“I’ll try to think of something,” she told him. “Let’s just take a break for a little while, go cool off.”
“Right,” Cole said. “Where are we going to cool off? It’s gotta be ninety degrees out.”
“This way.” Mari hopped up from the grass. “I haven’t shown you all my spots yet.” She led Cole into the forest. They stumbled over rocks and underbrush for about a quarter mile, until Cole started to wonder what the hell she had up her sleeve. Then the dense thicket of trees broke and opened to a beautiful, sparkling pond. “Let’s do it,” Mari said, grinning back at him. Cole hesitated, and Mari rolled her eyes.
“It’s fine,” she said. “I mean, there’s some algae, and I wouldn’t recommend drinking it. But it’s a natural pond, totally disconnected from the city runoff.”
Cole still wasn’t sure whether to let down his guard, but the pond was tempting. And she was being almost … nice. It was kind of a welcome change after the morning he’d had. Besides, he hadn’t been swimming in forever. You couldn’t do it in the Slants—swimming in the streams polluted by runoff was strictly forbidden. There were gruesome tales of kids dying or developing disturbing physical symptoms just from touching some of that water.
He watched as Mari stripped down to her tank top and underwear and ran out onto the narrow wooden pier that stretched out onto the pond.
Cole raised his eyebrows. He couldn’t imagine anyone else he knew just stripping down like that. For a second he was embarrassed for her. Then he realized: modesty was all a construct, just like everything else. Mari didn’t have any social decorum, because she’d probably never had to. In that sense, she was free.
Mari dove in and resurfaced, laughing. “You have to come,” she shouted to him. “It feels amazing!” He hesitated. Was it weird to strip down in front of a girl?
It did look amazing. The water sparkled under the sun-filled sky, and he realized he was thinking too much. The promise of icy water washing over his skin was enough to squash any remaining doubts. Cole pulled off his T-shirt, leaving his shorts on, and dove in after her.
The water felt like heaven. It swept away the stress and frustrations of the afternoon. Cole swam deep, close to the reeds that rose up from the depths. He opened his eyes, enjoying the otherworldly, murky feeling of it. He felt anonymous. He felt free. He swam further. He stayed down, swimming further still, letting the water drown all his worries.
When he rose to the surface, shaking water out of his hair, the sun was like a spotlight. Outdoor noises—birds chirping, the rush of the water, and the splashing of Mari several feet away—replaced the quiet he’d felt only a second ago. He turned to her, expecting her to yell at him for freaking her out. Instead, her face wore a look of quiet approval.
“I think we’ve found your event,” she yelled across the pond at him. “You have the lungs of a blue whale and you crossed the expanse of the pond in, like, five seconds.”
Cole couldn’t help grinning, and his heart soared. Under the water, he’d felt more himself—more alive—than he had in many months. He suddenly wanted nothing more than to soak up life, relax in the blaze of the afternoon sun. These little pleasures were what gave him hope. He climbed ashore, and Mari followed a few minutes later, bending over and shaking her dreads out like a dog might shake its fur. She plopped down next to him on the banks of the pond. For a moment, he couldn’t suppress his longing—not for Mari, but for Davis. Why couldn’t it be Davis there with him, enjoying this moment? It was the closest he’d felt to being at peace in a long time, and his heart ached that the wrong girl was there to share it.
“I’d missed that feeling,” he said to Mari a moment later, when they were lying on their backs, letting the sun warm them after the chill of the water.
“Which?”
“Just being alive,” he told her. “You probably don’t know what it’s like not to feel free. You have all this land. But I miss my old life. My mom, my brother … my best friend, Brent.”
“And her,” she finished for him. “The girl you miss. The Prior.”
“I miss Davis more than anything,” he admitted quietly. “But she was different.”
Mari’s eyes darkened, and Cole knew he’d made a mistake. Her loathing for Priors was too deep-rooted. She’d never understand the depth of his relationship with Davis. How they’d just understood one another, without even having to explain. Mari didn’t see Davis as human, though. Cole sort of understood why, but he wished it weren’t so easy for her to separate good from bad, Gen from Prior, as if nothing existed in between.
