by Devon Hughes
“Oh!” Leesa said. “I almost forgot.” She went to get the notebook and brought it back to Marcus.
“Is this Bruce’s?” he asked, turning it over in his hand.
Leesa nodded. “I grabbed it in the lab when the fire started. Bruce seemed pretty unhinged, and I thought there might be something important in there.” She scooted closer to him on the futon so they could look through it together.
The scrawl was mostly equations that were pretty far over their heads, but there were a few things in the margins that set off alarm bells and victory horns all at once—things like Unnaturals as prototype, L1 most aggressive, backup Laringos, need to control, and something about K-group.
“K-group,” Marcus said. “Isn’t that . . .”
“What Pete said the researchers were talking about!” Leesa said, nodding. “And look here.” She pointed to another page where K-group was written next to Vulpes pongo chiroptera. “Wasn’t that what Bruce had been muttering in the labs?”
“Fox-human-bat,” Marcus said. “I looked it up after. But what’s this?” He turned to a graph on the next page. One column was labeled TOLERANCES. It listed things like solar, pollutant, and predators, and the opposite column—GROUP NO.—had a bunch of letters listed. The weird thing was, after K, which had deceased written next to it, all the letters had been crossed out and Kill Clan had been written over them again and again.
What did all that mean, though? Marcus leaned close to study the graph, and Leesa was sure he could hear her heart beating.
Leesa’s phone dinged. Antonio. Ugh, he was always trying to ruin everything.
Enough. Leesa clicked the sound off.
“That, um, your book about the detective girl? Nancy . . .” Marcus leaned even closer to her as he tried to decipher the cover of the paperback from Ms. Hoiles she’d left sitting on the table.
“Drew. Uh-huh. We should go over the clues!” Leesa stood up quickly, hoping he didn’t notice when she wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans, and went to get her tablet to take notes.
She made a list.
THE SERUM: a virus that makes animals mean; they’re making it in bulk; Bruce thought he was protecting people by making it, but now he regrets it.
THE VIDEO OF PETE: a distraction that makes the citizens think this is a small operation; suggests something bigger; proves there is a real reaction with the serum that makes the animals even more violent toward people.
FRANCINE: the mayor’s daughter, who she will do anything for; very sick, tried to move to Paloma to get better, but was denied entry; missing.
KILL CLAN: test subjects in Bruce’s notes; what the serum creates; part of Vince’s plan to start a revolution.
THE INVINCIBLE CLONES: Bruce created them thinking they’d be even better than the Kill Clan—“more robust.”
THE “GREATER GOOD”: what the mayor thinks she’s working toward; says that you have to compromise and do bad to save the world; talks about wanting to protect citizens.
K-GROUP: a fox-human-bat; Bruce thinks it’s dead, Pete said it’s alive; important in Bruce’s notes.
“It’s still not enough,” Marcus said, shaking his head. A long blond strand fell forward, and he tucked it back behind his ear. “All of that is just stuff we’ve heard. Almost none of it is actual evidence.”
Leesa fished a vial of serum out of the front pocket of Marcus’s backpack. “This is.”
Marcus looked impressed that she’d managed to swipe it from the lab during all the commotion. Leesa felt pretty proud of herself, too.
“Okay, but what are we going to say when this story breaks? Pete said this is something bigger, but are we any closer to figuring it out?”
Leesa added two more items at the bottom.
UNNATURALS: entertainment to distract the citizens of Lion’s Head while Bruce and the mayor are using them as test subjects for the serum; cover story!
REAL STORY: ???
Then they stared at it for a really long time, offering ideas that seemed completely unbelievable, like the last one Marcus tossed out.
“What if . . . What if the mayor is building an army?” he asked, rubbing his temples. They were both tired of thinking but too hyped up to go to sleep.
“An army?” Leesa yawned.
“Antonio told you it was the Drain’s turn, that the underclass was about to rise up and take over. He said the word ‘revolution,’ and somehow the mayor was part of it. For a revolution, you need a force, right?”
