Toxic

by Lydia Kang

  As if remembering something, he frowns. “Uh, I need to…it says you have some contusions. I need to examine them.”

  I’m still wearing my robe, and only that. “Oh.”

  He reaches for my arm and stops. “May I…is okay if I examine your skin?”

  “Why not? You didn’t have a problem tackling me,” I comment.

  He looks hurt. “I’m sorry. But you were running away, and we had no idea what…who…if you were a threat.”

  “I thought that when people run away, it’s because they’re trying not to attack you,” I reason.

  He meets my eye, but I don’t back down. “I’m sorry if I hurt you. I was only following orders.”

  Something in his eye catches my attention. “You don’t like following orders, do you?”

  “No,” he admits. It seems to pain him to give me the answer. “Do you?”

  I think for a second. I haven’t needed to resist anything. I always knew that when I met Cyclo’s crew, I would be the most obedient crew member. Docility would make me likable, and that would make me worth keeping. I’ve had plenty of practice. All I’ve ever done is what Cyclo and Mother tell me. They’ve always had my best interests at heart.

  Haven’t they? If so, why did I get left behind?

  “See? Not so easy to answer, is it?” He reaches for my wrist. “May I?”

  I hesitate. The skin of my right forearm has a purpling color on the tender inside that extends to my wrist. My fingers feel slightly swollen, too. He watches me with large eyes lined with dark lashes. The color of his irises is different from Mother’s and mine. Ours are brown with a rim of black encircling them. His is more a mix of amber and ebony, light in the centers. I decide that I would like to see his eyes better, so I extend my arm.

  “All right.”

  He shifts closer on the hard bench that I’ve been lying on. With both hands, he takes my arm and carefully turns it this way and that. He lifts the data recorder and punches a few more keys. Those tiny amber flecks in his eyes are nice. In Cyclo’s language, it means curiosity.

  “You had some bleeding beneath the skin. It’s bruising, but far more than normal. It looks like your clotting is sluggish. Your vitamin K levels are low. Iron, selenium, zinc…all low.” When he releases my arm, I shift away from him and can’t help but wince.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “My back hurts,” I say without thinking.

  “Where?”

  I untie the front of my robe and turn away, lowering the fabric so my whole back is exposed. The boy inhales sharply. His fingertips gently touch my spine between my shoulder blades, then trace down to the small of my back. I shiver.

  “Your back is a map of bruises. Looks like Pangaea.” He pauses. “Pangaea is—”

  “I know what Pangaea is. The supercontinent on Earth during the Paleozoic era.”

  “Mesozoic,” he corrects me.

  I look over my bare shoulder to stare him down. “Cyclo, please tell us the correct era in which Pangaea existed on Earth.”

  To my left, the blue matrix mounds up and involutes to form a mouth. “Pangaea spanned both the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic era. You are both right and wrong.”

  “It talks?” Fenn asks. His body goes tight, as if ready to run. “I didn’t know it spoke. They said it just flashed colors. They said—”

  “They probably say a lot of things about Cyclo,” I say, a bit defensively. His hand is still on the small of my back. “Are you done?”

  “Oh. Yes.” The hand disappears, leaving an imprint of warmth that disappears quickly. Disappointingly fast. “You probably need some vitamin infusions to correct your deficiencies.”

  Deficiencies. I don’t want to talk about them because they are too vast to list. But I know what he means. “I don’t need vitamins. Cyclo gives me everything I need.” I pull my robe back on and cinch it tightly around my waist. I stand to face him, but I’m so wobbly. My vision flashes white, then black, before returning to normal.

  “Whoa.” He stands to steady me, very close. “Well, apparently that’s not true. You’re anemic. That’s why you’re dizzy. Look, we know that the ship was responsible for keeping its passengers fed and healthy all the time, but the ship is probably running out of nutrients, which means you are, too, if that’s how you get fed.”

