Unchanged

by Jessica Brody

  “Where?” She sounds so small. So traumatized.

  “Anywhere. A hotel. An island. Anywhere you want to go. Then you ping me when you get there, okay? You ping me the address and I will meet you there. I will break out of this place and come find you. Do you understand?”

  Another nod. I can see a hint of focus returning to her eyes. A purpose filling her sunken cheeks. I’ve given her a task and, most important, she believes it’s real.

  I reach out and pull her into a hug. I kiss her cheek, right atop a looping tat of a woman walking through what’s left of a bloody battlefield. Then I give her slight push. “Go. Now. I’ll see you soon.”

  She gets to her feet and walks to the door, pounding on it to be let out. “Don’t say anything to anyone,” I tell her.

  “I won’t,” she whispers as the door opens.

  I can deduce from the noise and commotion outside this room that rioters have already gotten inside the walls I once thought were so impenetrable.

  The walls that were built to protect me.

  As I watch Crest disappear behind the door, I pray that she can make it out of here safely. I pray that she’ll find another life that makes her happy.

  I pray that someday she’ll forgive me for lying.

  76

  END

  The next time the door opens, several hours later, it’s not anyone I recognize on the other side. A mob of eight men charge into the room, drag me to my feet, and carry me out.

  I don’t struggle.

  I’m transported down a long corridor that I recognize as a hallway of the Publicity Building. I was right. I was being held in one of the testing cells. The din from outside is growing louder the closer we get to the exit. As soon as we’re through the doorway and into the heart of the Administration Sector, I hardly even recognize the compound anymore.

  It’s been completely overrun.

  There are people everywhere. Not just thousands, as Crest speculated, but tens of thousands at least. Every available space has been filled with bodies. Incensed, thrumming, chanting bodies. When they see me hoisted into the air by the arms of the men carrying me, they only get louder. They cheer and applaud my capture.

  I could break free in an instant but what would be the point? I’d never get anywhere. I’d be rushed and squeezed to death by the mob.

  As the crowd continues to chant, I’m carried into the Residential Sector. I’m overwhelmed by the smell of sweat and fire.

  Right then, a loud booming voice rattles the air and shakes my bones.

  “Aha! The second one has been apprehended!” The words are slightly distorted from whatever speaker system they’ve managed to rig up, but I recognize his chilling voice. His crisp, sharp cadence.

  Pastor Peder.

  I twist in an effort to see where the voice is coming from, and that’s when I catch sight of what’s become of the Rec Field.

  It’s so crammed with people, I can’t even see the green surface of the synthograss below. At the far other end, still a hundred yards away, a makeshift stage has been erected. Peder stands atop it, his arms outstretched toward me.

  It’s hard to get a good view from my awkward position sprawled out above the sea of heads, but behind Peder I can make out two large transparent globes hovering thirty feet in the air. They look almost identical to the ones that were used during our first interview with Mosima Chan.

  And to my horror, staring out through the thick synthoglass of the ball on the left, is Kaelen.

  That’s when I start to struggle. But I quickly discover it’s no use. There are too many people. Too many hands. They pass me forward, a progression of rough, eager fingers poking my back and spine and legs until I arrive at the stage.

  Kaelen is pounding on the glass, screaming something but I can’t hear it. None of us can. The synthoglass is too thick. Even if I could hear him, the sound would be drowned out by the raucous shouts from the horde.

  I finally make out what they’re saying.

  “Ex the Gens! Ex the Gens!”

  They want us both dead. I didn’t need a chant to figure that out.

  The egg on the right is lowered and I’m jostled inside. The clear surface seals around me, locking me in. At least it’s quiet in here. At least I no longer have to listen to them.

  I spread my legs for balance as I’m hoisted into the air.

  From here, I can see almost the entire compound. The glinting domes of the Aerospace Sector. The impressive hangars of the Transportation Sector. The vibrant flowers that line the walkways. Even the gnarled, twisted cottonwood tree. Where Sariana’s life ended and mine began.

