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  “What?”

  “That boy you helped over the ice field. I’m fairly certain he’s the one who fried your chips. It was probably when you let him get close.”

  “Zir,” Marmeg corrected automatically while her mind raced. Had Ardha been close enough to corrupt her chips? Yes: that final embrace. But zie had been so cooperative. Stupid, stupid, stupid! To fall for a pretty moot face and destroy her chance of winning this race fair and square. She wished she could smash Ardha’s rating then and there, make sure no one trusted zir again.

  Mike shrugged. “Zie, he, she—until you change your genetics, you’re still male or female as far as I’m concerned. You kids want to play at being something that you’re not, that’s between you. I’m not changing the way I talk.”

  “Not playing,” Marmeg said irritably. “Making waves. Changing the world. Better to judge on what you can do, not how you born. Bodies are going out. Nats be left behind.”

  “You think so, eh? What do you expect will happen to the human species if we’re all neutered embeds? Who’s going to make the babies?” Mike shook his head. “You think you’re going to change the world. The reality is that the world is changing us. Pretty soon we’re going to need all the nat skills and abilities that our ancestors had. I should know; I used to be like you, full of bits of silicon and titanium. I fought in the Congo. Nature is stronger than we give her credit for. Best that we learn to coexist peacefully with her.”

  Not only was Mike a nat, he was a converted one—the worst kind when it came to preaching—but his words didn’t convince her. Companies like Minerva specialized in physical enhancements, but others were working on deeper changes. They wouldn’t need babies in the future. They would live forever, bodies enhanced, minds uploaded.

  Mike looked at her and sighed. “Every year I try, hoping that the message gets through to someone . . . someday. You think you understand the world by seeing it through the grid, but reality is messier than bits and bytes.”

  They’d been walking along the base of the massive rock wall. Mike stopped at a cluster of scraggly bushes growing between some rocks. He pushed the branches aside and rolled a couple stones away, revealing an opening that was half Marmeg’s height and as wide as an arm span.

  “You’ll see for yourself when you’re older. Here’s the tunnel. Someone will meet you when you need to get into the next one.”

  “This? Be a tunnel?”

  Mike grinned. “I never said you could run it. Trust me, you’ll crawl through just fine. In fact, your calves are going to thank you while you’re on your knees. It’s too bad you lost the upper leg enhancements, but this will still save you a lot of time.”

  He took something out of his pocket and then stretched it over Marmeg’s head.

  “It’s a head lamp. The switch is here, on top. Good luck. I’m going to cover the entrance once you’re in, so don’t try to turn back.”

  Marmeg looked at him like he was crazy, which he was, and then decided that she was equally crazy to do this. She got down on hands and knees, turned on the lamp, and went in.

  * * *

  The crawl went on and on until Marmeg’s arms, legs, and back ached. She felt like it lasted for hours, but according to her cuff, it only took forty-five minutes. The sky was nearly dark by the time she emerged into another cluster of bushes and rocks.

  She looked around but saw no one. She pushed rocks across the hole and tried to arrange the bushes to hide it from a casual glance. The task was harder than it looked. After three attempts to make it seem natural, Marmeg shrugged and gave up. Let the Mountain Mikes make it better if they wanted to.

  She loaded the map from Mike, oriented herself, and walked in the direction it indicated. As she moved, the kinks in her body relaxed into a minor nuisance. She tried jogging and then running. Jumping didn’t work as well as it had with the quad exos, but at least the pain from her cuts faded to a dull ache. She could maintain a respectable pace.

  Snow dusted the ground like powdered sugar on cinnamon cake. Marmeg’s stomach growled. Her throat felt parched. The booze back at the cabin couldn’t have helped with hydration. She opened her mouth and caught a few snowflakes on her tongue. They melted with a sensation like popping bubbles.

  A laugh burst from her. She wished Felix were there. Lee and Jeffy, too. None of them had left the city, seen true wilderness. Here, with nothing but trees and snow, sky above, dirt below, Marmeg’s spirit soared with glee. It had all gone to shit without a pot, but she was there. She was experiencing something that none of her family could comprehend, surrounded as they were by cement and glass.

