This Mortal Coil

by Emily Suvada

  “You had one, didn’t you?” My voice wavers. “There was a vaccine, but it was fragile.”

  He nods. “Your father developed one in the first months of the outbreak, but the virus evolved too quickly. The code was useless within weeks.”

  The thought makes me sway. Fragile code. We had it, but nature swept right past it.

  Nature laughed at us.

  “That’s why Cartaxus won’t hold back the vaccine,” Cole says. “They’ll give it to as many people as they can. They’ll broadcast it day and night to make sure we crush the virus. They don’t care about nonstandard tech, not anymore. They only care about the fact that if we take too long to decrypt it, we could lose the vaccine. We couldn’t have written it without your father, and now . . .”

  “Now he’s gone.”

  The full weight of it hits me. The last vaccine was useless within weeks, and Cole said this one might take six months to decrypt. If we wait that long, the virus will evolve, until there’s a chance the code won’t even work anymore. The vaccine could be useless, and without my father, it could take years to write another one.

  By that time, everyone on the surface could be dead.

  “You said your father left a plan for us,” Cole says, leaning forward. The light from the cabin catches on the ridges on his chest, but I still can’t make out the pattern. “All he left was the ghost memo. No instructions, nothing. He must have been sure that you could figure it out on your own.”

  “I know.” I sink into the water. “But how am I supposed to do that?”

  “I thought you were an Agatta.”

  “Very funny.” I roll my eyes, but Cole’s right—my father left this to me because I’m his daughter, and because I knew him better than anyone. There has to be something I’m missing. Some clue, some instructions he’s hidden so Cartaxus won’t find them, but I will. Something he knew I’d pick up on.

  Cole scratches at his bandage, twisting his body into the light spilling from the cabin. The ridges on his chest fall into sharp relief, and I stand up in the shallows, covering my mouth.

  “What the hell?”

  Cole’s entire chest, from his navel to his collarbone, is completely covered with scars. Lines of puckered skin stretch up and down, from one side to the other, crisscrossing his body like a human circuit board.

  “What happened to you?” I step out of the water. “Why didn’t they heal your scars?”

  He looks down and runs a hand over his chest as though he’s forgotten they were there. “They could have, but I keep them as a reminder.”

  “A reminder of what?”

  “Of what they did to me. I’m a black-out agent. Do you know what that means?”

  I shake my head. I’ve heard the term whispered on the Skies networks—reports of half-machine soldiers given superhuman skills. I thought it was just another rumor, but maybe it wasn’t. Black-out agent. The words bring up a flash of Cole’s midnight eyes, of him racing out of his jeep with inhuman speed. The way he threw himself over me, immune to the pain of his wounds.

  How he said he’d been programmed to protect me.

  Cole extends his arm, showing me the full stripe of his panel. Three leylines trace their way up his arm from the glowing cobalt light. They look like tattoos, but they’re not. They’re micrometer-thick tubes, the width of a single layer of human cells, lying flush with his skin. Most gentech nanites are transported from your panel through the cabling inside your body to make their way to where they’re supposed to run. Your muscles, your eyes, your stomach. The nanites could just drift through your cells, but the cables act like a railway system, transporting them instantly.

  Leylines are for dangerous code. Some nanites can’t be trusted to play nicely with the rest of your tech. The black lines streaking up Cole’s arms might be carrying toxic nanites, or experimental tech pushing the limits of what the human body can take.

  He turns his arm until his panel faces up. The glow lights up the scars across his chest. “Being a black-out agent means Cartaxus has given me tech that’s above my security clearance. I don’t have access to my panel, and I can’t remember most of my training. They wiped it, leaving behind just enough for me to act on it instinctively. The only thing I was allowed to keep were these scars, so I did.”

  My eyes widen. It’s hard to take in the horror of what he’s saying, especially when he talks so easily about being sliced open. I can’t imagine the pain he must have suffered, but I can read the story of misery etched into his skin. A testament to Cartaxus’s cruelty. A record of the military tech he’s not even allowed to know he’s carrying.

