The Thousandth Floor

“Three—” Lowy shouted, counting down. Lux gave an eager laugh and jumped higher on her tiptoes, trying to see over the crowd. Rylin glanced at V; his inktats were swirling even wilder than usual in the space surrounding his patch, as if his very skin knew what was about to happen.

“Two—” Most of the crowd had joined in the count. Hiral came to stand behind Rylin and wrapped his arms around her waist, resting his chin on her head. She leaned back into him and closed her eyes, bracing herself for the communals’ activation.

“One!” The scream reverberated through the room. Lowy reached for the tablet hovering before him and flicked on the electromagnetic pulse, tuned to the frequency of the communals. Instantly all the patches in the room released waves of stimulants into the bloodstream of everyone wearing them. The ultimate synchronized high.

The music turned up and Rylin threw her hands into the air, joining the loud, seemingly endless scream. She could already feel the communal taking over her system. The world had realigned to the music, everything—the flashing of the lights overhead, her breathing, her heartbeat, everyone’s heartbeats—timed perfectly with the deep, insistent pulse of the bass.

Don’t you love this? Lux mouthed, or at least that’s what it seemed like she said, though Rylin couldn’t be sure. Already she was losing her grip on her thoughts. Chrissa and her text messages didn’t matter, her job and her asshole boss didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except this moment. She felt invincible, untouchable, like she would be this way forever: young and dancing and electric and alive.

Lights. A flask of something strong being passed to her. She took a sip without tasting what it was. A touch on her hip—Hiral, she thought, pulling his hand closer in invitation. But then she saw Hiral a few rows forward, jumping and punching at the sky with Andrés. She spun around only to see V’s face whirl up out of the darkness. He held up another gold patch, an eyebrow raised suggestively. Rylin shook her head. She wasn’t even sure how she’d pay him back for the one she’d already taken.

But V was already peeling back the adhesive on the back side. “No charge,” he whispered, as if reading her thoughts, or had she spoken them aloud? He reached down to sweep her hair back from her neck. “A little secret: The closer it is to your brain, the faster it kicks in.”

Rylin closed her eyes, dazed, as the second wave of drugs snapped through her. It was a razor-sharp rush, setting all her nerves afire. She was dancing and somehow also floating when she sensed a vibration in her front pocket. She ignored it and kept jumping, but there it was again, drawing her painstakingly back into her awkward, physical body. Fumbling, she managed to grab her tablet. “Hello?” Rylin said, gasping as her breathing became irregular, no longer in time with the music.

“Rylin Myers?”

“What the—who is this?” She couldn’t hear. The crowd was still buffeting her back and forth.

There was a pause, as if the speaker couldn’t believe the question. “Cord Anderton,” he said finally, and Rylin blinked in shock. Her mom had worked as a maid for the Andertons, back before she got sick. Dimly Rylin realized that she did recognize the voice, from the few times she’d been up there. But why the hell was Cord Anderton calling her?

“So, can you come work my party?”

“I don’t … what are you talking about?” She tried to shout over the music, but it came out more like a rasp.

“I sent you a message. I’m throwing a party tonight.” His voice was fast, impatient. “I need someone here—to keep everything clean, help with the caterers, all the stuff your mom used to do.” Rylin flinched at the mention of her mom, but of course he couldn’t see. “My usual help bailed last minute, but then I remembered you and looked you up. Do you want the job or not?”

Rylin wiped a bead of sweat from her brow. Who did Cord Anderton think he was, summoning her on a Saturday night? She opened her mouth to tell this rich, entitled asshole to shove the job right up his—

“I forgot,” he added, “it pays two hundred nanos.”

Rylin choked back her words. Two hundred nanodollars for just one night of dealing with drunk rich kids? “How soon do you need me there?”

“Oh, half an hour ago.”

“I’m on my way,” she said, the room still spinning. “But—”

“Great.” Cord ended the ping.

With a herculean effort, Rylin pulled the patch from her arm, and then, wincing, ripped off the one on her neck. She glanced back at the others—Hiral was dancing, oblivious; Lux was wrapped around a stranger with her tongue down his throat; Indigo was sitting on Andrés’s shoulders. She turned to go. V was still watching her, but Rylin didn’t say good-bye. She just stepped out into the hot stickiness of the night, letting the used gold patches flutter slowly to the ground behind her.