That didn’t make sense to Leesa. Wouldn’t it be more obvious, with soldiers training and stuff? “I haven’t noticed any groups of people gathering, have you?”
“I don’t know,” Marcus sighed. “I mean, there’re people everywhere down here, all mashed together.”
“Well, pardon us if we don’t have airy condos to spread out in,” Leesa snapped testily.
“Come on, that’s not what I meant.”
She waited.
“For starters, I don’t mean a human army. I mean the mutants—a bunch of animals created to be strong, altered to be aggressive, and trained to attack on command. That would be enough to take control, right?”
Leesa propped up her head on her arm, considering. “But why? Eris is already in control.”
“Yeah, but things are shaky. You’ve seen the headlines. The overcrowding, the lack of food. People are angry, and the matches worked as a distraction for a little while, but . . .”
“But now they’re starting to blame the mayor,” Leesa finished his thought. The idea was starting to make sense to her.
“Mayor Eris is part of the sky class, though—that’s what I don’t get. She built our Towers and picked the people to go in them.”
Leesa remembered too well. Hers had been one of the families kicked out of them when the rent got too high and Eris held gambling debts over her dad’s head.
Marcus continued. “Why would she turn on them to protect the Drainos?”
“Maybe she’s not protecting us. Maybe she’s protecting herself. Vince can be very persuasive. And like you said, things are shaky. I don’t know how many rich sky people are trusting enough to follow her. But I could name quite a few Drainos desperate enough to follow Vince.”
As if on cue, there was a sudden pounding on the door that made them both gasp.
49
IT ALL HAPPENED IN LESS THAN A MINUTE, AND IT LEFT THEM speechless afterward.
The banging on the door was so loud it sounded like someone was about to knock it right down, and in those first few seconds, Leesa was about as scared as she’d ever been in her whole life. Then she recognized Antonio’s voice, yelling her name.
“Antonio, what the heck?” she asked as she yanked open the door.
He was already shoving past her into the small space. Leesa was worried he was sick or something, the way he was pacing—agitated, sweaty, like maybe he had a fever. But then he saw Marcus sitting on the futon, and he stopped dead in his tracks.
“I heard you brought him here. For what? Just to throw it in my face?”
Marcus was shrinking down into the cushions, his eyes wide as saucers. Leesa didn’t blame him—Antonio had shot up in height this year, and she knew he’d been doing gym reps with Vince’s friends every week. Paired with his threatening posture, it was pretty intimidating.
Leesa, on the other hand, had known him long enough to know that his bark was a whole lot bigger than his bite.
“Throw what in your face? There’s nothing to throw.” She tried to say it nicely, but like her sad gambler father, Leesa didn’t have much of a poker face, and it was pretty clear she was furious. “We’re friends, Antonio, and this is my house.”
“I just don’t get why you’d want to be seen with some sky kid instead of me.” He was actually crying now, which Leesa was even less prepared for than the yelling. It actually made her madder. She was not going to feel sorry for him—not after how he was acting.
“And I can’t believe you’d want to be seen with
the mayor, or even Vince, considering the war they’re planning.”
Antonio knit his bushy black eyebrows together in confusion. “Huh?”
“With the serum?” She held up the tiny vial and shook it in front of him.
Antonio’s eyes widened, and he stopped in his tracks.
“How did you get a hold of that?” he gasped. It was like he was staring at the biggest, shiniest gemstone in the whole world. He was totally mesmerized. “Is that the H-trial?”
“I know what Eris is planning, Tony. Marcus and I figured it out. And she’s not going to get away with it. When we go public with this as proof, it’s all over and—”
Antonio snatched the serum right out of her hand. Then he turned to run.
“Hey!” Leesa yelled.
Marcus was on his feet before Antonio got to the door, and he tried to block the exit.
“Give it back!” Marcus ordered, and the right side of Antonio’s lip curled up into a smile that verged on a sneer. He didn’t even wind up to give Marcus a warning. He just jabbed his fist forward with a sharp drive that caught Marcus squarely in the left eye and laid him out on the floor.