  Cole gets to his feet. “Sometimes I don’t even know what’s inside me until it kicks in, like the protection protocol. Or the jeep. The moment my hands touched the wheel, I—”

  “Wait.” I cut him off. “What did you just say?”

  “About the jeep?”

  “No, before that.”

  “Sometimes I don’t know what’s inside me until it kicks in?”

  My heart stills. Suddenly it all makes sense. Staring at the scars on Cole’s chest, I can finally see what my father has been trying to show me. It’s so utterly, painfully simple. He sent me instructions to unlock the vaccine, but they aren’t in the ghost memo at all.

  They’re standing right in front of me, hiding in plain sight, like the sonnet in the pigeons.

  They’re inside Cole.

  CHAPTER 8

  “I NEED MY GENKIT,” I say, splashing out of the water.

  Seeing Cole’s scars and hearing the story behind them is the scientific equivalent of waving a flag in front of a bull. My father must have known I’d be itching to jack Cole into my genkit and see what’s inside him, and that has to be what he wants me to do. The one thing my father knew I could do better than anyone else is hack panels. I did it to my own panel when I was fifteen, nearly killing myself in the process.

  Now I just need to do it to Cole. He’s already carrying the encrypted code for the vaccine. What if he’s also carrying the key?

  “Where are you going?” Cole holds out the towel he brought down for me.

  I spin back to him. “Th-the lab,” I stutter, too excited to speak. Goose bumps prickle my skin. “I need to jack you in. I think I just figured it out.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “And?”

  “I think there’s a message inside you. Well, inside your panel. Or maybe in your chest, I don’t know, but I think I—”

  “Of course,” he says, tilting his head back. “That’s classic Lachlan. But like I said, I don’t have access to most of my tech. My firewalls are military grade.”

  “I can g-get through,” I say, shivering, “I know I can. L-let’s go down to the lab, we can—”

  “Seriously?” Cole cuts me off, shaking his head. “You’re just like Lachlan, you know that? Your blood sugar is plummeting, you’re freezing, you just woke up after being in a healing coma for days, and all you want to do is code. You need to rest.”

  “We don’t have time to rest. The v-virus is evolving as we speak, and I’m fine. I’m j-just excited.”

  “That’s not excitement, Catarina. It’s called shock, and it’ll knock you out if you’re not careful. Hold out your hand.”

  I lift one hand. “I’m f-fine, see . . .”

  Only, I’m not. My hand is trembling like a leaf, and the harder I try to keep it still, the more wildly it seems to shake.

  He gives me a level stare. “I know we need to hurry, but you won’t be able to do anything if you crash. Dinner first, then you can jack me in.”

  I slump, dropping my shaking hand. “Okay, fine. After dinner, then.”

  Cole sends me into the downstairs bathroom to get changed and gives me a plastic packet of disinfectant wipes to clean the scratches on my leg. The wipes smell like the soap I used at boarding school—something close to vanilla, but cheaper and sharper, with a hint of ammonia. I’ve always hated the scent. It reminds me too much of those lonely years at scho
ol, which I’ve done my best to forget.

  I spent most of my childhood at boarding school, after my mother died and Cartaxus stationed my father at a remote research lab. He tried to quit, but it took him over a decade to get out. When he did, he bought the cabin and pulled me out of school, and we had a single year together before the outbreak.

  That year feels like a lifetime ago. Days spent coding, talking, reading. My years at boarding school are so distant now they’re barely more than a blur.

  I sit on the bathroom floor, running the wipes over the scratches on my calf and ankle. Pots clatter in the kitchen.

  “I hope you like pasta,” Cole calls out.

  My stomach growls at the thought. All I’ve been eating for the last six months are floury, stale nutriBars from a stash I found in a garage outside town. They’re nutritious, but they’re designed to be eaten while using a taste-bud-hacking app that you can download flavors for. To me, they just taste like dust. “Pasta sounds great.”

  “Okay,” Cole replies. “Ready in five.”

