by Lydia Kang
I feel a pang of sympathy, thinking of the year I had without Cy.
“Zel, none of this is easy. Time will help. Love does strange things to your internal chemistry. There’s also so much anger, confusion, and bitterness—”
“Look, I don’t need to know every detail of your relationship with my dad.”
Kria stares at me. “I’m not talking about me and your father. I’m talking about you.”
Oh no she didn’t. “Don’t make this about me! It’s about him, and it’s always been about him. About what he’s done to us. How he’s created us and left us to figure out how to fix this mess.”
“He tried to be transparent with me—”
“Ha!” I bark.
“Zelia,” Kria admonishes me. “Your father was trying to help.”
“I might have believed that once. I’m not sure I can anymore, Kria.” I turn and head for the door.
“Zelia, please.” I turn to see Kria, arms out. “Don’t leave Wingfield.”
I cock my head. “You mean like Endall?”
“How did you know about him?”
“We’ve met.” My hand goes to the implant in my neck. “So. What made him leave?”
“Would you believe that he’s claustrophobic?”
“In this place, sure. Who wouldn’t be?”
“Not just about Wingfield. About everything. There aren’t a lot of others like him, with your longevity trait. Your father wanted to make sure that Endall had a breathing pacer.”
“You can’t alter people’s bodies without their permission!” I say, pointing to my neck. My own words illuminate what I haven’t been able to see before. “Oh. It’s not that Dad feels responsible. It’s like we belonged to him, like a collection. We’re his little menagerie, aren’t we?”
“Zelia, he wanted the best for you. For all of you. He dedicated his life to you. But Endall went . . . slightly . . . crazy after his implant. He actually dug it out with a knife before he left.” She shivers and waves her hand. “He’s out there. Our doors are always open to him, but I doubt he’ll ever walk in again.”
For an infinite moment, I envy his choice. But turning my back on my father’s legacy would mean turning my back on everyone I love too.
I can’t afford that flavor of freedom. It would kill me.
• • •
I FINALLY MANAGE TO FALL ASLEEP AFTER snuggling beneath Cy’s arms, but it doesn’t last. When morning light flickers in through the watery ceiling, I’m up, as if already loaded on caffeine. I inch out of bed to find the poetry book sitting on a chair.
I read a few poems, pausing over the Anonymous written under the titles. Why did Dad give Dyl a book full of ownerless verses? I flip to the beginning and read the front matter, where the publisher and publishing date are listed.
Lanier Publishing. 1998.
I freeze.
Lanier was my father’s middle name.
I close the book shut and leave my room and Cy’s sleeping self, running down the curving hallway to Dyl’s room. Someone’s sitting outside of her room.
Micah.
His skin is sallow and his eyelids puffy, as if he’s stayed up all night sitting in this one spot.
“Micah, what are you doing here?”
“She said she’d talk to me this morning.” His arms are crossed on the tops of his bent knees and he stares at the blank wall opposite him.
“So you camped out here?”
“I have to try.”
I sigh. “Micah, I don’t think you should force it. Stalking doesn’t help.”
His eyes rise wearily to meet mine, and he gets up and walks away without another word.
I knock on the door. “Dyl, it’s me.”
The door swishes open and hides half her face behind the doorjamb. “Is Micah gone?”
“Yes. I sent him away. I told him to dial down the creep factor and give you some breathing space.”
“Good. Thanks.” I walk in and we sit on her bed. A school of those fish are wriggling in arcs above her room, casting shadows onto her quilt. “I don’t know how to handle him. He wants a nonstop rehashing of everything and I just can’t . . .” She shakes her head. I don’t blame her. I make a mental note to try to keep him out of her space at least for a few weeks, until we can all settle in.
“I wanted to show you this,” I say, opening up the poetry book. I point to the publisher name and she frowns.
“That’s Dad’s middle name.”
“I know. Do you have a holo we can use?”
