by Lydia Kang
Fossilized dino crap. How appropriate. “What’s with the security? Are we going to a bank vault or your house?”
“Home, not house,” she corrects me. “You’ll understand soon enough why there are security measures.” She waves me into the transport, whose walls are covered in a million black polka dots. “Okay, don’t move. I’ll go up after you.” She points to foot-shaped pads in the center of the transport and I stand on them obediently.
“Uh. It’s not going to hurt, right?”
“Only a little. Just remember not to move.”
“Wha—?”
But it’s too late. The doors shut and inside, the little black dots on the transport bulge. Tiny ebony points, hundreds of thousands of them, start coming straight at my body from all directions. They are needle sharp. Now I know why she told me not to move. They come closer and closer until each one is touching a single point on my body. It’s like an iron maiden from the Middle Ages, only with a much bigger ego. I can’t breathe, or I’ll get needled in the chest. I can’t cry out, or my cheeks will get pierced.
Just when I can’t hold out any longer, a single sharp jab hits the back of my left thigh. And just like that, the needles recede into the walls and the transport is flying upward. It opens to a white hallway, flanked by two heavy-looking steel doors at each end with matching red blinking dots beside them. Soon, Marka emerges out of the Iron Maiden Transport of Hell, rubbing her left hip.
“What was that all about?” I complain.
“Blood test, to make sure you are a member of Carus House, or an approved visitor. We logged in your blood sample from New Horizons only an hour ago. The needles pick a random place every time, so you can’t fake it with a little packet of blood.”
“Carus House?”
“Your new home,” she says, smiling. “My mother named it, actually. She was a linguist. She used to call me ‘mea cara una,’ or ‘my beloved one,’ when I was a child.” Marka leads me toward one of the doors, but I don’t follow her.
“Why couldn’t my sister come with me? Can you tell me now?”
Marka leans against the white wall. “Remember the blood tests at New Horizons?”
“Yeah.”
“The tests aren’t just to match you to a foster home. There are people screening the samples for special kids.”
“Special.” I let the word bob on the ocean of thoughts sloshing around in my brain.
“Dylia got flagged because her test was positive. Those people found out about it and acted before I could. That’s why they took her so fast.”
“I don’t understand. What people took her? What do you mean by ‘special’?”
Marka waves me over to the door. This time, Marka has to voice ID, fingertip ID, and punch in several codes before the door will open, but she does each one very slowly, to give her time to explain.
“There are a few rare people who have gifts, Zelia. Traits. And they’re kept away from the public for a lot of reasons. There’s one big underground organization that takes them in, the ones who took your sister. And there are other places too. Safe houses.” The door clicks open, and I hear another click down the hallway where the other door has unlocked simultaneously.
“Safe for who?” I ask. It’s an innocent question, but just then, the door opens. Marka props it open so I can enter, but after only one step, I freeze.
Inside is my new foster family, ready to welcome me.
At first, all I see is tattoos. The tallest person, a guy, leans against a big dining table in the center of a sparsely furnished room. He’s dressed in ash-colored clothes and is blanketed with ink. Black swirls, bodies in motion, scythes and hellfire twist together on his arms, neck, and half his face. A black ring hangs on his lower lip, while his ears are pierced with chunky black bars. Under a headful of closely cut, brownish-black hair, his eyes stare at me coldly.
Seated on the floor next to the table is a girl, but I blink a few times because I swear, she looks green. There must be a weird lamp reflecting off her skin, but after a quick glance around, I see there isn’t. Even seated, it’s clear she’s tall and curvy, and that her complexion is very real. She’s poisonously green and looking only slightly less belligerent than the boy.
Over to the left, there’s a glass wall showing the dull blue underside of Neia’s agriplane melting into the horizon. Leaning against the glass is another boy with the build of a wrestler. His eyes and hair are black, skin pale, and his bulging arms fold across his chest as he cracks a genuine, friendly smile.
“Hi.” He waves at me, but now my mouth is wide open. He hasn’t moved his crossed arms. The waving hand comes down to rest on his hip. There is a matching one on the other side. Four arms. He’s so muscular that I don’t see the other person standing behind him.
