Origin

by Jessica Khoury

  She hauls the valise over the side of the Jeep, chattering on about the humidity and the mosquitoes and the other trials of the jungle, and then I hear a thump. Aunt Harriet swears, and I hear the pounding of feet running to her. Drawing a deep breath, as if I could suck courage into my lungs, I peek over the luggage to scope the scene.

  The valise is lying open at Aunt Harriet’s feet, its contents—consisting of women’s clothes—spread across the dirt. The brunette woman from Corpus, wearing a white pantsuit totally unsuited to the jungle, is glaring at Aunt Harriet as her colleague tries not to notice the frilly underwear scattered around Aunt Harriet’s feet. Taking advantage of the moment and using every ounce of my speed, I roll over the other side of the Jeep and land in a crouch. Everyone on this side of the caravan is too focused on Aunt Harriet and the woman to notice the blur of a girl breezing around the corner of the garage.

  Once I’m well out of sight, I sink against the side of the garage and suck down air, hoping to drown my nerves in oxygen. My clothes are a ruin, my hair is in knots, and there’s river mud coating my arms and legs and neck. There’s no way I can face Corpus like this.

  The B Dorms are eighty yards away, and the path to the building is lined with tall shrubs. If I stay low and move quickly, I can make it there in a matter of seconds. I sidle around the garage, then crouch low, draw a breath, and break into a sprint.

  I can still hear the sounds of the crowd, which now include the shouts of Uncle Paolo as he tries to calm everyone down. Without missing a step, I slip through the door of B Labs and race down the hall to the pool. In less than a minute I strip and dive into the water. I swim to the other side, leaving a trail of mud swirling behind me, but by the time I climb out, the dirt is sinking to the bottom. I take only a second to slide past the mirror in the locker room to check for any residual mud, then I’m wrapping a towel around me and heading for the door.

  By the time I reach the crowd out front, only two and a half minutes have passed. It’s almost as if I never left the Jeep. Soaked, mostly naked, and barefoot, I have no choice but to face everyone.

  “There you are,” a voice growls, and Uncle Antonio grabs my wrist. “Swimming, Pia? Honestly? I’ve been searching for half an hour! Paolo said you’d be with Harriet. Harriet said you never showed up. I almost thought you’d climbed the fence and run off into the jungle!”

  “Ha!” I bleat. “That—that’s crazy, Uncle Antonio! I was…swimming. See?” I yank a lock of my dripping hair, then decide it’s a perfect time to change the subject. “What’s going on?”

  He bites. “They radioed us forty minutes ago, said they were standing on the banks of the Little Mississip, waiting for a ride.” He shakes his head. “Threw the whole place into chaos. Paolo’s been yelling nonstop, I’m pretty sure Haruto had a minor stroke, and now Harriet’s gone and dumped their underwear in the mud.” Uncle Antonio leads me through the crowd, still muttering. “Damn Corpus would pull this kind of stunt.”

  We emerge between Uncle Paolo and Uncle Sergei, who are apologizing profusely to the scowling woman for Aunt Harriet’s clumsiness. But when Uncle Antonio clears his throat and everyone turns to stare at us, they all fall silent.

  Feeling extremely self-conscious and clinging to my flimsy towel as if it could somehow rewind this day to its innocent beginnings, I smile my brightest.

  “Sir and madam,” Uncle Paolo says, a vein in his eyelid pulsing so strongly his whole temple twitches, “here she is. Our Pia.”

  I know he meant to give me an entire speech to recite at this moment, in order to win Corpus over from the start, but the surprise arrival has thrown pretty much all of Uncle Paolo’s planning out the window. So I’m left to my own wits, which are still frayed and raw from the encounter with the anaconda this morning.

  Was it only this morning? Resisting the urge to sigh and run straight to my bed, I nod to the visitors. “Hello. Welcome to Little Cam.”

  I try not to wince at the way their eyes roam my body. Neither says hello back to me or offers their name. Despite the fact their eyes are glued to me, I have a feeling that neither of them sees me. They look at me the way Uncle Paolo looks at the lab rats; you can almost see the calculations running across their eyeballs. Summing, subtracting, weighing, and comparing. They don’t see a seventeen-year-old girl. They see the result of a particularly long and expensive experiment. And from the intensity and silence of their stares, I can’t even tell if they like what they see.

