The Duality Bridge (Singularity #2) (Singularity Series) Read online

  Text copyright © 2015 Susan Kaye Quinn

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  August 2015 Edition

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  Susan Kaye Quinn

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  The Duality Bridge

  (Singularity 2)

  young adult science fiction

  Summary

  What does it mean to be human?

  Elijah Brighton is the face of the Human Resistance Movement. He’s the Olympic-level painter who refused an offer of immortality from the ascenders—the human/machine hybrids who run the world—in solidarity with the legacy humans who will never get a chance to live forever.

  Too bad it’s all a complicated web of lies.

  Worse, Eli’s not even entirely human. Few know about the ascenders’ genetic experiments that left him… different. Fewer know about the unearthly fugue state that creates his transcendent art—as well as a bridge that lets him speak to the dead. But the Resistance is the one place he can hide from the ascender who knows everything the fugue can do. Because if Marcus finds him, he’ll either use Eli for his own nefarious purposes… or destroy him once and for all.

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  to Daniel

  for stretching my cognition

  “My name is Elijah Brighton, and I’m part of the Human Resistance Movement.”

  The words leave my mouth and float into the blue holographic matrix that surrounds me. My chair is rigged with tech that authenticates every word so my audience will know the broadcast is real, not a sim or virtual. That’s key to winning the hearts and minds of the ascenders—the god-like human/machine hybrids who run the world—as well as the legacy humans they keep for pets. But it’s the half dozen Resistance members standing and pacing outside the holo matrix, their faces washed in blue light, that concern me. They’re watching me read the script, but that’s not what’s making them dart nervous glances at the open door of the transmission room.

  They’re worried we’ll get caught.

  So am I—but not because it will stop our covert operation to hack in our message. I’m worried the one ascender who knows there’s something different about me, something that shouldn’t be possible, will find me. I escaped Marcus once, but the next time he has me strapped in a chair, he won’t waste time telling me I was never supposed to be born. He’ll simply kill me. Or inject nanites in my brain and turn me into an ascender.

  At this point, I’m not sure which would be worse.

  I clear my throat and lean closer to the holo grid. “The Resistance is fighting for equal access to ascendance for all humans, no more, no less. Ascendance isn’t something to be doled out to the few, the worthy, by whatever measure the ascenders choose. The choice to ascend is a fundamental right every human should have.”

  Delphina wrote the script—she’s an Olympic gold medalist in storia, so words are her talent. More importantly, she’s the spiritual leader of the Resistance. Everyone looks to her for inspiration. For courage. Sometimes, I think Kamali—a girl I once kissed and then forever lost with a mistake—is looking for even more. I’m sure Delphina’s preference for girls would include a tall, gorgeous ballerina like her. They’re both watching me from outside the holo matrix, exchanging words I can’t hear and smiles I don’t want to see.

  I pull my gaze back to the script floating just beyond the cameras. “Four days ago, the world watched as Kamali LeClair, Delphina Astoria, and I took the gold and won the right to ascend. When our connection to the Resistance was discovered, the ascenders stripped us of our medals to keep us from the winner’s stage. They even went so far as to falsely accuse me of murder.” I don’t have to fake the fire rising in my voice. Thompson was a jerk, but he didn’t deserve to die. “Aaron Thompson was a kid from my own hometown of Seattle. He performed for the ascenders like the good pet he was supposed to be, and they killed him when he got in their way. Just one more victim in the Games the ascenders like to play. When we refused to play their games, they held us prisoner. They tried to silence our message. But they have failed.”

  This is why we’re transmitting from an authentication chair, rather than taping our script from a more secure location. Which would be any location other than the middle of an ascender city teeming with police bots and mechanized military sentries. To prove we’re still very much alive. That we were judged worthy of ascendance and denied it because we stood for ascendance for all. Delphina, Kamali, and I are now the Resistance’s most powerful PR weapons.

  Kamali is up next in the holo chair, then Delphina. Outside the holo matrix, she gestures to Kamali to turn her graceful dancer body around so she can adjust her black body armor. Delphina’s hands seem to be lingering too long. It stirs up jealousy I have no right to have.

  Kamali twists back to look at me and frowns. I’m not doing my job.

  My attention whips back to the script. “During the Olympics, I was doing everything I could to win the gold. But only so I could throw the medal back in their faces. I was never going to accept their supposed gift of ascendance. Until every human has the right to ascend, no legacy should take the tiny scraps of hope the ascenders offer us each year.”

  All of that is lies—I would have taken it in a heartbeat. I was trying to save my mom, which meant I had to win the gold and an immortal life for us both.

  “I’m here today to tell you the Resistance is real. It is strong. And our ideals aren’t just held by humans. The Resistance reaches farther than you could ever imagine.”

  I give one last look into the camera, trying to appear the determined revolutionary the Resistance leaders want. I’m still dependent on them for the gen tech meds my mother needs for her cancer. After my mom gets her cure, I’m not sure where I’ll stand.

