Catalyst

by Lydia Kang

  One by one, the senators feel her bubble of numbness with cautiously extended hands, before stepping back. “Fascinating,” one says. “So it would be possible for a man to have a wife whom no one could touch but him. A key to his own property!”

  Caliga bares her teeth at this, and I inconspicuously grab her hand to calm her down. Julian is laughing with the men. There are hands clapping his back, congratulating him on his newest acquisition, when Caliga’s hand squeezes mine back.

  “No, no,” she mutters. “He can’t. I’ll never let him touch me.”

  I don’t know what to say. He’s already started working on a vaccine. It’s only a matter of time before Caliga’s cage—or defense, depending on how you see it—is open to him.

  “And Xiulan. Our lovely peacock. Limitless applications for espionage, warfare . . . entertainment. I believe a different group of senators saw her charms at our last visit, but she was asked to return, just for you. Show them, Xiulan.”

  Xiulan is still tightly wrapped within her cloak. She doesn’t budge, only tightens her crossed arms. Julian goes pink in the face with slow-rising rage.

  “Xiulan. Our senators are waiting for their demonstration.”

  “I will not,” Xiulan says with a quiet, firm tone. She might as well have screamed it, because it has the same effect. Her face is pulsating in deep pinks and oranges as Julian stands and towers over her, slowly lifting his hand. I let go of Caliga’s hand to squeeze mine into a fist. In my other palm, Ana’s glass unicorn is still hidden, cradled carefully.

  Exquisite and unique. So breakable.

  So worth saving.

  I stand up abruptly. “Color and flashing lights. Is that what this is all about?” Every head swivels away from Xiulan to stare at me. “She’s just smoke and mirrors. Let’s be honest. It’s not what you’re really interested in, or what you came here to discuss.” I step forward, praying that no one notices the slight warble in my voice.

  “Maybe I ought to introduce myself again.” I put my hands on my hips. “I’m Zelia Benten. And I can make you immortal.”

  CHAPTER 19

  THE ROOM IS SILENT. EVEN JULIAN, which means I’ve either done something very good or very stupid.

  “Really?” The oldest senator pivots in his seat and focuses on me with his green, slightly metallic eyes. Holo implanted. “Last I heard, your DNA killed Senator Milford. Don’t see how that amounts to anything but trouble.”

  “Someone very eager to make a statement used an old prototype,” I explain in my best bored voice. “That formula was slated for more aggressive purposes.”

  Julian finally gathers himself and comes to stand by my side. “Zelia is living proof of the longevity gene at work.”

  One of the younger senators points at me. “Are you saying that you could truly bottle your trait? Keep a person alive far beyond our life expectancy?”

  The four men watch me carefully. They’re trying to stay professional, unemotional. But there’s a shiny, dark thing behind their eyes. Greed. And fear of death. That’s when I realize the brilliance of Julian’s words.

  Greed, sympathy, and fear . . . use them . . . like weapons.

  Julian walks around the senators, like a cat circling its prey. Oh, he’s in his element, loving this. He puts his hands on two senators’ shoulders and leans between their heads. One of Endall’s beautiful watches gleams on this wrist. He sees me looking at the timepiece and winks at me. “Let me ask you, gentlemen. What’s the one thing no one ever has enough of?”

  The senators look inwardly as their focus blurs. I can imagine what their thoughts are. Money. Sex. Power. I sit down in front of them and cross my legs. Ready to deliver the final blow to make or break our meeting.

  “Youth. Stamina. Beauty.” I tick them off on my fingertips, then thread my hands together and smile. “Those are nice things. Small things. We’re offering what you truly can never buy—that which is utterly priceless.” I lean closer. “Time.”

  The senators sit back and consider this. Julian’s eyes twinkle at me with approval. Micah and Cy watch us carefully and Xiulan’s face has blended in with the couch beneath her. But there’s a tiny camouflaged smile of relief on her face.

  “What good is immortality if you can still be killed from an injury?” the younger senator asks.

