disadvantage, communicating without implicating him in a two-sided meeting, and when he considers that, he might believe I’m sorry.

---

He does not respond. But the next day, I get an invite to party up. We play through a tournament where our third opts to play zephyr. I stick to cover and let the others open each encounter. I feel squishy, without the dense muscle of Barley standing between me and any given opposition. Though our fill-in teammate spends much of the game crashing cashouts far from our own, we end up taking the win. Sonnet speaks exclusively in call-outs and Bank It! Shorthand. Even as we launch into our second, then third tournament of the session, he does not break. I might as well be any other teammate randomly assigned through the arcane machinations of Bank It! matchmaking, aligned for the span of a game, then a stranger once more. Yet the shift has not inhibited our objective chemistry. Doesn’t matter whether he talks, when I know each move before he makes it. I fall in step, as if we are old dance partners. We hold cashout after cashout with little trouble. He casts everything. We play until practice typically ends. Sonnet disbands the party without a word then.

He is online the day after, and the day after that. We play. I don’t know what else I’d do with myself. Spending more time in meatspace is a dangerous prospect. The lack of stimuli leaves holes for dread and panic and a yearning for raw feel. Same reason meditation isn’t feasible anymore. I need to bleed, in one way or another. So I play the game, and time melts around my face, which also melts around I don’t know what, and it is Sunday.

I am surprised when Edmondo does not brief us before we go in. Probably wants to clean his hands of us. I guess we know the drill. We have played thousands of games. With all outside context removed, this one is no different. In the arena, it’s us and three other teams clashing for cash and the chance to fight again at a higher level of play. I hope Sonnet has read my message. It’ll be difficult to communicate much of anything once we’re in there.

The Ready Room bursts into being around me. Barley is already here. She must have loaded in a split second before me and Sonnet. We have thirty seconds. Thirty seconds to select our loadouts. Thirty seconds to strategize. Thirty seconds to say anything needing to be said.

Barley wastes none of it. “You hate me,” she says, “I understand. Later, punish me. Now, work with me. The world watches.” She looks up at a sky that is not there to suggest a particular subset of watchers, watchers who look on even now, before the game begins. Ranzio. MultiCo. Both, maybe.

“One last show. Let’s make it good,” says Sonnet. He curls his thumbs in so that eight fingers extend, like the eight appendages of Ospuze’s mascot octopus. It’s a common gesture among fans of the Overdogs. I smile, and my heart beats fresh blood into my veins. So he saw my message.

The Ready Room collapses into the space-age swoops of Century Stadium. We dive in headlong.