The last boy comes forward, a sheepish smile on his boyish, sweet face. Erupting out of the angle between his neck and left shoulder is a large, bulbous, skin-covered mass. It’s like the kid has two skulls, but the extra one sits there like a ball of flesh so monstrously wrong. The kid scratches this extra, faceless globe, and his smile disappears. He looks at Marka apologetically and shrugs, one shoulder bumping against his second head.
“Here we go. Three, two, one . . .” he says, pursing his lips.
On zero, I turn around to flee.
CHAPTER 5
I DON’T BOTHER WITH THE TRANSPORT because there’s no button to push. At the end of the white hallway, I see the other metal door. A tiny light beside it blinks green. It’s open!
Behind me, there’s a rush of alarmed voices and running feet. A single deep voice rises above the babble.
“I’ll get her.”
And then I really run.
What kind of crazy, horrific stuff is going on here? God, for all I know, Dyl is being eaten alive by a different set of freaks on the other side of town. I’m not going to be anyone’s experiment. The solution to getting Dyl back can’t possibly rest with those things in there. I never should have trusted Marka.
I smash into the door and it bangs open, revealing a wide spiral stairwell. I expect to see the steps wind all the way down to the ground, but after a few twists, a white plane intersects the stairs, closing it off.
Natural light enters from somewhere, a window maybe. The agriplane. I have to try.
I pound up the stairs, matching each step with a lungful of air, trying to meet the demand my heart requires. I flick my holo stud on.
“Emergency! Police, anybody—” I gasp into the screen, but it’s nothing but gray fuzz. Cripes. I hit the top of the stairs, sheltered under a glowing white dome with a huge fan spinning lazily behind a metal grate. One single door has a red light next to it. Locked again. A few feet away, a window glows so brightly, I shield my eyes for a second. The sound of thudding feet rises up the helix of stairs.
I rush to the window. There is a field of gold and a sky of blue. The real sky. How can I break the window? In a panic, I scan the landing where a pile of stuff sits, as if waiting to be taken outside. I grab a heavy stick with a metal tool on the end, the teeth jagged and sharp. The thumping feet are only one flight below.
I hurl the metal end at the window and it breaks, too easily. An alarm wails—wah-wah-wah—so loud, I want to stopper my ears. With a firm grasp on the windowsill, I hoist myself up, but when I push my body through, the jagged shards from the window frame dig into me.
“Oh god,” I yelp, gasping. I yank a bloodied triangle of glass out of my forearm.
The vibrating alarm is still wailing. One more push, and I drag myself through the window despite the consequences. Glass teeth scrape against my belly as I wiggle through.
“Gotcha!” Behind me, a hand grasps my ankle. I kick frantically, and my foot makes hard contact with something fleshy. The hand lets go.
“Ow! Fuuuuu—”
Two more scrambles and I’m through. The brightness of a sun I haven’t seen in ten months pierces my eyes as I stumble forward. The agriplane is a dazzling expanse of
waving golden plants that stand up in walls, separated by evenly spaced narrow rows.
I dash straight ahead, leaving behind the half sphere covering the stairwell. A beeping sounds from behind me, and when I glance back I see the four-armed boy burst out the door, rubbing his chin.
“Hey! Stop!”
Panting, I run as fast as I can, straight into the nearest row between the seven-foot-high stalks. The stringy leaves whip my face and neck. The crunches and thuds of my pursuer grow louder and louder.
I should have listened to Dad. I should have been more careful. Where am I going? I keep running, gulping down as much air as possible, but I know the distance between us is shrinking. Through the bits of open rows ahead, a translucent, glowing blue wall looms in the distance, blending in with the sky. I hadn’t noticed it before; now that it’s closer, I see it’s like a fence, too high to climb. As I head toward it, a white bird gets spooked out of the crops. I hear a fluttering of wings above me as I run wildly forward.
It heads straight for the blue wall, hits it with a weird, electric buzz, and drops into the yellow plants.