  I wait while the matrix shimmers and the transmission pauses.

  A flicker of movement outside the holo grid draws my attention. Lenora, my ex-patron of the arts and current rebel-ascender, arrives at Kamali’s side in a blur of tech-enhanced speed. Delphina gives her a nod, but Kamali keeps her now cool gaze on me. Her silent judgment is for the things she thinks I’ve done. Forbidden things, like being a love toy for Lenora, whose perfect bodyform is barely covered in scintillating ascender-tech fabric. The thing is, I’ve never so much as kissed her. Except in my dreams, which really shouldn’t count against me. Any seventeen-year-old guy would have those kinds of thoughts. But Kamali’s not wrong to judge me.

  My feelings for Lenora have always bee
n… complicated. And now that I know she helped cook up my genetic makeup in a lab, our relationship is beyond strange. Few people know I’m a genetic experiment. Even fewer know about the fugue state that grabs hold of me and lets me create great art. Only Marcus knows I hallucinate about talking to dead people. But Lenora was there in the beginning when I was created. And she knows more than she’s told me so far.

  I rise from the holo chair and step through the pulsing blue field of the grid. A static charge races across my skin—I can feel it through my body armor. I’m outfitted the same as the three Resistance militia stationed around the cramped room, except I’m not toting a gun that looks more like a reconfigured bot. There are a dozen more militia keeping watch down the hall, plus a cloaked transport on the roof of the apartment and a combat ship patrolling the skies.

  Which is nothing if the ascenders actually come for us.

  Kamali passes me on her way to the chair. Her creamy brown skin is washed blue by the holo light. It reminds me of when we were under the Olympic stage, her beautifully carved cheeks lit by our blue competitor tattoos—back when she thought I was someone worth believing in. Her eyes are solemn, measuring. Then she gives me a miniscule nod of approval. It warms me like a blast of sun through the darkened room. I fight to keep my reaction off my face.

  Ayala, one of the militia guarding the room, is standing right next to us and pretending not to see everything. But as soon as Kamali steps inside the holo field, which captures every sound wave both in and out, Ayala says, “Nice work, sir.”

  I duck my head, afraid my response was too obvious. “Just doing my part.”

  “Your part is important. It’s an honor to guard you.” She smiles, then drops her voice. “I never believed what they were saying about you, sir.”

  I frown and look up. Before I can ask what she means, Delphina strides up with another militia behind her. Caleb is only a couple years older than me, but his face is sharp-boned and battle-hardened. A lot of the militia are like that—aged early by the fight.

  Caleb nods to Ayala. “I’ve got Brighton and Astoria. You can take point in front of LeClair and the transmission chair.”

  Ayala frowns. “Grayson assigned me here.” Grayson is the third militia, older and in command. He’s guarding the door with his back to us.

  Caleb gestures with his chin to me. “I’m supposed to stick with him.”

  Ayala shifts her grip on her weapon, taps her ear, and whispers something. Probably a subdermal comm—all three of the militia in the transmission room have augments, some more obvious than others. Grayson has black metal where his legs should be while Ayala has just one ascender-tech leg. Caleb’s augment replaces one arm below the elbow. They all have more power in their augmented limbs than the rest of their bodies combined.

  Ayala listens for a moment to her comm, then drops her hand. “All right, I’ll take point,” she says to Caleb. “Grayson says to keep the medalists far from the door.”

  Caleb nods, and Ayala strides to the front of the holo chair, kicking up a misty vapor around her boots. The weird ascender flooring makes it look like she’s walking on a blue cloud. Caleb gives me a twitchy glance, then turns his back on Delphina and me to focus on the door. He flexes his grip on his weapon. In the blue light, it’s hard to tell his mechanical fingers from the gleaming black barrels of his gun. I can’t help wondering if he lost his arm in a previous operation. And how Ayala and Grayson got their augments.

  I realize I’m staring and drop my gaze to the floor.

  “It’s strange, no?” Delphina asks, glancing at Caleb’s ascender-tech arm.

  Heat rises in my face. I’m sure he can hear us. “I’m just not used to it.” It’s so clear now that my legacy home of Seattle was a carefully constructed zoo. We were told everything outside the city was wasteland and chaos. The ascenders lied about so much. I understand why the Resistance wants to broadcast their message to legacies as well as ascenders.

  Delphina is short, but her stare has a thousand watts of energy behind it. “We should never become used to such a thing,” she says with the lilting French accent of her hometown of Paris. “The augments, they are changed in bits and pieces, growing stronger and more capable with each modification. It is seductive, yes?”

  I frown. “I suppose.” I’m not looking for replacement parts if that’s what she’s thinking.

  Delphina turns her scrutiny on Grayson at the door. “With each change, our warriors win the chance to risk even more. And they are glad for it. Welcome it with a zeal that is serviceable to our cause. And yet… it is a dangerous cycle. Where should we draw the line?”

