by D. S. Murphy
Unlike me. I was tired and sore, even after getting a full night’s rest. Today I felt especially drained, because I didn’t know what to do about Camina. I knew I should tell someone, but we were already on thin ice as guests here. We didn’t truly belong, like the other rebels and outcasts who had grown up outside the compound system. To be harboring an elite was bad enough; to also have a chosen that was feeding off of her... it was too complicated for most people to understand. I barely understood it, or at least, I wish I couldn’t.
The truth was, I’d had cravings like this before, with Damien. Once I started getting a steady dose of elixir, I could smell it whenever I was around an elite. I wanted him, but the attraction was confusing. I didn’t know how much of it was me, and how much was the thirst.
I headed down to the cafeteria. Most of the inhabitants were already doing chores or fulfilling various roles, so it was mostly empty. I poured a glass of hot water and mixed it with powdered burdock root. It wasn’t exactly coffee, but the dark bitterness was comforting.
I found Jazmine playing cards with a few of the younger men in the compound, with a sizable pile of contraband in front of her. Two of the guys weren’t wearing shirts, and one was pantless.
“Strip poker?” I asked. “What did you bet?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she smirked. “I won’t lose.”
“Have you seen Camina?”
“Yeah I think she went for a run.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Laps, around the top floor.”
I headed up the metal stairs, stepping over the twisted roots. The mall was built in rings, with an open central space, and curving platforms on each level. A portion of the two top layers had collapsed into each other, so they were mostly used for storage and livestock. I found Camina jogging around a stubborn goat, munching on dry, colorless grass.
I grabbed her arm as she passed to slow her down.
“Hey,” I said. “We need to talk.”
“About what?” she smiled. The dark bags under her eyes were gone, and she seemed fresh and alert. I wondered if she’d truly forgotten last night, but there was no way she hadn’t seen me.
“Look I get it, I’ve felt the thirst before, but it’s wrong. We can’t do it like that.”
“Whatever. I know she was your friend but that thing in there is gone. She’s barely conscious. She doesn’t even notice.”
“I don’t care. You can’t just do what you like.”
“You don’t get to tell me what to do,” Camina said, putting her hands on her hips. “You’re not champion, we’re not even chosen anymore. You don’t have some elevated status over me. And let me remind you, I didn’t ask to be here. You could have left me in the capital.”
“You were dying!”
“They would have saved me. They have more elixir in the capital than they know what to do with. If I was still there, I’d get two drops a day like the other chosen, not to mention hot showers, cold beer and real food. I’m just taking what’s mine.”
I tried to tell myself it was just the elixir talking. I knew it made you reckless and removed your filter. But I’d always considered Camina the steady, reliable counterpart to Jazmine’s fiery personality. I knew she was strong, but her newfound aggression startled me.
“I won’t let you keep feeding from her,” I said, squeezing my fists.
“You think you can stop me?” she said, leaning closer. “Where I grew up, life was cold, hard, tough – we survived by any means necessary. I’ve been training most of my life. You’re soft.”
She tore her arm away and flicked back her short blond hair.
“See you at dinner,” she said, shoving passed me.
I stormed back towards the cafeteria, frustrated. Camina was a warrior, trained for duty and honor. There had to be a way to make her see reason. Maybe Jazmine could get through to her. I didn’t like violating her trust like that, but she needed help. And it wasn’t just about Penelope; the thirst made people violent and unpredictable. I barely recognized her anymore, and we didn’t need more drama with the rebels.
I was so distracted I didn’t see Trevor and Luke until they were right in front of me.
“What is it?” I asked, seeing the tension on their faces.
“It’s time,” Trevor said. “April thinks it’s ready.”
“What’s ready?” I asked.
“The cure to immortality.”
We gathered in the makeshift underground laboratory. Technically, it was the health center, where med supplies were gathered, but someone had also lugged some large machines with blinking lights from an abandoned hospital a mile away, along with a rolling bed with built-in pads. Leather straps had been fashioned to the sides, and Penelope was already tied down when I arrived. Her eyes were wild, like a wounded animal, but she was calm – until she saw the syringe. Then she jerked back and let out a pained shriek that hurt my ears.
Trevor and Frank held her down. I reached for her hand, trying to calm her, but her nails dug into my skin, drawing blood.
“Shhh...” I said. “We aren’t going to hurt you. We just want to make you better.”
A tear slipped down her eye, and I wasn’t paying attention until Steve filled up the third vial with her blood. She shot me a look of angry accusation.
“What the hell! I just told her to trust us.”
“It was your idea,” Steve said. “We don’t know what this will do with our elixir supply, but it makes sense that, even if we save her, her blood will no longer retain its regenerative powers.”
“Fuck you,” I said. “She’s a person, not the fountain of youth.”
“At the moment,” Jacob interrupted, “she’s only the latter. If this works, she’ll be only the former. We’re just taking precautions.”
