by Kristin Cast
“Let me get the bot.” Sparkman moved her wrist toward the cuff scanner. “We can try to save her.”
“The corporation does not need a strain that terminates its host.” Normandy’s fingers curled tightly around his glasses. The frames bit into the soft flesh of his palms. “She is not worth saving.”
“But—”
“Enough!” Normandy snarled. Spittle sprang from his lips. “Leave me to clean up this mess.”
Sparkman leaned forward almost imperceptibly before she dropped her hand from the cuff scanner, and her shoulders again slumped as she took a step back.
“I was close, Sparkman. This close.” Normandy held up two fingers, separated only enough for a breath to pass through. “Perhaps if the patient is younger next time.” He rubbed the earpieces of his glasses. “Ninety-Two was four when we started and lasted longer than any before her. Yes,” he mused. “Age . . .” With the corner of his coat he rubbed small circles across his lenses. “We shall search for another suitable child. A male this time, perhaps.”
Sparkman pursed her lips and nodded sharply. “You’re the boss.”
Normandy slid his glasses up his nose, glanced at Ninety-
Two’s ghostly pale frame, and smiled.
XVI
Aiden might end up being happy in the lab. Well, not happy necessarily, but content. No. No, not content either. Maybe fine was the right word. He blew out a puff of air and weighed the innocuous adjective. Yes, he could end up being very fine with a career in one of the many End-of-Life Unit labs, or anywhere else in the ELU that kept him out of Cold Storage or the incineration unit. Tavi hadn’t taken him there yet, but they’d walked by and Aiden could imagine what fresh hell waited behind the shiny steel doors.
The lab, or at least the section of it in which he and Tavi currently worked, was free of dead people, or anything else he might need his orange garbage bag of a biocontainment suit to protect him from. Tavi still hadn’t allowed him to take it off. Aiden was sure it was some sort of punishment for him acting like, well, himself.
Even though the lab was better than where he’d been before, there was no escaping the brilliant white light, so searing that it could disinfect every surface of the ELU without the help of the Violet Shield. Also, the glass walls made it a bit terrariumesque. On the bright side (pun intended), Aiden didn’t have to do much as far as work was concerned. But greater than that was the fact that he could see straight into the no-nonsense science section of the laboratory, and, if he positioned himself just right, he could catch images displayed on the floor-to-ceiling holoscreen. People way smarter than he was took turns pointing at the images, looking in their fancy microscopes, and shuffling about in their orange biosuits like shriveled squash. It was wishful thinking, but maybe Tavi would decide that he didn’t need to learn anything about any of the other sections of the ELU and could stay here indefinitely.
He adjusted the tight ring of rubber around his gloved wrist, snapping it for added effect before scooping up another tray of petri dishes and spilling them onto the waist-high metal table.
Aiden grabbed a few dishes and began stacking them on the table the way Tavi had instructed. His foot cramped from hours of standing in the same position. Maybe he could come up with another excuse to take a break. As long as he was throwing out possibilities, maybe he’d even see that wet-haired nurse out in the hall again.
Aiden leaned his hips against the table.
Now that was wishful thinking.
“Oh, Gods,” Tavi said, “not like that. Like this.” Propped up on a metal stool, she stacked her set of Petri dishes from biggest to smallest and pushed them to the edge of the spotless steel table. A bot motored up, scooped up the dishes, and puttered through the doorway’s Violet Shield. “They won’t come get them if the sensor doesn’t relay that they’re stacked correctly,” she said.
Aiden understood that. He also understood how to stack round items from largest to smallest. But currently, he was having a hard time focusing on anything except the Long-Term Care Unit nurse who’d been searching for the medi-pump lab, her round lips, and the way she pinned her gaze to the floor as if afraid that if she ignored its existence for too long, she would take flight and lose it forever.
And they’d had something in common. Showers. A strange thing to have in common, sure, but a commonality nonetheless. And there were shadows there, secrets. Aiden had gotten good at spotting secrets, and hers flickered in the depths of her black eyes. Intrigue swirled around him, clawing ribbons of curiosity down his back.
