Unchanged

by Jessica Brody

  It’s the other Kaelen. The terrifying version of him that I can’t control.

  I don’t know where that monster lives. He seems to come out only when he’s threatened, challenged, or, in this case, insulted.

  I saw what became of that farmer in Miami. I remember the way he looked when they finally tore Kaelen away from him. His eyes had rolled back in his head. His mouth was slightly agape. He looked broken. And not just because his skull had certainly been cracked. But something else in him had been cracked, too. Some part of his humanity.

  I fling myself toward the boys still wrestling on the ground. I know my strength is no match for Kaelen’s. Not even when I’m at my full capacity. But he won’t hurt me. He won’t risk it.

  “Stop! You’ll kill him!” I manage to wedge myself between them, lying protectively over Lyzender who now has only his bruised and bloody hands to protect himself from Kaelen’s wrath.

  Kaelen is so lost in himself, so lost in this fiend that pilots him, he doesn’t even notice that I’m there. His fist strikes down hard. I turn my head. It lands squarely on my ear.

  I scream. The pain rockets through me, vibrating my brain. The whole world seems to hum and flicker. Like a broken screen that’s trying to hold on to a signal.

  When I look up, Kaelen’s face reflects the horror that I know he feels.

  “Sera,” he breathes. It’s all he can say. He’s too shocked for words. Even though my head is throbbing and my ear is ringing like it’s the only sound I’ll ever hear for the rest of my life, I know I’ve accomplished what I set out to accomplish.

  I’ve ruptured his crazed, monstrous state.

  I’ve pushed him back over the edge. Back to the sweet, caring, protective Kaelen I love.

  He thrusts himself backward, landing on his butt, and holds his head in his hands, rocking slightly.

  “Kaelen.” I reach toward him. “It’s okay.”

  “Like hell it is!” Lyzender struggles to sit up, but he’s weak and battered. “He could have killed you. He could have killed us both! He’s a glitching maniac.”

  I place a hand on Lyzender’s chest. “Please. Just go.” I glance at the sky and we’re both reminded of the incoming hovers full of people who will be none too happy to find him here. Especially after Dr. A explains the part Lyzender had in today’s devastation. “Get out of here. Find Klo. Take the hovercopter back to the camp.”

  “Seraphina,” he argues. His fury has not subsided. Not one bit. “I will not leave you here with that monster.”

  “I’ll be fine. I promise. Now GO.” I give him a shove. He winces against it and it pains me to watch. But it will pain me even more to see him captured by whoever Dr. A has called in to deal with him. Dr. A won’t be kind. It’s not in his nature.

  “No,” Lyzender resolves. “Not without you. Not again. We belong together, Sera.”

  “I belong here.”

  He starts to shake his head.

  “Zen,” I say forcefully. My voice is breaking. I catch his chin in my hand and hold it. I won’t look away until he understands. “You have to leave. If you don’t, Dr. A will kill you, or worse.”

  “Then come with me.” The pleading in his tone—the aching, the desperation, the history—it’s almost too much. I feel myself crumbling.

  I close my eyes. “I can’t.”

  “Why not? Sera, you can’t stay here either. You will never be free if you do—”

  “BECAUSE I CAN’T LOVE YOU!”

  The words echo deep within the chasm that was formed in the earth today. And the one that’s been forming in my heart since the day I was brought into this world. I fear neither one can be completely refilled. The new dirt that they’ll pile in, the new foundation that they’ll lay will only serve to hide the raw, pulsing wound that will forever remain underneath.

  The injury on Zen’s face is unmistakable. It cracks me wide open. It steals everything I have left.

  But if it saves his life, then I have no other choice.

  “I can’t love you the way you want me to,” I whisper. I pray he can’t hear the uncertainty in my voice. If he does, he’ll never leave. “It’s like Paddok said. I’m too far gone. I’m too broken. I can’t go with you when I’m meant to be here. This is where I was made. This is where I must stay.” I shut my eyes tight, gritting my teeth. “Please, just go.”

