This Cruel Design

by Emily Suvada

  “Drive,” I whisper to Cole, my voice shaking.

  He snaps his head to me, confused.

  “Drive,” I urge him. “We need to go now!”

  His eyes flash to black, and he slams the accelerator. The jeep surges forward, tires screeching, but the weight of the crowd keeps us held in place. Cole slams the horn, flooring the engine, and the throng of people starts to part. Some tumble down beneath us, but the bloodied man is still beside us, shaking now, his body rigid.

  “Get down!” I scream as the man’s head flies back, but it’s already too late.

  CHAPTER 28

  THE MAN THROWS BACK HIS head, and it happens in an instant. A shockwave against my door, crumpling the metal. My window shatters, pelting me with a million squares of broken glass. Hot, choking air rushes in with a crack that throws me sideways against Cole, and a spray of scalding mist fills the jeep. Cole swerves wildly, his eyes black, staring behind us, but all that’s left of the man is a crater cut into the rock. The crowd is scattered, bloody, reeling. Cole shouts something at me, but his voice is lost in the whining aftermath of the blast.

  I cover my ears, curling into a ball as another crack sounds behind us. Another blower, their cells not even close to detonation. Instead of a plume of mist, they form a spray of foam and flesh, pieces of their body flying through the air.

  “Drive!” I scream, huddling into the seat. “I’m sorry! Please, just get us out of here!”

  The engine roars, struggling against the tide of people, the jeep bouncing and rocking as they fall beneath the wheels. I scrunch my eyes shut, my hands pressed over my ears as Cole floors the accelerator, plowing through the crowd. The jeep screams along the tunnel, smashing through the metal barricades at the entrance, and fishtails onto the road outside. The pigeons form a blanket of swirling lights above us, their cries like a hailstorm. Cole is a statue of fury beside me, the muscles in his forearms rigid.

  My good hand is shaking, misted with drops of scarlet from the cloud. A hundred fine scratches from the broken glass are traced across my skin like paper cuts, beading blood, but I can barely feel them over the pounding in my chest. We screech down the road, veering off it to follow the trail that cuts through the razorgrass border, heading out of the city.

  “Are you hurt?” Cole asks, his teeth gritted.

  “I’m okay.” I look down at my new hand, trying to pull my fingers into a fist. They twitch, curling slightly. My tech is in emergency mode, working hard to knit the nerves back together. But I don’t want these nerves—I want my real hand back. I force my eyes away from it, looking back over my shoulder at the city.

  There’s a crowd of people who’ve been infected by the flock grouped near the entrance to the tunnels. They must be coming here for help, trying to get into the city, but Regina is keeping them away. There are hundreds of them—desperate and frightened. Regina will give them the vaccine, but that won’t save the people who already blew in the tunnel.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have stopped you from driving through that crowd. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  Cole doesn’t reply. The wall of silence is back around him, bricked higher than I’ve felt it so far. Part of me wants to kick it down and force him to talk to me, but he’s covered in blood, fine cuts from the shattered glass seeping streaks across his arms. We both have the patched vaccine, so we shouldn’t be at risk of infection from the foam streaked across our skin, but the scent is stifling, turning my stomach. We need to clean off, to regroup, and to figure out what we’re going to do. I draw in a long, slow breath, leaning back into my seat.

  We drive far enough for the cries of the pigeons to fade to a distant roar, the road winding through barren desert valleys and steep, rocky hills. Signs posted along the highway advertise residential developments that must have been half-finished when the plague broke out. This whole corner of Nevada has been dominated by the genehackers for decades, but most of them don’t seem like the kind of people to buy into packaged land developments. The advertisements are faded and torn, showing illustrations of pretty gated communities. Bubbles of normalcy in the middle of Regina’s wild kingdom.

  Cole pulls us off the road, heading for one of the developments. “I told the others to come and find us here. Lee and Anna are picking up the Comox. I can’t get through to Mato. Let’s find somewhere to regroup and figure out what to do.”

