by Lydia Kang
“My dad was just a doctor.” I squeeze my blistered palms into fists that hurt no one but me.
“You underestimated him, as we did. Yes, he was a doctor, but more than that. All the gifted children you see here”—she wiggles her pathetic stumpy arm around the room—“are his doing. He visited so many women in the last decades, switching out their vitamins for carefully crafted gene-modifying agents to improve their offspring.”
“No.” That’s not what he said. That’s not what he told me.
“Yes. We didn’t know that he experimented with your own mother. Not until the test from New Horizons came back positive.”
I feel sick. So much sicker than Caliga could ever make me. Is that why my mother left us? Because she was part of an experiment too? The story behind her departure always made it easy to hate her. I’d been told that she selfishly wanted her own life, and that Dad’s traveling job, along with the baggage of children, was too inconvenient. But maybe she wanted to leave for an entirely different reason. Because we—and our father—were monsters.
Aj continues. “What a stupid mistake we made. We started noticing a few years ago. He was reporting fewer successful births. Fewer traited children. So we grew suspicious and began watching the orphanages, finding traited children being abandoned by their parents—children that we should have had in our houses from birth. He pretended he knew nothing about how they got there. We were angry—after all, we paid him well. Nearly ran off with you both before we stopped him.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Of course you wouldn’t. Didn’t you notice a pattern in how often you moved? Every ten months? He’d follow the women for nine months, examine the babies, and send them to us when they were found to have illnesses ‘incompatible with life.’” Sun air-quotes his words, then knots his fingers together in his lap. “And then he moved on. But this time, he wouldn’t do what we asked. For reasons I cannot fathom, he took control over the creation and futures of traited children. And so he had to go.”
It can’t be. How could it be?
My father.
For a minute or a century, I can’t see anything. I can’t hear anything, only a buzzing in my head as the world rewires itself. Small things fill my mind—the scuffed gold ring on his finger, the wiry gray hairs on his head that wouldn’t obey a comb. And his distracted presence, so large that you could feel his away-ness—even when I was close enough to touch him. I’d always tried to please him, to play by his rules, to be the child he wanted me to be. To pin down his presence with my obedience. But it didn’t work. He was always somewhere else.
Because he was someone else.
I curl my fists so tightly that the nails dig into my bloodied palms. But this pain is nothing to what boils inside me.
So. This is what rage feels like.
God, I thought we were normal. Odd, yes, but normal; a family simply torn apart by a simple accident. That crazy, bobbling magpod in the street . . .
“The magpod accident?” My mouth is hardly able to make the words. “You did that?”
“Yes, well.” Aj sighs. “That was a hasty decision. Little did we know he had with him someone with a longevity gene. A financial holy grail, so to speak. Only second best to . . .” She kicks her thumb-sized foot with irritation.
“Aj, get on with it!” Sun growls with impatience.
“Well, you’re here at last.” She smiles. Her pink lipstick stains her teeth with cherry-colored blotches. “Our family is complete.”
“You’re not my family,” I say, unable to keep my voice from shaking.
“Oh, not according to your definition. But whether you like it or not, we are tied together by your father. And we seek to better our existence, not merely exist to waste our gifts—so selfish! Our valuable traits are made available to the masses, one by one. And when they become dependent on our very existence, we can regain our freedom.”
“Seems like you’re doing just fine now.”
“It’s an illusion. None of us may walk in the light of the sun without fearing for our lives. Not even the unmarred, like Micah. We have our protected playgrounds, but it is not the same. We are worse than second-class citizens. We aren’t even allowed to be.” SunAj stands up and comes to crouch over me. Aj’s face is so close, I can see the lipstick bleeding into the cracks around her lips. “We only want freedom. What do you want, Zelia?”
I breathe in measured increments, afraid to speak. Their grand plan seems good, but there’s darkness at its core. Finally, I can’t hold it in any longer. I’m not here to save the world. I’m willing to push aside my father’s betrayal for another time when I can examine it, pick it apart in masochistic detail. But first, Dylia.
