Ro (A Cyberpunk Retelling of Romeo and Juliet)

8

JULES CAPULET

Nutrix wipes the last of the butterfly makeup off my face with a cleansing spray. His platinum-blonde locks, cropped to his shoulders, tickle my face as he tosses a silk robe at me to sleep in. "Tell me your secrets." He says, a malicious grin in his eye.

"He wanted me." I turn around, facing the window that overlooks the stale, beautiful city of northern New Verona. The districts glow with floating blue lights, set along the highways with orderly hovercraft transports that are all set in neat little rows. Police and state vehicles watch from cameras and robotic monitoring systems, armored body plates and hovercraft tanks near the administration buildings. We live close to the shopping district, with artificially sculpted ponds and lakes that have all the perks of nature without any of the bugs or wild growths. Everything's monitored here. Sanitary.

"He wanted you?" Nutrix raises a micro-bladed brow, scrunching his freckles up along his nose as he twitches. He has that habit, twitching when I seem uninterested. Distracted.

I shudder. "Don't they all want a petal off the rose?"

Nutrix places his hands on my shoulders, shifting his weight onto his other leg as he stares deep into my eyes. "You're not telling me something."

I sigh, wrapping my robe around my middle, tying it tightly so the light outline of my abs disappears from view. I'd been running a lot lately. Exercising for upper body strength until the pain drove out my worries. Nutrix joked I was trying to outwork the paparazzi, to outrun my infamous misdeeds. More likely that I'd been trying to outrun the stain of the family business. Of the lottery that dictated people's lives. A people I was kept locked away from because of some family feud over ownership of one, broken city.

I also wasn't very kind to myself. One, because of the usual things like low self-esteem and fear of straying from the status quo. And two, because I guess I never learned how to really be me. I'm still trying to figure that part out.

The past me wasn't the old me, a shy art major. A body. A sum of parts.

That past was just a stepping point to the Jules I could become. Not a body. Not someone to be put into binary boxes. I'm an experience.

"Now, now," Nutrix grins and places a finger beneath my chin, tilting it up to face him. I smile as he taps my nose, like I'm some unruly kitten. "You look ugly when you cry."

I snort. "Thanks, Nu. I feel so much better."

"Now you're angry with me instead of being sad over that Jack Paris character." He claps his hands in glee. "You can't be sad if you're angry! Come on and get some beauty sleep. And don't worry about the business merger too much." He leans in, like he's sharing some conspiratorial secret. "I heard that theJules Capulet is attending the hottest lottery-night masquerade of the year. We have to work to upstage that brat!"

I laugh at that. "You're crazy sometimes. And don't call me a brat." Typical Nutrix. The thirty-something fashion designer claps his hands again, platinum hair bobbing, and then walks over to turn off the monitors so I can head to sleep. I stop him before he can.

"Wait, look. The Montagues are on the wall-screens." I gesture at the news report monitor flashing across the third wall, the monitor almost hidden beneath my steel mesh canopy near my bed. Working quickly through the universal-remote settings of my Eye-Lens, I expand it so the report plays across all four digitized walls, closing off the window on the fourth side of my room. The scrolling reports are accompanied by a clear video feed of...of...

A man and his sons; slaughtered in a drug-fueled murder-suicide.

Bloodied bodies. Bruised arms. Plastic body bags carried out with limp, cold figures.

Bio-tech. Blood-draining bullets. A sketchy alternative medicine shop.

Montagues massacred.

Our enemies.

The feed clips away. A man with a dark, black beard, tanned skin, and intense eyes addresses onlookers from a podium, glistening white, in the northern sectors. CHIEF OF NEW VERONA POLICE, EMIR PRINCE, the report reads. He begins speaking on the "...this Montague tragedy. Sole survivor, daughter Ro Montague accuses the esteemed Capulet family of criminal involvement. I'm afraid that New Verona will have to take serious measures to avoid further bloodshed. Anyone who dares to break the peace of this city may face a lifetime of imprisonment in maximum security facilities—."

"Wall-screens, off! Dammit, the cleaners must have left this political drivel on." Nutrix commands, but it's too late. I've already seen the report. I sit on the bed, and Nutrix puts his arms around me, holding me tight. I can't get the video feed horrors out of mind. This, all happening in the southern parts of our cities, where the streets are so neat and clean.

I pull my hands around my knees. "Did we do this, Nutrix? Was Officer Prince right in the rumors of us being involved in this?"

Nutrix holds me closer.

He does not answer.