FREE SAMPLE (Ch.1)

Of all the ways I had imagined spending my Sunday afternoon, getting a tattoo with Nic in the ghetto of a Martian city was nowhere on the list.

Well, “tattoo” was a bit of a misnomer; in reality, it was a minor cosmetic surgery. “Just like getting a nose job,” the technician explained as he swiftly slid my fingers into the metal device that would keep them still for the delicate procedure. “Relax, babe.”

I was doing no such thing. Lying in a cracked dentist’s chair in the shuttered back room of a tattoo parlor with both hands strapped down was giving my anxiety a lot of material to work with. The only thing keeping my heart from forcing its way up my throat was the fact that Nic stood behind me, watching.

I was a bit surprised that he’d come with me, especially when the procedure was supposed to take several hours. But I wasn’t about to complain. He stood with arms crossed and feet apart, eyes roaming the room in constant patrol. The bulge of the pistol in his pocket sent a clear message.

The technician finished strapping me in and rolled the surgery machine up to the chair. It was sleek and metallic—a single robotic arm with a microscopic needle on the end. The technician keyed a passcode into the control panel, and the device whirred to life. The robotic arm stretched and rotated, needle sliding in and out.

“Did you sanitize that?” Nic grunted.

The technician mumbled something as he fetched an alcohol pad and swiped it on the needle. I swallowed.

“Now this won’t hurt much,” the technician said for the tenth time. I noted that his qualifiers kept changing; five minutes ago, the procedure wasn’t supposed to hurt “one bit.”

“This laser-guided needle is going to alter your fingerprints—like a miniature skin graft. But first, we have to design your new set. And that’s why you pay me the big bucks.” He rolled his chair up to the control panel and typed eagerly.

“How much is this going to be?” I asked.

“It’s fine,” Nic interrupted, and I silenced.

“First, I scan your existing prints. Then I run them through a program that compares them to a global database so the algorithm can generate a new pattern. Of course, I always manually edit my designs to make sure they look as organic as possible. Purely autogenerated prints look fake—if you ask me.”

He threw a pierced-lip grin at me that I didn’t return. I had no idea if any of that was true, but I didn’t have much of a choice. I had to get new prints taken before I could use my new file, and there weren’t that many microsurgeons on Mars.

At least not many who were willing to do procedures off the record.

The technician guided the machine’s arm until it hovered above my left hand. A patchwork of blue laser light fell on my thumb. A soft whir and a click, and then he moved on to the next finger.

I tried to control my rising panic as he scanned the rest of my digits. My fingerprints had been with me since birth. God had designed them Himself, and within three hours they would all be irreversibly altered.

After today, Philadelphia Smyrna would no longer exist, and Andromeda Nolan would take her place.

The design process took over an hour, during which I closed my eyes and prayed to keep myself from hyperventilating. There wasn’t much else I could do with my hands bolted to the arms of the chair.

Finally, the technician called Nic over to approve the prints. He squinted at them, then angled the screen so I could see.

I stared at the eerie electronic rendering, as if I had any idea what I was looking for. Dear God, I hope this is the right choice. I looked up at the technician and nodded.

“One new ID coming up! Let me know if it starts hurting a lot.”

The machine shifted gears. The laser changed from a grid to a dot, so focused I could barely see it. Then without any kind of warning, the needle sank into my skin.

I flinched as the thin metal started weaving in and out of my fingertip. My heart broke free and blocked my next breath, everything in me begging him to stop. I couldn’t do this—I couldn’t take who I had been my entire life and callously throw that person away like I was erasing a whiteboard.

I was Philadelphia Smyrna. I was.

But I couldn’t be, not anymore. I knew that. I knew it wasn’t safe. My “real” name and image had been plastered all over the internet, associated with several acts of terrorism against the United—some of which I was more or less responsible for. Even worse, I was their link to Red Rain.

If I didn’t want to end up in an interrogation room giving the government the formula to melt entire cities with acid rain, I needed to become a new person. So I closed my eyes, bit down on my tongue, and said nothing.

It seemed like an eternity before the microscopic stabbing stopped. It hadn’t hurt much—although I’m sure the pain medication Nic doped me up on before we left had an effect. The technician freed my hands from the machine, and I struggled to feel them. My palms tingled and shook, my fingertips flushed red and raw.

“And there you have it, Miss—what did you say your name was?”

I was about to answer when Nic stepped between us. “I’m paying.” He held out his phone. The technician took it and keyed in numbers.

“How much extra to wipe the originals?” Nic waved his hand at the machine.

