by Sarah Cross
“This isn’t about you, Jacques,” Cherchette says. “Stop interfering.”
“She convinced me I could go much, much further. I was more powerful than she had been at my age—that’s what she told me. But when my new powers failed to manifest—when, in fact, I escaped death only to emerge from the experience weaker, with a whole host of defects, a heart that beats as though it’s been ravaged by disease—”
Jacques breaks down. The temperature in the room is spiking and falling dramatically. My body’s acting as a thermometer, bordering on paralyzed every time the temperature plunges.
“You think she wants to help you?” Jacques shouts. “She’s the one who did this to you! Who gave you these powers in the first place!”
Nicholas stiffens like he’s been slapped. I wonder if we all look like that—not sure what to believe. A hush descends on the room, leaving only the steady hum of electronics.
“Are you finished?” Cherchette says. “If you’re not through behaving hysterically, perhaps you should leave.”
Jacques meets my eyes, his stare ghostly. “I don’t care anymore, what telling you the truth is going to mean for me. You have to know that it’s a mistake.”
“Please,” Nicholas says. He lifts his hand carefully, two fingers pressed to the tape. “Can we stop delaying this? I’m ready; I don’t care if I end up weaker. Or anything worse. It would make things a lot easier.” He’s swallowing again and again, and I don’t believe him for a second—he’s terrified. He has to be.
“Nick, you’re not strong enough,” I say.
“Of course he is,” Cherchette says tartly, catching me with a warning glare. “No more outbursts please. Have some respect for the transformation Nicholas is about to undergo. All your problems will soon be over,” she assures him.
“Wait!” I grab Cherchette’s arm before she can inject the first dose of the formula into Nicholas’s waiting bloodstream. “It isn’t fair that Nicholas gets to be first. I’m your favorite, right? It should be me.”
I puff out my chest, try to look stronger, more formidable. To make myself believe it. Because this is it. No turning back. It’s me or Nicholas—and I know which one of us has a better chance of surviving.
Cherchette’s watching me curiously, her eyes sparkling. She caresses my wounded throat with one gloved hand.
“Of course you’re my favorite.” She says it like I’m the only one in the room.
“Okay then.” I take a deep breath. “Don’t you want to see what I’ll become?”
24
I SWEAR TO GOD I’m going to cry,” Catherine says. “And then I’m going to kill someone.”
I’m sitting on a gurney with IVs in both my hands. Waves of heat spread throughout my body as the formula pumps slowly into my veins. My heart burns like an ember in my chest.
In my mind, a coin keeps flipping back and forth. Heads, I come out of this a force to be reckoned with. Amazing, spectacular, more powerful than ever. Tails, and I’m ruined. I lose everything that makes me unique. Or maybe there’s a third option. Jacques isn’t exactly a weakling. Maybe he isn’t as strong as he once was—but what if he used to be stronger than I am now? What if there’s something special in the Morozov bloodline that allowed Jacques to even survive Stage Two?
Option three means that the coin crumbles in midair. Total body shutdown.
Nicholas hasn’t said a word to me since I demanded his spot and Cherchette bumped him to the waiting list. But now that she’s gone—off to check on some things, or deal with Leilani or maybe hunt down someone else—he finds his voice.
“You shouldn’t have done that. It’s not going to stop me. As soon as she’s finished with you, I’m going next. And I shouldn’t have to feel guilty about what happens to you.” His Adam’s apple bobs painfully. “I feel guilty about enough already.”
“I’m buying us time, Nicholas,” I say. “And you’re not going next because I’m getting you out of here before—”
A surge of heat floods my head and I swoon forward. My vision goes gray and sweat pours down my face: the floodgates have opened. Cold hands seize my shoulders and prop me back up. “This is the worst thing you could have done,” Jacques says.
“Can’t we just rip the IV out?” Catherine asks.
A blurry Jacques shakes his head. “I don’t know what would happen if we interfered with it. It might make things worse.”
