This Vicious Cure

by Emily Suvada

  “Yes,” Dax says, unblinking, “but your people are going to need to make compromises. If the genehackers stay isolated, then our civilians are never going to trust them.”

  “We don’t care if you trust us,” Ruse says.

  “Oh, but you should. We’ve been seeing a lot of unrest in the bunkers, and there’s only so much that we can control. We’re providing people with more food, more entertainment—and we held a public trial of Brink, which we thought would resolve tensions, but instead it’s made them worse.”

  “Of course it did,” I say. “People saw how badly they’d been lied to.”

  “No,” Dax says. “You don’t understand. The tensions were worse because the people supported Brink. Finding him guilty and imprisoning him just made them turn against us. Most of them want him back.”

  I sit forward. “How is that possible? He said he owned them. That footage was replayed on every network for days.”

  “Yes,” Dax says. “And in ordinary times, people would have called for his execution, but these aren’t ordinary times. Our people are afraid. They’ve been away from their homes for years, and they’ve been threatened by a virus that none of them can fight. Now they have a gap in their memory they can’t explain, they’re seeing people turn into Lurkers, and there’s absolutely nothing they can do about it. They want to do something, whether it’s good or bad, and they’re on the verge of staging mutinies. We’re barely managing to keep control of them now. I don’t want to launch more attacks on the surface, but if we don’t find a way to work together and fix this code, then we’ll have no choice. We can find a figurehead to turn the civilians against—someone like Novak—and try to forge an alliance with the other genehacker factions, like yours. It’ll be the only way to appease our people and stop a rebellion.”

  I sit back, reeling. This wasn’t what I was expecting. I thought Cartaxus’s leaders were the ones calling for war. I assumed the civilians were innocent—that they were prisoners. Once the Panacea is complete, I was planning on setting them free and welcoming them into the new world. I was going to use the scythe to take out Cartaxus’s leaders and troops to stop the war from breaking out, but if Dax is telling the truth, that won’t fix anything.

  The civilians will just form new armies, and the cycle of violence and control will start over. I can’t kill the civilians, either. There are billions of them. Panic circles through me. Dax’s plan is making sense—maybe working together really is the only way.

  But it can’t be. Cartaxus doesn’t want to fix the Panacea. They just want to strip its code out of the vaccine. They’re not interested in building a new world or setting people free. They just want to control them. They build prisons, not peace treaties.

  If their civilians really are the ones calling for war, then I’ll figure out how to deal with them later.

  “Don’t listen to him,” I say to Ruse and the others. “He’s lying. He’s just trying to keep Cartaxus in power.”

  Dax’s brow furrows. “That’s ridiculous. I don’t think you understand the situation. I’m trying my best to hold three billion angry people back from launching a war.”

  I meet Ruse’s eyes meaningfully, then nod at Rhine by the door. “We understand.” I reach for the mask at my neck. “But don’t worry. They won’t be your people for much longer.”

  CHAPTER 16 CATARINA

  I SCRAMBLE BACK ON MY knees, my hands raised. Anna’s eyes are steely, the gun in her hands aimed at my chest. Cole coughs, still lying on the ground, his veins pulsing black against his deathly pale skin. The sky is dark, but the headlights of Anna’s truck are splashed across the desert, casting a yellow glow over the crumpled silver fabric of Cole’s parachute.

  “Anna, I can explain,” I say again. “I should have told you.”

  “You’re working with Jun Bei.” Her voice is flat and cold. “That’s why she didn’t wipe your memories. You’re her goddamn spy.”

  “No I’m not,” I say, desperately trying to think of a story they’ll believe. It can’t be the truth—it’s too late for that. I’m too deep in this lie already. Cole coughs again, blinking, staring up at me, and my stomach twists. I made this deal with Dax knowing I’d be betraying Anna and Ziana, but I didn’t know I’d be lying to Cole, too. Anna never trusted me, and I don’t even know Ziana, so I can bear it if they hate me, but I didn’t think about the possibility that Cole would turn against me as well.

