The Nancy Experiment

by McKenna, Tess

  “We wanted to know if you guys wanted to come to the gym with us,” a brave young boy speaks up.

  A few of the others behind him throw their heads up and down. A small girl with short, straight black hair with combed bangs steps right up next to my chair. She wears a purple dress with a matching purple bow in her hair and little black socks and white shoes on her feet. She stares up at me with massive, crystal blue eyes, and she smiles, parting her light pink lips to show me her tiny, pearl-white teeth. Her skin is also white, almost as white as snow. I can’t help but smile back at her, then I look to Zoë, and she seems to think that this is great.

  “You guys want to go to the gym?” Nate asks Elijah, Zoë, and I. Zoë reads my face then turns to Eli and nods.

  “Yeah! We’ll go to the gym!” Elijah says. The children giggle and gasp in excitement; some even clap their hands together. “You guys want to play basketball?”

  “Yeah! Basketball!!” the boys in the crowd shout. They turn and start running out of the cafeteria.

  “Come-on!” Zoë says, grabbing my hand and pulling me with her after the youngsters. We jog out of the cafeteria, despite the guards warning us not to run, and continue jogging down a large hall until we come to a pair of double doors. The doors slide open, and we follow the mass of children into the large gymnasium.

  “Zoë! Zoë!” some girls who look about age nine or ten shout. They swarm Zoë and me and hold knotted yarn bracelets of red, yellow, green, blue, and pink up to our faces.

  “Look what we’re making! We’re making friendship bracelets!” they shout.

  “Wow! These are so pretty, girls!” Zoë replies, tracing her finger along the edge of one of the yarn bracelets.

  The girls giggle and smile brightly. The young girl with short black hair and massive blue eyes comes up from behind me and holds my hand in her tiny, cold one. I look down and give her a smile. Her white cheeks blush, and she looks down at her white, Velcro shoes.

  “Hey! Nate!” the girls cry out. They swarm him like they did Zoë and me and drag him over to where we stand.

  “What’s going on, girls?” Nate asks, arching his eyebrows as the girls pull his arms with all their might. They hold up their bracelets to him. “Whoa, those are some pretty necklaces.”

  “They’re Bracelets!”

  “Yeah, Nate, they’re bracelets,” Zoë teases.

  “Come over and see them!” the girls shout, and they drag all three of us to a patchy ring of boys and girls playing cards. A pile of yarn and tape sits in the center of the boys and girls, and we sit down to fill the ring of people.

  “Zoë, can you braid my hair?” a girl with long blonde hair and bright pink skin asks her, crawling close to Zoë.

  I sit down next to Zoë, and the girl with short black hair sits down next to me without saying a word. Nate is taken over by the boys playing cards, and sits down across from Zoë and me.

  “Sure!” Zoë says.

  The pink-skinned girl smiles giddily and crisscrosses in front of Zoë, and Zoë kneels behind her and starts tying the girl’s bangs back.

  “I want two side French braids, please,” the pink-skinned girl says. Zoë agrees, and parts the girl’s hair.

  Someone tugs on my shirt. I look down and see a girl with a dark complexion and equally dark hair.

  “Can you French Braid hair, too?” the girl asks me.

  I smile. “Yes, I can.”

  The girl smiles and turns her back to me, sitting down in front of me. I brush my fingers through the girl’s dark hair, making three equal parts. From the corner of my eyes, I swear I can see Nate smiling at us.

  “So what’s your name?” a girl asks me. She’s busy braiding another girl’s hair into pigtails.

  “Annika, what’s yours?”

  “Sloan.”

  “Sloan, that’s really cool.”

  “My name’s Jakara,” says the young girl whose hair I’m busy braiding.

  “Your name is beautiful.”

  “Thank you,” she says, and she wiggles with glee.

  “When did you come here?” Sloan asks.

  “Oh, umm, just three weeks ago,” I admit. Wow, has it really been three weeks?

  “OH! You’re so new!” Sloan says, smiling. “You’re staying, aren’t you?”

  “For as long as we can keep her here,” Nate interjects.

