The Thousandth Floor

They’d come to Pulse, the midTower silent disco, where music was blasted directly into each person’s eartennas instead of coming from external speakers. But the strange thing about Pulse was that each eartenna feed differed: no two guests were hearing the same song at the same time. Watt supposed it was fun for most people, trying to guess what others were listening to, laughing at the fact that they were streaming a slow song while their date had EDM. But to him it just meant everyone awkwardly stumbled over one another on the dance floor.

He leaned back carelessly on his elbows and met the gaze of a girl across the bar. She was gorgeous, tall and willowy with wide-set eyes, definitely out of Watt’s league. But he had a secret weapon, and knew exactly how long to make eye contact before looking away. According to Nadia’s estimates the girl would come over in three, two—

His eartennas sounded with the double beep that indicated a ping request. He nodded his acceptance and the girl’s voice sounded in his ear, the wireless link allowing them to speak directly to each other over their individual music, though of course Watt’s was already off. “Buy me a drink,” she said, sidling up next to him at the bar. It was a command, not a question. This girl knew how much hotter she was than him.

“What are you drinking?” Watt tapped the bar’s surface, and it lit up into a touch screen menu.

The girl shrugged and began drawing circles on the menu pad, scrolling through brightly colored bubbles representing the drink categories. There was a small inktat on the inside of her wrist, a rosebud that kept opening into a blossom and then furling back. “Guess.”

Watt put his hand over hers to still it. She glanced up at him, an eyebrow raised. “If I guess right, you’re buying,” he challenged.

“Sure. But you’ll never guess.”

“I think …” He flipped through the categories for a moment as if weighing the various options. But he already knew what she really wanted, and it wasn’t on the menu. “Something special,” he concluded, pushing OTHER, and pulling up a keypad to type squid ink martini.

The girl tossed her head back in laughter. “You cheated somehow,” she accused, her eyes roving over Watt with new interest. She leaned forward to order their drinks from the bot-tender.

Watt grinned. He felt attention shifting toward them, everyone clearly wondering what he’d said to attract a girl like that. Watt couldn’t help it; he loved this part, loved feeling like he’d won some unspoken contest.

“Thanks,” he said as the girl slid him a dark beer.

“How did you know what I wanted?” she asked.

“I figured, an unusual drink for an unusually beautiful girl.” Thank you, Nadia, he added silently.

I wouldn’t waste your time with this one. Girls 2 and 6 were more interesting, Nadia—Watt’s quantum computer—answered, flashing the words across his contacts. When they were alone Nadia spoke directly into his ears, but she defaulted to text whenever Watt was with someone else. He found it too disorienting, trying to carry on two conversations at once.

Well, this one is prettier, Watt replied, smiling in amusement as he sent the sentence directly to Nadia. She couldn’t read his every thought, only the ones he intended for her.

Re-rank selection criteria for potential romantic partners appeared in his to-do list, alongside buying a present for his brother and sister’s birthday, and his summer reading.

Sometimes I wish I hadn’t programmed you to be so snarky. Watt had constructed Nadia’s mental architecture to favor oblique and associative thinking over strictly logical if-then. In other words, to be an interesting conversationalist, instead of just a powerful calculator. But these days her speech pattern bordered on what could only be called sarcasm.

Nadia had been with Watt for almost five years now, ever since he had created her as a thirteen-year-old scholarship student at an MIT summer program. He’d known, of course, that it was technically illegal: the creation of any quantum computer with a Robbens quotient of over 3.0 had been banned worldwide since the AI incident of 2093. But he’d been so lonely on that college campus, surrounded by older students who pointedly ignored him, and it hadn’t seemed like it would do any harm … He’d started tinkering with a few spare parts, and soon, bit by qubit, he was building a quantum supercomp.

Until the professor in charge of their program caught him working on Nadia, late one night in the engineering lab.

“You need to destroy that—that thing,” she’d said, a note of hysteria in her tone. She took several steps back in fear. They both knew that if Watt was caught with a quant, he’d go to prison for life—and she would probably be arrested too, simply for failing to stop him. “I swear, if you don’t, I’ll report you!”