But had he really asked her if she took water baths? Shit. That was creepy. He was lucky she hadn’t run away shouting for security. Maybe the weirdness of the ELU was already starting to rub off on him.
“And you don’t need to worry about what’s going to go in these dishes,” Tavi continued, although Aiden had no recollection of how the conversation had started. “Your only job is to get them stacked so the bots can deliver them to departments around the ELU.”
Aiden busied himself with more dishes. “Will I ever need to?”
Tavi blinked up at him, her lips stretched into a frown. “Need to what?”
He slid a completed stack to the pickup area on his side of the table. “Worry about what’s going to go in these dishes.”
She shook her head. Her pink-tipped hair helmet practically glowed neon under the lights. “I don’t even know half the time.”
“Then what’s the point?” The quitter inside of him prodded, wanting to be set free. “And why isn’t a bot doing this?”
“A bot normally does do this, but I’m trying to be a good instructor and have you do instead of see. It’s better for learning and other brain development things.” Tavi hiked her pointed shoulders. “At least that’s what the handbook says.” She balled her hands on her hips and glanced at the petri dishes Aiden had just begun stacking. “I don’t know why I’m trying so hard. You clearly don’t care.” She cocked her head. “Or maybe you’re just way dumber than I thought.”
Aiden opened his mouth to object, but thought better of it. He didn’t want Tavi to think of him as the guy who couldn’t stack a bunch of glass dishes by descending size, but, at this point, there was no use in trying to change her opinion. It had been set the second he’d walked in late to the End-of-Life Unit.
“This seemed like it was the easiest thing to start with, especially with how you reacted to Cold Storage, but—” Tavi gestured toward the tubs of sanitized petri dishes waiting to be sorted. “Something tells me it’s going to take you all frickin’ day to get through the rest of those.”
“Cold Storage is filled with dead bodies. And they all have those feet.” With a shiver, Aiden held up his hands, miming two stiff, lifeless feet. “Anyone who walks in there and isn’t, at the very least, grossed out, has some serious problems.”
Tavi slid off her stool and glared up at him. “On my first shift, I worked in Cold Storage. The entire day. I didn’t puke or run away crying or stare off like some stroke victim. My file says that I was a perfect trainee.”
Aiden propped his elbow against the table. “Did you put in my file that I did those things?”
Tavi threw her hands in the air and let out an exasperated groan. “You are the absolute worst, you know that?” She held up a petite finger before he had a chance to speak. “I’m putting my instructor hat back on now.” She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. With the exhale, the vein that ran down the middle of her forehead disappeared, and a pleasant grin creased her cheeks.
The cheery pixie version of Tavi was more horrifying than the disappointed, annoyed-sister version he was growing accustomed to.
“How about we back off the hands-on lessons for a little bit? You can watch the containment protocol video while I figure out how to dumb down the rest of your assignments.”
Ah, yes. There was the Tavi he knew. And at least now he’d
set the bar so low, simply walking into work on time would earn him points.
Aiden followed Tavi out of the lab and into a room filled with rows of evenly spaced desks and the same uncomfortable chairs found in Cath Scott’s office. Nearly everything in the MediCenter looked identical. The sameness of it all would have made it easy to get lost if he hadn’t worked on every floor just long enough to learn their nuances.
Tavi pointed to the small student desk nearest to the instructor’s broad desk, which sat at an angle at the front of the room. “Sit.”
Aiden dropped into the chair. It was just as uncomfortable as he remembered. “You don’t have to watch over me, you know.”
Tavi squinted. “Sure I do.”
She set down her holopad and typed for a few moments before turning her attention back to Aiden. She’d lost her bright and cheery instructor smile before they’d even left the lab. “I was going to ask if you wanted to take any notes, but I feel like it would be a waste of a good holopad.”
Aiden cocked his head. “Actually, I prefer the age-old method of pen to paper.”
