Toxic

by Lydia Kang

  I snatch my discarded clothes, some still with acid stains and gaping holes from Cyclo’s attack. Hana has already put her clothes back on, and she’s standing facing away from me.

  “I suppose it must be strange,” Hana says, her voice soothing. “You’ll get used to it.”

  I yank my pants on, and once they’re up, I reach over to touch my wounded shoulder. The skin feels a little tender, but there’s skin where it had been missing before. And it still doesn’t hurt. Half clothed, I feel a little more human (which is maybe a funny thing to think—how much more human can you be than when you’re naked?), and I throw on my shirt and jacket, missing my right sleeve where the acid burned it off.

  “I’m dressed,” I say, and Hana turns around. She runs up to me, and her hands hover over my bare shoulder without touching it.

  “It looks so much better. Are you…how are you?” she asks. Her eyes are wide and fearful.

  “It feels weird. And tight. But okay.” Our eyes meet, and we both look at the floor as if we’re both remembering that we were naked only moments ago. And holding hands. Awkward. And what’s more awkward is that I want to hold her hand again because I miss her being close by.

  “I…I am so sorry,” Hana says.

  “For what? For saving my life?”

  “I’m sorry Cyclo did that to you. And I know you’d never wanted to go into her, but it was the only way to… You were going into shock.”

  “I shouldn’t have pressured you about using the drone. I’m the one who should be sorry.” I offer a handshake. “Truce?”

  “Truce.” She puts her hand into mine, but instead of shaking, she just holds it. She cups the back of my hand with the other. I like this better, actually. I take a step closer, wanting to say something, because that would be better than getting on with the business of dying.

  “Hana, I—”

  The walls flash colors of orange and red. Hana’s head turns to the door, as if Cyclo’s announced someone’s arrival. The door widens, and Portia, Gammand, and Miki run inside.

  “What the hell happened here?” Portia says. “We’ve been trying to contact you for hours. You weren’t in any of the rooms. We couldn’t find either of you!”

  Hana and I look at each other. And we both blurt out, simultaneously, “It was my fault.”

  Three sets of eyebrows raise, and we explain. How I was going to put a drone in her, but Hana’s worry and refusal triggered an attack from the ship, and then I was hurt and in shock and going into Cyclo was the only way to get my pain under control, and now I’m healed and here we are. I say nothing, of course, about how we were holding hands throughout most of it, partly naked, and it was maybe the most unbelievable experience—aside from the whole acid attack thing—that ever happened to me.

  “Fascinating,” Miki says. Her holo visor is on, and she holds out a sensor toward me. “An attack. And she healed you? So quickly? That’s faster than the top-of-the-line regenerative serums would have worked. At this level of decay, I’m impressed. We’ll have to see if it’s depleted her abilities in other areas.”

  Gammand, Portia, and Miki all start chattering a parsec per second about the data trove this just caused, and how they might score more points by going above and beyond the data they’re required to at this point. Gammand yanks me by the arm, asking if I’ve downloaded the drone data from within my body, when Hana steps forward.

  To be honest, we all sort of forgot about her for a few minutes.

  “I have a request.”

  “A what?” Portia asks.

  “I need to contact my mother.”

  “Well, we’re not allowed to—” Miki starts, but Hana’s not done.

  “And a second thing. I need to access the data you’re gathering, so I can start working to boost Cyclo’s energy stores and help her regenerate the parts of her that are failing.”

  Portia frowns. “This is expressly against our mission guidelines.”

  “Your mission?” Hana says. She looks at Portia, then Gammand, then Miki and me. The floor flashes several colors, one after another, in a psychedelic display. “Your mission is not our mission.”

  Before Portia can respond, before I realize what’s happening, a long tendril of blue drops down from the ceiling and sucks a small scanning device from Miki’s outstretched hands. Before she can even try to recover it, it’s stuck to the ceiling. Her face blanches a very pale blue, almost green.