  At this, Cy stands up and plants himself by my side. “That’s where I come in. You’ve already seen my regenerative serums.”

  The youngest senator claps his hands together. “Long life, and an invincible body! What I wouldn’t do to see a child born of you two. It’d be a god, wouldn’t it?”

  Cy and I look at each other, startled. Kids? Us? Not that it’s possible, since neither of us can procreate. But I never considered it. You’d think I’d be excited about the thought, but instead, it sends a chill into my heart. Humans weren’t meant to be gods. We’re too greedy, too afraid, and too emotional. Maybe we weren’t meant to play god with genes either, but it’s far too late for those kinds of regrets.

  The senators are practically salivating at the thought. They start talking among themselves. I hear one of them say, “We could change history with this. At the right price on the black market, the profit could be beyond anything we’ve considered.”

  “Indeed, gentlemen,” Julian replies. “The black market has posed quite a demand already.”

  Everyone in the room relaxes. One of the senators chats with Cy and Micah, while another pats Xiulan on her covered shoulder and she shows him her hand camouflage trick on a bowl of fruit. He smiles, then sits a safe distance away from where I’m sitting next to Caliga.

  “So, young lady. Do you really think you can make this elixir of life?”

  “I do,” I say with a confidence that I don’t actually have. His eyes light up and I can almost see the dollar signs in them. “Senator. We owe you our gratitude for protecting us.”

  For the rest of the hour, we mill around as Julian begins to outline a plan for exporting our goods and creating new products. I eavesdrop on the latter subject. Julian talks about surreptitiously welcoming undiscovered traited kids to Inky and funneling them to Avida.

  The eldest senator sips his martini slowly. “It would be so nice if we could expand the market. I haven’t seen a new product since that boy’s serums came out,” he says, pointing his olive-speared toothpick at Cy.

  The brown-haired politician next to him shakes his head. “Too bad they only have one trait. Can’t you just make some more? We are in Inky, after all. Shame if no more children could be produced. If you need pro-conception hormone treatments, we can certainly supply them by the bucketload.”

  “Ah. That’s a work in progress.” Julian’s got a sheen of sweat on his forehead. Without an ability to unlock Dad’s suicide seed terminator technology, there can be no more babies. “But we appreciate the offer.”

  “Well, can’t you just . . . make mutations?” The youngest senator looks around the room and motions to me. “You. Come here.” I walk over in my heels, which are now rubbing two spectacular blisters on my heels. It’s an effort to not grimace. “Can you make a mutation?”

  I fudge my answer. “It’s complicated. And boring science-talk, to be honest,” I say, smiling. I pray he’ll drop the subject.

  “Surely you could make it happen. There’s a variety of dangerous chemicals out there.” He snaps his fingers at Cy, who’s crossing the room. “You! Name me some chemicals.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Chemicals! Ones that cause mutations.”

  Cy looks taken aback. “Uh, phosgene, I suppose. Ethylene oxide?” He shrugs his shoulders and walks by, pretending to be interested in a horrible abstract painting of an egg, of all things. Cy’s losing his patience for these guys, as am I.

  “There you go!” the senator says, ordering another martini from the bartending bot in the corner. “Can’t you just see i
f they work?”

  “On regular people?” I say, incredulous. “That would be like using a shovel to do surgery.” I think I’m being clever, when I see Julian frowning deeply at me. Uh-oh. My playfulness strayed into disrespectful territory. I try to backtrack and apologize, but the senator gets up to leave with the others.

  “Well, that’s our cue. We’ll leave the lab tinkering to you, Julian. We expect a report in two weeks.”

  We put our cloaks on to leave. When we enter the magtrain, Julian has Cy stay in our compartment. Julian is positively glowing when he brings us sapphire drinks in tiny glasses.

  “A toast. To our jewel, Zelia. I had no idea you had it in you. Your father really hid your talents well, didn’t he?” He grins broadly. When Julian raises his glass, Cy and I don’t. He’s halfway through his drink when he sees we haven’t taken a single sip. “Don’t you want to celebrate?”

