This Vicious Cure

by Emily Suvada

  A shudder races across my skin. One of the tanks holds a girl my age. Her eyes are half-open and unseeing, her body limp. “If they’re going to keep them locked away like this, then they might as well kill them. This isn’t living.”

  A shadow passes over Catarina’s face. “No, it isn’t. Come on—we need to get out of here before they come back with more prisoners.”

  I nod, scraping my hands over my eyes to clear away the nanosolution. “Where’s Agnes?”

  “Gone. The cameras show her leaving just a few minutes ago—she made it out in a Comox.”

  “She’s gone to get your clone,” I say, pushing myself to my feet. “Once she has your DNA, there’ll be no stopping her. She’s going to try to finish the Panacea. We should get out of here and contact the others.”

  “You can’t go like this,” Catarina says, looking around the lab. “You’re infected—you’ll be stinking soon. You’ll get eaten alive.” She stands, walking to a row of steel lockers on the wall. Her eyes glaze over, and the lockers’ slatted metal doors hiss open to reveal shelves of frozen nanite solution, biological samples, and a custom-made hazmat suit.

  “Perfect,” I mutter, pushing across the room, almost slipping in the puddles of nanosolution pooled around the tank. The suit isn’t one of the bulky white models like most labs keep stocked. This one is emerald green and skintight, a pattern of scales printed into the whisper-thin fabric, the shoulders decorated with orange strips that flutter like flames. The helmet hangs beside it, form fitted with a gleaming green-black visor. I shouldn’t be surprised. This is one of Regina’s labs. Of course she’d have something more interesting to wear than a standard-issue suit. I’m just going to look ridiculous in it.

  Footsteps echo in the distance as I grab the suit from its hanger. I stiffen. “Can you see what’s happening?”

  Catarina’s eyes glaze, her head tilting as she concentrates, logging in to Entropia’s security network. “It’s hackers. They’re running from the troops. Cartaxus will be back here soon, though. There are trucks rolling in to take the tanks back to a bunker.”

  I nod, leaning against the lockers, pulling the hazmat suit’s legs over my wet skin. “Do you know where the clone of you is? Where Agnes might be going?”

  “No,” Catarina says, her focus blinking back, “but we’ll figure it out. Hurry up—there are guards coming down one of the hallways near here. You need to get out, now.”

  I drag the zipper up the front of the suit, looking around for my boots. There’s no sign of them, my clothes, or my gun. I shoot a glance at the hackers in the other tanks, wondering if I should wake them, but there’s no time. There might not even be enough time for me to get out of here.

  I grab the hazmat suit’s helmet, clipping it to a loop at my waist. I’m unarmed, barefoot, infected, and I have no idea where I’m going, but I can’t let Agnes take the Panacea. It’s a weapon—I see that now. I can’t let it fall into her hands.

  “I can’t access the controls for the door out of here,” Catarina says, jogging with me across the room. “Agnes must have changed the protocol.”

  “I’ve got it,” I say, swiping my panel over the sensor beside the door, launching a hack to open the lock. I didn’t spend a month living in this city and learning its systems to let myself get trapped inside it. The door clicks and swings open, letting in a wave of sound. Gunfire, voices, screaming. We’re going to have to run.

  I bolt into the stairwell, swallowing down a wave of dizziness at the effort it takes. The worst of the fever hasn’t hit me yet, but the infection is already sapping the energy from my muscles. I hurry down the concrete steps and into a hallway that leads to the park, where it sounds like the hackers are still fighting. “Any idea how we can get out of here?” I ask.

  “You can try one of the tunnels,” Catarina says, running beside me. “You’ll need a vehicle when you get…” She stops suddenly, trailing off.

  “What?” I slow, grabbing the wall for support. My legs are burning, my vision swimming. I don’t know how much longer I can run for.

  Catarina is frozen, her hands pressed to her mouth. Her eyes are filling with tears. “I just got a comm from Leoben. He’s alive. I thought he was dead.”

  “J-just temporarily,” I say, coughing.

  She presses the heels of her hands into her eyes to keep herself from crying. “I’m just… I’m just relieved.” She sniffs, dropping her hands. “He says to go to the park.”

