City of Beasts

by Corrie Wang

  Biting his lip, he picks at my scratchy mattress.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  He doesn’t ask what I’m talking about.

  “Yeah. They do stuff like that to me all the time. It’s not that big a deal.”

  Motor’s been here his whole life. I wonder if in that time, he’s ever had anyone who loved him. Tucked him in. Was happy to see him in the morning. I hope so. Even if he can’t remember it, I hope Motor at least had that. From where I’m sitting, the clock is positioned right over his head. No loose threads, I hear Breaker say. Remember what’s at stake.

  “Motor, you know there are better motivators in life than chocolate, right?”

  “Oh yeah,” he says, pushing up his glasses. “Honor told me. Egg tarts, right?”

  A surprised laugh escapes me. “No. I was thinking more like friendship.”

  Motor lets out a begrudging laugh. “Oh, duh.”

  Then he snorts, and for brief second, we’re grinning at each other and I realize I kind of actually like this odd, surly little gruff-voiced tattle-tale male. Too bad I still haven’t thought of a way to humanely “dispose” of him. Remember what’s at stake. Mouse. Sway. I let out a wide yawn, stretch.

  “Bedtime, Motorhead.”

  As I lie back on my bare mattress, Motor looks reluctantly over at his.

  “You want to sleep here tonight?” I ask. “You know, as a favor. So I feel less homesick?”

  Rolling his eyes, Motor sighs heavily but then quickly crawls to grab his pillow and hurries back to the foot of my bed.

  “Just for tonight.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “I really appreciate it.”

  As Motor hunkers in, he lets out a fart and laughs. “Doc almost showed up for that one.”

  “And here I thought it couldn’t smell any worse,” I murmur.

  2:46:15. 2:46:14. 2:46:13.

  My eyes blink, heavy with sleep. It’s been over two days since I’ve gotten any decent rest. But if everything goes well, this will all be over soon. Just as I’m about to make my move, I feel two little feet press up against mine. Somewhere in the building, Breaker is getting ready to take Mouse to the cafeteria. And that decides it for me.

  I know exactly what’s at stake.

  “Hey, Motor.” I sit up. “Can I borrow your keycard? I need to use the bathroom again.”

  Leaving our bedroom door open a crack, I walk across the hall to the bathroom. My hands shake as I leave that door popped open as well. As I wait, I stare at the showers. Motor said they were too hot. I can’t even imagine what that feels like. Never mind the last time I bathed was at Comma and Sway’s. Or that it was more of a hand bath than anything else. Or that the water was frigid. On Grand Island, hot and shower were words that didn’t ever go together. It’d be like running a quick marathon.

  Before I can think twice about it, I turn on the faucet in the last shower stall. Within seconds the whole bathroom is steamy. Quickly disrobing, I hop in. I should have a solid five minutes before Motor comes to investigate what’s taking me so long. That’s four minutes longer than I need.

  I step into the scalding water and let out a quiet groan. Maybe the food comes in bricks of color and they use sedatives and sensory overstimulation to keep the wards in check, but the water at the Fortress is piping hot. And the feel of it is…delicious.

  Which is maybe why as I soap up under the scorching spray—with actual soap—I find myself thinking about milk. When I was younger and Grand was testing out her recipes for the milk substitute, she’d call me into her lab to be her official taste-tester.

  “If you like it,” she’d say, “then the pickiest drinker in the world will like it.”

  And I did like the milk. Except it always tasted the same.

  Of course, I never told my grand this. Not after all the time she spent perfecting the recipe. So I’d make things up. That one was creamier than last time. Or This one was sweeter. They were happy memories for me, because the milk tasting meant I was allowed into her lab. The time went by so quick in there, I’d leave without realizing that half a day had passed.

  My knees give a little, and the soap slips from my hands. Even given the almost unbearably hot water, a shiver runs down my back as an awful thought occurs to me. Maybe the reason nothing is adding up is because I’ve been calculating all the wrong sums. Because now, as I quickly think everything out, point by point, it all clicks into place.

  The bathroom door creaks open.

  Waste. I turn off the tap.