  “But the negotiations aren’t done yet.” I put my glass down and exchange nods with Cy.

  “What negotiations?”

  “We made a lot of promises today. We’ve done our part. Now it’s your turn,” Cy explains.

  “What makes you think I need to negotiate with you?” he says, with an expression of surprise. As if we were three-year-olds demanding a billion dollars.

  “Because of fear. Avida will be destroyed if you don’t deliver what we’ve just promised the senators. And greed, because it will give you more power in Inky than you’ve ever had.”

  “What happened to sympathy?” He almost sneers at me.

  “Sympathy is for children. They’re for the masses, aren’t they? Not for people like us.”

  He touches his red bracelet, considering this. We both watch his movements, and Cy says, “Of course, you could just torture us into doing what you want, but that would be the messy, slow way.”

  “Very true. So what is your request?”

  “Zelia needs full access to the labs,” Cy starts.

  “Oh, that. Consider it done. But I expect progress reports.”

  “Of course,” I agree, smiling. “We need our schedules relaxed and my door access throughout Avida relaxed as well. I work best when I’m on my own clock. Cy is going to help me work out the kinks.”

  Julian puts his empty glass down and laughs out loud. “You don’t fool me for a minute, but very well. I’ll grant you access.”

  “And one last thing. About the children in the locked infirmary,” I begin.

  Julian hoots. “I thought you said that sympathy was for the masses! Who told you, Renata?”

  “We found out ourselves,” I say quickly. I don’t want Renata to get into more trouble than she already has. “Why are they sick? I have a stake in Avida now. I need to know what’s going on, in case it affects my research,” I say, walking up to him.

  “That is not your business,” he says.

  “It’s all my business, Julian!” I say firmly. He blinks hard at me, as if seeing me for the first time. “You’ve made it my business by bringing me here today. I need to know.”

  The train comes to a stop and the doors begin to open. As we exit to head for the magpod, he waves Cy ahead and pulls me back so we can walk alone.

  “I don’t want people to panic,” he tells me in a low voice. “But it’s complicated.”

  “I can handle complicated,” I said. “Why are they sick, Julian?”

  He inhales a huge breath, holding it for far too long before he lets it out. “They’re dying, Zelia.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe you should have asked your father when you had the chance.”

  “Because he could have helped them?”

  “Or not. Did it occur to you that some of Benten’s creations had a kill switch built into them?”

  “That makes zero sense. Why create something that’s destined to die too early?”

  Julian stops walking and stands close to me. Too close. His hand reaches out to grasp my black box pendant between his fingers. “Why do you have your Ondine’s curse? Why would your father make you, knowing you were so . . . breakable?”

  “It was a mistake,” I explain, pulling back until my pendant pops out of his fingers and nestles back against my throat. “The PHOX2B gene damage was an accident. My chromosomes had to lose some DNA to be made into those loops.”

  “Are you so sure, Zelia, that your father ever made mistakes?”

  He waves me inside the magpod and gets into a different compartment. Only after the doors shut do I realize—Julian didn’t answer my question. He just created a hell of a lot more.

  • • •

  THAT AFTERNOON, CY AND I TOUR THE labs after a dizzying ride through the transport. The rooms in every direction around us are visible through the plasticleer walls. The machines lining the walls are pristine, made of shiny composites that don’t age or break.

  It’s the most beautiful lab I’ve ever seen. I might as well have micropore filters stuffed into my mouth, because I’m speechless. Cy is less impressed.

  Bots float about doing their work. They’re headless and legless, but one in particular bobs forward as if expecting us. Like the other lab bots, he’s headless, but there’s a half spoon, half fork sticking comically out of his torso. Some Avida child has scrawled the crooked letters SPORK on his torso.

  “Welcome. I will assist the supreme in this lab. Happy to come orientate with me.”

  “Uh. Okay.”

  “Happy to come orientate with me.”