  I give my face and hands a rub with the last of the wipes for good measure, and pick up the clothes Cole gave me to wear. Every piece of clothing I own was stuffed in my rucksack when I blew out the wall in my father’s room, and now they’re all ruined. Cole brought a few sets of clothes in various sizes in case I might need them, and they’re all stamped with the Cartaxus logo, but otherwise they’re not too bad. Black cargo pants like the ones he’s wearing and a gray tank top that’s cool to the touch. The fabric is soft, but I have a feeling it’s pseudometallic, the kind of fiber that’s made by genehacked bacteria in industrial vats. It won’t stop a bullet, but it’ll probably stop a knife. I tug it on over a black sports bra and turn to the mirror.

  A single glance reminds me why I don’t look in mirrors anymore.

  My face is pockmarked and thin, my gaunt cheeks traced with scars from where I face-planted out of a tree last summer. My hair is wild and tangled, my right canine tooth badly chipped. I’m completely and undeniably hideous.

  I don’t usually care what I look like, but despite all logic and reason, having a male presence around stirs up old feelings of insecurity. Like, despite the apocalypse, I’m somehow supposed to be pretty. It feels stupid even thinking about it, but I still find myself tilting my head back and forth in the light from the naked bulb overhead, searching for an angle that makes me look good. All I see is sun-damaged skin, chapped lips, and untamed eyebrows over my father’s piercing gray eyes.

  The longer I look at myself, the more I see him in my features, until it hurts too much and I have to look away.

  “Okay, I’m out,” I say, leaving the bathroom, running my hands through my still-damp hair.

  “Just another minute,” Cole calls from the kitchen.

  I wander through the living room, glancing at the front door, where the frame has been splintered apart on either side at knee height. That’s where I hooked up the electromagnetic trap to yank out the sockets from an intruder’s knees. It looks like Cole got to the trap before it got to him. The broken pieces lie on the floor. I let out a sigh. It took me a whole week to set it up.

  The room is littered with Cartaxus-branded equipment that Cole must have brought here with him. There are two sleeping bags and air mattresses, a bag of clothes, a box of food, and a terrifying assortment of weapons. Guns, knives, lasers, and darts are laid out across the coffee table in the living room, along with a leather-bound book. I pick it up, check the spine for a title, and flip it open without thinking. The pages fall open to a sketch of a young girl.

  Black glossy hair, a wide smile, and delicate features shine out of the paper, rendered in simple, elegant lines. I flick through the pages, seeing a dozen more portraits of the same girl. Running, laughing, sleeping. She’s stunningly beautiful. In one picture, her cheeks are tracked with tears, her distress practically screaming through the paper. I glance at the kitchen nervously. The sketches are signed with Cole’s name, and it’s clear that he must have been in love with her.

  Her name is printed in careful script beneath each portrait: Jun Bei. She looks like she was around his age when the sketches were done. Most are dated from before the plague, and as I flip through the pages, I see the tone of the sketches suddenly change. They grow softer, more refined. As though the girl herself has been distilled and condensed, scraped back to her very essence.

  It’s like the earlier sketches were drawn from life, and the later ones from memory.

  “Don’t touch that.”

  I spin around to find Cole standing in the doorway wearing a fresh tank top over his bandages, two steaming plates of pasta in his hands.

  A chill races through me at the look on his face. “I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  “Put it down now.” His voice is like ice. He sets the plates on the dining table and strides across the room, his movements inhumanly fast. He grabs the book in a blur, sending fear skittering down my spine. A second ago he was a boy cooking dinner, but now he’s transformed back into a trained Cartaxus weapon.

  He yanks the sketchbook from my hands. The pages slide open to the drawing of the girl with tears glistening on her cheeks. He stares at it for a moment, then snaps the sketchbook shut and sets it on the table beside the gleaming knives.

  “I-I’m sorry,” I say again, then stop myself when I realize how pathetic I sound.

