Soulprint

by Megan Miranda

  I wonder how long we’re supposed to stay here. It doesn’t look like this place has electricity, but there must be, because there seems to be some sort of television screen.

  I pretend not to notice the rope on the counter. But Casey finally sees it, and I sense her shoulders stiffen from across the room. I pretend not to hear the lock turn on the door—not to notice it’s a key instead of a latch system. Or that the windows are covered in meshed wire, nailed into the wood.

  I pretend not to notice that I am being held against my will, once again.

  There’s a brown sectional sofa, which looks as if it hasn’t been cleaned in a decade or longer. Cameron sinks into it, a cloud of dust rising up around him, and he coughs into his closed fist. There are three doors beyond this main room, one of which has rolled-up sleeping bags leaning against it. I’m hoping one of the others is a bathroom.

  Casey picks through a bag of clothes, pulling out a pair of camouflage pants, which she frowns at. “Oh, good, just my style,” she says, tucking her hair behind her ear. Her hair has a wave to it, I’m noticing now, that makes it look lighter than mine. And it falls in wisps from behind her ear, softening the sharp angles of her face. She throws a pair of clothes at me, gesturing toward the blood on my shirt. She wrinkles her nose as she does, reminding me of the expression Cameron makes.

  I turn around, facing the wall—like Cameron or Casey might do—as I change from the black, blood-stained shirt to the forest-green T-shirt she’s thrown my way.

  I don’t understand what they intend to do with me, and I don’t want to stick around to find out. I need to move. I need to get outside, and I need to disappear. These clothes—the way they’re made to blend in with the surroundings—will probably help.

  “Where is this place?” I ask, as I slide my legs into the new pants. I pull the drawstring tight around my waist, and when I turn around, Dominic is the only one looking at me. He’s watching me as if he’s confused by me. Like I’m a puzzle he’s intent on solving.

  “Nowhere,” Dominic says for the second time. “It’s nowhere, sweetheart.”

  The fact that he calls me sweetheart makes me nervous. The fact that I am essentially locked in a room with him makes me nervous.

  The presence of the rope and the wire makes me nervous.

  The fact that I cannot orient myself, that I am not at an axis, that the world is moving and existing and changing without me at the center makes me feel small and insignificant and lost, and I recite the facts in my head to keep calm: There were thirty-two guards on the island, and I escaped.

  Here, there are only three. There are only three. There are only three …

  “Can’t say I’m a fan of this place,” Casey says, tossing the bag of clothes on the couch beside Cameron.

  “It’s temporary,” Dominic says. Temporary. That can mean nearly anything. Days, months, years. Now that we know that the soul doesn’t die, it could also mean a lifetime.

  June’s hiding was “temporary,” too. That’s what they call it on that one documentary. A year and a half, and then she came out and was killed.

  Even now, nobody knows how June and Liam got in the database. Rumor has it that after they got inside, they set up a secondary shadow-database, one that copies directly from the original source, so they could have unlimited access to it at all times. Somewhere only June and Liam knew. That’s what people are worried about now. That I might somehow know how to find it again. That I might continue where June left off.

  “Okay,” Cameron says, “then let’s get on with it.”

  Dominic holds his arm out, gesturing toward the back room.

  Casey skips ahead into the back room and says, “Give me ten minutes.”

  Dominic nods and heads for the second closed door. He sends Cameron a look. “Watch her,” he says.

  I catch the tail end of Cameron’s eye roll and find myself involuntarily smiling at him. He looks away first.

  Well, I do have ten minutes. I open the kitchen drawers, one at a time, but they’re empty. Though the drawers are old and removable, and I bet I could pry a nail or two loose if I had a few minutes to myself. I slam them closed and run my fingers along the mesh wiring, pulling at it to see if it gives.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Cameron asks.

  “Looking around,” I say, not pausing.

  I check under the brown couch, but the wooden legs seem to be firmly attached.

  “Stop,” Cameron says.

  “Why?” I ask, but he doesn’t answer. He of all people should understand after helping me escape. I will not be slow and malleable and content. I will not wait for someone to come. This time, I will be ready by myself. I’m used to people watching me. What’s he going to say? Alina was looking under the couch? So what. It would be stupid if I didn’t. It would be a waste of time for us to stand here staring at each other, pretending like I am not still being held against my will.

  There are four lantern-shaped lamps that I’m assuming are battery powered. Inside each is a tiny lightbulb. I wonder if they will break. When they’re on, I wonder if they will burn. I try to pry the top off one, but it’s glued on pretty tightly. I look for anything that will shatter into shards that I can store in the pockets of my pants until someone opens the front door.

  They are not careful enough.

  Everything is a weapon.

  I will not stay here long.

  “Stop,” he says again, but lower. “Before he comes out.”

  My eyes lock with his, and I wonder, not for the first time, what he’s doing here. I place the lantern back on the counter, wondering just how far I can push him, trust him. “Just …,” I say, “one more thing.”

  I take the rope off the counter, and Cameron comes closer, his hands held out like he must stop me from something, but he’s not sure what. Like I might use it on him. I’m not stronger than he is, I know I’m not. But still, he comes closer as I walk toward the couch with it.

