Toxic

by Lydia Kang

  “I need to see something. I need to get my things,” I say.

  “What? From your room? That’s impossible. Cyclo is active in that quadrant,” Fenn says, almost yelling.

  Portia nods her head. “He’s right. You can’t go there.”

  “My mother’s things are there. I need them. I’ll get my answers there. I have to know.”

  “They aren’t worth it.” Fenn grabs my hands. “Please. Hana, that stuff isn’t important. It isn’t worth risking your life.”

  “Then I’ll risk it for something else,” I say, turning to Portia. “The cell culture. The one with the photosynthetic cells. I can transplant them into Cyclo and see if they work. But it will only be useful if I can talk her through it, so she doesn’t ruin the process. I’m the only one who she’ll listen to. And it makes sense to do it in the north quadrant, where my room is. It’s the side of Cyclo that receives the most light from Maia.”

  Portia opens her mouth, then closes it without arguing. “You know, Hana is right. If we have any chance of doing this, it has to be her.”

  It has to be me.

  And only me.

  …

  It takes a while to prepare. Fenn wants to put me in full body armor, a set that was originally for Miki, but it’s far too large. I’m drowning in the suit.

  “I don’t like it, Fenn,” I tell him, trying to take off the hard-shelled leg armor and peeling off the gloves. “I need my bare hands. This is how I talk to her sometimes. And it doesn’t even fit anyway.”

  “You realize that touching Cyclo puts you at risk,” says Portia. She’s braiding my hair—a very maternal action, and one I’m not used to anyone but Mother doing. Her long, spider fingers section my hair into a tight, twisting braid that leaves no tail swinging with a chance it’ll get caught.

  “I know. But I have to try. If she knows I’m afraid of her, everything will change between us.”

  Which is a lie. Everything already has changed. It changed the day I woke up alone. It probably changed the day Mother died, and I was asleep and didn’t even know my world was collapsing.

  Portia finishes braiding my hair, and her hand lingers for a second on my shoulder, fingers against my neck. Her red eyes glisten for a second, and a horizontal membrane blinks across her red pupils. I forget that Prinniads have double eyelids. I think it means she’s upset, blinking away her own ruby-red tears.

  Fenn walks in, holding several large cylinders, a foot long each. There’s a window on each one that shows they’re all filled with lavender-colored liquid.

  “I’ve got good news and bad news.”

  I stare at him. “What?”

  “The good news is, I’ve got all the cells we’ve grown so far for photosynthetic purposes. It’s enough that if they take, then Cyclo will be able to make two percent of the usual energy she makes. And two percent is enough for her to maintain her safety systems.”

  “And the bad news?” I ask.

  “The last gestational chamber with the backup embryonic stem cells leaked. One of those acid blemishes somehow splashed the chamber. All the cells dumped out.”

  Oh no.

  All those stem cells, spilled onto the floor and lost. Another chance to fortify Cyclo. Another chance to save her, and ourselves, lost.

  Portia puts her hand on her head. “Then this is all we’ve got. Even if we had time, we won’t be able to make more cells. We’ve got one shot.”

  I sigh. I can’t handle much more bad news. “So, what do I do?”

  Fenn shows me the two capsules. “These can be injected or poured onto her surface. There’s a gel capsule of growth medium around each clump of cells. So once Cyclo can bring them near her outer surface, they’ll be able to survive on their own for a while. Hopefully long enough to mature and start harvesting light energy.”

  “How long will it take for them to establish?” I ask.

  Portia removes her hand from my shoulder. “Twenty-four hours. At least. And that would be fast, but we need fast.”

  “The growth capsule should accelerate the process,” I tell them. I sound more confident than I am.

  “Remember to get the cells injected first. Get your mother’s diary later. It’s less important.”

  I nod, but I can’t bear to look Portia in the face. She sees my reluctance to agree.

  “Hana. You have to do what’s safe first. We can’t take the risk that Cyclo will hurt you. Use all your good standing with her and inject the cells first.”

  “Cyclo won’t hurt me,” I say stubbornly.

