Catalyst

by Lydia Kang

  My eyes blur with stinging moisture. I hate him. Still playing these games with my life. I wish with all my heart that I could slap him, but there’s no part of him that’s real anymore. And Wingfield? My mother? What the hell?

  “Come on!” Caliga pulls my hands inside the elevator, which is disturbingly like a vertical metal coffin. Inside, there are no buttons, just bumpy, rusted metal. We hold on to the walls as it plummets down at a stomach-churning speed.

  “Wilbert, tell me you put brakes on this thing,” Caliga moans. Suddenly, the lift jolts to a stop, and Caliga and I knock heads.

  We chorus in pain. “Ow!”

  “Look.” Caliga points to the door, which opens to a dark room. It smells of water and concrete, but there’s definitely an organic whiff of rosemary and Hex sweat. Dyl’s voice splinters the quiet.

  “Here! We’re over here!”

  Caliga and I gallop into the darkness. A light breaks ahead of us, and we turn in to one of the holding spots for the big char, the one we took to the Argent nightclub over a year ago. Dyl’s face is smudged and dirty on one side. She keeps her distance from us because Caliga is still with me. I let go of Caliga and run over.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, my face kind of hit the lift on the way down. It’s quiet as a tomb here. No sign of the police or anything.”

  I snort. “Please don’t use the word tomb today.”

  “Right. Good point.” She pushes her messy hair out of her face, the way she used to when she was a toddler. Marka and Ana, who’s acting more herself, walk in.

  “Good. We’re all here. All three chars are ready to go. We’ll have to split up.”

  As soon as she says it, I grab Dyl’s hand and squeeze. Marka’s eyes fall to our clasped hands, and she frowns, turning to Caliga.

  “Caliga, do you know how to drive one of these things?”

  She shakes her head.

  Oh. Oh no.

  “But. Can’t we . . . Can I . . .” My words can’t keep pace with what’s going on in my head, and my heart is already breaking. No, no, no. I can’t be separated from Dyl again! Not from Hex, and Vera, and Ana and . . . no. I won’t. Tears pool in my eyes.

  Marka speaks quietly. “We can’t all fit together, not with our supplies. Dyl will go with me. You can drive Caliga. Vera, Hex, and Ana will go together. We’ll meet at the safe house in Chicago in twelve days.”

  “Twelve days?” I squawk. Marka and I proceed to heatedly discuss the separation plan, when Caliga pipes in.

  “I can’t go to Chicago.”

  “What do you mean?” Marka asks.

  “It’s time for me to find Wilbert.”

  “Where are you going to go?” Marka reasons. “We can’t leave you here. You don’t know where to go. And we’re not just going to drop you off in the middle of nowhere.” I peep out a sound and Marka shoots me a look that says You are NOT going to drop her in the middle of nowhere!

  “I’ll manage,” Caliga says, standing on her good leg.

  “How? In the sewer pipes again? Your wound will get worse before it gets better without Zelia’s help, at least for another week. You can barely walk with that bone infection. You’ll snap your leg in half.”

  I sigh. She’s so right, and everyone knows it.

  “Okay, Chicago.” Hex hands out holo studs for everyone to put in their earlobes. It’s been so long since I wore one of the thick, barbell-like earrings that projects a holographic screen. Normally, it would have communication ability, access to every piece of information you’d ever want, but ours are sorely limited because we’re illegal.

  “Access to the address is voice activated,” Hex tells us. “And here are your F-TIDs. We matched them with unclaimed IDs we bought a year ago. Active accounts, but very inactive humans, so—”

  “You mean dead?” Dyl asks.

  “Not quite. They’re all in care facilities.”

  I make a face. “You stole F-TIDs from sick geriatric patients?”

  “Just borrowing them! Anyway, your artificial F-TIDs should work two or three times before the account holders realize they’ve been compromised. Here.”

  He squashes a small, warm bundle into my hand. I should be prepared for this, but still. There are a pair of separate fingers, each with a soft fringe of skin hanging from the base, like a skirt. The fingers are warm and pink, and pulsate slightly.

  “One for you, and one for Caliga. Take this too.” He hands me a packet of white powder. “Soak them in this solution every twelve hours, for nutrients. The digits have self-contained vascular systems, so they should stay alive for a while. Oh, and they sort of pee, so watch out.”

