by Lydia Kang
Hex hides two cookie-laden hands behind his back and shoves the other two in his mouth. “Who faid I waff eating anyffink?” He ambles over to me. “Marka wanfs to talk wiff you.”
“Why didn’t she call me herself?”
He swallows and picks a piece of raisin out of his teeth. “She says you don’t respond to her calls.”
I’ve been avoiding her since last night’s cryfest, but tuck away the truth and smile brightly. “Oh. The wall coms must be worse off than last week.”
Hex points to the door. We make our way down the stairs to the first floor of Carus, which is the ninety-fifth floor of our building. Marka’s bedroom is insufferably hot. I don’t know how she can bear it.
She sits on her bed in a tank top and shorts, her sleek pixie cut revealing delicate cheekbones and concerned eyes. Vera’s beside her, nibbling her fingernails. Also not a good sign. With this much floor space, she’s usually in some joint-twisting yoga pose.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“You’re right on time. It’s starting.”
On the holographic wall screen, a woman stands behind a podium. She’s got a lab coat on and wears glasses. Only people who don’t trust technology wear glasses.
“The recent attack on Senator Milford was a wake-up call to the illegal and unregulated genomic crimes in the States. We have located several sources of tainted DNA produced in direct violation of HGM 2098.” She stands aside and holo photos appear beside her.
The first photo shows a dead toddler boy with eerie grayish skin. He has no eyes, just plain, bald skin over where the sockets would be. The press corps gasps collectively. The photo is replaced by a baby-sized lump beneath a white sheet. A fuzzy halo of brown hair peeks out from the top. A plastic-gloved hand reaches toward the body and tugs the white sheet away.
The baby is a dull, dead green. He could be Vera’s baby brother. Or son, someday.
My stomach folds in on itself and I touch the wall, steadying myself. The press corps buzzes with frantic exclamations of horror.
Vera’s face is frozen, but only for a second. Something horrible takes hold behind her eyes, widens, explodes. She bolts off the bed and out the door. Hex runs after her, his face harshly carved with concern. I can hear Vera hyperventilating as Hex murmurs to her in the hallway. Marka switches off the holo screen.
“Oh my god,” I say, my hand shaking over my mouth. “They killed those children.”
Marka’s face is all grief, but there are no tears. Maybe she saves them for later, when no one can see, like I do. “I could have rescued some of them,” she says. “New Horizons hasn’t let me adopt anyone in a year.”
New Horizons is where Dyl and I ended up last year after our father died. It’s where Marka found us; an insider from New Horizons would call her whenever abnormal blood tests came up with new residents.
“No, Marka.” We’re all thinking it, so I might as well say it out loud. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine.”
“Zelia, it’s not that—”
“It’s okay,” I whisper. “You don’t have to make me feel better.”
Though the assassination happened a month ago, the media has been swarming with panic over the existence of altered DNA. Until now, altered DNA has been “an issue” and a “credible threat,” rather than real walking, talking people who might sneeze mutant DNA in your face. Today’s news conference is epic, in the worst way.
The day that news bulletin came out about the assassination, I wanted to die. The elixir I made was meant to turn regular DNA into the kind I had, the kind that might never degrade and might allow people to live forever. But when we tested it on Wilbert’s guinea pig, Callie, she’d erupted in horrible tumors within hours. It ended up causing cancerous cells that grew out of control until she was dead. SunAj, Aureus’s two-faced leader, had mentioned weaponizing my elixir. But when Dyl and I returned to Carus, I forgot about my trait-in-a-bottle that failed. In the blur of losing Cy, it was an afterthought.
“Somehow, the elixir I made got into the bloodstream of your uncle, Marka. I am responsible for his death, and we all know it.” I’ve told her countless times already how sorry I am, but she’s brushed the apologies away like errant table crumbs.
Marka moves over to touch my arm. Her nose does that tipping-in-the air thing she does when she’s reading my scent signatures. I wonder what a murderess smells like. Blood, maybe. She opens her mouth to say something, when Hex and Vera return. They both look shaky and wrung-out.
