She takes my hand, points at the bombs on me and holds up the detonator. “No Zone B life, Will. Come on. Hold me. Let’s just do this.”
“No. Alex. Dying like this won’t achieve anything. Please, let’s . . .”
“Fuck off, then!” she shouts at me. I grab her and we struggle. She elbows me in the jaw. She’s still got the detonator and I’ve still got all the explosives strapped to me. I flick the detonator out of her hand and wrestle her onto the ground.
“Fuck off, Will! I just want to . . .”
“I know.”
“So let me!”
“No.”
“I hate you.”
“That’s okay, you can hate me.”
She punches me, hard, in the face. I pull myself over and kick the detonator farther out of reach. She goes to punch me again, and I block her, try to kick her, miss. Then an orange suit is standing in the corridor with us and I see that it’s Luke. Luke grabs Alex around the waist. She screams at him. He pulls her arms around her back and pins them there. “Will!” he says. “Reach into my back pocket—I’ve got some ties in there.” I get the hand ties and, my hands shaking, I secure them around Alex’s wrists, while Alex yells how much she hates me. Then Luke throws Alex over his shoulder and we run. We carry her down the fire escape, across the parking lot, and to Rob’s SUV, where he’s waiting. She’s still shouting at me. I gently place her inside, in the back seat, and slam the door.
“Good to go!” I shout at Rob, and smack the hood. I watch him take off.
I know that Alex may never forgive me for this. But I can live with that. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if she took her own life, even if it was for a cause she believed in. I believe in her, and all that she can do for the Response—alive. Ma always said that betrayal can feel cruel, but there’s love behind it. And maybe one day, who knows, Alex herself will understand why I did what I did.
•
In the morning, Luke is driving me back to the surgeon’s house when he passes his phone to me—a message from Rob. I click on the link and there’s the video, time-stamped a few hours ago. It’s a feed of Alex walking to an apartment door, knocking. Then the door opens and her mom, sick and thin, shouts in delight and hugs her. She’s back in the Gray Zone. She’s safe.
My eyes tear up and I look out the window as we zip past the apartment buildings at the edge of Zone A. People are already out, walking with coffee in their hands.
When we arrive at the surgeon’s house, the surgeon runs outside, pulls me out of the car and gives me a big, fake hug, hurting my shoulder more. “I was so worried about you!” she gushes. “Luckily, we had the Response shut down by dawn and the ringleaders are already awaiting trial. We lost one hundred twenty-two good Breeders in the blast—not all the bodies have been identified.” She leans over and whispers. “We haven’t yet accounted for your girlfriend, Alex.”
She shows Luke and me inside, into a small room I haven’t seen before.
“It’s time for kaffee und kuchen,” she says. “You must be starved.” There’s a delicate tablecloth on the table, and a young man is playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations on a piano. The surgeon shows me to my seat. From where I sit, I can see outside the gigantic windows to the street outside, where Rob’s gold SUV is just pulling up to the curb.
“Well. I should hear that your deeds have been executed any minute now,” the surgeon says, taking her seat across from us. “Actually, before you get comfortable—would you mind changing out of that tracksuit? It’s such an eyesore.”
I shake my head. “No.”
“What do you mean, no?” she laughs, and points to a dress a member of her staff is holding. I become conscious of my body again. Once upon a time, my body was mine to do things with—to run, climb, punch, kick. Then, when I was in the Incubator, it was a thing for other people to use, and it wasn’t mine at all. Now, it’s something in between: this body is still being used, but at least it’s a better exchange.
“I’m not wearing that dress,” I say. The surgeon once said that college girls always present themselves as feminine, that it was a “marketing thing,” but I’m with the Gray Corps now. I’m not wearing dresses ever again. And I’m going to shave my head, close to the skin—like all Westie males.
The surgeon sits there, staring at me. I sip my coffee and think about how I won’t have the surgeon’s mentoring after this deal. Instead, I’ll have an enemy for life. But I’ll have the protection of both the Corp—through the dean—and the Gray Corps. I’ll live on-site at the Scholars Club and learn for myself. I’ll be a weird kid—I’ll never lose that.
The surgeon is about to say something else to me when there’s a knock at the front door and one of the staff is beside her, talking to her in a low voice.
“No, they don’t have an appointment!” the surgeon tells her staff. “No, I don’t see why they’re here, the deal has been done . . .”
The staff member whispers something else.
“Okay, fine. Show them in.”
Moments later Rob comes in, smiling, the dean of Excelsior beside him.
The surgeon’s face is a picture.
•
My name is Lara Goode. I’m majoring in science at Excelsior, the most elite college in the Corporation. I can see the ocean from my bedroom at the top of the Club’s terrace, and I’m learning how to craft human DNA in the Scholar Club’s laboratory. When I graduate, I’m planning to do a PhD.
I know who I really am. And I know that Alex is safe. Like all Breeders, I’m taking the long view, and biding my time.
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my great appreciation for my agent, Julia Kenny, of Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency, for her brilliant work on behalf of Breeder. Warmest thanks to my incredible editor, Vikki Warner. Thanks also to the wonderful Blackstone Publishing team—Kathryn G. English, Mandy Earles, Megan Wahrenbrock, and Samantha Benson—and to Corinna Barsan for her transformative editorial insights.
About the Author
Honni van Rijswijk is a writer, lawyer, and academic. Breeder is her debut novel. Her fiction has appeared in Southerly and was short-listed for Zoetrope: All-Story. She is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law at the University of Technology Sydney, where her research focuses on intersections between law, technology, and culture. She lives in Sydney, Australia, with her partner and their daughter.
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