“You did it!” he said, looking at Anaya and laughing in sheer amazement. “You friggin’ did it!”
“We did it,” Anaya said. She turned to the island and waved both arms high at her father and Dr. Weber. “It worked!”
Petra grabbed Anaya’s hand. “Sorry we were so late. The vines stopped moving us, and then the pit plant closed!”
“You guys saved my life!” Anaya said. “I was about to get speared when you cut me out!”
“I wouldn’t have got there without you,” Seth said to Petra. He felt light-headed with triumph, his words spilling out of him. “She machine-gunned the vines with the water lilies!” he told Anaya. “It was incredible!”
“What?” said Anaya.
“I’ll show you later,” Petra said, grinning.
“Nice shades, by the way,” Anaya told her.
Overhead came a creaking, groaning sound like cracking ice. Seth looked up to see the entire canopy sagging. And then it began to collapse. Thick tangles of vines plummeted. Eating sacs the size of watermelons cannonballed down into the lake.
On the island, Seth saw Dr. Weber and Mr. Riggs take shelter under a big pine. That was good. There was a ton of stuff coming down, and he didn’t want them getting hit, or splattered with acid.
Still the vines fell, crushing the water lilies. From the corner of his eye, Seth saw something long and green fall toward the lake. The liberated canoe! It smacked into the water rightside up, bobbing.
“We’ve got a boat!” he shouted.
Huge holes had opened up in the canopy now, and through them came the early evening light. And there was the sun itself, low in the sky.
And silhouetted in front of it was a helicopter, hovering low, with someone leaning out the doorway, waving down at them.
ANAYA WATCHED AS THE helicopter lifted off from the military base on Deadman’s Island, carrying her father and Dr. Weber. Through the window, Dad gave her a thumbs-up. From the field, she waved back with a nervous smile. Strapped to the underside of the helicopter was a torpedo-sized tank of herbicide.
“Please let this work,” Petra said beside her.
The helicopter nosed out over the harbor. The water was darkly blanketed by lilies. Anaya couldn’t believe how quickly they’d flourished in the saltwater, fouling the air with their stink. A week ago, the harbor had been filled with anchored boats escaping the vines and pit plants. Now only a few remained, slouched low in the water, abandoned and riddled with holes by the acid-coated seeds.
“Look at all the news helicopters,” Seth said.
Anaya counted more than ten, hovering around Stanley Park, their doors slid back, cameras jutting. Surrounded almost entirely by water, the huge city park had been designated a test site. It was completely overrun with black grass and vines, the fields and forest malignant with pit plants. Dad had said the eastern point was a good place to test their new herbicide for the first time.
And now she, along with the rest of the world, was watching, and hoping.
Barely a week ago, she’d been helping load eight bags of soil onto their rescue helicopter at the eco-reserve. She and Petra and Seth had all managed to keep their true identities secret from the soldiers. She’d swapped her shoes with Petra’s slightly bigger ones to hide her claws; and Seth had bundled his feathered arms back inside his hoodie.
The moment they’d touched down on Deadman’s Island, they’d been summoned before Colonel Pearson and grilled. They told him what had happened on the eco-reserve—while hiding details like razor-sharp feathers, tails, impossibly high jumps. Everything to do with the fact that the three of them were cryptogen hybrids.
“Four soldiers die, three kids survive,” Pearson had said, looking at them so severely that Anaya squirmed inside. “All for some dirt.”
But when the helicopter rescue crew reported how the canopy of vines had died and collapsed, even the colonel had to admit the soil was very promising.
“You’re tough kids,” he’d said. “Good job.”
Right after that, Dad had been whisked into surgery to have the seed removed from his neck. The very next day, he was up and in the lab, helping Dr. Weber, who refused to let her own injuries slow her down. Taking only short breaks to sleep, they’d worked together, first isolating the bacterium in the soil, and then trying to culture it for a herbicide. Now it would get its first test.
