by Lan Chan
Yuri, for all his outward roughness, is pleasant to work with, at least to me anyway. His patience runs low for the other occupants of our lab. And yet I can already tell it’s not enough. I find myself staring out the window more than I will admit. It makes me realise how boxed in the facility is and how much it reminds me of a glass cage. After a few hours, I start to get anxious, and I’m almost happy when the elevator bell rings to signal Harlan’s return.
Except the person who steps into the lab isn’t Harlan. It’s his mother.
“My son isn’t happy,” Sheila Dempsey says. Are her words directed at me or Yuri? She has a way of commanding an entire room, and I’m not sure which of us is in trouble. The other lab assistants have managed to covertly slink away.
“When is he ever happy?” Yuri says. He takes no notice of the Chief Warden. I marvel at the extent of his indifference and half expect for some guards to appear and shoot him. “He knows the agreement. It’s not subject to change just because he wants to show off.” Yuri attempts to pick up a beaker, but it slips and shatters into thousands of pieces. It’s only then that I notice his hands are suddenly unsteady. “Now look what you’ve made me do!” Yuri snaps. He points to the assistants. “What are you waiting for?”
“I would appreciate it if you would remember your place, Doctor,” Sheila says. Why does she look at me when she says that?
“I never forget it,” Yuri says. “It’s here in this lab where I’ve been promised I’ll be left alone to do the work you need me to do.” To me he says, “Tomorrow we will talk about this special formula of yours.”
It’s a dismissal if I’ve ever heard one. I try to send him a silent message not to leave me with the Chief Warden, but he wrinkles his nose as if to say, You may as well get used to it. Their short exchange has given me a lot to think about. I’ve always thought the Citadel would be crawling with Seeders specialising in plant manipulation. That Yuri is able to command so much respect means they’re in fact quite rare. More importantly, I seem to have lied my way into this elite circle. Now all I have to do is learn how to not care if the Seeders murder everyone in the regions, and I’ll be set.
“Come with me,” Sheila says. “There’s someone I want you to meet.” There’s no one she knows that I would want to meet, but I can’t exactly refuse. We take the lift up to the top floor. The three seconds it takes for the lift to shuttle upwards is the longest of my life. As always when I’m alone with a Seeder, I play the what if game. What if I simply close the three feet between us and drive the base of my palm into Sheila’s throat? What if I steal her passkey? What if I use the key to get viable seeds?
This game is of course immediately followed by the consequences game, and before the elevator doors even open, I abandon all rebellious thoughts. Unaware of the many ways I’ve been concocting her death, Sheila steps out first and puts a finger to her lips to quiet me. As if I was making any sound. It’s her gargantuan feet that stomp so loudly even the carpet can’t muffle the noise.
The lift opens directly into an ornate room with plush maroon carpet and gilded furniture. Long rays of sunlight peek through the drawn curtains, allowing just enough visibility to walk without bumping into anything.
The reason for our tender steps is lying on a bed a few feet away. He’s so small he seems almost like a phantom in the half-light of the window. As we get close, his eyelids flutter and I realise who it is. I try not to choke on the twist of fate that leads me to Thomas Dempsey just a day after I make a choice that results in my own father’s death.
“Sheila?”
“Yes, Tom, it’s me.” Tom tries to sit up, but that seems to require a greater amount of energy than he has. Halfway through, he gives up so that only his head and upper chest stick out of the covers.
“Who’s that? I didn’t say you could bring anyone up here. Go away.”
Sheila makes room for herself beside Tom and takes his hand. He tries to pull away at first but lacks the will to protest very much. I’ve no idea how to behave, so I just stand there like a tree and try to blend into the background.
“Shhhh,” Sheila soothes. “Hush now.” She speaks to him as though he’s a child. “This is Aurora Gray. She used to be the Wind Dancer. Remember when we saw her flying above the clouds? You liked that, didn’t you?”