  I wish I could have fallen in love with you in a different world.

  I start counting. It’s all I can do to keep the tears at bay.

  When I reach 41, I hear him rise to his feet. When I reach 50, I hear his quiet, uncertain footsteps. But they don’t recede. They come closer. I keep my eyes firmly closed.

  57: his breath on my face as he bends down to me.

  60: his hand on mine, prying my fists open with his fingers.

  68: something cold and hard placed in my open palm, my fingers closing around it.

  “I will wait for you.” His whispered words are cracked and wounded.

  83: the sound of hovercopters descending, sirens blaring, his lips brushing against my forehead.

  89: his warmth disappears.

  95: the sound of running, running, running …

  100: gone.

  60

  MOURNING

  The world is quiet now. Finally quiet. The bulldozers and cranes outside the window that cleaned up the mess I made have stopped for the night. The sounds of parents calling for lost children and children crying for lost parents have subsided.

  The compound—or what’s left of it—has gone to sleep.

  Tomorrow will be another day. Tomorrow Diotech will be rebuilt. But the shame imprinted on me will never go away.

  I listen to Kaelen’s deep, easy breaths beside me. I was supposed to fall asleep in his arms. After he pulled me to him, kissed me deeply, and whispered Latin in my ears. But it was he who succumbed to the night first.

  I am still awake.

  He tried to apologize. He started so many times. But I never let him finish. I promised him we didn’t need apologies. We were beyond that.

  “We beat each other up all the time.” I attempted a joke. “It’s what we do. We can’t hurt each other, remember?”

  He touched my bruised cheek with the back of his hand. Ever so gently. The remorse clouded his eyes. “I hurt you here.”

  I take his hand and place it on my chest. “But it doesn’t hurt here.”

  As I lie in bed, I can already feel the skin healing. The pain being chased away as my genes grow stronger. As the inhibitor works its way out of my system. Tomorrow I will be whole again. I will be strong.

  I will be me.

  If only I knew who that was.

  One hundred and twenty-one people are dead. And the counters are still counting.

  Tonight we gathered around the dining room table and ate our evening meal like nothing had happened. But it was an act no one could really keep up. Kaelen and I picked at our food while Dr. A stared vacantly at the empty seat where Dane used to sit.

  Director Raze joined us toward the end of the meal after he’d sent the police away, insisting he could handle things from here. We listened numbly as he chewed on his synthetic steak and drank his wine and recounted the whole painful saga from his side. How Kaelen translated my message. How he set up the trap for Paddok. How we lost so many good people but ultimately won the war.

  The bunker was not destroyed.

  Diotech’s precious data is safe.

  The company will live on.

  Meanwhile, my head has been a cacophony of what-ifs.

  What if I’d never sent that message to Kaelen?

  What if I’d never stopped to watch the commotion at the Miami Feed station?

  What if I’d never fallen for the boy?

  I don’t have answers to any of them.

  “You did the right thing,” Kaelen tried to assure me after Dr. A excused himself and Director Raze returned to the ICC. “If you hadn’t warned me, they would have destroyed it all. Diotech wi
ll recover because of you.”

  I nodded numbly.

  Diotech may recover. But I fear I never will.

  When I’m certain Kaelen is asleep, I untangle myself from him and slip into the bathroom, sealing the door behind me. Motion sensors activate the Feed on the ReflectoGlass when I walk in and I see the familiar images of the ExGen Collection ad playing.

  “Be stronger. Be faster. Be smarter. Be more,” the deep, commanding voice says.

  “Deactivate Feed,” I nearly scream at the glass.

  The ad vanishes just as the Diotech logo appears.

  I turn on the water in the tub. No scents. No enhancements. Just clean, clear, scalding water.

  I strip off my pajamas and sink under the surface.