  “Somewhere before nanites in our brains.” But I know her question is rhetorical. Delphina would sooner die than ascend.

  She nods and lets it drop.

  Cybernetic limbs aren’t the only ascender tech the Resistance has laid their hands on. Ocular implants, subdermal comms, embedded screen interfaces—all first-class felonies in the legacy human world. Only neural enhancements remain interdit, as Commander Astoria, Delphina’s mother, mentioned when I asked.

  Forbidden.

  Like ascender kisses. Even with rebel ascenders in the Resistance, the taboos are still strong: there’s just too much mental distance between humans and ascenders. Any liaisons between them are hopelessly one-sided. That thought drags my gaze up to find Lenora staring at me through the blue web of the holo matrix.

  We’ve tiptoed around each other since I brought my mother back from Seattle. She was still frail from her illness, and I didn’t want to leave her side as the Resistance decamped from Los Angeles to the main base in Oregon. Then Commander Astoria insisted on doing the transmission right away. With all that going on, getting Lenora alone to demand answers about my past hadn’t happened.

  She subtly tilts her head, inviting me to come around the front.

  I shake my head no. I want to, but Caleb has orders to keep us here.

  She frowns, and black tendrils curl across her skin. I don’t understand the meaning of all the shifting coloration on ascender skin, but I know it reflects emotional states. Black is worry or perhaps anger. Even with the tendrils and the blue light, she still looks like a goddess—impossibly beautiful and powerful. She’s objectively superior, physically and mentally, to everyone in the room, human or augment. It took me a long time to figure out even gods are imperfect. And that lying, cheating, and murder weren’t human vices the ascenders left behind.

  But thanks to Lenora, I’m no ordinary human. The fluttering flame of an idea—that not being entirely human might make a difference to her, to us—sputters inside me. I douse it with the harsh bucket of knowledge that she set me up for Thompson’s murder. Even if she helped create me, she has her own agenda. One that doesn’t involve kissing her pet evolutionary project.

  Maybe.

  A rustle by the door grabs everyone’s attention. Commander Astoria has arrived next to Grayson. She’s whispering something in French.

  I tip my head to Delphina. “What’s your mother saying?”

  She dismisses the question with a wave of her black-gloved hand. “Only that he’s needed up front.” Her attention is focused on Kamali in the transmission chair, who’s gesturing with her splayed hands as she delivers her speech.

  Commander Astoria gives a flourish of fingers that must be some kind of command. Grayson flips down the visor of his helmet and disappears. Like, literally, shimmers out of existence. It’s his personal cloaking tech, the same as our transports use, only it’s built into the silver-blue jacket and pants he’s wearing over his black body armor. We all got instruction on the multi-spectrum capabilities of the suit before we deployed, but only Grayson and two others were outfitted. Now that he’s in ghost mode, my stomach clenches.

  Something is up.

  Kamali emerges from the holo matrix. Caleb gestures for her to stay back, next to me, while Delphina steps into the blue field to give her speech. Kamali’s posture is always perfect, but now there’s an
unnatural stiffness to it as she ignores me and keeps her gaze trained on Delphina.

  Tension is eating a hole through my gut.

  While my attention’s on Kamali, Lenora appears suddenly by my side, moving with that insane ascender speed again. Caleb twitches in surprise and swings his weapon to her, but pulls back at the last moment. He makes a sound of disgust, then goes back to watching the door.

  I give Lenora a look that says, What are you doing? The room is tense enough as it is.

  “How much longer?” she asks, no apology in her voice as she glances at the holo chair.

  “As long as it takes.” I try to keep the growl out of my voice. Commander Astoria timed the op out precisely, and she’s putting her own daughter at risk in service to the cause. I’m sure we won’t be leaving until the message is delivered. Kamali scowls at Lenora, then continues watching Delphina’s speech.

  It feels like each second is slower than the last.

  A scattering of voices come from outside the door, somewhere else in the apartment. We’re deep inside the gleaming city of New Portland. I’m not sure what was wrong with the old Portland—something about rivers; ascenders don’t like water—but the original city is now a decaying urban wasteland and a hangout for bloody religious cults. The ascenders created New Portland with wildly new architecture—thin skyscrapers lined up like razor blades alongside bulbous mountains of latticed steel and glass—but our ship’s cloaking tech is also ascender-made. We managed to slip past the towering spires and origami-shaped buildings to this very particular apartment undetected.

  The owner is named Kallias, and the ascenders don’t know she’s a rebel. Which means her holo chair is still hooked into Orion, giving the Resistance the authentication they need. Orion is like a net for ascenders, only more—Lenora described it as a communion of sorts—but this will be the last time Kallias can access it. Even if we get out before the ascenders track us down, they’ll know Kallias helped. She’ll have to go off-grid, like Lenora and most of the other rebel ascenders. Which means no backups—something about the tech not being secure outside of Orion—and that means if their bodyforms are destroyed, they won’t be able to resurrect. Kallias will be as mortal as any human.