  I look over my shoulder at the park. “That’s where Cartaxus’s troops are.”

  “I know. It doesn’t make sense, but I don’t have another plan. There are soldiers everywhere. I don’t understand how there are so many here.”

  I grit my teeth, running for the park. Outside, the air is laced with smoke, hackers streaming into the scorched grass. Black-clad troops are moving in teams through the atrium, grabbing people and pressing vials to their necks. Catarina is right—there must be hundreds of soldiers here. But they’re not just soldiers.

  Dax said Cartaxus’s civilians were the ones calling for war. He said he was worried he’d lose control over them, but it looks like he’s found a way to keep their allegiance. The civilians wanted to attack the genehackers, and now Dax is letting them fight.

  I stare at the soldiers. Some move like they’ve been trained, but most look like civilians in armor. The civilians aren’t rebelling anymore—they’ve joined Cartaxus’s troops to form an army too large for us to beat. Some of Entropia’s people are carrying weapons and trying to fight back, but it’s hopeless. The Cartaxus teams are surging through the hallways, clearing people out faster than I can watch.

  This isn’t a battle, or even an invasion. This is complete annihilation.

  “I don’t know where to go,” I say, backing away. The fever is getting stronger, sending ripples of nausea through me. I reach for the wall to steady myself, looking out at the park, and spot Ruse and Rhine in its center. They’re with a group of a dozen hackers being herded into the open by Cartaxus’s troops. Ruse’s silver-printed skin is streaked with blood, his face pale and desperate, but he isn’t running, and he isn’t hiding. He’s doing what Novak said leaders should. He’s standing with his people as they fall.

  Rhine meets my eyes through the fighting just as a group of soldiers bursts from a hallway across the park. The soldiers aren’t shooting people—they’re drugging them and hauling them away, but they lift their rifles as Rhine fires at them. The bullet goes wide, but one of the soldiers fires back at her.

  Time slows to a crawl. Rhine stumbles, scarlet blooming from the cracked plate across her chest. She drops to her knees, her arms flying out as she slumps to the ground, and I race from the hallway and across the park.

  “Jun Bei, no!” Catarina shouts, but I’m already gone. I’ve let Rhine down once before, and I won’t do it again. The rocks littering the park cut into my feet as I run into the open, making my way to Rhine’s side, and kneel beside her.

  The soldiers shout for the group to drop their weapons. Ruse’s silver eyes are frantic, looking between me and the soldiers. I press my hands to Rhine’s chest, putting pressure on the wound. Her eyes are closed, and I can’t tell how bad the damage is. I can’t let her die.

  “We have to go!” Catarina shouts. She follows me into the open, then skids to a stop, looking up as a crack echoes through the air. It’s the blast doors to the surface creaking open. A wedge of the night sky appears above us, and a humming sound echoes from the atrium’s walls.

  A Comox is dropping down from above the mountain. Its spotlight dances across the park, landing on Rhine and me. The soldiers stop short. I press down hard on Rhine’s chest, squinting up into the light. A Comox is exactly what we need. I could load Rhine and the others into it, and we could all get out of here. It can’t be carrying more than a dozen soldiers. I could try to kill them with the scythe. But that would mean another dozen people’s blood on my hands.

  Catarina’s eyes lock on mine, and I know sh
e’s thinking the same thing. That this is war, and people die in war, but there has to be another way for us to win. A way to stop this battle without taking more lives. There’s no point in fighting for a future when we won’t be able to live with the things we did to reach it.

  But with Rhine’s blood on my hands, with her gasping on the ground in front of me, I’m more than ready to fight.

  I send a pulse out from my cuff, locking onto the panels of the people in the Comox. It roars down, the wash of its rotors lifting my hair.

  “Wait!” Catarina yells. “There’s something off about the Comox’s signals.”

  My heart leaps as the windshield comes into sight. “That’s because it’s not Cartaxus.”

  A hurricane of dirt and burned grass whips over us as the Comox jolts down beside us, its door hissing open. The ramp unfolds, and a scarlet-haired woman leans out, a rifle in her hands.

