Chapter 3
At night, the city of Portland glows.
The sidewalks are lined with soft lights. They’re solar-powered for the rolling blackouts, so when the city goes dark, its paths are traced with illumination. It’s for pedestrian safety, but it gives the city a radiant beauty. Even in the dark, one can find their way.
On this sweltering August evening, the streets are wide awake. A night market has sprung up near the waterfront; a live jazz band has set up on a patch of grass; the smells of roasted meat waft from a nearby food truck; cyclists gracefully swerve through crowds of pedestrians.
I amble along the waterfront toward my apartment rental.
The Waterfront Jewel looks out over the Willamette, promises its occupants all the latest in smart home technology, and has an indoor pool.
According to its website, the building used to be a hotel until it was repurposed into housing.
A weekend there will cost months of my stipend, but it’s worth it.
Not for the air-conditioning or the pool.
But because my grandmother lives there.
I won’t talk to her. I can’t talk to her. Wraiths aren’t allowed any contact with people from their former lives. I knew a middle-aged man who would walk by his family restaurant just to catch a glimpse of his kids. That was until one of them caught a glimpse right back. I never saw that man again.
Even when a wraith’s term of service is up, they aren’t returned to their former life. Instead, they get a fresh start elsewhere—with a new name, a new backstory, and enough relevant job history that they’ll find work.
My deal with Prefect is one of a kind. Not only am I the singular teenage wraith, but I’ve been promised that I will get to return home.
I’m sure it’ll be expensive and complicated—a body “misidentified” as me, amnesia or another flimsy excuse, and I’ll have to spend the rest of my days lying to my family about what I was doing for the last decade.
But still—I’ll get to be with them again.
So long as my ISD deal doesn’t go sideways.
This is a risk—such a dangerous risk. But I tell myself that it’s a calculated one. Nonna will never see me. Prefect is in another city, cleaning up the fallout from our last job together. By the time he arrives in Portland, I’ll have checked out.
This is how clever people become criminals. We can rationalize almost anything.
I stroll up to the front doors and hold out my left hand, electron-ink tattoo angled toward the door sensors. They’re locked to nonresidents.
My electron-ink tattoo is pretty standard: a series of silvery lines.
The lock recognizes me as a temporary resident and swings open with slow, jerky little movements. I step inside and the cool air is blissful against my sweaty face.
The building’s origins as a hotel are obvious: The lobby is laid out in a pretty, minimalistic style, with benches cut from faux marble, an indoor pool taking up a swath of the large room, and a small army of three-foot-tall potted succulents scattered throughout.
There is a desk that must have once been the concierge station, but now it holds building announcements, a holographic resident board, and a security guard.
The guard’s gaze flicks over me. I can almost see the moment he categorizes me as a non-threat.
I dress in dark clothing that is easy to move in and covers my scars.
Like many of my generation, I wear an opaque visor.
It looks like a smooth strip of glass and metal covering my eyes, with a slight indentation for my nose.
Most people use visors for augmented reality—entertainment, subtitles, maps, and cheat codes for tests.
Mine is programmed for facial recognition, magnification, video and audio recordings, and will scramble any video feed of my face.
I nod at the guard and he nods back.
Most people overlook teenage girls.
It’s their mistake.
The elevators are tucked away in an alcove behind the pool area. Normally, I would use the stairs—once you’ve been in one hacked elevator, it makes you a little paranoid—but my shoulders and legs ache after my last job.
Nonna’s apartment is 309. Mine is 310. Several of these are short-term rentals, for businesspeople and vacationers wanting to be close to downtown Portland. I remember seeing an email in Nonna’s inbox where she complained to a neighbor about the party people who invade the building during holidays.
All right, so maybe I am a bit of a stalker.
As I stride from the elevator, to my left are all the apartments. On my right is the open-air center of the building. If I leaned on the glass railing, I could gaze down at the lobby and pool below. At the thought, my stomach gives an uncomfortable lurch.
The apartment doors are unremarkable. The difference between Nonna’s door and the rest is that hers has an old-fashioned doorknob and lock, while the others have flat tattoo sensors. Nonna is infamous in my family for refusing smart upgrades.
I dangle my hand in front of 310’s door sensor and light dances across the back of my knuckles.