  One of the fingers twitches and tickles my palm. Oh lord. This is going to freak me out forever. I stuff them into my backpack, which is crammed full of food, clothes, and medical supplies, along with my e-tablet with all my research on tracking Cy down. Thank goodness Hex nagged us into keeping them at the ready. Before I can finish zipping it up, Hex has me in a two-armed hug, which is so sad and incomplete that my eyes sting. I choke down a sob.

  “Zel, we’re all going in different directions, just in case. We’ll go west, Marka north, and you should go east. See you soon.”

  I can’t bear to let go. Hex bends over a bit to whisper in my ear. “Remember when I chased you on the agriplane the first day you showed up at Carus? I knew you were tough. Tougher than I am. You’re going to be okay. You can do this.” He clears his throat, but I still don’t let go. I’m going to ignore all social cues and glue myself to Hex for as long as he’ll let me. “I know I’m jokey all the time and I never say what I—” Hex’s voice breaks and something in me breaks too. He pushes the words out. “I’m so glad Cy got you back to us.”

  “Tell Vera I said good-bye,” I tell him, sniffling. “Tell her I love her and to stop picking on you so much.”

  Hex gives me one last squeeze and nods before abruptly walking away. He doesn’t want me to see his face. I’m glad of it. I couldn’t stand to see him cry.

  I jog over to Ana and an unconscious Vera in the backseat of the char. I lean over to embrace Ana, but she doesn’t hug me back.

  “Take care, okay?” I say gently. Her blue eyes turn up to me, swallow me whole.

  My heart hurts. Her words inch around in my skull, quiet and fearful.

  “Mine does too.”

  Take this. She pulls out a tiny glass figurine. It’s one of her irregular glass unicorns. My fingers clasp the cool and pointed glass. Poor little fellow. He’ll be lonesome.

  Forget the unicorn. I’m going to be the lonesome one. “Thank you, Ana. I love you.”

  She says nothing, just stares. As I walk away, I feel her ghostly fingers curl around my shoulders, a whisper of an embrace.

  Marka finds me as I walk to her char, and hugs me firmly. “Stay on the back roads, far away from the mag lanes. Hide the char during the day and travel at night. There will be plenty of places to hide in the Neia Deadlands. There’s enough food and fuel in the trunk to last you for the trip.”

  “Marka? Before I came down here, Dad’s holoprof said something about Wingfield. Do you know what that is?”

  “Wingfield?” She looks past me into the darkness. “Wingfield,” she mutters to herself.

  “What is it?”

  “Your father said he was born there.”

  I frown. Dad told us he was born in Minwi, but he never mentioned the town. I pinch the holo stud in my ear and Hex’s pre-loaded map pops up in a glowing green rectangle in front of my face. I touch the image to find Minwi and do a search. Wingfield doesn’t exist, just like countless other things about Dad he wanted us to believe. How he pretended to be an ordinary traveling doctor. Or how he cared for women when he was actually poisoning the children in their wombs with gene-altering meds. And now, he’s lied about my mother.

  I try
to imagine her. Frizzy hair. Long fingers, like Dyl’s. But her face . . . I can’t see it, no matter how I try. Marka’s warm hand lifts my chin, and she reaches to turn off my holo. I’ve been zoning out.

  “Zelia? What is it?” She noses the air around me. She knows I’m hiding something. It infuriates me that Dad can drive a wedge between me and Marka with just two damn words. Wingfield. Mother.

  I stare at Marka’s face. The only real mother I’ve ever known. And then I decide: I’ll figure out what I can. Until I have evidence, I’ve no room for any other parent in my heart but Marka. Dad’s left enough of a bitter void, and Marka is everything I’ve ever wanted.

  “It’s nothing.” I smile bravely and launch myself into her arms. “I’ll miss you, Marka,” I whisper. “So much.”

  “I’ll miss you too. It’s only twelve days. We’ll be together in Chicago soon.”

