by Corrie Wang
Seeing the blood drain from my face, he quickly says, “I’m not saying I agree with Fortitude. But I mean, maybe there’s not a right or wrong way to do things anymore.”
I bristle. “Of course there is. Habitation zones, for instance, shorten commute times, build community, keep everyone safe. They are the right way to live. And obviously there are efficient and more sustainable ways to eat, drink your water, wash your clothes.”
“I guess. Or maybe we’re only making up these rules to feel less scared about the fact that we survived. Maybe the only rule is ‘wake up.’ After that, everything else could be based on what makes that waking-up experience a happy one.”
Now Sway bats his eyelashes at me.
I snort. “Sounds great, until the day everyone in your society wakes up and decides food production no longer brings them joy. And as lovely as the singular goal of existing to be happy sounds, you’ve never had to live on an island because you feared for your safety. Hey, Sway?”
“Yes, Glori?”
I suppress a smile. My name on his lips. Welcome back, sparkle up my spine.
“I think Matricula knew about the cameras you had on us.”
Sway shakes his head at my abrupt swing in conversation. But I can’t stop thinking about it. When Majesty discovered she was pregnant, Grand moved us to our abandoned cul-de-sac less than a day later. After Twofer was born, she was always adamant that I never take him into the neighborhood yet lax about letting us go to Costco or Fantasy Island. Despite the fact that a fee could have happened upon us at any moment. I don’t think it was fees she was truly hiding us from. I think it was beasts.
But I can’t exactly tell Sway any of that, so I take a different route instead.
“Matricula used to come to my school on her lunch breaks,” I continue. “She’d stand in the back of my math class, with this little smile. Once, when I asked her about it, she said she still got a kick seeing young fees learning complex science and math. That in the past we’d been told we weren’t inherently smart enough or genetically suited to it. She said some days she needed a reminder of what this was all for. I’m positive she would never let us be as unprepared as Chia seems to think we are.”
Same went for putting Grandma Lucy and Grandma Aruun up on the roofs for guard duty. It was a poor defensive strategy and Grand didn’t make those. Sway listens while trying to peel a sticker off the wall above him.
“I hear things like that and it makes me think we’re better off now,” he says.
I sit up a little straighter. “I think that, too. I know it isn’t right or charitable, but sometimes I don’t mind that there’s so few of us left. Listening to what Grand said it was like before the Night—the stress, the inequality, the conflict, all those screens—I’ve always felt kind of lucky. Not just to be alive, but to be alive now. But I wouldn’t have minded living in a world where there weren’t quite so many dead bodies.”
I’ve never told anyone that before.
“What would you have more of?” Sway asks.
“Swimming pools. I would definitely have more working swimming pools.”
He laughs. “Nay to dead bodies. Yea to swimming pools. Heard.”
He rips off the sticker, gives a little cheer, then wads it up and throws it on the floor.
“Hey,” he says. “For the record: You know I’m not like that, right? Those pre-Night beasts who thought y’all couldn’t science? Neither is anyone else I know. I mean, we all grew up fee-less. Reason aside, we have no expectations of you. I just want to be me.”
He gives me a sleepy smile, and there’s nothing stomach churn-y or sparkly about it. It’s solely sweet and comfortable. And it makes me realize that’s exactly what I want, too. For me to be me. And him to be him. And for Twofer to be Twofer. And what I really want—what would make me wake up happy every day—is for us all to do that together. Because how can I possibly go back to living my solitary life, my fee-only life, now that I know he’s over here? How can I possibly dream of robbing Two Five of the exquisiteness that is being friends with Sway?
“We should get some sleep.” I scrunch down and shut my eyes.
“Boop,” he murmurs, and then ever so quietly says, “Honestly, Glori, if Matricula is prepared? Good for her. She’ll need to be.”
Next second, he’s snoring.
“Can of peaches for your thoughts,” Grand offered, setting aside her portable.