  Portia starts to talk, but I turn away from her. She doesn’t understand. Fenn ignores her and helps me put on a backpack with all the cell cartridges on it, and it must weigh thirty pounds. But I’m surprised to find I can bear the weight.

  “Funny,” he says, to no one in particular. “I don’t think you could have carried this when we first found you.”

  “I know,” I say. “I’ve gotten stronger. All the walking and running, I guess.”

  “Or something else.” He lifts the handheld data device that Gammand used to wield. “Your biometrics have been great in the last few days. Far better than when we first found you. Your anemia is still there, but it’s better. And your electrolytes are fine.” He snaps it shut and puts it into a sleeve of the backpack to monitor my biometrics on the short trip. “You can’t fix all that with just a little exercise.”

  “That’s odd. The only thing’s that’s changed is…is…”

  I can’t say the rest because the rest is the last thing I want to hear. The last thing I want to admit.

  “You haven’t slept inside Cyclo since the day after I was wounded,” Fenn says. He’s quiet, and his words are spoken so gently, as if he knows there’s a barb about to stab me in the heart. Prepping me for the worst. “Ever since you got real food, you’ve been stronger. Cyclo might be the reason you were so weak when we found you.”

  “No. No, Fenn, it can’t be.”

  “I think she was purposely keeping you malnourished, Hana. To keep you dependent on her. It’s the only answer.”

  “But Mother was in charge of telling Cyclo how to handle my hibernations.”

  “Are you so sure?” Portia asks. Her red eyes look slightly dull. She’s worried for me.

  “Cyclo’s been sick,” I say. “She’s been lacking nutrients herself. It’s not her fault. She wasn’t doing it on purpose,” I say, but I’m not ready to admit that the weakness I had when the Selkirk landed is the same weakness I’ve felt my whole life. Could Cyclo have been trying to keep me powerless since I was born? It just can’t be. Fenn fiddles with the strap on my shoulder, and I pull away from him. I head to the door and face them. “She wouldn’t hurt me. Not on purpose.”

  Portia instructs me about the best way to introduce the new cells, reminding me about not touching Cyclo, spending the minimum of time in the northeast quadrant. I don’t want to listen to anything she has to say, but I must.

  Finally, I’m ready. Before I head out the door into the dark, navy-blue hallways, Fenn touches my hand.

  “Hana. Please be careful. Please remember what I said. Cyclo may not be on your side. Even with those nutrients we just gave her, she’s still unsafe.”

  I shake my head. I can’t. I can’t. Cyclo isn’t like that. Instead of speaking again, because he’s realizing that I won’t listen to him, he pulls my shoulder close.

  “Just…try to be safe. Trust your instincts.”

  I don’t even know what my instinct are, or if I’ve ever listened to them before—a language I may have to learn fast, I suppose. Fenn kisses me tenderly on the forehead, and I close my eyes, inhaling his warm scent.

  His fingers tap a message on the side of my shoulder.

  .. .-.. --- ...- . -.-- --- ..- .... .- -. .- ..- -- .-.-.- -... . -.-. .- .-. . ..-. ..- .-.. .-.-.-

 
I love you, Hana Um. Be careful.

  My eyes widen, and my mouth drops open.

  So.

  That’s what it feels like.

  My heart thrums quickly, a happy tap-tap-tap against my rib cage as I smile.

  “I love you, too,” I whisper. Reluctantly, I head out the door. I turn around, adjusting the pack on my back, and smile.

  “I’ll be fine. Cyclo won’t hurt me.”

  Despite my words, Portia and Fenn are looking at me with stricken expressions.

  As if I’m alre ady a ghost.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  FENN

  I watch Hana walk down the hallway, burdened by her heavy pack. Her hair is tightly braided against her head, the white forelock swirled into the complicated knots and braids. She has a way of walking that makes it look like she’s dancing slowly—one foot carefully in front of the last, a sway of beauty that she has no idea is hers.

  Portia puts her long arm on my shoulder, and the weight says more than I’m willing to.