  Marmeg ran faster, breathing hard and enjoying the burn of cold air in her lungs. The incisions on her calves tugged with each step, but the sensation was gentle and far removed. Snow blurred into an almost uniform whiteness. She had to land each step by feel and hope her balance held. A trickle of sweat traced the space between her shoulder blades. Fingers and toes warmed as her blood pulsed and breath deepened.

  “I’m alive!” Marmeg yelled into the dark expanse above.

  She’d left the head lamp on. She slowed to a jog and switched it off, then activated the night vision in her contact lenses. Marmeg ran until she saw another massive slab of granite looming ahead. The time on her cuff showed nearly ten o’clock. She’d been out for eleven hours.

  Her mileage showed as forty-five, far more than she expected. GPS access had been blocked inside the tunnel, so the routing software that Minerva required had extrapolated from the terrain. It calculated the miles as if she’d climbed over rather than crawled through. How had the Mountain Mikes found that loophole?

  She arrived near the base of the mountain and couldn’t go farther. The map indicated that she should turn left. Five minutes later, a figure loomed out of the darkness, its hooded face wrapped in a giant wooly scarf.

  “This way,” rumbled a low, decidedly male voice.

  Marmeg looked for a beard, but it was impossible to find in the swaddled head, especially with her night vision on. The Mike said nothing more as he revealed the tunnel. He stayed silent even after she went in.

  The light from the head lamp blinded her when she turned it on. Marmeg blinked and squinted until her pupils adjusted, then began the long, painful crawl to the other side. Muscles cooled, breath slowed, and a deep cold seeped into her body from the rock surrounding her.

  This tunnel was considerably longer than the previous one and had some uphill and downhill sections. Halfway through an incline, the pain pills began to wear off. She couldn’t get into the pack for more, so she gritted her teeth and kept moving. Her calves were screaming with pain by the time she came out of the other end. It was nearly midnight. All of the elation from earlier had evaporated.

  Marmeg stopped to stretch her pain-wracked body. She popped a couple more stims and three pain pills into her mouth and tried to work up some spit. The mass went down in a painful, bitter lump that made her gag. The analgesics would take some time to work, but the stimulants were fast.

  She sat and waited for them to hit. She hated this race. Winning by any means, cheating the GPS system, getting help—and for what? So she could give half the prize money to a group of people whose values meant nothing to her. This race was supposed to be her chance to prove herself, to prove that she could compete with those who had the latest and greatest tech. Now she was like every other lowlife filcher. She ignored the rules, broke laws, and stomped on anyone who stood in her way.

  She checked her cuff. The mileage had jumped by another fifteen. That put her total at sixty miles with only fifteen more to go. If all her gear still worked, she could match her earlier four-miles-per-hour pace. She could finish the race and beat the record. Unless that, too, was faked.

  Marmeg groaned and hit the ground with a fist. The faces of her brothers stared at her from the cuff.

  “What should I do, Jeffy?”

  The image was still, silent, accusatory.

  You started this, it seeme
d to say. Finish it! Don’t be a whiny little girl. You’ve already done enough to be disqualified. You might as well go for the kill.

  Marmeg shuddered with cold. Too much time sitting still. Her calves stung at the incisions. She could feel warm blood as it seeped through the bandages and froze against the frigid air. Would bloody ice crystals look like rubies?

  Red gems dripped from her legs and fell to the ground, forming a carpet around her. The crystals caught the starlight, sparked with their own internal fire. A thousand tiny flames surrounded Marmeg with their warmth.

  She woke with a start. The forest was black. Nothing but chilled dirt and melting snow lay beneath her.

  “Wake up,” she told herself, slapping her cheeks.

  Her cuff said she’d been asleep for twenty minutes, and her body felt heavy from the weight of it. The stim pills had begun their work, though. With a soft groan, Marmeg stood and forced herself to walk, step by slow, dull step.

