Unchanged

by Jessica Brody

The tears are coming. They well up in spite of myself. Just another part of me that I have no control over. I shut my eyes, trying to trap the tears inside but they leak out anyway, tracing jagged, insolent paths down my cheek.

  “Yes,” I begin, and then change my mind. “No. Not entirely. I … I can’t do this.” The words are so cracked.

  “It’s okay.” Kaelen pulls me to him, wraps his arms around me. “We don’t have to. We can just be here. Together.”

  I can’t do that either. Not when Lyzender’s face is forcefully monopolizing my thoughts. Not when he’s out there, sending me messages, burying memories in the ground, asking me questions on the live Feed.

  I shove Kaelen away. I admit it’s too hard. Too rough. Not that it would hurt him. At least not on the outside. But it’s enough to keep him from following me. And that’s all that matters right now.

  “I’m sorry,” I say again, refusing to look at him for fear his expression will destroy me.

  I pull on what’s left of my ruined dress, holding the top up with one hand so it doesn’t plummet to the ground again. I charge the door, open it with a swipe of my finger, and rush through.

  As I walk down the hall, swatting tears away, Dr. A’s words from the interview today haunt my mind.

  “They will never hurt each other. They are incapable of doing it. Just as you are incapable of flying.”

  I’m beginning to wonder how many other things Dr. A has been wrong about.

  26

  CONVICTION

  The guard stationed outside Kaelen’s door pays me no attention as I stagger down the hallway, drunk with emotion and guilt and whatever’s left of the champagne.

  I don’t go to my room. It’s too close. I would be able to hear Kaelen breathing through the adjoining door. A heartbeat and a knock away.

  We’re not allowed to leave the floor. Raze has given his guards specific instructions to contain us. That leaves only one place I can go.

  When I burst through the door of the Hospitality Suite, I’m surprised to see it’s not empty. I’d assumed everyone would have gone back to their rooms by now. Particularly given the early hyperloop we have to catch to San Francisco in the morning.

  Dr. A stands in the center of the room. Dane is dangerously close to him. They are speaking in harsh whispers. Dane has his hands on the sides of Dr. A’s face, as though he’s literally holding him up. Keeping him from toppling over. But Dr. A isn’t looking at him. His gaze is focused just to the left of him. Eyes distant, lips clenched shut, while Dane pleads for his attention.

  My entrance isn’t graceful. I accidentally knock into a table with my hip, sending the empty flutes that haven’t been cleared away crashing to the floor. The collision nearly makes me lose hold of my dress. I pin my elbows tightly against my ribs to keep the shredded fabric around me.

  They turn in unison and Dane’s hands instantly fall to his sides.

  “Sera,” Dr. A says, his voice strained. Like he’s trying to sound happier to see me than he is.

  “I’m sorry,” I say for the third time in the past five minutes. “I’ll go.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Dr. A says. “Dane was just leaving.”

  I don’t miss the pointed look Dr. A gives Dane right then and the wounded expression he gets in return. But I also know better than to comment on it.

  “Weren’t you?” Dr. A prompts.

  Dane grits his teeth. “I was.” He walks briskly from the room, not looking back once. He doesn’t say good night. To either of us. Which is very unlike Dane.

  Dr. A lowers himself onto the sofa and gives the wall screen the command to unpause. “Sit down,” Dr. A says, patting the space next to him.

  Actually, the last thing I want right now is Dr. A’s company, but I sit anyway. Because that’s what I do. I obey.

  I pray he won’t ask me where I’ve been, why I’m not with Kaelen, and why my dress is nearly ripped in half. Fortunately, he seems too weary and preoccupied with whatever just happened to put the pieces together. In fact, his eyes barely even leave the screen as I sink into the couch.

  I turn my gaze to the wall, surprised to see Pastor Peder on the Feed. He’s wearing the same wide-brimmed hat and blue-tinted glasses, giving another impassioned, long-winded speech to an audience of thousands. Today, I recognize the familiar monuments of the nation’s capital behind him.