  I take her words as truth. I have to. Marka pulls out a handful of little silver buttons from her pocket and pours them into my hand. “Stick these on your char. It’s as close as we can get to a cloaking device.” I remember how Wilbert used these to camouflage his extra head during our trip to Argent. Caliga scoops them from my palm and starts applying them to the char. As Marka walks away, I stare hard at her retreating form, trying to imprint her in my memory forever.

  When Dyl walks up to me to say good-bye, Caliga pointedly turns away. Dyl crushes me so hard in a bear hug that I can’t breathe for several seconds. The cold edge of Dad’s ring hanging around her neck clinks against my black box pendant. A million thoughts go through my mind. My love for her, my bottomless worry, the tiny things I want to say, and the ones so big, they can’t be contained in syllables.

  We say nothing, because we don’t have to.

  • • •

  I SINK INTO THE DRIVER’S SEAT. THE door to the back of the building opens.

  Ahead of me, Hex’s and Marka’s chars ease out of the velvet darkness of the building. The cloaking buttons work well; the setting sun’s light bends over their chars and causes a strange halo of light around them. Once there’s a little distance between us, they’re far more difficult to spot.

  A few emergency magpods sit at the far corner of the building. The guards glance at the door, ready to investigate, but look away when no one seems to emerge. I drive slowly so our engine stays quiet. The rough street takes us along heaps of garbage and the ugly back sides of buildings.

  Within minutes, Marka’s and Hex’s chars are completely lost to our sight. Buildings become sparser and the true ground shows itself—tufts of stubborn grass growing on dirt poisoned by chemicals used on the soil decades ago. Caliga faces her window and curls up in her seat, collapsing into her own thoughts. Before long, she falls asleep.

  I am utterly alone.

  “Cy,” I say aloud. But of course he doesn’t answer.

  CHAPTER 6

  HEX’S HOLOMAP KEEPS ME FAR FROM THE small towns. Unfortunately, that means driving off-road, slowly across swaths of filthy and uninhabitable Deadlands. After six hours, I’m exhausted. I pull over next to a decrepit, feral farmhouse riddled with toxic vines and weeds.

  “Caliga.” I nudge her thin arm. She’s cold as ice.

  She mumbles, turning over to rub her eyes. “Where are we?”

  “Just past Des Moines. It’s been six hours.”

  “That’s as far as you could get?” Her tone is infused with irritation.

  Ungrateful piece of dirt, I want to say, but don’t. I reach into my satchel to grab a bottle of water and one of Vera’s traveling biscuits, which I cram into my mouth. It’s chewy and sweet. Caliga turns her nose up at the food. Fine. I don’t bother to ask how her leg is, and she doesn’t bother to tell me. When I offer her water, she drinks it greedily until the whole bottle is gone.

  I leave the char to stretch my legs, suppressing a yelp when a disfigured rat scuttles by my feet. I can smell the decay from the ground and the faint chemical signature that won’t go away for another century. The tepid wind rustles my hair and I bend my neck to stare at the agriplane’s bland underside.

  I am here, in the same sky.

  I will wait for you.

  Cy’s voice doesn’t come with the breeze. I sense it in my blood, where it pulses in my arteries, down to my fingertips. Cy’s voice is so much clearer and louder than when we were in Carus. I spin around, eyes wide open, but see nothing but the Deadlands. Miles of abandoned homes and the distant glow of Des Moines.

  I remain, fixed in memory

  Dead on a living sphere

  Too weak to rise, and you, too strong to fall

  The softest touch follows the words, right in the middle of my palm. It’s like he’s tracing the lines embedded there, showing me the way on my own map. I curl my hand closed, and the whispery sensation disintegrates. It’s like he’s right here. Except he’s not. If it’s a dream, it’s the closest thing to reality I’ve ever concocted in my lonely brain. I squeeze my eyes shut, daring his voice to come into my head again. Hoping.

  “Are you going to ask?” Caliga sits with her legs hanging out the open backseat. Sitting up must be a supreme effort, because she’s breathing fast. An unnatural flush covers her cheeks.

  “Ask what?” I say, unhappy at her intrusion.

  “The obvious. I mean, I can hear him too. Feel him. Creepy as hell.”

  I hate needing Caliga for info, but I force myself anyway. “Okay. Did he ever do this in Aureus?”

