The Infinite Sea

“No, they prayed for the souls of the Holocaust. Then the next day the dog died.” And now he was nodding thoughtfully. “Grandma prayed for him. Prayed every night. Told all us grandkids to pray, too. So I prayed for a dog that terrorized and hated me and gave me this.” He swung his leg onto the bed and pulled up his pants to expose his calf. “See the scar?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Well, it’s there.” He pushed down the pants leg but kept his foot on the bed. “So after it died, I said to Grandma, ‘I prayed really hard and Flubby still died. Does God hate me?’”

“What did she say?”

“Some BS about God wanting Flubby in heaven, which was impossible for my six-year-old brain to process. There are nippy old purse dogs in heaven? Isn’t heaven supposed to be a nice place? It bothered me for a long time. Like, every night, while I said my prayers, I couldn’t help but wonder if I even wanted to go to heaven and spend eternity with Flubby. So I decided he must be in hell. Otherwise, theology falls apart.”

He wrapped his long arms around his upraised knee, where he rested his chin and stared into space. He was back in a time when a little boy’s questions about prayer and God and heaven still mattered.

“I broke a cup once,” he went on. “Playing around in Mom’s china cabinet, part of her wedding set, this dainty little cup from a tea set. Didn’t totally break it. Dropped it on the floor and it cracked.”

“The floor?”

“No, not the floor. The cu—” His eyes widened in shock. “Did you just make the same . . . ?”

I shook my head. He pointed his finger at me. “Naw, I caught you! A moment of lighthearted levity from Ringer the warrior queen!”

“I joke all the time.”

“Right. But they’re so subtle that only smart people get them.”

“The cup,” I prodded him.

“So I’ve cracked Mom’s precious china. I put it back in the cabinet, turning its cracked side toward the back so maybe she won’t notice, even though I know it’s only a matter of time before she does and I’m dead meat. Know where I turn for help?”

I didn’t have to think hard. I knew where the story was going. “God.”

“God. I prayed for God to keep Mom away from that cup. Like, for the rest of her life. Or at least until I moved away to college. Then I prayed that he could heal the cup. He’s God, right? He can heal people—what’s a tiny freaking made-in-China cup? That was the optimal solution and that’s what he’s all about, optimal solutions.”

“She found the cup.”

“You bet your ass she found the cup.”

“I’m surprised you still pray. After Flubby and the cup.”

He shook his head. “Not the point.”

“There’s a point?”

“If you’d let me finish the story—yes, there is a point. Here it is: After she found the cup and before I knew she’d found it, she replaced it. She ordered a new cup and threw away the old one. One Saturday morning—I guess I’d been praying for about a month—I went to the cabinet to prove the prayer circle wrong about wasted prayer, and I saw it.”

“The new cup,” I said. Razor nodded. “But you didn’t know your mom replaced it.”

He threw his hands into the air. “It’s a fucking miracle! What’s cracked has been uncracked! The broken made whole! God exists! I nearly crapped my pants.”

“The cup was healed,” I said slowly.

His dark eyes dug deep into mine. His hand fell to my knee. A squeeze. Then a tap.

Yes.

70

IN THE BATHROOM, the gush becomes a stream, the stream becomes a trickle, the trickle becomes an anemic dribble. The water slows and my heart quickens. My paranoia was getting the better of me. A decade passed while I waited for the water to be cut off: the go signal from Razor.

The hall outside is deserted. I already know that thanks to Claire’s tracking device. I also know exactly where I’m going.

Stairs. One flight down. One last promise. I pause long enough on the landing to slip Jumbo’s sidearm into the jacket pocket.

Then I slam through the door and hit the hall ru

“Take cover!” I shout. “It’s going to blow!”

I swerve past the counter and race toward the swinging doors that lead to the ward.

“Hey!” she shouts. “You can’t go back there!”

Any day now, Razor.

She hits the lockdown button on her desk. It doesn’t matter. I hurtle into the doors at full speed and smash both off their hinges.

“Freeze!” she screams.

The entire length of the hallway remains; I won’t make it. I’ve been enhanced, but I can’t outrun a bullet. I skitter to a halt.

Razor, I’m serious. Now would be a very good time.

“Hands on your head! Now.” Struggling to catch her breath. “Good job. Now walk toward me, backward. Slow. Very slow, or I swear to God I’ll shoot you.”

I obey, shuffling toward the sound of her voice. She orders me to stop. I stop. I’m still, but the mechanisms inside me aren’t. Her position is fixed: I don’t have to see her to know exactly where she’s standing. The hub’s dispatched the managers of my muscular and nervous systems to execute the directive when called upon. I won’t have to think when the time comes. The hub will take over.

But I won’t owe my life entirely to the 12th System: It was my idea to grab Jumbo’s jacket.

And that reminds me:

“Shoes,” I murmur.

“What did you say?” Her voice is quivering.

“I need shoes. What size are you?”

“Huh?”

At the speed of light the hub’s signal fires. My body doesn’t move quite that fast, but double the speed that is probably necessary.

Right hand jams into Jumbo’s baggy sleeve, where I slipped the ten-inch knife, pivot to the left, then throw.

And down she goes.

I pull the knife from her neck, slide the bloody blade back into the left sleeve of the jacket, and check out her shoes. A pair of those white, thick-soled nurse’s shoes. A half size too big, but they’ll work.

At the end of the hallway, I step into the last room on the right. It’s dark, but my eyes have been enhanced: I can see her clearly in the bed, fast asleep. Or doped. I’ll have to determine which.

“Teacup? It’s me. Ringer.”

The thick, dark lashes flutter. I’m so jacked up by this point, I swear I can hear the tiny hairs thrumming the air.

She whispers something without opening her eyes. Too soft for the unenhanced to hear, but the auditory bots transmit the information to the hub, which relays it to the inferior colliculus, the hearing center of my brain.

“You’re dead.”

“Not anymore. And neither are you.”

71

THE WINDOW BESIDE the bed jiggles in its frame. The floor quivers. Bright orange light floods the room, winks out, then an earsplitting roar and a fine mist of plaster floating down from the ceiling. The sequence repeats. Then again. Then again.

Razor’s hit the magazine building.

“Teacup, we have to go.” I slide one hand behind her head and lift gently.

“Go where?”

“As far as we can.”

Bracing the back of her head with one hand, I hit her in the forehead with the heel of the other. The precise amount of force, no more, no less. Her body goes limp. I heave her out of the bed. Another blast as the ordnance in the magazine continues to detonate. I kick out the window. Bitter cold air crashes into the room. I sit on the sill facing the bed, cradling Teacup against my chest. My intent alerts the hub: I’m two stories above the ground. Reinforcements race to the bones and tendons in my feet, ankles, shins, knees, and pelvis.