ERIS

ERIS DODD-RADSON BURROWED deeper under her fluffy silk pillow, angry at the ringing that was playing incessantly in her eartennas. “Five more minutes,” she mumbled. The ringing didn’t stop. “I said snooze!” she snapped, before realizing that this wasn’t her alarm. It was Avery’s ringtone, which Eris had long ago set on full override, so that it would wake her up even when she was sleeping. “Accept ping,” she mumbled.

“Are you on your way?” Avery’s voice sounded in her ear, pitched louder than usual over the clamor of the party. Eris glanced at the time, illuminated in bright pink numbers in her lower left field of vision. Cord’s party had started half an hour ago and she was still lying in bed, with no idea what to wear.

“Obviously.” She was already halfway to her closet, shimmying out of her oversized T-shirt as she picked her way through discarded clothes and stray pillows. “I just—ow!” she yelped, clutching a stubbed toe.

“Oh my god. You’re still home,” Avery accused, but she was laughing. “What happened? Oversleep your beauty nap again?”

“I just like making everyone wait so they’ll be that much more excited to see me,” Eris answered.

“And by ‘everyone,’ you mean Cord.”

“No, I mean everyone. Especially you, Avery,” Eris said. “Don’t go having too much fun without me, ’kay?”

“I promise. Flick me when you’re on your way?” Avery said, and ended the ping.

Eris blamed her dad for this one. Her eighteenth birthday was in a few weeks, and today she’d had to visit the family attorney to start her trust fund paperwork. It was all excessively boring, signing countless documents with an official witness present, taking drug and DNA tests. She hadn’t even understood all of it, except that if she signed everything, she’d be rich someday.

Eris’s dad came from old money—his family had invented the magnetic repulsion technology that kept hovercrafts aloft. And Everett had only added to the already-massive fortune, by becoming the world’s premier plastisurgeon. The only mistakes he’d ever made were two expensive divorces before he finally met Eris’s mom, when he was forty and she was a twenty-five-year-old model. He didn’t ever talk about those previous marriages, and since there were no children from either, Eris never asked about them. She didn’t really like thinking about it, to be honest.

Stepping into her closet, she drew a circle on the mirrored wall, and it turned into a touch screen that lit up with her closet’s full inventory. Every year Cord threw this back-to-school costume party, and every year there was a fierce and unspoken competition for best costume. She sighed and began sorting through her various options: the gold flapper dress, the faux-fur hood her mom had given her, a hot pink sequinned gown from last Halloween. None of it seemed right.

Screw it, she decided. Why was she trying to find a costume anyway? Wouldn’t she stand out more without one?

“The black Alicia top,” she announced to her closet, which spit the item into the output chute at the bottom. Eris pulled the top on over her lace bra and stepped into her favorite suede pants, which she knew made her ass look fantastic. She snapped a set of silver cuffs on her elbows and reached up to yank out her ponytail, letting her strawberry-blond hair fall around her shoulders in a wild tangle.

Biting her lip, she plopped down at her vanity and placed her hands on the hairstyler’s two electropulsers. “Straight,” she ordered, closing her eyes and bracing herself.

A tingle spread from her palms, up her arms, and into her scalp as the machine jolted her with a wave of electricity. The other girls at school always complained about the styler, but Eris secretly enjoyed the feeling: the hot, clean way it set all her nerves afire, almost like pain. When she looked up, her hair had fallen into straight layers around her face. She tapped at the screen of her vanity and closed her eyes as a fine spray of makeup misted over her. When she looked up again, eyeliner now brought out the strange and arresting amber flecks in her irises, and a blush softened her cheekbones, highlighting the smattering of freckles along her nose. But something was still missing.

Before she could second-guess herself, Eris was moving through the darkness of her parents’ room and into her mom’s closet. She felt for the jewelry safe and typed the passcode, which she’d figured out at age ten. Nestled inside, next to a colorful array of gemstones and a rope of thick black pearls, were her mom’s stained glass earrings. The rare, old-fashioned kind of glass—not flexiglass, but the kind of glass that could actually break.