  “Yes,” Caliga admits. “Not at first, only in the last two months. He’d be thinking inside his head and broadcast it to everyone. How he missed you. How he hated us.” Her tone is mocking and I’d be more pissed, if I weren’t so relieved. It isn’t my imagination!

  “What else did he say?”

  Caliga shifts deeper into the backseat. “Not much. Blink told him we could hear everything. She got burned by Micah for that one.”

  “What, Micah punished you guys?”

  “Not me. I did what I was supposed to do. But everyone else? All the time. Micah was damn good at it too.” She says it like she almost admires his cruelty. “Anyway, after that, Cy would say things in fits and bursts, but later on, he just started reciting random stuff. Books he was reading, and poetry.”

  Poetry? Cy’s words jostle against a totally different memory. When Cy was in Carus with me, I showed him Dyl’s poetry book. I know those words—Cy’s words. They’re from a poem in Dyl’s book entitled “Luna,” by some hopeless, dead poet who fell in love with the moon. But why would he recite this, instead of calling for me?

  The answer is so obvious. He wants me to follow his voice, but he can’t say so outright. I know it. I run to the char and turn on the engine.

  “I thought we were stopping to sleep,” Caliga says. She tries to shut the door but isn’t strong enough to pull it closed. I huff in annoyance and shut it for her, like a chauffeur.

  “Why do you care? You were sleeping anyway.” I don’t need to tell Caliga what has to happen. I need to find Cy. He must be closer than ever before. I hit the gas and Des Moines grows smaller in the rearview mirror. When I hit a fluttering bat with my side mirror, it doesn’t slow me down.

  Caliga snickers. “I like it when you’re annoyed. You drive like a lunatic.”

  • • •

  DURING THE NEXT TWO DAYS, CY’S WORDS are crumbs leading me on a trail. Every phrase is a message. I change my direction slightly north or east, depending on the strength of his voice, but it’s not long before I realize where he’s leading me. Dubuque—a bustling city where Ilmo, Winmi, and Inky all converge on a single point on the map. It’s the only legitimate way to get to Chicago, which worries me. Dubuque will be smothered with law enforcement searching for illegals eager to switch State citizenship. I’ve no idea why Cy would lead me there.

  Caliga sleeps fitfully in the backseat, waking up less and less often to ea
t or drink. She mumbles through her dreams, and her breathing grows more rapid by the hour. I stop to check on her a few times, but she swats my hands away. When dawn hits on the second day of our drive, I look for a safe place to park, since the cloaking buttons don’t conceal the char well during the day.

  In the shadow of an abandoned factory, I turn off the engine and open the back door. Caliga lies there like a puddle, struggling to focus on me when I examine her. This time, she’s too weak to push me away. I have trouble finding her pulse and when I do, it’s a faint flutter. After a few tugs, her bandage falls off with a wet plop and the smell of her infected leg rises like a miasma. It’s worse than Satan’s outhouse.

  “Ugh, ew!” I pinch my nose quickly. Her wound is puffy and purple. It didn’t even look this bad when she arrived at Carus. “Geez, why didn’t you say anything?” I chide her, scrambling for my medical supplies.

  Caliga’s scarred eyes barely stay open. “Dunno. I think . . . I got hurt again when we were attacked.”

  “Stupid,” I mutter, rifling through the medical kit. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.” I’m not sure if I’m talking to myself or to Caliga. I was supposed to take care of her. Marka’s disappointed face pops into my head and I wither inside. I pull out some flat pouches filled with liquid antibiotics and pause at the open char door. Inside, Caliga has drifted back into unconsciousness.

  I could leave her here and just go. She’s already a skip and a stumble away from death. After what she’d done to Dyl, it would be a just ending. Lying askew on the backseat, her body is painfully thin and her white hair splays in oily strands. She looks like something that got tossed into the garbage yesterday.

  “Damn it.”

  The universe owes me a million karma points for this. I clean off her belly and peel the backing away from an antibiotic pouch and slap it on, giving it a yank so the swath of microneedles sink into her skin. I count the remaining pouches—three. Caliga’s infection has definitely spread to her blood. She’ll need at least a week’s worth, and I only have enough to last one more day. How am I going to get to Chicago if she’s this sick? Without more supplies?