Free Existence by James Frey Page A

“P-p-p-l-l-l-ease.”
    He hates them for refusing, as he hates his body for rebelling, as he hates his uncles and his father for leaving him in this state.
    Hate. That’s another thing he’s been left with.
    His hate is the purest thing he’s ever felt, untempered by fear or hope.
    Someday, maybe, he will be blink​blink​blink​blink strong enough to use it.
    An’s mind heals faster than his body, but he begins to return to himself. He is slower and weaker than before, but he gets stronger every day. The tics and stutters shiver remain.
    They will, the doctors say, likely always BLINK remain.
    He shiverSHIVERshiver will never be what he was. Never as strong, never as coordinated. Nothing will ever be blinkblinkblink so easy for him again.
    An Liu laughs bitterly when the doctors tell him that.
    As if blinkBLINKshiver his life has ever been easy.
    He goes home.
    If he were of another line, if he were not blinkblinkblink Shang, then perhaps his people would SHIVER choose a different champion. They would deem him BLINK unworthy. Choose someone new to be their Player. Someone SHIVERblinkSHIVERblink whole. They would BLINK set BLINK An BLINK free.
    Not the Shang.
    The Shang believe in the oracle bones. The oracle bones were cast years ago, and they name An Liu as BLINK the next Player.
    There is no question.
    There is no escape.
    If An Liu is blinkBLINK damaged, then it was meant to be. If An Liu’s father deemed it blinkblink necessary to damage him, then it was SHIVERblink meant to be.
    He will Play however he is able to Play.
    He will Play no matter what.
    He will not be given a choice.
    He’s not ready yet to resume his physical training. So his father and his uncles leave him alone to his basement and his computers. Maybe they think he’s shiverBLINK no use to them in this state.
    Maybe they blink-blink-shiver see something new in him, and they are afraid.
    An doesn’t care, as long as they leave him alone.
    Hour after hour, he sits in the dark, in front of his computer, fingers shiverBLINK flying across the keyboard. On screen, in the bits and bytes, there are no tics. No stuttering. He calls himself LaMort377. La mort, French for “death”—he likes it because, out loud, it sounds the same as the French word for “love.” There’s nothing to tie the username to him except the number: the Shang people are the 377th bloodline. But no one would be able to piece that together, trace it back to him. This is a secret he shares only with himself.
    Online, An can be whoever he wants to be. Do whatever he wants to do.
    He wants to destroy, and when the impulse seizes him, he does.
    He hacks electricity grids. Banks. Air-traffic-control systems. He makes mischief of any kind that suits him. Some days he crashes stocks, other days blinkBLINK planes.
    Every day, he searches for his mother.
    Government databases. Social networks. Corporate mailing lists. Media archives. Anywhere and everywhere, he looks for evidence of his mother, something to lead him to her. Something, even, to prove she ever existed.
    There is nothing.
    There are no walls in An Liu’s cyberspace. No locks he can’t blinkSHIVERblink crack at will. No shred of information hidden from him—but his mother is a ghost.
    He learns plenty about this father, answers to questions he never before thought to ask. An Bai grew up in Beijing, child of wealthy banker parents. His name, Bai, means “person of purity,” and An Liu thinks this is well chosen. His father is impossibly pure, untainted by mercy, doubt, or love. When he was 16 years old, his parents died in a fire, leaving him everything: their penthouse in Beijing, the family estate in Xi’an, and four brothers who depended on him foreverything. He controlled the money, and so he controlled them.
    As he blinkblink continues to control them.
    The more An Liu learns about humans, the more he comes to despise the human