Anaya gazed across the water at the towering groves of black grass on the park’s shoreline. Dad’s helicopter made several low passes, spraying, then lifted higher to cover the vine-choked treetops. The news copters drifted and bobbed, filming everything.
Anaya felt an arm curl around her shoulders and turned to smile at Mom. She wore a pollen mask, like practically everyone else watching on the field. Her eyes were shadowed with fatigue. Her face didn’t look as gaunt as it had when she’d arrived four days ago, flying the floatplane the military had secured for her. She’d brought Petra’s mom and dad with her, as well as several island patients who needed to be transferred to bigger hospitals.
“How fast will this stuff work?” Mom asked her.
“On Cordova, Dad said the plants started to die within an hour.”
She leaned into Mom. Seeing her get out of that floatplane, she’d felt such a complicated tangle of emotions. First, there was love and sheer relief, but it didn’t come with the feeling of safety she’d yearned for. She’d been through so much alone, and knew too much, to feel like Mom could solve all her problems, and keep her safe. And then there was absolute dread, too, knowing that she would have to tell Mom what she was.
Luckily, it was Dad who’d mostly done that part, and afterward Mom said all the right things, and hugged her really tightly. Anaya knew Mom and Dad could never think of her exactly the same way again; she just hoped they still loved her as much, and could keep loving her—no matter what came next.
She looked over at Petra, watching the test spray with her own parents. She knew Petra had been worried sick about how to tell her own parents, and Dr. Weber had helped her out. Afterward, when Anaya asked how it went, Petra had laughed it off by saying her mom had always thought she was half alien anyway, so not much had changed, really. She said her father took it harder, but had told her everything was going to be okay.
Anaya’s eyes drifted over to Seth. At least she and Petra had parents. Seth had no one, except for Carlene Lee, who was still on the base as Seth’s de facto guardian—but that didn’t count. He had to deal with this all alone.
No, Anaya told herself, that wasn’t true. He had them: Petra and her—and Dr. Weber. Anaya remembered how, after they’d gotten back to the base and finally had some privacy, Dr. Weber had examined Seth’s arms. They were so bruised and cut, and needed stitches in a few places. She’d called him a hero, and then, very tenderly, she’d wrapped his feathers back up with clean gauze. A real mother wouldn’t have done it any differently.
Anaya caught Seth’s eye now, and smiled. Then she checked his sleeves—it had become a habit over the past few days—to make sure none of his feathers had cut through. But they were safely concealed inside his layers of clothing.
She was terrified of being discovered; she couldn’t forget the way Brock, and especially Jolie, had looked at them—and the gun that had been trained on all three of them.
Petra’s changes were easier to hide than Seth’s. The skin on her legs was still sloughing, but that was simple enough to conceal. Harder was the tail, which had grown enough to make a small bump in her jeans. Probably no one would notice it, but Petra had started wearing a skirt over leggings, just in case.
Anaya glanced down at her own shoes. With some help from Dr. Weber, she’d sawed and filed down her toenails. She wasn’t quite ready to call them claws yet. Surprisingly, she’d felt sad cutting them, like part of her was being taken away. But they’d started to grow back the very next d
ay, and she could already feel them pushing against the toe of her shoe.
Not for a second could she forget what she was. Even on the eco-reserve, when her only focus was staying alive, she was aware of how different she was. Every whiff of the sleeping gas, every splash of acid in her face, every time she jumped high or kicked with her claws. These things were all part of her now, at least for the time being. And if she was honest with herself, she kind of liked it. She liked her unblemished face. Even more, she liked her new leg muscles, her speed: the sheer power of herself. She wasn’t sure what awaited her, but right now, at this moment, she felt like she could handle it, especially if she didn’t have to go through it alone. Petra and Seth would be keeping pace right beside her.