  “I’m sure you’re hungry and tired,” Uncle Paolo says at last. They nod and keep staring as they follow Uncle Paolo and me to the B Dorms, where they’ll be put for the duration of their stay. Which is still, as far as I know, undetermined.

  Once we’re in the dorm and Uncle Antonio helps sort out their luggage, I whisper to Uncle Paolo that I’m going to go change for dinner. He nods distractedly, the tic in his eye still going at full blast. I slip away, glad to be forgotten.

  Well, not quite forgotten. The two visitors watch me as I walk down the hall and through the door, as if their eyes were leashed to my heels.

  Even as I cross Little Cam, my towel drawn as securely as it can go around me, I feel the weight of those two gazes like chains hung around my neck.

  Their names are Victoria Strauss and Gunter Laszlo, I learn during dinner, and together they run the monster of a company that is Corpus. I learn all of this from Aunt Harriet, who sits beside me. The Corpus duo sits with Uncle Paolo and the rest of the Immortis team at their own table. Every five seconds, at least one of them glances over their shoulder at me. I consider sticking my tongue out or picking my nose, but then I remember what Uncle Sergei said about them shutting us down, and I keep my rude gestures to myself.

  “They have operations in over twenty countries,” Aunt Harriet whispers as she attacks her spaghetti. “Most of them are top secret. There’s not a government in the world that can touch these guys. They’ve got fingers in everything—weapons development, banking, space exploration. But their main focus is biotech research and, more specifically, genetic engineering. In other words”—she chops her noodles so they’ll fit on her fork—“you.”

  “How do you know so much about them?”

  “They’re the ones who recruited me. It was Strauss who approached me first. The woman’s psychotic.” The fork stabbing turns vicious.

  “Why?” I ask. “Is it a personality disorder? Schizophrenia? I can’t imagine that someone who’s bipolar or delusional would be given a job as important—”

  “She’s not literally psychotic, Pia. Good heavens. I meant it figuratively. She’s nuts. Don’t you think for a minute I spilled her suitcase by accident. Oh, no.” A meatball suffers a gruesome death beneath Aunt Harriet’s knife. “That woman deserves more than just muddy underwear.”

  “Why?”

  “I hear they plan on staying several days. I’m sure you’ll figure it out by then.”

  After dinner, Uncle Paolo suggests the guests retire for the night, but Strauss and Laszlo shake their heads and point toward me. Inwardly, I cringe. After Aunt Harriet’s description, I have no idea what to expect from them.

  We gather in my lab, which feels tiny once eight people—me, the Immortis team, and the Corpus representatives—are crammed inside of it. I sit on the examination table and hope with every cell in my body that they don’t ask me to strip down. They don’t, thankfully, but they do comb over every page in my files, which are extensive. Hours go by as Strauss and Laszlo interrogate Uncle Paolo and the rest of the team. What kinds of leukocytes does my body produce against diseases? What are the differences between my chromosomes and those of a normal human? What is my normal level of telomerase? All questions I could answer in my sleep. But no one asks me. Strauss and Laszlo have been here for hours, and not once has either of them spoken a word to me. I have a feeling that if I did say something, they might startle and stare as if an amoeba had suddenly asked them if they enjoyed their breakfast.

  After the questions, they w
ant to see demonstrations of my unique properties, starting with my unbreakable skin. Uncle Paolo picks up a scalpel and hands it to Strauss.

  I almost refuse, but Mother, without even looking me in the eye, takes my hand and rolls up my sleeve before I can speak. Strauss seems to relish the blade as it presses against my skin, and I think I see a little of the woman Aunt Harriet seems to loathe so deeply.

  “Remarkable,” Strauss breathes as she hands the scalpel to Laszlo. “Not a scratch on her.”