“I want my sister.” Such a simple request. “Where is she?”
SunAj goes back to the chair. “In time, in time. You’ll be reunited.”
“I want to see her now,” I demand. “I have something worth more than her, maybe even more than me. I’m offering a trade.”
Sun squints at my brazenness, examining me like an insect. For the first time, everyone in the room perks up. I dig inside Dyl’s bag, pulling out the cold pack with the bottles and the microchip loaded with data. I carefully place the pack on the smoky glass floor and retreat. As if a few steps back could protect me from anything here.
“I’ve figured out how to manufacture my trait. The elixir will delete the telomeres and relink chromosome specific sequences, making them a continuous loop, like mine.”
Sun/Aj, whatever its name is, turns to let Sun speak.
“We have synthesized this as well.” My shoulders fall in defeat. Why did I imagine that I could beat them? When they probably have better equipment and money—
“However, ours has not been successful.”
I almost smile. “Mine worked on our cell culture karyotypes, and we even tested it on a pig—”
“Oy, you mean, this one?” The carrot-haired boy shoves the jelly beans into his pocket and reaches beneath his chair for a large, black box. He carries it over and takes the top off, dumping the contents at my feet.
With a sickening thud, the hairy stiff body of Callie rolls to my feet.
CHAPTER 28
CALLIE’S PRESENCE AT AUREUS MAKES NO SENSE. Everyone smirks at my frozen expression of confusion. Her body is covered in massive lumps, one so large, it’s overtaken her ear and disfigured her face. The dead eyes are hazy and half open, as is her mouth. She’s not just dead. She’s dead from something that covered her inside and out with tumors, within hours.
“How . . .” I begin, but I don’t have to finish. Caliga walks up to me and kicks Callie’s dead body away.
Callie. Wilbert. My head whips up and I spin around, searching for him. I don’t know why I didn’t see him when I first came in. He’s been sitting in the corner the whole time, just behind me. His face is morose and pitiful.
“Wilbert!” I run over to him. “Are you okay? How did they get you here?” I clutch at my chest, afraid that all the members of Carus are in terrible danger. But strangely, Wilbert hardly reacts to my panic. He lifts his hands up, hesitating.
“I’m sorry, Zel.” He won’t look me in the eye. Caliga clicks over to Wilbert in her high heels and caresses his faceless head. Wilbert wilts next to her and smiles, but within seconds, he turns sallow and limp from her effects.
Callie. Caliga. No way.
“I don’t understand.” The words escape before the understanding sinks in with sharp precision. God, it makes sense. His willingness to get me to the junkyards and the agriplane so I could keep my conversations with Micah going. Testing everyone’s experiments on Callie and shrugging off the fact that his own trait was already on the market as ForEverDay. He’s been helping Aureus, at every turn. The memory of his nausea after Argent collides with the realization that I never actually saw him drinking. He was probably hanging out with Caliga the whole time, driving to see her at night in his chars while everyone was asleep, medicating himself with th
e gargantuan bottle of NoPuk.
And yet, some things don’t fit. Wilbert didn’t want us to go to Argent, I remember. He was disappointed, almost frightened when Hex picked it that night. He couldn’t have given them a heads-up, or we’d all be stuck in Aureus.
“They’re your family! I was your family!” I choke, hardly containing my rage.
“No. We are his family,” Sun tells me. “Wilbert is my son, brought into Carus by your father himself. To this day, your foster family has only the weakest understanding of what your father really was. Caliga”—he waves his hand dismissively at her—“is Wilbert’s wife, though I wasn’t thrilled at their marriage at such a young age, but what can you do? Love does strange things to people.” His fingers tap against each other, amused at the soap opera of his home.
“It’s about time you came back,” Caliga says softly, rubbing Wilbert’s head. It would be an endearing scene, if it weren’t so sickening. “You were supposed to deliver Cyrad too. You promised us you would.”
Wilbert flushes the brightest red I’ve ever seen. “You know I tried. I sent you copies of his protocols . . .”