“We should get back,” Mari said, her voice bitter. She jutted her chin toward the setting sun, which illuminated the smattering of freckles across her cheeks.
“I’m going to head back into the Slants tonight,” Cole mentioned as they stood up. “I need to see Thomas about getting me into the Olympiads. I’ll be back in the morning.” Truthfully, he thought it was probably better to be away. Maybe it would diminish the tension between them.
“We’ll see you tomorrow, then,” she told him.
As they walked back along the bank of the pond, Cole caught a familiar, minty smell.
“Peppermint,” he realized aloud.
“It’s all over the place,” Mari told him. “Here.” She squatted down near the bank and picked a bunch of the pointed, rough-textured leaves. “It makes great tea.”
Cole pocketed it, surprised. An olive branch. He thought immediately of Vera; she’d like it. His mom had made peppermint tea when he was a kid. She’d poured it into a thermos for herself but had always given him a sip first—she said it kept her alert all day at work. The smell cleared his head, giving him energy for the half-hour journey awaiting him.
The trek back to the Slants was much easier this time around, because Mari had shown him a new route.
“You took the tunnels?” she’d scoffed when he’d detailed his treacherous journey out there. “Why not just dive into raw sewage next time?” Then she went on to outline a far more direct—and somewhat less treacherous—route, through a mile of woods and over a rickety twenty-foot bridge cobbled together from wooden beams that were half rotted. In ancient times the bridge had functioned as an overpass for horses and buggies. Now, Mari warned him, it was falling apart. He’d have to tread carefully, but she’d done it dozens of times—and worst-case scenario, he’d fall into the water below. Her directions were great; he knew exactly where he was headed, and sort of looked forward to trying a new route.
Once he’d crossed the bridge—which held his weight but looked like it shouldn’t have—he traversed an abandoned plot of land that Mari had told him was meant to be a site for a new high-rise, back when Priors thought the land was safe to develop. Now there was just a huge pit in the ground. Cole walked around it cautiously; Mari had said that the dirt near the pit’s lip was loose—and if he fell in, he’d have little chance of pulling himself out. He was nearly past it when he tripped over a mound of trash, tearing the skin just above his ankle.
The scratch was superficial, but when Cole touched it he felt the unmistakable wetness of blood. He fumbled for the offending object. From the look of it, he’d come across what had once been a squatters’ lair, and he shuddered to think what had happened to the people who’d camped out there. He stepped around an abandoned, collapsed tent and held the object up to the thin ray of moonlight that partially illuminated his path. He saw that it was an old-fashioned instrument—maybe a ukulele? It looked like it had all its strings intact. He plucked one, and its melody rang out clear and sharp, echoing around the tunnel. Its rough edge—where the wood had chipped—could be easily sanded down. It was no cello, but he figured Vera would appreciate any access to a musical instrument.
Buoyed by the tea and the gift, he quickened his pace, and the rest of the journey was unremarkable. He reached Thomas’s new lab—housed in an abandoned parking garage in order to avoid attracting attention from the Prior guards that now patrolled the Slants—in record time.
Vera’s face lit up in a genuine smile when he walked in. Her blonde hair was clean and shining, and she wore a long worker’s tunic—the kind his mother had once worn at the factories—rather than the pink silk dress he’d seen her in last. The tunic was shapeless and drab, but it hugged Vera’s growing belly and set off her rosy cheeks and light brown eyes. Her sterile, plain surroundings offered to a stark contrast to her beauty and had the effect of magnifying it.
“Brought you something,” he told her, withdrawing the ukulele from behind his back. At first she wrinkled her brow in confusion.
“Is that…”
“Are all stringed instruments not the same?”
Vera laughed. “It’s perfect,” she told him. “God, I’ve only seen one of these in my music theory textbook.”
“It can’t be that old,” Cole told her. “Still in pretty great condition, right?”
“It’s just what I needed,” she reassured him. “Seriously. Was it that obvious how bored I’ve been?”