“Oh my God, Antonio!” Leesa yelled as he bounded out the door.
She bent over Marcus, who was wincing in pain and trying to squint. His eye was already almost swollen shut, and a purple bruise was starting to bloom.
Wow. Leesa couldn’t believe Antonio had actually hit her friend. She’d known Tony since he was eight years old, and no matter how tough he acted, this wasn’t him. It was like he was possessed. She couldn’t imagine what was in that serum that would make him do something like that. Now, it looked like she’d never find out.
50
MARCUS AND LEESA WERE IN A PINCH. THEY KNEW SOMETHING awful was going to happen, and soon, but they had no idea how to stop it. Who did you turn to when you thought war might break out in the streets? The government. Unless the government was the one starting the war. Who did you ask for help when you needed it? Your parents. Unless one of your parents was involved. Who did you turn to when all else failed? An expert.
“You should’ve come to me earlier,” Joni Juniper responded when they texted her. “Meet me at Pete’s apartment, and we’ll go over everything.”
They punched the button for 247 and Leesa felt her stomach drop as the elevator shot them into the sky. A moment later, there was a soft ding, and they got out on Pete’s floor of the Skyrise, Marcus separated the dog-shaped plastic icon from all the jangling metal keys on the ring, and pointed it at the door. There was a soft click.
As they sat in the living room waiting for Joni, Leesa tried not to get caught up in the view of the sky, the clouds, the stuff. Unlike Marcus’s apartment, it wasn’t spotless and all the curtains didn’t match the pillows and rugs and dishes. Pete hadn’t done much decorating. There were sneakers tossed in corners, veterinary books, crumbs under the furniture—real crumbs, Leesa thought enviously, not just calories that came in a pill like she ate most nights—a few framed pictures. She reached for one of the two brothers, with Pete as a teenager with dorky glasses holding his arm around a white-blond little kid with a skateboard and a skinned knee. She couldn’t believe that was Marcus!
Her hand brushed against one of the knickknacks on the shelf, and she saw it was an Unnaturals figurine of Pookie. The urge to pick it up was overwhelming. She rubbed the plastic segmented spider legs, and stroked the dog’s chin with its wiry strands of silvery hair—Pookie had always closed his eyes in pleasure when Leesa did that.
“Maybe we should look around while we’re here,” Marcus said, and Leesa quickly dropped the figurine back onto the shelf. “There’s a chance we could find something that will help us get him out of there.”
While Marcus sacked the living room, Leesa headed to Pete’s bedroom and started rifling through the drawer next to his bed. It was stuffed with papers—real, actual papers, like in the pages of her books from Ms. Hoiles—and some of them were really old. She found diplomas and essays and an old pair of glasses, pawing through them quickly until she found a clothbound stack of pages at the bottom.
She pulled out a thin black-and-white clipping, and the ink smudged under her fingers. It must’ve been all the way back when people used printers. She read the headline: “GREEN INITIATIVE PULLS FUNDING AFTER THIRD AGENT DIAGNOSED WITH CANCER.”
Leesa stared at the words, feeling their significance mounting. Hadn’t Marcus mentioned that his dad had died of cancer?
“Marcus . . .”
She showed him the clipping, and when their eyes met briefly over the page, Leesa understood a lot more about Marcus than she had before. This was the darkness that hung over him, the thing that had shaped who he was.
And considering that Francine was also sick, it also might be a clue.
The bell rang and Marcus and Leesa started.
Joni.
“This is big, really big,” she said, bursting into the apartment and shaking the dire mood. She had lots of equipment with her. Recording equipment, cameras, lights. “We’ve gotta go live!”
“We don’t have any real evidence, though,” Leesa said. She sat in a comfy chair in front of a pale blue screen Joni had arranged in the kitchen to look like a TV set.
“So what? Since when has the media relied on proof? You’re sitting on the biggest scoop Lion’s Head has ever seen. With a politician, the public is your best weapon, and we need to get way out in front of this story.”
