Lotus and Thorn

by Sara Wilson Etienne

  He was quiet for so long, I thought he was lost. Then he started speaking. “Grimm was one of my good ideas. A friend. Someone to keep Edison and me from going crazy locked inside that lab.”

  He hesitated and I jostled Grimm off my own shoulder and onto Nik’s. He absently petted Grimm’s feathers and it seemed to give him the courage to continue. “Once we got Grimm’s personality and mechanics working, Edison thought it would be an interesting experiment to give him a real animal body so he’d blend in outside the Dome.

  “And I wanted to see the sky so badly, Leica. The real blue . . . not this thin, faded color. The real stars—even if it was just through Grimm’s eyes. So we snuck through the underground tunnels and into a network of abandonned laboratories we’d found. No one else knew the LOTUS facility was even down there—it’d been locked up and forgotten about years and years ago—but we’d used those tunnels as our playground.

  “We set up in one of the old isolation rooms, but Edison and I started fighting over Ad Astra’s DNA files. I wanted Grimm to be an owl, but Edison said that parrots were more intelligent. So in the end, we used both.” Nik shuddered. “A chimera.”

  My mind was ringing with the word LOTUS. The word from the shuttle and the necklaces. “What happened?”

  “The first attempt was horrible. When the bird emerged from the egg, it had too many wings—four half-formed monstrosities—and his beak was fused and twisted. It was grotesque, but something even worse had gone wrong. The bird wasn’t supposed to have its own functional brain . . . it was only supposed to be an empty body for Grimm’s computer. But it wasn’t.” And Nik was stock-still, staring into nothing. Like if he moved, if he blinked, the memory would hurt too much.

  “When he saw it, Edison just started cracking up . . . this wild, hysterical howl of laughter. Then he started flapping his arms, imitating the thing while it tried to cry out in agony.”

  My stomach turned. There was no sparkle in Nik’s eyes now—the yellow embers had all died out. “Edison was still laughing when he snapped the bird’s neck.”

  The worst part was, I believed Nik. I could almost picture Edison myself.

  “I begged him not to try again. I should have stopped him, but I didn’t.” Nik looked ashamed. He reached up and stroked Grimm’s feathers. “I never do.”

  Then as if I wasn’t even there, Nik turned away and started cleaning up the broken glass and spilled dirt. Sweeping it all into a neat, little pile.

  CHAPTER 28

  NIK HAD GIVEN ME enough to go on. Both he and Edison (and June for that matter) had all talked about tunnels and facilities running beneath this Dome. I was sure that’s where I would find Olivia and hopefully the other missing Kisaengs.

  As I emerged from the forest, the sun was setting, flooding the Dome with purple shadows. I couldn’t go to the Salvage Hall—even at this time of day it would be swarming with Curadores and flys. But Edison had said something about using an intake conduit near the brewery. That was just a complicated term for a drain, and I knew where to find one of those—and close to the Genetics Labs at that. If there was one thing I’d learned in the Reclamation Fields, it was that getting underground was the easy part.

  The Kisaengs were already at dinner and the Sanctum was silent—except for the constant babble of the stream. I followed the creek across the courtyard to where it ended—shivering as I stepped into the icy current and peered down through the decorative grate. The water didn’t drop straight down, but angled gently, becoming an underground river. The metal drain was rusty and old. Easy to pry off.

  It was much harder to make myself get down on my hands and knees and crawl into the wet darkness—the pipe was barely bigger than I was. But the water was only a few centimeters deep. Not enough to drown in. Still, I didn’t know where it went, other than down.

  My hands went numb almost instantly, which was convenient, since one of them still hurt from Grimm’s talons. The roar of the water echoed in the cramped tunnel, deafening me as I crawled through the dark. I could feel myself going deeper, the weight of the ground above pressing down on me.

  The pipe grew wider and steeper as more water dumped in from somewhere else. The current was stronger here—but there was no way to turn around or go backward. I was half crawling, half being sucked forward.

