SWAB (A Young Adult Dystopian Novel)

by Choate, Heather

  Chapter Thirteen

  Genesis

  The first thing I noticed about Nathan when the large wooden door swung open was a pair of orange spikes protruding from his brown hair. The next was his gaping mouth and wide green eyes, splintered into four irises just like I remembered them from the night of the change. He looked at me like he’d never seen me before.

  “What?” I asked him using mind-talk, and shuffling my feet self-consciously. My gaze went over his shoulder to the room full of humans I used to know. Derrick was on Nathan’s left, looking unchanged except for the four-inch black points on each of his ears. Mrs. Weatherstone sported streaks of turquoise in her gray hair. Officer Reynolds seemed to have tripled in size. Gray sported dozens of blue, needle-like pins from his chin, like a goatee. Travis had two short antennae on his head, and Jorge had long barbs protruding from his elbows and ankles. All of them gawked at me, like I looked strange. I had yet to see my own reflection since undergoing the change. Was it really that bad? Am I really that ugly?

  “You’re beautiful!” Nathan exclaimed, and took my hands into his.

  “Really?” I scrunched up my nose. That was probably even worse than being ugly. I didn’t want to be beautiful. I didn’t want to be scarb. I just wanted to be me.

  “Yes, you are,” Derrick agreed, his voice a little deeper than before, more a growl than a voice in my mind.

  I still couldn’t believe them. Just then, Saki came huffing behind me. She put a hand on my shoulder and looked about the room at my admirers.

  “She’s quite exquisite, isn’t she?” she said. “Now, let’s give her some room.” She went to brush Nathan away, but I held his hand tighter. Saki turned to my brother. “Are you sure that’s such a good idea? Remember the consequences I told you about having physical contact too soon?”

  I looked from Saki to Nathan. Obviously, they’d met before and knew something I didn’t. Nathan kept his neon gaze steady on her. “It’s fine.”

  She glanced back at me. “Very well.”

  “What’s that about?” I tried to direct the question only to Nathan, but obviously failed because Saki answered, “Physical contact can be dangerous with one so recently Born.”

  I put the pieces together. “So, Nathan and the others have been here for a while.”

  Saki left my side and went over to a bubbling fountain under an ornate gold-framed mirror on the left side of the room. “That’s right.”She dipped her bluish tongue into the water and lapped some up. She wiped at her mouth with a white towel and continued. “Just like the healing, you required…special attention. They have been here three days already.”

  I looked back at Nathan, who was still staring at my face. “Will you stop that?” I told him sharply.

  “Sorry,” he said. “It’s just so crazy. It’s still you, just different.”

  “Prettier, you mean?” I asked skeptically.

  “Come see for yourself,” Saki called from the fountain. I walked toward her. Derrick and Officer Reynolds cleared the way for me.

  A little scared, I turned to face my reflection in the mirror. Eyes split into two irises gazed back at me. One was ice-blue, the second a brilliant navy, like the deep part of the lake on a clear summer day. Little flecks of silver surrounded the pupils like stars in the night sky. Each eye was fanned by a splash of black-feathered lashes an inch long. Smooth, dark-blonde brows arched above my eyes and ended in a line of blue dots. A silver gleam shone on the top of my sharp cheekbones and across my nose and forehead, like they’d been airbrushed with a fine metal powder. My lips had turned a shade of rose pink. My skin had lost some of its sun-tanned tone and was a shade of pale ivory. Even my figure had improved. My toned body and gained a soft roundness to it. My bust had increased at least three cup-sizes, but my waist was small and my abs tight. I was happy to find that my arms were still strong and that my legs under the combat gear I still wore were tight. Hopefully I can fight with this new body.

  I ran my fingers through my long blonde hair. Its color hadn’t changed much from before, but it was shinier and thicker and fell in soft curls to the middle of my back. I leaned in closer to the water. About two inches into my hair line, a band of small copper spears ran around the crown of my head like a ribbon.

  “You look like a princess,” Nathan said over my shoulder.