  Running out of nutrients? Cyclo never told me such a thing. Lately, I’d been spending my spare time learning about Cyclo’s birth—not the current status of her health. If I had, maybe I’d have known that the crew were going to leave. How thoughtless of me. This is the kind of thing that would prove I’m not worthy of being a member. The thought hurts me somewhere near my stomach, a real ache, and I put my hands there.

  What if my hidden requirements ended up cannibalizing everyone else’s? Maybe I’ve been taking more than my fair share, and there was a good reason I should never have been born.

  I feel terrible.

  The door behind us opens. A tall Prinniad walks in, clad in a black uniform similar to the others. Her eyes are red as rubies; her legs end somewhere around my chest. Her skull shows a golden tattoo. Every humanoid I see in person is an utter surprise. I want to run my hands over her face to feel the texture of her skin, to follow the outlines of the gold tattoo. I hold my breath, waiting to hear what her voice sounds like.

  She looks at the boy, smiles a little black-gummed, toothless smile, and stares at me sternly.

  “Our remote group leader wants a word.” Her voice is…not what I was expecting. She seems rather irritated to be in the room with me.

  A visor hologram also shows up in front of her face, projected from an implant in her forehead that I now realize the boy has, too. She grasps the hologram with her fingertips, spins it around, and expands it so that I can look at the image. I’ve seen holograms before, but none that wanted to speak with me.

  It’s a hologram of an elderly gentleman, sitting who knows where—possibly systems away—behind a desk. A ReCOR logo is behind his head. I know ReCOR—they are the company that made Cyclo, and for them, I am so very grateful. He must be here to help Cyclo, then.

  He has a white beard, white hair, with crinkly blue eyes surrounded by lots of wrinkles.

  “Hello! So you’re finally awake.” His tone is gentle, and the timbre is deep and resonant. I like it. It makes me think of photos of the Grand Canyon. “My name is Aldred Doran. I’m in charge of the Selkirk crew from my station of BT-78i, and I suppose I’m in charge of you, too, now.” He smiles, and I immediately warm to him even though he is so far away. The blue of his eyes is just like Cyclo’s happy blue. “I have some questions to ask. Please, sit.” He motions to the bench, but until yesterday I have never been in a room with more than one other human, and I don’t like the odds, even if he is not really here.

  I lean back against the wall, touching it lightly and letting my fingertips sink into the gel. Cyclo responds, oozing forward a large bubble of matrix, and I sink into it as it supports my back and arms. A high-backed chair forms to lift me up. Flicking my eyes left and right, I see that Cyclo has made me a replica of the historic British monarchy’s coronation throne, down to the lion’s feet. She has done this for me in the past, and she knows how much I find it amusing, to be on a faux throne. Surrounded by her, I feel safer. I curl my legs under me, and my knees stick out like two bread buns.

  Looking down at the hologram and the Prinniad and the boy, I ask timidly, “What questions did you wish to ask me?”

  The Prinniad and Fenn exchange uncomfortable glances with each other.

  “Let’s start with your name, for one,” Doran asks.

  I guess there is no hiding anymore. If I am going to find out what happened with Mother, I will need help.

  “‘All compromise is based on give and take.’ Mahatma Ghandi,” I quote in not much more than a whisper. They exchange glances a
gain. I should probably just tell them, then. “My name is Hana…” I pause here, as Cyclo flashes a silver-tinged pink iridescence around me. “…Um.”

  “What was that?” the boy asks, pointing at the fading pink on the wall. “What does that mean?”

  “That is my middle name.” Cyclo flashes it again. It is what she calls me when she is not phonating. A color she has made for me, and me alone. It is moonbeams and orchids at dawn, is how my mother described it. I had to look up all these pictures to understand what she said, but together, they were supposedly more extraordinary than the separate images. Finally, she found an object that described the color. Something born of an amorphous mollusk on Earth, whose innards look like mucous and shell, like ages-old rock. An oyster, it’s called. And the item within, a pearl. It’s the color that isn’t one color. Mother gave me a silver necklace to wear with a very old pearl pendant that belonged to her great-grandmother.

