This Mortal Coil

by Emily Suvada

  Smart enough. I let out a short, bitter laugh. Of course he’s smart enough to fake his own death. He’s smart enough to manipulate us into releasing his abomination of a vaccine to everyone.

  And he’s still going. Whatever his plan is, it certainly isn’t over. Driving a town full of people crazy isn’t a big enough goal for a man like my father. Any minute now he could use the vaccine to turn on the orange panels across the world.

  He could kill us all. But why?

  “We need to find him,” I say. “Whatever he’s trying to do, he’s not finished.”

  “I know. That’s why Lee and I came up here. We’re near the lab he wanted us to go to, the one he mentioned in the notes he left us. It took us a while to find it, but we spotted some landmarks last night. Lee’s gone down there on foot to check it out.”

  Landmarks. The lab. Something itches in the base of my skull—the same feeling I get before a migraine, but it’s different this time. I stare at the mountains on the horizon. They’re the landmarks Cole is talking about—I know it. I must have seen them when I was a child, but I still can’t remember when.

  There’s a wall in my mind I can’t punch through. A memory locked away, rattling deep in my subconscious. It draws closer every time I look at the mountains, every time I think about the flashes I saw during the procedure. Something happened to me in that vat. Something I can’t explain.

  “Cole, there’s something I need to tell you.” I take his hand, climbing out of the back of the jeep.

  “What is it?” He takes my elbow to steady me, then looks into my eyes, and a jolt passes through him. He steps away suddenly, his face paling, staring at me like I just pulled a gun on him. “Why did you do that to your eyes?”

  “What?” I bring my hand to my eyes, meeting bruised, tender skin. “What are you talking about?”

  “The upgrade. They’re green—you changed their color. Why did you do that?”

  “I didn’t do anything.” I turn to the side of the jeep, peering at my reflection in the mud-strewn windows. My face is bruised, one eye swollen, and my hair is full of dust from the explosions. My cheeks look hollow; my lips are chapped . . .

  And I have bright green eyes.

  I blink. “My new panel must have . . .” I drift off as I look down at my forearm, seeing three lights flashing beneath bruised, dirty skin. It’s still growing. It hasn’t started running yet. There’s no way it could have changed the color of my eyes.

  Then I remember what Dax said.

  After the procedure, he told me that my gene for eye color had mutated during the decryption. It should have been impossible, but he kept insisting that it happened. One tiny gene, which controlled the color of my irises, had flipped. I’d walked into that vat with gray-eyed DNA and walked out with green.

  “Cole,” I whisper, still staring at my eyes in the window. “I lied to you about the procedure. It was supposed to kill me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The decryption, it was supposed to destroy my cells when the vaccine passed through me. Dax and Leoben knew, but nobody else did, and we didn’t know how you’d react, so Dax made me promise not to tell you.”

  Cole grabs my good shoulder and spins me around, searching my face. “Are you kidding?” He backs away. “You’re serious, aren’t you? You thought you were going to die? Is that why you came to my room? Jesus, Cat. You weren’t even going to say good-bye?”

  “I couldn’t risk your protection protocol kicking in.” It sounds like a flimsy excuse, as if I don’t care about him at all.

  He just stares at me. “What the hell, Catarina? You were just going to let me watch you die?”

  “You don’t understand what I’m saying, Cole. I should have died. A normal person would have died as soon as that code started running.”

  Cole freezes. “What do you mean normal?”

  I swallow, rubbing the back of my head. There’s an ache starting up there, but it’s not like any migraine I’ve ever felt. This feels like there’s something sparking, burning inside me. Something scratching at my skull from the inside, trying to get out. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. I think my father did something to me and made me forget it.”

  “And your eyes?”

  I look down at my arm, at the bruises on my skin that will fade as soon as my panel starts working. “That’s what doesn’t make any sense. Something happened during the procedure. Dax said my DNA just . . . changed.”

  Cole’s breath catches. “So it’s not an upgrade?”

  “No,” I say. “I mean my underlying DNA, the thing that’s supposed to be untouchable, is different than it was before. It’s impossible, but it happened. It should have killed me, but I’m still alive. I don’t understand how my father made me like this, but I’m starting to remember things.”