  “You coming?” Novak shouts. She lets off a burst of cover fire and tosses a smoke grenade at the group of black-clad soldiers.

  Leoben waves from the Comox’s cockpit, seated at the controls. “Get your asses in here!” he yells.

  We don’t need to be told twice. Ruse and I lift Rhine together and race to the Comox, our eyes scrunched shut against the gale of dust and grit. Novak grabs my wrist as I scramble for the door, piling in with the rest of the hackers.

  “You’re alive,” I gasp.

  “I’m tougher than I look,” she says, grinning. She wrenches the Comox’s door shut. “Lee, let’s take her up!”

  CHAPTER 38 CATARINA

  THE COMOX RISES UP THROUGH Entropia’s blast doors into the night, leaving Cartaxus’s troops and the rest of the genehackers fighting in the park below us. Watching them being captured while we escape makes my stomach twist with guilt. They’ll be loaded into tanks like the one Jun Bei escaped from. I don’t know if this is just happening here, or all over the world. People aren’t being slaughtered like they were during flood protocol, but watching them get drugged and forced unwillingly into comas gives me the same rush of horror.

  There has to be a way to heal the divisions that are tearing this world apart.

  I stand, feeling unsteady, holding the side of the Comox for balance. There’s no point telling Jun Bei about the ache in my skull, or the static that’s been prickling across my skin since we broke out of the tank. The implant is on the verge of collapse. Jun Bei doesn’t seem to feel it, but I do. That means that Dax was right—if the implant fractures and the two halves of our consciousness merge, I’m the one who’s going to shatter.

  Not that Jun Bei is doing so well herself. She stands at the window as we fly over the mountain, her face pale beneath the mottled bruises rising on her skin. The infection is spreading fast. We won’t have a lot longer until the fever rises. Then we won’t be able to do much of anything.

  “So what’s the plan?” Novak asks.

  “We’re following Agnes,” Jun Bei says. “She left in a Comox not long ago. It looked like they were heading north.” She turns from the window and drops to her knees beside a wounded girl I recognize from when I visited Entropia. Rhine. Jun Bei flips open a medkit and presses a pad of gauze to the bloody cracks in Rhine’s chest. The wound looks bad, but Jun Bei doesn’t seem concerned as she starts patching it up.

  A hacker with silver circuits on his skin kneels down to join her—he’s older than us, but not by much. He doesn’t seem to be very fond of Jun Bei, but they work quickly together to give Rhine a dose of healing tech and use an epoxy to close the wound.

  “Agnes?” Novak frowns, exchanging a glance with one of her people. “What does she have to do with this?”

  “She’s the Viper,” I say. “She’s the one who’s been creating the Lurkers. She’s trying to destroy Cartaxus and push us into a war. She thinks she’s saving us—that a war is inevitable, that Cartaxus falling is inevitable, and that fewer people will die if it happens under her control. She’s burning down the world so that she can use the Panacea to rebuild it in the way she thinks is best.”

  “That’s a hell of a plan,” Novak says, something like admiration flickering in her eyes.

  “It’s bullshit,” the hacker with circuits on his skin says, straightening. “You can’t build a peaceful society on the basis of lies and control. It won’t last, just like Cartaxus won’t last. Lying to people is no way to lead them.”

  “I agree,” I say. “I’m no friend to Cartaxus, but I don’t want to see them fall at the hands of someone whose ideals are even worse. Agnes wants to alter people’s minds.”

  “So does Jun Bei,” Leoben says, walking through from the cockpit, crossing his arms. There’s a bandage taped to his chest, peeking up from beneath his shirt. He meets my eyes, giving me a quick smile. “Hey there, squid.”

  Jun Bei pushes herself to her feet. “Lee… I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t think I’m ready for an apology.” He’s not even looking at her, his jaw tight. “You have a lot of things to be sorry for, Jun Bei. Where the hell is Mato, anyway?”

  Jun Bei looks down. “He died. He was—”

  “He was trying to kill me,” the hacker with the silver circuits on his skin says. “She chose to save my life.”

  Leoben looks up, surprised, and his eyes widen when he sees Jun Bei. “Shit. You’re infected.”