“That’s not the Wind Dancer. She’s damned near too big, and she looks all wrong.” He doesn’t exactly project the picture of health either. He’s so thin Sheila’s fingers curl over her palm where she hangs on to his wrist, and the shadows on his arms are bruises more than tricks of the light.
“It’s been a while, my love. Harlan thinks she looks better as a blonde. And soon, very soon, the Wind Dancer will fly again. You’ll see. Won’t that be fun?”
Tom doesn’t answer. Instead, his head lolls to the side. His gaze is like tiny bugs crawling up my arms.
“Make her read to me,” Tom says. “I want her to read to me.”
“You have to eat first, love,” Sheila says. “Do you want Aurora to help you eat?”
“I don’t need help eating.”
“No, of course not. Do you want Aurora to stay while you eat?”
“Okay.”
Clearly, I have no say in any of this. Sheila presses a green button on the intercom above the bedside table. Then she beckons me over to the wall opposite Tom’s bed that is occupied by shelf after shelf of books. She runs her finger along the spine of a row in her eye line. The gesture leaves a clean trail where the dust is rubbed off.
Over in the bed, Tom appears to have fallen asleep again. Sheila watches him, her expression unreadable.
“In the hearing, you claimed that the Citadel created the rotting sickness,” she says. Then she turns and in her eyes is a challenge. “If that were the case, why would I allow my own brother to be infected?”
I don’t have the words to answer her. What does she mean by telling me all this? Does she aim to make me feel guilty? Does she want to garner sympathy? Then I remember I’m supposed to hold the secret to the cure for the rotting sickness, and I realise it’s the cause that she’s trying to rally me to.
Before the Famine and the Bio-Wars, the rotting sickness was a thing called cancer. Back then, the world was a vast place made up of many continents. There was so much land that the people thought its abundance would last forever. When it didn’t last, they manipulated nature and created their super crops and hormone-laden meats. They didn’t know these crops were slowly poisoning them until it was too late. The rotting sickness is a disease mutated from cancer, brought on by the homogenous food and sterilised seeds the Seeders feed to everyone in the regions.
“If not the Citadel, then how did the rotting sickness come about?” I ask.
Sheila’s face twists into a mask of sheer vehemence.
“The Wanderers, of course. You may not agree with our ways, Aurora, but we have never sought to use nature in any way but to benefit mankind. We created plants that would grow in the harshest of terrains. Our seeds fed millions and created empires. But the Wanderers objected to our use of science to help ourselves, so they turned to biological warfare. They did this, and as their descendent, you will help fix it. Do you understand me?”
I nod because I can’t trust myself to speak. Not for a second do I believe a single word she’s saying, but she’s a good actress; I’ll give her that. She obviously hasn’t gotten to her position without learning a few tricks. The elevator bell rings again, and Tom stirs. Sheila rushes to his side. I follow at a much more sedate pace, not at all relishing the thought of “helping” Tom eat.
Footsteps enter the room. Soup sloshes against a bowl.
“Set the tray over there.” Sheila points to the side table.
The attendant does as he’s told, and it’s when he straightens up from depositing the tray that I get a good look at him and scream.
The attendant is Micah.
Twenty-Five
I throw myself on Micah and squeeze him so tight he goes r
igid. Any moment now I expect to be hugged back, but after a long pause and no reaction, I let go.
“I can’t believe it,” I say. “How did you get here?” The Seeders have made him cut his unruly hair, and he’s meatier than I’ve ever seen him before.
“What are you doing?” Sheila says. She grabs my arms, but I don’t back away.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Micah says to Sheila. Fury begins to churn in my stomach because the Seeders have lowered the register of his voice. “Is there anything else I can get you?”
“No, Eli, you can go.” Eli?
“Wait!” I reach for him and he sidesteps. His head bows in genuine bewilderment, and when he looks up, a beam of sunlight dances in his golden-brown eyes. I stop mid-step. This isn’t right. Micah’s eyes are cerulean. I don’t know how to react. Wrong Micah makes a hasty retreat into the elevator.
“What did you do to him?” I accuse Sheila. “He doesn’t recognise me!”