“Hmm. Judging by the array of friendship bracelets on that table yonder, I’d almost believe you were crying for help,” he teased.
“There’s a lot of extra yarn lying around,” Vera told him. “I think it’s my calling. By the way,” she added in a faux whisper, “think Worsley knits in his down time? I wouldn’t have pegged him for the type.…”
Cole laughed. He liked Vera. They’d started to develop an easy rapport, and he genuinely looked forward to seeing her. At first it had been about doing what Davis would have wanted; now he just enjoyed it.
“Hang on a second,” Worsley said, rolling his eyes and confiscating the ukulele. “I’m not going to dignify that last comment with an answer, by the way.” Vera and Cole smirked. “Just let me wipe this down.…” He produced sterilized cloths from a set of chrome drawers set up in one corner of the small space. Cole took a second to examine the room; he’d never seen the new iteration of Thomas’s lab, and this one was even nicer than the last. Even the cement floors somehow glowed with a sterile-looking sheen.
“Nice space,” he commented. “Wanted to be discreet, my ass.”
“They were catching wind of the last place, I swear,” Thomas said. “You know I can’t jeopardize my research. What’d you bring me, Casanova?”
Cole produced the peppermint leaves from his pocket.
“No!” Thomas said. “Amazing. You can’t find those anywhere around here. So you got to Braddock’s okay?”
Cole nodded, taking everything in. Thomas’s equipment looked state of the art; more imports from one of his old mentors, Cole guessed. “Found it,” he told him. “Interesting guy.”
“Think he’ll be able to help you?”
Cole paused, reluctant to mention Mari in front of Vera, for some reason.
“Yeah. So, you sleeping here or what?” He was eager to change the subject. Worsley nodded, acknowledging the old sleeping bag that was balled up in one corner.
“It isn’t ideal,” he said. “But I want to make sure I’m here in case something happens with the baby. If Vera goes into premature labor … I want to make sure I’m around to help.”
“Still. It’s cramped quarters. You guys must be dying to get out.”
“Remember how it was when we were kids?” Worsley laughed. “We could run all over the place. There weren’t any guards, no one to stop us.”
“We were troublemakers,” Cole agreed. “Remember that time you, me, and Hamilton glassed that old haunted house?”
“Glassed? What does that mean?” Vera broke in.
“Just literally threw a bunch of old glass bottles at this abandoned house that was near the Slants. We did it in the middle of the night on a dare. Obviously we made a huge mess.”
Vera smiled, and Cole was relieved she wasn’t totally horrified by their behavior.
“Yes! The house just north of the outskirts of the woods,” broke in Worsley. “Man, those were the days.”
“I really thought it was haunted,” Cole said. “It was so creepy looking. I was certain we were going to wake the ghosts with those bottles, and they were going to come after us. Hamilton ran screaming like a baby after he threw his first one. But the bet was three each, so we lost.”
“What were the stakes?” Vera wanted to know.
Cole shrugged. “I don’t know. An ice cream bar or something.”
“Well you could have gotten that easily on your own!” she laughed.
Cole and Worsley exchanged glances. That hadn’t exactly been the case. They’d had to save up for months for treats like that, doing odd jobs. Instead they’d had to buy Dylan Church, the guy who’d dared them in the first place, a double-scoop cone.
“Wiped out my savings, losing that one,” Cole said, and Worsley nodded.
Vera gave them a funny look, like she thought they might be joking. It sounds like you guys had fun,” she finally said, strumming gently on the ukulele. “It sounds almost … idyllic. Not like our high-rises and constant pressure to excel in whatever it was we showed promise in. Even our playdates were structured. I can’t remember ever running free.”
“Yeah, fun … but I wouldn’t say idyllic.” Cole was trying not to bristle at her naïveté. It wasn’t her fault. “Living in the Slants was filthy,” Cole told her. “That abandoned house was a disaster waiting to happen. When I look back … it’s a miracle none of us got sick and died. We were always running around in garbage heaps, cutting ourselves and not worrying about infection—until the Priors figured out the disposal system, which you’ve seen. It’s just that lot near the Swings, where I used to work out. They crush it and dispose of it about once a month with their machinery. It starts to smell pretty bad toward the end of the month, but at least it’s fenced off. When we were kids, there were open piles that we treated like mountains, and half the time when I went home to bathe I did it in the lake with no soap.”