  I’m forced to lie back and not grimace as Laszlo runs the blade over my arm and even my cheek. It doesn’t cut, but it still hurts! I want to scream, but I can’t. Uncle Paolo’s eyes are on me at every moment, compelling me to comply. So I close my eyes and think about the future. About the first immortal I’ll create. It’ll have to be a male. Maybe I’ll get to name him. Maybe…Slowly, as if swimming up through water, Eio’s face slips into my mind. Maybe I’ll name him George.…Eio, his body arcing into a perfect dive as he leaps from the top of the waterfall. Or Peter or Jack…Eio’s eyes full of stars as we sit by the river. Klaus or Sven or Heinrich. Good names. They were all scientists here at one time or another.…Eio leading me through the jungle, holding his hand out, urging me to take it.…

  “Open your eyes, Pia,” Mother says.

  For a moment, I’m disoriented. There are strange faces looming over me, shining lights in my eyes, watching my pupils shrink and retreat. Fire, I think. You really want to see something? Use firelight. I stare up at Strauss and Laszlo, willing myself not to blink as they pry at my eyelids.

  It’s two in the morning when they finally run out of questions to ask. Uncle Jakob yawns into the back of his hand, and Uncle Haruto’s eyes are bloodshot.

  “Well,” Uncle Paolo says, his fingers drumming the exam table by my knee. “What do you think?”

  Strauss and Laszlo exchange looks, then glance at me.

  “We should speak privately, Dr. Alvez,” Laszlo says. His voice never seems louder than a whisper, so everyone has to crane to hear him.

  Uncle Paolo nods. “All right, everyone. That’s it for tonight.”

  Apparently “privately” means just Uncle Paolo and the two Corpus representatives, but at this hour, no one seems to mind. They shuffle out, yawning and rubbing their eyes.

  I trail behind, but when we reach the stairwell, I stop to tie my shoelace.

  No one notices that I’m wearing slip-ons.

  Once I hear the door shut behind the others, I lightly slip back down the hall. I don’t have to go far. My sense of hearing is well above average.

  “Yes, yes, there’s no denying she’s a marvel,” Laszlo is saying, his voice severe. “Subject 77 is perfect. Everything we could have hoped for and more. Which is exactly why we’re wondering what the delay is, Alvez. We need more of them. She’s no good to us on her own.”

  Subject 77…I have a number?

  “We need her if we’re to speed up the process,” Uncle Paolo replies. I can hear his fingers still drumming the table. “Pia’s mind is more advanced than ours could ever be. You’ve been after a shortcut to immortality for years, haven’t you? Well, she’s the only one who will discover it, if it even exists. And she’s not ready.”

  I’m ready! I almost yell it out. I’m ready, oh, am I ready!

  “What exactly are you waiting for?” That’s Strauss.

  “I’ve been giving her the Wickham tests right on schedule, but her scores aren’t yet at the level necessary for full induction onto the Immortis team.”

  “The board is growing anxious,” Strauss replies. “They want results.”

  “Pia is a result. The greatest result humanity’s ever seen. The board will just have to be patient. Anyway, don’t you control the board? If I remember correctly, whatever you say goes. No questions. No complaints.”

  “Fine. You want to play it straight? We want results. Unlike you, not all of us are inspired by terms like ‘the good of mankind’ or ‘building a better future.’ We don’t want a race of immortals in five generations. We want solutions now. Sato’s experiments proved that immortality couldn’t be attained by someone born mortal. Fine. We’ve accepted that. But there are those of us who will have children and grandchildren in the coming years.”

  “But—”

  “Yes, we control the board,” Strauss continues as if Uncle Paolo had never spoken. “But without more results, without more forward momentum, we’ll lose that control. And Paolo. You don’t want us to lose control. There are those at Corpus who strongly feel that this operation should be stationed in the States—under a different team.”

  No, no, no…don’t shut us down.

  “So take Pia to them. Hell, let them all take scalpels to her if they want. Once they see her, they’ll shut up about results.”

  My knees weaken, and I sink against the wall. My hands run up and down my arms as I imagine a hundred scalpels digging into my skin.

  “You know we can’t do that,” Laszlo replies. “Word would get out. Genisect would start World War III just to get their hands on her. They suspect, you know. They’ve suspected for years. Why do you think we only risk coming down here once every few decades? They’re watching us. Pia is the holy grail of modern science, Alvez; we can’t parade her around like a prize pig!”

  “All right, point taken. But I’m telling you, she’s not ready! We should focus on Dr. Fields’s cloning research. It’s our best angle.”

