The Thousandth Floor

She pulled back her arm and hurled the earring against the wall with all the strength she had. It exploded into a million pieces, which scattered over the floor like shards of glittering tears.

RYLIN

AS THE LAST guests stumbled from Cord’s party into a waiting hover, Rylin heaved a sigh of relief. The night had felt endless—cleaning up all those drunk kids’ messes, pretending not to notice how some of the guys looked at her. She was exhausted, and her head still pounded from being yanked out of the communal. But thank god she was finally done.

Stretching her arms overhead, she wandered to the windows in Cord’s living room and gazed hungrily at the horizon line in the distance. The view screens in her apartment were so old that they didn’t even look like windows anymore, more like garish cartoons of a fake view, with a too-bright sun and overly green trees. There was a window along the side of her monorail stop at work—Rylin’s snack stand was at the Crayne Boulevard stop, between Manhattan and Jersey—but even that was too close to see anything except the Tower, squatting like a giant steel toad that blocked out the sky. Impulsively she pressed her face to the glass. It felt blissfully cool on her aching forehead.

Finally Rylin peeled herself away and started upstairs, to check in with Cord and get the hell out of there. As she walked, the lights behind her turned off and the ones ahead of her clicked on, illuminating a hallway lined with antique paintings. She passed an enormous bathroom, filled with plush hand towels and touch screens on every surface. Hell, the floor was probably even a touch screen: Rylin was willing to bet that it could read your weight, or heat up on voice command. Everything here was the best, the newest, the most expensive—everywhere she looked, she saw money. She walked a little faster.

When she reached the holoden, Rylin hesitated. Projected on the wall wasn’t the action immersion or dumb comedy she had expected. It was old family vids.

“Oh, no! Don’t you dare!” Cord’s mom exclaimed, in vibrant 3-D.

A four-year-old Cord grinned, holding a garden hose. Where was this, Rylin wondered, on vacation somewhere?

“Oops!” he proclaimed, without an ounce of contrition, as he turned the hose on his mom. She laughed, throwing up her tanned arms, her dark hair streaming with water like a mermaid’s. Rylin had forgotten how pretty she was.

Cord leaned forward eagerly, sitting almost on the edge of his leather armchair. A smile played on his lips as he watched his dad chase his younger self around the yard.

Rylin retreated a step. She would just—

The floor creaked under her feet, and Cord’s head shot up. Instantly the vid cut off.

“I—I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I just wanted to let you know I’m finished. So I’m heading out.”

Cord’s eyes traveled slowly over her outfit, her tight jeans and low-cut shirt and the tangle of neon bracelets at her wrists.

“I didn’t have time to go home and change,” she added, not sure why she was explaining herself to him. “You didn’t give me much notice.”

Cord just stared at her, saying nothing. Rylin realized with a start that he hadn’t recognized her. Then again, why should he? They hadn’t seen each other in years, since that Christmas his parents had invited her family over for presents and cookies. Rylin remembered how magical it had seemed to her and Chrissa, playing in the snow in the enclosed greenhouse, like a real-life version of the snow-globe toy her mom always got out for the holidays. Cord had spent the whole time in some holo-game, oblivious.

“Rylin Myers,” Cord said at last, as if she had stumbled into his party by chance rather than been paid to work it. “How the hell are you?” He gestured to the seat next to him, and Rylin surprised herself by sinking into it, pulling her legs up to sit cross-legged.

“Aside from being groped by your friends, just great,” she said without thinking. “Sorry,” she added quickly, “it’s been a long night.” She wondered where Hiral and the gang were, if they’d finally noticed her disappearance.

“Well, most of them aren’t my friends,” Cord said matter-of-factly. He shifted his weight, and Rylin couldn’t help noticing the way his shoulders rippled under his button-down shirt. She sensed suddenly that his carelessness was deceptive, that beneath it all he was watching her intently.

For a moment they both stared at the dark screen. It was funny, Rylin thought; if you’d told her earlier that her night would end here, hanging out with Cord Anderton, she would have laughed.

“What is that?” Cord asked, and Rylin realized she was playing with her necklace again. She dropped her hands to her lap.