Watt nodded and promised to do as she said, cursing his own stupidity; he should have known better than to work in a nonsecure space. The moment the professor left, he frantically transferred Nadia onto a smaller piece of hardware, then smashed the box he’d first housed her in and delivered it silently to his professor. He had no desire to go to prison. And he needed a nice recommendation from her so that he could get into MIT in a few years.

By the time Watt’s summer program was over, Nadia consisted of a qubic core the size of his fist. He wedged her in his suitcase, in the toe of a shoe, and snuck her back to the Tower.

Thus began Watt’s—and Nadia’s—hacking career.

They started small, mainly messing around with Watt’s friends and classmates, reading their private flickers or hacking their feeds to post funny, incriminating inside jokes. But as time went on and Watt discovered what a truly powerful computer he had on his hands, he got bolder. Nadia could do so much more than crack teenagers’ passwords; she could scan thousands of lines of code in less than a millisecond and find the single weak sequence, the break in a security system, that might let them inside. Armed with Nadia, he could access all kinds of restricted data. He could make money off it too, if he was careful enough. For years Watt kept Nadia safe in his bedroom, periodically upgrading her into smaller, easier-to-hide pieces of hardware.

And then, two summers ago, Watt took what had seemed like a normal hacking job, a request for removal of a criminal record. When it came time for payment, though, the messages got strangely threatening—in a way that made Watt suspect the client somehow knew about Nadia.

Watt was suddenly and powerfully afraid. He usually tried not to think about what would happen if he got caught, but he realized now how foolish that had been. He was in possession of an illegal quant, and he needed to hide her somewhere she could never be found.

He’d tucked Nadia in his pocket and taken the next monorail downtown.

He got off at South Station and stepped into another world, a cluttered maze of alleys and unmarked doorways and pushcarts selling hot, greasy cones of fried wheatchips. The steel form of the Tower loomed overhead, casting most of the Sprawl—the neighborhood south of Houston Street—in shadow.

Watt turned toward the water, blinking at the sudden onslaught of the wind. Green and yellow buoys bobbed in the aquaculture pens over the long-submerged Battery Park. They were supposed to be farming kelp and krill, but Watt knew many of them also grew ocea-pharms, the highly addictive drugs cultured in jellyfish. Keeping his head down, he found the doorway he was looking for and stepped inside.

“What can I do for you?” A burly man stepped forward. His hair was clipped close to his scalp, and he was wearing a gray plastic jacket and surgical gloves.

Dr. Smith, as he called himself, had a reputation for performing illegal surgeries like drug wipes, fingerprint replacements, even retina transfers. They said there was nothing he couldn’t do. But when Watt explained what he wanted, the doctor shook his head. “Impossible,” he muttered.

“Are you sure?” Watt challenged, reaching into his pocket to hold Nadia out for inspection. Her hardware burned hot on his palm.

Smith took an involuntary step closer and gasped. “You’re telling me that’s a quant?”

“Yeah.” Watt felt a surge of satisfaction. Nadia was pretty damn impressive.

“All right,” Smith said reluctantly. “I can try.” He peeled off one of his surgical gloves and held out his hand. It had six fingers. “Dexterity boost,” he boasted, noticing Watt’s gaze. “Helps in surgery. Did it myself, with the left one.”

Watt shook the doctor’s six-fingered hand and gave Nadia to him, praying this crazy idea would work.

Leaning against the bar at Pulse, Watt brushed his fingers over the slight bump above his right ear, the only evidence left from that day. Sometimes he still couldn’t believe the surgery had succeeded. Now Nadia was always with him—at the edge of his temporal lobe, where Smith had embedded her, drawing her power from the piezoelectric pulse of Watt’s own blood flow. The authorities hadn’t ended up tracking them down, but still, Watt felt safer this way. If anything bad ever did happen, no one would think to look for a computer in Watt’s own brain.

“Do you come here a lot?” Squid Ink Martini Girl asked. She took a small sip of her martini, its purplish liquid swirling in the glass like a gathering storm.

Several lines of text instantly flashed across Watt’s contacts. She was a year older, a student at the local college majoring in art studies.

“I like coming here to observe,” Watt said. “It helps me with my art.”