She scrunched her face.
“What can I say, O Captain, My Captain? You’ve inspired me to be a better student.” Aiden said with a dramatic flourish of his hand.
Another scrunch. “You are so frickin’ weird.” She scooped up her holopad and, eyes narrowed, watched him as she headed for the door. “You’re up to something. I know you are.” She paused in the open doorway. “Try not to do anything too terrible before I get back.”
Aiden waited until the door to the classroom closed. The heavy doors leading back toward the reception area clanged shut before he kicked his feet up onto the small desk in front of him. “Hey, Holly?”
Haunting Holly flashed to life next to him, each pixel stacking on top of the one before until they’d formed a complete person. “Hello, Aiden. Octavia has bookmarked several lessons for you. Would you like to begin?”
“Not until the chief returns.” He folded his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. “But I do need your help.”
The hologram’s smile was all teeth. “Sure thing.”
“Can you bring up employee profiles for the Long-Term Care Unit nurses?”
He had probably scared her off, but if there was one thing Aiden had learned in all of his years of career hopping, it was that the only way to know whether or not you liked something was to try it. And hopefully the LTCU nurse was into trying new things.
XVII
The Pearl seemed to glide weightless down the street as Elodie stood outside the MediCenter. She glanced at her bracelet. Five minutes were left until its scheduled arrival time window, but it was only a block away. Astrid had been right about its punctuality.
It wasn’t difficult to see how the automated vehicle got its name. Its round, opalescent shell alternated between gleaming white and muted swirls of rainbow in the patchy sunlight. Each Pearl added a level of whimsy to Westfall’s otherwise serious palate of muted grays and aged whites. The only spots marring the car’s pristine coating were two half-moon shaped windows on either side as if the zippy vehicle had freed itself from a tight pinch and had its glimmering sides sheared off.
The Pearl silently weaved around the clunky MAX train and paused for pedestrians with the intuitiveness of a human, but with the endless, split-second calculations of a computer.
Elodie leaned forward, then abruptly stopped herself. Astrid’s text had said to meet the Pearl outside, but not to approach the curb or the Pearl until it had made a complete stop and the door had opened. It was part of the testing for the newer, smarter prototype, and Astrid, who hated using exclamation points because they didn’t feel “emotionally specific” enough, had used five.
The Pearl smoothly transitioned to the right lane, slowing as soon as it reached the corner of Elodie’s block. It eerily crept along the curb. Its tinted window seemed to peer at the citizens entering and exiting the restaurant on the corner before it sped forward and came to a halt directly in front of Elodie. It had stopped so precisely that she only had to take a few steps to meet it at the curb.
A chime sounded from the Pearl, and Elodie’s bracelet flashed brilliant white as the back door swept open. She slapped the passenger side window. Giggles burst from her lips as she waited. She never was good at scaring anyone. Anyone other than herself, that is. The window silently slid down. She’d expected to see Astrid in the “driver” seat. Instead the front seats were empty. Elodie bent over and poked her head inside the car.
Astrid’s long legs and signature navy and green checkered shoes were the first things Elodie saw.
“What’s cookin’, good lookin’?” Astrid leaned forward from the backseat and winked. Her shimmery green eyeliner beautifully accentuated the delicate upturn of her eyes. She clicked her tongue and motioned for Elodie to join her inside.
“The Pearl was so accurate, I figured you’d be driving.” Elodie shrugged off her backpack and slid into the Pearl’s plush interior.
Astrid’s sleek ponytail brushed the headrest as she shook her head. “Nope. Observing slash meeting my best friend who I hardly ever see in the real. Work and play combined.” She interlocked her fingers. “Throw a little bit of work in there, and every hour becomes billable.”
“I wish I could get paid for socializing.” Elodie settled in to the seat and the door closed automatically.
“You? Socialize? ” Astrid clutched her chest in mock horror.
Elodie shook her head and ignored the comment. “Well, I’m glad you did. A lot happened at work, and it’s better to talk in person.”