  He starts to lead us to a new room, when I ask, “Um, Spork? Why are you talking so weirdly?”

  “The children alter my language chips. Pig Latin last week. This week, blessed normal!”

  It’s so not normal, but I don’t have the energy to tell Spork the truth. We follow him around as he points out the different rooms, the sequence analyzers, replicators, and chemical storerooms.

  “What’s this?” Cy asks. There’s a wall of holo boards in one room, and at the bottom, we recognize one name.

  Jakobsen, C.

  “The protocol for shiny Jakobsen C vaccine,” Spork says emotionlessly.

  “Is it correct?” Cy asks me.

  My eyes scan the information. “It looks pretty correct. I wonder if they’re done making it.”

  “Not possible. If Julian could have showed off his ability to touch Caliga today, you know he would have already.”

  “How many people can you treat with this vaccine?” I point to Caliga’s protocol.

  Spork answers, “Lonely single human dose.”

  “Why so few?” I say, starting to get used to Spork’s odd way of speaking.

  “Only uno requested,” he responds.

  One dose. What a sicko. He doesn’t want anyone else to have Caliga, and meanwhile he can still use her as a weapon.

  “Onward! Tissue bank arrives on our marvelous agenda.” Spork whizzes to another room.

  Long white storage tables line both sides, and a holo screen shows names listed on a central square.

  “Please to squeeze one,” Spork tells me. I touch Cela’s name, and immediately a row of choices light up next to her name. Saliva. Urine. Hair. Plasma. Whole blood. Skin. Ova.

  I touch the square labeled SKIN and the table hums. A clear window slides open on the surface to reveal several boxy containers filled with flakes of skin, like slices of opalescent glass.

  “Oh, I just remembered.” I lift up my sleeve and show Cy the blob of gelled skin that I attached there early this morning. “It’s Ryba’s. It rehydrated in a snap and stuck on like glue.”

  “Like this?” Cy pulls up his sleeve and he’s got a blob attached too. “Great minds think alike.” He gifts me with one of his rare smiles, and my heart flutters like he’s just kissed me. “Cela’s and Ryba’s skin must pull oxygen directly out of the water to their tissues.”

 
I turn to Spork, getting tired of the tour. “Listen. Julian says he’s working on finding the key to the terminator technology in our genes. The thing that makes us all suicide seeds. Do you know how far the research has gone?”

  Spork hovers by the holo screen. A few lights flicker on his torso, beneath the scrawled SPORK. “Benten Z juicy extracts have not resulted in viable embryos.”

  Phew. Well, that’s what I assumed.

  “Uh, Spork. You’re going to assist us, right?” Cy says, clearing his throat.

  “Amen,” he bleeps at us.

  I try not to choke on a laugh. “Um, we need neural maps of the members of Avida. To test my elixir on, for brain function purposes,” I add hastily.

  Cy adds, “Oh, and an ionizing gun. A big one. To denature some DNA.”

  “Will start now, perky immediately.” Spork spins around and retreats to work on our commands.

  Perky indeed.

  I hope that Julian isn’t well versed in lab techniques, because everything we just said is molecular hooey.

  CHAPTER 20

  DINNER IS INSUFFERABLE. FORGET MY LONGEVITY GENE; my life may be cut short by the tight, unforgiving gowns every night. The only thing that buoys my mood is my new, full access all over Avida.

  Which means, for the first time in a year, I can spend the night with Cy again.

  At dinner, he’s much quieter than usual and we’re separated by Élodie, who asks for updates on all the day’s activities. After dessert, Cy leaves with Élodie so abruptly that the transport door closes before I catch up with them.

  “In a hurry?” Micah says from behind me.

  I try to extinguish my disappointment before I face him. “Not really.”

  “I heard that you and Cy are . . . working on something.” He pauses for a long time, but I don’t give him an inch.

  “I’m tired, Micah. It’s been a long day.”

  “If you try to leave, you have to take me with you.”

  I give him the rudest stare. “I don’t owe you anything.”