Metal Heart: Book 1: The Metal Heart Trilogy

by Melinda Crouchley

  We settle into the kitchen and prop up the table and two chairs, knocked over by criminals looking for a place to rest their heels and take their hits. Glass vials and cigarette butts litter the floor. We aren’t the first people to utilize this space for recreational purposes. Emilia sets the medical kit on the table and stares at me openly. Her normally serene and happy demeanor is tinged with suspicion.

  “This is a long walk to draw your blood, Len,” she says, voice calm but heavy with suspicion.

  “Sorry for all the subterfuge, I’m never sure where or what or when the Academy might be recording. I don’t want them to know I’m doing this,” I admit.

  “Why?” Emilia asks. Emilia is great for cutting through all the social static and getting straight to her point. She and Emanuelle will make excellent medical officers. Or medical researchers. They will excel at whatever they put their scary intelligent brains towards.

  “There’s something wrong with me,” I say.

  “Yeah, I thought so. You haven’t looked well for the last month or so. Dark circles under your eyes. Pale. Sweating. Nosebleeds. Are you sick? Are you dying?”

  “Yes and no. I don’t have all the answers. But I don’t want to be kept in the dark either. You understand?”

  Emilia hesitates, then nods. She extracts a syringe and preps her tools while she speaks.

  “What kind of tests do you want me to run?”

  “Whatever you want to run. But don’t tell anyone else what you find. Only me. Please. This is important.”

  “What about Manny?” she asks. “Can I tell her?”

  “Do you need to?”

  I want to limit their exposure to Prothero, shield them as much as possible. I’m already involving them and asking too much. But I’m blind here, without information, with Prothero in total control. I need to stack the deck in my favor somehow.

  “Of course I have to tell her. We could publish an amazing research paper on you. We've talked about getting a blood sample to study for months, since you're the only person on base who takes regular nano suppressants. Honestly, I'm glad you asked for my help. The symptoms of implant rejections are increasing at a much higher rate than normal. So, can I tell her or what?”

  Emilia waits for my answer with raised brows and a smooth, placid countenance.

  “OK, only you two. No one else. Please,” I say. "And don’t name me in your publication.”

  “Fine. I want you to count to ten for me. You will feel a slight prick,” she says, holding the needle over the pit of my elbow, poised near a vein.

  “One, two, three, four, five, six—” She stabs the needle in my right arm.

  “I thought you said ten,” I mutter, watching red liquid pour into the vial.

  “I did. Neither of us like surprises. I don’t want to get caught violating a Prothero law, Len. Emmanuelle is important to me. My life is important to me. We are going to do big things and change the world. You tell me if this is going to get me in trouble.” She flicks the vial and rubs my arm to keep the veins flowing.

  “You aren’t going to experience consequences from running these tests. Tell me the results. And then, get rid of the sample.”

  She nods.

  “Aren’t you even a little curious about what you might find there?” I ask, hoping to tease out a smile.

  “Yes. I am.” She smiles good naturedly.

  Emilia finishes the extraction and turns to rub a healing gel over the wound, but it has closed already.

  “Already got that, thanks,” I say with a smirk.

  She bandages my elbow anyway, wrapping the tape and gauze with expert precision. Her fingers don’t shake, and she maintains the composure of a dignified surgeon. It’s easy to forget she isn’t even 18 years old yet when she works so efficiently.

  She pulls a sticker from the back pocket of her pants and presses it against the cloth of my hooded sweatshirt.

  “If it’s between you or Manny, I won’t choose you,” she says in a soothing tone.

  I look at the upside down yellow smiling face she placed on my chest, right above my metal heart.

  “If it’s between you or me, I would choose you too.”

  “Good.” She zips up the pack. “That’s why I like you.”

  She wraps up her tools and rises from the chair, knocking it over. We tip the furniture back into its state of disarray. It seems right, somehow.

  “That’s not the only reason you like me,” I say, nudging her with my good elbow as we move out of the dining-room area.