  The sight takes my breath away. So many angry faces, I can’t even begin to count them. They must have come from all ends of the earth.

  Is Zen out there somewhere?

  A breath of fresh air mixed into this madness? A single pinprick of light in the darkness?

  Some of the compound buildings have been partially destroyed. Some are being raided now. The Owner’s Estate behind us is ablaze. The flames are just starting to break through the VersaScreen windows and lap at the sides of the house. All I can think is that I hope Crest got out in time.

  I hope she’s not still in there searching for hairbrushes and nanopins.

  Panicked, I turn toward the Medical Sector in the distance. It’s by far the most impervious sector on the compound. The buildings are reinforced with synthosteel. The labs are secured. But what if they manage to get in? What if they find what I’ve done? They’ll destroy it for sure.

  Has Zen looked at the cube drive I left him?

  Has he watched the memory I stored in there?

  Or is he too angry at me for repressing his transession gene and leaving him behind?

  I need him to access the contents of that drive. I need him to protect what’s inside Rio’s lab.

  My globe prison comes to a halt as I reach my position alongside Kaelen. His body is turned to me, his palms flat against the curved surface of the ball.

  I match his position, placing my hand against the glass. As if I could reach out and touch him. As if I could feel his skin against mine one last time.

  My eyes lock onto his and in that moment, I understand. I know. We both do.

  He doesn’t hate me. He never could.

  Just as I could never hate him.

  Maybe Dr. Alixter was right all along. Maybe we really are incapable of hurting each other. Because as our gazes intersect and I feel that warm, familiar magnetism drawing me to him, even through this impenetrable glass, I know that all is forgiven.

  And soon all will be forgotten.

  Peder is speaking to the crowd now, riling them up even more. He’s pointing vehemently toward us as we hover helplessly in the sky.

  Part of me wishes I could hear what he’s saying.

  Part of me is grateful I can’t.

  Because in the end it doesn’t really matter. I wanted to make people see the truth. I wanted to help build a new world. One where corporations like Diotech can’t get away with deceiving people. With brainwashing people.

  Looking out at this astounding spectacle, I guess I’ve succeeded.

  Even if it wasn’t in the way I envisioned.

  Synthoglass is known for being airtight. Eventually we will run out of oxygen in here. It will take a long time, though.

  But it soon becomes apparent they’re not willing to wait.

  I watch the silent green vapor seep out of the small canister that’s been secured to the top of the sphere. It slithers menacingly toward me. Like a long, crooked finger, outstretched and beckoning.

  “If it was deadly it would have been green.”

  Kaelen holds his breath. I do the same. It doesn’t seem to matter, though. As soon as the vapor reaches my skin, I cry out in agony. It burns. It suffocates. And as I watch Kaelen’s face, his lips parted wide in a scream, I soon realize it disfigures as well.

  As the gas boils and blisters my flesh, I almost have to laugh. I find their we
apon of choice so disturbingly fitting.

  The two most beautiful specimens of humans, born in artificial chambers not too dissimilar from these, dying an ugly, deforming death.

  As I scream and writhe and try in vain to brush the vapor from my skin, through the green poisonous cloud that envelops me, high in the sky, I can just make out a hovercopter in the distance. Followed by a second, a third, and a fourth.

  Do they hold more rioters?

  Or do they hold help?

  I turn to Kaelen to see if he’s spotted them, but he’s not looking up. He’s looking at me. Fighting to peer through the thick green fog. Our eyes connect once again. I place my blistered, rotting hand against the glass. Slowly, agonizingly, I begin to play the chords of our secret language.

  Index finger, fourth finger = G.

  Index, middle = O.

  Index, middle = O.

  Thumb, index, fourth finger = D.

  My muscles give out before I can finish and my hand falls to my side. As my legs crumple, and I hit the glass bottom of my prison cell in the sky, I can only hope that he was able to infer the rest of the message.