  We wind down a concrete road into one of the half-finished suburbs. Dozens of houses in various stages of completion line a grid of cul-de-sacs, the bare dirt of their yards still stacked with building equipment and piles of gravel and sand. Some of the houses look finished, with solars glinting on their roofs, and a creek bed winds through the rocky scrub behind them, shining in the afternoon sun. Power, shelter, water. It’s a good place to stop.

  We roll along the road, past faded FOR SALE signs in front of the houses. The walls are all intact, the doors closed. Nobody’s blown inside, but Entropia’s people have probably been through here and ransacked them. Cole parks the jeep outside a finished-looking house and reaches into the back to grab some fresh clothes and a towel. He climbs out, pausing to uncoil a gold chain from his shirt. It’s not his, but it’s plastered to the fabric of his shirt with dried foam and shreds of flesh. There’s a heart-shaped pendant strung on it, the kind that clasps together to hold a photograph, but it’s hanging open, empty, the inside of the heart smeared with blood. It must have come through the broken window from one of the blowers in the tunnels.

  Cole stares at it silently, then clenches it in his fist. “I’m going to wash off in the creek,” he says.

  He turns, heading for a path between the houses.

  “Wait, I’m coming with you,” I say. I struggle to sling my backpack over my shoulder with my good arm and follow him out, jogging to keep up with him. The path grows narrow, following a series of switchbacks that take us down to the creek. The grass is thicker down here, a shock of green after days of endless desert. The creek looks shallow enough to ford, but deep and slow-running enough to bathe in.

  “I don’t know if I feel like talking right now,” Cole says, striding to the water. He drops the clothes on the ground and sets the necklace down beside them, kneeling to unzip his pack and pull out a towel. He’s wearing his silence like armor. I dump my backpack beside him and drop into a crouch on the water’s edge to untie my bootlaces.

  “That was horrible in the tunnel,” I say.

  He doesn’t reply.

  “I’m sorry I tried to stop you driving through those people.”

  He pinches the bridge of his nose, sighing, then unbuckles his shoulder holster. He drops it to the ground and hauls his tank top off, wincing as it rolls over the bloodied skin on his shoulders and arms. He tosses it down, still avoiding my eyes, and draws in a slow breath.

  “I didn’t want to do that,” he says. “To drive over those people. I was doing my job. I kill people—that’s part of being a black-out soldier.” He steps out of his foam-streaked cargo pants and strides into the water. “But it’s not trivial, taking a life. It’s something I hate doing.”

  I tug off my boots. “I know that.”

  He just shakes his head. I shrug out of my jacket and follow him into the water in my T-shirt and leggings, holding my panel arm up above the surface. The water is cold, but it feels good against my bruised skin.

  “Cole, what is all this about? You’ve been different since I killed that soldier in the lab. What’s going on?”

  He bends over to dunk his head in the water, scraping at his scalp, then stands, letting out another sigh. “I’ve been trained by Cartaxus since I was a child,” he says. “We all were. But they should never have trained Jun Bei.”

  A flutter of nerves kicks inside me at the mention of her name, the tightness in his voice as he says it. “Why not?”

  He swipes a handful of water over his face, rubbing his eyes. “She was smarter than all of us—smarter than even Lachlan knew, and when they
started training us, she blended what she was learning about violence with what she learned about coding, and it wasn’t a good mix.”

  I splash water over the dried foam on my chest. “You’re saying she should have been left weak? Untrained?”

  “No,” he says, frustrated, “I’m saying that it’s dangerous to intellectualize murder—to make a science of it. That scythe in your arm is a nuclear weapon, and it’s Cartaxus’s fault that it exists, but it shouldn’t. It’s too dangerous.”

  “I know that—”

  “But you don’t.” He closes his eyes. “Anna and Lee and I are black-out soldiers. We’ve been trained to kill on instinct—it’s what we chose. But Jun Bei could have turned her mind to anything. She could have changed the world, and so can you, but instead you’re doing what she did. You’re becoming a weapon.”