  “These abominations,” Peder is saying to the crowd, “these ExGens,” he spits the word, “are not the work of God. They are the work of a much darker, more sinister force. They’re soulless monsters that Dr. Jans Alixter is trying to pass off as human beings.”

  The throngs of people break into cheers of concurrence.

  Why is Dr. A watching this? Why is he subjecting himself to this torture?

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see him reach for a glass on the table next to him. It’s not champagne, but something stronger. I can smell its noxious odor as he takes a long, sturdy gulp. Like he’s trying to swallow the strength to keep watching.

  “Have you ever noticed,” Peder goes on, “that Diotech and devil both start with the letter D?”

  The crowd loves this. The hovering cams pan the rows and rows of people packed into the outdoor venue. Their faces are distorted mirror images of one another, sharing the same ugly hate that fuels them.

  “Look at them,” Dr. A murmurs. The charming, charismatic leader from today’s interview is gone. The man who sits next to me is balancing precariously close to the edge of defeat. One strong gust of wind and he’d be gone. “So blindly faithful. So … brainwashed.”

  The languid, almost garbled quality of his voice makes me think he’s not really talking to me, but rather to himself.

  “This is what happens when you believe in things you can’t prove. It makes you crazy.” He points his glass to the screen, as though he’s toasting Peder’s success. “If he asked them to throw themselves in front of a speeding MagCar they would do it. If he asked them to light themselves on fire, they would do it. Without even questioning.”

  Fire.

  The word sends a shiver of fear through me. It bounces around my brain, trying to find a familiar place to land—a synapse to attach itself to—before finally giving up and fading into the background noise of my mind.

  I don’t say a word. Something tells me he’s forgotten I’m even here. Until he says, “You know, Sera, we’ve come so far with technology. We’ve done so much.” He stops, closes his eyes. “So much. Yet we’re so stalled when it comes to our views about the world.”

  His words slur, each one bleeding into the next. That’s when I realize he’s intoxicated. The idea astounds me. I’ve only ever seen an inebriated person on the Feed. Never in real life. And never someone like Dr. A.

  “I could have sworn by the time I became an adult, this religious crap would have finally blown over. How many times do we have to prove to them that they’re wrong? How many scientific breakthroughs must we have before these idiots finally understand the truth? There is no God. We are God.”

  He’s still staring at the screen but he’s not listening to Peder’s sermon anymore. I steal a glance at him and notice how bloodshot his eyes are. How saggy his skin looks. They must have put enhancers on him for the interview today. Enhancers that are now wearing off.

  “Faith is a powerful thing, Sera,” he says, growing quieter, more introspective. “A foolishly powerful thing. It keeps people stupid.”

  “Dr. Alixter wants to debate science,” Peder bellows from the screen. “Fine. Let’s debate science! Did you know there is scientific proof of the existence of a soul?”

  The mob falls quiet, waiting for his next words with intense eagerness.

  “That’s right,” Peder goes on. “It has been proven that when a human body dies, it loses an infinitesimal amount of mass. What could we possibly attribute this to? A freak physiological accident? Or the departure of a heavenly spirit? A soul returning to its maker?”

  Screams from the audience. People
are shouting, “Yes! God lives!”

  “I bet,” Peder says, staring right into the cam, right into my eyes, “that if you cracked open those two ExGens, if you peeled away their glossy exteriors and squeezed out their last breaths, you’d find nothing inside.”

  The applause escalates to a deafening level. I’m grateful when Dr. A finally pauses the playback, running a shaky hand across his damp forehead.

  As I stare at the eerie frozen image of Pastor Peder on the wall—the brim of his hat casting a shadow over his sharp features, his eyes visibly ablaze behind his glasses—I can’t help but wonder if he’s right. Is that what’s been missing my entire life? A soul? Some kind of invisible essence that differentiates the Normates from the ExGens? Is that the widening hole that seems to follow me wherever I go?