  When a sudden gush waterfalled in from a third pipe, there was no longer even the pretense of crawling. I was swept down through the angled pipe—on my belly one minute, flipped onto my back, then pulled under.

  My hands managed to push off the bottom, shoving my head above the surface. As I gasped for breath, I banged my head against the top of the pipe. There was only a few centimeters of air left.

  My lungs ached and I sucked in what little air there was. Water roared in my ears. Burned my nose. Pressed in on me from every direction.

  Then I was flung into space. And I was falling, reaching out, tumbling, grabbing onto nothing. I landed with a smack—pain blossoming across my skin and reaching deep into my bones. My boots and dress weighed me down, dragging me under. As I flailed in the deep river, my hand knocked against a rusty ladder bolted to the side and I grabbed on.

  Sputtering and shaking, my feet treaded water as I looked around. I was in a huge tunnel. Orangey dim lights lined the ceiling, glowing eerily against the surface. Two meters up, I could see the smaller tunnel I’d been jettisoned from. A permanent waterfall thundering in the dark.

  The water was deep here, but slow. And it ran through a channel in the middle of the tunnel. Gripping the rungs, I heaved myself out of the underground river and collapsed, dripping, on the cement bank.

  After a few minutes, I managed to get my shaking legs to hold me and started walking. Up ahead, the tunnel split, one fork taking the river deeper into the bowels of the Dome. But I took the other fork, a small, dry tunnel.

  I had to crouch a little so my head didn’t hit the ancient pipes and cables running along the ceiling. Lamps came on as I passed, then switched off again—keeping me in a finite bubble of light. But I was grateful for them anyway. I drew courage from the fact that at least there was power here. And it was a tunnel. It had to lead somewhere.

  As best as I could tell, the river was heading away from the Reservoir and toward the Kisaengs’ houses. But this tunnel veered back toward the Sanctum. Soon the electric thrum of a magfly vibrated through the walls and I was sure I was close to the Genetics Lab and the Promenade.

  Then there it was. A metal door in the wall of the tunnel, reading LOTUS. It had a rusty lock but I made short work of it with my knife. A scout picks up all kinds of skills out in the Fields.

  My teeth chattered as I stepped through the door into a glare of white. The hallway was immaculately clean and the lights radiated a bluish glow, illuminating every square of pristine tile. Every corner. Every doorway.

  The hall was lined with blank white doors—each one with a tiny reinforced window at the top. A memory swam up to my consciousness. There’d been a window like that in my isolation room, crisscrosses of wire running through the glass. And for a moment I was frozen there again, cocooned in that horrible sling—the plastic mesh hammock constricting my body while wires and tubes spidered out in every direction.

  The windows here were too high up for me to see through. And the doors were locked. But I could hear movement and voices coming from behind them.

  I shuddered, my wet shoes clammy on my feet. Nik had described abandoned, forgotten laboratories. But whatever LOTUS was now, it was no longer some underground relic.

  I hurried on down the hall. I didn’t want one of the Curadores to find me and take me to . . . who? Jenner? Edison? I wasn’t even sure who I was afraid of anymore. I just knew I didn’t want to end up behind any of these locked doors.

  I lost my bearings in the maze of identical hallways. I stopped every once in a while to listen for voices or try a door. Looking for any signs for Wa
rd C. Looking for signs for anything. Then at the end of one hallway, there was a pair of double doors. The LOTUS flower that I’d seen in the shuttle and on Lotus’s necklace was etched into the foggy glass and there was a sign reading: WARD A DECONTAMINATION PORTAL. And nearby, a long rack of isolation suits.

  I grabbed a suit and stepped into it. It was baggy, but the moment I zipped it up, the thing cinched in around me—shortening the sleeves and legs. It also heated up, blowing dry air across my damp, frozen skin, and for a moment, I savored the sensation of being warm.