“Yeah. Kria gave it to me when I got here. It’s just a general network one.” She pinches the stud in her earlobe and the glowing green rectangle screen pops up in front of her face. She angles it so we can both see it.
“Search ‘Lanier Publishing,’” she commands. No site pops up, but several books are listed under the publisher. Reprints of novels, textbooks, and other poetry. It’s all random.
“Wait, look.” I run my finger down the list of books. “These all have the same publishing date. 1998. Strange.”
A few images accompany the books. Mostly cover photos and scraps of text. But one catches my eye. It’s a fuzzy photograph of a young man with messy hair, holding a book that could be our poetry book. He’s not smiling, nor is he looking at the camera. It’s a true candid, and seems like he didn’t even know the picture was being taken. The date is January 1, 1999.
“Expand that one.” I point, and Dyl grabs the photo and stretches it out with her fingertips.
I grab Dyl’s wrist and she says only two words.
“Holy shit.”
It’s Dad.
CHAPTER 32
DYL AND I RUN THROUGH WINGFIELD, searching for Kria and Marka. We find them along with the others eating breakfast.
“We need to talk,” Dyl says, dropping her book on their table. Several heads turn in our direction, including Cy’s. He and Élodie amble over.
“What is it, dear?” Kria asks. I wince at the dear, but try to ignore it.
“Dad had a trait. Did you know? Either of you?” I ask.
“No, he didn’t. He told me he didn’t,” Kria says. Marka’s face mirrors Kria’s.
“What’s going on?” Cy asks quietly. His hand touches my back.
Dyl turns on her holo and spins the rectangle around so Kria, Marka, and Cy can see it clearly. She expands the photo as large as it can go, until the image of our father is actual size.
“This is Dad, isn’t it?”
Kria and Marka nod, still not quite understanding why we’re so upset.
I point to the caption below the image. “This is dated 1999. According to this picture, Dad was alive one hundred and fifty years ago.”
Marka’s a sickening shade of green. “That’s not possible,” she whispers.
“That’s just a fuzzy picture. How do you know it’s real? How did you find it?” Kria asks, her hand planted firmly on her chest, as if trying to keep her insides from spilling outward.
Dyl and I explain how the book led us to the answer. There’s silence for a long time, and Tegg sidles up to us, peering at the picture.
“How do you know it’s really him? Could be his great-great-grandfather or something.”
“He’s right,” Cy reluctantly admits. He pulls up his own holo, and after a few searches, adds, “There’s no information on this Lanier Publishing Company. There just isn’t enough data here.”
A glint of metal catches my eyes. Dyl is touching Dad’s ring hanging around her neck. The ring that I’d forgotten about in the insanity of making it to Wingfield.
“No. There’s data. We just didn’t know we had it.” I reach over to Dyl and she gives me a confused look as I touch the ring. “Dyl, can I have this for a second?”
“Sure, why?”
“Because I think that D
ad never meant to tell us anything. He left clues, but he didn’t tell us because he never intended for us to know. He never intended to die.”
I slip the heavy gold ring off the chain and hold it up. It feels like an ordinary ring. Round, with scuffs along the edges, the inside surface smooth and worn. He never took it off. It was that precious.
“Wilbert,” I call, and find him seated next to Caliga in the far corner, where they’re watching us, their coffee untouched.
“Yes?” he answers. Caliga’s hand conspicuously grabs his under their table.
“I need you to find something for us. Inside this ring.”
He lets go of Caliga and walks toward us, scratching his extra, faceless head. He holds out his hand and receives the circle of gold, turning it over in his palm. “What do you think is in here?”
“The answers,” I explain. “To everything.”
• • •
WE ALL GATHER IN WILBERT’S WORKROOM. CAL stands behind him (she hasn’t been more than one micrometer away from him since she arrived). Marka, Kria, Élodie, Micah, and everyone from Carus stand around, watching Wilbert study the ring under a scanning microscope.
