THROUGH TWO SHEETS of glass—my visor and the small window of the airlock door—the foyer of the Pistil looks as pristine and white as always, with large-leafed foliage strategically placed to add a feeling of serenity to the otherwise stark interior. Plants line the railings of each of the ten floors, rising to the top of the Pistil. A perfectly cylindrical screen fills the middle. On its surface, in extremely high definition, is our secretary of defense, Sasha Kaplinksi, talking with fervor, though it’s not possible to hear what he’s saying. Surrounding the screen is a throng of citizens. Some are huddled in small groups, like scared animals, while others run to and fro with no discernable destination. They just run.

The airlock hisses and the door pops open. I push through the opening and scramble to remove my helmet. The drone of conversation and murmuring in the Pistil is unbearably loud. Kaplinksi’s voice is just audible above the din.

“Once again, rebels from Lower Etyom have completed an act of terror on HAP Seven, though Robust terrorists have yet to claim the attack. Six of our people have lost their lives, including two younglings. Seven more are in critical condition. The Leader asks that you remain calm and focus on your tasks. The senate will discuss any countermeasure and how to improve our first lines of defense.”

That doesn’t make sense. There hasn’t been an attack in years. Nikolaj says that’s because the Robusts need us for trade, to pay for their very existence, and that even the terrorists, their resistance, have figured that out. Still ... if it is an attack, why Lillipad Seven? It doesn’t have any strategic value I know of. It’s just the mathematics lab. Full of guys whose brains work in a way mine never could. They imagine their universe, living inside a place of probability. As an experimental physicist, I prefer the definitive. At any rate, why would the Robusts want to destroy that facility? What value could that have? I don’t even know anyone on—

My stomach cramps. Evgeniy is in that group. Oh, for the love of the Leader.

A wicked chuckling erupts in my head. No more medicine for the little puppet.

Vedmak is right. My stomach convulses and I drop to the floor, panting loudly. A gloved hand touches my shoulder.

“Mitya, you okay?” Nikolaj stares down at me, a genuine look of concern creased into his face.

“Yeah, it’s just ... just ...”

Just no more drugs for the addict.

I ignore Vedmak and focus on lying to my brother. “I know someone on that lillipad. I hope he’s okay.”

Nikolaj slips his hand under my armpit and yanks me to my feet. “Let’s find out, shall we?” He closes his eyes and accesses the neuralweb. “What’s his name?”

“Evgeniy. Evgeniy Yarlov.”

Why don’t you look him up yourself, coward?

Concentrate, Demitri. Focus. “You got him?”

“Evgeniy Yarlov. Got him. Domiciled on HAP Nine, works on Seven. He’s alive. In the infirmary over on HAP Eight, since the one on Seven was damaged in the blast.”

Thank the Leader. “I think I’ll go see him.”

“Sure,” replies Nikolaj. “But not now. We have to get to work.”

“Really? But no one else is—”

“We’re not everyone else, or do I have to remind you? We’re part of the engineering task force set up by the Leader himself. Next to be on the council and maybe even the senate. We’re elite even among our kind. Pull yourself together. You can visit him after hours. Got it?” His hazel eyes probe into my own.

Stab him. Right in the eye.

Shut up, Vedmak. “You’re right, Nikolaj. Let’s go.”

We filter through the throng of muttering citizens, all dressed in similar slacks and polo shirts, knee-length dresses, or skirts. No one ever deviates from these classic designs—flattering to our enhanced physiques, yet appropriately businesslike. Never in a bright color that would clash with our skin tone. The same caramel tone. Everywhere I look. They shoot worried glances at Nikolaj and me. As overall project supervisors, we’re often looked to for advice in all manner of situations. I never know what to say. Vedmak usually has something vile to offer. Luckily Nikolaj is on hand with a grin and a handshake.

Nikolaj puts his arm out across my chest, stopping me in my tracks. What the hell? But now it’s clear—the Creed.

Two peacekeepers stand in front of us in their standard royal-blue jumpsuits, wielding plasma energy rifles. They’re not Graciles. They’re not even remotely human. The Creed are geminoids. Fully autonomous androids perfected just before World War III ended. They were meant to be the soldiers to end it all—that is until the NBD did it for us. Nearly a thousand were recovered afterward and put to use as a sort of militia to protect us from Robust attacks as we built New Etyom.