The helicopter dipped out of sight behind the trees, and Anaya knew they were now spraying the fields on the eastern point. Dad had told her the plan. It was crucial the herbicide worked on all the cryptogenic plants, including the buried pit plants. Dad wanted to see if the herbicide could penetrate the soil to reach them.
“Nothing’s happening,” Petra said, staring at the wall of black grass.
“Give it time,” Anaya replied, but she felt the same impatience. She wanted to see the grass wilt instantly. She wanted to see the vines writhe, like they had when they touched the soil on her skin. But looking into the treetops, she couldn’t see any frantic snaky movement.
“We need this to work,” Petra muttered.
“The whole world needs it to work,” she added.
Every day the news got worse. Crops were ruined, food shortages were becoming more common, and rationing had started in some countries. The death toll mounted and mounted. Despite all the emergency and military forces fighting the plants, tens of thousands of people were killed every day. Strangled, gassed, melted. Nowhere was safe. This new herbicide was the world’s best chance right now.
Anaya looked across the field, at all the other hopeful spectators. There was a group of Dr. Weber’s lab staff. And there was Carlene Lee, with a bunch of soldiers. Anaya had seen her talking quite a bit with one soldier in particular, and it made her nervous. She hoped Carlene was keeping her mouth shut.
And farther along the field was Colonel Pearson, binoculars to his face, with a bunch of other important-looking people, some of whom had flown in today just for the test. Pearson lowered his field glasses, and checked his watch. Anaya didn’t think he looked pleased, but then again, when did he ever?
The helicopter lifted back into view. Before heading home, it dipped low and strafed a huge raft of water lilies between the park and the base, using up the last of the herbicide. Anaya saw the chemical mist settling over the plants, and the long flowered heads reared back, taking aim. But the helicopter was already out of range and coming in to land.
The moment it settled on the pad, Pearson and his officers were walking toward it. With a clenched stomach, Anaya watched them talk to Dad and Dr. Weber. She couldn’t hear a word they said, but she had a good idea that Colonel Pearson was asking why it was taking so long. Which was crazy, because most herbicides took at least twenty-four hours to start working. She knew Dad would be reminding him of this, and Dr. Weber would be backing him up, and telling the officers they needed to be patient, and this was a first try, after all.
But Anaya couldn’t help feeling a creeping disappointment and dread as she looked back at the water lilies and the vine-choked trees and the vast, unbowed wall of black grass.
None of it looked one bit different.
* * *
THE CURRY THAT Anaya’s mom had made was delicious, but Petra didn’t have much of an appetite. In the living room of the little apartment, everyone was sitting with plates balanced on their laps, eating and talking.
“It may just be a question of the concentration,” Mr. Riggs was saying. “Maybe it’s not potent enough for a big spray.”
“It could also be the medium we’re using to deliver it,” Dr. Weber said. “It might be antagonistic to the bacteria. We probably rushed the lab tests. I know we rushed them.”
Petra could tell everyone was as bummed out as her, even though the grown-ups were all trying to sound positive, and saying it was ridiculous to jump to any conclusions before twenty-four hours had passed. Words like enzymes and titration and stabilizing agents were bouncing around. All she knew was that, eight hours after the spray, the cryptogenic plants looked just as healthy as ever.
“You’re not the only ones working on this, though, right?” her father asked.
“No,” Mr. Riggs replied. “We sent soil samples and our data to ten other government labs around the world.”
“If we don’t nail it, someone else will,” Dr. Weber added, but Petra wondered if she was really as confident as she sounded.
“We need to get back to Salt Spring,” Mom said.
“What?” Petra turned immediately to Seth and Anaya, and was glad they looked as startled as she felt. “But we’re safe here! You said things were terrible over there!”
“That’s exactly why we need to get back,” her father told her. “They need me at the hospital, and the RCMP needs your mother.”
Petra felt her cheeks heat in embarrassment. Of course her parents were needed over there, and part of her wanted to go home, too. But she also wanted to stay here, and not just because it was safer. The idea of being separated from Anaya and Seth gave her a terrible pang. And wasn’t it better to be closer to Dr. Weber, who knew better than anyone what might happen to their hybrid bodies?
