Not Even Bones

by Rebecca Schaeffer

  Kovit blinked, then frowned. “Where are you going to get an arm?”

  Nita just looked at him.

  Then it clicked. His eyes widened. “Oh.”

  A voice from the hall called out. “Kovit? Was there a text?”

  Then the door began to open, and Nita dove out the window to go and get Reyes’ arm.

  Twenty-Five

  NITA RACED THROUGH the jungle.

  Every time her foot crunched on the branches or the leaves scraped at her hair, she’d wince, half afraid the guards would hear. Which was ridiculous; they were in the house. They couldn’t possibly hear her.

  Her breathing was hot and shallow, sweat sticking her clothes to her and tickling her mosquito bites in a highly uncomfortable way. As a fly buzzed by and landed on her, then stuck to her sweaty body, unable to get off, Nita determined something: she hated the jungle. When—if—she ever got out of here, she was taking a vow to never go into nature again.

  Once she got back to a city, she was going to cling to the concrete buildings and take deep, desperate gulps of the polluted air. She wouldn’t ever complain about the crowds again if only she could be back in Lima, with its air conditioning, dry climate, and paved roads.

  Nita kept a wary eye out as she ran, trying to make sure she didn’t accidentally stray from the path or step on something alive.

  She snapped several branches as she stumbled out of the jungle and into the edge of the market. Then she took off, running down the street, Reyes’ too-tight shoes pinching her feet in a way that would have been painful if she’d had her pain circuits turned on.

  Nita avoided the crowded parts of the market, and she was in front of the concrete prison within a few minutes. Her fingers fumbled as she pulled the key from her pocket and slid it in the lock.

  As the door opened, a blast of air conditioning hit Nita. She gasped at the sudden change, then pushed through the shock, toward Reyes’ body. She was very grateful for the air con. Without it, given the outside temperature, Reyes’ body would already have been stinking and starting to rot.

  Nita approached Reyes and then realized she needed tools. She’d seen a few before, in their version of a dissection room. Nita stumbled in her haste to get there, not sure how long Kovit could stall.

  Please, just hold them off a few minutes, Kovit. If they decided to turn on Kovit, Nita would be in huge trouble. They’d come for her next.

  Nita found a bone saw—not the best option, but something. She didn’t have time to go through bone—this wasn’t an electric saw, it was manual. She’d need to pop the arm out of its socket and then cut through there, where it would be easier. Not ideal. She would have liked a different tool. An electric one.

  She returned to the main hallway, and looked down at Reyes, body partly sprawled on the floor, but her head and a bit of her chest half propped up against the wall.

  This was the person Nita had murdered.

  The person she was now going to dissect.

  When did you cross over into serial killer territory, Nita?

  I don’t have time for you right now.

  A phone rang, tinny and high-pitched. Nita knelt down and pulled out Reyes’ cell. It was nice, a brand-new smartphone with a cover and case that clicked against Nita’s fingernails. Nita pocketed it, ignoring the ring.

  Then she pressed her saw to the body and cut.

  She’d told off her conscience better than she thought, because she didn’t feel nauseous or guilty while she worked. She just felt sort of sad, a vague, distracted emotion. Like when she looked at someone on her dissection table and saw that they had chronic arthritis. She felt a little bad for them, but it was a distanced feeling, not really empathy, or even sympathy. She didn’t know if there was even a word for it. Maybe other people didn’t feel that emotion, or maybe they didn’t like to admit they felt that emotion and just pretended they had sympathy.

  Or perhaps her adrenaline was pumping too high, and her panic was too strong for her to really process anything else. The saw crunch-squish-snapped through flesh and muscle. Nita wedged it in between the shoulder joint and attempted to rip the arm off in full. It tore, flesh rending with a wet, chunky sound.

  Nita wiped sweat off her forehead, and replaced it with dark, clotted-blood-black streaks across her skin. But she had the arm. She scooped it up and turned to leave, but stopped. She couldn’t just run through the market holding a human arm.