The earrings were exorbitantly expensive, hand-blown from the panes of an old church window. Eris’s dad had bought them at an auction, as a twentieth-anniversary present. Pushing aside her twinge of guilt, Eris reached up and screwed the delicate droplets into her ears.

She was almost at the front door when her dad called out from the living room. “Eris? Where are you headed?”

“Hey, Dad.” She turned around, keeping one heeled bootie in the hallway so she could make a quick exit. Her dad was sitting in his favorite corner of the brown leather couch, reading something on his tablet, probably a medical journal or patient record. His thick hair was almost entirely gray, and his eyes were creased with worry lines, which he refused to surge away like most of Eris’s friends’ parents did. He said that patients found the lines reassuring. Eris secretly thought it was kind of cool of her dad, to insist on aging naturally.

“I’m going to a friend’s party,” she explained. Her dad glanced over her outfit, and Eris realized a second too late that she hadn’t concealed the earrings. She discreetly tried to pull her hair forward to hide them, but Everett was already shaking his head. “Eris, you can’t wear those,” he said, sounding a little amused. “They’re the most expensive thing in this apartment.”

“That’s an exaggeration, and you know it.” Eris’s mom sailed in from the kitchen wearing a scarlet evening dress, her hair piled atop her head in a cascade of curls. “Hey, sweetie,” Caroline Dodd said, turning to her daughter. “Want some bubbly before you go? I’m about to open a bottle of that Montès rosé you like.”

“The one from the vineyard where we swam in the pool?”

“The one with the ‘Pool Closed’ sign, you mean.” A smile lifted up the corners of her dad’s mouth. That had been a particularly ridiculous family trip. Eris’s parents had let her drink the wine pairings at lunch, and it was so hot out that Eris and her mom kept trying to fan each other with their napkins the whole meal, then ended up sneaking, giggling, into a gated-off hotel pool and jumping in fully clothed.

“We never saw that sign!” Caroline laughed in protest and popped the bottle. The sound reverberated through the apartment. Eris took the outstretched glass with a shrug. It was her favorite.

“So whose party is it?” Caroline prompted.

“Cord’s. And I’m already late …” Eris still hadn’t told her mom about her and Cord. She shared almost everything with her mom, but never the hookup stuff.

“I believe it’s called fashionably late,” her dad added. “And you’ll only be a minute later and just as fashionable once you put the earrings back.”

“Oh, come on, Everett. What harm can she do?”

Eris’s dad shook his head, giving in, as Eris had known he would. “All right, Caroline. If you aren’t upset, then Eris can wear them.”

“Outvoted again,” Eris teased, and exchanged a knowing smile with her dad. He always joked about being the least powerful person in the apartment, outnumbered as he was by two highly opinionated women.

“Every time.” Everett laughed.

“How could I say no when they look so gorgeous on you?” Caroline put her hands on Eris’s shoulders and turned her around to face the massive antique mirror on the wall.

Eris looked like a younger version of her mom. The only tiny differences, aside from age, were the slight modifications Eris’s dad had agreed to give her this spring—nothing major, just the insertion of the gold flecks in her eyes and the lasering on of a few freckles for texture. There was nothing else to be done for her, really. Eris’s features were all her own, her full mouth and cute upturned nose and most of all her hair, a lustrous riot of color, copper and honey and strawberry and sunrise. Eris’s hair was her greatest beauty, but then, there was nothing about her that wasn’t beautiful, as she was well aware.

She gave her head an impatient toss and the earrings danced, catching all the glorious colors of her hair as if lit from within.

“Have fun tonight,” Eris’s mom said. Eris met her eyes in the mirror and smiled.

“Thanks. I’ll take good care of these.” She finished her champagne and set it on the table. “Love you,” she said to both her parents on her way out. The earrings glowed against her hair like twin stars.

