The Receiver

E P I L O G U E

ONE WEEK LATER 

Our sim room is packed with a dozen screaming kids. Sosh, Cora, Bo, and Bear all run in a circle like a brewing storm with Keiko by their side, tiny, but lightning fast. She keeps up just fine. Our three adopted Scrappers join in the fun as well. Though they all wear clothes free of rips and stains, looking like unsullied little cherubs untouched by the grubby hands of man, I can still see the distinctions between them and the neighbor kids who've been uppercrusters all their lives: the graffitied skin of one child and the precious stones embedded into the face and neck of another.

But their play is no different.

The Scrappers play as if the first years of their lives haven't been riddled with death and violence. You'd never be able to guess their background by the way they treat each other.

The boys, who are taking over Zander's old apartment while he's away, speed past me, but I manage to smack them lightly on their behinds, a reminder to behave. Sosh and Cora, close behind them, forget that they can't stand their annoying little brothers and run over to an uppercruster girl with a spray of rubies swirling along each temple.

I find myself resting against the doorway, watching. The girl with the rubies adds four new names to a holographic scoreboard that floats above everyone's heads and then the game resumes. The landscape is an exotic planet set in the Jurassic period. Dinosaurs, some with scales and some with feathers, roam the vast expanse, miles off in the distance. A babbling stream of bubbling pink liquid separates the two sides of the land, demarcating the edge of the room. On the other side is a beach covered in cornflower blue sand where the ancient creatures play their own game and peck at orange shoots sprouting from the sand. A dark purple sky dotted with twinkling stars suspends constellations shaped like dogs and fish and pigs and birds. Underneath, the kids play tag, swooping in and around unusual plants and using a giant emerald-encrusted tree with serpentine roots as home base.

"I'll be back for you in a few hours," I shout over the sounds of wind whipping between the trees and the deep-bellied calls of dinosaurs at play, but no one nods in acknowledgment or even turns their head, too caught up in their own imaginations.

I descend five floors in the elevator and when the doors open my breath catches in my throat. I still can't get over this space, another one of Zander's parting gifts.

Designed by him, with Frank's help, every surface gleams with dyed metal: it's my new workshop. A dozen workstations and tables have been polished to a mirror shine; even the ergonomic chairs show my reflection. The room, at least ten times the size of our old apartment, has been fitted with wall-to-wall laserscreens and in the corner a dark chute leads up to nowhere and everywhere, like the open mouth of a fireplace. Ordered parts are sent here and my stomach flips just thinking about all the possibilities.

Frank is already here, standing over Tetra's recovered body, his new plating backlit with the milky light streaming in through the floor-to-ceiling window that holds a view (almost) worth dying for.

I grab Dad's boilersuit from the hook by the entrance and make my way over to the operating able.

"How's she doing?" I ask, zipping myself into the suit.

"Hanging on," Frank says.

"Good," I nod, then peer inside.

Her circuit boards are completely totaled, charred black and fried to a crisp. The biters really did their worst on her. I take a deep breath.

"Let's get to it, shall we?"

Frank nods and flicks the tip of a pinkie open to reveal a miniature drill and begins working. I gather miscellaneous items from the tool rack (a soldering gun, various drill bits,