This Vicious Cure

by Emily Suvada

  And if I have to, I can just change my DNA.

  I stand, grabbing my duffel bag, lifting it onto my shoulder. The motion algorithms in the implant take a second to adjust to the new weight, and then my posture straightens. “Thank you for everything, Zan.”

  She climbs across the bed and slides her arms around me. I hold her close, trying to memorize the feel of her, the smell of her hair, packing the memory into a safe, protected space inside my heart. When she pulls away, her eyes are clouded, and she squeezes my arms before dropping her hands. She stays kneeling on the bed as I step across the room, slip through the door, and make my way down the hallway.

  The lab is dark and silent, the first hints of sunlight peeking through the windows. I hurry to the stairs and jog down them, doing my best to stay quiet. The downstairs hallway is littered with bullet casings and fragments of broken tiles. The rooms on this level are mostly laboratories and storage, and they’re empty with the exception of one—the room with the glass wall that looks out over the mountains.

  I pause as I reach it. A faint beeping in the pattern of a heartbeat is coming from inside. I press my hands to the double doors but can’t make myself push them open. The laboratory holds a mess of cables, a row of humming genkits, and a body lying in a bubbling suspension tank.

  Catarina.

  I force myself to open the doors just wide enough to glimpse the tank. Catarina’s pale limbs are twitching gently in the glowing blue nanosolution. Her hair is loose, swirling in dark, spiraling patterns. Her eyes are closed, her lips slightly parted. I keep the doors cracked, but don’t swing them open or step inside. My cheek still holds a scarred, olive-toned patch of her DNA, and there are more of her cells hidden inside my body, but seeing her lying apart from me is harder than I thought it would be.

  It still feels like a crucial part of myself is in that tank with her. But it’s a part of myself that I need to let go of if I’m going to make it on my own.

  I turn and stride down the hallway toward the blasted-open wall where the front door once stood. Staying here isn’t going to help Catarina, and it isn’t going to help me. I make my way carefully through the wreckage in the waiting room and pull aside the clear plastic sheeting hung over the hole in the wall, wincing at the noise it makes. I need to leave this nightmare of a laboratory and never come back.

  I let the plastic sheeting fall behind me as I step into the cold morning air. A thick blanket of mist hangs low over the forest. The fields around the lab are still littered with wreckage and gouged with muddy scars. The first glow of daylight catches on the dew draped across the grass, turning the droplets into a million glittering jewels.

  “You weren’t going to say good-bye?”

  I whirl around to find Cole waiting for me, a mug of coffee in his hands.

  I shift the duffel bag on my shoulder. “It seemed easier. None of you are comfortable with me here. I can tell.”

  “You’re the one who’s uncomfortable, Jun Bei.”

  I look down, chewing my lip. “I think we all need some time to move past this. It’ll be better if we do it apart.”

  He takes a sip of coffee, steam curling around his face. “You might be right.” Even though I know it’s true, hearing him say it still stings. “Where will you go?”

  I draw in a long breath of the morning’s cold air. “I think I’ll go to Hawaii. Ruse and some of the others from Entropia are headed there, and they’ve invited me to join them.”

  Ruse was the last person I thought I’d hear from after the vaccine went out. I betrayed him, left him with Cartaxus, and tried to steal Entropia from him. I wanted to do what I’d always been told I could—make the world a better place by improving humanity. But he was right. Making people’s lives better isn’t something you can do with code—it’s something you need to do with your heart.

  My heart is an ocean in a cage. Sometimes it still frightens me—the way it surges against the walls inside me whenever I’m around Cole and the others. The way it roars when I think of Mato and what we could have been. The way it whips into frenzied peaks when I turn my thoughts to the emptiness inside me where Catarina’s presence once lay.

  Someday I’ll find the strength to open that cage and swim in that ocean. I’ll learn to ride the waves of my heart without drowning in them. Maybe I’ll take that ocean and use it to change the world, or maybe I won’t. Until then, Ruse has offered me a lab in the new city he wants to build, and that’s all I need.