I flopped down on the couch across from where she was tucked into her “reading” chair. I didn’t want to tell her this, but there was no one else to tell. Liyan would have said to ignore it. “Who cares?” And Su had already told me that instead of being sensitive, maybe I should try a little harder to fit in. Only, I had been trying.
I pressed my face into the couch’s seat cushions, vaguely wondering at the pre-Night butts that had sat there before us. This was before Majesty was snatched by the beasts. Before we moved to the cul-de-sac. When for as long as I could remember, there was something that made me different from everyone else.
“The Miracles started this thing,” I said into the cushions of the couch. “All the friend groups are making names for themselves. The Tricky Switch Stance Nine. The Sensational Sevens. The Gaudy Arties.”
“What’s your group called?” Grand Mati asked. I could hear the smile in her voice.
I pulled my face from the crack in the cushions to look at her.
“The Optimal One.”
Her bemused expression sank.
“Oh, honey, no. Want me to talk to everyone?”
“No.” I inhaled, mortified. “Don’t you dare.”
Clicking an empty pen that she kept specifically for this purpose, she was quietly thoughtful, then leaned toward me in her chair. “Glori, did I ever tell you why I went into genetic biology?”
I shook my head, riveted. On Grand Island, new stories were as rare as bright colors.
“My mom, your great-grandma, was something of a celebrity. The creator of this thing called a fashion blog. She began it in high school as a side project, and it skyrocketed her to something called celebrity. Which meant lots of people who didn’t know her envied her. But she was not a happy person. She had a horrible relationship with her parents and I grew up believing she had me if not entirely by accident, then at least partially to infuriate them.
“Anyway, even though it was still controversial, my mom signed unborn me up to be CRISPRed. I was one of the first in the US.
“Looking back, I’m sure it was mostly a publicity stunt, which means a thing you do for attention. And yet, it gave us our height, eye color, and good metabolism. Plus, it eradicated our Rhodes family’s susceptibility to breast cancer and depression. There were about twenty-five other adjustments they made as well. I honestly can’t remember all of them. I still have the documentation in a drawer somewhere around here.”
Grand quietly played with her braid. We called that style the Matricula Rhodes. I’d been wearing mine the same way since I could remember.
“When I started school, it was at something called a private school in a place called Brooklyn. Since my mother made no secret of my enhancements—there were entire magazine articles written about it—my competitive classmates knew me long before I knew them. You’d think with time, you would become inured to certain words like freak and monster, but you don’t. Honestly, I think I envisioned our life here on Grand Island decades before the Night. A place where no fee ever had to temper her intelligence or athleticism or interests ever again.”
She clicked her pen for a few beats.
“How come you’ve never told me any of this?” I finally asked.
“For starters, the world ended. All those people are dead. It seems silly to hold a grudge against them now.” She laughed at herself, at how serious this conversation had become. But then her eyes narrowed. “No, that’s not entirely the truth. I’ve never told you because it felt like letting their memory endure was an honor they didn’t deserve.
“An
yhow, when it was time for me to decide my career, I went whole hog into genetics. My goal was to make CRISPRing so common that the freaks became the people without it. You are all called Miracles for the fact that you survived. But you are my miracle, Glori. My special girl. Optimal One sounds like the perfect name to me.”
In the transport, a voice comes over the loudspeaker and shakes me from my reverie.
“Our next and last stop will be the farms. This transport will go express until then. I repeat, our next and last stop will be the farms.”
As we pass old snow-covered highways, and as Sway snores beside me, I can still hear them arguing.
“What is wrong with you?” Grand Mati quietly seethed on more than one occasion when Teacher Paz brought me home from school—again—because Majesty had neglected to pick me up. “At least try to engage her.”
“Like you ‘engaged’ me as a child?” Majesty did not keep her voice down. “You never had any use for me until she came along and now I’m supposed to pretend to—”
“Glori is your daughter, Maj. You shouldn’t have to pretend anything.”
“Oh really, Mother? In what sense is she mine?”
Which was weird, because of all the Miracles, I was the only one who wasn’t adopted.