“Are we going to talk?” Hex says. “We need to start planning, like, a month ago.”
“Plan what?” I ask.
“Our evacuation,” Marka says quietly. “My contact in New Horizons warned me that the police have been poking around their database. They’ll decrypt my uncle’s personal records. We can’t stay here for much longer.”
I take a huge breath after the dizziness sets in. My Ondine’s curse. I put my necklace on quickly. The black box pendant dangles at my throat, triggering an implant within me to make my lungs expand and contract. It pushes and pulls my chest wall in that odd artificial way I don’t like. Once my fuzzy brain gets enough oxygen, I start talking again.
“How long do we have?”
“I don’t know, but we can’t wait for someone to knock down our door. We’ll prepare as fast as we can, and get out of here.”
“Where can we go?” Vera asks.
“There’s a safe house in Chicago.”
“Okay,” Hex says, two of his four arms crossed, the other two waving about. “I’ll grow some fake F-TIDs. Every fingertip-ID is registered, but we can generate some black-market ones in a pinch. I have enough of that retinoic acid growth medium to make one for everyone. Vera, you get our provisions ready. Something that will keep for weeks, high protein and carb stuff. We need to load up more ethanol to run the chars. Dyl needs to destroy our DNA samples in the labs. We may even need to torch the rooms, to get rid of any lingering evidence. And Zel, you get medical kits ready to take on the road. Everyone’s gotta pack their own clothes and disguises.”
Vera, Marka, and I gape at him.
A small squeak issues from Vera’s unbelieving mouth. “Since when did you become so . . . responsible?”
Hex reddens. “Is that a problem?”
“Hells, no. It’s hot!” she coos. I smile and Marka laughs quietly, when a feathery hand touches the back of my neck. I grab at it, but the wispy feeling goes away.
I cannot . . . It’s the faintest whisper.
It’s not Ana. I know Ana’s voice inside my head, and this wasn’t hers. I spin around, but no one looks at me like I’m crazy. Hex and Vera quickly separate, startled.
. . . This place . . .
“Holy crap. That sounded like Cy. Did you hear that?” he says.
I freeze, waving my hands at him to be quiet. But the touch that’s not Ana’s, and the voice—they’re both gone.
“I heard it too,” Vera says.
We all look around, confused at Cy’s voice in our midst, when a loud pounding echoes from the main door upstairs.
We all freeze. No one ever knocks on our door. No one.
Thump, thump, thump.
My heart jumps a mile. Cy!
“He’s here! He’s back!” I scream. I tear out the door and up the stairs. I can’t see where I’m going, all I can think is, it’s really happening. He’s really back! Marka, Vera, and Hex follow me, barely able to catch up. As soon as we careen into the common room, tripping over the piles of pillows on the floor, a voice yells from behind the door.
“Open this door!”
We all freeze, the excitement on our faces melting instantly.
It’s not Cy’s voice.
CHAPTER 2
IT’S A GIRL’S VOICE. MY SKIN DROPS ten degrees from disappointment and fear. I turn back to Marka.
“If it’s not Cy, then who—”
“They’re here,” Vera cuts me off. Her body is poised to run in five different directions. Running wouldn’t do any good anyway. We’re totally unprepared.
“No. It’s too soon,” Marka says.
Hex unfreezes quickly. “Don’t open the door. We’ll try to get to the chars by the transport—”
“The transport is broken,” I say. I neglect to say that I’m the one who broke it.
“The medical room can’t be opened from the outside without a verbal order from whoever’s inside,” Marka says. “It’s the best we have for a panic room. Vera, can you—”
“I’ll get Ana and Dyl in there.” She gallops off in a blur of green. Hex ducks into the side door to the kitchen, emerging with a knife in each hand. I want to cry at the sight of him. I don’t want anyone in my family to fight. Knives are no match for neural guns carried by the police.
I run to the window. On the ground, there are no flashing lights that warn of an imminent, violent takeover of Carus by law enforcement. Just the normal midday magpod traffic. Strange.
Thump, thump, thump. The last thump sounds more like a child’s knock, it’s so weak.
