Amy

We passed the French Quarter. Oh good. It meant I wasn’t gonna get dumped right into the city. According to habitat infographics, the post–Ice Age French Quarter ranked highest in outlaw population in this state, if not the country. Nobody really knew how many people lived in the country anymore, and certainly not how many of us were still all human. If the Cy aliens knew, they weren’t sharing.

We flew over a street I recognized from the map as St. Charles Avenue, and the cyborg driver—seemingly more informed of our destination than I—sped up. I presumed Stepmother intended to take me where the humans lived, meaning I’d live as an outlaw.

“Did you forget anything, dear?” my stepmother asked as she stuck a diamond pin into her hair. I swore if she pinned her hair up any more, it would stand like the former Eiffel Tower, and anyone flying above us would see that the Trahan widow might have lost her husband but not his money. Which couldn’t be further from the truth. The flashy diamond stones stuck on her mechatronic fingernails were a farce. Dad hadn’t left her with much.

“I got everything I need,” I said and glanced out the window. Behind me, the New Orleans habitat, the largest habitat in Louisiana, which we’d moved to when Dad remarried two years ago, left me numb. I wouldn’t miss it, but I would miss New Orleans if my stepmom decided I needed a trip out of town or even the state.

My body had rejected my third Cy implant, which meant I couldn’t elevate our social rank by marrying a high-level cyborg or becoming a cyborg myself. Thank God the Cy tested the implants before taking off an arm and hoping the implant would take. I glanced at the scar on the inside of my forearm, a small cut where the cyborg medical team had inserted the sample. A few hours later, the site had swelled and hardened, then spit out the implant.

For all I knew, I might’ve been born cursed. First, my mother had died, then my dad married a witch, and now he’d died too, leaving me with said witch. Yeah, at twenty, I could leave home and do whatever I wanted, but where the hell would I go? The only place for implant rejects in the habitat was the ground level, and I wasn’t moving there. The humans down there labored all day long and rationed food. Though I had no idea where the hell Stepmother was heading in the rented Cy-21 model car, I was grateful she hadn’t kicked me out of the house. At least she intended to find me a home.

I glanced up at my stepsister, Marcy, who smirked knowingly at me. If my stepmother was a witch, Marcy was her evil disciple. When Daddy first told me about his plans for a second marriage, I’d been happy for him and happy I’d get a sister, but a week into living with these two, I wished for a time capsule so I could go back and throw a fit about his marrying my stepmom. Maybe that would’ve helped. Maybe then he wouldn’t have gotten stuck with her and left me with her after his death.

A glance out the window showed the Mississippi River, along with ruined buildings, broken bridges, and abandoned boats covered in frost. Stray packs of dogs searching for a place to warm up on a chilly October morning made the streets of post–Ice Age New Orleans look like all the other streets in the country, unlike the New Orleans my dad had described when he told me stories from his youth. He’d called New Orleans the most unique city in all the US. To me, it looked the same as New Jersey, where I’d grown up.

The driver slowed down, and the car descended. From our vantage point a few hundred feet above ground, a vast property stretched. It looked like a small village of one-story homes all connected into a U shape around a large Southern mansion with a huge porch. In the front, four columns supported the house, though I bet those were just for show.

“Look!” my stepsister screeched. “A real-life chicken.”

I stretched my neck, having never seen a chicken aside from the pictures on our meal packets.

“A rooster, dear,” Stepmother said.

“What’s the difference?” she asked.

Shoot me.

My stepmother sighed. “Rooster is a male.”

Stepsister giggled.

I suppressed my commentary.

At nine in the morning, the…villagers seemed busy. People carried boxes to and from the mansion. We landed right in the middle of their expansive front yard and effectively stopped all the traffic. Boxes dropped, and people gathered around our car and waited for us to emerge.

“Poor things,” my stepmom said. “They’ve never even seen technology. Still living in the pre-Cy era.”

My sister stretched out her hand as if to open the door.

Stepmom caught her wrist. “Let them look. Maybe the lord of the manor will come, curious to see who’s visiting.”