The downTower C lift was pulling up right as she walked into the station, which Eris considered a good sign. Maybe it was because she was named after a Greek goddess, but she’d always attributed an omen-like significance to even the smallest things. Last year there had been a smudge on her window that looked like a heart. She never reported it to outside maintenance, so it stayed that way for weeks, until the next rain day finally washed it away. She liked to imagine that it had brought her good luck.

Eris followed the crowds on board and edged toward the side of the lift. Normally she might have taken a hover, but she was running late and this was faster; and anyway, the C line had always been her favorite, with its transparent view panels. She loved watching the floors shoot past, light and shadow alternating with the heavy metal framework that separated each level, the crowds waiting for the local lifts blurring together into an indistinguishable stream of color.

Mere seconds later, the elevator pulled to a stop. Eris pushed past the swirl of activity around the express station, the waiting hovers and the newsfeed salesbots, and turned onto the main avenue. Like her, Cord lived on the expensive north-facing side of the Tower, with a view uncluttered by the buildings of midtown, or the Sprawl. His floor was slightly larger—the Tower narrowed as it got higher, ending in Avery’s apartment, which was the only thing on the top level—but she could feel the difference even in those sixteen floors. The streets were just as wide, lined with tiny grass plots and real trees, fed by discreetly hidden misters. The solar lamps overhead had dimmed to match the real sun, which was only visible from the outward-facing apartments. But the energy down here was somehow different, louder and a little more vibrant. Maybe it was thanks to the commercial space that lined the center avenue, even if it was only a coffee shop and a Brooks Brothers fitting room.

Eris reached Cord’s street—really just the shadowed cul-de-sac that ended in the Andertons’ front steps; no one else lived on this block. A dramatic 1A was inscribed over the doorway, as if anyone needed reminding whose home this was. Like the rest of the world, Eris wondered why Cord had continued to live here after his parents died and his older brother, Brice, moved out. It was way too much space for one person.

Inside, the apartment was already crammed wall-to-wall with people, and growing warmer despite the ventilation system. Eris saw Maxton Feld in the enclosed greenhouse, trying to reprogram the hydration system to make it rain beer. She paused at the dining room, where someone had propped the table on hovercoasters for a game of floating pong, but didn’t see Cord’s telltale dark head in there either. And there was no one in the kitchen except a girl Eris didn’t recognize, in a dark ponytail and formfitting jeans. Eris wondered idly who she was, just as the girl began stacking dishes and carrying them away. So Cord had a new maid—a maid who was already out of uniform. Eris still didn’t understand why he paid for a maid; only people like the Fullers, or Eris’s grandmother, had them anymore. Everyone else just bought all the various cleaning bots on the market and set them loose whenever things seemed dirty. But maybe that was the point: to pay for the human, un-automated-ness of it all.

What are you supposed to be? “Too cool for costumes”? “Oversleeper”? Avery flickered her.

I prefer “professional attention-getter,” Eris replied, smiling as she glanced around the room.

Avery was at the living room windows, dressed in a simple white shift with a pair of holo-wings and a halo floating above her head. On anyone else it would look like a lame last-minute angel costume, but Avery was, of course, ethereal. Next to her stood Leda, in a black feathery thing, and Ming, who was wearing a stupid devil costume. She’d probably heard that Avery was being an angel and wanted to seem like they were a set. How pathetic. Eris didn’t feel like talking to either girl, so she flickered Avery that she would be back and kept on looking for Cord.

They’d started hooking up this summer, when they had both been stuck in town. Eris had been a little worried at first—everyone else was jetting off to Europe or the Hamptons or the beaches in Maine, while she’d be stranded here in the city, interning at her dad’s medical practice. It was the trade he’d insisted on in exchange for the surges he did last spring. “You need work experience,” he’d said. As if she planned on working a day in her life. Still, Eris had agreed. She wanted the surges that badly.

And it was all just as boring as she’d expected, until the night she ran into Cord at Lightning Lounge. One thing led to another, and soon they were taking atomic shots, and walking out onto the enclosed balcony. It was there, pressed up against the enforced flexiglass, that they had kissed for the first time.