God. My head is spinning so violently I literally don’t know which way is up, down, sideways . . .
“He looks awful,” Catherine says. “There has to be something we can do!”
I’m lying flat but I feel like I’m falling, falling . . . I don’t stay conscious long enough to hear Jacques’s answer.
Drifting in and out. Fever dreams drip with reality. I roll over, hyperaware of the damp shirt clinging to my neck and chest, the sensation of vinyl slick against my cheek.
“Perhaps he’ll make it through—there’s no real precedent. He’s the first of the second generation, if you don’t count . . . but my origin is different.”
“Did your mother really create us?” a male voice asks. “What does that even mean?”
An exhalation like a whistle. “There was an earlier formula. And the specifics—”
Someone touches my face. My eyelids spasm and light filters in, dims again.
“I think he’s awake. Maybe . . .”
“—various children in cities all over the country. Administered in place of the polio vaccine.”
“Nice,” a girl says sarcastically. “So we’re not even immune to polio.”
“I think that’s the least of our problems . . .”
A gray hand descends like a shroud and smothers me, blocks out the sound. I jerk away from it, panting—but I can’t move. Flickers appear. Snaps and pops of light. Vein-colored flares against a night sky.
“So there are others? How many?”
“Many did not survive. We have recorded deaths throughout infancy and beyond . . . Although typically after age seven, the survival rate is very high. Some of her subjects gained no powers, but suffered disfigurements.”
“Like . . .” Deep breath. Mine or someone else’s. Swollen in my ears. “My brother.”
A golden glow attacks my retinas, when all they want is darkness. Something soothing to get lost in. The orb expands, pounces on my brain, relentlessly . . .
“It’s almost midnight. That means . . .”
“How long until he’s, you know, lucid?”
“I really can’t say. My mother was weak but coherent, for the most part. Of course, she was an adult by then. For me, Stage Two was mainly a time of nightmares.”
Nightmares. I roll the taste of the word around on my tongue. The flavor is bitter, too hot. I get up and leave the room, flee through the steel door, and escape . . . and then I find myself back on the gurney, going through the motions all over again. Mechanically. Effortlessly. But I’m always in the same place.
“So if Cherchette created us, who created her? Where does this—”
Begin?
“My grandfather. He . . . it’s a long story . . .”
A very, dear.” Cherchette’s cool hand touches my face, relieving some of the heat, the delirium. “You are doing very well. Do you want to try to sit up?”
We’re alone. I’m on a real bed now, still in a sterile white room, surrounded by office furniture and medical equipment, and it’s mostly dark. Easy on my eyes. The walls and the door are plated with glass so that I can see the rest of the complex. Blue light from the pool room slithers across the ceiling.
With Cherchette’s help, I manage to pull myself into a sitting position. The room sways at first but eventually the vertigo passes and I can hold a cup of water without dropping it.
“The pain is only temporary. It will be much better soon.” She strokes my hair, like a mother tending to a sick child, and I wonder if she did this for Jacques. If she reassured him the same way. How can she be sure?
“I’m not afraid of pain,” I say.
Pain, at least, I can withstand, battle through it to emerge on the other side. But weakness . . . I’m so used to being strong; I’m terrified that this formula flipped a switch in me and I’ll never be the same. All my power-related problems will be gone, but the person I’ve become will cease to exist.
Normal—I’ve never been more afraid of that word.
Cherchette tells me to take a deep breath, presses her stethoscope to my back as I slowly exhale. She checks all my vital signs, records the results on her clipboard. She even measures my arms, my chest, my waist, as if my body’s going to spontaneously change shape or something.
Hell, I don’t know; maybe it will.
“Can you stand, Avery? Stage Two may affect your mass, so I would like to get a starting weight for you.” She gestures to the medical scale next to the bed, takes my arm, and lets me lean on her as I step onto the scale—a strangely familiar feeling, since I’ve been weighed probably hundreds of times for wrestling. She steps behind me, picks up her clipboard, and stops. “What is—”
I turn, and see her squint before she quickly plucks something off the back of my pants. I’m about to tell her—politely—not to touch my butt when I see it: pinched between her nails is a small lavender sliver of plastic, the size of a girl’s fingernail. With spiky metal teeth on the back.