The Creed’s gaze is cold, and they have synthetic skin that lacks the luster of life. But this isn’t what makes me uncomfortable about these machines. It’s the fact they are made to look, walk, and talk like Graciles who have been Ax’d. Graciles who were considered to have been influential and socially important. Merely seeing Creed who look like them is supposed to give people the feeling of familiarity. Reanimations of our friends and neo-family. Thankfully, no geminoid has been modeled on anyone I have ever cared about. Who do I care about? Do any of us actually care about each other?

Such a child ... always whining.

It’s so difficult to hear over Vedmak’s incessant nagging. Sard, I’ve lost track of the conversation.

The peacekeeper on the right is asking multiple questions of Nikolaj. Does he know what happened on HAP Seven? Did he see anything suspicious in the last few days? Where was he every day for the last week? Nikolaj recounts his movements, indicating we have been together the whole time. It isn’t perfectly true. I often hide in my bedroom, surrounded by my old books. But this seems to satisfy the geminoid. He—it—nods and thanks us for our time before stomping off with its companion toward another group of people huddled around a carefully placed tree. Nikolaj marches off in the direction of our lab.

Eventually we make it to our workshop on the far side of the Pistil. Nikolaj punches a code into the panel at the entrance and stands rigid beneath the sensor just above it. The scanner beeps momentarily as it reads his iso-print—the DNA in his epithelial cells.

“Nikolaj Stasevich,” confirms the computer voice, which is distinctly soft, female, and alluring. The door slides open and we shuffle in.

Our lab. Occupying a third of the Pistil, it’s one of the biggest in New Etyom. But then it needs to be. The collider takes up half the space. Its simplicity and, frankly, brilliance makes me beam every time I see it. A huge, doughnut-shaped cylinder just over ninety meters in circumference, with narrow silver pipes running like metallic ivy over its surface and off into the adjacent wall. It’s amazing to think these things were once nearly thirty kilometers long and buried underground.

I peel off my environmental suit and hang it up before taking a seat, then scan my station. The CPU wakes from its overnight processing—a 3-D image of two adjacent parallel beams contained within the doughnut glow green on the screen. The helium readout is stable, and the temperature of the magnets is absolute zero. It’s been cooling for a day or two. I slip on the key gloves, which match my finger movements to commands, and within a few strokes, my two babies—my detectors—appear on the screen.

“How are our working girls?” Nikolaj asks without glancing up from his station.

I hate it when he calls them that. “They’re perfect and ready to go.”

ALICE and ELISA. When the collider is fired, beams of particles travel in opposite directions, smashing into one another. ALICE and ELISA tell me what pops out. ALICE—A Large Ion Collision Experiment—picks up particles from the beginning of the universe in a soup called a quark-gluon plasma. ELISA—my favorite, my Experiment at Light Speed Apparatus—detects a variety of different particles with a broad range of energies. Whatever form any new physical processes or particles might take, ELISA detects them and measures their properties. It’s immensely satisfying.

Of course it satisfies you. You can’t get a real woman, can you? Vedmak seems to relish that I’m alone.

Gotta focus on the task at hand. Talk to Nikolaj. “How’s your little man?”

“Little man?” Nikolaj peers over his station. “You just remember, your girls couldn’t even work if it weren’t for THEO. He’s like their pimp.”

“Their what?”

“Pimp. You know, like the Robusts have. A guy who’s the boss of prostitutes.”

“Don’t call them that.” Nikolaj’s damn THEO—a Tokamak High Energy Output. THEO is one of two portable fusion reactors known to exist. He loves telling me how my work wouldn’t happen without his. How his fusion reactor is the reason I can even run my accelerator.

And why is it used for this and not powering your stupid city? Ever think about that?

I had wondered that myself once. But Nikolaj explained that the solar power is enough for the city. Our work is prioritized over everything else.

“Okay, big brother, are you ready?”

“Ready.” I love this bit.

Nikolaj scoots his chair on wheels across the room and over to a lonely desk at the back wall. The needle drops onto the spinning vinyl, the delicious crackle emanating over the twenty speakers lining the room. Eyes closed, I wait. Then, it happens: piano in C-sharp minor. The opening notes of Quasi una fantasia, Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. The melancholic melody sends a shiver along my spine. Even Vedmak remains silent. I absorb the warm tones that can only be reproduced by a vinyl record. Despite this age of technology, we Graciles appreciate beauty in its purest form. The deck is one of only a few left in the known world. The Leader gave it to us as a gift when we began our work.