  The two of us might not have a future after all that’s happened to us. He and Anna were plotting to betray me when they thought I was Jun Bei, and the memory of that betrayal still feels like a blade lodged in my chest. We’ve lied to each other, and I’ve been wiped from his memories. There’s a good chance I won’t even survive the next few days if the implant keeps degrading. But whatever there is between us, it’s not over for me yet, and I don’t think it’s over for him. I’ve seen the picture he’s carrying in his pocket. I can feel it as he stares at me. There’s still something there.

  It’s messy and painful, but it’s real, and I don’t want to risk losing it.

  “Jun Bei is my half sister,” I say carefully. “She’s Lachlan’s biological daughter.”

  From the look on Anna’s face, whatever she was expecting me to say, it wasn’t that. She lowers the gun. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Cartaxus created Jun Bei to control Lachlan. Jun Bei is a clone of a daughter Lachlan had who was killed by the former leader of Cartaxus—the Viper. She created Jun Bei to force Lachlan to stay with them and keep working on a vaccine. I’m his daughter too, and I found out about Jun Bei just before flood protocol.”

  Anna is still staring at me, open-mouthed. Cole’s brow is furrowed, but he doesn’t seem surprised. “I saw you,” he says slowly. “During the wipe, you were there with Jun Bei. I saw you arguing with her.”

  I nod. “We were all together then—both of you, and Leoben. We were trying to find Lachlan and force him to fix the vaccine before Cartaxus killed everyone. I found out that Jun Bei had been kept as a prisoner, and I set her free because I thought she could help us stop the attacks. She did, but then she started to run the wipe, and I stopped her before she could finish. That’s how I ended up as a prisoner instead.”

  Anna’s eyes widen. There’s a distance to her gaze that tells me somewhere, deep down, the words I’m saying are ringing true. Wiping memories isn’t a perfect process. There are always traces left behind—things people learned, things they felt, even snatches of images and words that come back to haunt them the same way that Jun Bei’s memories were once bleeding through to me. It’s probably the only reason Anna has trusted me at all. It’s why Cole is carrying the drawing of me, why they’re listening to me now. It’s going to make it easier for me to gain their trust and finish this mission. It’s also going to make it that much harder to betray them.

  “So no, I wasn’t wiped,” I say. “I’m the one who stopped it. You were helping me then, and I need your help now.”

  “What do you need—” Cole starts, then scrunches his eyes shut, slumping back down to the ground, shaking.

  Anna presses her hand to his forehead. “He’s burning up.”

  “It’s the toxin,” I say. “It’s still reacting with the healing tech, and it’s giving him a fever. We need to cool him down. Water will help.”

  “I can do better than that.” Anna jumps to her feet and runs to the truck. She hauls out a Cartaxus backpack and dumps it on the ground beside Cole. Inside, there’s a bundle of medical supplies, another couple of knives, and three blue freezepaks full of water. They’re the same kind I used to store frozen doses in the cabin. Anna cracks one over her knees, bending the blue plastic packet back and forth until a layer of frost creeps across its surface. She presses it to the side of Cole’s neck. He coughs again, a seizure racking his body, a stream of silver-tinted blood leaking from his mouth.

  “What’s happening?” Anna asks. “He looks like he’s getting worse.”

  “I�
��ll check,” I say, trying to connect wirelessly with his tech, but it’s glitching too much. “Jack back in.”

  Anna grabs the silver cable still jutting from the incision at her elbow, reeling it out, and jams it into his panel. His tech blinks into my vision, the interface glitching. The shield I wrote for him is still working—his heart and nerves are protected—but the battle between the healing tech and Jun Bei’s nanites is still raging in the smaller, less critical systems. His irises, his skin, the lining of his bones. Jun Bei’s code is destroying his upgrades, and it looks like the reaction with the healing tech has made it run more quickly and violently than it should have. His whole panel is going to need to be repaired with hypergenesis-friendly tech, or it’ll shut down completely, and I won’t even be able to jack in and check on his injuries.

