by Lydia Kang
“Yes. But he never said anything about Dyl to me. Aureus wants to know more about her gifts, and she says she doesn’t know. You have to tell us about her trait.”
“I don’t know anything!” I shake my head. “I have her holo diary. I’ve listened to some of it—”
“What did she say?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary.” Nothing but innocent observations of a world and a sister that don’t deserve her. I sigh. “But I haven’t listened to all of it.”
“Do you have it with you?”
“I left it behind. I didn’t want to lose it.”
“You have to tell me if you find anything. It’s the only way they’ll let her go. They’ll tear her to pieces to find the answer.” I hide my face in my hands, unable to speak. I have no answers. Q wraps an arm around my shoulder, consoling me. “Look, we’ll figure this out together, okay? I’m glad you found me.”
Q’s willingness to help is a better drug than anything Argent could cook up. His patience is solid and calm as he waits beside me. Something brushes by my temple.
“Your hair looks good like this, Zelia.”
My mouth drops open, just a fraction. “So you have seen me before. Was it on the holo?” I ask.
“No. But your new housemates block transmissions so well, it’s a wonder my calls ever got through.”
I frown. “They said it was the tower.”
“They say a lot of things, Zelia.”
I don’t respond, letting his words replay in my mind. Slowly, the patch of dark blue in my vision transitions to smoky gray. There is movement. Blobs of bodies wander in front of me. I put my hand in front of my face, hoping I can see it, when Q touches my fingers and guides them to his cheek instead.
I feel faint stubble, and then his ear with the holo stud there. His hair is so silky. Boys shouldn’t have hair this soft, I think. It’s unfair. As his hand guides mine closer to his lips, I pull away.
I’m so impatient for my vision to come back that I squeeze my eyes tight, willing them to return to normal. My eyes begin to feel less rubbery. When I finally open them, the light, though dim, is piercing and painful.
Finally, I can see Q’s hair, the caramel tint. I push his shoulder farther away, to get a better look, and he cups his hand over mine, as if to say, “You can push me away, but I’m not leaving.” Confusion overwhelms me when I see the mischievous grin, the lean torso clad in a shirt of gunmetal gray.
It’s the boy from New Horizons.
“Micah!” I gasp.
“At your service.” He tips his head.
“Q! Your name is Q! Why did you lie?”
“Who says I lied? My name is Micah Kw. K-w.”
“Kw?” I say it like an accusation. I could never have known to search with that spelling.
“Well, lots of words don’t have vowels. Cwm, nth, crwth—”
I impatiently cut him off. “Why didn’t you tell me at New Horizons you were going to help?”
“Everything there is monitored, so I couldn’t say a word. But after your tests, I tried to warn you. They must have known. I got transferred to the north office the second your labs were done.”
“You said you work for Aureus.”
“I do. They pay me to work at New Horizons, to scope out the new talent. I’m the one who sends the samples to them.”
My holo buzzes in my earlobe and Hex’s recorded voice booms at me. “Two-hour alarm, two-hour alarm, TWO-HOUR ALARM!”
“I have to go.” I stand up, hesitating. I pivot on my heel and face Micah. The idea spews out of my mouth without thinking. “I should just go with you! We can get Dyl back, working together.”
“No, no. You need to find what you can from Dyl’s diary. Stay there. I’ll be in touch.” He walks me out of the shelter of our room and back into Alucinari corridor.
“That’s not good enough. We have to meet again.” I cling to his hands. “The junkyards. I can meet you there. My holo is too unreliable. You’re the only way I can find out if she’s okay.”
“All right. Next Sunday morning, then,” he acquiesces, embracing me. “Contact me when you get out of Carus,” he says, then quickly messages his number to my holo. He smiles. “See you in a week.”
I can’t believe I’m making promises like this. I might as well tell him I’ll get him a recombinant woolly mammoth too. Micah presses a tender kiss on my cheek, and my cheeks fill with warmth. He pulls away and freezes.
“I thought you said you came alone,” he says.