  “What’s in Hawaii?” Cole asks.

  I shrug. “Sun, surf, pineapples.”

  He cocks an eyebrow. “Sounds like fun.”

  “What about you? Any plans?”

  His eyes cut to a window on the lab’s wall. Catarina’s room. Cole has spent most of his time sitting with her—reading to her, putting the news on the screen in the corner of the room. Last night, when I looked in on her, he’d fallen asleep in a chair beside her tank. “I think I’ll stick around here for a while longer,” he says. “Then I’d like to travel. I haven’t seen much of the world.”

  I clutch the strap of my duffel bag, stepping into the grass. “I’m going to miss you, Cole.”

  His face tightens. “I’ll miss you, too, Jun Bei. I want you to be happy.”

  I look back at him. “Is that really possible for us, do you think?”

  “I do,” he says, his voice firm. “I mean it. Don’t punish yourself for the past—that isn’t going to help anyone. I know how much work we have ahead of us, and I know you’re capable of doing a lot of good. You saved us—we know that, even if the rest of the world doesn’t. You have to find a way to be happy. Promise me.”

  “I don’t know if I can promise you I’ll be happy.”

  He holds my eyes until I have to fight the urge to look away, then a soft smile curves across his face. “I don’t think there’s much that you can’t do, Jun Bei.”

  A lump swells in my throat. “Okay, I promise. You too.”

  “Deal,” he says, reaching for my hand. His skin is warm from the mug, and a familiar shiver passes through me at the feel of it. There’s a part of me that wants to step into his arms, and maybe that part of me always will. But the rest of me is stronger, louder, yearning for the road, for the unknown, and for the comfort not of another person’s arms, but of finally knowing my own mind.

  I let his hand drop and walk along the gravel driveway into the mist. I don’t look back. I’m looking forward now.

  And I see a whole world out there waiting for me.

  CHAPTER 45 CATARINA

  ONE MONTH LATER

  I’VE ALWAYS LOVED WATCHING THE sun set over the Black Hills. The way the horizon turns gold, shimmering between the trees, sending wild rays of light scattering through the branches. I love the way the deer step from the forest, their noses lifted high, ears flicking nervously as they walk down to the lake’s edge to drink. I love the birdsong, the shift in the air as the day’s heat slips away. The softening of the shadows as the light grows dim, then dusky, then fades to night. I love the first stars, the sudden glow of the moon.

  And I love it more for being alive to see it—to stand knee deep in the lake’s chilly waters and feel the breeze on my skin.

  My skin.

  My hair hangs loose around my shoulders, wet and tousled, freshly washed. My arms are prickled with goose bumps, a crumpled cloth and a bar of soap clutched in my hand. I came out from the cabin to bathe in the lake, but then the sun started setting, and I just had to stand and face it, to experience it, to breathe the night in.

  Everything has become so overwhelmingly, achingly beautiful to me.

  The cabin door squeals behind me, and footsteps creak across the porch. I look over my shoulder, meeting Leoben’s eyes. “You’ve been out here forever,” he says.

  “I got distracted by the sunset.”

  He shakes his head. “You’re ridiculous. It’s freezing. Come on, it’s almost time to eat.” He grins. “Do you need a hand?”

  I raise an ey
ebrow, not giving him the satisfaction of a smile. My left hand is paler than the rest of my body—newly grown and still weak, a thin white scar circling my wrist. Leoben and Anna haven’t let a day pass without a joke about it.

  “I’ll be fine—I’ll come in soon,” I say, looking over my skin for dirt or smears of soap. I’m wearing a nanoweave tank top and shorts that have already dried in the time it took me to watch the sunset. I know Leoben only offers to help because he cares, but I haven’t needed it the last couple of days. My legs are shaky as I step from the lake, but not enough to worry me. It’s been a month since I woke. The first few weeks were rough, but now I’m almost ready for more sparring lessons—not that I think Leoben will give them to me. I’m his little sister now, as he likes to remind me. My chest always tightens when he says it, something deep inside me feeling whole for perhaps the first time in my life, but I could do without him treating me like I’m made of glass.