  “He needs proper equipment,” I say, sending a command through Anna’s panel to give Cole a dose of anesthetic. It won’t slow the battle rampaging through his body, but it should help him with the pain. His head tilts back, the tendons in his neck relaxing, and his eyes drift half-closed. I eject the wire from his panel, letting it retract back into Anna’s arm. “I need a genkit—a lab would be better. His whole system is getting flushed and needs replacing. I can’t do that with just your panel.”

  Anna winces as the wire snakes into her elbow. She unfurls a length of medical tape, winding it around the freezepak on Cole’s neck to hold it in place. “Is he in danger?”

  “Not yet, but we need to get him help soon. He’s in pain. His muscles are being destroyed, and his bones are being stripped. His body is going to start to break down, but I can help him.”

  “And I should trust you?” she asks.

  “You don’t have a choice. You need me. Cole’s stable, but he could still crash. He needs hypergenesis-friendly code, which means, apart from Lachlan, I’m probably the best person in the world to help him. Besides, Jun Bei is gone. There’s no reason for you to stay in Entropia anymore. Come with me, let me heal Cole along the way, and you can leave if you change your mind.”

  Anna’s brow creases as she looks down at Cole. She isn’t convinced, but she’s considering it. A boom echoes in the distance, faint but startling. She looks over her shoulder, her eyes narrowing.

  “A blower?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “Gunfire. It’s a mile away, at least. Look, I want to help you, but I haven’t changed my mind about Jun Bei. She’s probably the one behind these attacks. If she pulls off this raid on Cartaxus and kidnaps Lachlan, someone’s gonna need to be ready to stop her. I’m the only one who seems to understand that we can’t risk keeping her alive.”

  “You want to kill her?” Cole whispers. His eyes are still half-closed, his words slurred from the anesthetic.

  Anna rolls her eyes. “She just tried to kill you, Cole. You of all people should know how dangerous she is.”

  “Technically, I don’t think she intended to kill him…,” I start, but Anna flashes me a look of fury. “Never mind.”

  “The… the attacks aren’t her,” Cole breathes. “She isn’t making the Lurkers.”

  “For real?” Anna asks. “She just threw you out of a Comox, and you’re still defending her?”

  “She’s not behind it,” he says, coughing wetly, trying to sit up. “She’s trying to stop them.”

  “I think he’s right,” I say. “These attacks are turning the bunkers into pressure cookers. Cartaxus’s civilians are clamoring for war, and that’s a war Jun Bei can’t win. She has no incentive to start it.”

  Anna looks between Cole and me, doubtful. “Maybe. Let’s talk about it once Cole is stable. You said we need a genkit—I say we go back to my place in Entropia and find one.”

  She slides one of Cole’s arms around her neck, grunting as she lifts him. The tattooed muscles in her arms bulge with the strain. She gets him to his feet slowly, swaying with his weight, and pushes him toward the truck.

  “Okay, I guess,” I mutter. Anna helps Cole into the passenger seat, then swings her bag of supplies back in and slams the tailgate closed. I turn my focus to the truck, and the simulation warps around me, the hook in my chest tugging me into place between Cole and Anna. There’s not much room for the three of us—one of my legs is pressed against Cole’s, my arm squashed into his ribs, though he wouldn’t be able to feel it. He can see me and hear me—but that’s just an image drawn into his ocular tech and a simulated voice added to his audio feed. I can’t touch him anymore. The thought tugs at me, and I shift until I’m not pressed against his side.

  Anna starts the truck’s engine and spins us around, heading back to the road. Another boom sounds in the distance, and Anna stares in its direction, but she doesn’t seem concerned.

  “What’s going on out there?” I ask, peering through the window. The cameras in the truck’s driving array are feeding into Veritas, updating the desert as we drive. It’s hard to see through the darkness, but I can make out the shape of a cloud of dust billowing up on the horizon—it looks like a storm front rolling through the plains, kicking up a wall of dirt and feathers.

  “Probably nothing,” Anna says. She glances over at me. “So you’re just… in a cell somewhere?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Is Lachlan there too? Does he visit you?”

  The question almost makes me choke. “No,” I say firmly. “He’s not that kind of father.” Lachlan might have created me, but I’m just an inconvenience to him—a tool to help him save Jun Bei and then discard. I don’t even know if he sees me as a real person.