Now Eris could only wonder why it hadn’t happened sooner. God knows she’d been around Cord for years, ever since her family moved back to New York when she was eight. They’d spent several years in Switzerland so her dad could study all the latest European surge techniques. Eris had attended first and second grades at the American School of Lausanne, but when she came back—speaking a strange polyglot of French and English, with no understanding of a multiplication table—Berkeley Academy had gently suggested she repeat second grade.

She would never forget that first day back, when she’d walked into the lunchroom not knowing anyone in her new class. It was Cord who had slid into the seat beside her at her empty table. “Wanna see a cool zombie game?” he’d asked, and showed her how to set her contacts so the cafeteria food looked like brains. Eris had laughed so hard she’d almost snorted into her spaghetti.

That was two years before his parents died.

She found Cord in the game room, seated around the massive antique table with Drew Lawton and Joaquin Suarez, all of them holding real paper playing cards in their hands. It was one of Cord’s weird quirks, how he insisted on playing Idleness with that old card set. He claimed that everyone looked too vacant when they played on contacts, sitting around a table but staring away from one another, into space.

Eris stood there a moment, admiring him. He was so insanely gorgeous. Not in the smoothly perfect way that Avery was, but in a swarthy, rugged sort of way; his features a perfect mix of his mom’s Brazilian sensuality and the classic Anderton jaw and nose. Eris took a step forward, and Cord glanced up. She was gratified by the flash of appreciation in his ice-blue eyes.

“Hey there,” he said as she pulled up an empty chair. She leaned on her elbows so that the neckline of her top skimmed lower over her breasts, and studied him across the table. There was something shockingly intimate in his gaze. It felt like he could reach over and touch her with nothing but his eyes.

“Want to play?” Cord swept a pile of cards toward her.

“I don’t know. I might go dance.” It was so quiet in here. She wanted to go back to the loud chaos of the party.

“Come on, one hand. Right now it’s just me against these two. And it hasn’t been that fun, playing with myself,” Cord quipped.

“Fine. But I’m with Joaquin,” Eris said, for no real reason except that she wanted to push him a little. “And you know I always win.”

“Maybe not this time.” Cord laughed.

Sure enough, fifteen minutes later, the pile of chips in front of her and Joaquin had tripled in size. Eris stretched her arms overhead and pushed her chair back from the table. “I’m getting a drink,” she said meaningfully. “Anyone want one?”

“Why not?” Cord met her eyes. “I’ll come with you.”

They stumbled into the coatroom, their bodies pressed close together. “You look fantastic tonight,” Cord whispered.

“No more talking.” Eris yanked his head down and kissed him, hard.

Cord leaned forward in response, his mouth hot on hers. He snaked his hand around her waist, playing with the hem of her shirt. Eris could feel his pulse quickening where his wrist touched her bare skin. The kiss deepened, became more insistent.

She pulled away and stepped back, leaving Cord to stumble forward. “What?” he gasped.

“I’m going to dance,” she said simply, reaching up to straighten her bra and smooth her hair; her motions brisk, neat, practiced. This was her favorite part, reminding Cord that he wanted her. Making him just a little bit desperate. “See you later.”

As she started down the hallway, Eris could feel the weight of Cord’s gaze tracing the long lines of her body. She didn’t let herself look back. But the corner of her mouth, her red paintstick just a little bit smudged, turned up in a triumphant smirk.

WATT

“REMIND ME WHY we’re here again?” Watzahn Bakradi—Watt to everyone but his teachers—comm-linked his best friend, Derrick Rawls.

“I told you, this place makes girls go crazy,” Derrick said. His voice filtered through Watt’s eartennas, which were playing a drowsy jazz beat, blocking out all the other noise of the club. “Some of us need all the help we can get,” he added, without resentment.

Watt didn’t argue. In the past hour alone he’d received seven flick-link requests, while Derrick was yet to get a single one. “Fine,” he conceded. “I’m getting a drink.”

“Grab me a beer while you’re there?” Derrick asked, unable to look away from a brunette who was swaying near them, her eyes closed, arms moving in no apparent rhythm.

“I would, except I’m not buying.” Watt laughed. At the bar, he switched off his music and turned to stare out over the club, listening as the shuffling feet and chorus of whispers echoed eerily in the quiet.

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.