I turn around. The crowd splits in half as Cy approaches us. Behind his dark, inked mask he’s seething with fury, and he’s wielding a knife as long as his forearm.
“What are you doing?” I blurt out, eyeing the knife.
“Come on, Zelia, we have to go.” He uncurls his other fist toward me. He wants me to take his hand, but I pause.
“Go on, it’s okay,” Micah whispers, his eyes still on Cy. Micah’s hand inches up toward the holo stud of his ear when Cy raises the knife.
“Take out that holo,” Cy orders him, pointing the knife. Micah complies readily. “Chuck it. Far away.”
Micah throws it and it pings against a far wall.
“You have some nerve, Kw.” He keeps the knife directed at Micah’s heart. “You touch her again and I’ll kill you.”
“You’re in no place to make threats,” Micah retorts, but his face doesn’t match his words. He glances at the knife, then gives me a look of helplessness and walks away without glancing back.
One week. Sunday morning, I tell myself. We’ll meet at the junkyards and he’ll help me get Dyl back.
“Let’s go,” Cy growls at me. When I don’t move, he yells, “Now! Or I’ll carry you back.”
“Okay, okay!” I say, exasperated. He takes my arm and runs with me down the hallway, stepping over the hallucinating, squirming, beautiful youth of Neia, even stepping on them when they crowd the floors too thickly. Upstairs, Hex, Wilbert, and Vera wait for us by the door, exhausted but happy. They take one glance at Cy’s face and the knife and immediately drop their smiles.
“I guess that means we really have to go, huh?” Vera sulks.
“They know we’re here,” Cy says, and in a second we’re out the door and galloping for the char. We run as fast as we can. At the char, Wilbert knocks his silver buttons askew getting into the backseat. Magically, his extra head pops into view.
“Welcome back.” Hex pats his extra head a little too roughly. Wilbert responds by rolling down the window and puking onto the street.
“What the hell is going on?” I yell.
“This was a mistake, is what.” Cy sinks the blade into a sheath tied to his right thigh, which I never noticed until now. I start up the char and drive down the deserted side streets. Cy keeps checking the mirrors.
“Drive faster,” he orders. I respond by stamping my foot on the accelerator and blasting down a back alley.
“Who was it?” Hex asks. When Cy doesn’t answer, Hex snorts. “Oh. Him. Well, it was time to leave anyway . . .”
“What is up with you and Micah?” I ask. I want to defend him, to say that he’s trying to help Dyl, but the less I say, the better.
Suddenly, the char gets deathly silent. Everyone stares out the windows as if I didn’t ask the question. I guess I’ll have to get my answers another time.
Soon, it’s clear we aren’t being followed. Vera waves off the tension and leans over to me.
“So. Did you have a good time?”
I widen my eyes. “We just ran away from a club with him”—I throw my head in Cy’s direction—“flashing that Masters of the Universe cutlery and you want to know if I had a good time?”
“Well . . . yeah.” As if Vera does this every weekend. “I want all the illegal details,” she says. “Speaking of illegal, you’ll never guess how many guys—”
“I REALLY don’t want to know!” I say, plugging an ear with one hand and driving with the other.
“In any case, I’d ca
ll this a successful night.” She beams. And then, for no apparent reason, she holds her breath in and puckers her lips, like a kid on the verge of a tantrum. It’s so odd that I jerk myself out of my anxiety-filled funk for a second.
“What are you doing?” I ask her. “I thought I was the only person with breathing problems.”
“I need more carbon dioxide when my skin is covered up,” she explains, shrugging. “I’m gonna have a massive hyperoxia headache tomorrow. My chloroplasts are cramping.”
“Sounds like female issues,” Hex snorts from the back.
“Everybody shut up. I told you to drive faster,” Cy orders from behind me.
“Fine!” I rev the engine afresh, and the char thrusts ahead with a roar. The speed is therapeutic, but does nothing to erase the memory of two very different kisses and the phantom vision of Dyl.
I glance at Cy, who’s touching his lips as if they were sore. He sees me watching him, and pointedly turns away. I turn a sharp corner and Wilbert opens the window for a second puke-fest.