Holy—
Darla didn’t tag me. Sophie did.
“What’s this?” Cherchette turns it over, pokes the metal teeth that have held on to my pants all this time.
“Um.” Before I can think of a good answer, Cherchette lifts the sliver to her lips and blows, coating it with frost until it looks like it’s been dipped in liquid nitrogen. Then she flicks it with her fingertip and it disintegrates. “Clever. Does this mean I should be expecting company?”
“N-no, I don’t think so.”
“You know, I was perfectly content to leave your little friends alone.” Cherchette slams her tools into a drawer and locks it. “I can’t help them; they’ll never be more than they are. But I don’t take this sort of interference lightly. It’s bad enough that Jacques’s ambition has suffered and his defiance has virtually exploded since he began spending time with that girl. I could let that go; the children don’t know what they’re getting themselves into. But this is too much.”
“They’re not—” I’m fumbling; damn it, why can’t I get out a coherent thought? “It’s an earring or something. Probably my mom’s; she leaves her crap all over the house.”
“Avery. Look around you at the resources I possess. Do you think that I was born yesterday?”
“Listen: no one’s coming here! Jacques told Sophie to stay out of it and she listens to him! And Darla’s totally distanced herself; she doesn’t care what happens to us! I swear to you. And if I’m lying you can . . .” And I am lying; it’s never been more clear how obvious it is that Darla and Sophie would never leave their friends hanging out to dry. Darla’s loyal to a fault, and Sophie sticks to her friends like glue—even Jacques, when no one else trusted him. We’re in this together. All or nothing. “If I’m lying you can . . .”
My words fade away. I’m staring at the frosty dust that used to be solid plastic and metal. I’m remembering—even as my own body is failing me—that Cherchette came through Stage Two more powerful than ever. She could snuff me out in a second. She could end any one of us with a simple flick of her fingers.
“Avery—do not make deals with me. I am building a family here. And when I allow newcomers into my family, when I trust them and show them I care for them, I expect their loyalty.”
I bow my head, wondering where the others are, whether Catherine and Nicholas are okay. Heads or tails. My mind flips, the coin landing on you’re screwed. If we end up in trouble, I won’t be able to save them. I’m not the alpha-perfect-golden-boy anymore.
I’m a liability. Weaker than I’ve ever been.
“I have dedicated my life to this,” Cherchette says quietly. “I have been mistreated so many times by people who could not understand me—who would never accept me. And it has taken me years, to . . . to find others who would understand. I won’t be betrayed by my own kind. It’s unacceptable. I have worked too hard to bring us together.”
“What happened to you?” I say. “Why are you doing this?” My voice breaks. I don’t understand. Why does she throw around words like family with kids like Leilani and me, but then discard Charlie and Sophie like trash?
“Ah, Avery.” Cherchette sighs. “You are opening Pandora’s box, asking me that. I don’t wish to burden you with the darkness and despair that has come before. We can move on from this.”
“Obviously you can’t,” I say, almost wincing as the words leave my lips, expecting her to lash out in retaliation. Cherchette blinks at me, dumbfounded, her eyes suddenly wide, like a child’s. Stage Two is breaking down my self-censor—either that or my will to live. Because I can’t stop myself. I let everything out. “You can’t move on or you wouldn’t be doing this, playing with us. How am I supposed to feel safe here—how are any of us?—if you’re so willing to lay down the law as soon as one of us fails to play by your rules? We didn’t come looking for you. We haven’t agreed to anything.”
The innocence in Cherchette’s face closes up. She seems angry again, and fully aware of the power discrepancy between us. “You said you wanted to be here. That you knew that you belonged here. You came to be better than you are, more special. Stage Two is not something to toy with. And if you can’t appreciate that, or the other things I’ve done for you . . .”