  Grabbing my towel from the curtain bar, I wrap it around myself, then step out into the locker room, where I come face-to-face with Motor.

  “I know what you’re doing,” he says.

  “Bathing? You should try it. Truly.”

  “No. You’re escaping, aren’t you? You’re gonna steal my keycard and escape.”

  I try to get past him to my clothes. Half-naked was not how I envisioned participating in this conversation.

  “Motor, listen…”

  He blocks my way, wiping at his steam-fogged glasses in annoyance. “No, you listen,” he says in a voice that’s more raspy than usual. “I’m not some dumb septic tank. I’m right. Aren’t I?”

  As I dart around him and reach for my clothes, he grabs my arm to stop me. Right on my stitches. I cry out. I feel my towel loosen, and next second it lies in a lump on the floor.

  I’m naked.

  “What are those?” Motor shrieks, pointing at my chest. “And what happened to your ding-dong? Mutant! Mutant!”

  I lift him into the air by his shirt, my hand covering his mouth. Remember what’s at stake. It would be so easy to break his neck right now. I could hide his body in an empty wing of the Fortress. It would be weeks before anyone found him. Sway, Mouse, and I would be a lifetime away by then. Maybe he can see all these thoughts rush through my head, because he stops struggling.

  “I won’t tell,” he quietly whimpers.

  “I doubt that,” I say.

  Putting him down, I quickly grab my towel, then turn my back to him and slip into my clothes. He cranes his neck, trying to get another look at my body.

  “And I’m not a mutant. I’m a fee. Same as your Powerpuff Girls. And you’re right, I am going to steal your keycard and escape. So now what?”

  His nose is running and his forehead is dotted with sweat. “Take me with you?”

  This is not what I was expecting. “Why would I do that? You’ve spent the entire day solely telling me how great the Fortress is. You’re the doctor’s most helpful ward. You love it here.”

  “No. I’m done with being helpful. I want to be a Buttercup—a real hero. And if you won’t take me with you, you’re gonna have to break my neck. Because otherwise, I’ll go out into the hall and scream for Doc, and you’ll never see your brother or friend again.”

  Minus the request to tag along, this is exactly what Breaker predicted Motor would do.

  “Motor, I think you’re confused on the definition of a hero. Heroes don’t blackmail their friends.”

  “I don’t want to mail black at you, but I have another six years until I’m of age. That means another six years staring at gray walls. Six years of everyone thinking I’m a septic tank. And waiting for yellow dinner-meal days. You know, I don’t even like yellow dinner meal? I think I actually hate it. I just like pretending I have something on my agenda to look forward to.”

  His voice is high and wobbly, as if the very idea of staying here one more minute, never mind six more years, is enough to make him cry. I laugh with relief. His eyebrows go above his glasses frames as a small snot bubble forms in his right nostril.

  “Geez, rude,” he sniffs. “What’s so funny?”

  “You’re in. You passed.”

  “Of course I passed. I’m super smart.”

  “Though I need you to promise that you’ll help me with my brother, Mouse. If he doesn’t make it out, we’re not making it out. Understood?”

  “Geez, yeah. I get it. Onl
y Mouse matters. Not me. Understood.” He wipes his nose on his arm. It leaves a trail of wet. “So wait. What am I ‘in’?”

  “My escape plan. I needed your help, but I didn’t know if I could trust you or if you’d even be willing to lend a hand. But now I do and you will and we really have to get moving.”

  Motor pushes up his glasses with shaky hands. His little sour mouth is a mess of smiling and trying to look tough and suppressing stress tears. Luckily, the process of telling him Breaker’s plan and having him comment on how dumb it is and how it’ll never work snaps him right back into form. Until I tell him the new part. The part Breaker doesn’t know about. The one I decided on when I realized what was at stake.

  When I finish, Motor’s brow furrows, like he hasn’t heard me right.

  “You mean”—he shoves at his glasses—“if this whole dumb thing works, then…?”

  “Yep.” I nod. “You’ll be a hero. It all depends on you.”