“It was my mom’s,” she said shortly, hoping that would end it. She’d given the necklace to her mom as a birthday present one year, and after that her mom never took it off. Rylin remembered the pang she’d felt when the hospital sent it back to her, folded in plastiwrap and labeled with a cheerful orange tag. Her mom’s death hadn’t felt real until that moment.

“Why the Eiffel Tower?” Cord pressed, sounding interested.

Why the hell do you care, Rylin wanted to snap back, but caught herself. “It was an inside joke of ours,” she said simply. “We used to always say that if we ever had the money, we would take the train to Paris, eat at a fancy ‘Café Paris.’” She didn’t bother explaining how she and Chrissa used to turn their kitchen into a snooty French café. They would make paper berets and draw mustaches on their faces with their mom’s paintstick, and adopt terrible French accents as they served her the “chef’s special”—whatever frozen food packet had been on sale that week. It always made their mom smile after a long day’s work.

“Did you ever end up going?” Cord asked.

Rylin almost laughed at the stupidity of the question. “I’ve barely left the Tower.”

The room sounded with sudden shouting and water spraying, as the screen lit back up with the holovid. Cord quickly shut it off. His parents had died years ago, Rylin remembered, in a commercial airline crash.

“It’s nice that you have those vids,” she said into the silence. She understood why he would be possessive about them; she would have done the same if she and Chrissa had any. “I wish we had more of my mom.”

“I’m sorry,” Cord said quietly.

“It’s fine.” She shrugged, though of course it wasn’t fine. It wouldn’t be fine ever again.

The tension was broken by a sudden rumble sounding in the room. It took Rylin a moment to realize that it had come from her own stomach. Cord looked at her curiously. “You hungry?” he asked, though the answer was obvious. “We could break out the leftovers, if you want.”

“Yes,” Rylin said, more enthusiastically than she’d meant to. She hadn’t eaten since lunch.

“Next time you should eat the catering,” Cord said as they started out of the holoden and down the sweeping glass staircase. “Guess I should have told you that.” Rylin wondered what made him think there would be a next time.

When they reached the kitchen, the fridge cheerfully informed Cord that he’d consumed four thousand calories so far today, 40 percent of which were from alcohol, and per his “Muscle Regime 2118” he was allowed nothing else. A glass of water materialized in the fridge’s export slot.

“Muscle regime. I should get one of those,” Rylin deadpanned.

“I’m trying to be healthy.” Cord turned back to the machine. “Guest override, please,” he mumbled, then looked at Rylin, redder than she’d ever seen him. “Um, could you just put your hand on the fridge to prove you’re here?”

Rylin placed her palm on the refrigerator, which dutifully swung open. Cord began pulling out containers at random, pumpkin seed milk bars and hundred-layer lasagna and fresh appleberries. Rylin grabbed a box of pizza cones out of his hand and tore into one. It was cheesy and fried and perfect, maybe even better cold. When Cord handed her a napkin, she realized that sauce had dripped onto her chin, but somehow she didn’t care.

As he leaned back against the counter, Rylin caught sight of something over his shoulder, and let out a squeal. “Oh my god. Are those Gummy Buddies? Do they actually move when you bite off their heads, like they do in the adverts?”

“You’ve never had a Gummy Buddy?”

“No.” A bag of Gummy Buddies cost more than what she and Chrissa spent on food in a week. They were the first edible electronics, with microscopic radio frequency ID tags inside each candy.

“Come on.” Cord tossed her the bag. “Try one.”

Rylin pulled out a bright green gummy and popped it whole into her mouth. She chewed expectantly, then glowered at him when nothing happened.

“You didn’t do it right.” Cord seemed to be struggling to keep his face straight. “You have to bite off the head, or the legs. You can’t just eat it all at once.”

She grabbed another gummy and bit off the bottom half. The RFID chip in the remaining top part of the gummy abruptly let out a high-pitched scream.

“Crap!” Rylin yelled, dropping the gummy head on the floor. It kept twitching near her feet, and she took a step back.

Cord laughed and grabbed the rest of the gummy, tossing it into the trash, which suctioned it off to the sorting center. “Here, try again,” he said, holding out the bag. “If you bite off the head, they don’t scream, just move around.”