  Now that I’m down, the vapor works hard to finish me off quickly. For that, I’m grateful. My damaged body convulses. My bones shrivel up inside my skin. My eyes feel heavy. The last thing I see before they shut forever is Kaelen. He’s still standing. Still holding on. Still bracing against the pain. Even though we both know it will eventually take him, too.

  His determination makes me smile.

  He always was the stronger one.

  77

  AFTER

  THREE HOURS LATER …

  The captain shouts several orders at once as his hovercopter touches down upon the broken earth. The Neutralizers they sprayed over the compound cleared out most of the rioters, but there are still a few stragglers wandering aimlessly in circles, like zombies lost in their own shadows.

  As he disembarks, he takes in the destruction that lies before him. A mansion burnt to the ground. Buildings torn open, like large, bleeding wounds. And two giant orbs, suspended in the air like soap bubbles, each encapsulating an unconscious body and a monstrous cloud of green gas.

  “Get those glitching things down from there and get those people out!”

  His subordinates run toward the hovering chambers, searching for the controls that are keeping them afloat. When they finally manage to lower them to the ground, the captain notices the boils and blisters on the prisoners’ skin.

  “Stop!” he calls out. “Don’t open those yet. Someone get me a suit.”

  The area is cleared and the captain, protected by a layer of synthetic rubber, opens the first chamber. He barely recognizes the girl. Her face has been almost completely deformed by the gas. Her flesh is corroded and her hair singed away in places, leaving behind rough and blotchy patches of scalp. It isn’t until he lifts her swollen eyelid and sees the luminous purple hue staring back at him that he can start to piece together exactly what happened here.

  He pulls a Slate from his pocket and scans for a signal. Two sets of nanosensors appear on his screen. They recount the sad conclusion to a story that started and ended within these walls. An ending he was too late to prevent.

  “Dead,” he announces into his earplant. “Both of them.”

  He transmits the orders for the bodies to be retrieved and relocated to a nearby army hospital where the state can decide what’s to become of them.

  As he places the girl onto the ground and steps away, he feels a hardening in his heart that can’t be stopped. And probably won’t be thawed for a long time.

  “Glitching bastards,” he mumbles under his breath.

  Then, through his plant, someone shouts so loudly it makes him cringe and press a finger to his ear. “Captain, I think you better get over here!”

  The coordinates are transmitted and the captain moves quickly, tearing off his suit as he leaves the area marked on his Slate map as residential sector and enters the one labeled medical sector.

  He follows the signal of his subordinate until it leads him into a dark, vast lab, lit only by the glowing orange, liquid-filled sphere in the center. Despite his high rank and the fact that he’s seen just about everything there is to see in the world, he can’t help the gasp that escapes his lips.

  “Holy flux,” he swears under his breath.

  “We were able to hack into the security system and shut down the power grid,” the sergeant informs his boss. “It was the only way we could get into this fortress.”

  The captain just nods, unable to take his eyes off the remarkable sight in front of him. Through the thick, gelatinous orange fluid, he can just make out a hand, an arm, the side of a face.

  “Do you know how much longer it has to be in there?”

  The sergeant points to a screen fastened to the side of the giant contraption. On it is an active countdown.

  35 days, 8 hours, 7 minutes, 9 seconds remaining

  “Oh,” the sergeant adds, “and we found this.” He yanks at the shirt collar of a tall, slender young man huddled behind the incandescent machine and drags him into the captain’s line of sight. “He was clearly affected by the Neutralizers because he’s mumbling nonsense. But he won’t leave the room. We tried to escort him out and put him with the others, but he lost it. Started screaming and kicking and flailing. Landed a punch right in Private Lanster’s face.”

  The captain hides a smirk as he eyes the private, standing off to the side, scowling from behind a pink, swollen nose.

  “Can we transport this thing?” the captain wonders aloud. “I mean, without disturbing it?”