April tucked the vials away and held up a larger syringe, filled with shiny pink liquid that looked like dish soap. She looked at Jacob and he nodded.
Four of us had to hold her down, careful to avoid the snapping maw of her fanged mouth. She was starving, and being this close to so many warm-blooded humans must have been overwhelming. April found a vein and drove the needle deep under her skin. A discharge of black fluid crept up the chamber, before she emptied the vial slowly into Penelope’s blood.
Her eyes rolled back in her head and she squealed like a pig being slaughtered. I’d heard that once, in Algrave, when I was walking past the butcher’s. I never enjoyed bacon quite as much after that.
She spasmed, arching her back so much I was afraid she’d snap her own spine. The machines were buzzing in the background, and even the lights flickered.
“It’s okay,” I said. “It’ll be over soon.”
One way or another.
“What’s happening?” Luke yelled above the noise.
“I don’t know,” April said.
“Is it working?”
I held my breath as April stared at the monitor. It had a single, level line on it that seemed to be moving forward. Then, suddenly, there was a clear beep and the line spiked. After a moment, it beeped again.
Penelope took a long, gasping breath, then collapsed on the table, still as death.
We stood there for a minute, waiting for anything to happen. Ten more minutes passed before we gave up hope.
“Take her back to the cell,” Jacob said finally with a long sigh.
“Is she alive?” I asked.
“There’s no heartbeat, but she’s still alive, or undead, or whatever. I don’t understand,” April said quietly. “It should have worked. I followed all the directions. I did everything right.”
After they took Penelope away, I stayed in the lab, watching April pore over her notes. I couldn’t understand most of it, but I wanted to help somehow.
I flipped through John Patten’s journal. I hadn’t been able to look at it before, because Jacob had it locked in here with the other stuff in case April needed it.
“Knock
yourself out,” she said. “I read through it earlier. There’s nothing specific about the formula or the cure in there. You’ve got to remember, the king synthesized the original elixir a hundred years ago at least. Way before John Patten’s time. He was a basement chemist at best. We don’t even know how he got the formula or if he was able to make it work himself.”
“I thought he stole it, from Damien.” The same way I did. Like grandfather, like granddaughter. I brushed off the guilt and licked my finger to turn the page, as I’d seen Damien do in the library, when he was furrowing his brow at some philosophical passage.
A wave of homesickness and longing rushed through me. Algrave was my home, and then the citadel. I wondered if I’d ever feel this way about this underground prison and the bitter burdock root tea.
I picked up the family photograph I’d seen earlier. The man must have been John Patten, posing with his family. A young woman stood at his side, with dark, familiar eyes. She was holding a toddler with dark curly hair. My mother, I realized with a start. My real mother. I didn’t even know her name. I turned the photograph over, hoping someone would have written in the names. Photographs were relatively rare in the compounds; taken during special occasions, the details of which were often preserved on the back.
But instead I only found a short inscription.
Family makes life complete.
April had powered on some kind of portable tablet with a glowing screen, and was jotting down notes on the surface with a white pen. It reminded me of something I’d seen Zane use in the citadel, or the digital panels on the chosen’s bracelets.
I rubbed my wrist with my fingers. April noticed, looking up.
“Miss it?” she asked.
“Miss what?” I asked.
“Being chosen.” I couldn’t tell whether there was disdain in her voice, or sympathy. She seemed generally curious.
“I was just thinking, the bracelet was useful. Too much elixir and humans die, or get sick, or go mad with thirst. Down here, without it, there’s no control.”
“That makes sense,” she nodded. She looked like she wanted to ask something else, but bit her tongue. Something about me, probably. I wondered if Jacob had told her who I really was, or how many people knew I was more than just an ordinary chosen; that I was a halfbreed, the only one of my kind.
“How’d you learn this stuff anyway?” I asked, turning the conversation back on her. “I mean, they have tech in the citadel, but not like this. You weren’t even raised in the compounds.”
“I wasn’t raised at all,” she smirked. “I grew up nearly feral, a street rat. Fighting for food. My parents were killed by scavengers from another district. At the time, there were bands of roving bandits in the wilderness, moving between the fallen cities, digging for scraps.”
“That’s awful,” I said.
She shrugged.
“One day I found a wide glass roof. I broke the window with a brick and used scraps of a torn blanket to lower myself down. It was a library. Shelves and shelves of books. They were worn and frayed and moth eaten, but each page was like a new treasure for me to discover. My parents had taught me how to read. Before they… before they were gone. At first I started with the books I remembered, the children’s section. Fantasy and romance. Then I moved on to the good stuff. I found a book on wilderness survival tactics. It taught me how to build traps, and there was a procedure for water purification, for organic antibiotics. The library even had an old fashioned microscope. That was the beginning of my love for science. I even had a cat. I named him Tiberius.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“One day, elites came. They lit the library on fire. They killed my cat. I hid in a drawer until they left, then crawled my way through the flames, into the ash.”