  Or could she? This was Death Market. Hadn’t Nita seen worse things peddled on the street?

  Tucking the severed arm under her own, Nita pelted from the building and retraced her steps through the market to the jungle and Reyes’ house. Her heart beat in time to her steps, and droplets of sweat marked her passing. Her throat was dry, even though the rest of her was soaked.

  The branches swatted at her, and a cricket fell down her shirt as she stumbled through the hideous path to Reyes’ house. Nita crushed the cricket, angry at the interruption.

  When she reached the clearing with the house, Nita pulled out Reyes’ phone, only to realize it was locked.

  Fuck.

  She could receive calls, but she couldn’t initiate them. She needed Kovit to call her.

  Groaning, she braced herself and turned on her pain circuits in another finger. She fell to her knees, gasping through the pain. She was never going to get used to that.

  The phone rang a moment later.

  Nita double-checked the caller was Kovit before answering. “I’m sorry I couldn’t call. Reyes’ phone is locked.”

  “I got the message.”

  Clearly. Nita shifted, uncomfortable with the idea of him eating her pain. “I have the arm.”

  She could hear the whoosh of air leaving him. “All right.”

  “I’m going to throw it up through the window I left from.”

  “I see. I’ll make a note of it in the files in the study.”

  Nita paused. The guards were clearly listening in. “So, you want me to throw it through the study window?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Okay.” Nita walked around the building to where the study window was. It was right next to the one she’d jumped out of, so it was easy to identify. “I’m throwing it up now.”

  She swung the arm in an underhand motion. It arced up, hit the side of the house, and then fell down. Nita swore, picked it up, and tried again. This time it went in.

  “It’s in.”

  “Great. I’ll hand it over now, then. Thanks.”

  Then there was a click as the line disconnected.

  Nita slumped against the side of the house, exhausted. Sweat dripped into her eyes, and stuck her clothes to her body in an unpleasant way. The dried sweat had created a crunchy layer over her body, and the wet sweat piled over it created another layer, until Nita had an entire stratum of sweat on her body.

  The front door opened.

  Nita froze, realizing she should have hidden while she had the chance. Lorenzo and Jorge were walking away. They hadn’t seen Nita, but if they turned around, she’d be right in their line of sight.

  Damn it, Nita. If you fuck this up because of such a stupid mistake, you’ll never live it down.

  No shit, because I’ll never live.

  “I could just meet you later—” Lorenzo was saying.

  “Not a chance.” Jorge had the arm in a bag he’d found somewhere. “I’m not letting you out of my sight. You’ll just snort again, and then Reyes really will give you to Kovit. She isn’t screwing around, man.”

  Lorenzo sighed softly and rubbed his temples. “I know, I know. But I just . . . I’ve been thinking of going back home. You know, now that Italy doesn’t have to sign into INHUP because of EU regulations, powdered unicorn bone prices will go back to normal.”

  “You’re leaving?” Jorge sounded hurt.

  Nita just wished they’d hurry up and leave so she could move again. The longer they talked, the greater the chance they’d notice her.

  Lorenzo shrugged. �
��I dunno. I thought maybe you could come with me. Italy’s nice. You’ll like it.”

  “I don’t want to go to Italy, Renzo. I like it here.”

  Nita’s heart slammed in her chest, and her body was as still as a corpse until they left the clearing and entered the trees. Their voices slowly faded, and Nita let the tension fall from her shoulders as she leaned against the side of the house, all her strength stolen by relief.

  She was alive.

  For now.

  Twenty-Six

  KOVIT LOOKED TIRED. Not hungry tired, just emotionally tired. Nita wasn’t even sure how she could tell, just that she could—she thought maybe when he was hungry tired, his movements tended to be sharper, more edged and jerky. When he walked over to her, he was loose limbed, shoulders slightly slumped.

  He leaned against the side of the building and looked down at Nita. “While I agree it’s definitely time to take a break and just curl on the floor for a while, I vote we do it inside, where there’s air conditioning.”