  Behind him, Elijah and Lazzer are fully involved in a basketball game, which looks like Elijah, Lazzer, and two small boys against an army of twelve.

  “I think you should stay,” says the little girl with massive blue eyes next to me.

  “Aw, thank you,” I say to her.

  She blushes and buries her head into my lap.

  “Nate, what happened to your head?” another girl asks.

  On the side of his forehead, there’s a small, scarring laceration where a nuclear beam from my eyes scorched the side of his head. I remember almost puking when I saw it, not because the blood dripping from the wound had dried and blackened down the side of his face, but because I knew I gave him the wound. I was aiming for Jericho; I was trying to defend myself. I always had a reason, an excuse, but when the sun comes up the next day, I’m still responsible. I’m still the one who ran, who maimed, who killed. It’s these nuclear burdens, but it’s more than that. I can choose not to use my unnatural weapons, but that still won’t stop what is inside me that makes me run, maim, and kill. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.

  “Got it Friday when everyone was in lockdown,” Nate says. He picks seven cards out of the scrambled heap of fifty-two, and sets down a pair of tens.

  “Was it they guy who broke in? Did he give it to you?!”

  “Did you fight him?!”

  “Yeah, we ran into him before he jumped out the window and got away,” Nate says.

  “No, I was the one who gave him that wound,” I speak up. The boys turn to me with mouths open and eyes wide.

  “It was an accident,” Nate quickly says. “Annika was there with us when we ran into him, and I stepped into the crossfire.”

  “Why?” a little boy asked.

  “That doesn’t mean I wasn’t the one who gave you that,” I argue.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Annika. I blame the guy who got away for the whole mess.”

  “That guy was a low-life,” Zoë adds, finishing the braid in the pink-skinned girl’s hair. “But luckily he didn’t get what he came for.”

  “What did he come for?”

  “Was he scary?”

  “Yeah! It was scary!” Zoë says. “We knew that he had found four of our friends― Nate, Annika, Lazz, and Abe― and we didn’t know if they were alright or what he would do to them.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say to Nate. “I should have been more careful, and I shouldn’t have―”

  “No, Annika. This wasn’t your fault. I know how you’re feeling, but this wasn’t your fault,” Nate says, trying to embed his words into my brain.

  “So you’ll admit that the art museum wasn’t your fault?” I counter, but his message sinks in. I don’t believe him to be responsible for the catastrophe at the Cleveland Museum of Art just as he doesn’t blame me for the cut on his head.

  “Fine. Now do you see? Not your fault,” Nate says.

  He grins and passes an eight to a small boy with skin that looks like that of a lizard’s. I find myself smiling too as I secure Jakara’s braided hair with a thick hairband. She turns to me with a smile so big her chapped lips could crack.

  “Thank you!” she says, and she scoots back toward her friends.

  “Can we braid your hair now?” the girls ask Zoë and me.

  Zoë and I glance at each other, and she shrugs her shoulders.

  “Sure!” she says.

  “If you’d like,” I agree.

  The girls squeal and smile and run behind us. Soon, I could feel three or four pairs of small, rough hands tugging and twisting my hair. I do my best not to let my expression mirror the pain from the girls pulling my
hair backward. I can’t hide my smile though. I miss having younger kids around me, remembering the ECs that I would play with and eat with and eventually travel around the world with to find each of them a suitable, safe home. Being around kids is kind of like having your hair braided, in a way: once in a while the braider pulls your hair, and it really hurts, but you keep smiling and don’t let them see the pain in your face because you know they are having fun knotting your hair. Nate sees it though, the pain; he sees it behind Zoe’s smile and mine. He laughs to himself and keeps playing Go Fish with the group of boys.

  “Look at our bracelets!” a girl says. She and her friends hold up their woven friendship bracelets to Zoë and me while the others tug on our hair.

  “Yes, you showed us already! They’re so pretty,” Zoë says.

  “You can have one!”

  “Oh, no! We don’t want to take your bracelets that you worked so hard on!”

  “But we already have some!” the girl protests. She and her friends lift their arms and shake the several different yarn bracelets around their wrists. “They’re friendship bracelets, so we want you two to have one too so you can be our friends, too!”