  I’ve spent two years on my own, dodging blowers and protecting the cabin, doing whatever it took to keep myself alive. I just found out my father is dead, that there’s a Hydra vaccine, and that its fate has been left in my hands. I’m grieving and tired, but I’m not weak, and I’m not going to let a jacked-up Cartaxus soldier order me around in my own home.

  I cross my arms. “No, you know what? You’re in my house, soldier. You showed up uninvited, and you have no right to fill up my living room and then snap at me when I touch something. Maybe you shouldn’t have brought the book with you if you didn’t want me to see it. What the hell do you need it for on this mission, anyway?”

  He meets my eyes, a muscle twitching in his jaw. “It’s all I have left. You think Cartaxus will let me back if they find out why I’m really here? They’ll court-martial me for this. They’ll destroy everything I own. I’ve left my whole life behind on the back of a single note from your father, so I’m sorry if you’re a little put out by having my things in your living room.”

  I open my mouth, then close it. I don’t know what to say to that. I hadn’t considered what Cole might be risking by coming here like this. Of course Cartaxus will court-martial him if they find out why he’s here. I’d be surprised if they didn’t kill him.

  That fact alone should convince me that Cole is on my side, but for some reason it just makes me more nervous.

  He looks me up and down, then turns and walks to the dining table. “Come on. We’re both tired, and you need to eat. I’ve cooked you a double serving. It looks like you could use it. Your healing tech must be using a lot of calories.” He pulls out a chair at the table for me.

  I hesitate for a moment, then walk over slowly and sit down. A heaping plate of herbed, creamy spaghetti lies waiting. The sight makes my stomach rumble. I pick up a fork and lean over the plate, drawing in a slow breath.

  “This might be the best meal I’ve seen in a year.”

  He looks up. “What have you been eating?”

  I jerk my thumb at a stack of foil-wrapped nutriBars in the corner. “Those, mostly. There isn’t much else around.”

  He twirls his fork in the spaghetti. “Really? I drove past a farm just north of here that looked like it went for miles. Soybeans, vegetables . . .”

  “Um-mh,” I say, through a mouthful of spaghetti. “That stuff’s proprietary. You can’t digest it without their app’s synthetic enzymes. It tastes good going down, but it’ll leave you sick for days. There’s a special place in hell for whoever came up with DRM for food.”

  “So you’ve been living on nutriBars?”


  I swallow a mouthful. “I wouldn’t call it living. I nearly lost my mind eating them every day last winter. It’s better than starving, though.”

  He pauses with his fork mid-twirl. “So why didn’t you go to a bunker? Homestake isn’t far, and Cartaxus would have come to pick you up. Hell, you’re an Agatta. They would have sent a chopper.”

  My shoulders tighten. “I know. They sent one for my father. They put two bullets in him too. I wasn’t going to let myself become their prisoner.”

  “Your father wasn’t mistreated, Catarina.”

  I dig my fingernails into my palm again, but the pain is becoming meaningless. “If he wasn’t mistreated, then why would he make me promise to stay out here?”

  Cole raises an eyebrow. “I’d like to know that myself.”

  I lean forward. “I’ll tell you why—it’s because he knew he was walking into a cell he’d never escape from. He wanted me to live on my own terms.”

  Cole looks around the room, at the spiderwebs on the ceiling, at the bare walls and dusty kitchen. “Yeah, you’re really knocking it out of the park.”

  I scowl. “At least I can leave anytime I want. Cartaxus threatened my father’s life when he tried to quit. It took him years to get out.”

  “He quit? I thought Lachlan was fired over the influenza crisis.”

  “Fired?” I freeze with a forkful of spaghetti midway to my mouth. “No, that’s ridiculous.”

  “Thirty thousand people died.”

  “I know. That was Cartaxus’s fault.”

  Cole chews silently, and the condescending look on his face makes me want to stab him with my fork. Influenza X was the most lethal virus in human history, before Hydra came along and shot straight to the top of the list. My father coded a vaccine that should have won him a Nobel prize, but Cartaxus encrypted it and refused to release the source code. Soon people started guessing at what might be hidden inside it. One rumor caught hold—that the code was impure, that it was based on canine DNA.