My eyes widened. She was much stronger than she looked. I guess everyone here was. They were survivors. While I was raised in comfort. I never went hungry, I was never in real danger, except when I went outside the compound.
My eyes turned back to the journal and a section caught my attention. I leaned back in the couch and reread the paragraph.
August 5th. Damien took me on a walk outside the citadel today and told me the truth. I thought I was like a pet to him, a distraction, but now I’m not so sure. He’s never chosen, and being the king’s son must bear its own pressures. I think he’s lonely. I don’t think he even realized the momentousness of his confession. It was a revelation. It was like time stopped. He pressed on through the ash, hands clasped behind his back. I stayed silent, hoping he’d say more... and he did. So much more. We were told, the elixir was created as a response to a plague that was decimating the human population; that in the time before, pollution and overpopulation and antibiotics had led to a super strain of resistant viruses that were wiping humans out.
King Richard was a scientist who created a true panacea – a cure-for-all. It healed the sick and kept humans strong. But too much of it would lead to death; and rebirth in a new, immortal form. These were the first elites. Most of the people raised in the compounds don’t even know this much; to them, the elixir is blood magic, King Richard is god on earth, and that’s enough for them, but in the citadel they are more informed. Or so I believed.
But today, Damien was talking about his childhood, in the before, describing things I had no amount of comprehension for. Dating apps and ride shares and field trips to the zoo. Picnics in the park, ice skating. It sounded like utopia to me.
But then, according to him, his mother got sick. His father tried to save her. In the end, he failed. He created the elixir a few weeks after they put her in the ground.
Damien said this bitterly, almost like he blamed his father for his mother’s death. Where was the noble scientist who singlehandedly saved humanity from the ravaging plague? Instead we have only a grieving husband turned widow. Was this really the beginning of the elixir – before the race wars, before the blood thirst, it all started with a man trying to save the woman he loved?
This was new. It felt important, but I didn’t know how. Damien had never talked about his mother with me. I closed my eyes, trying to imagine the scene. There was something else bothering me, just at the edge of my awareness.
The woman he loved...
Suddenly I saw a vision, a man dancing, a ballroom, the moon.
“I saw her,” I realized suddenly. “Or, I was her.”
“What do you mean?” April asked, glancing up from her work.
“John’s talking about Damien’s mother. In the citadel, in training they told us about the blood memories. Elites can share information, memories through their blood. It’s how Damien told me about the location of the chest. In class, we were given a memory, we were told it was from the king. But that doesn’t make sense, because it was from her perspective. I was a woman in love, with the man who became King Richard. We were dancing, the sky was clear. I remember the music, the champagne. It was so real.”
“So what?” April said.
“So... it wasn’t his memory, it was hers. That means, he took some of her blood, but also that he’d already turned her; that she was elite before she died. It means, he lied to Damien about her funeral, he must have.”
“What difference does it make now? That was all nearly a century ago.”
I gripped the edge of the table. I wasn’t sure, really. My mind was spinning in circles, trying to connect the dots.
“If he’d already made the elixir, maybe he’d also started on an antidote. Imagine if he turned his wife and she became like Penelope, bloodthirsty. He would have wanted to save her. King Richard has a lab in the citadel, but we’d never get in there. He showed me the security. It’s all glass doors and keypads and fingerprint scanners. But what if he had another lab, a long time ago, where Damien grew up? What if his original research or work was there?”
“That’s a long shot,” April frowned. “And how would you even begin to find it? Ask Damien where he grew up?�
�
“I won’t have to,” I said. “There’s someone here who might already know.”
10
The guards were awake this time, and there were two of them. I think I’d seen them before, but I hadn’t paid them much attention. I went during dinner, when everybody else would be distracted. They were sitting at a table nearby eating but stood up when I strode into view. One put his hand on the hilt of his dagger nervously. Interesting.
“I need to see her,” I said.
“Nobody is allowed down here,” one of them said. He was younger, with a trace stubble on his chin.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Geoffrey,” he said. “And this is Davis.”
The larger one nodded.
A noodle was stuck in his dark beard.
“Well Geoffrey, Jacob sent me down to check on the prisoner.”
“She ain’t a prisoner,” Davis said. “She’s an abomination and a monster.”
“Right, well, the procedure today didn’t go as planned and we need to make sure there are no lingering effects. So unless you want to go in there yourself and check her vitals, I suggest you let me pass.”
“Maybe I should just check,” Geoffrey said, reaching for his radio.
“Sure,” I rolled my eyes. “I’m sure Jacob doesn’t have better things to do than have each one of his orders triple checked.”
I pushed past them, unlocking the heavy door and stepping inside the truck. Penelope was still in the corner, locked up with heavy chains. I could barely see the cuts from last night, hidden under the dried blood coating her thin arms.
I wrinkled my nose against the foul smell, and took out the small dagger I’d tucked against my hip. I held it against my wrist, then pulled sharply until the steel bit into my flesh.