“You won’t get past the plasma fence,” the boy yells. He must have seen the bird too. It hasn’t recovered to fly away. It must still be on the ground somewhere, injured, or dead. Possibly fried.
Exhausted, I slow down against my will. My leg muscles are on fire from lactic acid building up, because I’m not getting enough oxygen. My stupid, wretched, small body. I can’t outrun this thing, this guy, whatever it is. I just can’t. Can’t. Can’t.
My mantra of defeat works. To crown a final moment of utter failure, I trip on a root sticking out of the row and fall, face-first, onto the dirt.
“It’s about time,” the boy says. He’s not even breathing hard.
I wipe my mouth with my sleeve, tasting blood. My arm is striped red from the window shards. Squinting up at the brightness of the sky, I see the guy’s not standing above me, but sitting down next to me. He leans back on two arms, while the other two cross his chest. Two dark eyes crinkle in the bright sun, and I notice that his black hair is buzzed neatly on his head. A straight-laced brand of monster.
“It’s okay. Hey, if I saw me for the first time, I’d run too.” He smiles at me for a second before turning to stare at the horizon. “I’m glad you fell. I don’t have four legs, and you probably would’ve outrun me.” He pats his flat belly. “’Cause I ate too many pancakes for brekkie today.”
His attitude is so non-hostile that I’m thrown a bit. I wipe more dirt off my face and just concentrate on breathing.
“Look,” he says. “I know what you’re thinking. We’re not going to eat you for our next meal.” He cocks his head thoughtfully. “You’re only big enough for an appetizer, anyhow. Or, perhaps, an amuse-bouche.”
My eyes must bulge out of their sockets, because he lifts all four hands up in protest.
“I’m just kidding! I swear!” He grins again, and extends one of his right hands. “I’m Hex. Your new . . .” He wiggles his head in an effort to find the right word, and then blinks hard. “Your new brother.”
I hesitate. Hex gets a hurt look when I don’t shake his hand, then wipes it on his pants instead.
“Zelia,” I whisper.
“Nice to meet you.” He puts his hand back down on the ground, and a different one comes up to rub his sore chin thoughtfully. “So, you know, just ask.”
“Ask what?”
“What you’re dying to ask me.” He lifts up all four arms in what can only be described as a pose fit for a Hindu god. He wiggles all twenty fingers. Even the best Broadway performer from last century couldn’t do jazz fingers like this kid.
“Okay.” I swallow, my throat so dry, I almost choke. “Did it . . . hurt when they did that to you?”
The boy throws his head back with a hearty laugh. “Do this to me? Nothing here gets done to you. Nah, I was born like this. My parents took one look at me on the ultrasound and signed me up for New Horizons when I was one minute old.” There isn’t a trace of anger or resentment in his face. I am duly impressed.
“So . . . all of you guys were just born like . . . that?”
“Yep. Just like your sister was born the way she was.”
Whoa. Do all the members of Carus House know my life situation? I decide to feign stupidity.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, she’s gifted. Like we all are. Well, maybe not you, but you’re an exception. A rarity, shall we say, for Chez Freak.” He springs off the ground like a jumping spider, brushes the soil off his hands, and extends the cleanest one to me.
My legs shake from the recent sprint, and the cuts on my arms awaken with fresh agony. I take his hand, and it’s soft and strong and warm. I’m surprised. I guess I thought it would feel less human.
“Thanks,” I say.
He points the way back to the stairwell. When I still don’t move, he pats my back with short little taps, like I’m a puppy. His arms are strong, so every little pat sends me scooting forward.
“Look, Carus is a decent place. And Marka is a real sweetheart, you’ll see. The other kids are pretty harmless.”
I give him a suspicious look.
“Okay, well. They’re irritating, occasionally. Maybe most of the time. But basically harmless.” At the door, he keys the pad and it swings open for us. The alarm is no longer wailing. Inside the dome, we walk down one flight of circular stairs to a door invisibly set into the wall.
“It’s Hex, open up,” he says to the door.