  “It’s certainly not your charming personality.” She gives me a friendly wink.

  “Everyone says that. It’s starting to hurt my feelings,” I mutter, following her lead out of the door.

  “That’s impossible. According to Scarlett you don’t have any.”

  “Yeah, everyone says that too.”

  “What are we going to find in your blood?” Emilia asks as we trudge away from the city, back towards the ruined highway.

  “Answers.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  CORPORAL PUNISHMENT

  The punishment for physical aggression towards a fellow resident leading to bodily injury is three weeks latrine duty. Not quite corporal punishment, but close enough. To be honest, I’d rather take a corporal punishment option, but there is none available for first term offenders.

  My assignment doesn’t start until Nurse Esperanza is assured my ocular implant is fully operational and integrated. Which means Rabbit’s already been cleaning toilets a full four days before I join him. We both arrive at the Commons door, buckets, mops, bleach, toilet scrubbers and rags in our hands. We make eye contact and Rabbit gestures towards the sliding door with his bucket.

  “You ready for this?”

  His tone is softer than it should be, and his gaze lingers too long on the glowing blue eye. His own face is decorated with a fading black eye and a scabbed-over cut slashing across his upper lip.

  “No.” I brush past him. I kick open the first stall and set my tools down heavily.

  There’s a long pause before Rabbit moves off to his own toilet. Muffled thumps and splashes issue from his stall and his knees bend to the floor as he works.

  “It’s not fair.” His words echo in the otherwise empty room. “That you have to do this.”

  “Why, because your buddy broke my eye?” I slip on a pair of yellow gloves and fish a toilet brush out of the bucket. I stare at it. I really don’t want to do this everyday for three weeks. I survey the toilet in front of me: urine spots and caked feces along the backsplashes and under the rim. Some human waste combination substance oozing up over the rim and down to the base of the toilet itself.

  I don’t want to do this, but I can do this. It’s not entirely fair, and yet somehow the punishment seems fitting.

  “You have to suffer the consequences if you lose,” I say. “Face it Rabbit. We’re just a couple of losers.”

  I plunge the scrubber into the toilet, and get to work. It’s easier than I thought it would be. I just picture the dirty toilet bowl as Clinton’s face.

  There’s a prolonged silence from the other stall.

  “How much do you hate me?” Rabbit asks. I hear the hiss of bleach spraying from the bottle before the sharp odor hits my nostrils.

  “Why would I hate you? Because your best friend sucker punched me and wrecked my face and now I look like the monster I really am?”

  “Whoa. That’s not—”

  “I don’t hate you. I hate him. I hurt him. And you know what? It felt good. Everything I did to him felt good and if I had the choice I’d do it over again. He’s gone now and I hope he doesn’t come back. I wish he were dead.”

  Silence from Rabbit’s stall. My hand shakes around the scrubber so I drop it into the cleaning bucket with a sigh. I clench and unclench my fists. Overhead the lights flicker briefly. There’s too much rage and anxiety rolling around in my body. I form a fist and slam it against the stall wall. It feels better, like some of the pr
essure releases.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m just glad he’s gone.”

  “You meant it.” Rabbit says quietly. “Sometimes I wish he was dead too. But without him, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have a future. It’s complicated.”

  Another few moments of frothy bleach scented silence pass between us.

  “He fucked your girlfriend.” It comes out as a statement, not a question.

  Rabbit sighs heavily. “Ex-girlfriend. And yeah. He did.”

  “Jesus, Rabbit. What the fuck?”

  “I told you. It’s complicated.”

  “Yeah. Sounds like it. What about your deal? The one you made with Clinton—the everything price deal. What happens now?”

  Rabbit drops his toilet scrubber. There’s rustling in the doorway and then his shadow falls over me. I turn and plop down on the tile floor, leaning back against the freshly scrubbed toilet. Rabbit settles all the way to the ground, crossing his long legs. They bump against mine as he moves. Once he’s done folding himself up, his knees rest against my thighs. They’re as bony as I imagined they might be, pressing against me. I don’t mind.