Wilbert’s room in Wingfield looks nothing like ours in Carus. Half the room is his bedroom, and half a nanocircuit lab. It’s tidy, and something’s missing. The gallon of No-PuK, for one thing.
“The walls look pretty different in here,” I say.
“Oh yeah. The posters of half-naked women in Carus? Those were there to throw you off. They all changed to portraits of Caliga when no one could see,” he explains, sitting at his work desk.
He goes back to his scanner, then he utters a noise of surprise. “There’s a seam here. Hand me those chargers, Cal.” She picks up something that looks like pliers, but with wires attached. “I’ll charge the two sides with the same polarity and they should come apart.” Wilbert fiddles with the controls on the holo panel to the side, and clamps the pliers onto two halves of the ring. There’s a quiet buzzing sound, and the two halves of the ring split in half cleanly. “Voilà.”
The inside of the ring is hollow. A tiny ring of black lies within, and Wilbert pulls it out with delicate forceps.
“Wow, that is a beauty! A polymer data unit. Non-volatile. This thing is indestructible.” He loads the tiny circle into a slot in the wall, and the holo screen above starts to read it.
“It’s not encrypted?”
“No. It’s like he never had a doubt that anyone would access it but him.”
How cocky of him. It doesn’t surprise me, though.
Within minutes, huge lines of data begin scrolling down. There are formulas and endless lines of genetic code. So much that it’s unreadable at first.
“Whoa. What . . . Who are we looking at?” I say, my eyes blinking rapidly, trying to catch bits of lines here and there.
“Wait. Let me find the menu.” Wilbert touches the screen in a few places, and the confusing jumbles of lines disappear, replaced by a single list of names.
The list.
Caliga, me, Marka, SunAj, Tegg . . . everyone I know, plus at least sixty names I’ve never seen before. All neatly laid out, with birthdates next to them.
“Oh my god. These are the traited.”
The room is quiet as snowfall as everyone scans the list.
“So this is it. The name and genetic code of every child he ever made,” Marka says quietly. “Anyone with this list could make others like us too.”
“We can’t let anyone ever find it,” I say quickly. “Someone could use it against us. Maybe we should destroy it.”
“But this is us. We can’t throw it away,” Hex argues. “We might need it for ourselves.”
Marka’s peering at the list, her finger running down the names, when it trembles by a cluster of all-too familiar ones.
Marka Sissum
Kria Weisberger
Julian/Sean Llewellyn
SunAj Agni
“It’s you.” I look at Kria and Marka. “Both of you. I thought . . . I thought . . .”
“You never thought that he’d made us too. I didn’t know either,” Marka says, and she hugs herself, shivering. I remember Marka telling me that she’d been attached to my dad, back when he was pretending to be just an underling of Aureus. It’s eternally creepy, to think of how he created the women in his life. It’s awful. I just want to peel my skin off at the thought.
Below are a list of other names and birthdates, but I don’t recognize them.
“Who are they?” I point to the other names.
Marka opens up a file of a name no one recognizes, born a year after her. There’s an error-type message stamped across their code. She opens several other folders, but gets the same message. “He made others in our generation, but they didn’t survive. That would explain why there are so few of us. He tried, but he failed a lot.”
“Wait . . . what? My name is on there!” Dyl exclaims. We all stop to stare.
Dylia Laura Benten
“That can’t be,” Micah says from behind me. “Aureus tested you. There’s nothing in your blood that’s abnormal.”
“Look here.” Wilbert clicks on her name and a triptych of files opens. Next to a creation protocol, there are two distinct genetic codes listed for Dyl.
“Two codes?” Dyl peers closer, her eyes wide and searching. “So . . . my blood and external body have a different code from my internal organs?”
“You’re a mosaic,” I say with wonder. “Someone with completely different DNA in different parts of your body. Why?”