  “A queen,” Derrick said reverently.

  But I didn’t feel like a queen. I didn’t see myself anywhere in that reflection, and it bothered me. That wasn’t me. It was a stranger, and I was tired of everyone staring. My head felt woozy.

  “I need a moment.”

  “Sure,” Saki said and led me to a wash room. I went to the sink and closed my eyes, not wanting to see myself in the mirror.

  Scarb are the enemy. The enemy. The enemy. I told myself this over and over. I turned the water on, hoping the sound of it could drown out reality. They murdered my parents. They rape the land and kill humans as if they are the vermin. They took Ray. I dipped my hands into the stream and ran the water over my face. I looked at my eyes with their double lenses like two blue lakes: one navy, one ice. The enemy. And now I’m one of them.

  Ray. I can almost see his brown eyes and feel the warmth of his touch like a sun-warmed towel on my skin. Will you still love me now that I’m everything you hate?

  Hot, angry tears pricked at my eyes. I couldn’t let them fall. If I broke down now, I would shatter completely. I had to keep myself together to face whatever dangers now threatened me and my brother. I’m a scarb. I’m a scarb. I promise you, Ray, I won’t let this change me. I still love you. Even though everything’s different on the outside, I’m still me inside.

  Before, everything was black and white. Humans were good. Scarb were evil. Now, I found myself in a whirl of gray. I was scarb and I knew I wasn’t perfect, but I wasn’t evil. That changed my perception of everything. What else have I mistaken about the world?

  After a while, Nate knocked on the door. I let him in.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Me, too,” he admitted. “It’s a lot to take in.”

  “Do you think Ray will still love me?”

  Nathan’s eyes shifted and his mouth twisted to the side. “I don’t know, but I’d like to think so.”

  “Me too.”

  He put his hand on my shoulder. “I hope we find him.”

  Could he be a scarb in this colony too? I tapped into the connection again, frantically examining every scarb. There were thousands. Not one of them felt like Ray. But I didn’t give up hope. Maybe he’s still human. That thought gave me an odd mixture of hope and anxiety. Hope that he had escaped the change but fear of what that would mean for us.

  Nathan wrapped me in a hug. For the first time, I felt he was the one protecting. I stood on my tip-toes to touch the points of his two neon-orange spikes. He looked like a satyr. “Now, you really are a little devil.”

  Nathan grinned like it was a great compliment. “Yeah, and check this out.” He turned and I saw two thin, black, wiry wings protruding out of holes cut into his T-shirt. He wriggled them back and forth.

  “You’re a flier?” I asked dumbfounded.

  Nathan cheeks blushed. “Well, not yet, technically.” He puffed up his chest. “But I will be.”

  Wow. “Am I?” I spun in the mirror to see if I had wings, too, but my back was smooth.

  Nathan gave me a playful shove. “Don’t worry, sis. I’ll take you flying.”

  So much had changed so fast that it was hard to take it all in.

  Saki called for us to come out and join them in the other room. Nathan gave me one last squeeze and then we did. “Would you like to visit our laboratory?” Saki asked us all. “I would love to show you the work we are doing there.”

  “Oh, yes,” Mrs. Weatherstone chimed and clicked her mandibles together. “Fresh air would be lovely.”

  Nathan took my hand. “How ‘b
out it, sis?”

  I wasn’t sure if I could handle much more. I was nearing information/sensory overload, but maybe I could look for clues of Ray. I need to find that red-haired flier that took Ray and I.

  “Let’s go,” I said. Saki led our little group out of the room and back into the opulent hallway with the bright chandelier. Jack conversed with another scarb on the other side of the fountain, but when he saw us, he came over.

  “Excellent,” he clasped his hands together. “I was just telling Jules what an extraordinary bunch of new recruits we have here.” His yellow eyes glanced at me. Recruits? Is that what we are?

  But Saki was already leading the others down the hall. More than anything, I wished I could have a private conversation with just Nathan. He was chatting cheerfully with Gray.

