After he was gone, Nita let out the breath she’d been holding. Her lungs felt scorched, like she’d been trapping fire. Her whole body shook with fear. The shaking got worse until Nita realized that she wasn’t just shaking, she was sobbing. Her nose began to stuff up, and great gasping breaths caused heavy tears to cut their way down her face.
She tried to tell her body that it was having a delayed reaction, that the danger was over now, but it wouldn’t listen to her. Wrapping her arms around her legs, she pillowed her face in her knees and sobbed until her shirt was damp.
It wasn’t just that she’d been kidnapped, or that one of her captors was a pain-eating psychopath.
It was the fact that they knew what Nita was—knew that she could control her body, and were expecting it. Had clearly targeted her for it.
There were only three people in the whole world who knew what Nita could do—Nita, who certainly hadn’t sold herself. Her father, who would never, ever betray Nita this way.
And her mother. Who’d promised Nita a punishment like nothing else last time Nita disobeyed her.
Nita felt a wretched sob curl out of her body. There was no other possibility.
Nita’s mother had sold her to the black market.
Ten
NITA WASN’T SURE how long she cried. It felt like hours, but it could have been minutes. There was nothing to mark the passage of time, and even if there had been, Nita wasn’t sure she was in a good enough state of mind to notice it.
How could her mother have done this to her? Sure, Nita had done something wrong. Yes, it had probably cost them millions. But . . . it was just money. It wasn’t like they were broke. They had nearly a dozen bank accounts Nita knew about, and she was sure there were some she didn’t. They’d been laundering and hiding money from their black market sales for years. They were not doing poorly.
Plus, her father had a real person job too, with a salary and tax forms and everything. Their finances were not in trouble.
What had her mother been thinking—that Nita would spend several terrifying days in captivity, learn her lesson, and then her mother would come rescue her?
Nita clung to that faint hope. It was exactly the type of punishment her mother would devise.
“Are you okay?” A small voice came from the other side of the room.
Nita turned away from Mirella. “I don’t want to talk right now.”
“I’m sorry. I should’ve warned you about the zannie.”
“It’s fine.”
“Don’t worry. Señora Reyes keeps a tight leash on him. Can’t let monsters like that roam free.”
Nita turned around to give Mirella a disgusted look. “Is that why we’re in cages? Because monsters like us can’t be trusted to roam free too?”
“No.” Mirella rolled her eyes. “We’re here because we’re for sale. That’s different.”
For sale.
That’s right, Nita was the one in the cage now. The one waiting for a sadistic monster to cut her ear off or tie her up to pull out her eye. Now it would be her blood spattering the walls, her screams waking people in the morning. The echo of Fabricio’s pleas for help whispered in the back of her mind, and she wondered who she’d be begging for mercy.
Somehow, she doubted she’d get it.
Nita squeezed her eyes shut and curled up on her cot. All she wanted was to be alone with her thoughts. Mirella took the hint this time and let Nita lie down in silence.
She wondered what piece of her they’d cut off first.
Stop. Now. This isn’t helping.
You want me to just ignore it?
A pause. You’re very good at that.
She was indeed.
Nita imagined her dissection room. Her smooth metal dissection table was in front of her. There was a body on it—a zannie, like the one she’d dissected a few days ago, like Kovit. Nita approached and began procedures. She imagined the feel of the spoon in her hand as she scooped the eyes out. She imagined the texture of the heart through her gloved hands, placing it gently in a jar. Slowly, piece by piece, she went through the full dissection until there was nothing left unpackaged or unlabeled. Not even bones.
There. That felt better. She felt calmer, more in control now, ready to face the world.
Nita took a deep breath. She didn’t know how far her mother would take the punishment, so she couldn’t rely on her for rescue. Nita was going to have to break out on her own. Her mother respected that kind of thing. Maybe it would be enough to be forgiven.
And then you have a way out in case your mother never comes to save you, a small voice whispered in her head.
Shut up, Nita told it. My father won’t let that happen. He’d never have agreed to this. If Mom doesn’t come for me, he will.
“Are you feeling better now?” Mirella asked.
Nita looked over at the other girl. Lit by the fluorescent lights, her skin looked almost cracked, perhaps from the dryness of the constant air conditioning.
“Fine.”
Mirella smiled softly. “No one’s fine.”
Nita sighed, leaning her chin on her hand. If the other girl wasn’t going to shut up, Nita might as well try and get information. “So, do you know what time it is?”
“Nope.” She shrugged. “Fluorescents are on all the time. Food is delivered whenever. I’ve never really noticed a pattern.”
Great. Nita wondered how long it had been since she was taken. Had her father heard yet?
“So, Nita.” Mirella gave her a sideways glance that seemed more appropriate for a high school drama. “Your Spanish is . . . interesting. Where are you from?”
Nita shrugged. “My dad’s from Chile, but I lived in Madrid until I was six. I’m from . . .” Where was she from? She was born in Spain, raised in the States, Germany, Vietnam, and now Peru. She didn’t really feel a pull to any of those places, though. Well, a bit to Chicago because her dad was there. “I don’t know.”