  Dr. A sets his empty glass down with a clank and stands up. He stretches his arms above his head. “I better get to sleep. We have an early day tomorrow.”

  “Why does Peder hate us so much?” I blurt out. I realize it’s the first time I’ve ever used the word us in Dr. A’s presence.

  “Because he’s afraid of us,” he says.

  That wasn’t the answer I was anticipating. I find it hard to comprehend—or accept—such a simplistic explanation. “Then why do you hate him so much?” I ask, expecting to challenge him. Expecting to stump him.

  Dr. A just looks at me, as though he’s studying data on a Slate. He takes my chin in his hand, rotating it left, then right. “You know,” he says pensively, “sometimes when I look at you, all I see is her.”

  I frown. “Who?”

  But he doesn’t answer that question either. He releases me and turns for the hallway, letting out a long, stale sigh as he goes. “Good night, Sera.”

  27

  BREAKAGE

  I lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling of my hotel suite. Right now it’s programmed for night, made to look like there is nothing between me and the star-cluttered sky. Even though I know there is so much more than nothing.

  A historical upload once told me that ancient people believed superior beings lived up there. In something called “the heavens.” They were referred to as “gods” and they were revered. Respected above all other people. Because they weren’t people. They were something more.

  More powerful.

  More knowledgeable.

  More resilient.

  Dr. A says there are some Normates who still believe in this archaic way of thinking. Who still think that somebody watches over us. He says these people are the enemies of science. The enemies of the Objective.

  “Science has answered all of the questions that were posed at the time the gods were invented,” Dr. A once told me. “Those mythical beings are obsolete in our time. Fairy tales. Anyone who says differently is only fooling themselves.”

  When I ran away with Lyzender we traveled to a time when mythical gods were still revered as the keepers of the secrets.

  This was evident six months after we arrived and my special abilities landed me on trial for witchcraft. I would have burned on that stake had it not been for Kaelen. Had it not been for Diotech. They rescued me. Then Dr. A shared the truth with me, invited me into his secrets. Fixed me.

  Now when I look up at the sky, I see sky.

  I see oxygen molecules and vaporous gases and the helium beams of the sun. I don’t see fantasies or poetry or dreams of far-off places.

  That’s the way it should be.

  Yet something inside me still stirs for more. More information. More insight. More answers that can’t be found in an upload. My brain craves it like dry, cracked skin craves moisture.

  “Activate Feed,” I tell the ceiling, and the image instantly shifts. A live broadcast of a professional MagBall game is streaming. But I’m not interested in sports right now.

  “Search function.”

  The MagBall game is reduced to a small square that zips off to the corner of the ceiling and a search box appears in the center. I give it my parameters.

  “Dr. Jans Alixter.”

  I’ve searched his name so many times. I’ve scoured through hours of archived footage of his life, trying to unlock the secrets of the mysterious man who controls my destiny. Decides my fate. I don’t quite know what I’m looking for now. I don’t know what I expect to find that I haven’t already devoured during my countless searches in the past year. But something still motivates me to scan the results that fill the screen.

  I filter the list by format, opting to view all the Feed footage first. There’s not much available before March 28, 2091, the date Diotech was created. Dr. A was clearly a very private person before he cofounded what would become one of the most powerful corporations in history. It’s almost as though his life began when his company began.

  I locate archived Feed footage of a press conference dated May 5, 2110, and command it to play. I’ve seen this before, during one of my many searches. It’s the first public announcement of Diotech’s synthetic meat product. Dr. A is at the podium, speaking eloquently to the cam, while Rio is standing in a corner, fidgeting with what I recognize as an earlier model of the DigiSlate.

  Dr. A finishes his short speech and turns the attention over to his colleague. I watch in fascination as the man who created me, who helped me escape, shakily steps up to the podium and reads a prewritten speech from his Slate about the science behind the synthetic food. His voice is trembling. His back is hunched slightly forward. His eyes never leave the screen. It’s obvious he’s extremely nervous and uncomfortable at that podium.

