The Thousandth Floor

“Rylin. How … unexpected to hear from you.” Cord had sounded amused. Rylin tried not to, but all she could picture was the bright red mark on his face after she’d slapped it.

“About last night.” She was sitting at the kitchen table, tracing a crinkled advert for Later Gators cereal, the instapaper so old and cheap that the cartoon alligators no longer danced. Only their eyes flicked creepily back and forth, their tails barely twitching. Rylin took a deep breath and tried again. “I want to apologize. I was tired, and I overreacted. I’m sorry.”

“Words are cheap,” Cord answered. “If you really are sorry, why don’t you show me?”

Rylin slammed her hands on the table. “You seriously think, after—”

“Get your mind out of the gutter, Myers,” Cord said, drawling out her name in that way of his. “I was going to ask if you would clean again. I don’t know if you’ve met my brother, Brice, but he’s here this week, and he’s kind of a mess.”

“I could do that. Same rate?” Rylin said carefully. It was what she’d been about to suggest; after seeing that cash in her account this morning, she’d realized she should squeeze as much money out of Cord as she could. Yet somehow it seemed like the upper hand had shifted back to him.

“Sure. I’ll have the uniform sent over. Wearing it is optional, of course.” Cord chuckled. Rylin had rolled her eyes and started to reply, but he’d already hung up.

So now it was Monday morning, and here she stood, waiting for Cord Anderton to comm her in. She tugged self-consciously at the shapeless black dress and white apron the drone had delivered last night. She’d already called in sick to Buza, her boss at the monorail stop: she even had official “proof,” since she and Chrissa had long ago rigged their mediwand to log a false positive for nasopharyngitis. She wasn’t sure how long she could hold down her real job without showing up, but she couldn’t afford not to try.

As the door clicked open, Rylin stepped inside—and paused for a moment, speechless. On Saturday these rooms had been overheated and crowded, full of people and noise and light. Now they felt vast, and empty. Rylin’s eyes traveled to the greenhouse with its cobblestone flooring and insect-like heat lamps, to the cavernous high-tech kitchen, to the two-story living room with its curving glass staircase.

“Care to tell me why you’re here?”

Rylin jumped, whirling around, and almost collided with a dark-haired stranger wearing a navy suit and a smirk. “Where’s Cord?” she said without thinking, and instantly regretted it.

“Who knows?” The guy flashed a grin. “Maybe I can help you instead. I’m Cord’s brother, Brice.” Of course, Rylin thought; they looked alike, though Brice was almost ten years older.

“Rylin Myers. Sorry to bother you,” she said quickly. “I’ll get to work.”

“Work?”

“Cord asked me to come clean for you guys.” She shifted her weight, feeling uncomfortable.

“Ah,” Brice said quietly, his eyes traveling up and down her body. “Well, I’m glad Cord’s taste is improving. You’re certainly better than the last one.”

Rylin didn’t say anything, just went to the closet of cleaning supplies and gathered the bucket of spray cleaners and disposable scrub-balls. But when she went back out into the living room, Brice was still there. He’d leaned back on the couch, his tie loosened and his arms crossed behind his head. “Please, don’t let me stop you,” he said lazily. “It won’t bother me if you clean around me.”

Rylin gritted her teeth and started up the stairs, ignoring him.

* * *

Later that afternoon, she stood outside the door to Cord’s bedroom, steeling herself to go in.

It’s not that weird, she told herself. He’s just a guy. But even though she’d been in Hiral’s room plenty of times, walking into the bedroom of a stranger felt somehow weird. It was far too intimate.

She started with the bed, changing the sheets and fluffing the pillows, then sprayed the windows and UV-cleaned the carpets. Finally, as she was running a duster over the top of Cord’s heavy wooden dresser, she hesitated, overwhelmed by a powerful curiosity. Who was Cord Anderton, anyway?

Impulsively she opened the top drawer and glanced through its contents, an assortment of very masculine things. Some of them she didn’t even recognize. But it had been so long since her dad left, all Rylin could really remember was living in a house full of women. She pushed aside cuff links, a small bottle of cologne, a leather billfold embossed with WEA—Cord’s father’s initials, she guessed. Rylin was a little impressed to find it full of illegal old paper greenbacks, which still circulated wildly through the black markets since, unlike nanodollars, they were untraceable. Maybe they were just heirlooms. But if Cord actually paid people in this, he was ballsier than she had realized.

In the bottom drawer she found something that gave her pause—an antique metal box filled entirely with custom-made BeSpoke drugs. Spokes, everyone called them. Rylin had never seen so many in one place. But she lifted up the lid of the box and there they all were, her own personal treasure trove of tiny black envelopes, each of them marked with the signature yellow prescription label and containing a single pill.

Spokes were exorbitantly expensive, worth more than Rylin made in weeks at her monorail job, precisely because they were legal drugs: prescribed by a doctor after countless brain scans and psych evaluations. They were tailor-made for wealthy clients to “relieve stress and calm anxieties.” Rylin glanced at the date on the original prescription. Just as she’d guessed—right after his parents passed.