She’s too busy feeding her brother soup to turn around. “That’s because he’s not this Micah you keep referring to, though they must be from the same donor if they’re identical. One of our better batches, only one or two with defects.” Everything she says swirls around my limp brain. I latch onto the words donor and batch but refuse to believe the implications. Micah would have told me.
“She doesn’t know,” Tom says with a giggle. I can see Harlan’s unhinged personality runs in the male Dempsey line. “Your Micah is a clone. Clone, clone, clone.”
He keeps saying the word in a singsong voice. I take a step closer, fully intending to smother him with a pillow.
“Take her away,” Tom says to Sheila. “She’s useless to me today. Go away, Wind Dancer. Come back when you’re ready for the truth!”
Sheila presses the communication pad on the wall. The pad crackles and then Aiden’s voice sounds through the static.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Miss Gray is ready to be escorted back to her apartment.”
“Understood.”
Whatever else Aiden must have been doing, it doesn’t take him long to come for me. When the elevator opens, I step in quickly, eager to get away from this oppressive room filled with foretold death and insanity.
We don’t speak as the elevator reaches the ground floor and Aiden marches through the complex’s foyer with me in tow. An all too familiar black sedan waits for us at the curb. Again, Aiden opens the door for me and though it’s starting to piss me off, I am not in the right headspace to make a fuss.
Molten brown eyes haunt me. Micah can’t have known that he was a clone, because why would he keep that from me? Before the Famine, cloning was used for all sorts of things, from infertility solutions to organ harvesting. Now only the Seeders have the technology and they use it to their advantage. I think of Micah’s near genius with electronics and start peeling off minute layers of skin around my fingernails. If I were a Seeder, that would be a trait I’d want to cultivate as well. Why, then, is Micah double moonlighting as a butler?
Once Aiden closes the door, he taps once on the glass separating us from the driver and the vehicle starts moving. As the car ambles along the Citadel’s research promenade, I become acutely aware of Aiden’s left knee grazing the side of my thigh. The blade of a knife sticking out from his boot knocks on my calf every so often. Does he have to sit so expansively? He and I both know how far he must have fallen from the Council’s grace if Gideon is now an enemy of the Citadel, but he still acts as though he owns everything in sight.
After several moments of silence, Aiden reaches for what I assumed is a car fridge in the space behind the front passenger seat. Instead, the compartment opens up to reveal a small storage space with a silver carbon fibre case inside. He takes the novel-sized box out and hands it to me.
The box feels so light there might as well be nothing inside it. I flick the clip open to reveal a palm-sized tablet device and thin silver bracelet with a small computer chip in it. I recognise the bracelet as a disguised key pass that’s popular with the more active Seeders. It was perfect for me in the circus.
“The passkey will get you into the research complex, to Thomas Dempsey’s apartment, your apartment, and the Arts Centre,” Aiden says. No doubt those will be the only places I’m allowed to go while I’m in the Citadel. “The tablet has your schedule for the foreseeable future on it. There’s also a program for the circus’ next set of shows and some information about what may have changed while you were away.”
I turn the tablet on like it has never left my hands, even though I haven’t touched one in the last six years. “Hmmm,” I say.
“What?”
“The schedule doesn’t seem to allow me any time to take a shit.” I am deliberately crass to elicit a reaction, but he just shakes his head and then leans back and closes his eyes.
When we reach the hotel, Aiden lets me go up to my apartment alone. Someone has been in my apartment to clean while I was gone. Now I remember why I hate living in a hotel so much. Twice a day, every day, it feels like I’m being violated by a ghost whose only trace is the neat stack of towels and lavender-scented soaps they leave behind. I miss Kadee with her bawdy laughter and the stories she would tell while I helped her clean. It’s impossible to comprehend that I will never see her again.
I’ve not taken more than twenty steps into the apartment when the notification sound of the tablet chimes. An image of Harlan flashes on the screen. I click on his picture and a message opens up. It reads: Hello, pet. Shame our tour was cut short this morning. Not to worry, I’ve organised some riveting entertainment for us tonight. Car will be ready to pick you up at six.