  The hot water stings my bruised face but I brace against it. The whoosh in my ears brings me a fleeting peace. I close my eyes and let myself float.

  The water can’t wash away what I’ve done.

  Can’t wash away the look in Zen’s eyes when I told him I couldn’t love him.

  Can’t mend my brokenness.

  But it can bring me blissful silence. Even if just for a moment.

  And then the moment is over. I think of Crest sobbing over Jin’s body. I think of Rio. I think of Raze’s agents and Paddok and even Jase. All the people who won’t see tomorrow.

  They each lived for something different—rebellion, change, science, revenge—and yet they all died for the same thing in the end.

  The grief weighs upon me so heavily, I feel it pinning me to the bottom of the tub. I feel it soaking into me like a wet cloth that will never dry. I will carry it around with me wherever I go. Sodden, dripping limbs that will slow me down no matter how fast my legs can carry me.

  At least the water can wash away my tears.

  61

  HOPEFUL

  When I rise from the tub, it is almost morning. My fingers and toes are wrinkled from the saturation of the water. I step into the Demoisturizer and lean against the wall for support as the dampness is sucked from my skin.

  I dress and sit in front of the ReflectoGlass. In the same chair I always sit in when Crest attempts to do my hair and tells me about her Dark Matter. She returned to the estate after evening meal but immediately locked herself in her room and hasn’t come out since.

  I pull open the vanity drawer and find what I’ve hidden there.

  A tiny vial filled with a sparkling clear liquid. It’s what Zen placed in my hand before he left. Before the hovercopter took him away from this place forever.

  It didn’t take me long to realize what it was.

  A dose of the transession gene. Cody engineered two. One for Zen and one for me. One last hope of escape.

  I stuffed it down my shirt as soon as I made the connection. Kaelen was too drowned in his misery over accidentally punching me to notice.

  “I will wait for you.”

  That’s what Zen said as he gave me the vial.

  And I now know it’s a promise he will keep.

  I doubted his devotion to me. I doubted every time he ever told me he loved me. That’s something I will have to live with for the rest of my life.

  I don’t doubt it now.

  There’s no way I could.

  He had his chance to kill Dr. A. He had his chance at revenge, but he threw it away to save my life.

  There is no arguing with that.

  There is no hidden meaning or agenda in his actions.

  There is only truth.

  A truth that was there all along but that I refused to see. I was programmed not to see it.

  There’s only one doubt left in my mind now.

  But it’s not about Zen. It’s not about Kaelen. It’s not even about Diotech.

  It’s about me.

  I need to know who I am. I am not a Normate. But I am not purely an ExGen either. I am something in between. Something intangible. But hopefully not unknowable.

  And it’s that hope that steers my hand toward the injector Crest keeps in my bedside drawer. It’s that last strand of dying faith that secures the vial in my hand to the injector’s reservoir and pilots the pressurized tip to my vein.

  62

  TRESPASS

  The Genesis Project began in the year 2101. Dr. A likes to recount the chronicles of its success like it’s a children’s bedtime story.

  Sequence: A / Recombination: A – Failed

  Sequence: B / Recombination: F – Failed

  Sequence: D / Recombination: R – Failed

  One hundred and four disappointments until finally they stumbled upon the one that worked.

  Sequence: E / Recombination: A

  S:E/R:A was a success.

  That was almost three years ago, in the early summer of 2114. June 27 to be exact. The date has been etched into my mind thanks to the DigiPlaque that hangs in the hallway outside my bedroom, cycling through the dates of the failed attempts until finally landing on the only date that mattered from then on.

  My “birth” day.

  Before Kaelen was brought into existence. Before a boy named Lyzender stumbled upon me locked away in a prison cell in the now-forsaken Restricted Sector. Before my escape and my return.

  What was so special about S:E/R:A?

  Why did it succeed where the rest failed?

  If I can answer that question, I think I can answer all the others that have plagued me since I woke up in that womb.