The sensor reads my name and life story in the silver whorls of ink. All of it is untrue.
I wear my best lies beneath my skin.
The sensor blinks green and the door glides open, revealing my home for the weekend.
There is a balcony overlooking the river, a sliding glass door that appears freshly polished, a small kitchen, and a living room furnished with sturdy Swedish furniture. It looks like any other short-term rental.
“Good evening,” the apartment’s virtual assistant says in a feminine voice. The sound emanates from a small, circular machine resting on a high shelf in the corner.
When virtual assistants went mainstream, companies gave them cutesy, feminine names like Alexa and Siri.
Now, most people just call them VAs. This VA looks like a standard model: hooked up to the internet, capable of answering basic questions and controlling everything in the apartment with a simple voice command.
More advanced VAs can do anything from keeping track of home finances to noting how often someone uses the toilet—and analyzing its contents for nutritional recommendations.
Computers know everything we do; we traded privacy for convenience decades ago. And as a hacker, I am keenly aware of how easily that data can be accessed. That’s why I own an unsmart watch, keep my location data off my ringware, and wear a visor that confuses facial recognition.
“How would you like to be addressed?” asks the VA.
“I wouldn’t,” I say, dropping my backpack on the couch.
“Welcome to unit 310, I Wouldn’t,” says the VA cheerfully.
“Please be aware that this rental is nonsmoking. That includes vapes, incense, candles, and other incendiary devices. Please check the map by the front door and familiarize yourself with the nearest fire escape. However, we do not anticipate any fires, and our suppression system is state of the art. This apartment building specializes in cutting-edge smart technology. Everything from the elevators to the doors is hooked up to the building’s mainframe.
The lock is now keyed to your identity, so you do not have to worry about physical keys.
Would you like to hear about local tourist attractions? ”
“No,” I say, heading to the kitchen. It’s a small unit, with a minifridge and a microwave.
“Would you like to connect to the rental’s Wi-Fi?” A tiny bubble pops up in my visor’s view. I double-check the connection—it’s a secure one, with a password that changes with every renter. I hit CONNECT with my ringware.
“If you are hungry,” continues the VA, “I can provide you with a list of local restaurants. Fourteen of them deliver by drone.”
“Thanks, but I’m good.” I find a mug in one cupboard. “Is tap water safe to drink right now?”
The VA hesitates, checking the local advisories. “Yes. The last toxic algae outbreak ended three months ago.”
I look at the mug. Then I put it back. Inside the fridge, someone has left a few bottles of water. I crack one open and drain it in a few gulps. “What time is it?”
“Nine thirty.”
“Go to sleep for now,” I say. “Set an alarm for seven in the morning.” Tossing the water bottle into a recycling bin, I head toward the bedroom.
“I will do that,” replies the VA. “Good night, I Wouldn’t.”
The next morning, I sit on the living room floor, gently stretching my arms and upper back.
I need to stretch. The car crash that took my life also left me with a few irritating, chronic reminders of that day.
I have scars along my left arm and chest, and if I go too long without stretching, my back will stiffen up.
When I’ve worked the tautness from my shoulders, I reach for my backpack.
If I am going to spend a weekend next door to my grandmother, I am going to do more than a little online snooping.
And for that, I need my secret weapon. Within the lining of the backpack, I’ve hidden a small black box about the size of a paperback book.
It looks like a flat rectangle of metal, but it’s actually a small computer chassis.
Magnetically clinging to the surface is a bumblebee.
It doesn’t look like much, but this is the most dangerous—and illegal—thing I own.
I hit a button on the side of the box, booting it up. “Good morning, Edgar.”
The bumblebee buzzes to life.
“Good morning,” he says.
He is adorable: all fuzzy body and big eyes. But if you look closely enough, you’ll see that the hairs are actually sensors and the eyes are tiny, multifaceted cameras.
Edgar is a spybot. The most sophisticated spybot to ever exist.
“Why did you activate me?” says Edgar. His voice is programmed to go directly through my visor and into my ear; neither the bumblebee nor the computer chassis have built-in speakers. “Was it because you crave human interaction and have no friends?”
He speaks with that fake mid-Atlantic accent of 1940s film stars. Every word sounds aristocratic, outdated, and frustratingly chipper. Even the insults. Especially the insults.