“Open up! Please!” the voice behind it cries.
“That doesn’t sound like cops,” Hex murmurs. “Too polite. And too girly.”
“How could anyone even get up this far, without bypassing the mirror password program?” I wonder out loud. We gather around the image on the door’s scanner pad. A blur at the bottom tells us the person out there is lumped on the floor and unmoving.
Marka passes her elegant hand over a scanner pad. There is a silky stuttering of clicks of multiple bolts receding into the doorframe. Hex takes a step forward, readying his knives. With one smooth movement, Marka tugs the door open.
Outside in the hallway, a girl is slumped on the floor. Dirty skin is stretched over too-thin arms and legs. Her hair might have been white once, but is now dishwater gray, matted with dreads and debris. Tired, strangely scarred and wide-open eyes search us, barely focused.
Marka feels it before I do. She staggers back, stumbling, holding her hand to her neck in a protective gesture. A soft wave of an invisible, anesthetic cloud hits my face and hands, along with an unmistakable wave of nausea. I’d go blind if I didn’t stagger backward as well. The horrifying numb sensation is spreading over my skin. I’m not sure which is stronger—the numbness, the nausea, or the hate boiling in my chest.
“What is she doing here?” Hex asks. He rubs his face, irritated and grunting as she affects him.
It’s Caliga. From Aureus. The girl who stole Dyl away without an ounce of regret. The first person that might be able to tell me where Cy is.
“Where is Cy?” I almost scream at her. “Where is he?”
“Not now, Zel! Everybody, get far back!” Marka orders us.
I gesture to Hex, who’s still clutching the knives. “Give me one of those.” Hex hands it over, but Marka shakes her head at me.
“No, Zelia, don’t,” she says.
My hand grips the knife handle so hard my palm hurts. I want to throw it with all the force I have, right into her face, because I can’t see Caliga anymore. All I can see is Dyl, and all the horrible things that happened to her because of Caliga. My knuckles crack sharply from squeezing the knife. I’m shaking with fury.
“He said you’d help me,” Caliga mews, hardly a whisper.
“Wilbert left this family a long time ago,” Hex fires back at her.
Caliga twists her scrawny neck and her eyes converge on me, pinning me in place. The last time I saw those eyes, they had multiple pairs of eyelids, thanks to Hex’s duplicative tissue serum. Now the whites of her eyes are bloodshot, the lids scarred and stretching her eyes open. She takes a gasp before letting her head gently touch the ground, unable to keep it up.
“Not Wilbert,” she rasps. “Cy. Cy said you’d help me.”
Her body sinks to the floor as she passes out.
• • •
WE MANAGE TO PULL CALIGA INTO THE common room far enough to shut the door. It takes us minutes before we have normal sensation in our hands and the nausea subsides. Vera, Ana, and Dyl have since emerged from the infirmary.
We stand at a healthy distance in an arc around her. Just staring.
“How did she even get up here?” Hex asks.
“Wilbert must have hidden access for Caliga in the mirror password program,” Marka thinks aloud.
“What are we going to do?” Dyl whispers. Her face is pale. She’s not close enough to feel Caliga’s effects, but not far away enough to forget her memories of Aureus. Caliga abducted her, and Micah expertly played with her mind and heart, just as he’d done with Ana. He’d impregnated her. Then he’d coldly and brutally ended Dyl’s pregnancy because it was useless to him, and to Aureus.
Micah makes me sicker than Caliga’s trait ever could.
As if thinking the same thing, Vera growls, “I’ll tell you what I’d like to do to this piece of—”
“No.” Marka tilts her head, studying Caliga’s body. “None of that. We need to know what happened. I don’t think it’s a trap. I’d have smelled the deceit on her by now.”
Caliga’s so thin that her knees and elbows are disproportionately huge and knobby. Wherever she’s been lately, there hasn’t been much food. One shin sports a three-inch wound oozing pink liquid and resembling raw hamburger.
“Let’s put a watch on her. She’ll need to be searched, and scanned for any tracking implants,” Hex says.