  Silence. Then Strauss: “Dr. Fields isn’t going to be cooperating much longer.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Yes, what do you mean?

  “The sister. She’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “Fields doesn’t know. She can’t know, for as long as possible. The minute she finds out, she’ll be gone. We need her research, Alvez. She’s the best in her, well, field.”

  What’s going on?! I clap a hand over my mouth to prevent myself from shouting aloud.

  “It comes down to Pia,” Strauss continues. “When is the next Wickham test scheduled?”

  “Three months. And it’s not the last one. There are three more—”

  “It is the last one, and it’s happening tomorrow.”

  “I—Victoria, that’s impossible. It’s too soon. She’s not ready.”

  “But she will be. After tomorrow.”

  “Victoria, really, I—”

  “Tomorrow.” Her voice lowers. I have to strain to hear. “I will speak plainly, Alvez, because we both know what Corpus is capable of. Remember Geneva?”

  Complete silence.

  Then Strauss continues. “There are at least twenty scientists I can think of who would kill for the chance to have your job. Your job and the jobs of your entire team. Don’t make it come to that. I swear, Alvez, if you resist us on this—”

  A strangled murmur from Uncle Paolo.

  “What was that?” Strauss asks.

  “It won’t come to that. As you say. Tomorrow.”

  I hear a rustling of papers and shoes and sense that the conversation is wrapping up.

  Heart hammering and skin the temperature of liquid nitrogen, I flee the building.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I wake up to the familiar glow of sunshine on the glass roof. The light is green, filtered by the drapes of leaves between the roof and the sky, and it falls on me gently. Given the chance, I could easily fall back asleep. But my alarm clock is relentless.

  Then I remember the conversation I overheard last night between Uncle Paolo and the Corpus representatives, and I sit up straight, wide awake.

  They’re going to test me today. My hands grip the blanket until my knuckles turn white. And it’s going to be my last test.

  Someone knocks on my door, and I nearly jump out of my skin, the timing is so eerie. It’s Mother.

  “There’s been a change of schedule, Pia,” she says. “You’re to meet Dr. Alvez in the menagerie in half an hour.” She breezes into the room and whips my blankets away.

 
“Hey!” I draw my knees up indignantly.

  Mother perches on the edge of the bed and leans close to me. “You must be strong, Pia. This is everything. Everything. You must do all that they ask, or they will take Paolo from us.” She grabs the front of my T-shirt. I’m so shocked I don’t resist. “I cannot lose him, Pia. Do you understand me? Paolo is…I can’t lose him.”

  Her fingers are cold and white, her eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. Did she talk to Uncle Paolo last night? Did he tell her about Strauss and Laszlo’s threats? I’ve always known that Mother worshipped Uncle Paolo, but the intensity in her eyes is stronger than I’ve ever seen before. She’s usually so reserved and controlled. Seeing her like this makes me nervous. I’ll be infinitely glad when Strauss and Laszlo leave and everyone starts acting normally again.

  “I’m getting up,” I whisper. “Everything will be okay. You’ll see. I’m ready.”

  She holds me for a moment longer, then sighs and lets go. Before leaving the room, she looks back and says, “You had better be. Because I’ll do anything to keep him here.”

  And I don’t doubt a word.

  In the menagerie I find not only Uncle Paolo, Laszlo, and Strauss—wearing a different white pantsuit—but Aunt Harriet too. She and the menagerie’s supervisor, Jonas Brauer, are watching and discussing a sick marmoset in a wire cage. They see me and wave, but continue in the flow of their conversation.

  A feeling of apprehension grows in me as I near Uncle Paolo, but I am determined to succeed, no matter what he asks of me. I think of my eternal people. Of brothers and sisters and friends who will never die. An immortal family, untouched by pain and death, knowing only life and love and beauty. I try to imagine it, try to see their faces in my mind…but all I see is a blue-eyed boy sitting by the river, giving me the stars.

  So instead I think of Mother and Uncle Paolo and how strong and composed they are. I can be like them, I think. I can do it. I’m used to them looking at me with pride because of my immortality, but I want them to see that there’s more to me, that I am strong and disciplined. A circle and a line.…