  “Don’t,” he whispers, but I have no idea what he wants me to stop doing, or why. He has my elbow in a grip just as I’m lifting a couch cushion, and he looks completely confused but doesn’t let go. I shove the rope under the cushion with my free hand and drop it back down just as Dominic enters the room again.

  “Wow,” he says, eyeing Cameron with his hand on me, standing perfectly still, so close I can feel his breath on the side of my face. “What the hell happened in that trunk? No, don’t tell me, I bet I know.”

  My entire face is burning. I know what he’s going to say from the way he’s leering at me. I shouldn’t be ashamed of kissing him. I did it to distract him, so I’d have a moment to think, to act.

  I kissed him, and then I ruined him, and I cannot look him in the eye. I can’t look at Cameron either.

  “She got carsick,” Cameron says, a second before Dominic speaks. “And then she hiked four miles across the state border.” My pulse races, because he’s giving me information. I know he knows it, too. And he hasn’t said anything about the rope or my search of the room. “She needs something to eat.”

  I pull my arm away, let my eyes wander the room like I’m mindlessly assessing it. I know better than to hope blindly, but I relish the information.

  I will use it.

  Casey pokes her head out of the back room, swinging the door open. “All set,” she says. But she doesn’t smile, and so neither do I.

  There’s something humming in a back room. It sounds like ten refrigerators, and I really hope that’s the case, because I really am starving. On the island, someone would’ve brought me food by now. Someone would’ve made sure I had enough.

  My stomach growls and my legs are shaky from the hike, but all thought of food leaves my mind as I enter the room behind Cameron. There’s a generator, I think. Something to power this place, so far off the grid. It’s humming, and the computer it’s hooked up to is humming, too. There’s another machine with a computer screen attached, but it’s long and rectangular and has a pin dropping o
ut of an alcove in the middle, currently resting in a beaker of something. Maybe water. Maybe not. But the most uncomfortable part of this room is not the things that are unfamiliar. It’s the thing I know: a narrow cot, a metal tray covered in Saran Wrap, a box of gauze, a bottle of disinfectant.

  Dominic comes up behind me and places a hand on my tense shoulder. “Relax, Alina, it won’t hurt much.”

  But my shoulders go tense because I don’t understand. “What the hell is this?” I ask. Nobody looks me in the eye. “Casey?” I say, but she keeps herself busy at the screen. Dominic wanted a sample from me in my room as well. He didn’t tell me why then either. “Cameron?” I say.

  Cameron cuts his eyes to Dominic. “I thought you said she wanted this,” he says.

  “Wanted what?” I ask, panic rising, rage rising. “Wanted what? You think I’m not her?”

  Dom looks at me with something close to compassion. “No, I know you’re her. Calm down, Alina,” he says, but that only succeeds in making me even less calm, because he’s also blocking the door.

  We all know June’s soul is mine; what more do they intend to see? There is nothing else to see. That’s the problem with soul fingerprinting. We still don’t know what it can do, what it can tell us. All we can do is find a match.

  There have been several studies on the nature of the soul, but it’s not information that comes from the soul fingerprint itself—there’s no secret revealed in the readout; it’s like seeing a DNA strand but having no idea what it codes for. The only way science has learned anything so far is by linking the soul with a person, monitoring each generation, and seeing what traits correlate from life to life. Science explains the correlations the same way it explains DNA markers. In the same way that some sequences in a DNA chain indicate an increased likelihood of developing certain multifactor diseases like Alzheimer’s, there’s no certainty. And here, they’re not even using hard facts—no markers in the soul fingerprint they extract in the spinal fluid itself. The “markers” they use as evidence are personality tests, self-surveys, or in the case of the famous study, specific types of criminal records tied to each soul. But there are only a few generations in the database, and it’s no secret that even these so-called markers are flawed. People could be committing crimes and not getting caught. People could be caught and not convicted. People could be framed. But it’s the best they can do. A human being isn’t quantifiable. So they study those markers from generation to generation to assess the correlation. Seems a lot less like science to me. Most of the results were reported during June’s lifetime.

  They already know the nature of my soul.

  The only thing they can get from that needle is knowledge they already have.

  Dominic flips a switch on the side of the rectangular box, and the liquid in the beaker begins to disappear, sucked inside the machine as it stutters to life. “It’s time to see exactly what you’re worth, Alina Chase.”

  Chapter 9

  “No.” I back up toward the door, but Dominic is blocking my way.

  Cameron turns around but doesn’t look at me. “She doesn’t want this.”

  Dominic comes closer and says, “Of course she wants this. She’s June. This isn’t to hurt you, Alina. It’s to access your money.”

  “What money?” I ask, even as the pieces are falling into place. I know what he’s trying to do, to see if June has left herself an inheritance. But to check funds, to transfer funds, you need to have this procedure done at a bank to prevent fraud.

  It’s rare, truth be told. Most everyone leaves their assets to their children, their spouses, their loved ones. It’s only the lonely people who do this. The people who have no one else. Something cold settles through my bones, and I hope that the account is empty.