  That Hana may not come back.

  That she’s blind, and brave, and blindly brave.

  And then she says what I’m thinking, because Portia’s never afraid to say anything. “That girl is good as dead.”

  Portia walks away from the door, and I collapse into a heap, staring down the hallway as Hana turns a corner.

  Just like that, she’s gone.

  “Here. Instead of staring at nothing, stare at this.” Portia hands me the small handheld monitor that shows Hana’s location within Cyclo.

  All our dots—Portia and I, clustered here at the edge of the northeast alpha, while a tiny, innocent green dot, Hana, walks around the alpha ring on the way to the northwest quadrant. I touch the green dot, and her biometrics appear on the screen. Her heart rate is steady, in the seventies. She’s walking at a calm pace, three miles per hour.

  On the monitor, Hana is digitized and defined in numbers, graphs, levels. She is healthy and normal. She’s also strange and miraculous, after basically being a prisoner for her entire life, though that’s not what she would call it. Being taken care of, is what she’d say. But it’s not just Cyclo’s fault. It’s her mother’s fault, too. They both kept her locked away like some precious trinket. They made her for selfish purposes.

  I laugh softly. I guess making babies for the purpose of making babies is a somewhat selfish endeavor. If my parents knew the heartache I’d give them, they would have opted for the contraceptive vaccine. The permanent kind.

  A small red graph line appears in her biometrics. Hana’s entered the beginning of the north quadrant, and suddenly her heartrate has zoomed up to one hundred. ACTH, cortisol, and epinephrine levels went from barely detectable to elevated within seconds. I grasp the monitor and stand up, eyes searching for what she can’t tell me. If only we’d had a holofeed to give her, but the only ones we have are embedded in our own skulls.

  Portia runs over, looking at the monitor over my shoulder. “What is it? What’s going on?”

  But I can’t speak.

  Hana’s little green dot has stopped moving.

  Something’s happened.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  HANA

  The pack is heavy, but I can manage it by resting every few minutes or so and massaging my shoulders.

  What I can’t manage is what I’m about to encounter.

  I haven’t spoken to Cyclo in what feels like years. The last time I slept within Cyclo was days ago, before the crew told me it was no longer safe. The last time I slept was within Fenn’s arms, kissing him with kisses I didn’t know could be so warm and hard to stop…doing. And now I’ve left Fenn and Portia behind me, these few and fragile beings.

  And I am worried, despite my brave words to Fenn. The old part of me knows that Cyclo has done nothing but nourish me, care for me, save me from spiraling down into the abyss of loneliness. But that was before. Before they came, before Cyclo changed. What I saw her do to Gammand was—no, I cannot think of that. I can’t. Even when I do, it feels like I’m watching another ship doing something unspeakable to someone I’ve never met. Even then, it’s too terrifying to breathe.

  Walking along the edge of the northeast quadrant, heading north, I see signs of Cyclo’s degeneration everywhere. Looking out the plastrix windows, I see flaking and drying around her surface edges. And inside, her bright-blue matrix has deepened to the telltale navy blue that says her nerves are dying. The area between the windows and her matrix is peeling and cracking. A few windows are buckling and slightly askew.

  Underfoot, the matrix is tougher and less cushiony, as if it’s been dehydrated under a bright, hot sun. This is even worse than a day ago. Some of the translational units built into the walls have fallen out, pushed by the matrix that is shrinking like skin around a scab.

  “Cyclo,” I say as I walk. “Cyclo. How are you? I haven’t asked in so long. And I’m sorry for that.”

  But here, where her matrix has gone dead—like a human foot after frostbite—there is no response. I wonder what that must feel like, to lose parts of one’s self.

  I wonder if Doran will make it all the way here in time.

  I wonder if he simply logged off, laughed about the conversation to his superiors, and went to eat some cake, pretending that he’s the good guy when, in reality, he was complicit all along.

  This is why I have to do this. I can’t believe in anyone saving me but me. Not anymore.