  “Cole, I didn’t want to kill the pilots, or the soldier. I took no joy in it—”

  He shakes his head. “That’s how it starts. It’s never good the first time. But then you did it again, and now you’re talking about going after Cartaxus. Do you have any idea how many people we’d have to kill to take them down?”

  “But the alternative is letting more people die!”

  “That’s the thing,” he says, turning to me. “That’s always the alternative. It’s how these people stay in control. Nobody ever goes into battle thinking that they’re going to be the annihilating force. It’s always justified one way or another.”

  I step deeper into the water, crossing my arms over my chest. “Cole, I have to do whatever it takes to stop Cartaxus if they’re going to kill everyone on the surface.”

  “No, you don’t,” he says. “Dammit, Cat, you have to do better than that. You’re smarter than they are, and it’s killing me to see you using your mind like this. If you can’t find a way to stop this without more bloodshed, then we may as well give up, because Lachlan is right.”

  I stop, staring at him. He steps through the water. “You’re supposed to be better than me,” he says. “You can’t let yourself turn into a weapon. I’m past saving, I know that, but you don’t have to be.”

  My heart twists. “You’re not past saving.”

  “I don’t need comforting.” He turns away. “I know what I am.”

  “Cole, look at me,” I say. “I know who you are too. You’re a good person.”

  “A good person?” He spins around. “Cat, I’m a goddamn black-out agent. You can’t be a good person and do the things I do, or the things you’re planning to do. What do you need to hear to make you understand that this is something that will change you? You want me to say that I could have killed every person in that tunnel? That part of me wanted to just because they were slowing us down?”

  My breath catches. “Cole . . .”

  He strides closer in the water, his eyes blazing. “Do you need me to tell you how many people I’ve killed for Cartaxus? That I have dreams about walls of people between us that I have to kill to get to you, and that I like them? Do you need to hear that it’s satisfying to me now? That I’ve turned into a monster? That I’m a goddamn monster? Is that what you need to hear?”

  “You’re not a monster,” I whisper.

  “You don’t know what I am,” he snaps. “You don’t know what they did to me after you left—what they made me do. I’m not going to let this happen to you, too.”

  “You’re not a monster.”

  He heaves in a breath, head tilted back, fists tight by his sides.

  Tears prick at my eyes. “You’re not a monster,” I say again, stepping to him, pressing my hands to his chest. His body is like rock—tense and unyielding, resisting me as I slide one hand up behind his neck, pressing my face to his shoulder, breathing in the scent of his blood, of the water, of him.

  Then his arms slide around me, and his lips find mine, crushing me to him as he kisses me. The feeling of his body against me is a thunderclap of relief, and I sink with him, my legs wrapping around his waist. Every nerve in my body is aflame. I kiss his lips, his cheek, his neck. There is nothing inside me but hunger for him. For the sound of his breathing, for the way our bodies fit neatly together.

  This is the only thing that’s felt right in days.

  “I love you,” he says, his arm locked around the small of my back. “I love you, Cat. I don’t want to lose you to this.”

  I coil my fingers in his hair, falling with him into the water, kissing him hard. He breaks off the kiss and pushes me back toward the shore, shifting his weight on top of me. His lips drop to my neck again, his stubble scraping fireworks across my skin. I rest my back against the shore and tilt my head, the heat inside me sharpening into a pulsing, aching need. I want him. I want all of him, and the wildness of my desire feels like a creature waking inside me, its power so overwhelming that it takes my breath away.

  His hands move down my body, tugging at the waistband of my leggings.

  “What about the others?” I whisper.

  “They’re miles away.” He presses a kiss to the corner of my jaw.

  I grab his hair and pull him up. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.” His eyes are glazed, roaming over my body, rising slowly to my face. “I love you, Cat,” he whispers again.

  Something breaks inside me.

  I don’t know who I am, or who my memories belong to, but I know that I love him. One single truth. One constant in a storm of shifting identity. This isn’t an echo of Jun Bei’s feelings, and it isn’t weakness or need. This is real, and it’s mine. The fact that I love Cole might be the only thing I truly know about myself.