I’m so ready for this night to be over. Not that it matters. Some parts of it have been stitched into my soul.
CHAPTER 14
THE NEXT MORNING, I WAKE UP STILL wearing my club clothes. I stink of stale chemicals and cigarette smoke.
My head throbs with a distinctive shade of pain I only get after oxygen deprivation. A hypoxia headache, thanks to my spell of breathlessness in Argent’s Alucinari Room. I wonder if the rest of the crew feels like this, a can of condensed awfulness. I unclasp the necklace from my neck, stretching my chest to its max with a deep inhalation. If only I could exhale all the ugliness of last night. The confusion of meeting Micah, the pain of seeing Dyl, the torture of not getting her back.
I’ve got a week to try to find what Micah is looking for. I switch on Dyl’s holo, listening to the poem again, letting her voice soothe me. And then I search her diary for mentions of traits, but there’s nothing. Like me, she’s in the dark. Unlike me, she’s being slowly killed for it.
I do a secondary search within her diary for Dad. At first, there’s nothing substantial. But then there’s this. She’s reading a different poem, when she stops.
“I wish Zel would read this one. I wanted to show her, but there’s no point. Dad says she doesn’t like poetry anymore.” She huffs dismissively. “Sucks.”
I pause the diary, shocked. Dad told me to stop obsessing over poetry to focus on cell bio classes four years ago, so I could work in the lab more. I never stopped loving poetry. I only stopped reading it because he wanted me to. I always thought Dad knew me so well.
Now I’m wondering if he knew me at all.
All those years, he guided my education, my likes and dislikes. And for what? So Dyl could have nothing in common with me?
My search leads me back to the original poem. I close my eyes, listening.
Remember the mind.
Let it shift and move like water,
First to understand
Then to turn with ease
The boulders of the earth.
Boulders. Right. I have to do the impossible. Dad always emphasized my weak and flawed body, my Ondine’s curse. But I have this brain. I’ve got to make impossible things happen. My skills in the lab were a gift that he nurtured and subsequently told me to dump. But right now, there’s no way I’m giving them up.
I have a week. I’ll get her out of there; I have to believe it, because I cannot consider the horror of other possibilities.
After a quick shower, I walk as fast as my throbbing head will allow. The common room and kitchen are empty. I don’t want to be alone this morning, not with Marka gone and Ana wandering the darker hallways of Carus.
I run through the selections on the efferent and order a huge pot of strong, black coffee and half a dozen pieces of dry toast. Some headache patches would be nice.
“Cy?” I call. At first, I’m rewarded with silence, but after a minute his gravelly voice enters the kitchen.
“What?”
“Can you . . . please . . . get some headache patches from the medic room and bring them down to breakfast? Enough for everyone?”
Cy grunts in reply. I can’t believe he didn’t cuss me out. Then again, maybe he’s still sleeping and not really listening.
I bring the coffee, toast, jam, and sunseed butter into the common room and lay out creamer and agave sugar. Might as well make enough for everyone, I figure. I put my hands on my hips and call out loudly.
“Wilbert, Vera, Hex, Cy—there’s hot coffee and toast in the common room.”
Cy walks in as I say this, rumpled and gorgeous in what must be his pajamas. A loose white T-shirt hangs off his angled shoulders and a pair of drawstring pants barely hang on to his hips. Yesterday’s tattoo mask is completely gone and his skin is uninked as yet. His face looks softer, kinder. I watch him toss several medicine-infused patches onto the table, then peel one for myself and place it on my neck as he grabs the coffee decanter.
“And there’s headache medicine too,” I add loudly to everyone.
“By god, you’re good,” Hex mumbles from his room.
Within minutes, Vera, Wilbert, and Hex all shuffle in. Vera collapses into a chair at the table and immediately puts her head down. I place a patch in her open palm, and without lifting her head, she slaps it onto the side of her neck. Her index finger lifts, as if it’s the last effort she can manage.
“Coffee,” she mumbles against the tabletop. “Industrial strength.”