“Uhhh. Okay . . .” Mirella stared and then tactfully changed the subject. “So, I saw you heal. That’s pretty cool.”
“Not really.” Nita eyed the pink-gray girl. She didn’t really want to talk about herself with a stranger. “So, what’s your story?”
Mirella shrugged. “You ever hear of the pink dolphins in the Amazon River?”
“Yeah. I’ve heard. Scientists still haven’t figured out why they’re pink. I read one thing that said they were pink because of the minerals in the water, and another that said it was because of how close their blood vessels are to the surface of their skin.” She’d actually wanted to go to the Amazon River and see the pink dolphins. She’d asked her mother to go for her birthday, but her mother had refused. No reason given.
“Actually, they’re like flamingoes. They eat certain foods, and they get pink. Different foods, and they’re gray.” Mirella spoke slowly, as though to a toddler. Nita wanted to slap her. “But I was referring to the legend.”
“No.”
“Well, there’s an old legend among the people who live along the Amazon River.” Mirella settled herself, crossing her legs and tilting her head high. “A pale man in a hat will walk into a village, and try and sweet-talk the girls. If he manages to lure one away, he takes her back to the river to be his bride, and drowns her beneath the water.”
Nita frowned. “Isn’t that mermaids? The drowning?”
“It’s both,” Mirella admitted grudgingly. “The more popular version of the legend says the dolphins just get women pregnant and then leave the next morning. But I like the drowning one better.”
Nita had to admit she did too.
Mirella resettled herself. “But if you take the pale man’s hat off, he reveals his true form—a dolphin. Then he flees into the river and escapes to hunt for brides in another town. They say his shoes turn into catfish, and his belt is an eel and . . . Well, they say a lot of things.”
Nita blinked. “So you can turn into a dolphin?”
“Of course not,” Mirella snorted.
>
“Then where is this going?”
Mirella crossed her arms and scowled. “I was trying to give you background.”
“Yeah, but that’s just a legend.” Nita tried to keep the irritation out of her voice. “I was interested in the facts. What are you?”
“I’m a human,” she snapped. “Just like you.”
Nita sighed.
Mirella continued to pout. “My pigmentation is like dolphins, though. I change color depending on my diet. Those stories were based on legends about my people.”
Nita leaned against the glass wall of her prison. “Can you do anything else besides change color by eating?”
“No.”
“No other adaptations?” Nita wasn’t holding out hope for it. Skin color changed because of ingestion of carotenoids in food, and while prominent examples included flamingos, humans, especially babies, could also do this to some extent. She’d read about babies that turned yellow-orange from eating too many carrots, and the mothers always seemed to think it was jaundice. When Nita was much younger, she’d tried to change her own coloring, but found it was more complicated than she initially thought, especially since she already had a lot of melanin naturally in her skin tone.
She hadn’t tried since, though she thought she might be able to manage it now. When she was twelve, it had seemed cool to be an artificial chameleon, but she just didn’t really see the point of it now, especially since it wouldn’t be terribly useful.
“Nothing I know of.”
“That’s useless.”
Mirella glared. “Can you do anything besides heal yourself?”
Nita paused. Her mother could enhance her own muscles, give herself a strength that was almost superhuman. Could Nita?
How would she go about doing that? Could she cause muscles to build faster by artificially training them? And she wanted to speed up the process more, so maybe she could synthesize the effects of steroids. Her head began to pound as she worked—not hurt, because she had no pain receptors on, but pound, like there was a loud bass music only she could hear. It warned her that she’d been overstretching herself today, that she still had traces of a sedative in her blood. But Nita kept pushing, until she could barely lift her arm for all the muscles.
Then, stumbling to her feet, she swung with all her might at the glass wall.
It reverberated, but didn’t break.
Three of Nita’s fingers did.
Nita fell backwards and landed on her butt. Hard. She looked at her fingers, snapped, and her wrist, with torn tendons needing repair. If she could feel pain, that would probably have hurt a lot. Well, that was an unforeseen advantage to Kovit’s presence.
Sighing, she used her other hand to set her broken fingers in the right positions.
Maybe she should have learned how to throw a punch first.
She groaned and leaned back against the glass and cut off the steroid synthesis. Then she relaxed her muscles, let the chemicals reabsorb. Her skin rippled as her artificial muscles faded back into her body. Clearly, this wasn’t the answer.
Mirella stared at Nita with wide eyes. Nita ignored her.
Nita closed her eyes for a while, breathing. God, she felt awful. She shouldn’t have tried that. She might not be able to feel pain, but she could still feel exhaustion, nausea, and the sensation of her bones grinding against each other in her broken fingers.
She groaned. She didn’t even have the energy to mend her fingers.
There was a clunk as the door to the facility opened, followed by the click of footsteps on concrete. Mirella shrank under the blankets again.
Nita cracked her eyes open as Kovit came down the hall. He was carrying two plates of food and had bottles of water tucked under his arms.
He went to Mirella’s cage first and slid the plate of food through the box in front of it. It looked pink—was he feeding her shrimp? That seemed decadent. But they were probably trying to keep the pink pigmentation to her skin for sales purposes. That was the sort of thing Nita’s mother would have done.