  He jogs down the porch steps and through the grass, swooping down to pick up my towel for me.

  “I said I’m fine.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he says, looping the towel around my shoulders. “I know you are, squid.”

  He takes the soap and washcloth from my hand, his tattooed skin gleaming in the sunset’s light. A new design is woven through the animals etched across him. A phoenix—its flaming wings inked in gold and crimson, its story tangled with the others—taking flight, burning into ash, and being reborn as something new.

  It seemed appropriate for me.

  “I’m leaving tomorrow,” he says, stepping back in the grass. “Dax is gonna meet me in California. I’m planning to come back, but…”

  “I know,” I say. “You guys might need to lay low for a while. Stay safe, okay? We’ll see each other again.”

  He pushes a wet lock of hair from my face. “I know we will.”

  Dax just spent a week giving testimony in the Hydra hearings, and his face has been all over the news feeds. He isn’t being charged with anything, but a lot of people still want him dead. Cartaxus fell under his leadership, and it hasn’t fallen cleanly. Some people don’t believe that the vaccine is safe or that the virus is really beaten. Some of the bunkers have locked down again, the civilians choosing to stay in the security of their cells. Some of them are removing their panels, destroying their tech out of fear.

  There’s a long and slow road ahead of us to rebuild this world. But we’re on our way, at least.

  “Are you and Dax still…?” I ask, lifting an eyebrow.

  Leoben runs a hand over his shaved head. “I don’t know. I don’t think we even know who we are outside Cartaxus. But he’s getting about a billion death threats a day, and I’m a trained bodyguard, so it’s kind of a perfect match.”

  I pull the towel up to scrub at my wet hair. “You’re the one who told me not to confuse protectiveness with love.”

  “Hey, nobody said anything about love,” he says, holding up his hands, but he can’t hide the twitch of a smile. “I just don’t want to see him dead.”

  I shake my head and turn toward the cabin, shoving his shoulder with mine. “That sounds like love to me, Lee. He’s lucky to have you.”

  He slings his arm around my shoulders, walking with me through the grass. “Oh, I know. I’ve made that perfectly clear.”

  We make our way up the stairs and into the cabin. The air smells of garlic and fresh bread. There are blow-up mattresses on the floor and bags piled along the walls. Anna is sitting on the kitchen countertop, pulling apart a baguette and eating it in chunks.

  “All I’m saying,” she says, chewing, “is if you kept it unloaded, a scorpion would make a pretty good pet.”

  Cole shakes his head. He’s standing at the range, stirring a bubbling pot of spaghetti. “You’d keep a missile for a pet if you could.”

  She tears off another chunk of bread. “Only if it had legs.”

  Cole turns, catching my eye across the room, and smiles. A bubble of warmth rises in my chest. We’ve spent the last month as friends. Just friends—but friends who go for walks, who watch movies we’ve both missed in our strange lives, and who argue about gentech, about freedom, about what it means to control your own body. We’re friends making tentative plans to go on the road together and visit the bunkers that have locked their doors, to try to convince people to join the rest of us in rebuilding society. The revelations about the vaccine and about gentech have frightened them, and so they should. But hiding from the world isn’t going to stop it from moving on. Jun Bei’s Panacea might be lost for now, but the wild ideas behind it aren’t, and there are already groups around the world prodding and pushing at gentech’s limitations now that Cartaxus has lost its control over them.

  People are frightened about the genehackers and what the future might hold, but if they can meet Cole and me—a former black-out soldier with scars across his face where his leylines used to be and a transplanted, mutated half mind inside a tank-grown body—they’ll see that we’re just people like them. We’re fundamentally the same. And maybe they won’t be so afraid anymore.

  Plus, I think both Cole and I like the idea of spending some time alone together.