  “Clint’s not my friend. He never was. He’s more like a really shitty business partner who keeps screwing me over. A real friend wouldn’t do the things he does. A real friend wouldn’t hurt—” He takes a deep breath. “A real friend wouldn’t hurt you. Maybe I’m not really your friend either. I don’t know. I’m sorry, Eleni. I messed up. I’m messed up.”

  My stomach whirls and I stare down at my gloved hands. “You didn’t mess up.” He sniffs loudly and I think he might be crying but I’m too terrified to look at him. “You’re not messed up. It’s not your fault he kicked my ass.”

  “I couldn’t help you,” he says. “Not when it mattered.”

  The sincerity and pathos catch me off guard and shoot a bolt of electricity up from my toes. I’m reminded of those brief fleeting moments in the SIM where I thought Rabbit might kiss me. How he stood in the middle of this whole mess and tried to mediate. Rabbit telling Clinton about the bomb—sending Luis to get the EMT. Scenes of him struggling with Clinton in the alley between the looming cargo containers flash before me. The weight of his hot hand against my slumped, defeated shoulders. His apology. This apology.

  I finally look up at him—at the cut and bruises healing on his face. He’s not crying but his eyes are soft and full of pain. A sudden urge wells in me to caress the cut on his lip. How would it feel running across the pads of my fingers?

  I pull off the gloves and toss them at my side. “You don’t need to help me. I’m not your responsibility. In fact, it’s probably better if you stay away from me.”

  “Are you sure?” He tilts his head, blinking down his nose at me like a strange bird.

  My heart stops, then lurches back to life. I’m not sure which of my statements he’s responding to. “You’re not responsible for everyone around you.”

  “No one’s ever told me that before,” he says. I think he’s joking. Except his mouth levels into a frown.

  “You don’t owe me anything,” I say.

  “That’s not true.”

  “Rabbit—”

  “He gouged out your fucking eye and I couldn’t stop him. It’s my fault he noticed you in the first place. I tried to—”

  “I know what he did. Stop beating yourself up. That doesn’t help me. I’m fine. I heal fast. There are worse things than Clinton Fuller. There are better things too.”

  He swallows and drops his hands into his lap. Now our fingers are only inches apart. “You’re right.”

  A grin breaks out on my face. “I am right. It’s nice to hear you say it. It’s nice to hear someone say it.”

  He ghost-smiles and runs a hand through his hair, momentarily liberating his ears from the loose curls. “Better things like what?”

  I’m stunned by the brief appearance of his ears, which are usually carefully hidden behind his tousled layers of hair. They’re comically large but strangely handsome.

  “Wow. Your ears are huge.” The words leave my mouth before I can stop them. I’m grateful for the distraction.

  He laughs and the sound of it warms my cheeks. “You know what they say—big ears, big secrets.” He pushes his hair aside to tug at his bottom earlobe with a quick, self disparaging grin.

  I wonder if his ears are as soft and springy as they look, the inside lobes swooping and raised like ocean shells. His hair falls back over them—the curls bouncing and dancing in the light from the buzzing overhead fluorescents. An urgent desire sears into my brain and fills the small space between us. I could fight it. I could turn away now. But I won’t.

  “Tell me your secrets.” I reach up and tuck one of the curls behind his ear. I run my fingers over its soft curve and down the gentle fold. He closes his eyes and leans forward so his forehead bumps lightly into mine. “I’ve told you mine.”

  “Eleni,” he says, the breath hitching in his chest. I slip my fingers into the shaggy dark mass of his hair, twirling them through his soft black brown loops. I’m sure he uses the shampoo conditioner combo from the commons—the same kind I use—but it smells different in his hair. Like cinnamon swirled with oranges.

  “You haven’t told me all of them.” He licks his lips and his fingers touch down on my temple. His adam’s apple bobs in a silent swallow. Is that disgust or fear? Awe or anxiety? He rolls his thumb over my temple, the rest of his fingers diving lightly into my hair, tickling along the raised, wrinkled flesh of my cheek. His touch is light, like a bumblebee resting on a flower. Very little pressure. The pads of his fingers, slightly damp with sweat, warm wherever they touch.