  A quick check showed the leg exos and one remaining sleeve functioning correctly. The heating elements on the torso shell remained broken—no surprise—but the heart and lung monitors read correctly, and the abdominal boosters were doing their job. So, why couldn’t she move faster?

  You’re tired.

  She put one foot in front of the next, following the path set out for her. What else could she do? Around one o’clock, the moon rose above the eastern peaks. Its light showed breaks in the cloud cover. Marmeg couldn’t see the stars she’d hoped for, but the moonbeams made for better company than the storm-clouded blackness. The snow had stopped falling. The ground crunched under her steps and glimmered from the faint light.

  The pain pills started kicking in, and Marmeg picked up her pace. No matter what prize money she won, she wouldn’t be out for another solitary moonlit hike any time soon. She’d caught a snowflake on her tongue. She’d heard ice crackle under her boots, mimicking the sound of broken glass that had been stepped on too many times. Or the sound facial bones made when your mom’s boyfriend didn’t much like your mom’s kid.

  She wished she could have a do-over, a second chance to prove that she was as good as the legit embeds and moots; that she could beat them at their own game; that she deserved to be at a university with people who were born licensed, who never had to worry about food or medicine or shots. But that kind of thinking trapped her in the dark corners of her mind, where bad ideas looped infinitely.

  Maybe Mountain Mike was right. Life was never fair. Winning by cheating was okay if you used the money for the right reasons. In her case, she wanted to buy little Felix’s license so he could get his shots and go to school. She wanted a full degree, which ultimately meant a better life for her and her family. Those goals were noble enough to let the ends justify the means, weren’t they?

  A figure loomed up out of the darkness. Marmeg gasped and nearly lost her footing. She stumbled to a halt a few feet away, breathing hard. When she looked at the person, she saw a face hidden under bushy hair that glinted in the moonlight.

  “The hell?” Marmeg demanded, heart hammering. “No tunnels for miles yet!”

  “You’re this girl? The one with the leg cuts and all?” The muffled voice was high-pitched.

  Marmeg peered at the Mountain Mike. “You a lady?”

  The bundle of hair nodded. “We wear beards to fool the cameras. As long as we don’t come too far into the open, they can’t tell us apart. Follow me.”

  “But—”

  “Come on!”

  Marmeg bit back an irritated reply. This Mike plowed straight through the underbrush. Marmeg followed, small branches smacking into the backs of her calves and making the incisions sting. Her cuff said she’d been on the correct path to the next tunnel. Now they headed toward an overland route that she’d considered before the race. It was direct, but it required rock climbing skills and equipment that she didn’t have.

  They arrived at a tumble of boulders. Mountain Mike scrambled up on her hands and knees. Marmeg decided that she might as well take it easy and use all four limbs too. There wasn’t much point in jumping like a goat when she had no idea where to go. What would they put her through next?

  A light breeze blew over them and grew stronger as they climbed higher. Broken clouds outlined by ghostly white moonlight hung behind the ridge’s saw-toothed silhouette. As she and Mike neared the top, the wind blew so hard that they were forced to lean into it. The bare rock was mostly free of snow and ice, though a few wind-sheltered pockets glittered like treasure. She scooped a handful into her mouth. Only a few drops of cold liquid, but the relief to her throat was immeasurable.

  Mountain Mike tapped her on the shoulder and then pointed down—into the wind and a steep, rocky slope. She put her bristly face next to Marmeg’s ear, and Marmeg fought the urge to pull away.

  “There’s someone down there who’s hurt. Another contestant. I think you might be able to help me with him. Follow me very carefully. He went down this scree and got trapped under a rockfall. I don’t want the same thing to happen to us.”

  Marmeg peered down, trying to see the other person. The nearer rocks reflected the moon’s glow, but nothing else was visible. Her attention locked onto her footing once they transitioned to the down slope. Stones littered the ground, ranging in size from pebbles to boulders wider than her arm span. Each step sent a few of them skittering away. The rattle reminded her of gunfire, a sound that accompanied many nights at home.

  Mountain Mike was doing a respectable job of the climb, though she ended up on her ass after half of her steps. Marmeg managed to keep her balance. The lack of full leg exos made the job more difficult than it should have been. She wondered how another race contestant had screwed this up.