  Air conditioning. Possibly the only two words that would have gotten Nita up faster would have had something to do with imminent death.

  Kovit offered a hand to help her up, but Nita waved it away and rose on her own, and followed him inside. They ascended the stairs and settled themselves in the study, underneath the air conditioner, which Kovit had already turned on.

  The cool air did wonders for Nita’s mood. She might still be trapped in a market full of people who wanted to murder her and eat her corpse, but at least now she didn’t feel like she was having a bath in her own sweat. Somehow that made all the difference.

  The two of them rested for a while. Kovit lay on the floor, looking up at the ceiling, and Nita sat against the wall. They were silent, and that was okay—she just wanted to revel in the cold and sort through her thoughts.

  Eventually, Kovit rose and brought her a bottle of water.

  “Thanks.”

  He nodded and sat down across from her. Looking at the water bottle, his eyes softened slightly. “I have a friend, and when she was younger, she wanted to scare her brother, so she opened a water bottle and put a plastic snake in. He didn’t notice and drank the water, snake and all. Then he had to go to the ER to get it removed.”

  Nita nearly snorted her water out trying not to laugh.

  Kovit grinned. “Every time I open a water bottle, I think of that story.”

  Wiping her mouth, Nita narrowed her eyes. “Was this friend part of the, uh, Family?”

  Kovit frowned for a moment, then his eyes cleared and he shook his head. “Oh, no. Definitely not. She was from an online forum. I think all my friends as a kid were over the internet. I never met any of them.”

  Nita had never thought of using the internet to meet people. To her, the internet was just where you sold things, where monsters lurked behind glowing screens, claws hovering over scratched keyboards as they funded her mother’s murders. She couldn’t imagine being friends with anyone there.

  She never really thought of the rest of the internet. The non-evil side of it.

  “I assume they don’t know about you?” she asked.

  “Of course not.” He looked away, voice soft and sad. “I actually like these people.”

  His eyes lowered, a stray strand of hair just brushing the tips of his eyelashes. He still looked achingly beautiful from torturing Mirella, and she found it deeply disturbing that hurting people made him look attractive. She found it more disturbing that she noticed.

  Nita turned away and took a deep gulp of water. She improved her water absorption as she drank, since there was a danger of dehydration in places like this. Especially given how much running she’d been doing.

  When her bottle was empty, Nita set it down on the floor and looked up at Kovit. “So. Now what do we do?”

  “That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?”

  Nita sighed and scratched at the dried sweat on her scalp. “We’re no better off than before we came here.”

  “No.” Kovit tapped a finger on the ground. “Well, I’ve got my passport back.”

  “And that helps us get out of here how?”

  He shrugged. “It doesn’t. But it’ll be nice for after we get out.”

  “I guess.” Nita groaned, put her head in her hands, and clenched it. She’d been trying to focus on the immediate problem of getting out. But afterward . . . “Fuck.”

  “What?”

  “Reyes’ video. The one of me she posted online.” Nita had been trying not to think about it. But it was persistent. “My face is plastered all over the internet, along with my ability. Every black market dealer in the world will be on the lookout for me once I get out of here.”

  She felt a sudden surge of rage. Her whole life, fucked up. Even if she got out, she’d have to look over her shoulder forever, wondering if someone was after her. No more anonymity. Always on someone’s hit list. Her fist smashed down on the floor.

  “You can do things with your body. Can you change your face?” Kovit asked.

  Nita shook her head. “No. My ability is to control things—I can only do things my body can do on its own. It’s not magic. It’s not like I can go change my genes to modify the color of my eyes.”

  Though, now that she thought about it, she could add or reduce melanin to make them a bit darker or lighter.

  “What about, I dunno, making your face rounder with more fat or something?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I could add fat to certain areas. But if I started screwing around with my appearance, I’d be more likely to fuck it up. I mean, what if I tried to get my body to store more fat on my cheeks, but my face wasn’t designed for it? So it impeded blood flow or who knows what, and when I fix that, it breaks something else—I’m not saying it’s impossible. I mean, I might be able to change other things too, possibly, with an awful lot of research and specialized knowledge, but . . . the risk of screwing it up really bad is so high. I’ve never considered doing anything cosmetic with my ability.”