  Then I stepped forward and the doors slid open, letting me into a tiny room. They sealed again behind me, and a fine mist sprayed from the ceiling and walls, coating the suit. There was another set of clear double doors in front of me, but I could barely see through the fog. Then there was a hiss of air—clearing the room—and when the second set of doors slid open, I could barely force myself to step through them.

  The smell reached me, even through the filters of the suit—astringent chemicals and death. My stomach twisted as a chorus of cries and groans crackled through my speakers. It was like walking into a wall of suffering.

  There were hundreds of them. Sick, dying people—each one cradled in a mesh sling suspended from the ceiling. They stretched out in front me, hanging like rows of terrible cocoons—five people high and four wide and I had no idea how many deep. A vast web of tubes and wires spanned the enormous room.

  Fighting back nausea, I made myself go deeper into the nightmare. Made myself look at the people trapped there. The lowest tier of slings was at eye level and as I moved down the narrow aisles between them, I could make out faces and bodies through the clear mesh—flys swarming over blotchy, seeping skin. But listening to them was almost worse: murmuring, pleading, in their half-comatose state.

  All I wanted was to run away. But then I pictured Olivia and the other missing Kisaengs, immobilized and in pain, somewhere among the hundreds. And I made myself go on.

  I skirted past a hulking, blinking machine that sat in the middle of the aisle. It looked a little like the main computer, except for the thousands of tubes and wires that spiderwebbed out from it, connecting the machine to each of the slings. Liquids flowed through the vast network of tubes—deep reds and bright yellows funneling in and out. Medicating and filtering and hydrating the layers of hanging bodies.

  The machine started buzzing and I jumped as an engine somewhere above me whirred to life. Metal claws descended from the ceiling, like the robotic arms in Nik’s gardens. They closed gently around the top layer of cocoons and turned them slightly, so the bodies were rotated a bit inside their slings. Then the whole top row descended down a level and the slings on the bottom revolved up to take their place—like a giant pinwheel. The tubes and wires doing a delicate dance around each other so they wouldn’t tangle as the bodies moved.

  What the hell was this place?

  I walked through the rows, looking for answers—the people had dark hair, brown skin, and seemed tiny against the Curadores I’d grown used to. Clearly they were Citizens. Some of them might’ve been Kisaengs, but there were men here too. Some of the faces almost looked familiar and my heart ached with the certainty that these people were from Pleiades.

  They were my people.

  Moans went up from the patients as I passed, as though they could sense my presence. And now I saw that their symptoms were all different. Some had blood tinting their eyes, dripping from their noses—like Red Death. But others had strange sores or rashes I didn’t recognize. And still others looked as if nothing was wrong with them, aside from being a little pale and weak.

  A few had their eyes open, staring at me in a kind of frozen horror. Others were able to actually focus on me, tracking me as I moved. Their hands twitching as if trying to reach out—despite the constricting slings. I remembered the half sleep I’d endured in the isolation room. Keeping me in a kind of drugged stasis while the Curadores filtered and tested and removed bits of me. Then I understood.

  They’re keeping them like this on purpose. Killing them in slow motion. In that moment I yearned to reach for my knife. To slash through the perverse web of tubes. To destroy the industrious machines keeping these people in suspended agony.

  But then I recognized her. Despite the cracked and bleeding skin. Despite the sores and the blood. A face I loved.

  It was impossible. If there was a God, if there was any mercy in this world, I never would’ve seen her again. She would’ve died. Her bones rendered into ash.

  But there was no God. There was only this pitiable creature in front of me. There was only my sister.

  Only Taschen.

  CHAPTER 29

  “TASCH?” MY VOICE BLARED through the room, amplified by the speakers in the suit. I knelt by her sling. “No.”

  And the word rippled through the ward—low moans repeating my protest.

  My sister’s eyelids struggled to open. She looked at my isolation suit and fear flashed in her dazed eyes.

  “It’s okay,” I whispered this time. “It’s just me. It’s Leica.”