  “Won’t it be frozen anyway?” I ask.

  “That’s the beauty of privacy,” Dominic says. “It’s not tied to any names. Your soul fingerprint is the username and password. The banking system merely searches for the match. The money is just sitting there, waiting to be retrieved.” That way, either life can retrieve the cash. Nothing else may be passed along. No messages, no notes, no confessions or last words. Just a sum of cash. Nearly everyone checks it on their eighteenth birthday, because why not?

  But I’m not eighteen and I’m not in a bank, and if I were, surely I would be arrested before I could get the money, regardless.

  Surely June would’ve been arrested had she walked in to make a deposit.

  “That’s it?” I ask. “You just want the money?” It’s a price to pay for my escape, I suppose. It’s not really mine, anyway. Honestly, I could use it. But I’m not June, and I don’t want her blood money.

  “No,” he says. “But we’re going to need the money.”

  We’re on the run, after all. Money is necessary for survival. I understand this on some academic level, but I’ve never had it, and I’ve never needed it. But it must have cost them a considerable amount of money to pull off that escape.

  “I owe you money, though. Isn’t that right? How much do I owe you?” I ask.

  I want there to be a price—a price I can pay and be free. But nobody responds as I crawl onto the table and hike my shirt up to my ribs and pull my knees to my chest, like I’ve seen done on television a hundred times before. I’ve had this procedure done three times, but I don’t remember any of them. The first, when they were searching for June. The second time, by request of my parents, to double-check. Dumb hope. The third, by request of the state when I was placed in their care.

  June Calahan, every time.

  When I was younger, I tried to prove I wasn’t her in other ways: June was right-handed, so I sat on my right hand and wrote with my left, until it felt natural. Left- and right-handedness transferred at a correlation of .99, and so I fought it. I refused to study the things June was good at, skimming over math problems and pretending I didn’t see the patterns in the IQ test. I was quiet when she was loud, and I stayed far away from anything she liked to do, according to all the documentaries.

  Didn’t matter.

  Still June.

  Even though I don’t remember having this procedure done, I’ve seen it enough on TV.

  Every year, there are at least three movies that deal with the “what ifs” of soul science. Like when DNA, and all its implications, was discovered, and there were movies on human cloning and scary government regulations and selecting for perfect traits and an end to life as we knew it. None of which happened. Life stayed pretty much the same, and science was pretty much used for the betterment of all: disease prevention, genetic screening, criminal evidence. Sometimes there’d be news of a couple who screened their embryos for a perfect match for their sick child, and there’d be some ethical debate about it, but mostly people did what they did for their loved ones. It was all still a matter of privacy. And sometimes there was more knowledge than we really wanted. Did we really want to know if we were going to die from a horrible disease? Did it change anything, other than provide a ticking clock? And that was something that privacy law protected as well. It’s your decision to check such things. It’s only your information to know.

  And this is no different. It exists, and we know it, and there are movies about understanding the nature of the soul, of quantifying and labeling people, and there are movies about souls trying to reach some nirvana, and about illegal screening and revenge scenarios and government plots, none of which have happened. No, I am the only mistake.

  So I know what to do, to pull my legs up so my spine sticks out, so they can ease the needle between my vertebrae and extract the clear liquid from the base of my spine, that they can run through the spectrometer and see the color spectrum the marker of the soul emits, in a pattern that is unique to itself. Like a fingerprint.

  I wonder what mine looks like. If it’s all blues and purples, which is how I feel inside. Whether the colors mean anything. Personality. Predisposition. Good. Evil.

  DNA was just a combination and pattern of nucleo
tides before we knew what they stood for, too.

  I expect it to be Dominic who sticks a needle in my back, but he goes to the computer and his fingers fly across the keyboard. “Casey already has us remotely on site.” I’m surprised to hear this, that she’s the one who hacked into the bank. I don’t know why, but I didn’t want it to be her. “All we need is your username and passcode.”

  I feel something cool against my lower spine. And then the sharp smell of alcohol. “Hold very, very still,” she says, and even Dominic stops typing. I feel a sharp pinch, and then pressure, so unlike when Cameron extracted the tracker from my rib, but at least it was a hurt I could quantify. This becomes a pull, the feeling that my nerves are moving in a way they shouldn’t. It feels so very, very wrong.

  “There,” she says, and I feel the needle slide out from between my vertebrae. She applies pressure and tapes something over the top. I push myself up, but she puts a hand on my shoulder. “No, you need to lie still for a bit.”

  Casey carries a small vial filled with a clear liquid over to the rectangular machine, removes the beaker, and slips the test tube over the pin.

  “Were you left anything?” I ask, because every piece of information is useful. The type of people they were, the type of people they are. I can use it all.

  “No,” Dominic says, and he looks exceptionally angry by the fact that his soul must’ve had loved ones, must’ve had a family or friends or a cause to donate to.

  “Not me,” Casey says.

  I stare at Cameron, but he doesn’t answer. “He never checked,” Casey says. “He doesn’t want to know.”

  “You could be a millionaire,” I say, just to bait him into speaking.