  “I bet I could slam-dunk from half-court,” he bragged.

  Gray shoved him. “I could do it from the other team’s net, no problem.”

  “I bet the ladies will really get a kick out of these.” Nathan gave his wings a little flap.

  “Absolutely.”

  Nathan seemed happy enough, but that was just like him. Easily adaptable to new situations. Willing to make the best of them.

  Frustrated that I couldn’t even whisper a thought to him without everyone else being able to hear it, I decided to focus on searching the room for that red-haired flier. There were only a couple of drab-looking middle-aged female scarb and the one Jack had called Jules. I felt an awareness reaching out to me.

  I turned my head to see Derrick staring at me intently. Becoming scarb actually looked good on him. His chest had filled out more, and his blonde hair was almost white, which contrasted sharply with his deep blue eyes and pointed black ears. His lips cracked into a smile. His old dimples were still there.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” he said to my thoughts in a manner that was so sincere it made my cheeks flush. Quickly, I looked about to see if any of the others had noticed his comment to me. No one seemed to. Even Nathan continued laughing loudly to Gray about how even some scarb women could be as ugly as dogs.

  No one else heard Derrick, I realized. “You’ve got to teach me how to do that,” I thought back to him.

  Derrick smiled.

  Saki took us down the narrow hall that had I run up earlier. We were back in the stark hospital-looking hall. She stopped in front of a white door with a glass window. The sign above it read “Observation and Understanding.”

  “This is where I do my work,” Saki explained with the excitement in her purple eyes. “I think you’ll find it rather interesting.”We followed her through the door into what appeared to be a small laboratory. The table closest to us was lined with tiny plastic cases containing samples of roots and dead insects. The name of each was labeled in careful penmanship. Next were several pieces of beeping equipment and even a computer. I hadn’t seen a working computer in over five years and stared at it in wonder. Several glass containers sat under bright lights at the farthest end of the room. When I looked at them, I felt a burning presence in my chest. Something in the tanks was calling me to them.

  “What do you do here?” Mrs. Weatherstone asked, peering at a moth with blue and silver wings pinned to a piece of paper. Travis made a face at a dissected grasshopper.

  “Well, it’s a bit complicated, but basically, I research our genesis,” Saki said with pride. “Come, let me show you.” She led us around the tables back to the lighted glass containers. They looked like the kind of tanks that would have held fish or snakes when humans used to keep such pets. I felt the pull of energy increase as we got closer. Nathan and I stepped up to the glass. Derrick looked over my shoulder.

  “Easy now,” Saki said quietly and with deep veneration. “We don’t want to startle him.”

  Peering into the glass, I saw nothing at first: some sand, a tiny bowl of water, bits of dried wood and a few blades of grass.

  “There he is,” Saki whispered, pointing to the top blade of grass. I followed her finger and a single red beetle just like the one I found in the dome. It had a black outline and antennas and was no bigger than a common ladybug, but as I looked at it, I knew that this tiny insect was the source of the great energy I had felt when we entered the room.

  For a while, no one spoke. All eyes were on the little bug. I watched as it alternated each of its six legs, moving carefully across the blade. When it found a tiny bit of pollen on the end of the grass, its antenna seemed to quiver with excitement. Nathan, and even Gray, chuckled with amusement as we watched it gingerly put small chunks of the pollen into its mouth. I was smiling, too. What’s happened to make us all so giddy like this? But there was an undeniable link between us and the insect.

  “What is it?” Nathan asked softly.

  “It’s the Origin,” Saki answered. “It is how all of us were Born.”

  I frowned at the little red beetle. “So, we became scarb because of this bug?”

  Saki brushed back a strand of her blue hair. “Yes. Isn’t that beautiful?”Beautiful wasn’t exactly the word I would use for it, but she went on. “And it’s not just how we became scarb but how all scarb are Born.”

  I looked again at the insect now crawling upside down on the blade of grass. I just couldn’t wrap my mind around it. How could something so small, so harmless, be capable of destroying almost the entire human race?