  “Whoa,” he breathes.

  When he exhales, the tang of his cinnamon gum hits my tongue. On my temple his fingers twitch and a strange warmth ripples into my hairline, tickling down my cheek and neck. A brief whiff of ozone swirls into my nostrils and a zapping noise pops next to my fake ear. Rabbit pulls away, shaking his fingers and curling them into a fist.

  “Did you shock me?“

  “No. No way. It’s closed circuitry.” I give the wires an experimental tap. They’re hotter than the regular mix of silicone and real flesh. But not too hot. Not hot enough to burn someone.

  “It was like a static shock.” Rabbit slips his thumb into his mouth and sucks at the tip. I wonder if his thumb tastes like rubber gloves and bleach. I wonder if it tastes like cinnamon and oranges. Or maybe like salty sweat. “You shocked me.”

  “I didn’t.” I want to scoot back away from him, but I’m already pressed firmly against the toilet. There’s no escaping Rabbit or his accusations. “I didn’t mean to.”

  Rabbit inspects his thumb.

  “Now I know four things about Eleni Garza,” he says, with a decisive nod of his head. “Your headaches, the nosebleeds, those visions, and voices, and the bomb, and the LRAD.”

  He leans back, freeing up space between us. I don’t say anything. I want to argue and lie and tell him he’s seeing things. But in the same breath I’m fascinated by how extensively he’s catalogued every event in the last month. It’s an overwhelming amount of detail. “A spark came from your fingertips when you fried the tablet. There was another spark in the SIM, between you and Clint. I saw it. I know what I saw. I just don’t know what it means.”

  I don’t speak. I’m not sure what to say. He’s articulating all the evidence I’ve been desperately trying hard to ignore. He’s drawing conclusions that I don’t want to look at, that I’m not ready to face. It’s not fair.

  He settles against the closed stall door, staring down his nose, studying me.

  “Say something.” He nudges me with his knee.

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “Tell me I’m right.” His forehead wrinkles. “Tell me you’re OK. Tell me what it means.”

  A long pause passes between us. I want to reach up and smooth over the lines on his forehead. I want him to forget about it. Forget all of it. I want him
to kiss me. Which is the worst thing about here with him. I can’t get close to anyone. Especially not someone like Rabbit. Someone who cares.

  “It means I’m dangerous.”

  “Maybe you are.” He shrugs. “Or maybe you’re just scared.”

  “You’re the one who should be scared.”

  His eyes light up and his mouth twitches. “I’m always who I should be. Except—” I raise an eyebrow at him. Part of me wants to interrupt him and stop his flow of words. Another part of me wants him to finish the sentence because I know what he’s going to say. “Except for when I’m with you.”

  I blow out a ragged breath and press two fingers to my temple, massaging the wires there. Pressure is building up in this spot. It’s probably just the motor cortex adjusting to the new implant. Or maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s Rabbit Santiago. I need to change the subject or else I’m going to kiss him in the middle of latrine duty and then it will be too late. I’ll forget about Mateo.

  I’ll forget about escaping National Service. All the letters in the world will slip through my fingers. Fingers. His fingers and his stupid list. Something about it wasn’t quite right.

  “Four things.”

  His brow furrows.

  “There are four things on your Eleni Garza list. The last time you mentioned the list it was only two things. So what else do you know?”

  His face goes blank and carefully neutral.

  “The code letter. You write code letters to some guy named El Matador.”

  “You said you didn’t crack the code.”

  “I never said that.” He sighs and climbs slowly to his feet. “I’m not the Matador. That’s my problem.”

  “Wait—what? Where are you going?”

  His ghost smiles returns and he taps the wall with his knuckles. “Next stall over, Garza.” He opens the door. “We’re losers, remember?”

  “What are you gonna do? About the letter?” Nervous sweat pools under my armpits.