  Which was exactly the opposite of what Breaker suggested I do. But if one thread could unravel a sweater, surely it could bind one together as well.

  “Now come on,” I say. “Breaker and Mouse are probably waiting for us, but are you sure you don’t want to shower before we leave?”

  “Nah. Showering’s for septic tanks.”

  I consider insisting. A red pimple is forming on Motor’s cheek, probably from all the accumulated grime and oil, but I let it go. As I follow Motor back to our room, he keeps smiling at me over his shoulder. Right outside the door, I pull him to a stop.

  “Motor, where did you learn that saying? Calling someone a septic tank?”

  “I dunno. Everyone says it, duh, you dumb, smelly septic tank. See?”

  I snap my fingers and point at him. “Don’t push it.”

  As soon as I’m through the door sparks ring out next to my ear. Horrific pain radiates from my neck down my spine and along every nerve in my body. Out the corner of my eye, the gray male from reception takes out a needle and jabs it into my arm.

  He’s so close, I could…

  “Oh, don’t bother plotting, sweetheart. You’re paralyzed.”

  I swing my eyes to Motor. He’s crouched on the floor with his hands over his head. Rough hands catch me as I fall.

  1:44:12. 1:44:11.

  They’re early, I think. Then, everything goes black.

  When I wake, I’m lying in a hospital bed in a windowless room. It feels like I’m hundreds of miles beneath the dormitory floors. Yet there is a sound.

  Click. Click. Click. Click.

  It can’t be.

  My entire body feels wrung out, yet I clench my fists and manage to turn my head slightly. My heart beats faster even as my body goes limp.

  For there, unbelievably, is my grandmother.

  For as long as I can remember, my Grand Mati has looked the same. Strong and graceful with flawless glowing skin and perfect posture. If anything, as she’s aged, she’s become younger. I commented on this once, making her laugh.

  “What can I say, Spark Plug?” She winked. “We have good genes.”

  Now she’s sitting next to my hospital bed in a plush chair with her legs tucked up under her, clicking her pen. Her shiny dark brown-and-gray braid twists down her shoulder, curls escaping wherever they can. A reading lamp casts a warm yellow glow on her as she peruses a tablet, the screen filled with data sets. It’s almost like I’ve woken from a strange dream and am back home. Although I couldn’t be, because at home our lamps never worked.

  Nor was I ever drugged or electrocuted in the neck.

  When I shake my head to dispel the grogginess, she is immediately beside me, one hand on my arm, the other stroking my forehead.

  “Thank goodness,” she says quietly. “How are you feeling?”

  How am I feeling?

  “I was electrocuted.” I try to touch my neck, only to find that my arms and legs are zip-tied to the bed. A cry escapes me. “Grand? What are you doing here? What’s going on?”

  “Don’t be afraid. Everything is all right. There was simply a miscommunication. I told them I wanted you to wait in my quarters. I don’t know why they placed you in the general population. They’re all a little afraid of you, honestly.”

  As she was the morning the beasts raided the island, she is purposely calm. But now, like then, I don’t need calm. I need outrage and horror and her I-will-murder-you face from that time Su and I used her favorite bathrobe to make ourselves turbans. Also, her quarters?

  “How is everything all right?” A strangled sob comes up my throat. “You’ve been lying to me. For my entire life. The mob. The Fortress. The labs. It’s all you, isn’t it?”

  Grand liked to say that the simplest, most logical answer was usually the correct answer. Well, then what was most logical? That the Seventeen Year Truce was coming up and our matriarchs had no recourse against it? That they trained us to be fighters our whole lives and at this crucial moment in time had no plan? That fees were the only ones who knew how to make babies, yet males managed to coerce my fiercely independent and loyal brethren into making more males all these years?

  Or was it most logical that males weren’t behind any of this?

  Fees were.

  Unflinchingly, she says, “Yes. They’re all various backup plans in case the divide failed. The Fortress is the oldest of them.”

  “But why? Why are you making more males?”

  “After we escaped Buffalo, most fees couldn’t yet conceive of a future where we didn’t have males. But when those young beasts attacked our fees on the island right after the divide, some of the mothers began to imagine a future where beasts were less beastly. What if we could raise young beasts in our own image?”