  Cole stands frozen. I don’t know if he’s even breathing. “What do you remember, Cat?” he whispers finally.

  I turn to the mountains, lifting my good arm to point at them. “Those. I’ve been here before, but it’s not clear. . . .” I close my eyes, trying to dredge up the memory. It’s like trying to remember falling asleep—you know it happened, but the details turn into fog when you focus on them. It doesn’t help that the closer I get to remembering, the more my head pounds, until I can barely breathe through the pain.

  When I open my eyes, Cole’s face is white. “What else?”

  “My father and I were arguing. We were in a . . . a lab like the one in the cabin. I was younger, and I was wearing gray. I could see these mountains through the window.”

  “No,” Cole says, staring at me with wide, haunted eyes. The intensity of his gaze is starting to frighten me. “There was nobody else here, no other children. The lab in this valley is where I grew up. It’s where the Zarathustra program was based. There were ten guards, eight nurses, two doctors, and your father. That’s all. I knew every heartbeat. I remember every visitor.”

  “This is where you grew up?” I turn to the horizon, the edges of my vision blurring. The fog has rolled off the mountains, drawing the memory closer. It’s sharper now. More insistent. The base of my skull is aflame. “I remember a hologram. I was young. I was biting my nails. . . .”

  I look down at my fingernails, shaking. They’re bitten. I’ve been chewing on them for the last few days, ever since Marcus cut the healing tech out of my arm. No, not just the healing tech—the memory suppressant.

  I don’t think I ever bit my nails before that.

  When I look up, Cole is staring at me like he’s seen a ghost. “Oh God,” he breathes. “Oh no. Oh no.”

  My throat tightens. “You’re scaring me.”

  “He changed your memories,” Cole says, grabbing my shoulders, his fingers digging into my skin. “He blocked them, and your DNA, it changed, so it’s possible. It’s possible . . . Jesus, I nearly lost it when I saw your eyes. They’re the exact color I remember.”

  I blink, confused. “Cole, you’re hurting me.”

  “Oh God.” He swallows, tears filling his eyes. It’s like he can’t even hear me. “It’s true, I can see it. You came into my arms that night, and I think part of me knew. She always came to me like that. Always in the middle of the night when she had nightmares, curling up beside me, since we were kids. I held you that night and I felt her, I could smell her, but I thought it was crazy.”

  “Cole,” I cry, struggling against his grip. The pain in my skull is flooding down my spine, into my limbs, burning lines of fire through me. I choke back a cry, my chest shuddering. “Cole, what are you saying?”

  “It’s you,” he breathes. His arms slide around me, crushing me to him. His body is a rock, but his shoulders are shaking.

  “It’s you,” he whispers, his lips at my ear. “You’re Jun Bei.”

  CHAPTER 43

  BLINDING SPARKS, LIKE CROSSED WIRES, race through my brain. Cole’s voice echoes in my mind.

  You’re Jun Bei.

  “No,” I
spit, shoving him away. “Do you know how crazy you sound? I’m Lachlan’s daughter. I’ve seen my DNA.”

  “What if he changed it?”

  “That’s impossible. That would kill me, it would—”

  “How do you explain what happened in the decryption?” Cole cuts me off. “What happened to your eyes? Shouldn’t that have killed you too?”

  “I don’t know.” My voice is trembling. “But she was a completely different person, Cole. It’s not possible.”

  “She bit her fingernails,” he says. “She had your height, your frame. She used to code with Lachlan all the time, using a holographic display down in the lab.”

  “No.” I step away, rubbing the heels of my hands into my eyes. “I’m not her, I can’t be. I went to boarding school. I remember my childhood. I had a room full of books, and I spent all my time coding. The school was in the mountains, in Canada.”

  “That’s exactly where we are now.” Cole’s voice breaks. “Don’t you see? That’s how you make false memories—you build a story on top of something true and tell it to a person over and over until they believe it. They did it to me, to all of us. Why do you think I kept the scars? They’re the only thing I can trust.”