The music sets the tone for our labor: exploring the beginnings of the universe. I open my eyes and command the system to fire the beams, forcing the particles to dance to the melody, racing faster and faster toward the speed of light. My hand hovers above the trigger that will allow the beams to collide and ELISA to do her job.

We wait patiently through the first movement with its sedate pace, and the second movement, slightly faster and lighter. Then it comes. The third movement explodes over the speakers, a near-frantic rhythm, and I press the button. The intersections open and the subatomic particles collide. It’s how I imagine the birth of the universe, played out to the musical genius’s glass-like piano notes. ELISA’s readout begins to flood with information. Quarks. Muons. Mesons. The list goes on. Still not what we’re looking for.

“Did you get anything?” Nikolaj asks, his eyes wide.

“No, I don’t think so. I need to trawl the data, but I didn’t see anything.”

“Did you get the luminosity right? Was the velocity correct?”

“Yes, yes, of course. You need to be patient. We may not see it when we want.” I hate it when he questions me.

“You’ve been distracted lately.”

“Look, I know what I’m doing. We didn’t get it. Maybe next time ... I’ll tinker with the system.” Why won’t he leave me alone?

“Maybe I should check.” He rises from his seat and strides toward me.

Before I can protest further, Oksana slides into the room. I didn’t even hear the computer announce her. Dressed in a tight-fitting gray wool dress, she resembles every other Gracile female, designed to be aesthetically perfect according to our standards: long legs with perfect calves, tiny waist, full breasts. Yet the minute differences that make her unique also make her more beautiful. How her nose turns up slightly. How her chocolate-brown hair falls in open curls around her face and shoulders. The way she rests one hand on her hip when she’s still. She ambles toward me, winking as she slips past, and kisses my neo-brother full on the lips, her arms locked around his neck. My gut knots again.

There she is, the only one you desire. And you let him have her. You’re pathetic.

I didn’t let him have her. How can I let him do anything? He’s him and I’m me. She chose him, because he’s everything I’m not.

She chose him because she’s a shallow slut.

Got to stay focused. Can’t listen to Vedmak.

“Yeah, we saw the explosion,” Nikolaj says. He’s talking about HAP Seven. “Damn Robusts. When will they learn? You’d think they’d get that they need us to survive. Need the money we pay them to run their sad little lives. Can you imagine? Living down there. It’s disgusting. I hear they don’t even look human anymore. All squat and hunched, with eyes developed to see in the dark.”

He’s a scientist. He should know better. “That can’t be true. Evolution takes a lot longer than that.”

Nikolaj shrugs. “Either way, some of our citizens are dead. Mitya here knows someone over there who was caught in the blast.”

Again with the nickname.

“Do you, Mitya?” Oksana searches my face for a response, those doe eyes of hers glistening. And now she’s using that name, too.

“Yeah. A friend of mine.”

“What are you doing with friends who work all the way on HAP Seven?” she asks. “Most of us can’t be bothered to trek one, much less several, HAPs over.”

“He’s just a friend. I can’t even remember where I met him.”

“Well, clearly a good enough friend that it messed with your head this morning,” Nikolaj says, gesturing toward our work. “Another zero result from the collider.”

“Oh, that’s a shame. Do you think you had enough luminosity?” she probes.

“I know what I’m doing. I don’t need anyone to look at it.” Just leave me alone.

“That’s what I asked, Oksana. Here, move over, Mitya, and let me look.” He steps toward me and reaches for the panel that controls ELISA.

“I said back off!” My voice reverberates around the room.

I know the words left my mouth. I felt my tongue make them, the air pass over my vocal cords. But that was not me. That was Vedmak. Did he just speak for me?

There’s a long pause, and then Vedmak speaks in a voice deeper than usual.

You weren’t going to do it. Pathetic kozel.

My heart pounds in my breast. That’s never happened before. He’s bugged me to say things. Pushed me. But never spoken for me. My seat is hot. Every fiber of my being urges me to leap up and run away, but I stay fixed to the spot. There’s a cold silence in the room.

Dammit. Should have taken my last DBS hit.