“I know, I know,” I say. “I wouldn’t be what I am without you. You made us like this—that’s what Jacques said. And it’s true, isn’t it? You gave us these powers, you threw us into a world that didn’t know what to do with us, and now you pick and choose who you want to help. Why would you play with our lives like that if you don’t even—if some of us don’t even warrant your time?” Like Charlie. Like Sophie. Like your own son, Jacques. I manage to bite back that much.
Arguing is wearing me down, sending me spiraling into the draining depths of Stage Two-based exhaustion. There’s no adrenaline here to save me. No super energy. Just my own body fighting not to kill itself.
Cherchette touches my hand gently. “You don’t understand, Avery. Let’s not be enemies,” she murmurs. “I didn’t know what would happen, when I . . . when Stage One began. I had to take chances, because I couldn’t be alone. I couldn’t. I’ve opened up your world, Avery—I’ve given you a gift other boys your age would die to have. And some of them did die. Some of the children didn’t make it—I admit that, and it’s very unfortunate. But it’s a natural test, you see—like natural selection. It makes what you’ve become all the more special.”
She smiles and strokes my hand, almost happy. I shiver each time her fingers make contact with my skin.
“Nature doesn’t make mistakes. Nature weeds out the weak, the unfit. We have to accept that we are different. I . . . have been different. Since I was a young girl. My father . . .”
She pauses, her face contorting with bitterness, maybe sadness, like she’s struggling to contain something. “My father was far more ambitious than I could ever be. He was driven by the thrill of discovery, the power that comes with shaping the future, adapting humanity. A forced evolution of sorts. What might mankind require to survive in the future? What skills or specialties might be buried within us, waiting for the right mutation to act as a catalyst and change our race forever?
“He used me as his test subject. I was an only child and he wasn’t fond of children, but he found a use for me—his perfect little experiment. A subject who would always keep her mouth shut, who would dutifully suffer the injections and the analysis.
“The pain that I endured as the experiments wrought changes upon my body was so intense that I cannot describe it. And yet my father, the scientist, continued to administer his revised formulas as if I were a tower he was building, a
nd all he cared about was how tall it could become, with no thought as to what might make it collapse. I think he imagined that he would one day create a race of supermen, once he had perfected his formula. But he failed to account for what I might do once I was truly strong, truly my own person, unwilling to endure any more. And that . . . that is all I wish to say about my father. You want to know why I created you, why I would inflict that transformation on others, when I had suffered so terribly?”
I do want to know. “Please.”
“I inherited my father’s formula—I inherited everything. I told myself I would live a simple, normal life—dull, even.”
She smiles at me, like this is our private joke.
“But as I made my way in the world, I realized that a normal life was out of my grasp. I would forever be hiding my true self. I wished for siblings and peers who did not exist. I had been the first, but now I possessed my father’s formula. Perhaps I could create others, and we could be our own family, our own society. The strongest, the fittest and most special, as chosen by nature. You understand me now, don’t you?”
She flashes a bright, fervent smile, and I give a tight, upturned grimace in return, too sick and conflicted to really know how to feel about this.
On the one hand, I love my powers. I claim them, I own them (or at least what’s left of them); they make me who I am. But kids died because of Stage One. And others have had their lives ruined—like Charlie. That’s not nature; it’s not “meant to be.” That’s what Cherchette doesn’t understand. With her it’s black or white; we’re either fit or unfit for survival. Like she said about Jacques, when Stage Two brought him down: it was his own fault. No apologies.
I open my mouth to say something neutral, searching for a way to soothe her, to make her forget about Darla and Sophie. But something within me is still shocked, speechless. Too sick, too weak, too scared to know how to tell her that it doesn’t have to be this way. Precious seconds go by in silence, and Cherchette’s introspective air slips away, replaced by something stiff and wounded. Slowly, her eyes drift back to the pulverized remains of Darla’s tracking device, and as her features grow hard and begin to freeze over, I know that any chance I may have had to stop this is gone.