  I touch it now, to remind me who I am, and to soothe myself. The iridescent nacre wears off bit by bit from all my fiddling, and when I sleep, Cyclo places another layer of nacre on to keep it lustrous.

  “I see. Hana…” The hologram pauses for the flash. “Hana Um. And your mother?” Doran asks.

  “Dr. Yoonsil Um. But she went by Yoona, for short. She has a blue lotus tattoo on her arm,” I say, showing my own forearm and swirling my fingertip to show where it was, the blue tissue of Cyclo’s own matrix embedded in Mother’s skin. It was beautiful. It would glow faintly all the time, a gleaming symbol of how together they parented me from the day I was one cell big.

  “Why do you have no universal ID? Why is your DNA not registered?”

  I go quiet. If I tell the truth, Mother will get in trouble. And I will be in trouble. But I’m already in trouble. The rules about me living my secret are too difficult to break. Instead, I point to the boy.

  “What’s his full name?” Cyclo flashes a tiny sliver of sparkling white to tell me I’m being rude by pointing. I put my finger down.

  Doran looks at the boy, who takes his hands out of his pockets, where they’ve been stuffed since this inquisition began.

  “Fennec.”

  “That is a fox,” I say.

  He raises his eyebrows, and the corner of his mouth twitches up in a quirky grin. I believe that means I am correct. After a long silence, the boy—Fenn—repeats the question. “Why isn’t your DNA registered?”

  I look away.

  “Doesn’t anyone know you’re here?”

  “No,” I say, eyes still trained on the wall.

  “Did you hide here on purpose?”

  “No,” I say again.

  “I see. Curious.” Doran rubs his grizzled chin. “She’s unregistered. Probably born in secret on the ship. I’ve heard of such things. There’s a steep penalty, which explains why she was hidden. And now she’s been left behind so that the secret can stay a secret.”

  No. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. “She didn’t leave me behind,” I tell him. “It’s just a mistake. I think. I need you to contact her and let her know of my status.” Cyclo flashes a faint iridescent white behind their heads again. Oh. I’m being impolite. “Please,” I add.

  “I understand you want to find her. But you also must understand, we have our own directives and must complete them. This is no search and rescue mission.”

  “Directive? What directive?”

  “To document the demise of the Calathus, of course.”

  My skin prickles with goose bumps. “Demise,” I repeat, tonelessly.

  “Yes. You do know that this ship is dying? That the being you call Cyclo has, in fact, reached its terminal status?”

  I look at Fenn, who nods. His shoulders slump as if this information causes him pain, though he is not surprised.

  “No. That can’t be. No,” I say, but the memory of the brown dot and its acid on my fingertip flits through my mind. I grip the handrests of Cyclo’s chair, but she doesn’t throb back any warmth. Oh God. She knows. This is no surprise to her, either, but since I never asked… I have done nothing but immerse myself in Cyclo’s past, not present, lately. “No one told me.” My voice grows smaller. “Oh God. Mother never told me.”

  Chapter Six

  FENN

  Sitting high on her sapphire throne, the girl—Hana—looks utterly lost. She looks older now, and her face contorts with fleeting emotions. Confusion. Sadness. But there’s one overriding emotion that, lately, I’ve recognized in myself: fear.

  “Portia and Fenn,” Doran says, “I’ve another meeting. Finish the inquiry and file a report. We’ll discuss later.”

  Without so much as a goodbye, Doran disappears from Portia’s visor.

  “You have to tell us what you know,” Portia says, her voice slightly whistling and unemotional. “We don’t have communication with the parting ships.”

  “You can’t speak to Cyclo’s crew?” she asks. She squeezes the armrests of her blue throne, and it starts to shrink under her. She lands a toe and then her whole foot on the floor. She stands there, hands at her sides, looking helpless as the blob of blue chair sinks back into the floor.

  “No, we can’t.”

  “How much time does Cyclo have left to live?” she asks.