“You’re an artist? What kind of art?”

He sighed. “Well, I used to work primarily in 3-D sculpture installations, but lately I worry they’re a little overdone. I’m thinking of incorporating more audio into my work. That’s part of why I’m here, to read everyone’s responses to the music.” He turned to look the girl in the eye; she blinked under the force of his gaze. “What do you think?” he asked.

“I totally agree,” she whispered, though he hadn’t really stated an opinion at all. “It’s like you read my mind.”

This was the side effect of having Nadia in his brain that Watt hadn’t anticipated—that she’d become his secret weapon for getting girls. Before the procedure, Watt’s batting average had been exactly that: average. He wasn’t unattractive, with his olive-gold skin and dark eyes, but he wasn’t particularly tall, or confident. Having Nadia changed all that.

Of course, up here in midTower—almost a mile higher than where he and Derrick actually lived—everyone could afford pretty decent contacts. You could look things up on your contacts while talking to someone, if you wanted, but you’d have to speak the question aloud. Aside from a few preprogrammed commands like nodding to accept an incoming call or blinking repeatedly to take a snap, contacts were still voice-operated. And while it was normal to mumble while you were on the Ifty or at home, it was definitely uncool to give contact commands mid-conversation.

Nadia was different. Because she was in Watt’s head, they could communicate through what Watt had dubbed “transcranial telepathy mode,” meaning that he could think questions and Nadia would answer him. And when he talked to girls, she could follow the conversation, instantly feeding him any relevant information.

In the case of Squid Ink Martini Girl, for instance, Nadia had made a complete study of the girl in under ten milliseconds. She’d hacked the girl’s flickers, found every place she’d checked into and who her friends were; she even read all twelve thousand pages of the girl’s feeds history, and calculated what Watt should do in order to keep the conversation going. Now Watt was self-assured, even smooth, because he always knew the exact right thing to say.

Martini Girl studied him as she idly twirled the stem of her glass. Watt stayed silent, knowing that she didn’t like overly aggressive guys, that she wanted to feel like she was making the first move. Sure enough—

“Wanna get out of here?”

She was gorgeous. Yet Watt didn’t even feel excited as he automatically said, “Sure. Let’s go.”

He slid a hand low around the girl’s waist, walking with her toward the entrance, noticing the envious stares of all the other guys. He usually felt a thrill of victory at times like this, his stubbornly competitive streak coming out. Now he couldn’t bring himself to care. It all felt too easy, and predictable. He’d already forgotten this girl’s name and she’d told him twice.

“Winner’s curse,” Nadia whispered into his eartennas, and he could swear he heard amusement in her tone. “Where the victor gets exactly what he wants, only to find that it isn’t quite as he expected.”

AVERY

“ZAY’S TALKING TO Daniela Leon.” Leda’s eyes narrowed at the other girl, who stood below them wearing some kind of black flouncy dress. Daniela tipped her head back and rested a hand lightly on Zay’s forearm, laughing uproariously at whatever he’d just said.

Avery followed Leda’s gaze, though she didn’t particularly care who Zay talked to. “It’s fine.”

“What’s she supposed to be, anyway, in that weird dress? A matador?” Leda snapped, turning to Avery.

“I think it’s a French maid costume?” Avery volunteered, trying to keep from laughing as she reached for her drink, which floated on a hovercoaster near her elbow.

But Leda wasn’t listening. She’d turned her attention inward and was muttering to herself, probably planning revenge on Daniela. That was typical Leda, though; when she thought Avery had been slighted, her reaction was swift and uncompromising. It was just her brand of friendship, and Avery accepted it, because she knew what love and fierce loyalty were behind it. I hope I never piss you off, she always joked, and Leda would just laugh and roll her eyes as if the very idea was ludicrous.

The two friends were standing on Cord’s second-floor landing, right at the top of the stairs. Avery’s eyes scanned the crowded room below. It had been overwhelming down there earlier, with guy after guy telling her how amazing she looked tonight. She leaned forward on the railing and the halo above her head followed, its tiny microhovers programmed to track her movements.