  I enter the northeast quadrant. The color change is the most obvious—the blue brightens ever so slowly. Underfoot, the matrix starts to feel more cushioned. I am barefoot, as I’ve been all this time. Now that I am in more familiar territory, I pause and feel her gently pulsating warmth under my toes, and smile.

  This feels right.

  My room is around the next curve. But there is a passageway to the right, which takes me to an area where Portia says I need to release the cells and they’ll go into her fluttery mantle around the edge of the ship. I pause at the intersection.

  I need to find out what my mother said in the last pages of her diary. But I need to save Cyclo, too.

  All logic tells me to turn right.

  So I turn right.

  Three steps into my foray to the edge of Cyclo’s last living quadrant, the colors on the walls and floor flash with stripes of yellow iridescence and lingering spots of peach.

  Through the soles of my feet, I can feel her latching onto my skin and trying to communicate, but it’s making my feet stick in the matrix. Forced to pause, I watch as her matrix slinks over my feet and rises up to my ankles.

  I am fixed in place, and her voice enters my bloodstream.

  Hana. Where are you? Where are you? Gone. Gone. I am here.

  Her words are disjointed, as if missing whole sentences and thoughts. Looking down, I can see her trying to pull me into the matrix. Her blue matrix forms fingerlike projections that snake their way up my calves now. Can she not see me?

  I wave my hand, a gesture that usually gets me a pretty rainbow of colors in return—a trick I often did as a child. But there’s no response. I think Cyclo can’t see me, only sense me through my feet.

  Hello, Cyclo. I missed you, too, I tell her in my head. I’m back now. But I can’t go into hibernation right now. I need to do something.

  But you are going the wrong direction. Room back. Left, turn, delete. Back, back.

  My heart flutters, faster and faster, and I break out in a sweat. Her gel encasing my feet makes me want to flee and scratch and fight. I can control the voice in my head, but I can’t keep my body from reacting. Never, in my whole life, has her touch made me feel like this. My head goes slightly dizzy with the sensations flooding my system.

  Fight or flight. That is what it’s called. This is what I felt the first time Fenn saw me and chased me down. Only now, I would much rather run
into Fenn’s arms. Cyclo’s gel on my skin doesn’t feel like coming home, as I’d expected. In fact, I was worried that it would be so soothing, so irresistible, that I’d go into hibernation for a week and completely forget that Fenn and Portia were waiting for me to return.

  Suddenly, a warm sensation washes over me. I look down, and the gel is still rising higher up my calves.

  Oh. Cyclo is reading my thoughts. She understands that I’m panicking and upset. She’s using her chemicals to calm me down and settle my racing heart. But I need to stay alert. I can’t let her lull me into being complacent. Into our old way of me being taken care of by her. There isn’t time for me to be a child anymore.

  This is what she wants. Isn’t it, Hana?

  Room. Sleep. Go fracture to gather.

  I don’t understand, and I do. My room. That is where I want to go, too, I tell her without thinking, because it is my instinct, too. I shift the canisters on my backpack and shake my head to clear the fuzziness that’s rapidly slowing my thinking.

  Cyclo, I tell her. Let me go, so I can go to my room. Okay?

  Wordlessly, the gel withdraws from my calves and sinks back into the floor. I sigh in relief, and the clarity in my mind tells me that her sedatives were slight and short-acting. Good. I can’t do what Portia and Fenn want me to do first. I’ll get Mother’s diary, and placate Cyclo somehow, then release the cells.

  I turn around and take the other corridor to my room. It’s only about fifty steps away. The membrane door is already open and waiting for me, but beige scar tissue mars its edges. Even here, she is showing signs of degrading.

  Inside the room, everything has changed back to before our group dinner here. I can almost smell the soup I cooked, see the look of happiness on the crew’s faces when given a steaming bowl of warmth and nourishment, and remember the laughs and frowns from certain inappropriate behaviors. It was like a family. They say that families are imperfect, and that you don’t choose who your family is.

  I wish I’d gotten to know Gammand and Miki better. Frowns and scowls and all.