  Hana and Cyclo aren’t passive creatures. We can’t just do whatever we wish to them. She and this ship can sabotage our work in an instant. Mission over, incomplete. And our contracts will be obsolete. Our deaths will be for nothing. I mean, Cyclo could have killed me last night, though it was in defense of Hana. What if they felt really threatened?

  “Doran,” Portia says. Her holo winks on, and after a moment of no response, his pale blue face shows up, and she swings the holofeed so everyone can see it. “You’ve been listening.”

  “I have,” Doran says. “All right, Hana. What are your terms?”

  “I want you to help me contact my mother,” Hana says.

  He pauses. “Is that really what you want? You told us that she hid you, against protocol. You would be putting her in danger. She might be imprisoned for her actions. You might be eliminated.”

  Hana bites her lip and tugs on her hair. She paces around the room as if waiting for the ship to color in with an opinion, but it stays blue. “Well,” she says, “I’m going to die anyway, won’t I? And I’m going to be part of your research and in your records. My existence already reveals what she’s done. Reaching out to her doesn’t change that. Does it?”

  She asks this as if she’s really unsure, though her logic is sound. I want to tell her to stop questioning herself and just ask for what she wants, but I get the feeling she’s not used to saying what’s on her mind.

  “You have a good point,” Doran concedes.

  “There’s something else, too,” she adds. “I want your research to investigate how to save Cyclo.”

  Doran’s eyes bulge at little at this. “No. Absolutely not.” Despite his words, I can tell he’s already on unsteady ground. She’s backing him into a corner.

  My face glows with excitement. If Doran agrees, that means there’s a chance we could find a way for the Calathus to not die. I mean, our mission is to find out what the natural death process of the ship is. But if death doesn’t happen, and it’s not because of something we directly do—I mean, we’re just gathering info, and if this girl can turn things around—well, that means that I might live after all. And I might still fulfill my contract at the same time. I try not to grin like a little kid. Doran tries to keep his face neutral, and soon his expression is once again inscrutable.

  “I’m sorry, Hana. I have my orders. I—”

  A slight cracking noise issues above Doran while he speaks. Cyclo is starting to crush the data scanner right over his head.

  Miki squeals. “That’s the only scanner I have! Doran!”

  Doran’s hologram puts up both his hands. “Wait, Hana. Please. The crew brought limited equipment, and they need it!”

  “Well, I need things, too,” Hana says.

  I cross my arms, eyebrows raised appreciatively. This girl just got Doran (and, hell, all of us) by the balls and squeezed with a literal pair of alien pliers. I have to say, I’m damn impressed. I don’t think I’ve ever forced anyone to do anything I wanted. I mean, I’ve stolen a hella lot of stuff, but no one ever agreed to be robbed.

  “Very well. We will do our best to help you,” Doran says.

  “And the ship,” Portia adds hastily, glancing with a nervous red eye, left and right.

  Cyclo drops the data recorder, just in time for Miki to catch it in her hands, exhaling with relief that it’s mostly intact.

  Hana grins, wider than I’ve ever seen. “That,” she says, “is
most magnificent.”

  What a weirdo, this girl. But despite my feeling that she’s so very odd, part of me also misses that moment when I woke up to find her so close to me. How can you miss someone you’ve barely known for twenty-four hours?

  Chapter Eleven

  HANA

  The crew of the Selkirk aren’t happy with me. I follow them and Fenn to the bridge that’s now their central encampment. All their gear has been placed here—multiple cargo boxes full of complicated equipment.

  “All right. We have a list of all our objectives for the next few days,” Portia begins. “How are we doing?”

  One by one, they each frown. “I’m already behind,” Fenn says.

  Miki nods in agreement. “Me, too.”

  “I am, too. How can we already be so off-schedule?” Portia asks.

  Miki grimaces and points to me. “We have a wrench in the works,” she says. “And no allowance for extra time.”

