The sidewalks are lined with soft lights. They’re solar-powered for the rolling blackouts, so when the city goes dark, its paths are traced with illumination. It’s for pedestrian safety, but it gives the city a radiant beauty. Even in the dark, one can find their way.
On this sweltering August evening, the streets are wide awake. A night market has sprung up near the waterfront; a live jazz band has set up on a patch of grass; the smells of roasted meat waft from a nearby food truck; cyclists gracefully swerve through crowds of pedestrians.
I amble along the waterfront toward my apartment rental. The Waterfront Jewel looks out over the Willamette, promises its occupants all the latest in smart home technology, and has an indoor pool. According to its website, the building used to be a hotel until it was repurposed into housing. A weekend there will cost months of my stipend, but it’s worth it. Not for the air-conditioning or the pool.
But because my grandmother lives there.
I won’t talk to her. Ican’ttalk to her. Wraiths aren’t allowed any contact with people from their former lives. I knew a middle-aged man who would walk by his familyrestaurant just to catch a glimpse of his kids. That was until one of them caught a glimpse right back. I never saw that man again.
Even when a wraith’s term of service is up, they aren’t returned to their former life. Instead, they get a fresh start elsewhere—with a new name, a new backstory, and enough relevant job history that they’ll find work.
My deal with Prefect is one of a kind. Not only am I the singular teenage wraith, but I’ve been promised that I will get to return home. I’m sure it’ll be expensive and complicated—a body “misidentified” as me, amnesia or another flimsy excuse, and I’ll have to spend the rest of my days lying to my family about what I was doing for the last decade. But still—I’ll get to be with them again.
So long as my ISD deal doesn’t go sideways.
This is a risk—such a dangerous risk. But I tell myself that it’s a calculated one. Nonna will never see me. Prefect is in another city, cleaning up the fallout from our last job together. By the time he arrives in Portland, I’ll have checked out.
This is how clever people become criminals. We can rationalize almost anything.
I stroll up to the front doors and hold out my left hand, electron-ink tattoo angled toward the door sensors. They’re locked to nonresidents.
My electron-ink tattoo is pretty standard: a series of silvery lines.
The lock recognizes me as a temporary resident and swings open with slow, jerky little movements. I step inside and the cool air is blissful against my sweaty face.
The building’s origins as a hotel are obvious: The lobby is laid out in a pretty, minimalistic style, with benches cut from faux marble, an indoor pool taking up a swath of the large room, and a small army of three-foot-tall potted succulents scattered throughout. There is a desk that must have once been the concierge station, but now it holds building announcements, a holographic resident board, and a security guard. The guard’s gaze flicks over me. I can almost see the moment he categorizes me as a non-threat.
I dress in dark clothing that is easy to move in and covers my scars. Like many of my generation, I wear an opaque visor. It looks like a smooth strip of glass and metal covering my eyes, with a slight indentation for my nose. Most people use visors for augmented reality—entertainment, subtitles, maps, and cheat codes for tests. Mine is programmed for facial recognition, magnification, video and audio recordings, and will scramble any video feed of my face.
I nod at the guard and he nods back.
Most people overlook teenage girls.
It’s their mistake.
The elevators are tucked away in an alcove behind the pool area. Normally, I would use the stairs—once you’ve been in one hacked elevator, it makes you a little paranoid—but my shoulders and legs ache after my last job.
Nonna’s apartment is 309. Mine is 310. Several of these are short-term rentals, for businesspeople and vacationers wanting to be close to downtown Portland. I remember seeing an email in Nonna’s inbox where she complained toa neighbor about the party people who invade the building during holidays.
All right, so maybe I am a bit of a stalker.
As I stride from the elevator, to my left are all the apartments. On my right is the open-air center of the building. If I leaned on the glass railing, I could gaze down at the lobby and pool below. At the thought, my stomach gives an uncomfortable lurch.
The apartment doors are unremarkable. The difference between Nonna’s door and the rest is that hers has an old-fashioned doorknob and lock, while the others have flat tattoo sensors. Nonna is infamous in my family for refusing smart upgrades.
I dangle my hand in front of 310’s door sensor and light dances across the back of my knuckles.
The sensor reads my name and life story in the silver whorls of ink. All of it is untrue.
I wear my best lies beneath my skin.
The sensor blinks green and the door glides open, revealing my home for the weekend.
There is a balcony overlooking the river, a sliding glass door that appears freshly polished, a small kitchen, and a living room furnished with sturdy Swedish furniture. It looks like any other short-term rental.
“Good evening,” the apartment’s virtual assistant says in a feminine voice. The sound emanates from a small, circular machine resting on a high shelf in the corner.
When virtual assistants went mainstream, companies gave them cutesy, feminine names like Alexa and Siri. Now,most people just call them VAs. This VA looks like a standard model: hooked up to the internet, capable of answering basic questions and controlling everything in the apartment with a simple voice command. More advanced VAs can do anything from keeping track of home finances to noting how often someone uses the toilet—and analyzing its contents for nutritional recommendations.