  Beasts. The word hurts my ears now.

  “But you aren’t raising males. You’re messing with them.”

  Again, a curt nod. “One of our geneticists teamed up with a hormone replacement therapist who worked in the same building as NeuYue labs. The goal was to erase a beast’s testosterone and libido.”

  “Grand,” I interrupt sharply.

  But she cuts back just as quick. “Fees have dealt with the repercussions of a beast’s hormones since the dawn of time. Let them, for once, make do. And if you can’t curb your moral indignation, we won’t be able to continue this conversation. The choice is yours.”

  Whenever Grand and I argued about Twofer, Liyan always told me, First and foremost your grand is a scientist. Her clinical nature requires her to be callous and narrow.

  I take a deep breath. Her eyes do not leave me. I curtly nod for her to continue.

  “Our first trials weren’t on infants. They were on the beasts who hurt our fees. Unfortunately”—she clicks her pen, her eyes steely—“all those beasts died. Mayor Grim, however, actually supported the research. He suggested we do the trials here, and while he was alive, he sent us a few more particularly violent beasts to work with. Some of those cases were quite successful. Rage, for instance. But then Grim was murdered, new subjects were no longer forthcoming, and the team decided it would be more productive to begin the process in utero.”

  “But this place is horrible. They use this sound torture to keep everyone under control and drug everyone and—”

  She cuts me off. “From what I understand, the Fortress offers plenty of exercise, free time, stimulating classes, nutritious meals. I’ll grant you that Doctor and his brother are a little… eccentric. But we both know there are worse situations out there.” She softens. “Besides, no one will be here much longer. Glori, there’s something I’ve been keeping from you….”

  “Yeah, no waste, Grand,” I say loudly, pulling against my restraints.

  She frowns but doesn’t scold me. I guess a lifetime of lies earned me that much lenience. Instead she slips off my bed and retrieves a pocketknife from her bag. I flinch when she flicks it open, but she only uses it to cut my zip ties.

  “This is not how I imagined telling you, for the record.” As I rub my wrists, she resumes
her seat on my bed and worriedly chews on her lower lip. “I only kept it from you because I wanted you to have as normal a life as possible. Whatever normal means nowadays. The thing is…” She takes a deep breath. “Two Five wasn’t the first child conceived after Nuclear Night.”

  “Obviously.”

  Her left eyebrow shoots up at my tone, but she continues. “I’m not talking about the lab babies or the beasts here. I’m talking about you. You were the first child truly conceived after the Night. I know you’ve always wondered why Majesty had you when she was so young. Well, it wasn’t technically her idea.” She hurriedly says, “Though it was with her blessing.”

  “Blessing to do what?”

  “To combine one of her harvested eggs with a sample of synthetic sperm that Auntie Shereen and Auntie Jean created. Glori, you were the last child NeuYue conceived before we moved to the island.”

  I can hear Majesty screaming at my grand, In what sense is she mine, Mother? No wonder she never felt or exhibited any attachment to me. Willing or not, what was I to her but a science experiment?

  “Why would you ever, ever choose Majesty as the sample?”

  Majesty, who was temperamental even before she was snatched. Majesty, who I remember being innately angry, the way other fees were kind or funny. A wildly emotional being, laughing and verbose one minute, brooding and stormy the next. My grand stops clicking her pen.

  “Because Majesty was conceived the same way.”

  Like Su with her Rubik’s Cube, my brain twists as I rapidly put all the pieces together.

  “So I’m the first fee made from synthetic sperm born of a fee made from synthetic sperm, born of a CRISPRed fee?”

  She smiles. “Tongue twister, isn’t it? We needed to wait until you were out of puberty to make sure you could have children of your own and that there were no latent mutations. Ideally, we’d wait until you were in your twenties or thirties and make dozens of other fetuses similar to you in the meantime. We are doing that now, of course. But back then, we only had you and we only had seventeen years. Glori, I’ve always told you that you’re my special girl.”

  But that’s only dressing it up, because what I actually am?