  “My memories aren’t false!” I whirl on Cole. Part of me wants to hit him, to stop these accusations that feel like nails being driven into my skull. “I remember the food, the clothes I wore, the goddamn soap I had to use.”

  I freeze. The soap. The sweet-sharp vanilla scent I’ve smelled so many times in the last few days. In the cleaning wipes Cole gave me back at the cabin. In the Wash-and-Blast at Homestake. In the Skies gymnasium. It’s a disinfectant, a Cartaxus brand. I’ve always hated the smell.

  “You’re starting to see it,” Cole whispers. “Your memories are blurred, aren’t they? There’s nothing you can grab hold of and know for sure it’s real. Try to think of something specific. What were your birthdays like? When did you get your first period?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Just stop it, stop talking!”

  His questions feel like arrows in my side. I don’t remember my birthdays, but they’ve never meant much to me anyway, so I probably just spent them in my room. My first period, though—a physical change. I would have been intrigued; I would have jacked myself into my genkit and analyzed my hormones. I close my eyes, searching my memory for the day it happened.

  But there’s nothing. No memories at all.

  My breathing hitches higher, making my throat burn. I open my eyes and find Cole watching me with his hand over his mouth. He reaches for me and I stumble away, scrambling to the jeep to yank out my backpack. I turn it upside down, shaking it until the Zarathustra folders slide out. I drop to my knees and grab Jun Bei’s file. Her eyes glare up at me when I flip to the black-and-white photograph clipped to the back.

  Bursts of pain, like firecrackers, pop in the base of my skull.

  Jun Bei. The girl I saw on the road. Small, scarred, fierce. The wild, murderous genius who was in love with Cole.

  I blink and see her eyes in the mirror. Crying. Afraid. For a moment it feels impossibly real, but I shake the thought away. I’m not her—I’m Catarina. I have my father’s skin, his face, his hands, his genes written into every inch of my bones. I’ve seen my DNA, I’ve sequenced it, and I would have noticed something like this. . . .

  Only, that’s not true.

  I never had hypergenesis, and I didn’t figure that out. My father made me too afraid to touch my own panel. I flip the pages in Jun Bei’s file, turning away from her photo, reading the notes my father left in her sequencing report.

  Rapid uptake. Whole-body regeneration. Cellular anomalies.

  I flip the pages frantically, until a comment stops me in my tracks.

  Jun Bei is a blank canvas waiting to be painted over. She’s just a child now, but she could be a masterpiece.

  “Oh no,” I breathe, rocking back on my knees. “No, it can’t be. He’s my father. . . .”

  “Then how do you remember the lab?” Cole drops down beside me, a file clutched in his hands.

  No, not a file. A sketchbook. His drawings.

  The throbbing in my skull rises into a storm as he opens it, turning the pages, flipping through the sketches. Each one hits me like a bullet. Those eyes. That smile. The tear tracks on her cheeks.

  “No,” I gasp. “Stop it, please. . . .”

  Cole’s shoulders heave, tears pooling in his lashes. “It’s you, it has to be. The first time I saw you, it took my breath away.” He chokes back a cry. “I’ve loved you all along.”

  The wall in my mind parts with a roar.

  Bright green eyes, black hair falling in my face. My skin is pale and my knuckles are bruised, and there’s a stranger’s face in the mirror. I feel her tears and her anger, feel her hands turning DNA models in the air, solving puzzles deep inside a white laboratory. I’ve been kept here as long as I can remember. I see bars and concrete cells. I see scalpels and arterial spurts of my own blood.

  And I see Cole.

  I see him as a child. I see him smiling, laughing, screaming. Bandaged and broken, I see him with every beat of my heart. The memory of Cole’s smile hits me like a bolt of lightning, shattering the pain and confusion, splintering the walls in my mind.

  He is my friend and my confidant. My soul mate and guardian. I am a girl called Jun Bei, and I am in love with Cole.

  This truth detonates inside me, crackling across my skin. My memories of boarding school fall away, crumbling into dust.

  “Cole,” I gasp, blinking away tears. “Cole, I remember.”