“But none of them are complete.” She pouts. “I think you’ve tried to protect him. Where are his blood samples?”
“I couldn’t get them. Every time I drugged him, the needles wouldn’t work. His vessels seal up before I can draw the blood!” Wilbert whines. For a second, he shoots me a look that cries out for mercy. If he really wanted to deliver Cy, he could have done it a thousand times over. What stopped him?
Sun silences them with a raised hand. “Enough.” I look back at him and realize that my cold pack with the elixir is now missing.
“Where is my elixir?” I ask, once again off balance.
“Disappointment in your experiment aside, I think it will still be useful.”
“Really?”
“You’ve created a formula that causes rapid, cancerous growth. What could be a better weapon that that?”
“No.” I almost choke on the word as I back away.
Sun claps his hands together with satisfaction. “Well. It’s time we expanded into weapons.” He shifts forward and his smile disintegrates into an emotionless straight line. “There will be no bargaining, no haggling. You have come here of your own power, against the wishes of your previous family. Your father owed us what he stole. The balance is even now.” He turns to fully face me, and I get a glimpse of Aj, hanging limply against his right cheek. Her eyes are closed, her mouth slack, the lower lip shiny with saliva. Sun dabs her drooling mouth with a handkerchief. “Ah, you’ve exhausted Aj. I can read in peace.” Sun reopens his book and waves a hand in my direction. “Send her to her room.”
“Get on with you,” Ren says gruffly, pushing off from a chair. He points me to the door. As I pass by Micah, he holds my arm for a moment.
“Don’t fight it so hard, Zelia. You’re meant to be here, you always were. We’re just righting the mistake we made.”
“My sister is not a mistake.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“You’re good at not meaning what you say.”
“This isn’t how I wanted it to be. We’re all victims, Zel. I always wanted you on my side, even before we knew about your trait.” Regret is written on his face, but it’s too late. He’s made his choice, and so have I.
I turn from him to follow Ren. The other members of Aureus barely look up. This is familiar to them. Boring, even.
How many new Aureus recruits have been through here? I count the current members in the room—Caliga, Micah, Ren, Tegg, the short muscular guy, and the dark-clothed girl with sunglasses, Blink. Six. Seven, counting Dyl, all made by my father. What happened to all the others?
• • •
“YOU NEED TO MOVE FASTER, CHICKADEE.” Ren shoves me into a transport after we pass back through the white room. For a change, it zooms upward instead of down. I want to shrink away and hide in a shadow, but I can’t. I still have something to lose. I push away the ugliness of the last few minutes and force-feed myself a teaspoon of bravery.
“So . . . do you know my sister?”
Ren ignores me, picking bits of black candy from his teeth. Maybe I should try a different tactic.
“How does your . . . trait work?”
Surprisingly, he actually makes eye contact. “Why do you care?”
“It’s pretty amazing, what you did. I guess SunAj thinks pretty highly of you.”
He shrugs.
I point at his hand. “What’s in the jelly beans?”
“My own formula. Psilocybin, LSD, DOB, Q’s leaf, among other things.”
“Why aren’t you affected?” I ask, as if were discussing the utterly normal, like the weather, or Sunday night holo programs.
“My lungs metabolize them out of my bloodstream directly. Wanna see?” He leans in closely and I get a whiff of his licorice breath before I can turn away. Around Ren’s head appear pink feathers that flash purple. It was just a little puff of his breath, but the vision is still shocking enough to make me stop breathing for several seconds. I take a step backward, and the illusion dissipates.
“Show’s over. We’re here.”
Ren stands in front of a blue corridor with several black circular doors. The walls are semi-transparent, icy and partly clouded. They suck away the surface warmth of my body as we walk past. Pink and gray things are embedded inches deep. I pause in front of one.
“What are these?” I wipe away the frosted condensation. Something’s suspended in ice, bright fuchsia on a stalk of gray. It’s a girl’s finger. Apparently, she cared enough to paint her fingernails before the finger left her body. Horrified, I wipe off another glass surface. This time, it’s a torso. No arms and no legs—or head, for that matter. Thick spines emerge from the skin, inches long, like daggers.