“Oh god. She’s like me,” Kria says, astonished. “I didn’t know there was anyone else like me. I thought it was lucky—if someone tests me by blood test or skin sample, I resemble a normal person. But internally, I’m not. I can carry traited children and not be affected by their traits. My internal codes neutralize the terminator technology that makes everyone else sterile.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Dyl says, frowning. “He made me into a . . . breeder? What?” Her face is bright red. She’s going to pop if she doesn’t calm down.
“No. This will never define you and it’s not your fate. None of these things define us. I don’t care what he did!” I’m yelling, but I’m not yelling at Dyl. How dare he? How could he?
“Why the hell would he prevent most of us from having children?” Vera asks.
Marka’s face is lined with pain. “So they . . . or he, somehow, could control the production of us.”
“What else is on this list that we need to know about?” Cy wonders aloud.
Wilbert goes back to the master list. We scroll back to the top, and right next to Dyl’s name is another, too familiar one.
Thomas Lanier Benten
“So. There he is,” Dyl says softly. “He must have some sort of longevity trait too.”
“Is it like yours?” Hex asks, peering at the thousands of lines of genetic code swimming across the holo screen.
“I can’t tell by just looking. This list doesn’t spell it out. But he’s marked part of the code in red. We match that up with a normal DNA dataset and we’ll have our answer.”
We all stand there, numb. There we are, in one neat little list for anyone to see, and for anyone to decide that we’re too abnormal to deserve to live.
“Wait. If this is the whole list, then . . .” I turn to Marka and Kria, hopeful. “Then we could find everyone he’s made. We can bring them here, right?”
“I don’t know. To find them would be to reveal them. Avida is firmly locked within Inky. You saw how hard it was to leave there. We may have a list, but we’re powerless to do anything except keep bribing Minwi to keep our own border guards, like George, in place so that our own can come to us.”
“So they can find us?” It’s too passive. I shake my head, saying, “We have to do more.”
“Like what?” Kria asks. “We are criminals. I don’t want to risk the safety of everyone in Wingfield. I don’t know that I can do more, Zelia.”
“It’s not good enough, Kria.”
We break away into smaller groups. And we start doing what we do best. Hex, Vera, and Micah volunteer to pore through the past holo news to see how many children have already died since we were discovered, so we’ll know who’s still alive. Cy and I promise to devote plans to decode the traits of the children we’re not familiar with. Dyl and Kria plan on piecing out the actual altered proteins and immunological quirks that make up the key to unlocking terminator technology.
“Because I am not going to be anybody’s damned baby-making key,” Dyl mutters as she sits down at the desk next to Wilbert, rolling up her sleeves. She looks like she’s going to war on her own DNA code. I couldn’t be prouder.
“Where’s Élodie?” Cy suddenly asks. We turn around, but she’s gone.
Hex shrugs. “Maybe the excitement of the list sent her to the bathroom?”
“Ugh, not everyone has to pee like you when you get excited,” Vera teases him.
Cy leaves the room and I lean over Wilbert. Caliga’s brought a hover chair next to him.
“We have to be careful that none of this data leaves this room. Ever,” Marka says.
Kria nods. “Wingfield is a closed system and I’m the only person who has the ability to communicate with the outside world. And believe me, I’m telling no one.” Her lips press into a thin line. “We’ll make multiple copies so everyone can work on their share. There’s two labs downstairs, next to the hoverpod hangar. You’ll love it, Zelia,” Kria says, almost shyly. “It’s state-of-the-art. Your father wasn’t crazy about getting you into the lab again, but I made sure it had the same equipment you’ve used at your last few jobs, so you’d feel at home.”
Marka gives her a softened, grateful look and I can’t help but feel grateful too. “Wow. Thank you, Kria. Before he died, Dad told me to stop working in the lab and start studying political science and history courses.”
“You can do that too, if you want.”
I hesitate. Part of me—the old me—wants to say no way. But I think of what it was like to talk to those Inky senators. Of what it means to be the ant under the boot, and having nothing but a voice, at best, to fight with.