“I’m good, thanks.” Rylin tucked a strand of hair behind one ear and glanced back up at Cord. Something about the way he was looking at her made her fall silent.

Then he was closing the distance between them, and lowering his mouth to hers.

At first Rylin was too startled to react. Cord kissed her slowly, almost languidly, pressing her back against the counter. The edge of it dug sharply into Rylin’s hip, jarring her back to reality. She put both hands on his chest and pushed, hard.

She crossed her arms as Cord stumbled backward, his breath ragged, his eyes dancing with amusement. A smile curled at the corners of his lips.

Something about that look made Rylin shake with anger. She was furious with Cord for laughing at the situation, with herself for letting it unfold—and deep down, for enjoying it, for a single bewildered instant.

Without stopping to think, she raised her arm and slapped him. The noise cracked through the air like a whip.

“I’m sorry,” Cord finally said, into the painful stillness. “I obviously misread the situation.”

Rylin watched the red mark of her hand blossoming on his face. She’d gone too far. He wouldn’t pay her for tonight, and all that hard work would have been for nothing. “I—um, I should get going.”

She was halfway out the front door when she heard footsteps in the entryway. “Hey, Myers,” Cord called out from behind her. “Catch.”

She turned and caught the bag of Gummy Buddies in midair.

“Thanks,” she said, confused, but the door was already closing behind him.

Rylin leaned against the door of Cord’s apartment and closed her eyes, trying to gather the frayed and tangled strands of her thoughts. Her mouth felt bruised, almost seared. She could still feel where Cord had held her tight around the waist.

With an angry sigh, she hurried down the three brick stairs that led to his entrance and started down the carbon-paved streets.

The entire two and a half miles home, Rylin pulled the heads off the Gummy Buddies one by one, letting their small screams fill the empty elevator car.

WATT

“WATT!” A TINY pink form barreled down the hallway as he walked inside the next day.

“Hey, Zahra.” Watt laughed, scooping his five-year-old sister into his arms. Her dark curls had something sticky in them, and a costume tiara was perched precariously atop her head. Watt noticed that her pajama pants, which used to drag along the ground, now barely hit mid-calf. He made a mental note to buy her a new set the next time he was paid. Zahra giggled, then wriggled impatiently out of his arms to run back into the living room, where her twin brother, Amir, was building something out of plastifoam blocks.

“Watzahn, is that you?” Watt’s mom called from the kitchen.

“Yeah, Mom?” It was never a good sign when she used his full name.

You might want to change first, Nadia suggested, but Watt was already at the doorway. Shirin hovered over the cook surface, pouring water into an instant noodle dinner. Watt remembered back before the twins were born, when she used to cook elaborate Persian meals from scratch: rich lamb stews and golden flatbreads and rice sprinkled with sumac. Then she’d unexpectedly gotten pregnant and stopped cooking altogether, claiming the smell of spices made her nauseous. But even after the twins were born, the home-cooked Persian meals never came back. There wasn’t enough time anymore.

Shirin pushed the cook-dial to high heat and turned to Watt. “You were at Derrick’s all day?” she asked, with a glance at his rumpled clothes from last night. Watt reddened. Nadia said nothing, but he could practically feel her thinking I told you so.

“Yeah. I stayed at Derrick’s last night,” Watt said to his mom, but she just stared at him blankly. “Today was our last day of summer, and we wanted to try finishing this game …” He trailed off.

It was true, though. He’d barely spent any time at Squid Ink Martini Girl’s last night—Nadia was right, she didn’t have much to say, and he felt somehow foolish for having left the bar with her. He’d ducked out almost immediately to head for Derrick’s. He’d spent the night there, and this morning they’d eaten enormous sandwiches from the bagel shop and watched soccer on the tiny screen in Derrick’s living room. It wasn’t that Watt had been avoiding home, exactly. But Derrick didn’t have two younger siblings who needed constant attention. His parents basically let him do what he wanted, as long as he kept up his grades.

“I could have used your help today,” Shirin went on, sounding more defeated than angry. “The twins had a checkup this afternoon. I had to get Tasha to fill in for me at the center so that I could take them, since I couldn’t find you. I’ll have to work double shifts the rest of the week just to make up the time.”