  “Aw, that’s so sweet of you, Kree,” Zoë says.

  “Which one do you want?” the girl asks me.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Why don’t you pick for us?” I reply.

  The girls discuss among themselves which colorful bracelets to give Zoë and me until they decide on a red, pink, and orange one for Zoë and a black, green, and blue one for me. We thank them as they tie the bracelets around our wrists.

  “Where are you from?” a girl asks me.

  “I’m from Cleveland,” I reply.

  “Which part?”

  “Well, I lived in the suburbs east of Cleveland until I was seven, then we moved to live in the city,” I say.

  “Wow, Annika! You never told me you lived in the s―aH!” Zoë says, right as Elijah sprints around us, shouting, and lifts her off the ground. The girls braiding Zoë’s hair stretch their arms up to hold onto the long, blonde hair as Elijah holds her over his shoulder.

  “Eli! What are you doing?!” Zoë yells.

  “We need you to play basketball with us!” he says. The girls squeal and laugh and chase after Elijah and Zoë to the basketball court, where a little boy sits on Lazzer’s shoulders while Lazzer hoots and hollers and spins in a circle.

  “Oh no, there they go,” Nate sighs. He hands over a red Jack.

  “Okay! We’re done!” the girls exclaim. They tie a hairband around two braids down my back. They form a circle around me and admire their handiwork with smiles.

  “That looks really good, girls,” Nate says.

  “Thank you!” they reply.

  “You should let them braid your hair more often, Annika,” Nate teases.

  “You know, maybe,” I say.

  “Hey Nate,” a boy playing Go Fish with him pipes up, “is Annika your girlfriend?”

  “No,” I say quickly.

  Nate smiles and passes a black five to another boy.

  “Why not?” the boy asks.

  “We’re friends,” Nate says. “And go fish.”

  “Where’s Marissa?” a young girl asks. “Why doesn’t she sit with you anymore?”

  “Because we’re not together anymore,” Nate says.

  “Does she hate you?!”

  “No, we’re still friends.”

  “I like Marissa! She’s nice to us, except her hair is hard to braid.”

  “Yeah, it is!” another girl agrees.

  “Oh, Annika―I forgot―I have something for you,” Nate says. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a long, skinny vial filled to the brim with small white pills. “They’re pills that will protect you from the sunlight. Take one a week, and your body won’t be affected by the sun’s rays.” He hands me the vial, and I examine the contents. So small and so many pills―there must be at least twenty in here!

  “What is it?” a boy asks.

  “Wow… how did you…” I ask.

  Nate shrugs. “I finally figured out it was the sunlight that reacted with the plasma in your bloodstream, so I put this together,” he replies.

  “Wow… looks like I’m not the only one who’s been busy lately,” I say. “Thank you, Nate, really. This is awesome.” He smiles. “Can I test it?”

  “No,” he’s quick to say. “No, you’re still on house arrest.”

  “Hey Nate, why are you so bad at Go Fish?” one of the boys playing the card game asks.

  “I’m not bad at it; I just― hey!” Nate says. He spots a little boy behind him, peering over his shoulder and looking at his cards. “You’re a bunch of little cheaters!”

  The boy shrieks when Nate catches him, rolls the boy on his lap, and starts tickling the boy’s stomach. The boy laughs and hollers, wiggling like a fish out of water and kicking the pile of cards in every which direction. The boy rolls away from Nate and jumps to his feet, still laughing and smiling.

  From the basketball court, we hear Elijah, Lazzer, and Zoë hollering. I look over and see Elijah holding a small boy up to the rim of the basketball hoop as the basketball falls through the net. An army of boys climb and cling onto Lazzer to the point where moving is physically impossible for him, and Zoë runs around dribbling the basketball with a swarm of boys and girls chasing after her. She lets them catch her, and she throws the basketball to a girl standing alone next to the basket.

  “So what’s your gift?” Jakara asks me.

  “My gift?” I reply. Uh-oh, am I supposed to have something to give to Nate in exchange for the pills?

  “Yeah, your uh-ba-ba-bil-i-tee?” she stutters.