  Everyone turns to her. Novak backs away instinctively.

  “It’s true,” Jun Bei says, “and it’s progressing fast.”

  Silence falls over the Comox’s cargo hold. There’s a sheen of sweat on Jun Bei’s brow. The fever is setting in. She’s still lucid, but she won’t be for much longer.

  “Leoben is right, though,” she says. “I have a lot to apologize for. I’m the reason this is happening. I thought I could use the Panacea to make the world better, but I was wrong. The code is too dangerous for the world right now. We’re too broken. We need to heal before we try to change our minds like that. If I release it now, the Panacea is only going to be used as a weapon by people who think they know better than the rest of us.”

  “So Agnes has the code?” Novak asks.

  “She’s getting it from Lachlan,” Jun Bei says. “She needs to alter it with Catarina’s DNA before she can use it.”

  “Why does she need that?” Leoben asks.

  Jun Bei looks over at me. She wraps her arms around her chest, her small frame seeming suddenly frail in the clinging hazmat suit. “Because Catarina has a gift too. She’s my sister.”

  Leoben looks between both of us, confused.

  “It’s complicated,” I say. “I’ll tell you if we make it through this.”

  “The vaccine needs Catarina’s DNA to run,” Jun Bei continues. “Agnes isn’t just going after Lachlan to get the Panacea—she’s going to use the body cloned from Catarina’s DNA. We need to find her and stop her before she finishes. And we also have to work with Lachlan to fix the real vaccine.”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying we should have done all along,” Leoben says. He crosses his arms, leaning against the Comox’s side. “We need the others, though. Cole will do it, and Anna can probably be convinced, but I don’t know where Ziana is.”

  “I found her,” I say. “I don’t know if any of them will want to help us, though.”

  “I’ll ask them,” Jun Bei says. “I need to apologize to them, too. This could all be over tonight if we do this.”

  “So we need to find Lachlan,” Novak says, nodding, her eyes glazing. “His whole team was evacuated today. I don’t know where they’ve been moved to.”

  “Dax will know,” I say. “We can ask him. He has to help us with this, or Agnes is going to ruin everything.”

  Leoben’s shoulders tighten. “He’s already ruining everything. He sent destroyers to blow up Novak’s base.”

  “We almost didn’t make it,” Novak says, shifting uncomfortably. It looks like her leg is badly wounded, a plastic frame latched around her calf. She must have been hurt during the attack. “I managed
to get through to Crick just in time for him to call off the destroyers. He thought Leoben was dead, and he was going to bomb us in revenge.”

  A chill licks through me. That’s my fault. I’m the one who told Dax that I saw a flash of Leoben through Jun Bei’s eyes.

  “Let’s talk to him, Lee,” I say. “Maybe he can call off these attacks.”

  He shakes his head, his arms still crossed. “I don’t have anything to say to him. He’s just like the rest of Cartaxus’s leaders. He won’t listen. He thinks Cartaxus is the only way for humanity to survive.”

  “Please,” I urge him. “You’re willing to be jacked into a genkit by Lachlan, but you won’t call Dax and ask for his help?”

  Leoben tilts his head from side to side, stretching his neck. “Okay, fine. I’ll call him, but I don’t know if he’s gonna talk to me. I haven’t been answering his calls, and he stopped trying a couple of hours ago.”

  “He’ll answer,” I say, walking to Leoben’s side. “He cares about you. Just call him already.”

  “I’m doing it,” Leoben mutters. “Keep your goddamn hat on.”

  His eyes glaze, and a shared comm request pops up in my vision. I accept it, and a moment’s silence passes before the air in front of us flickers. Dax blinks into view, wild-eyed and panicked. His hair is messy, his clothing unkempt. It doesn’t look like anyone else in the Comox can see him, but they’ll still be able to see us talking to him.

  “Leoben?” Dax looks between us. “What the hell has been going on? I’ve been calling you for hours.”

  “You sent destroyers into Novak’s base,” Leoben says. “You were going to kill everyone there.”

  “I thought they’d killed you—”

  “So what? You can’t just launch a war if I die.”