“We just say what we think is going on, then?” Marcus sneezed as Joni brushed powder over his nose, getting him camera ready, and Leesa suppressed a giggle.
Joni tapped the excess powder out and shook her head. “You never tell them the ending. Just give them all the puzzle pieces, and they’ll do the work and tell you what the big picture is.
Leesa smiled, and her lips felt sticky from the gloss Joni had swiped across them.
“Sorry about the black eye,” Marcus said to Joni, and Leesa felt her fury at Antonio flare up all over again. “That’s the reason we don’t have any evidence.”
“Don’t be! I’m not covering it up, I’m actually accentuating the bruising a bit just to even it out. The purple looks great with your blue eyes.”
Okay, now Leesa couldn’t help bursting into laughter. It felt good to smile—things had gotten pretty heavy lately.
“I’m serious!” Joni insisted. “Injuries play great with viewers. A kid targeted by violence for standing up for what he believes in? You’ll look vulnerable and trustworthy. They’ll eat it up.”
All this talk about the performance of it made Leesa feel uncomfortable. “We’re not trying to manipulate anyone. We just want to tell the truth.”
“Good. So be honest. Just do it in a way that makes people want to actually believe you.”
“How do we do that?” Marcus asked.
Joni smiled her big, dazzling smile that had made thousands of people fall in love with her when she was just an announcer on a virtual reality show. “Just follow my lead.”
“I’m Joni Juniper, here with some breaking news. We’ve received troubling reports about some very strange activity at NuFormz. Mega Media said it was shutting down the facility weeks ago when an animal escape put citizens in danger. Now eyewitnesses claim to have seen more animals going in, and reports of new testing being done. What does it mean, and when should you panic? Let’s investigate.
“Viewers might recognize my guests, Leesa Khan and Marcus Lund, from a most-memorable ending to the Unnaturals season—and franchise. These heroic kids put their lives on the line to stop the awful mistreatment of the gladiator-like mutants, but now we’ve learned that they might know even more about the sinister history at NuFormz.”
“Hi,” Marcus said into the microphone.
“Hey.” Leesa waved.
“Marcus, it is your brother who is being held responsible for the mistreatment of these creatures, correct?”
“Yeah. But what they said he did was wrong.”
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“To bring viewers up to speed, Mayor Eris claimed in a statement that Peter Lund was giving steroids to animals to make them more aggressive for gambling purposes.”
“Pete doesn’t even gamble. His boss made him give that shot, and told him it was a booster shot.”
Joni turned to the camera. “We should note that in our ongoing series on NuFormz, at least one employee claims it was standard practice to give these shots to Unnaturals. Further, we’ve been able to obtain one of these so-called steroid shots, and according to an expert on genetics, this is not a steroid shot or a booster, but a serum to initiate mutation with a focus on aggression.”
“Right,” Leesa said. “They’re basically making super-mutants that kill on command.”
“But if the Unnaturals is no longer airing, who are they training these terrifying creatures to kill?”
Leesa raised her eyebrows. “Your guess is as good as mine, Joni. But I will say that I’m from the Drain, and there’ve been a lot of riots lately because of the bad living conditions.”
“And the people in my Sky Tower are complaining, too,” Marcus added. “About space issues, tax hikes, and environmental hazards. No one’s really happy with the government right now.”
“Not to mention the rising tension with neighboring Paloma, with its comparably low pollution and fertile land,” Joni pointed out. “You heard it here first. A shady business, a terrifying mutation that could be arriving at your own front door, and a mayor on the defensive. Is your government planning a takeover on your behalf? Do you really want a war? We’ll be right back.”
51
THE GREENPLAINS HAD ONCE BEEN LITTLE MORE THAN A dream. Then it was a blip of hope, and finally, a goal. Now, looking across that hazy horizon, Castor felt like it was receding into pure fantasy. After the longest journey of his life, he was farther away from the Greenplains than he’d ever been.