  “Stop calling me a wrench,” I say. But I calm myself. There’s no time to be irritated. “Look, I can help. I know I can. Why is it taking longer to do your work?”

  “Well, for one thing, the ship hasn’t allowed us to gather some materials,” Portia says. “I’ve done several biopsies, but Cyclo moves her matrix around to avoid giving me live tissue.”

  “Well, if you knew someone wanted a piece of your body, you’d give up a piece of hair, or a fingernail clipping. Something unnecessary. That’s what she’s doing.”

  “Can you get her to cooperate?” Portia asks.

  “I can ask. Haven’t you?”

  The crew goes silent. Of course it never occurred to them to ask permission. They just think Cyclo is this unthinking blob. Shame on them.

  “Try asking nicely. And I can tell you where to get good quality samples that won’t physically irritate her as much.”

  Miki gives a look of approval. “What about the radioactive areas? In the core?”

  “There’s a circadian rhythm to how permeable those areas are. Certain times of the day will be safer than others for you to go there.”

  “Oh,” Portia says. “That wasn’t in our training info. Without a sunrise or sunset, I didn’t think Cyclo would have cycles like that.”

  “She makes her own cycles. She’s healthier that way.” Oh! That might help her. If I can help her regulate her wake and sleep cycles, it could help her stress levels. If I could somehow give her a boost of hormones to help, she might last longer. It’s not a fix, but it’s a patch. “I could design a treatment to slow her aging. But I still want to contact my mother.” And find out why she left me. “Gammand, you’re the data person here, right? Can I access your—”

  “I don’t have time for side projects,” Gammand says tonelessly.

  “Well, a little chaos has been thrown our way, and we all need to make it work,” Portia says.

  Ugh. She means me. I’m the chaos. I think of myself as being pretty well put together, as an organism. Perhaps I have an inflated sense of biological self-esteem.

  “Fine. What?” Gammand puts his tablet down. It has a colored image that looks like a rotating jellyfish with flashing lights here and there. Oh. It’s Cyclo, some sort of macrobiological readout of the ship.

  Portia asks him, “All of the ship’s data went with the Calathus crew. And we can’t ask them directly while they’re in hyperspace. Can you see if there are any ghost or duplicate records we can look at?”

  Fenn glances at them and goes to a pile of equipment. When my eyes meet his, he looks away quickly. His cheeks flush a little. Mine do, too, in response. This is so strange. He’s so distracting.

  Gammand frowns. “What kind of records?”

  I force myself not to keep stealing glances at Fenn. “Perhaps any information about the evacuation?” I raise a finger. “Oh! What about any misconduct investigations? What if Mother was in trouble? What if she was sick? Health records, too…”

  Gammand rolls his eyes. “Do you want me to look at everything?”

  My eyes grow wide. “Can you?”

  Gammand turns to Portia. “This is more than just a little work. I’ll upload that data, and you can search it all you want.” He starts walking away, then turns to glare at me. “Are you coming, or not?”

  I trot quickly to catch up to him. Fenn is watching us and stands. “Where are you headed?”

  “Gamma ring,” Gammand says. “It’s where the hard drives are kept on the ship. Luckily I have to go there anyway.”

  “I have to work there, too,” Fenn says.

  I’ve only ever been in the alpha ring, the largest circular hallway on the edge of Cyclo. She has three rings and a core, all connected irregularly with her open-air hallways and matrix-filled tunnels. At the thought of us all going together, I perk up. How extraordinary to have company to do things. An absolute unknown, and hence a luxury for me. I reach up and hook Gammand’s arm in my left, and then Fenn’s in my right.

  Gammand stops walking. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Oh. I just thought…” I’d done this with Fenn yesterday, and it was okay. I find that I can’t seem to stop wanting to touch humans now that I’ve the chance.

  He throws my arm off and walks ahead of us.

  My eyes water. His tone was so bitter, it makes my eyelids ache. “Was that wrong?” I ask Fenn.