“Why don’t you dispose of the garbage yourselves, instead of letting it build up for a month?” Vera wondered aloud.
“We don’t have the machinery,” Cole told her. “The Priors have offered to ‘sell’ it to us, but at a price we could never afford. So we have to wait for them—you—to do it on your own terms.”
“It was pretty dangerous, when we were kids,” Worsley agreed. “But to us it was just normal. It’s partly why I wanted to go into medicine. To think of alternatives to the insanely costly medical care you guys have in downtown Columbus. That just wasn’t an option for us.”
Vera turned away, blinking back tears.
“Hey. It’s okay. We didn’t mean to upset you,” Cole told her.
“I’m just … it’s so hard to hear about,” she said. “I can’t believe this was all going on right next to me all my life, and I had no idea. That it’s still going on. That Priors have so much power over Gens. Part of me feels so bad for you. And part of me is.…”
“Disgusted?” Worsley finished, his tone neutral. Vera nodded, looking guilty.
“It was a different way of life,” Worsley agreed. Cole was glad he stopped there. He knew he had stronger opinions than just that. But it seemed to calm Vera. She looked back toward the ukulele and began to strum a light tune Cole couldn’t place—some sort of lullaby.
“I’m a little scared,” she said as she played, her eyes focused on the instrument. “Will my baby be a Prior if it’s not given in utero treatments? Can you do that here?”
There was a long pause. Cole looked hard at Worsley, willing him to tell her the truth. Of course the baby wouldn’t be a Prior. It wouldn’t be an Imp, either, with Prior parentage. It would be a Neither. Something about the way Worsley was conducting experiments and working on the vaccine without bothering to explain to Vera the implications felt very wrong.
“When your baby is born, she’ll be a hero. She’ll be acknowledged as a savior of mankind,” Worsley said. He reached out for Vera’s hand, and she clutched it. She trusted him—Cole could see it in the way she held his eyes with her own. “She�
�ll be known as the one who got rid of the deadly Prior disease. She’ll be a hero. Your family will be proud.”
“Maybe they’ll take me back,” Vera said hopefully. “Maybe Oscar will have me.”
Cole looked away, but Worsley nodded.
“I think so,” Worsley told her. “This baby represents salvation. Yours, yes. But also everyone else’s. One way or another, the lives of everyone in Columbus are at stake.”
On that point, Cole had to agree.
9
DAVIS
Mercer hummed under his breath, absentmindedly drumming a beat on the side of the narrow motorized lifeboat. It was a small boat—built for a handful of people—with a little cushioned perch on one end. It was actually much nicer than Davis would have expected of a lifeboat. Mercer had waited to turn the motor on—it was risky, given their close proximity to the larger craft—but he was steering it as best he could with the help of the tide. His blond hair was flopped over his forehead and his muscular calves flexed as he kept rhythm with his foot. For about an hour, they’d paddled softly together, not wanting to turn on the motor and arouse any suspicion with its noise. But now the motor was humming along and Mercer was steering with one hand as he gazed out into the darkness. He seemed unaware of Davis’s presence, and she watched him quietly from her perch at the opposite end of the craft. She’d heard him humming before, but when he began to sing, she was transfixed.
”You and me, baby,” he sang. “We’ll be quite all right, if only we’re together tonight.…”
Mercer’s voice was luminous. It captured warmth, emotion, and a sense of longing that Davis didn’t know was possible to translate into words. Part of her wondered if he was singing it for her, about her. She caught herself hoping he was, and flushed. She liked Mercer. They were friends. It was nothing like what she’d had with Cole—not even close. But still, sometimes when she saw Mercer like this, and found herself drawn to him, she wondered: would she ever feel love like that again? Even wondering it felt like a betrayal.
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