  “Find out who you really are.”

  Dr. Rio gave me the first clue before he died. The real Dr. Rio. Not the artificial one who occupied his body for the past year. He gave me an invitation to search for the truth about myself. To trespass into his secrets.

  I don’t have to go far to find what I’m looking for. I don’t have to intrude into the past or peer into the future. The answers have been here the whole time. Less than a mile away. It’s only now I’ve had the courage and the will to seek them out.

  I close my eyes and focus on my destination.

  On the other side of the compound, in the middle of the Medical Sector, there’s a door that’s been locked for almost three years.

  And I finally have a way inside.

  63

  WOUNDS

  It’s been a long time since I’ve transessed. I almost forgot about the toll it takes on your body. The unsettling twist of the stomach and joints, the upheaval of molecules and cells. I feel the air shift around me, indicating my relocation. When I open my eyes I haven’t moved in time but am now inside Dr. Rio’s former laboratory and office. It’s been securely closed off and locked up ever since it was discovered that the cofounder of Diotech Corporation was the one who helped me escape. Since then, all access to this place has been restricted.

  I always expected a new scientist to one day move in here and make it his own, but Dr. A never allowed it. It’s almost as though he wanted to preserve it. Or maybe this room—where they worked side by side as partners, where they created a new life together—was simply too difficult for Dr. A to look at anymore. Maybe that’s why he moved the Genesis Project to its current home in Building 1, where he brought in new and improved equipment to create his new and improved ExGen.

  The nostalgia of this space hits me like a boulder. From the glossy blue-and-white countertops to the sloped ceilings to the synthetic fish tank embedded in one of the walls. Dr. Rio always used to joke that synthetic fish were the only pets he could remember to feed.

  The empty, spherical womb sits untouched in the center of the lab like an abandoned planet.

  That giant globe brought me to life. Inside those domed synthoglass walls, a sixteen-year-old girl was grown and birthed into the world.

  I brush my fingertips gently across its surface, imagining what it must have been like to be trapped inside, breathing fluid, looking out on the world that I would soon awkwardly inhabit. That would eventually reject me.

  If I crawled back inside now and ran the process in reverse, could it erase the past three years? Would it shrink me do
wn to nothing more than a speck of dust?

  As I glance around the deserted lab, it becomes apparent just how long it’s been since anyone has set foot in here. The hydroponic flowers that used to frame his wall screens have died. The room is still scattered with empty plates and coffee mugs. Dr. Rio was known for refusing to grant access to anyone when he was in the middle of a project—not even a cleaning bot. And the white DigiBoard where he used to brainstorm his ideas is still covered in his indecipherable scribbles and virtual pins.

  I spot his desk in the corner of the large room. I tread lightly across the floor, suddenly grateful that Paddok’s people removed my implant and my nanosensors. With Director Raze still trying to pick up the pieces from the attack and restore order to a disorderly place, reinstating my tracking protocols hasn’t been top priority.

  I guess they don’t consider me a flight risk anymore. After all, I was the one who warned them about the attack.

  I guess I’ve finally proven my trustworthiness.

  Just as I’ve lost all trust in them.

  I tap the screen on Rio’s desk, activating it after its very long slumber. It blinks to life, somewhat slowly, like it’s remembering how to function again. A password prompt appears and I input the only word I can think of:

  Seraphina

  It works.

  I access the file manager and stare in wonderment at the rows and rows of data pods, each holding countless files. The list goes on forever. I don’t even know where to start.

  I barely know what I’m looking for.

  I opt for the search function instead, entering the first name I was ever given:

  S:E/R:A

  The results are generated instantly but it’s another daunting catalog that would take me years to sort through, not to mention the fact that I probably wouldn’t understand most of what I’m reading anyway. I silently curse myself for never requesting an upload on advanced genetics.

  My eyes quickly skim the file names. My vision seems to be improving by the second as the final effects of the inhibitor wear off.