  “You can’t just…” He runs his hand through his hair. “Look, when you talk to people, you don’t touch them.” His words are a tangle I don’t quite understand. People in the vids I watch touch each other all the time. Holding hands and singing. Hugging and kissing. Tackling each other over an ovoid, slightly pointed brown ball on a marked green field.

  “I don’t understand,” I say.

  He sighs. “People are complicated. Those vids you probably watched—that everyone watches—they aren’t real. They aren’t what real life is like, just a tiny portion, and the context is different.” He starts walking so we can catch up to Gammand, but his arm is still under mine. He hasn’t jerked away.

  “But they came from somewhere. Those were real people. That’s all I had to learn from,” I explain.

  “Well, that’s not life. Just like what we did last night—that wasn’t sleep.”

  “Or eating, I guess?” I add.

  “What, you mean we were fed while we were asleep?”

  I nod. “When we sleep, Cyclo infuses us with nutrients and calories. Didn’t you notice that you weren’t hungry when you woke up?”

  He touches his stomach with his other hand while we walk. I touched that stomach, too, with my bare hand. My own skin grows warm, and my neck prickles.

  “Well, that’s just not the same as eating real food. I wish I could cook you something.”

  “Sometimes I cook. I’ve read so much about it.”

  He smiles at me. “You’re the only other person I’ve ever met who likes that. Most people are happy to just get the ready-made, dial-your-taste-choices MorphoMeals. They look like the real thing, but they’re entirely synthetic. By the way,” he asks, lowering the tone of his voice. “Do you really think you could slow down Cyclo’s aging process? With hormones?”

  “Cyclo’s oldest ancestor, Turritopsis nutricula, could turn itself young and be immortal. Cyclo is so different. But maybe she can be triggered, artificially, to stop aging. I’m going to try.” I stop in the hallway, and Gammand gives me a look when he realizes I’m slowing him down. I put my hands onto the wall, and the matrix encloses them. Warm, comforting. It feels like my own hands have dissolved inside her, and I can’t tell where she begins, or where I end.

  Cyclo, I say through my fingertips. The stress hormones that you give to the crew when we’re sick—you must have them encapsulated somewhere in your matrix.

  I do. They are located in each quadrant, along with the other micropackets of nutrients.

 
I want you to release all of them into your own matrix, immediately. The cortisol, the epinephrine, the norepinephrine, the corticotrophins. All of them.

  But Hana, they are for humans.

  Just do it. It might make you feel better.

  Very well.

  I withdraw my hands slowly from the matrix, and Gammand and Fenn look at me expectantly.

  “Okay. I asked her to dump all her stores of stress hormones into herself. They’ll give her a burst of energy and might slow down some of the faulty processes she has.”

  “You just did that? By sticking your hands in the goo?” Gammand says, surprised.

  “I did.”

  “Okay. Well, we’ve had monitors on the ship for the last few days. We’ll know soon if the ship shows any improvement.” He starts walking again, and Fenn just stares at me.

  “That’s amazing,” Fenn says. “Did the crew talk like that to her?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Wow.”

  Gammand turns around. “Hey. Lovebirds.”

  Fenn glances sheepishly at me, and I glance back, biting my lip. And then we snap back to attention as Gammand points to a passageway above us.

  “We’re going up here,” Gammand says. There are stairs heading into a vertical, tunnel-like hallway. It goes up to the next smaller ring, the beta ring. Gammand takes the steps into the tunnel and then looks down at us.

  “Keep in mind, the g-force decreases with each inner ring. This’ll feel like the Earth’s moon.”

  When we step out onto the beta ring, I feel it immediately. I bounce when I walk, without trying. My hair fluffs around my shoulders a little. And the curve of this ring is steeper than alpha. It’s a smaller radius, for sure.

  And then I remember that this may be the last new experience I ever have.

  Cyclo is dying, and I am dying, too. Days, hours, seconds. It may be all I have. And then it will all stop, when Cyclo dies, and we all die along with her. But not if I can help it.