“Password,” a boy’s voice intones.
“Just open the door, you rectum.”
“That’s not protocol!” the voice complains.
“I’ll show you four fistfuls of protocol if you don’t open the goddamn door,” he bellows. My face must be blanching white, because he coughs and sweetens his tone. “Our new guest is waiting, turd.”
The entrance slides open, but I don’t cross the threshold. I just stand there. Ahead is a dark hallway, lit with oval medallions on the doors glowing an eerie blue. I know that when I take that step inside, I’m agreeing to something, but to what, I’m not sure. Somewhere in there might be answers about Dyl, about how to get her back.
Hex steps inside, waiting. He shrugs, which, for a four-armed boy, looks like his whole body is expanding upward for a moment.
“Come on inside, Zelia.”
I feel the air entering me and leaving, my body ticking down to a decision. Hex leans in closer, and his eyes are kind.
“It’s what your dad wanted.”
I freeze. Dad and Carus don’t exist in the same universe. How could they? He smiles when I step forward. The door slips shut behind me.
“How could you know something like that?”
“We just know. After all, we’ve known him for what, almost two years now?”
“You knew my dad? How? We’ve only been in Neia for ten months. We’ve only ever been in one place for ten months.”
“You were in Okks before this, right?” He leads me down the black and phosphorescent hallway, down a few steps. I try to keep up with him. He may not have four legs, but he’s at least six inches taller than me.
“Right. South of Kansas City. How . . .” My mind churns in thought. I remember Dad’s work hours were even longer than usual while we lived there. He went from distracted to totally out of touch with our lives then, but we figured it was stress. Okks and Neia have a looser border policy with each other. He must have taken the high-speed magtrain into Neia all the time. I grunt, half exasperated, and half out of breath. “So, my life is an open book for everyone here, but no one’s bothered to tell me?”
“Whatever happened to ‘ignorance is bliss’?” Hex turns to raise his brows at me.
“Ignorance is a four-letter word to me.”
“Ah.” Hex stops at a door that’s lit with a faintly glowing oval medallion, pink instead of blue.
“Cy? We need to get into the infirmary,” he says to the door. I’m
wondering if all the doors have assigned names, when the door clicks open. Hex snorts. “Good. He’s acknowledging my existence today.”
“The door?” I ask, confused.
“I wish. My life would be easier if I only had to talk to doors in this place.”
Hex touches the door and it slides open. Inside, it’s dim except for the yellowish glow along the edge of the floor and several green lights dotting the wall. I can see already it’s an oval room.
“Do you need permission to get into all the rooms here?” I ask.
“No, just this one. We kept running out of some of the meds because we helped ourselves to the first aid stuff. Only Cy has access now.”
Huh, so all the other rooms are a free-for-all. Otherwise, it’s only hard to get into Carus, or hard to get out. I tuck that away for future reference.
“Let’s see. How about a cheesy sunrise,” Hex says. The room obeys him, and the yellow brightness mixes with peachy pinks that increase at a gradual pace. In a few seconds, it’s easier to see an examining table and a wall of cabinets and drawers, each lit with a tiny green light. A variety of medical devices adorn the walls on clear shelves.
Hex pats the table. “Sit down. Your arms are pretty torn up. You’ll need someone to look at them.”
“But—”
“Hey, blood first, details later. Bleeding to death is one way to go, but I don’t recommend it myself,” he says, pointing to the blackish drops on the floor. Hex turns away from me, speaking to the center of the room. “Cy. She’s ready.” He stares up toward the ceiling, as if an answer might drop down. It stays quiet. “Dude. I think she only has a half pint of blood left.”
Suddenly, a voice comes from nowhere. It invades the room, like it’s materializing out of the air around us. “I’m busy. Ask Marka.”
The room is bright enough now for me to see Hex’s face flush. Ropy veins stick out of his neck. His next words come through his teeth.
“Cy, get your ass up here, or I’ll drag it over myself.” His voice scares me. I squirm away from him and pretend to study the medical gadgets on the wall.