  The sergeant nods. “I think so. I called in a technician from the base. He’s on his way here to check it out. It’s still running even after we cut the grid. I think it has its own independent power source. Which means we should be able to simply load it onto a hover and get it out of here.”

  Just then, an animalistic, primal scream resonates through the lab, startling the captain. The young man who was huddled behind the sphere comes charging toward him, hands outstretched. “NO! Don’t you take her away from me! I won’t let you take her away!”

  Three privates are required to restrain him.

  The captain chuckles. “So much for Neutralizers. You better let him come along. He may be our only hope in figuring out what the glitch this is.”

  * * *

  THIRTY-FIVE DAYS LATER …

  The young man sleeping in the lobby of the army hospital snaps awake as the doors to the intensive care unit unseal and a pair of shiny black shoes click-clack their way down the synthotile floors.

  He looks eagerly and anxiously into the eyes of the doctor, who comes to a halt in front of him.

  “She’s awake,” the doctor says.

  The young man leaps to his feet, feeling the sway of the earth beneath him, as he struggles to walk a straight line behind the billowing white coat. This is the moment he’s been waiting for ever since he woke up to find that tiny cube tucked in his hand. Ever since he connected the drive to his best friend’s Slate and watched the downloaded memory file she had stored there. Ever since he realized what she had done.

  She had created a life in the very lab that once created her.

  Or rather, she had returned a life.

  To its rightful owner.

  Her words echo hauntingly in his brain.

  “Fall in love with me in a different world.”

  He heard them in the memory, but they felt eerily familiar. Like she’d whispered them right into his ear as well. Somewhere between sleep and dreams and the cold harsh reality of daylight.

  He can’t undo what she’s done. He knows that. Some things simply can’t be reversed.

  All he can do is live with her decision.

  Live with it, try to understand it … and wait.

  But now, the waiting is over.

  The doctor veers left down a hallway and right down another until they reach a section of the hospital that’s gu
arded by a synthosteel door and two men in uniform, holding the kind of weapons the young man has only seen on Feed shows. He doesn’t even want to know what they’re capable of doing in real life.

  They pass into another corridor and the doctor stops in front of a room. The young man can hear his own heart pounding in his ears. He waits for the door to be opened, but instead, the doctor turns to face him, trepidation etched into his old, wrinkled face.

  “I should probably warn you, Zen,” he says, his voice grave, sending chills down the young man’s spine. “She doesn’t remember anything. She hasn’t spoken. She barely knows the letters of the alphabet. In many ways, she’s like a newborn baby.”

  He nods, understanding.

  “But she’ll learn. It will just take time. Her brain functionality is normal. Her vitals are all normal. Apart from the mental and speech impediments, she’s just a normal eighteen-year-old girl.”

  He turns and scans his fingerprint against the panel on the wall. The young man captures a breath in his lungs as the door glides open.

  The girl lying in the bed looks smaller than he imagined. Then again, he’s spent the last thirty-five days building her up in his mind. If she had any hope of matching the vast array of fantasies he concocted while daydreaming about this moment, she’d have to be twenty feet tall.

  But it’s her beauty that surprises him most.

  He honestly wasn’t sure what to expect.

  Her skin is the same shade of honey, but with a sprinkling of faint freckles. Her hair is the same golden brown. It just doesn’t sparkle. A pink birthmark, in the shape of a maple leaf, sits just under her chin.

  But the moment he gazes upon her, he knows. Without a shadow of a doubt, he knows.

  It’s the face of the girl he loves.

  Because he understands what lies beneath it. He always has.

  “Sariana.” He tests out the name from the memory file, saying it aloud for the first time. The S is familiar to him, an intimate sound on his tongue. The rest will have to come with time.

  She opens her eyes at the sound of his voice. Blinks. Two brilliant chestnut gems—so richly brown they’re almost purple—stare back at him, stealing his breath away. She looks him up and down with subtle fascination, as though she’s memorizing him for the very first time.