Watt felt like utter crap. “You could have pinged me,” he said lamely, pretty sure he’d ignored a call at some point last night.

“You were too busy playing that holo game,” his mom snapped, then let out a sigh. “It’s fine. Just get your brother and sister.” She set bowls and spoons on the table as the door opened again, eliciting more excited squeals from Zahra. Moments later Watt’s dad was in the kitchen, a twin on each hip. He usually had to work much later than this—having him home for dinner was practically a special occasion.

“Dinner’s ready, Rashid.” Watt’s mom greeted him with a tired kiss on the cheek.

They all crammed around the small table. Watt shoved the instant noodles and canned vegetables into his mouth without tasting them, not that they had much taste to begin with. He was angry with his mom for making him feel guilty. What was wrong with him occasionally blowing off steam at a midTower bar? Or spending the last day of summer hanging out with his friend?

The moment Zahra yawned, her hands making small fists over her head, Watt stood up as if on cue. “The bedtime monorail is about to leave! All aboard!” he announced, in a too-deep voice.

“Choo choo!” Zahra and Amir attempted a train noise and trotted alongside Watt. The actual monorail was silent, of course, but the twins watched tons of animated train holos and loved making that sound. Watt’s dad smiled, watching them. Shirin pursed her lips and said nothing.

Watt led the twins down a winding imaginary train track to the end of the hall. Their room was tiny, but still bigger than his: this used to be Watt’s room, actually, before they were born and he moved into the office nook. The dim light barely illuminated the bunk beds built into the wall. Watt had repeatedly tried to route more electricity to the twins, but it never seemed to be enough. He had a sinking suspicion that it was his fault, because of all the power-hungry hardware he’d set up in his room.

He helped the twins laser-clean their teeth and tucked them into bed. They didn’t have a room comp down here, of course, but Nadia did the best vitals check she could, watching the twins’ breathing and eye movement. When she’d confirmed they were asleep, Watt shut the door quietly and moved down the hallway to his makeshift bedroom.

He sank gratefully into his ergonomic swivel chair—which he’d lifted from an office space that was about to be foreclosed—and clicked on the high-def screen at his desk, which took up most of the room. His bed was shoved far to the corner, his clothes tucked on hoverbeams up near the ceiling. Nadia didn’t need the screen, of course, since she could project anything directly onto his contacts. But Watt still liked surfing the i-Net this way whenever possible. Even he thought it was weird sometimes, replacing your entire field of vision with the digital overlay.

He flipped through all the messages from the girls he’d met at Pulse last night, then closed out without answering any of them. Instead he logged into H@cker Haus, his favorite dark-web site for postings of “data services” jobs.

Watt’s family always needed money. His parents had moved from Isfahad to New York the year before he was born, when the Tower was new and the whole world was excited about it: before Shanghai and Hong Kong and São Paulo all got their own thousand story megatowers. Watt knew his parents had immigrated for his sake, hoping he would have a chance at a better future.

It hadn’t turned out the way they’d hoped. Back in Iran, Watt’s dad had attended the top mechanical engineering school, and his mom had been studying as a doctor. But Rashid now worked repairing industrial coolant and sewage systems. Shirin had been forced to get a job as a caregiver at a nursing home, just so they could keep their apartment. They never complained, but Watt knew it wasn’t easy on them, working long days hammering machinery and dealing with crotchety old people, then coming downstairs to take care of the family. And no matter how hard they tried, money always seemed to be tight. Especially now that the twins were getting older.

Which was why Watt had started saving for college. Well, for MIT. Their microsystems engineering program was the best in the world—and Watt’s best shot at someday working on one of the few legal quants left, the ones owned by the UN and NASA. He wasn’t applying to any safety schools. His parents worried that his insistence was stubborn and overconfident, but Watt didn’t care; he knew he would get in. The real question was how he would pay for it. He’d been applying to scholarships, and had won a few small grants here and there, but nowhere near enough to pay for four years at an expensive private university.

So Watt had started making money a different way: by venturing to the darker part of the i-Net, and answering ads for what were euphemistically called “information services.” In other words, hacking. Together he and Nadia falsified employment records, changed students’ grades at various school systems, even broke into flicker accounts for people who thought their significant others were cheating. Only once did they try hacking a bank’s security system, and that ended almost immediately, when Nadia detected a virus hurtling toward them and shut herself off.