Then he moved to Nita’s cage. He placed the tray in the box and closed the door, which triggered a lever that opened a door on Nita’s side. It was a clever little mechanism, so both doors could never be opened at the same time.
Nita reached in and pulled the tray out. Then she realized it wasn’t a tray, but a large piece of bread that was hard enough to act like a tray. On top of the bread were a few spoonfuls of beans, some shredded chicken, and rice. There was no plate or cutlery.
The tray snapped closed, and Nita pulled her food close.
“Thank you.” The words were automatic, out before she could catch them.
Kovit blinked, as though surprised she’d said anything.
Nita cleared her throat, then continued, “I was wondering—there’s a shower mechanism here. How do I turn it on?”
She regretted the words almost as soon as they were out of her mouth, because Kovit’s eyes focused on her in a not-entirely-sane way. His expression said he found something both hilariously funny and sort of sad at the same time. Nita had a feeling it was her. She didn’t like it.
But she really, really wanted a shower.
Finally, he responded, flicking a hand as though to dust her question off. “You can’t.”
“Oh.”
He continued to watch her, head tilted slightly to the side, expression unreadable. “But I can.”
Nita tilted her head to one side.
“I’ll be back.”
Kovit turned and left, and Nita watched him go.
After a moment, Mirella, still wrapped in her blanket, leaned forward and whispered, “You talked to him!”
“Yeah. You haven’t?”
“Of course not.” Mirella swallowed, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment before whispering, “He’s a monster.”
Nita wasn’t going to contradict that. “I wanted a shower. I won’t get one if I don’t say anything.”
Mirella picked up her food and began nibbling it. “You’re mad.”
“Possibly.”
Ten minutes later, Kovit returned. He had a towel in his hands, as well as a folded pair of sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt. Nita sat up in the cot, silent with surprise as he dropped them into her food box and slid them through.
“I’ll turn it on in two minutes, and then off ten minutes later.”
He turned to leave, and Nita called out, “Thank you.”
He paused before rounding the corner and looked up at her with those dark, slightly crazy eyes. And smiled.
It was not a nice smile.
Nita matched it with her own smile, thinking of the zannie on her dissection table. She imagined sliding the scalpel through his flesh, how there would be resistance, and then it would come easy once it had parted. Like the surface tension of water.
Kovit laughed, a more genuine, less harsh sound than she’d expected. Then he gave her a crooked grin that, while still ever so slightly crazy, didn’t seem to have any menace in it.
“You’re welcome.”
Eleven
NITA WANTED TO take a long, leisurely shower. But the water was ice-cold and, combined with the constant air conditioning, made for an unbearable situation. She hopped in and out of the water for a while, before biting the bullet and just showering cold.
Shivering, she dried off and put on her new clothes. But she was still cold, so she wrapped the towel around her hair and curled up in her blankets. She wished they’d turn the air conditioning off.
Nita almost forgot about the wound Kovit gave her until it started trickling blood on her cot. She examined it. It was about three inches by two inches in size, but not deep at all. Really, it was just the skin peeled off. Nita almost admired how expertly it had been done. It took a lot of skill to skin a moving, struggling person so cleanly. Kovit must have had a lot of practice.
That was not a thought Nita wanted to pursue.
Shuddering, she lowered her arm, careful of the wound. On a normal pers
on, an injury like that would take several months to heal fully. Whether it would scar or not depended on the person. If Nita focused on it, she thought she could probably have it cleared up in another day or so. She’d make sure it didn’t scar.
She settled herself on her bed, careful of her broken fingers, bleeding arm, and injured wrist. She couldn’t feel pain now, so there was a danger she’d damage them by rolling over in her sleep. She briefly considered turning her pain receptors back on to avoid further accidental damage, but discarded the thought before it had even fully formed.
First, turning them on would hurt. Nita had only turned them off once before in her life, when she’d been in a car accident and sliced her arm open. But turning those receptors back on had been the most painful thing she’d ever done in her life. It was like her body had completely rediscovered pain and had to make sure every pathway was working.
She’d never felt pain like that before or since. She wasn’t eager to repeat it.
That led her to the second reason. There was a zannie in the building. As long as Kovit was here, it was in Nita’s best interests to keep all pain functions off. If she kept them off, she hoped he’d be less tempted to torture her.
For a moment, her mind flashed to the anxious expression on his face when her pain receptors clicked off. Why anxious? Anger or frustration, Nita could understand, but anxiety? She felt like she was missing something.
Well, she probably wasn’t going to figure it out now, sick, injured, and head muzzy with exhaustion.
Nita let her eyes drift closed, blanket and towel wrapped around her, and slept.
She woke up sometime later. There was food waiting for her, bread and beans and chicken, like last time. Nita nibbled on it. Across from her, Mirella dozed.
Nita sighed, leaning back and watching the younger girl, glad she was asleep. Mirella annoyed Nita—she seemed to represent everything about people that Nita found annoying. Bratty, whiny, and helpless. Of all the people in the world Nita could have been stuck in a cage with, why did it have to be a snotty sixteen-year-old?
Not Even Bones Page 7