“And she needs medical care,” Marka adds. “Zelia—”
“No way!” I grit my teeth. “Hell no.”
“You have more training than anyone else.”
“But—”
Marka stares helplessly at me. I’ll do anything for Marka, but this? She serves me a look that tells me there’s no choice.
“We’ll all take turns watching her at night,” she reasons. “In the meantime, Hex, bring her to the med room. Take a few swigs of that No-PuK and we’ll make a stretcher so you don’t have to touch her directly.”
Hex drops a large sheet on the floor and rolls Caliga onto it. What a trouper. It takes him three breaks and a bout of projectile vomiting before he gets her up the stairs to the med room.
Hex is too depleted of bodily fluids to lift her onto the table, so he leaves her splayed out on the floor. By then, Dyl pops in.
“Let’s get a blood sample. We need to reverse this numbness-nausea thing.”
“Why, so she gets to be normal?” I scowl.
“No, so we can be normal,” Dyl says. “You’re the one working with her the most. Also, if she’s waiting to pounce on us because she’s still working for Aureus, we’ll be able to neutralize her.”
“Oh.” My eyes fall closed for a second. I’ve been thinking with my heart. All red-hot blood and not a single brain cell. Survival has to come first.
“We only have seconds before we succumb, so a blood draw isn’t going to happen. Let’s just cut her skin, get a quick sample, and scoot away.”
Caliga is so out of it, she doesn’t flinch when I cut her. Dyl stares at the vial of blood while I recover.
“You okay?” I manage to ask. “With her being here and all?”
“I don’t know. It’s not so much her, but everything else. You know. Him. Micah.” She crosses her arms and stares at the floor. “There are things . . . I can’t remember. But I remember Micah’s smile.” She shuts her eyes and tilts her head, as if listening to sweet music. “He made it so easy to fall in love with him. I was the center of his everything. Even if I was drugged half the time, I remember that so well.” Her eyes snap open. “And then I remember him hurting you and me. I was in love with an actor.” Her eyes are dry, though mine aren’t.
I still have the scars on my arms from wher
e Micah used his electrical trait to burn me. The scars are a landscape of puckered skin. Unlike Dyl, I remember everything. And I imagine a hell of a lot of what happened to Dyl when she was captive. Particularly where Micah was involved.
After Dyl leaves, I try to check my anger. If Cy sent Caliga here so that I would help her, then fine. I’ll help her until I can figure out what happened to Aureus and Cy.
“After that,” I say to her motionless body, “I owe you less than nothing.”
• • •
NO-PUK AND I ARE THE BEST OF friends. I’ve been chugging it so regularly over the past twenty-four hours that the essence of spearmint and ginger oozes out my pores.
I’ve cleaned Caliga’s cuts and put a dressing on her gaping leg wound. A transdermal patch the size of a small plate is now on the floor. It was supposed to infuse a giant bag of liquid vitamins, calories, and protein, but Caliga is so sick and confused that she’s ripped it off twice.
I hook up the liquid bag of nutrients to a new patch, and peel away the backing. The sticky side has a million microscopic needles. It itches, which is probably why she keeps yanking it off.
“If you touch this one, I’ve no problems with tying you down,” I say, taking a breath and readying to jump into the anesthetic field around her.
“If you try to tie me down, I’ll kill you.”
My hand twitches. Caliga hasn’t moved, and her eyes are still closed. I drop to a squat, many feet away, watching her with narrowed eyes. Her skin color has grown less pasty in the last several hours, and her cheeks are less sunken. The button lead I’ve stuck to her chest reads out on a wall monitor. Her vital signs are almost normal.
“Well,” I say at last. “It speaks.”
Caliga groans, and props herself up on her elbows. Her stiff eyelids blink and it takes nearly a minute for her to focus on me. She licks her cracked lips. “Water.”
“Say please.”
She delivers me a withering glance.
I stand up and back away. “I can throw you out the window without even touching you. Really, I’ve been rehearsing it in my brain. It involves a pole, a knife, and a homemade catapult. Want to try me?”