After that, Watt tried to steer clear of anything too illegal, except of course for the fact of Nadia’s existence. But he took on jobs whenever he could, depositing most of the proceeds in a savings account and giving the rest to his parents. They knew he was good with technology; when he told them the money came from tech support jobs online, they didn’t question it.

He scrolled idly through the H@cker Haus requests, stifling a yawn. As usual, most were too absurd or too illegal for him to take on, but he flagged a few for later review. One in particular caught his eye, asking for information on a missing person. Those were usually easy jobs if the person was still in the country; Nadia had long ago hacked the national security-cam link, and could use facial recognition to find people in a matter of minutes. Curious, Watt read further, an eyebrow raised. It certainly was an unusual request.

The author of the post wanted information on someone who had been missing this past year, but who had since returned. I need to know where he’s been this whole time, and why he came home, the person requested. Sounded easy enough.

Watt immediately composed a reply, introducing himself as Nadia—the name he used for all his hacking jobs, because, well, why not?—and saying that he’d love to help. He leaned back, drumming his fingers on the armrests.

I might be interested, the person who’d written the post replied. But I need proof you can actually do what you say you can do.

Well, well. A newbie. Everyone who repeatedly posted on these forums knew enough about Watt to know he was a professional. He wondered who this person was. “Nadia, can you—”

“Yes,” Nadia answered, knowing his question before he even finished speaking, and hacking into the sender’s security to find the hardware address. “Got her. Here she is.”

On the screen appeared the girl’s feed profile. She was Watt’s age, and lived right here in the Tower, up on the 962nd floor.

What did you have in mind? he answered, a little intrigued.

His name is Atlas Fuller. Tell me something I don’t know about him, and the job is yours.

Nadia found Atlas instantly. He was at home—on the thousandth floor. Watt was stunned. This guy actually lived on the thousandth floor? Not that Watt had given the Tower’s penthouse much thought, but if pressed, he wouldn’t have guessed a teenager lived there. What an idiot, Watt thought, running away when that was your life.

“Can we hack their home comp?” Watt asked Nadia, thinking maybe he could get a snap of Atlas in his bedroom.

But Nadia wasn’t having any luck. “It’s an incredibly sophisticated system,” she told Watt, which he knew meant that it could take weeks. Better to get something now. This job was too good to lose.

His messages, then. That would be easier to hack. Sure enough, Nadia immediately pulled up Atlas’s most recent messages. A few had been sent to guys named Ty and Maxton, and the rest to someone named Avery. None were that exciting. Watt sent them all over anyway.

Moments later the girl’s reply came in.

Congratulations, you’re hired. Now I need you to find as much as you can about what Atlas has been doing the past year.

As you wish, Watt couldn’t help replying.

In addition, the girl went on, ignoring the sarcastic turn of phrase, I’m offering a weekly payment in exchange for constant updates on him—what he’s doing, where he’s going, any information you can provide. This is all for his own safety, she concluded, in an incredibly unconvincing afterthought.

His safety, sure, Watt thought with a laugh. He knew a spurned-lover post when he saw one. This had to be either Atlas’s ex-girlfriend trying to win him back, or a current girlfriend worried about him cheating on her. Either way, the job was a freaking gold mine. Watt had never even seen a request for a hacker on retainer before; most H@cker Haus posts were one-time gigs, because most hacks were, by nature, one-and-dones. This girl wanted to send him weekly payments, just to track her crush’s movements? It was easy money, and he had no intention of messing it up.

“Leda Cole,” Watt said aloud as he pushed SEND, “it’s going to be a real pleasure doing business with you.”

LEDA

“GOOD AFTERNOON, MISS Cole,” said Jeffrey, the doorman at Altitude Club, as Leda walked up to the elevator bank the next day. Altitude had biosecurity too, of course: Leda knew her retina had been scanned the moment she stepped into the entrance hall. But Jeffrey was the kind of personalized and old-fashioned touch that made Altitude membership so expensive. He was a constant fixture of the club, practically an institution himself by now—always at the elevator wearing white gloves and a green jacket and a warm, crinkly smile.