  “Leica . . .” Taschen’s voice was no louder than a sigh. A pink tear leaked out the corner of her eye.

  I was fighting to stay calm, my breath fogging up the window of my suit. I wanted to take her hand, but the sling was in the way. And the wires and tubes were too thick to negotiate with my clumsy, too-few fingered gloves.

  “I’ve dreamed . . . you’re never real . . .” she said.

  “I am this time. And I’m going to get you out.”

  But then the machine buzzed again and the mechanical arms at the ceiling sprung to life. Turning and rotating the top slings before all the rows shifted places again. And Tasch was being pulled away from me. Up to the top of the pinwheel.

  “Stop! Tasch!” I raced to the hub of machines and tubes, searching for some kind of button or lever or screen that would stop the cycle, but there was nothing I could make sense of. And when I looked back, I’d lost track of her amid the rows and columns of identical cocoons. I ran back to where I thought I’d been standing, trying to figure out which one was hers. But she was gone.

  Then there was a different noise—a hiss of air. And I spotted a cloud of mist filling the decontamination portal between the two sets of doors. Someone else was coming.

  “I’ll come back for you, I swear.”

  I ran through the rows of bodies. Trying to put as much space as possible between me and whoever was coming. I spotted a second set of doors on this side of the ward and I jammed on the button—slipping between the sliding doors and into my own cloud of mist.

  My vision fogged, but when it cleared, I saw a group of Curadores step through the entrance of the vast room. One was bigger than the others. Holding himself tall and proud. Walking with a confident stride I’d gotten used to. I didn’t need to see any more to know it was Edison.

  I shed the isolation suit and ran. Not looking where I was going. Only caring that I was heading away from that place.

  I pushed my way through another ancient, half-open set of decontamination doors. After that, the hallways turned into stone tunnels. And still I ran.

  Then the stone floor turned to dirt and I stumbled. Sprawling across the ground, sobbing.

  Even after the tears were gone, I let myself stay there, curled in a ball. Breathing in the dusty desert smell. Letting the vaguest trace of sagebrush comfort me.

  And it was the scent of sagebrush that finally got my attention. That forced me to unfold myself and stand up and really breathe.

  It was not the stale, constant atmosphere of the Dome. And running my hand along the wall, I stepped carefully through the dark, following a trickle of cool, fresh air. Which became a waft. Which became a breeze. Which became the desert and sky and stars.

  So many stars.

  I climbed out of a dusty pit and found myself in the middle of the Recl
amation Fields. And in the distance was a semicircle of shining lights.

  Home.

  THE MIDDLE SISTER was glad she was not carrying the egg, for surely she would have dropped it. Inside the forbidden room was a basin filled with blood and bones. Beside it sat a chopping block and ax that dripped red. And, by her feet, hundreds of eggs lay smashed and broken upon the floor.

  Alas, what more did she behold? Her beautiful sisters lay in the basin, murdered and chopped into pieces. The brave girl gathered the parts of her sisters together, and laid them on the floor: feet, legs, torsos, arms, and heads. The middle sister knelt beside them, weeping for what she had lost. And as her tears mingled with the blood, the pieces of her sisters knitted together and began to move.

  Fingers twitched and eyelashes fluttered, until they looked up at her with wondering eyes.

  “What has happened to us?” the sisters asked.

  The middle sister hugged them close, but before she could answer, she heard the sorcerer call out for her.

  “Wait here and I will return for you.” She kissed their cheeks and locked them inside the room. Then she hurried to retrieve the egg.

  When the sorcerer saw the middle sister, he said, “Give me the egg so I know it is still safe.”

  And he was surprised to see the shell was white as snow, without a drop of blood to mark it.

  “You have proven yourself worthy. You shall be my bride.” And as he uttered those words, his power over her was lost.

  “FITCHER’S BIRD,”

  FROM FAIRY TALES OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM

  BY JACOB AND WILHELM GRIMM,

  EARTH TEXT, 27TH EDITION, 2084.

  CHAPTER 30