  But I lived with him as his daughter for a year. Could he really have felt nothing for me that whole time?

  Anna swings us back onto the road. The truck’s headlights splash ahead of us in pale yellow arcs of light. “He wasn’t great to Jun Bei, either, if it helps,” she says. “She must have flipped out when she found out about you, though. She always wanted a sister. She was so jealous of Cole and me for being related. She even used to say she had a sister, but she’d died before we were born. She made it out like we were all supposed to feel sorry for her. She was ridiculous.”

  “Maybe she was right,” I say. Cole shifts beside me, his eyes still bleary from the anesthetic, and his shoulder brushes against mine. The feeling makes my skin tingle. “Lachlan told me that Cartaxus grew hundreds of children in tanks for the Zarathustra experiments, then infected them with Hydra to see how they’d mutate. But there’s no way they just created one copy of Jun Bei. They would have made dozens to make sure one survived the infection process. You probably all had siblings or identicals who didn’t make it.”

  Anna frowns. “Identicals? You mean another me, who didn’t survive? That’s… horrifying.”

  “Yeah, it is. It happens in nature, too, though. A lot of people start out as twins and end up absorbing their sibling instead of being born with them. Shark embryos eat their siblings in the womb. What Cartaxus did was evil, but nature can be pretty vicious too.”

  “You must be fun at parties,” Anna mutters, pulling us around a bend. More gunfire echoes in the distance. She frowns, peering through the window. “Can you use Veritas to see what’s going on out there?”

  “You want me to jump into the gunfire?”

  “You don’t need to go there—” Anna starts, but a bright light flashes at the front of the truck, and a boom splits the air. The truck veers wildly, spinning out of control. “Hold on!” Anna yells, turning the wheel frantically. The truck skids in a circle, shuddering to a stop amid a cloud of dust and feathers.

  Cole sits up, staring blearily through the windshield. “What’s happening?”

  Anna twists in her seat, staring through the back window. “We’ve been hit. Pocket missile. Bastards must have been watching us. It’s too dark for me to track anything through this dust. Agatta, who the hell is out there?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, following her eyes, scanning the desert plains. The dust cloud on the horizon seems to be getting bigger, but I can’t make
out much from here. The sky is dark, and the desert is a wash of navy and gray. “I can’t see any more than you.”

  “Of course you can,” Anna snaps. “You’re in Veritas. Whoever’s out there, they’re gonna have cameras or ocular tech that’ll be updating the simulation. You don’t need to jump there—just focus on trying to see them. You’re not exactly bound by physical limitations right now. You get that, right?”

  I squint into the darkness. Anna’s right—I’m not in the real world. I’m in a simulation. The image I’m seeing when I stare through the window is just part of that, and the fact that I can’t see it clearly is part of the simulation too—it’s just a way of making Veritas feel more real.

  But I’m not using my eyes here. I’m using my mind. If the people in the distance have tech feeding into Veritas, there’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to see them, even if they’re miles away. I let out a slow breath, focusing. At first nothing happens, but then the horizon starts to warp, and the cloud of dust grows larger until it fills my vision.

  I stiffen as the image becomes clearer. It’s a towering, billowing cloud of dirt and pigeon feathers, but it isn’t being whipped up by the wind. It’s being kicked up by the footsteps of a crowd of people. There must be thousands of them stampeding across the desert. Some are carrying torches, but most are lit only by the glow of their panels. They’re streaked with dirt and blood, their faces blurry, but I can see that there’s something off about the way they’re moving.

  Because this isn’t just a crowd of people. It’s a horde.

  Every single one of them is a snarling Lurker, and they’re running straight for us.

  CHAPTER 17 JUN BEI

  I LIFT THE MASK OVER my nose, tucking the musty fabric into place. Rhine, Ruse, and the others do the same. My vision flickers at the sight of the black-and-white pattern, but the configuration file Ruse sent us kicks in, stopping the hack from affecting us. Dax just looks between Rhine and me, puzzled. He opens his mouth to talk; then his face pales suddenly. He shoves himself back from the table, scrunching his eyes shut, but it’s already too late.