  I suddenly realize that’s exactly what I would look like in Feed interviews if it weren’t for the countless uploads and genetic programming I’ve received to make me articulate and charming.

  My eyes flick to Dr. A, now standing off to the side. He’s trying really hard to hide the annoyance he feels about his partner’s stage fright.

  Dr. Rio finishes speaking and hurriedly steps away. Dr. A resumes his position at the podium to answer questions from the reporters.

  I’m about to return to my search results because I’ve already seen this footage, when something on the far edge of the screen catches my eye. I’m not sure why I didn’t notice it before. Probably because I was too focused on Dr. A’s Q&A to pay attention to what was happening offstage.

  The visual is slightly cut off due to the edge of the cam’s frame. But I can just make out Rio—who has literally run away from the podium—bending down low to pick something up. A moment later, I see he’s lifted a small child—a little girl—into his arms. His previous anxiety instantly vanishes. He’s smiling now, kissing the girl’s cheek.

  I command the screen to pan left and zoom in tight. I can see most of Rio’s body but still only half of the child’s face. She looks to be about four years old. With dark honey-colored hair, golden skin, and as Rio bounces her slightly in his arms, causing her to smile, I can see a small pink birthmark just under the right side of her jawline. I zoom in farther and see that it vaguely resembles the shape of a maple leaf.

  Familiarity tugs at my subconscious.

  I recognize the girl. I’ve seen her before. In a memory. In Rio’s memory. It was a little over a year ago, when I returned to the compound with Kaelen in search of the Repressor for Lyzender. Rio was in a vegetative state in the Medical Sector, before they replaced his brain with a computer. His memories were scrambled and chaotic, but I was able to see one.

  Or, perhaps, he was able to show me one. The only one that mattered.

  It was of her.

  She had the same sweet, heart-shaped face, the same clear and curious mahogany-brown eyes. The same miraculously uplifting effect on the man who’s holding her in this footage.

  A man who is now—for all intents and purposes—gone.

  But what about her? Where is she? Why have I never met her or heard a single utterance about her before?

  My mind flashes to the day we left the compound. To Rio’s stony, warped face as he stood motionless under that creepy
cottonwood tree.

  Sariana.

  That’s what he called me.

  My thoughts racing, I return to my search page and speak new terms. “Sariana Ri…”

  But my voice trails off when I see a result from my last search farther down the screen. It’s a link to archived footage labeled DIOTECH VS. JENZA PADDOK.

  Jenza Paddok. Weren’t Dr. A and Director Raze discussing someone by that name the other night at evening meal?

  I select it and the ceiling begins to play a capture from what looks to be the outside of a courthouse. A small crowd has gathered, and a tall, slender woman with dark skin and a long face descends the steps of the large stone building.

  Feed reporters surround the woman as hovercams buzz around her head.

  “Ms. Paddok,” one of the reporters asks, “what is your response to the unexpected dismissal of this lawsuit against Diotech Corporation?”

  I access my brain for a legal definition of dismissal. One comes back immediately from an upload I received months ago about the U.S. legal system: a judge’s ruling that all or a portion of the lawsuit is terminated or thrown out, at which point no further evidence or testimony may be provided.

  A well-dressed woman, presumably her lawyer, blocks the reporter from getting closer. “This setback is unfortunate but Ms. Paddok is not finished seeking justice from Diotech for the crimes they have brought against humanity. We will find another way to fight this battle.”

  A second reporter tries to ask a follow-up question but Paddok blocks him with a raise of her hand. It’s then that I notice the small mark on her palm. It’s not swirling or animated like a nanotat. It looks to be a real tattoo. The kind they used to ink directly into your skin before the less invasive nano version was invented.

  I rewind the footage and pause on the image of her hand thrust toward the cam. I command the screen to zoom in on the tattoo, studying the curious image.

  It’s a red crescent moon.

  But as the footage expands across my ceiling, getting closer and closer to the peculiar symbol, it’s not the red moon that snags my attention. It’s the blurry face peering out from behind the woman’s outstretched hand.