Astrid stretched her legs out in the open interior, toeing the seat across from her before crossing her long legs at her ankles and resting them on the fleecy carpet. “Real life meetups are highly overrated, and always seem to interrupt things.”
“Gah. Thanks, Astrid. I’m so glad you could make some time for li’l ol’ me.” Elodie batted her eyelashes sardonically.
“Shut up. None of that applies to you. Just, you know, to . . .” Astrid tapped her black polished fingertips on the tinted window at the pedestrians briskly walking along the sidewalk. “Everybody else.”
“You’re only saying that because you get reclusey in that apartment all by yourself,” Elodie commented with a little more brusqueness than she’d meant.
“Thea is crashing with me for a bit, so I’m no longer wild and free. You remember my sister?” Astrid didn’t wait for a response. “Did I detect a hint of jealousy in there somewhere, Miss Elodie Grace?” She combed her fingers through her hair and settled back against the seat. “Gwen’s on one again, isn’t she?” She brushed the end of her ponytail against her cheek. “What am I saying? It’s always something with Gwendolyn Benavidez.” Astrid stuck out her chest and lifted her chin in the same ostentatious way Elodie’s mother did anytime she introduced herself to anyone.
Elodie let her hair down and massaged the tender spot where the rubber band had pulled at her scalp. She couldn’t tell if the tight tie or the mention of her mother had made her temples start to throb with the first dull pains of a headache. “Don’t get me started.”
“Couldn’t if I wanted to. A ride out to Zone Six wouldn’t give us enough time.” The apples of Astrid’s highlighted cheeks lifted with a smile. “And this bad boy isn’t charged up with enough juice for a trip like that.”
Elodie blew out a long, lip-rattling sigh. “It’s nothing new anyway. Same neurosis, different day.”
And this day had truly been different from the rest.
Elodie pressed her hands against her thighs. “I met someone. He’s really . . .” She bit her lower lip, pausing as she searched for a word that encompassed the mohawked stranger. “Interesting.”
Elodie flicked the zipper on her backpack as she replayed her encounter with tall, dark, and handsome while Astrid listened, her dark eyes w
idening with each detail.
Astrid stopped twirling the ends of her hair and sucked in a sharp breath. “So, he asked you if you’d ever had a water bath”— disgust pinched her features—“and then told you that he works in the morgue?”
Elodie hugged her backpack against her chest and pressed into the seat’s milky soft fabric. “Yes, but not in a way that sounded as creepy as you just made it.” At least, she didn’t feel like what had happened was creepy. Strange, yes. But not creepy. Creepy implied danger and fear, and Elodie didn’t feel threatened or afraid.
“It sounds creepy because that’s really the only way it can sound.” Astrid’s inky black ponytail swished emphatically as she spoke. “When we talked about you being able to speak to guys, I didn’t think you’d shoot so low. And I mean that both figuratively and literally since you found him in the basement.” She rested her elbow on the armrest dividing the two bucket seats. “Although, I guess I should be happy that you talked to anyone at all about something other than work.”
“I knew you could find the positive if you just looked hard enough.” Elodie relaxed a little, letting her backpack slump into her lap. “And it wasn’t super awkward. I managed to speak the whole time and everything.”
“Did the whole ‘Let me give you a bath in the ELU’ conversation happen before or after you ran face-first into the door?” Astrid sucked in her lips to keep from laughing.
“Oh, don’t remind me.” Elodie groaned and slid down in the seat of the self-driving Pearl, tucking as much of her face as she could into the collar of her shirt. “He probably only spoke to me because he felt sorry for the weird girl who couldn’t manage to enter the building correctly.”
As the Pearl glided out of the city and into suburbia, the chunky gray freeway barricades ended, replaced by the blushing pink of flowering plum trees, brilliant green pines, and the steady thrumming of construction bots still working to upgrade the thousands of stores and homes that had made up the prepandemic suburbs.