  His arms curve around me, folding me into his chest. “It’s you,” he breathes, his voice thick with tears. His lips find my cheek, his hands shaking as they tangle in my hair. “It’s you, it’s you.”

  I let out a cry, a thousand points of pain aching in a body that is not my own, that has been changed and twisted into something else. Tears stream from eyes that belong to a stranger, hands and limbs and lips and teeth that are wrong and changed and desecrated.

  This is not my body.

  “Who am I?” I cry. My mind curls in on itself, the fragments of who I was and who I am splintering apart. “Who was I?”

  “You were wonderful,” Cole says, pressing his lips to my forehead. “You were clever, and brave, and stubborn, just like you are now.”

  “We were . . . together,” I choke out.

  Cole lets out a strangled sound, something between a sob and a laugh. “Yes,” he breathes. “Yes, we were together.”

  Pressure rises in my throat. I close my eyes, blinking away tears, and see a dorm room with gray blankets, a patch of gauze taped over Cole’s chest. He was always bandaged, always coming back from surgery and limping to my side. I see his fourteen-year-old form, already too strong to be strictly human. His eyes burn in the darkness as he tells me we’ll run away. We’re alone, his arms are around me, and there’s power in his breathing. He kisses me, tells me he loves me, and I promise we will always be together.

  “I love you,” I gasp, touching his ribs, his arms, his beating heart. I know them. I love them. I press my face to his neck.

  Then his lips find mine, and I pull myself into him, clutching him as he kisses me. Something roars inside me as his lips crush mine. A deep, aching cry that rises from my chest and bursts from me as I throw my head back, screaming into the sky.

  He did this. The man who is not my father. He took me apart, cell by cell, and remade my body in his own, twisted image.

  Cole presses his head to my chest, his arms circling my waist as I stare up at the gold-streaked sky, tears running down my cheeks. More memories surge up from my past, itching inside my skull, flashing across my vision like a glitching video feed.

  I see trees and highways, a forest and a lake. I’m not in the lab anymore. I’m fifteen, I’m in the cabin, and Lachlan is telling me that this is where we’ll live. He shows me the property, he’s trying to be kind, but he’s weak. He can’t rip Co
le from my mind no matter what he does to my DNA. I see myself running into the mine shafts, hiding a box of stolen files behind an orange kayak, promising that I will return to look at the photograph of Cole and never let myself forget, even though my memory is already in broken, blurry pieces that fall through my hands like water when I try to grasp at them.

  I see Lachlan finding me, shouting, dragging me back into the cabin. I see his eyes grow wide as I smash the windows and cut my hands on the glass, trying to scramble through and run. I see him fighting me, wrestling me away as I suck my hand to spit blood at him, screaming for Cole.

  Then he locks me away, and there are no gentle arms to keep me from the darkness. I am alone with the monster who changed my face, and he tells me that I will not remember.

  But I do.

  CHAPTER 44

  “ALMOST THERE,” COLE SAYS. “HOW are you doing?”

  “Okay,” I say. “As long as I’m with you.”

  He smiles, glancing over at me. We’re in the jeep with the windows rolled down, following a dirt road into the valley at the base of the three-peaked mountains. It’s midmorning, and the sky is a deep, stormy gray, the air ringing with the percussive cries of a flock of passenger pigeons.

  I’m sitting twisted in the passenger seat to protect my wounded shoulder, one hand stretched out to rest on Cole’s leg. I haven’t left his side all morning. I’m afraid I’ll fall apart without his touch. My mind is still a storm, but Cole is my anchor to reality.

  Now that we’ve found each other, I won’t let anything break us apart again.

  “Any more memories coming back?” Cole asks, nodding at my lap, where I have the photographs from each of the Zarathustra files arranged in a rough line.

  Every time I look at them, I remember something new. Ziana singing tunelessly. Leoben chasing me down the halls. Anna climbing into the lab’s ductwork and making it all the way to the roof before the guards dragged her down. Little fragments of memories keep coming back to me, but they’re scattered and incoherent, rushing away before I can take hold of them. I don’t know if that’s a side effect of the ERO-86 wearing off, or if it’s how my memories are going to stay.