Wilbert grabs two patches and slaps one on each of his heads, and Hex actually lies down on the floor with four hands covering his face. He groans miserably.
“Hex, are you okay?”
“I will be, if everyone will go mute for a few days.” He drops two hands to gently massage his stomach.
“Well, I’m glad I didn’t make any cocktails for breakfast,” I say lightly. At the mention of cocktails, Hex jumps off the floor, beelines into the kitchen, and pukes noisily into the sink.
Vera lifts her head to look at the kitchen door and then me. Cy emits a noise that sounds like air escaping from a balloon. We all burst into laughter. It’s the warmest sound I’ve heard in days. Wilbert starts pouring cups of coffee, when Hex stumbles back into the common room.
“Please don’t say that word again. Or anything that means the same thing.” He sits down at the table and Vera pushes a fresh cup of coffee over to him.
“Thanks,” he murmurs, and Vera’s lips twitch against her raised mug.
I survey the scene, realizing that for once, we’re all in the same place and not trying to yell at each other. “So, uh. How often do you guys do this club thing?” I ask, yawning so widely that my jaw actually cracks.
“Occasionally,” Wilbert says.
“Never,” Cy adds. I watch Cy after he speaks, and he turns to watch me right back. Finally, I drop my eyes to my coffee.
“But it’s never that exciting, that’s for sure. This one’s going into the books,” Vera says. “Locked away, never to be spoken of again.”
“Locked away would be nice. I saw things I never want to see again,” Hex says between coffee slurps.
As did I, I want to say, but I don’t. “Did you have fun, Wilbert?” I ask.
“All I remember is puking,” he says, grabbing some toast. “And wishing I had a mouth on this guy”—he pats his faceless head—“so I could puke twice as fast.”
“Schweeeeeet,” Hex slurs, and there’s another round of laughs. Even Wilbert’s being a good sport, joining in.
“Did Marka come home yet?”
“Not yet,” Wilbert answers. “She might be there for a few days. We never know until she shows up.”
“How often does she bring kids home? I mean, there aren’t a lot of you guys here,” I say.
“Not often. Well, before you there were the twins, little Edgar and Pria. They had these extra eyes on their body. Creepy, but kind of cute after a while. Something wasn’t right with their brain developme
nt, though. They couldn’t walk, or eat right. They died within a few months.”
“How did they . . . you guys . . . get the traits? Can they be undone?” I ask, thinking of Dyl.
Vera shakes her head. “No way. Every cell we have is altered—”
“Undone? We’re not errors that need fixing,” Cy interrupts, glaring at me.
“I didn’t say that!” I retort, exasperated. I turn my back to Cy and ask Hex, “So, is there something in the water that I don’t know about?”
“No,” Vera says, softly rubbing her skin. “It’s not something in the water. Our traits aren’t random mutations. You can’t get subdermal chloroplasts without purposeful tinkering.”
“Then how?”
It’s silent for a while. Everyone steals a look at Cy, but no one speaks, as if they’re afraid of him. Finally Cy clears his throat. “New genomic sequences, directly targeting the oocytes of women. With the right cell uptake vector, you could make it into a pill. The women would never know until something like Wilbert showed up on ultrasound.”
“That technology doesn’t exist,” I counter.
“You’re looking at proof that it does,” Cy says, sitting up and returning my glance. “No legal lab has access to that kind of technology.”
“And it’s been going on for a long, long time,” Wilbert adds. “Way before we were born. I mean, look at Marka.”
“But who could possibly be doing that to women? Is it Aureus?” I wonder aloud.
“I don’t think so,” Hex says, rubbing his unshaved chin. “The way they keep trolling the orphanages and foster homes? It’s like they’re Easter egg hunting, only someone else hid the eggs out there, you know?”
The conversation dies, right then and there. Everyone grows silent, thinking of their own twisted beginnings, all with the same empty space of an answer. I attempt to restart the conversation.
“So Wilbert, you came here two years ago?”
“Yep,” he responds, then smiles shyly when Vera doesn’t add some scathing remark afterward.