Toxic

by Lydia Kang

  At the word “theft,” Mother cringes a little, but then she shrugs. “I suppose I ought to get used to being on the run. I just stole Sannu, after all. And ReCOR’s data files. I’ll need a new ID, too.”

  “As will I. My first ID.” I smile.

  Fenn grins at all of this. “I come on this mission as a convict, and I end up bringing two criminals with me.”

  This is where Sannu chimes in. “I am not a criminal.”

  We all laugh at that, not knowing exactly what to say. But then I take Fenn’s hand in my own. “Fenn. You won’t be able to see your sister if you’re on the run and hiding. Or if people think you’re dead.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Mother says, her hand touching the controls on the bridge here and there. Without even looking at us, she says, “I can’t imagine a little thing like faking death would stop you from seeing your sister again.”

  I look wonderingly at Fenn and then his pendant. He takes it from his neck and hands it to me, and we step away to talk quietly.

  “I listened to it. Finally. I should have listened to you and opened it before.”

  “Well. We all make mistakes, don’t we?” I say.

  Sannu intones, “I don’t.”

  “Not yet, at least,” I whisper to Fenn.

  “I heard that,” Sannu says again, sounding somewhat irritated. “Dr. Um, my readings tell me that you need more treatment for your arm, and these two humans are showing low levels of radioactivity. Permit me to begin therapy for all of you while we are on autopilot.”

  “Permission granted,” Mother says, looking very much relieved. Her arm is wrapped up in a bandage, but I can see that her fingers have turned purple-black. I touch her hand, and Mother recoils a little. “No Hana. It’s okay. I’ve lost it, but it was worth it.”

  She says nothing more, and I don’t press her. I’m finding that sometimes the space within silence is much more filling than words.

  Sannu has a fully equipped laser medical-surgical program, and in a shockingly short amount of time, Mother’s arm is amputated, laser-stitched, and a healing infusion administered. Meanwhile, Fenn and I receive intravenous chelators to remove any lingering radioactivity in our bodies, plus an infusion of nutrients and vitamins we were in need of after our traumatic last few days.

  It’s time to set the course to leave. I help Mother stand, and Fenn and I walk her to the bridge. Once in the chair, she looks up at me.

  “Hana. Your necklace. What happened to it?”

  I put my hand to the base of my throat to feel my pearl pendant there. Strange. I was sure that I’d yanked it off in a fit of anger. And also strange—my great-grandmother’s pearl was baroque. Pear-shaped. The cool, smooth pendant around my neck is spherical.

  “That’s no pearl,” Fenn says.

  I reach behind my neck to unclasp the chain and hold the necklace up.

  It’s a brilliant, bright-blue sphere hanging from the chain like an azure glass bead. But the center looks liquid and iridescent, as if an entire galaxy and history were contained within it.

  Oh. I’d forgotten that Cyclo had given it to me. She must have attached it to the chain on my neck.

  “It’s a piece of Cyclo,” Mother says in astonishment.

  “You are only partially correct,” Sannu says. “It is embryonic tissue composed of DNA from Amorfovita potentia, subspecies cyclonica, with fragments of humanoid DNA.”

  “Wait, what?” I yell.

  “What?” Fenn and my mother yell.

  “The DNA of this embryo is a hybrid,” Sannu says, calm as can be.

  We all go silent for a full minute.

  “I thought Cyclo said it was only her,” I say.

  “Cyclo isn’t capable of that type of reproduction,” my mother says. “She’s not programmed to be able to reproduce in any way.”

  “She wasn’t programmed to kill, but she did,” I remind her.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Fenn says, holding his temples. “What other DNA is in this thing?”

  Sannu, calmly waiting for us all to be quiet, answers.

  “The humanoid DNA appears to be a mix of Argyrian, Prinniad, and Gragorian DNA.”

  WHAT.

  I am not sure what this all means. I’m only seventeen, and only just got out of my prison of a room two weeks ago, only just met other creatures besides Mother and Cyclo, had my first kiss, watched people murdered in front of my eyes, and experienced my first nuclear meltdown. And Cyclo has decided to live on, fiercely, by piecing her imperfect self together with the very people we are still mourning in our hearts.

  This is a bit much.

  I need a moment.

  But in the end, we decide that…nothing needs to be decided. Fenn needs to be in hiding. Mother can no longer return to her previous position because she’s on the run after her court-martial. And apparently, they are trying to track me down, too, because, since I was never allowed to exist in the first place, the federation has the right to delete my life.

  “Without incubation, this will not grow. Even if it was incubated, it may not be compatible with life,” Mother says, touching the pendant.

  “Then, for now, we’ll just call it what it is. A memory of the past.” I bite my lip. “With potential.”

  Memories and potential. But one thing it isn’t—destiny.

  If there’s one thing I learned, it’s that a DNA code can’t determine a perfectly tailored being or future. I’m proof of that.

  Finally, we sleep. Or at least we try to. Mother wants Fenn to sleep separately in the back of Sannu, while she and I sleep in the cockpit.

  “No,” I say. “Fenn stays with me.”