I am tempted to send a message back asking how he and the Council think I’ll be able to formulate any cure for the rotting sickness if he keeps exhausting me like this. Instead, I flop down on the couch and promptly fall asleep.
I’m awoken by a knock on the door. It then opens without my permission, and Gloria elbows her way in with a long white box tied with a silver bow.
“Why am I not surprised you’re not ready?”
“What time is it?” My head is foggy from sleep.
“Five thirty. You’re late.”
I don’t move. Instead, I turn over onto my back. “Thought you said you were done with my checkups?”
“I’m not here to check up on you. I’m here in case you hurt yourself tonight. Let’s go!”
“What’s the rush? They’re not going to start the show without Harlan’s permission.”
Gloria’s lips purse and she seems to contemplate revealing something to me, but then we’re interrupted by the elevator door opening and Vargas storming into the apartment. I search wildly for a weapon. Vargas senses my unease, and one of his eyes narrows as though a grin is itching to break free, but he won’t allow it.
“We’re leaving now!” he says.
A silent message passes between Vargas and Gloria. Or is it a battle of rank and wills? Where a moment ago she was practically pushing me out the door, now she seems determined to delay.
“Where’s Captain Forrester?” she asks. I was thinking the same thing.
“Indisposed.” Vargas sniffs. It makes the pockmarks on his face crinkle. I still can’t recall who he is, and that bugs me to no end. “Move or I’ll move you,” he says.
Faced with the possibility of being manhandled by Vargas, I don’t dawdle any longer. Gloria dumps the big white box in Vargas’ arms. A protest forms on his lips even as he steadies the box using the base of his chin.
“Don’t drop it now,” Gloria forewarns. “Harlan won’t be happy if it’s ruined.”
Once Gloria and I are in our car, it speeds towards the Arts Centre, leaving Vargas and the box to follow in another vehicle. And I mean speed, because this driver doesn’t seem to know what a brake is for. Not that he needs it, because when I stick my head to the side, all I can see are green lights in the direction we need to go. That can’t be a coincidence.
It is now the beginning of winte
r and the sun has well and truly set, but I don’t think the Citadel knows it. This city makes its own rules, nature be damned. Lights twinkle everywhere, from the warm glow spilling out of restaurant windows to the luminous night-blooming flowers of the trees lining the sidewalks.
Only the dome and immediate perimeter around the Forgotten Garden is left to darkness so as not to disturb the plants too much. It seems like faulty logic when only a few blocks away is the Art Centre, pinnacle of modern Seeder life. Papa told me the shell of the centre was once a grand opera house a great distance away, but the Seeders had it relocated when the Citadel was constructed.
I can’t help but be mesmerised by its arching white waves and the majesty of its glowing marble steps. What confuses me is why we’ve bypassed the busy visitors’ entrance and are now weaving our way around to the back. Maybe Harlan has his own personal entry I don’t know about? Then we pass the loading docks and catering hall where crates of champagne are being couriered inside by burly boys wearing black and white tuxedos. For a second, I think I see Gage, but then we’re whizzing past.
I turn to Gloria, my tone accusatory. “The gift box you gave Vargas earlier, my costume is in there, isn’t it?”
She only nods. At least she has the decency not to deny it. I should have known the Seeders wouldn’t wait to throw me back onto the stage. Now that I know where I’m headed, the Centre doesn’t seem nearly as bright. The driver makes a predictable left turn into the performer’s entrance. The area is deserted, and I’m glad we’ve come so late.
I feel every moment as though through a thick fog. Before I even get out of the car, a stagehand wearing a full-body leotard is in my face, tutting that I’m so late. He takes me by the arm, and I’m so uneasy all I can do is let him lead me through the warren backstage to a corridor lined with changing rooms with identical white doors. My door is freshly painted, and on a background of a gold star with a gust of wind trail is my name is bright blue letters: