Blood Zero Sky Read Online Free Page A

see one more reflection: there’s me—or a reverse image of me—staring back.
    I lean my forehead against my forehead.
    There: my short, messy dark hair; my big, dark eyes; pale, white skin; thin arms; awkward lips.
    And of course, there’s the black cross implanted in my left cheek, two inches by one inch. I know it’s sifting through my mind and try my hardest to divert my thoughts to an acceptable subject—like work, or friends, or what I want to buy myself next—but tonight it’s impossible.
    Instead, a scene fills my mind of an old-fashioned bar, full of laughter and loud voices and cigarette smoke, where everyone is packed in so close they can’t help but touch one another. In one corner, somebody bangs away on an old piano. Here, nobody is worried about money, about cars or clothes or plastic surgery. Nobody is afraid of being judged or demoted or fined for cursing. Nobody is worried about their credit level or about Human Resources agents watching them. They blurt out jokes, sacrilegious comments and double entendres, carelessly and endlessly. Young lovers go home together—to their own little houses, not big fancy apartments—and nobody whispers as they leave. The music follows them out the doors, into the streets, and when people pass the stumbling, laughing couples, instead of calling the security squad, they smile.
    I don’t know where this imaginary bar came from. Certainly, no place like it has existed in my lifetime. Most likely, I gleaned it from one of my father’s stories about his epic college years. Wherever I got it, my mind wanders to this fictitious bar a lot. Maybe everybody has their own ridiculous utopia; this is mine.
    And, of course, it’s filled with hot, flirtatious young women. Some vices are too much a part of you to be torn away completely.
    I turn back to my apartment. The air-conditioner hums. The carpet stretches away across the living room, a vast field of perfect white. There’s my imager, my stereo, my desk, my table and chairs, my N-Art signed prints of holo-photos from that famous photographer—I forget his name. All of it’s here, everything I could ever want. I take this inventory a lot, as a sort of mathematical exercise. I am equal to the sum of these treasures. That’s the formula. By everyone’s calculations, I’m doing brilliantly. Within fifteen years, I’ll be a Blackie, free and clear of any Company debt.
    There’s my elaborate fish tank, my robot cat, my leather sofas . . . and silence.
    My few friends are all working late and will have to wake up early for work. My father is in N-Hub 119, a place once called Mexico City, on business. I am alone.
    Outside my door, the security squadmen pass by, laughing. They patrol every building like this. They are everywhere. I could invite them in, I suppose, give them a drink, share a little cake. If one of them was a woman, maybe . . .
    I walk to the fridge and take out a cupcake purchased especially for the occasion. Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.
    But why invite the squadmen in? They aren’t my friends. They don’t know me, and I don’t like them.
    Nobody knows me , whispers a voice in my mind.
    And that’s true, no one does. Some vices do that to a girl.
    So I sit and eat my cake alone. I try not to think of Randal’s dire prediction of the Company’s coming loss.
    I put on my N-Elita silk pajamas, wash my face, say Jimmy Shaw’s prayer for health, wealth, and power, and go to bed.
    So ends my twenty-fifth birthday.
    ~~~
    The next day.
    I sit at the conference table with my team, dreaming up ways to make people buy things they don’t need. It’s not a difficult task by any means. The way it works is simple: we only produce a few models of each product, and we promote them so much before they come out that everyone goes out and buys them instantly, no matter the cost.
    The challenge, as my father confided to me on the day I was hired into the N-Corp marketing department, is that, truthfully,