  “Oh,” I say.

  Gifts, huh? I guess that’s kind of cool, though―a typical way for a school of special, genetically-mutated children to think of their extraterrestrial powers.

  “I, umm… I can shoot energy from my hands, and I can create force fields,” I say.

  “Ohh! Can you show us?” asks the pink-skinned girl.

  “I don’t know,” I say, glancing at Nate for approval.

  “Go for it,” he says.

  I look at Jakara and the other girls around me, and all of them give me their best puppy-dog faces. I would hate to disappoint them. I lift my palm up, and six dazzling photons of white and golden energy float up from my palm and twinkle in front of the girls. I move the photons up and down so they look like stars in the reflection of rippling water, and then I make the photons swirl around the girls. The girls “Ooh!” and “Ahh!” as their heads follow the stars until I bring the stars back in front and have them disappear back into my hand.

  “Whooaa!! That was so cool!”

  “That was soooo pretty!”

  “Can you do it again?”

  “Yeah! Do it again! Do it again!”

  “Whoa, settle down, settle down,” I say, as the girls scoot closer and closer to me, completely invading my personal space.

  “I wish I could do that,” mopes the pink-skinned girl. “I’m just an ugly, pink monster!”

  “Whoa―hey now!” I say, placing my hand on the girl’s shoulder. “You’re beautiful, and you’re special. Don’t you dare think otherwise.”

  “Annika’s right, Drea. You’re a special person; all you girls are,” Nate says. “Remember what Moton always says: we’re all human.”

  This makes me think, the last thing Nate said… We’re all human. True, all these girls, these children, the Metanites― they are all human. But me? No, I don’t know… not with some of the things I’ve done. How could someone like me, someone who runs, someone who maims, someone who kills, be human? The girl with short black hair and massive eyes brushes her hair against my side and reaches for my hand again. The bow in her hair pokes my side, but the closeness is a comfort. I don’t want to disturb her comfort just because her bow digs into my side. Maybe… maybe I’m just not human yet.

  XXIV: Who Are You?

  Wednesday, April 2, 2065
; 6:20 p.m.

  First person

  “Alright, Izzi, you’re clear to approach the front door,” I say into the microphone.

  I’m in the Metanite’s Base, sitting in the chair in front of the billboard screens and wearing the headset like I had seen Kiaria wear when she orchestrated the mission to extract some of the members of the hunting crew. That was last Wednesday, over a week ago. Last night, after playing basketball and braiding hair in the gym with the kids, I returned to the Base to my table-web with Nate and Zoë. We found, in the early hours this morning, a potential entrance to Dr. Nancy’s underground factory through a deserted barber shop in the Flats, Guy’s Barber Shop. Izzi is there now, with Kono and Nickel as back-up. She’s invisible, but the microchip Nate fastened to her shirt portrays a clear visual on the left billboard of the empty, run-down shop sandwiched between two equally squalid buildings with “For Lease” signs pasted to the window.

  I’ve never used this entrance before, but I remember seeing it from inside the factory. It’s a giant door that looks more like a pleated wall with a massive bar locking the two sides together at the end of a long, escalading hall. The ECs’ corridor is right around the corner, so it would be the perfect place to evacuate them if necessary. I remember carrying my cot up to the top of that escalading hallway along with a group of ECs until we came to the wall-door. Then, we would climb onto our cots and slide down the hall, colliding with any of the guards or scientists that would walk by at the other side of that long, slanted hallway. Ha, we would get in so much trouble for it after hitting Bruce or Dean, or someone like that.

  “I’m at the door,” Izzi says. I return my focus to the mission at hand. All the other Metanites, excluding those at the barber shop and Kiaria who is still sick, stand behind me, watching intently. We watch as the door handle turns slowly, then halts. “It’s locked,” Izzi whispers.

  “There’s probably nothing important in there, anyway,” Kono says.

  “Izzi, can you see anything through the windows?” I ask. The camera on the left moves toward the window, but everything inside is dark.

  “I can make out a little,” Izzi says.

  “Good,” Nate says over my shoulder, “because we can’t see much from the cam.”