  Leoben ducks past me into the kitchen and snatches the baguette from Anna’s hands, tearing off a piece. “Ziana called,” he says. “Says she’s building a house in Montana.”

  “She should have stayed,” Anna says, grabbing the baguette back. “We barely had a chance to catch up.”

  “It was hard for her to be with us,” Cole says. “Besides, she has a new family now.”

  “We’re her family,” Anna says, looking around at us. Warmth flickers in my chest at the realization that she means me, too. Anna and I aren’t going to be braiding each other’s hair any time soon, but she’s offered to teach me how to shoot, and she let me add customized firewalls to her panel. She’s going to need them. Anna’s DNA is still the key to immortality, and with the Panacea lost, people will be trying to re-create it on their own. If anyone finds out what Anna’s gift is, they’ll come after her. Cole is worried she’ll have to spend her life in hiding. But I think Anna can take care of herself.

  “Ziana was the last of us left at the lab,” Cole says. “We had a year in the black-out program while she was still being experimented on. That’s a lot.”

  A silence clouds the room. I know Jun Bei felt guilty for leaving the others behind at the lab, and it’s clear they feel guilty for leaving Ziana behind too. But Ziana understood. All of them were just doing what they had to in order to survive.

  “Her new family are farmers,” Leoben says. “Can you imagine Zan farming?”

  Anna rolls her eyes. “I think she’s making new crop strains, not plowing fields. Have you ever seen a farm, Lee? Do you even know where food comes from?”

  “Of course I do,” Leoben says. “When one tomato loves another tomato very much…”

  Anna rolls her eyes, tossing a chunk of bread at him.

  “Has anyone heard from Jun Bei?” I ask.

  Leoben drops his eyes, and Anna tears off another chunk of the bread, scowling.

  “No,” Cole says, his voice soft. “Not since she left.”

  I nod, scrubbing absently at my wet hair with the towel. None of the others have spoken much about Jun Bei. The rest of the world doesn’t know that she was the one who had everything—her code, her childhood, her identity—stolen from her. They don’t know that the vaccine couldn’t have been saved without her.

  They don’t know how close she was to trying to take control of their minds.

  She’s gone dark, as far as I can tell. I’ve commed her every day, telling her how I’m doing. Letting her know that I can walk, that I’m feeling like myself, that I’m healthy. But she’s never answered, and I guess I can understand that.

  I just want her to know that when she’s ready, I’d like to hear from her. We’re sisters, after all.

  “Jun Bei’s gonna be just fine,” Leoben says. “Maybe she’s farming with Ziana. I
can see her driving a tractor.”

  Anna rolls her eyes. “You’re ridiculous, Lee. She’s probably hanging out with her freaks somewhere.”

  There’s an edge to Anna’s voice, but it isn’t as sharp as it used to be when she talked about Jun Bei. All of us have turned against one another at some point in the past few months, and I think Anna understands what drove Jun Bei to do what she did. We’ve been living in a vicious, broken world, and we’ve all been trying to survive in it the best we can. Now we need to move on. We can’t let the pain of the past define us anymore.

  A low, percussive murmur starts up in the distance. I tilt my head, looking out the window. “Do you hear that?”

  “I hear the sound of my stomach rumbling,” Anna says. “How much longer until dinner, Cole?”

  He steps past her, his brow creased. “Yeah, I hear it too.”

  I stare through the window and into the night sky, dialing up my audio filters. My new panel’s tech is still learning the patterns of my thoughts, growing with me into this strange new body. A wash of static blasts in my ears, then collapses into a low rattling sound, growing louder by the second.

  I jog across the living room and push through the front door, the towel slipping from my shoulders as I step out onto the porch. Cole follows, his footsteps matching mine, meeting me at the porch railing to stare into the night.

  The sunset has all but faded, a chill lacing the air. The lake’s surface is a dark mirror, reflecting the moon and the halo of clouds around it. The air sings with a breeze coming in over the mountains, whistling through the pines. But I can hear more than just the wind.