Silver Eyes by Nicole Luiken

Author:Nicole Luiken
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon Pulse

GRACIANA HADN’T FOUND my angel pendant. She promised to check the robots’ dust bins, but I wasn’t hopeful.

To distract myself during supper, I asked Zinnia what she planned to take at university.

Zinnia looked surprised that I’d even asked. “Microbiology, of course.” Following in Iris Cartwright’s footsteps again.

“That’s nice,” I lied. It still seemed creepy to me: being forced into a career by a dead woman—and wasn’t that what Mike had meant when he’d said that old Angel hadn’t wanted to be a superspy because she’d been genetically designed to be one?

“What do you mean?” Dahlia asked suspiciously. “Nice?”

I had to scramble to remember what I’d last said. “Oh, just that I’m glad you’ll both have a job. I was afraid that only the winner would be allowed to join the family firm.”

Silence at the table.

“There’s no job provided for the loser in Iris Cartwright’s will,” Zinnia said finally.

I was beginning to seriously dislike Iris Cartwright, hero or not. “But whoever wins will have the power to hire whomever she wants, right?” I asked.

“Hireandfire!” Dahlia said with relish.

Zinnia paled. “You’re only up by four tenths of a percentage point. Don’t assume you’ll be the boss.”

Dahlia narrowed her eyes at her clone sister. “Maybe I’ll let you sweep out the labs. I wouldn’t want you to starve.”

“I don’t need your charity. I can name ten corporations that would love to hire me!”

“Great, then you’re both set,” Mike said heartily. “Dahlia, could you please pass the rice? I’m still hungry.”

I almost asked Rianne what career she was planning, before I remembered: when Rianne grew up she would be dead. My throat choked up.

Just then Rianne and Timothy got into an argument over how many moons Jupiter had. In my opinion, Rianne didn’t even care. She just wanted to argue. Specifically, she wanted to argue with Timothy.

By the end of the meal only Mike and I were still speaking to everyone.

The tense atmosphere should have made for a lousy evening, but instead I had a blast because of Mike. He poured forth energy like a supernova, and the rest of us caught fire in turn. “This is our last evening here. Let’s make it a fun one, okay?”

Timothy wanted to play VR Alien Invasion. Rianne countered with VR Sword and Sorcery.Zinnia diffidently suggested VR Molecule World, but when Mike proposed World-Building we all fell into line. Rianne didn’t even fuss about being carried into the basement by Mike and Timothy.

We all donned VR goggles and strapped on VR bodysuits. Our virtual bodies appeared in the game environment, the images playing on our goggles translating into a fair approximation of reality. The images had a slightly flat, cartoonish quality to them, and the sense of touch was limited to pressure, but it was still amazing.

Each of us designed a world and then showed it off to the others. The evening became a string of wonderful moments:

—walking up a staircase that turned sideways and twisted like an Escher painting, disorienting us, so that we suddenly realized we were walking on the underside of the stairway we had climbed before.

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