  “Huh.” Kovit considered. “I suppose all abilities have limitations.”

  “Unfortunately.” Nita picked a splinter out of her finger and stared at the blood that formed around the cut. It was still weird not to feel any pain. “The body is all interconnected. You mess with one thing, it affects others. I try to be careful about larger things.”

  She sighed, drained. She’d always loved her ability, always loved the insight it gave her into her own and other people’s biology. But now she almost wished she were human. Which was ridiculous. Who wants to be normal when they can be special?

  Nita, clearly, when she was upset.

  Kovit pinched the bridge of his nose. “Now you’ve got me thinking of the problems awaiting me if I get out.”

  “Such as?”

  “If the Family thinks I killed Reyes and ran off, they might decide to dispose of me. I know a lot of stuff about their organization, where the skeletons are. Enough to bring them down.”

  Nita thought about that. “What do you think they’d do if they thought you’d run off?”

  “Send a picture of me to INHUP, and evidence I was a zannie, for starters.” He licked his lips. “Zannies are on the list of dangerous unnaturals. If INHUP put a bulletin out on me, the whole world would see me and shoot to kill.”

  “Fuck.”

  What kind of irony was this? Nita was going to be on the run from every bad guy in the world, and Kovit would be on the run from all the good guys.

  Of course, if INHUP found Nita’s connection to her mother and the black market, she could be on the run from the law too. And Kovit might be hunted by his mafia connections. So really, they were both in trouble with everyone.

  Great. Just great.

  “To us.” Kovit raised his empty water bottle in a toast. “Both well and truly fucked.”

  Nita tapped her own water bottle against his with a laugh. “To us.”

  Kovit gave her a cheeky grin. “Now. What are we going to do
about all this?”

  Nita smiled, not sure how he’d managed to cheer her up so quickly. “This sounds like a problem to deal with when we get out. It’s all hypotheticals until then.”

  “All right.” He raised an eyebrow. “So how do we get out?”

  Nita scowled. “I don’t know. We have no money.”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. How do we get it?”

  Kovit considered. “This is a market. Can we sell things?”

  Nita opened her mouth to ask what they could possibly sell, when she realized. A grin spread across her face, thin and excited.

  Kovit leaned forward, crooked I-have-an-idea-and-it’s-so-so-wrong smile on his face. “Are you thinking what I am?”

  Nita laughed, lighthearted. “This is a body-parts market.”

  “And we have a body.”

  Twenty-Seven

  NITA WISHED SHE had her Disney playlist to listen to while she dissected.

  Reyes’ body lay on the table in the building’s dissection room. It was cramped, and the white paint was chipping off, but it was the best Nita had. And she intended to make the most of it.

  Her hand shook when she picked up the scalpel—a real, legit scalpel, not one of Kovit’s switchblades. It had been hiding in a box of other dissection tools. She didn’t shake from fear, but from excitement. She hadn’t dissected someone in too long. Oh, sure, she’d ripped off a thumb and an arm. But she’d been in a rush. She hadn’t had time to experience the dissection, to dwell and calm her thoughts.

  Nita figured everyone in the world had something they did for peace of mind. That crystalline, calm moment when there was no thought, just peace. Some people ran. Others meditated. Nita dissected.

  She started by taking a large pair of scissors and cutting the suit down the center so that it flopped on either side of the body. Then she cut the shoulders of the jacket from neck out to arm, and then the sleeves. Pieces of fabric fell onto the table with a soft flutter, where they blocked the shiny metal from reflecting the light.

  Once the body was naked, Nita paused. Should she start with the surface stuff? Or should she dive right in? Kovit had mentioned using the head as a tool to get them out at one point, so she decided to keep that mostly intact.