Stepmom lived in her own world where she still had a lot of money, held a high status in the habitat, and everyone wanted to be her. Not so anymore. She had married three times, but all three husbands had passed away, leaving her with nearly nothing. It didn’t matter that she’d accepted multiple implants and became a level-four cyborg with eighty percent of her body composed of mechatronic Cy parts. It wasn’t enough to give her lavish Cy benefits. She’d hoped I’d marry into a prominent family, but since I’d rejected the implants and my father was dead, nobody wanted me.

The red eject button on the door peeked right beneath my knee. I contemplated nudging the button and ejecting all of us out of the car.

My stepmother finally opened the door and stepped out, a smile splitting her face. It transformed into a grimace since cyborgs had trouble with facial muscle control, probably the reason the people in the yard stared and didn’t greet her. While cyborgs were a normal sight in the habitat, outside habitats, they were rare.

I surveyed the crowd’s limbs. No, not one cyborg.

“Hey, y’all!” my stepsister said as she came out. I followed.

Nobody greeted us back.

“Well then,” Stepmother said. “Is Lord Nentres home?”

Lord? Oh, give me a break. We were so pretentious. No wonder people scattered without an answer.

“Rude,” she mumbled and marched toward the manor.

Marcy and I walked behind her through a large door and entered the…foyer, I presumed, only because I’d seen it from pictures. We didn’t have foyers in the habitats. The Cy engineered our apartments for comfort but not much else. A foyer, apparently, wasn’t necessary.

“Oh my,” Stepmother mumbled.

I echoed her awe of the large foyer flanked by a pair of stairways that led upstairs and artfully made an archway entrance for another room straight ahead. Our heels clicked over the marble floors as we skirted a round metal barrel decorated in shiny, sparkly yellow flecks. Gold?

I peeked inside the barrel. Chopped wood. Real wood, not the fake wood we had in our apartment. The barrel kind of resembled a fireplace, but since it sat in the middle of the foyer, I thought it odd to have a fireplace there. Though, for all I knew, fireplaces belonged in foyers.

“Come along,” my stepmother called out, and I jerked my head in the direction of her voice. She had already been seated!

Crap.

I rushed inside the glorious room with pale yellow wallpaper, high ceilings, low-hanging chandeliers, and a giant unlit fireplace. Quickly, I sat on the most comfortable beige chair ever made. I ran my palm over the suede while admiring the paintings on the walls. The entire place could be described in one word: warm. I’d never seen anything like it. If this was where Stepmom intended to dump me, I was in. All in, like with a royal-flush poker hand.

“Amy,” my stepmother growled.

A dog padded past me, his claws clicking the marble. He lay down on a rug under a watercolor painting of lilies. “Here, boy,” I called and tapped my knee.

He or she ignored me.

“Amy!” Stepmother said.

“Yes?” I bit out.

“Never mind me,” a man said.

Oh horror. Our host had been here the entire time, and I hadn’t even greeted him before I sat on his furniture. I had no manners, and I knew how the Southerners loved their manners.

On the other side of the room, behind the sitting area and just before the large entry into another sitting room—lots of people sat here, apparently—a pair of men busied themselves in front of a stand-alone mirror. One, dressed in a black suit, with his back turned to me, worked on the other man, who I couldn’t see but for the top of his blond head.

The blond man rose on his toes and peeked at us over the shoulder of the guy in front of him. “Never mind me,” he said again. “Have a look around.”

His blue eyes lifted at the corners, and I presumed he smiled, so I smiled back and mumbled an apology for not greeting anyone when I came in.

The man in the suit kept fussing over the blond. A glance at the mirror on his right told me he was fitting the owner of this glorious place for a tuxedo. A young woman about my age brought more fabric, draped it over the suited man’s arm, and told us she’d return with our tea.

“Miss Trahan, you were saying?” the blond prompted her.

He’d said miss, but I knew he meant my stepmom, because down here, miss applied to women in general.

“The rumors among my circles say you are planning a ball.”

A ball? They did live in the past around here.

“Correct,” he said. “Too loose,” he added, probably to his tailor.

“And yet our family has not received an invitation.”

“George?” the lord asked.