Everyone was here. There was Kemball Brown, wearing intricate Viking armor that looked fantastic against his dark, muscled shoulders. Laura Saunders, the light catching all the sequins of her low-cut pirate bodice. And in a liftie uniform was Leda’s older brother, Jamie, covered in a tangle of facial hair.

“What’s up with Jamie’s beard?” Avery asked Leda, amused.

“I know,” Leda agreed as her eyes returned to regular focus. “When I first saw it the other day, I was grossed out too.”

“The other day?” Avery repeated, confused. “Wasn’t Jamie with you all summer?”

Leda wavered for a moment, so quick that Avery might have imagined it. “He was, of course. I meant when I saw the whole thing together, with the uniform. You know it’s a real one—he bought it off an actual liftie.”

Leda’s words were normal enough. Avery had to be imagining the weirdness in her voice, right? “I need a refill,” she decided, sending her drink back toward the bar. “Want one?”

“I’m okay,” Leda protested. Her glass was still mostly full. Come to think of it, Avery realized, Leda hadn’t been drinking much at all tonight. “Looks like you need to catch up,” she teased.

There was that hesitation again. The sounds drifting up from below seemed suddenly amplified. “Guess I’m not back in party shape yet,” Leda answered, but her laughter was hollow.

Avery watched her best friend, the way she shifted back and forth, studying the tiny bows on her black heels. She was lying about something.

The realization made Avery’s chest hurt a little. She’d thought she and Leda told each other everything. “You can talk to me, you know.”

“I know,” Leda said quickly, though she didn’t sound like she believed it.

“Where were you this summer, really?” Avery pressed.

“Just let it go, okay?”

“I promise I won’t—”

Leda’s mouth formed a hard line, and her next words came out cold and formal. “Seriously. I said let it go.”

Avery recoiled, a little stung. “I just don’t understand why you won’t talk to me.”

“Yeah, well, sometimes it’s not about you, Avery.”

Avery started to reply just as a commotion sounded from downstairs, voices rising up in greeting. She glanced down in curiosity—and saw the figure at the center of all the turmoil.

Everything came to a halt, the room suddenly devoid of air. Avery struggled to think. Next to her she felt Leda stiffen in surprise, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away long enough to look at her friend.

He was back.

“Atlas,” she whispered, though of course he couldn’t hear.

She ran blindly down the stairs, the crowds parting to let her pass, hundreds of eyes on her, probably taking snaps and loading them straight to the feeds. None of it mattered. Atlas was home.

The next thing she knew, Avery was in his arms, burrowing her face in his shoulder, inhaling his familiar scent for a single precious moment before the rules of normal behavior forced her away.

“You’re back,” she said stupidly, her eyes drinking in every inch of him. He was wearing rumpled khakis and a navy sweater. He looked a little stronger than she remembered, and his light brown hair was longer, curling around his ears like it used to when he was little. But everything else was the same: his chocolate eyes framed by thick lashes, almost too thick to be masculine; the sprinkling of freckles across his nose; the way one of his bottom teeth was slightly turned, a reminder that he wasn’t perfect. That was one of the things she’d loved about Atlas when her parents brought him home twelve years ago—the fact that he had actual, visible flaws.

“I’m back,” he repeated. There was a shadow of rough stubble along his jaw. Avery’s hands itched to reach out and touch it. “How’s it going?”

“Where were you?” She winced at the sound of her own voice and lowered her tone. No one but Leda knew that Atlas hadn’t told his family where he was this whole time.

“All over the place.”

“Oh,” was all she could think to say. It was hard to form coherent thoughts with Atlas so close. She wanted to run back into his arms and hold him so tight he could never leave again; to run her hands over his shoulders and assure herself he was really here, really real. She’d made so much progress this summer, and yet here she was, fighting the familiar need to reach out and touch him.

“Well, I’m glad you’re home,” she managed.

“You’d better be.” His face broke out into a broad, easy smile, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to show up at a party unannounced after being gone for ten months.

“Atlas …” She hesitated, unsure what she wanted to say. She’d been so worried. For his safety, sure, but even worse had been the worry at the back of her mind—the terrible, persistent fear that he might never come back.

“Yeah?” he said softly.