  “I love you,” I whisper back, pressing a kiss to his lips. I reach my hand up to touch the scars on his chest, but they’re not there. I draw back, blinking. His skin is suddenly pale, a circle of black ports set over his heart. My gaze rises to his face, and the water seems to freeze.

  I’m not looking at Cole anymore.

  His soft lips are gone, replaced with a gleaming black mask over alabaster skin. Mato stares down at me, holding me locked in place. Deep down, I know this can’t be real, but that doesn’t stop my muscles from seizing. I blink again, and Mato’s face flashes out of sight. Cole’s ice-blue eyes return, the curving leylines framing his face, the soft curls of his hair.

  “Are you okay?” he asks.

  I just stare at him, forcing myself to breathe. Maybe my VR tech is glitching again. “I—I’m fine,” I say.

  He drops his mouth back to my neck slowly, kissing a line from the hollow at the center of my collarbone all the way up to my hair.

  “Mine,” he says into my ear, his voice hitting me like a shard of ice. Mato’s voice. His lips on mine, his slender hands against my face. I can feel his breath on my skin, the coldness of the mask against me, the flickering of his wireless field pressing into mine. I close my eyes, willing him away, but when I open them, he’s still there.

  I can see the seams of his coding mask, the light playing on his hair. He leans down to kiss me, and something tears in my mind, like a stitch ripped from a wound.

  This isn’t just a glitch.

  I shove Cole aside, scrambling from the creek, stumbling back in the water. My pulse is pounding, my vision wavering. Cole’s face has returned, his features slack with confusion. “Cat, what did I do? Are you okay?”

  I just shake my head, swallowing against the nausea rising in me. Images are rushing back to me—indistinct and blurred.

  But they’re real. That wasn’t a VR glitch of Mato I was seeing.

  It was a memory.

  CHAPTER 29

  I STAGGER OUT OF THE water and spin around, my hand clutched to my face. My heart is pounding, my skin ablaze with the feeling of Cole’s lips, his hands, the heat of his body. I can still smell him on me, feel his stubble grazing my neck, but when I blink, all I see is Mato.

  The memory of his eyes meeting mine through the dark glass of his coding mask sends a flare of horror through me.

  They were together—Jun
Bei and Mato. I don’t know if it was in person or just while they were meeting in VR, but I know it’s true. I can feel it—a storm whipping up the ocean in my mind. I’ve spent the last few days with him, trusting him, working with him.

  I can’t believe he didn’t tell me.

  “Cat, what did I do?”

  I spin around as Cole strides from the creek. He stares at me, water streaming down his face, clear rivulets flowing over the pale scars on his chest. He’s trembling. I swallow hard, but I don’t trust my voice, and I don’t know what to tell him.

  Finding out the truth about this would devastate him.

  Whatever happened, it’s clear that Jun Bei betrayed Cole—whether she was with Mato in VR while she was at the lab, or if she was with him at Entropia after she ran away. The ocean inside me is still raging, and I don’t know how much longer I can hold it back. I’m exhausted, I’m shaking, and the bridge I’ve been trying to build between myself and Jun Bei is crumbling under the memory of Mato’s smile. I feel like I’m standing on the edge of a cliff.

  I need space, and silence, and time to clear my head.

  “It wasn’t you,” I manage to say. “It’s nothing you did.”

  Cole grabs his towel. His wet hair is slicked to his neck, coiled and glistening, sending droplets flying across the rocks as he wraps the towel around his waist. “What happened, then?”

  “Nothing.” I force my eyes away from his, crouching on the shore to rip open my backpack. There’s a towel shoved into one of the pockets, a few ration bars, a packet of wipes, and a handful of reader wires, but the only clothes I have left are torn black leggings and a navy T-shirt with a squid on the front. I’m not even clean. There’s still foam streaked across my neck and face. I need to wash it off, but I can’t stay near Cole or I’m going to fall apart. I pull my tank top off awkwardly and tug the fresh shirt on over my wet bra. My healing tech has already closed the fine scratches on my shoulders and arms, but they still tingle with pain as the dry fabric scrapes over them.