The technician licked his lip piercing. Then he grinned, hit another key, and handed the phone back to Nic.

Nic nodded and pocketed the device. “Let’s go.”

I tested my balance before standing up, then followed him out the door into the main storefront. The place was deserted except for another tattoo artist, who lay on her table scrolling through a phone.

“Want anything else done while you’re here?” The technician came out behind us and waved his hand at the sketches plastered on the wall.

“No thank you,” I said, even as my eyes scanned the gallery. Although most of it was downright bizarre, I had to admit that a few of the pieces—like a stunning blue-and-purple nebula wrapped around someone’s wrist—were strangely alluring.

He shrugged. “Come back anytime if you change your mind.”

Nic was already out the door, so I hurried to follow. “You know, he’s not wrong,” Nic commented as soon as we had blended into the anonymity of the alley. “A tattoo is a fairly inexpensive way to change your appearance.”

“You want to sign the parental waiver on that?”

He grunted at me as he unlocked the transfer. Even though Nic had agreed to be Andromeda’s legal guardian on paper, he did not like being reminded.

I grabbed the passenger door handle and winced, my tender fingertips protesting. I swallowed a grimace as I opened the door and hoisted myself over the treads into our bulky ride. Nic slid into the driver’s seat.

“Besides,” I said as buckled in, “I was hoping for less permanent options.”

“If you want to spend an hour in the bathroom putting on your mask each morning, be my guest. Just be glad you don’t pay the water bill.”

He started the transfer and pulled out of the parking lot. I took one last look at the Martian city as we drove down the backroad towards the border. We were on the outskirts, where the buildings were smaller and cheaper, but it was still a sight to behold.

The architecture was a mishmash of designs, as if no one could decide what aesthetic Mars should adopt. Most of the buildings were paneled with large windows to let in as much of the distant sunlight as possible. Slabs of concrete traced out an informal network of roads, and numerous planter boxes and greenhouses attempted to lend some humanity to the inorganic maze. Here and there, the natural red earth seeped through the cracks in the road and the gaps between buildings, reminding us that we were ultimately foreigners superimposing our will on an unforgiving wilderness.

Above it all stretched a dome of glass. The honeycomb panels kept the thin atmosphere out and the heat in—or at least some of it. Despite the fact that we were near the equator and had been soaking in the sun all day, Nic had still advised me to wear my heaviest jacket. He cranked the heat up in the car as we neared the edge of the glass.

The border officer cleared Nic’s credentials, then flagged us into an exit tunnel. We drove into a bay, and the doors behind us shut, plunging us into near-darkness. Nic double- and triple-checked that all the vehicle’s windows were sealed and the doors locked. After a moment’s hesitation, the lights on the wall flashed green. The doors ahead of us opened, and we drove out into the Martian countryside.

The town was one of three biodomes clustered in the valley. I watched the other cities glitter in the distance as we drove up the crude road that had been hewn into the side of the plateau. We crested the top and continued into the unsettled wilderness. Around us stretched miles of untouched dirt. There were no roads, no signs, no other indication that humans lived on this planet. The transfer’s computer navigated off of some unseen satellite as it led us through the gathering darkness.

I risked conversation. “Thanks for your help back there.”

“Oh, you’re paying me back.”

I turned to him. “That’s not what I meant.”

He didn’t respond or look at me, so I kept silent and returned my attention to the shadowy outcrops rolling past.

It was dark by the time we got back to Base #9.6.11. It was the only research base for miles in this part of the country, and the light from the glass-domed central wing shone like a lighthouse in the wilderness. I swore the base looked bigger every time I saw it from the outside. New wings and biodomes were always being added, connected by snaking hallways, as if the base were a living organism sending out roots and multiplying.

The docking bay doors opened to receive us. We waited until they had closed again and the atmosphere had been restored before piling out of the car.

Nic opened the door to the base, took two steps into the lobby, and stopped.

“You know I’m not doing this just for you, right?” he said without turning around.

“Huh?”

“I’m not giving you all this tender loving care because I like you.”

“Good, because I thought we were past the stage of having to like each other.”

He glanced back at me. “If you screw this up, I go down with you.”

That wasn’t exactly what he said, but it was the child-friendly translation.

“If the United ever figures out who ‘Andromeda’ really is, they’re going to investigate her relatives—and at the moment, that is, unfortunately, me.”

“Is that why you didn’t want me to pay?”

He nodded. “I don’t want you logging any electronic activity off this base until your new file is online.” He started walking. “Find Jean-Luc and have him scan your prints into the database. Have him text me when he’s done. The sooner we get your new file online, the better.”