“He never complied with our rules, that one,” Ren says.
“That one?” I say, sickened by his casual words. “That was a person!”
“Don’t lecture me.” Ren smolders, staring at the torso. “He was my brother.” The expression on his face—something between disgust and raw fear—terrifies me. Ren touches the cold glass. “There are rules in life, and then there are rules in our life. He didn’t follow any of them.”
“And you just let that happen?”
“I didn’t let anything happen. He did.” Ren pauses, trying to master the battling emotions on his face. Finally, he sheds his discomfort with a twist of his neck and points to the finger with the pink nail. “That one, Micah burned so badly, that was the only part left. Anyway, a useless trait. Her touch made people relaxed and happy. Got plenty of neurodrugs for that. Not marketable at all.”
“So you’re saying that if I don’t behave, I get turned into an ice cube decoration?”
“More or less.”
“More or less what?”
“More or less body parts, depending on what we need.” He waves me toward a door down the hallway. “Consciousness and silly things like walking, talking, keeping your body in once piece—they’re not necessary. Those are earned freedoms. You’ve got a lot to learn.”
Ren punches a door pad, and a black circle opens. Inside, it’s rounded, not unlike my bubble room, but that’s where the similarity ends. There’s a thin bed, a sink, and a toilet. Nothing else. No windows. The ceiling is a six-foot glass circle that’s just a big lens, the aperture shut for now. Soon enough, I’ll be under a microscope, and there are no corners in which to hide. Not even blankets on the bed.
“This is your room,” Ren says, tossing another jelly bean down his trap.
“Are you going to listen to me too?” I say, pointing to the ceiling lens.
“We put it on mute. No one wants to listen to a bunch of screaming and wailing.”
My hope has hit a dead end.
“It took a while for me to learn too.” He pulls up his sleeves, and I see long swaths of mutilated skin. Micah’s handiwork, I’m sure. He stares at them with a frown, se
eing things that I can’t. “But you get used to it. Once you stop fighting and come over to this side of things, life gets much better.” He crosses his arms. “Now, take off your clothes.”
“What?” I try to keep my voice calm, but it’s too late. My panic is obvious.
“No clothes while you’re under observation,” he says. “I’m here to confiscate all your belongings, down to the threads.”
“No way.”
“They’re not my rules.” There’s no lust behind his eyes, no lascivious grin. In fact, he looks almost sad having to say it. This is all business. My hands go protectively to my chest, where the tiny vials from Carus are still safely stowed. Ren rolls his head back, his face suffused with irritation.
“You’re messing with my job. Do it, or I’ll do it for you.”
I look down at the ink-colored sleeved tunic, elastic skirt, and leggings, knowing what lies underneath them—the green polka-dot highway, courtesy of Vera’s serum. Ren’s arms are crossed as he walks slowly to me. Just as I assume I’m getting a lecture at close quarters, his arm shoots out so fast, I have no time to brace myself.
Bam! The hit to my skull is so hard, my ear sings a buzzing noise and I fall to the floor, eyes watering from the blow.
“Knew you were going to be a pain in the ass,” he growls, standing over me. I don’t even have a chance to get my breath back when Ren plunks down, straddling me and tearing at my shirt.
“No!” Panicked, I hit and push him, my legs scrambling to get away. But Ren is probably close to two hundred pounds. All he has to do is sit on me and I’m immobilized. He smacks one of my hands down with his meaty fist and wrangles the other one above my head.
Ren’s face, with its licorice stink and stubbly, pimply red skin looms closer. His mouth is slack and his humid breath washes over me. I have to breathe. I can’t kill myself, not for this, not for him.
The stale breath invades my nostrils, and invisible chemicals assault my brain in seconds. Ren’s face stretches, melting into a warped clock’s face of numbers, a Daliesque monstrosity of red and black. The clock face floats away while my body sinks below it, softly bouncing against a sky of brilliant fuchsia, just like the girl’s fingernail.