As if it’s keeping rhythm with my heart, Bertha shudders to a stop. The effort of the brakes unexpectedly being called into action sounds like a building collapsing. We must have been on this transport for at least a few hours, yet the sun is still some time away from rising. Sway jolts awake.
“Please don’t kill me. I’ll pay you whatever you want.”
“Bad dream?” I ask as he wipes drool from his mouth.
Sway shrugs. “Nah, that’s how I usually wake up. The nightmare varies, but the paying my way out of it stays the same. Are we there?”
He leans over me to peer out the window. His breath smells like socks and not the clean kind. It is now the darkest of the dark hours. From what we can see, both sides of the transport are surrounded by old, dead cornfields.
“It doesn’t look like we’re anywhere,” I say.
Suddenly, a patrol soldier walks past our window. Sway and I both fall out of our seats and drop to the floor, but the windows must be mirrored because even though the soldier looks in—right at me—he simply uses the glass to smooth down his lip hair (which is prodigious).
“They’re probably checking for stowaways under the transport. Sometimes goits try to get out of paying the fare. Happens all the time.”
“I don’t think so.”
I clutch the neck of Sway’s shirt and tug it until he’s looking where I am. The color leaches from his face when he spots the gloriously long-limbed figure clad entirely in red. Her balaclava is stitched together rag-doll-style. Heavy chains crisscross her chest, covering the fact that she’s a fee. Though her baseball bat embedded with nails and her razor-studded brass knuckles make her gender the least interesting thing about her.
“Isn’t that one of your paramedics?” Sway asks.
“No,” I say quietly. “That is one of our mercenaries. Sway, EMS stands for Elite Murder Squad. There are five altogether. Misère. Niraasha. Itami. Muerte. Ann. Which translates into English as Misery. Despair. Pain. Death. And Ann.”
When I still lived in the neighborhood, every young fee had a favorite mercenary. We might not know what their faces look like beneath their balaclavas, but we knew all their weapons, stances, and battle card kill ratings by heart. Yet it was impossible for me to choose a favorite. Tasked with watching us while Liyan and Grand were at work, the mercenaries became my teachers, my sparring partners, my bodyguards. Later, seeing as they were the only other people outside my family who knew Two Five existed, they were also my confidantes and friends.
“That’s Misère. She’s a refugee from New Orleans and was something called an ROTC cadet in her past life. After my lessons we’d sit on the steps and weave tiny animals out of dead blades of grass and talk about pre-Night food like pizza and something called suicide wings.”
“That doesn’t sound so scary,” Sway says.
“She also taught me how to kill someone with one punch.”
And she’s not alone. Another mercenary is with her. Shorter than Misère, she has a longbow and arrows across her back and a skull on her balaclava. Muerte. Considering the note I left Grand on the kitchen table, I’ve kind of been waiting for them this whole time.
In the hall, males are shouting as the soldiers clear them out of the transport. Our door rattles but stays shut. Outside, the patrol soldiers arrange the passengers into a line.
“Why is an elite murdering fee here? Working with the patrol?”
“Maybe Su made it home,” I say. “Told them we were on this transport?”
“And they made it here already? No way.”
“When I left Grand Island, I wrote my Grand Mati a note. Chia said he spoke with Matricula Rhodes. Maybe she was requesting that the mercenaries be granted permission to come and look for me. My grand would do anything to get me back.”
“And what, the mayor gave his permission for extra good-guy cred?” I nod. “Well, your grandma must be pretty important if she can deter a couple of elite fighting machines from protecting the shore right now.”
“Every fee is important. Regardless, we should get out of here.”
Now that all the males on the transport have been herded outside, the mercenaries walk up and down the line, knocking off hats and holding their portables up to faces, which doesn’t make sense since they both know what I look like. They stop in front of the male with the kelly-green cap. The one who made eye contact with me when we boarded the transport.
Muerte gently takes off his hat. The male’s hair is black and choppy. Misère uses the razor blades on her brass knuckles to slice open the front of the male’s coat, then shirt, then flicks aside the fabric. I put a hand over my mouth in horror. His chest is wrapped with cloth. It’s not a male at all. It’s a fee.