  “Hana. No. I forbid it. You’re too young. You don’t even know what you’re doing right now. You need to rest.”

  “You just lost an arm. You need to rest. I’ve been working nonstop to reverse-engineer mantle cells, fool a ship so I could steal radioactive waste, and I saved you. I think I know what I’m doing.”

  Mother’s mouth drops open and stays there. This is not the docile, quiet, polite daughter she knows.

  “I’m staying with Fenn, and there isn’t much you can do about that.”

  I’m fully shocked at my own behavior and words, too.

  I kind of love it.

  Mother goes a little pale in the face, and she sits limply down in the captain’s chair. I find some medicine that will help her stump heal quickly and apply it to her newly sewn wounds, then find a crinkly solar blanket and drape it over her. I kiss her cheek.

  “Close your eyes and sleep. Fenn and I will see you in about ten hours.”

  Her eyes are droopy with tiredness and medicine, and she nods. “Okay.”

  I ask Sannu to drop a membrane of privacy between the cockpit and the back of the ship, and he complies. Fenn is waiting for me, and his mouth has dropped open in an almost exact mirror image of my mother’s previous expression of surprise.

  “I think you just sent her into shock,” Fenn finally says. “She may never recover.”

  “She’ll be fine. Just like you and I will be fine. Not perfect, but fine.” I curl my arm around his taut waist, and we head for a pile of gel padding beneath another solar blanket that will be our bed. “I’m still so angry at her, Fenn. I want to scream at her for hours and hours.”

  “Not now. But later, yeah. Scream all you want. You have stuff to figure out.”

  “Don’t we all?” I say, before lying down and letting Fenn’s arms wrap around me.

  “Yes. But right now, I don’t want any of that.”

  “What do you want, Fenn?” I ask as I roll to my side exactly one inch away from his face, staring at those beautiful brown and gold-flecked eyes. Staring, and waiting.

  He leans in to kiss me.

  It’s the answer I’d hoped for.

  So
while my mother slumbers in the bridge, busy healing, so am I. I may not have wounds on my body that need tending, but my heart does. Now that I don’t need to be afraid to exist, it’s easier for both of us to navigate this gaping hole that is our future.

  Future. What a beautiful, large word. I love it, so I say it often to myself when no one is listening. It’s been so long since I was isolated that I’m learning again what it’s like to be alone and not be lonely. A wonderful sensation.

  Tonight, I sleep on another sentient ship, wondering what it thinks of me. I slumber next to a boy who first saw me as an impediment, who taught me how to fall in love in low gravity. I am with a mother I lost and regained, who makes me so angry sometimes I could explode but who I am learning to forgive. And at an arm’s length away, I look at this tiny blue orb, in the center of which glows a being that could be everything or nothing, an end or a beginning, beauty or horror. Possibly all of it, all at once. And possibly none of it.

  But I don’t want to think of that now.

  What I think of when I sleep is Cyclo. Forgiving her is more difficult. I have seen things I cannot unsee. I have felt love that I cannot unfeel. I see her burning brightly in my mind’s eye, and I see all of us. We are ash and stars.

  I suppose this is what they say, on those old vids from the twentieth-century, that family can be complicated. I understand what that means now. So I think and think and think at night on this long trip to who-knows-where, trying to find forgiveness where only pain rests. I won’t find the peace I’m looking for in one single night.

  But then again, ahead of me, I have time. And I have a future.

  Did I tell you how much I love that word?

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  Acknowledgments

  To my husband, Bernie, my children, and my family, who have always cheered me on. Every day, I am thankful for your support and love.

  To Dad and Mom, for all the help with the Korean details—thank you. I love you so much!

  To Jamie Krakover, for your physics acumen! And to my math, biology, physics, and chemistry teachers who nourished my love of science and numbers. Creativity helped with dreaming up this book, but it was the math and science you taught me that gave it the scaffolding to exist.

  To Sarah Fine, who always has my back. I am endlessly grateful.

  To Maurene Goo, thank you for your wisdom and talent. Let’s get some Korean BBQ soon.

  To the many friends I’ve made on this writing journey that have supported me so generously: Mindy McGinnis, April Tucholke, Cindy Pon, Tonya Kuper, Mia Siegert, Elle Cosimano, Brenda Drake, Pintip Dunn.

  To Sarah Simpson-Weiss and Emalee Napier, for keeping my life from skidding off into a black hole of miserable chaos and wretchedness.

  To Eric Myers, thank you for all your agenting wizardry.

  To Kate Brauning, Bethany Robison, Clarissa Yeo, Stacy Abrams, Liz Pelletier, Melissa Montovani, Heather Riccio, all the interns, and the entire team at Entangled who have been so incredibly supportive of this strange little story of mine—thank you for helping to make this book the best it could be. I am so grateful.

  About the Author

  Lydia Kang is a physician who caught the writing bug several years ago and does not want the antidote, thank you very much. She is also the author of A Beautiful Poison, Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything, and the young adult novels Control, Catalyst, and The November Girl. She lives with her family in the Midwest.

  www.lydiakang.com

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