  Then she saw the massive vertical scar of pale gray against darker rock. At its base lay a jumble of boulders, and under that, the lower half of a body. She winced and turned away for a second, imagining what it must feel like to be crushed beneath that kind of weight. Her legs would be pulp.

  Marmeg and Mike inched sideways, perpendicular to the slope, until they stood near the injured contestant. One look at the pale, unconscious face and Marmeg identified zir as Ardha. You got what you deserved, said the vengeful part of Marmeg’s mind. Shut up. Nobody deserves this, said another.

  Marmeg bent to lift a rock from Ardha’s body.

  “No!” Mike said. “Don’t touch those rocks! I don’t know how stable they are, and they’re saving his life right now by keeping him from bleeding out.”

  “What you want from me, then?”

  “I want you to enable his grid access. That way the race organizers or his support team will know he’s in trouble. They’ll come get his body, and you can keep going.”

  Marmeg shook her head. “Can’t do.”

  “Why not? We’ll make sure you still place. Don’t worry about that.”

  “Can’t. Not won’t. Can’t access zir cuff.”

  “But you’re a hacker.” Mountain Mike sounded confused.

  “Not so easy. Could hack it, yeah, but takes time. Like hours time, not minutes time.”

  Mike blew out a frustrated breath and carefully sat down next to Ardha’s body. She held a hand on zir wrist, checking zir pulse, Marmeg guessed. Then Mike felt Ardha’s forehead and cheeks. She reached into a pocket, pulled out an old phone, and held it up to her head.

  “His pulse is weak, and he’s clammy,” she said, speaking into the handset.

  Marmeg could barely hear the words over the wind.

  “Maybe another hour or so to live, best guess. Not long enough for her to run to the finish line and inform them.” A pause. “No, that won’t work. What story could she give them?” A longer pause, then louder: “Are you kidding? Just leave him here?”

  Mike snapped the phone closed in anger and stood. “If you idiots didn’t think you were invincible, you wouldn’t get us into situations like this. Let’s go!”

  “What about zir?”

  “We have to leave him. You need t
o win this race more than we need to help him. So says our leadership. He lives or dies on his support team. That’s a risk all of you take, right? You sign the damn waivers when you enter.”

  “Nobody’s ever died.”

  “Then he won’t either. Now, come on!”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Not leaving zir. Not like this.”

  Mike flapped her arms like she was trying to fly off the mountain. “I thought you said you couldn’t do anything?”

  “Got my own grid access.”

  “You can’t use that. Then we all lose. We’ll get nothing for helping you, and once they realize you’ve been working with us, they’ll ban you from races forever. Is that what you want?”

  Marmeg was certainly happy to see Ardha lose the race after what zie had done to her. But to potentially let a person die over money? She would despise herself for it.

  She’d pulled herself from the precipice of self-hatred once before, when the glow of being a prodigy had worn off. Marmeg had lived the high school party circuit for a year. Jeffy left for the service, and she had no one to remind her of her worth. Contest money that Amihan didn’t take was burned on pills. Spare time—and she had plenty of that—was lost in the haze of self-loathing.

  If she hadn’t met T’shawn, if he hadn’t remembered Marmeg from the old days, she might never have crawled out of her head hole and back into life. This race, the prize money, her dream future: none of these was worth the risk of returning to that ugly corner of her mind.

  “Race not the be-all. Zie might die.”

  “I know. That’s why I brought you here. Look, this situation is crap, but we have to put the greater good first. If you won’t change your mind . . . well, I can’t blame you, but I can’t help you, either.”

  She turned and started walking up the scree.

  “That’s it?” Marmeg called after her. “Buncha nats think you’re the stuff! Let a kid die on money? Some things not worth being.”

  Marmeg took out her screen, enabled her grid access, and sent a message to the race organizers. She took some photos of Ardha’s situation, too—so they’d know what to bring—and sent a capture of her map with the GPS coordinates displayed. She made sure to disable her grid access again after seeing the send confirmation.