  Portia answers, “We can estimate how long the ship has to live, though our estimates can be quite off. But the Calathus has no more than a few weeks before it’s completely uninhabitable. That was when we landed. We’ve already been here thirty-six hours.”

  At this, my heart starts to pound. Why doesn’t it ever get any easier to hear the truth? To know my own mortal timeline? Instinctively, my hand goes to the metal pendant hanging from my neck. I still haven’t watched the hologram message from Callandra. I’m still not ready.

  “Our directive is very clear,” I say. “This is a data-gathering mission, with huge amounts we need to collect every day, or else…” I don’t want to get into our contracts, and the death benefit, and the fact that if I don’t fulfill it, Callandra may not be able to afford her own life.

  “I need to speak to my mother,” she says.

  “I don’t think that’s possible.” Portia gives me a warning glance.

  “If you don’t think, then it’s possible,” she says.

  Her words hang in the air as we try to make sense of them.

  Portia sighs. “You ought to eat something. Fenn, bring her to the mess hall when she’s ready. She looks malnourished for a human.”

  “I need to speak to my mother. I need to speak to Dr. Um,” Hana says again.

  My face gets hot. I don’t have time for this. And that makes me angry because I would like to help her. I actually would. God, what’s happened to me? I haven’t time to care about anything but the mission. Even without the watch that’s strapped to my wrist, I’m keenly aware of seconds ticking by, of hours I’m losing that I’ll never ever get back. A smarter, more spiritual person would find some solace and profound meaning in each moment from here to the end of my life. Me, all I feel is the desperation of frantically trying to fulfill my contract. Which, by the way, I’ve barely started because of her. Since she was tranquilized, all I’ve done is unpack the supplies into our makeshift headquarters on the ship’s bridge, place a dozen data scanners around the ship for data gathering, and babysit. By now, when I pop open my holofeed, it shows I’m barely over 5 percent done. According to my requirements, I should have done at least half a dozen drone tests already. And I haven’t. Three weeks, they thought we’d have. But already, we need more like six, and we don’t have six weeks.

  I’m no babysitter. If there’s no protocol for this, well hell, there’s no protocol. I think of Callandra. She’s the only person that matters.

  When we were little, I was the one who caught her after she fell climbing a boulder near our home. I’d fetch her from the bioluminescent caves that are everywhere on Ipineq, befor
e the sun set and the cave scorpions got too hungry. And with every stint away from home, she’d only asked me for a small thing—a souvenir from my “travels,” be it detention or military schools or a drone-thievery run. So I’d bring back tiny geodes from planet Ursulina, or a crystal that littered the ground around the juvenile detention on Ipineq’s moon. It was the least I could do.

  I think of her struggling to walk again, and anger boils inside. Her accident is my fault. Her life depends on me and this mission. There’s no room for anyone else.

  “I can’t help you,” I say. “I’m going to get my dinner.”

  I exit the room, but the web aperture doesn’t close behind me. I don’t know my way around the ship very well, except that it’s circular. I blink twice, and the minuscule holofeed chip on my forehead turns on my holo dashboard, laid atop reality before my face. Gammand had it updated with my tasks, convo channels, and Cyclo’s map. It’s now live with the information streaming from the data scanners all over the ship.

  If I keep going in one direction, eventually I’ll find the mess hall. Walking on the slightly squishy floor is taking me some time to get used to. The gravity here is not quite equal to Ipineq, my home planet. I come from a short-statured family, and the gravity was 1.2 times that of Earth’s, which meant growing up in detention on lesser g-force planets, I ended up being the tallest person ever in the Actias family.

  Every ten feet or so, an irregular window on the right shows up. Long and narrow at times, wide at others, they are embedded with a clear plastrix so I can see out to space—vast, black, glittering with stars and the Merope nebula nearby. It’s beautiful. My parents would tell me, while I was away, how much my sister loved space. So much that she wants to spend her entire life flitting from one place to another. She had pilot’s genes in her, just like our parents. I suppose I got them, too, though I pilot drones, not ships. My parents would tell me she was acing her tests in the junior academy. She’s the smart one.