Avery took a step forward. Her body was reacting instinctively to his nearness, like a plant that had been too long in the dark and was finally exposed to sunlight.

“Fuller!” Ty Rodrick barreled over and slapped Atlas on the back. The rest of the hockey guys appeared, pulling him forward, their voices loud.

Avery bit back a protest and stepped away. Act normal, she reminded herself. Over the chaos she locked eyes with Atlas, and he winked at her. Later, he mouthed.

She nodded, breaking every promise to herself, loving him.

LEDA

LEDA DROPPED HER clutch on the marble countertop of Cord’s bathroom and blinked at her reflection. Her hair was pulled into a bun and adorned with feathers, and her black ballerina costume clung to her in all the right places, even managing to create the illusion of cleavage. Real, illegal peacock feathers dusted the hem of her tutu. She reached down to run her fingers along them. Totally worth the import bribes.

Leda had long ago accepted that she wasn’t beautiful. She was too severe, all sharp edges and narrow angles, and her chest was painfully small. Still, she had her mother’s rich brown skin and her father’s full mouth. And there was something interesting in her face—a bright, hard intelligence that made people look twice.

She took a deep breath, trying to ignore the sense of uneasiness prickling over her. It almost didn’t seem possible, yet after all these months, it had finally happened.

Atlas was back.

Music played suddenly in her eartennas, the upbeat melody of a pop song she and Avery had been obsessed with last spring. Avery’s ringtone, again. Leda shook her head to decline the ping. She knew Avery was looking for her, but she couldn’t face her best friend yet, not after the way Leda had blown up at her earlier. She hadn’t meant to; she was just on edge and defensive about the rehab stuff. Why couldn’t Avery just stop pushing and give her some space? Leda didn’t want to talk about it.

Especially not now, when the whole reason she’d broken down in the first place was back again, and as gorgeous as ever.

Snap out of it, Leda told herself. Reflexively she reached into her bag for her lip gloss and reapplied, then stepped back out into the party, her head held high. She wouldn’t let Atlas get to her. She couldn’t afford to, not again.

“Leda.” Cord fell into step alongside her, wearing a dark costume with a sash slung across his chest. “Long time, no see.”

“Hey,” Leda said cautiously. She’d always been a little unsure of herself around Cord. Unlike Avery and Eris, she hadn’t known him since childhood, and ever since she had asked him for help getting xenperheidren a few years ago, it felt somehow like he had the upper hand.

“How was your summer?” he asked, reaching for a pair of atomic shots from a passing tray and handing her one. “Cheers,” he added before tossing his back.

Leda’s fingers curled around the glass of clear liquid. She’d promised her mom she wouldn’t drink tonight. Cord watched her, reading her hesitation, missing nothing. He raised an eyebrow in sardonic amusement.

Then she heard a familiar burst of laughter from behind them—Atlas was walking past. Why not? Leda thought suddenly; it wasn’t like one atomic would send her back to popping xenperheidren. She raised the shot to her lips and took it in a single gulp. It burned her throat, not unpleasantly.

“Now I remember why I like you,” Leda said, setting the shot glass down.

He laughed in approval. “I missed you this summer, Cole. I could have really used my smoke buddy.”

“Please. You have plenty of other people to get high with.”

“None as interesting as you,” Cord insisted. “Everyone else just gets dumber the more stuff they take.”

Leda shifted uncomfortably at the reminder. I’m sharp enough without xenperheidren, she told herself, but the words didn’t ring as true as they had just a few days ago. Mumbling an excuse, she turned and moved farther into the party. The feathers on her ballerina skirt had started falling off, leaving a little trail on the floor.

Hey, where are you? she flickered to Avery. Avery didn’t know about how she used to smoke occasionally with Cord—and Leda didn’t want to tell her—but seeing her might help calm Leda down.

“Leda?”

She turned slowly, trying to seem like she didn’t care, though of course she did.

Atlas was standing in a group of his old hockey friends. Leda waited, unmoving, as he mumbled something to the guys and came over toward her. “Hey,” he said simply.

Leda’s temper flared. That was all he had to say, when the last time they’d seen each other was naked in a hot tub, halfway across the world?

“So where were you?”