The tailor turned and gave my stepmother a black stare. “Your family is cyborg apart from Marcy Trahan, who is seventeen.”

“Amy Trahan is human,” my stepmother said. That would be me. I still had no idea where she was going with this.

George frowned. “Amy was fitted with an implant last week.”

“Yes, but it was rejected. For the third time.”

Heat crept up my cheeks, and I lowered my gaze. Implant reject. A rare breed, lowest of the low in the habitat. Everyone knew I was a reject and treated me accordingly. I’d stained my family name for generations because people gossiped that implant rejection ran in the blood. Stepmom’s friends said something about my biology not accepting the implant. I didn’t know if that was a scientifically proven fact, but it didn’t matter. Nobody would marry me. I couldn’t find a job other than at the bottom of the habitat, something manual and hard, with minimum daily rations.

“We didn’t know about the rejection,” George said. “I’ll issue an invitation immediately.” But instead of going off and getting the invitation, he spun around and fiddled with the fabric draped over his arm. He picked out a pale pink swath and showed it to the lord.

“Brighter,” the lord said.

George swiped another sample.

“Amy’s quite a pick for a man who’s looking for a human bride,” my stepmom said.

Huh? I snapped my head away from George and stared at her. She paid me no mind and reached for the sweet tea the serving girl set on the table.

George sighed. “Miss Trahan, I reckon you ain’t the first nor last who’s come with a daughter. As we said to the Smiths yesterday, we fixin’ to hold this ball come hell or high water.”

“There isn’t a need for the ball. Amy is sought after by many in the habitat, but as you know, her implant rejection is her curse. She’s willing to get married. Aren’t you, Amy?”

Stepmom cut me a death stare.

I didn’t dare deny it, partly because I didn’t know what she’d do with me if I denied it and partly because she’d caught me off guard. I hadn’t known she intended to marry me off. I thought she’d pay someone to house me. My daddy had entrusted her with my inheritance. Damn her, she could’ve given me a small portion of it when I asked and let me leave the habitat on my own. All I’d wanted was a car and some money.

I looked away.

George caught my gaze and held it with his warm brown eyes. He looked to be in his seventies. Old, fit, and wise.

I tried to fool him with a smile, a nod anyway.

“Willing’s an interesting choice of words,” the lord said. “Do you believe other women are unwilling?”

George stepped aside to reveal the lord of the manor.

I blinked.

I clearly heard my stepsister whimper.

I didn’t know how I suppressed my own whimper.

This man must be an angel. Six feet and some of male beauty with a six-pack of abs that flexed as he sat on the long couch in front of us. He kicked up a boot and leaned an elbow on the handrest, sprawling in his shirtless masculine glory.

One corner of his mouth lifted. “Do you believe other women are unwilling?” he repeated.

Stepmom had apparently gone mute.

“I don’t,” Marcy said. “I’m gonna be eighteen next Thursday. When is the ball?”

The lord chuckled. “Why, thank you, dear. You’re sweet.”

He glanced at me.

I schooled my face to appear impassive and swallowed the saliva in my mouth before I drooled worse than the dog resting on the rug. The lord’s gaze roamed over me. All of me. From the tip of my head to the toes of my brown cowboy boots and back to my eyes.

“Stand up so I can see you,” he said and flipped two fingers, gesturing for me to stand.

Fuck, no. I balled my fists.

He narrowed his eyes, then glanced at my stepmom. “George,” he said.

“Yes, my lord.”

“Escort the misses to their car with an invitation to the ball.”

I stood and let him look. I couldn’t go back. Stepmom might even kill me. I wouldn’t put it past her. She’d do anything for her Cy benefits and my inheritance.

The lord didn’t peruse my body as I’d expected. His clear blue eyes stayed locked with mine when he said, “Not interested.”

My heart sank. The last thing I wanted was to become my stepmother, a woman with no vocation, completely dependent on the men she’d married and unable to take care of herself after they’d passed away. Oh, she took care of herself by remarrying, but I didn’t want to have to do that. And yet, I had to do that. Right now. Or I wouldn’t wake up alive the next morning.