  “We have studied the Origin extensively here in our labs,” Saki continued. “What we have discovered is that this insect produces certain spores into the atmosphere. When these spores make contact with our lungs, they bind to our red blood cells and cause our genes to mutate, turning us into scarb. Scarb are really nothing more than a sub-species of the Origin.”

  No one spoke for a moment, each of us trying to digest that information. “Where does it come from?” Derrick asked from behind me. Was that a hint of skepticism in his voice?

  “The Origin planet,” Saki answered. “We can all feel the connection. The connection extends beyond this colony, beyond this world, to planets far beyond. We have been blessed to become part of the great web.”

  I didn’t like the way she said blessed. Becoming scarb was shocking at first; I had become the very thing I’d fought to destroy. I could appreciate the wonders of it, now—I’d even started to accept my new body—but I wouldn’t call the change a blessing. Destroying an entire race of innocent beings would never feel right to me.

  “Did the beetles come here to annihilate humans?” I asked Saki sharply.

  She gave a little laugh. “Look at him for yourself. Does he seem like a killer?”I watched the red beetle clean one of its back legs. The insect seemed innocent enough, just like any other bug I’d seen before.

  “No,” I finally answered. “It doesn’t.”

  “Origin is not much more dangerous than your typical insect,” Saki explained. “They are extraordinary in several ways, however. First, their ability to travel through impossible conditions. We are currently studying their skeletal and internal structures to understand how their bodies make space travel possible. And second,” Saki bent down so her face was level with the insect, “their ability to communicate telepathically.” Her ears started twitching, and I watched as the beetle stopped cleaning himself, stood up on his back legs, and turned toward Saki. His antennae trembled.

  “Are they really talking?” Nathan asked, jaw open.

  Thirty seconds later Saki straightened. “He says he is warm and comfortable but feeling a little dry. I’ll turn his humidifier up,” she said, turning a little knob on the top of the tank. A gentle mist poured over the sand and grass.

  “Incredible,” Nathan breathed.

  “You can talk to him, too,” Saki said, “if you want to.”

  I wasn’t sure I was up to talking to a bug just yet, despite the connection I felt, but Nathan piped up. “Sure.”

  “All right,” Saki smiled.

  Nathan bent down to the glass. The beetle immediately
scurried down the blade of grass and came right over to the glass where Nathan was. After a moment, Nathan stood back up, a fat grin on his face.

  I put my hands on my hips. “What did you say?” I asked.

  “I asked him if he likes Led Zeppelin,” Nathan smirked.

  “Music? Seriously?” I huffed.

  “He brought it up actually,” Nathan replied.

  “Well, what did he say? Does he like Led Zeppelin?”

  The knowing smile didn’t leave Nathan’s face. “Ask him yourself,” he said with a hint of challenge in his voice.

  Me ask him? The beetle rubbed the glass with both of his antennae. Is he really looking up at me with those two tiny black eyes?

  I felt the connection in my chest burn a little more. “This is so weird,” I said in my mind as if under my breath, but I bent down so that my eyes were level with the little bug. “Okay.”

  The beetle slowed the movement of his antennae, as if waiting for me. Separated by only a sliver of glass, I saw him in much greater detail now: the barbs around his jaw, the specks of gold on his checks and at the tips of each of his joints, the dozens of irises in his black eyes. He cocked his head a little to the right, and I was certain he was looking right at me. “All right, little bug.”I cleared my mind and tried to focus on a single thought. Music. I directed it at him. “What do you know about music?”

  His voice—a strange mixture of pitches and clicks—came clearly into my mind. “We know a great deal about music, actually. As I told your brother, I am only recently acquainted with Led Zeppelin, and while it suits me fine, I am fonder of the music back at my home world.”

  His highly articulate response startled me.

  The beetle must have heard my thought. “No, the insects of your world are about as smart as a piece of dung.”

  “Oh.”I thought about that. I imagined what it must be like to arrive on a planet surrounded by unintelligent beings. “But you have music where you’re from?”What kind of music do beetles like?