“I think Petra’s also concerned she might be noticed,” Dr. Weber said, and Petra nodded gratefully.
“Yeah. What if my tail keeps growing,” she told her parents, “and my body keeps, you know, changing?”
“If the tail becomes an issue…,” Dad began, and Petra wondered if tail was a hard word for him to say. “I can get one of the surgeons at the island hospital to take care of it.”
“It would be a risk,” Dr. Weber said. “People would talk. One news outlet gets hold of it, and we’re in a mess. I’d rather bring in one of my own people, and have it removed in secrecy.” She looked at Petra. “If that’s what you want.”
“Of course it’s what I want!”
“There might also be other health issues that arise,” said Dr. Weber delicately. “And I’d rather she were here so I could take care of her.”
“We should stick together,” Seth blurted out, “the three of us!” He sounded so sincere, and Petra felt touched. She wished she could tell him she felt the same, but when her eyes flitted to her father, he was giving Seth a strange look.
As for her mother, she regarded Dr. Weber with her cold police gaze. Petra knew she’d had a lot to accept in the past few days, and it was probably hard to like the person who’d told you that cryptogens had abducted you, implanted their DNA inside you—and, oh, that your daughter was only half human. Without any of your husband’s DNA. She wondered if Mom could even really believe it all yet.
“I’m not sure I’ve got a clear picture of what we can expect,” Mom said now, looking at Anaya’s parents. “In terms of…next steps.”
“Neither do I,” Dr. Weber said frankly. “We didn’t finish the MRI scans, and I haven’t had time to assess the ones we did, since we’ve been working all out on the herbicide. The first step would be getting the three of them back in the MRI.”
Just thinking about what she might discover gave Petra’s pulse a jolt.
“I don’t want to change any more,” she said. “I want to go back to normal!”
Or as normal as she could ever be, with a water allergy. But before they’d left the eco-reserve, Dr. Weber had taken a sample of the stinking lake water, and promised she’d try to synthesize it. At least that way, Petra would have a supply of usable water her whole life. But first she needed to go back to normal.
“We need to kill the plants first,
right?” she said to the doctor. “Then we might stop changing.”
Dr. Weber said, “Petra, even with all the plants gone, we don’t know what will happen to the three of you.”
“Well, that’s not very helpful,” Dad said.
“I know this must be incredibly hard,” the doctor replied. “I promise you, I will do my best for your children. But I do think keeping them here, and their identities secret, is crucial.”
“On an army base?” Anaya’s mother said skeptically.
“Why are we assuming the army’s reaction would be so negative anyway?” Petra’s own mother asked. “Our kids are heroes. They did what professional soldiers couldn’t. They rescued Mike, saved Dr. Weber’s life, and got us the soil. If it works, they’ve saved the world. Where’s the problem?”
Petra looked at Mom, startled. She’d just called her a hero—all of them. She couldn’t help smiling.
“But there’s already rumors on the base,” Anaya said. “Remember what Jolie said on the island? People are talking about us. And she was terrified when she saw Seth’s arms. She pulled a gun on us!”
“I’m afraid that might be most people’s reaction,” Dr. Weber agreed. “Including Colonel Pearson. You three share DNA with cryptogens that are trying to destroy the world.”
“I agree,” said Petra’s dad. “And frankly, I think our chances of keeping this secret are better on Salt Spring. All it takes is one soldier seeing Seth’s feathers, and our kids end up in military lockup.”
Petra turned to Seth, who was looking at his bulky sleeves self-consciously.
“You can’t keep those hidden much longer, Seth,” her father told him. “We could probably take care of that right here.”
Seth looked over in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“Well, it would be fairly straightforward for Dr. Weber and me to remove them. With clippers we could—”
“I don’t want them clipped,” Seth said firmly.
Bloom Page 22