“Things just got interesting,” Sway says.
“Holy crow,” I curse. “Of course. That’s Rauha. She used to live a block over from us in the neighborhood. She’s another of the fees who went missing years ago.”
And it looks like she isn’t happy to have been found.
Rauha says something to Misère, sharp and harsh. As Misère takes off one of the chains that cross her chest, Rauha kicks her in the wrist and follows that with a swift punch to Misère’s face. It’s a classic defensive move that every young fee knows. Only problem is, Misère is one of the mercenaries who taught it to us, and Rauha is not a young fee. As Rauha bolts into the tall cornfields behind her, Misère tentatively feels her nose, then says something to Muerte.
“Glori, don’t watch,” Sway says.
Languidly, like honey dripping off a spoon, Muerte unsheathes her bow. Before I can shut my eyes, three arrows stick out of Rauha’s back.
“Sway, we have to get off this transport. Now!”
“Or we could keep hiding.”
Except we were always taught it was easier to fight in the open. Never to get trapped. I don’t think the mercenaries are here because of my note. I’m not sure they know I’m here at all. Or whether they’d take me home or kill me if they did. But I know I can’t stay in this tiny space where we wouldn’t have a chance against Muerte’s arrows or Misère’s bat.
Yanking the bar from under the door handle, I slide the door open an inch and look out. The car is empty. Telling from the windows on the other side of the transport, more dead cornfields flank us, the stalks over ten feet high. If we can reach it, it’s a good place to disappear.
“The field,” I say.
The exit is right down the aisle at the end of this transport car. Twenty feet, tops. There isn’t a patrol soldier in sight. I pull Sway after me. We’ve just run past the restroom when suddenly, he makes a choking sound. I look back and cry out. A patrol soldier with a clown face tattooed over his own stands behind Sway with an arm around his n
eck, a knife pointed at Sway’s head.
“He came out of the bathroom,” Sway says. “Don’t kill him.”
The soldier laughs. “He’ll be lucky if that’s all we do to him.”
I roll my eyes. “He wasn’t talking to you. He was talking to me.”
Next second, the butt handle of Mama Bear hits the soldier smack in the forehead with such force it knocks him out cold. Only he wasn’t alone. The other bathroom door opens.
“What the…”
The soldier sees us, then his fallen friend, then goes for his gun. Sway sinks to his knees in a bomb-shelter crouch, arms over his head. I dive over him and tackle the soldier. We fall into the bathroom stall. It reeks so strongly of urine, it’s like no one’s aimed for the pee hole at all in the last ten years. Next second, I have the soldier in a headlock. He elbows my ribs, but it only takes twenty-five pounds of pressure to the carotid arteries to cause instant unconsciousness, and I have a very strong grip.
When his body sags, I lay him on the floor, then drag the other soldier in and hoist him on top of the first. The second soldier has a lightning bolt scar zagging over his features.
“Sway, both soldiers have mob marks on their faces. You think Chia’s let them infiltrate his patrol?”
“Not our biggest concern right now, Glori.”
That’s when I hear the growl.
Back out in the hall, Sway is facing off against a creature unlike any my worst nightmares could have conjured up. This is truly a beast. Neither wolf nor bear nor tiger, but some mix of all three. With a bear’s claws and teeth. A wolf’s muscular body and tail. And a tiger’s size and coloring. It makes Reason’s Mastodon look like a flea. It growls once, then charges straight at Sway, slashing out with its giant claws. Sway cries out and falls backward, the beast on top of him. Just as it lunges for Sway’s throat, I manage to grab its massive head. Its jaws snap at my face. As it springs off Sway onto me, I violently twist its head, breaking its neck.
With a whimper, Sway scrambles to his feet. Our eyes meet. Sway almost died. His chest and arm bleed profusely. Clutching him against me, I run to the door. This side of the transport is still empty. We hop off and are about to run for the cornfield, when Muerte steps between the transport cars.
