by Emily Suvada
He looks up as the lab’s door swings open. Dax walks through, supported by one of the soldiers. The bruise on his face has spread to cover most of his cheek. His green eyes run over the room—to the genkit, to Mato, and to the cable in my head. He falls heavily onto one of the chairs. “Are you okay?” he asks me.
“Better than you,” I say.
He smiles faintly. “Indeed.” He looks up at Mato. “Thanks for covering for me with Brink, Somata.”
“Next time you feel like stealing a copter, let me know in advance,” Mato mutters. “He’d have locked you up.”
Dax coughs, his shoulders shaking. “A prison cell is the least of my concerns right now.”
I look between the two of them. Dax is the head of Cartaxus’s science team now, so I’m sure he deals with central command regularly, but it sounds like he and Mato know each other better than that. There’s no chemistry between them like there is between Dax and Lee, but there is something. They’re both arrogant, and they’re both skilled coders. Maybe the two of them just get along.
“I think we’re ready,” Mato says. “Dax, you monitor her vitals while I watch the implant. If I’m right about the tracker, then it should send a ping out once we reboot it, and we’ll be able to trace it to where Lachlan is hiding. Catarina, are you ready?”
I watch Dax, drumming my fingers on the table nervously. He rubs his eyes, blinking against the fever he’s clearly fighting. I wasn’t expecting him to be monitoring my panel during the hack. Dax has been on my side until now—he made it clear in the Comox that he doesn’t think I should have to suffer any more for what Lachlan has done. I don’t know what he’ll do if he figures out that I’m not Lachlan’s daughter, though.
“You ready?” Mato asks, annoyed to have to ask me again.
I shoot a glare at him. “Yeah, fine. Let’s do this.”
His eyes glaze. “Okay. The hack is starting in three, two, one.”
The cable in my head vibrates, my panel flashing suddenly. I brace myself for a rush of pain, but it doesn’t come. There is no pressure in the back of my skull, no ache building up inside me. The spinning circle on the screen disappears, replaced by a report with a list of readings and numbers.
“This is a diagnostic from the implant,” Mato says, scanning the screen. “It says you suffered some damage several days ago. That would have been during the decryption.”
I grip the table. “Wait, do you mean brain damage?”
Mato tilts his head. “It’s more like a concussion. These implants can be dangerous, but I’ve run code that’s hurt me far worse than this. You’ll be fine, but you should rest while you recover.”
“Shit,” I mutter. I’ve spent hours fighting Leoben every day for the last week. I must have hit the ground a hundred times, and I’ve barely been sleeping. That’s basically the opposite of what I should have been doing to recover from a concussion.
I watch the screen, waiting for it to change. I don’t even know if the hack is running yet. My vision is still clear, my heartbeat steady, but there’s an ache starting up inside my arm. It radiates out from my panel and down into my palm, like a steady stream of too-hot water poured across my skin. It grows stronger as I breathe—the pain rising until I feel the urge to clench my hand into a fist.
“My arm is hurting,” I say. “Is that supposed to happen?”
Mato frowns. “I’m not seeing anything on the implant’s logs. Crick, what’s happening with her tech?”
“I think I see something,” Dax mutters. “I’m trying to figure it out.”
I swallow hard, trying to keep my arm still. This pain is slow and insidious, spreading across my skin, setting my cells ablaze one at a time.
“Should we cut this off?” Mato asks.
Dax shakes his head. “No, found it. It looks like there are some hanging commands waiting in her spinal socket. One is running in her panel, activating an app—I’m not sure what—but the other looks like a command to the implant.” He turns to the screen, focusing, splashing pages of text across it. “I think these commands were supposed to run during the decryption, but it looks like they glitched.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, gripping the arm of the chair, breathing through the pain. It’s growing sharper, like an army of insects burrowing beneath my skin. “I thought you got the whole vaccine.”
“We did,” Dax says. “I don’t think this code is related to the vaccine. This is something else.”
Mato follows his eyes, scanning the text. The code on the screen shows two commands with error messages beside them from the day we ran the decryption. Dax is right—this code was supposed to run, but it crashed. But if these commands aren’t related to the vaccine, what the hell are they supposed to do?
“The command for the implant is a configuration change,” Mato says, his eyes narrowing. “It’s switching off a suppression module, but it looks like the suppressor was already offline. You cut out your panel before the decryption, didn’t you? I think that might be why the command didn’t work.”
“I’m going to reboot the spinal node and see if I can clear the commands,” Dax says. His eyes glaze, and the code on the screen flickers. . . .
Then the lab disappears.
Gravity tilts, my stomach lurching. The world flashes to black, then gray, then into dazzling light. I’m suddenly lying on a metal table with white lights blazing above me. The air is warm, scented with jasmine. A window beside me shows scorched desert plains stretching into a line of hazy mountains. The walls are plaster, hung with plastic sheeting. This is a makeshift lab, complete with walls of vials of nanofluid and a humming genkit.
Lachlan is standing over the table, staring down at me.
I blink back into the lab, sucking in a gasp of air. The pain in my arm is licking higher, pushing past my elbow. The image of Lachlan’s face burns in the darkness behind my eyes. It must be another of Jun Bei’s memories.
But when was she in a desert?
“Catarina,” Mato says, grabbing my shoulder, a flicker of genuine concern in his eyes. “The implant just glitched. Are you okay?”
I nod, gritting my teeth, clenching and unclenching my hand. The pain in my arm is leaching through my fingers, burning across the creases in my palm. Whatever command Dax just ran feels like it’s whipped my memories into a storm. I can feel them heaving against my senses. “Is the hack working?” I ask. “Can you see the tracker?”
“Just a minute more,” Mato says. “We’re almost finished.”
The pain in my arm blazes across my skin, spots of light bleeding into the corners of my vision. I open my mouth to tell Mato to stop—that it feels like my arm is on fire—but the room suddenly blurs in and out of focus.
I freeze, not moving, not breathing. I feel like I’m on the verge of blinking into another memory, but I have just enough control to stay out of it. I can feel it pulling at me, though, and I can feel something else, too. An edge in my mind. A barrier between my thoughts and Jun Bei’s memories.
It feels like a wall inside me. Like it’s splitting me in half.
I try to suck in a breath, but the pain in my arm spikes, rushing up my neck and into the base of my skull. Something shudders under my skin.
“Something’s wrong,” Dax says, standing up, his eyes glazed. “We should sto—”
But he’s too late. My forearm shakes, my panel blinking as dozens of black wires burst through my skin with a spray of blood.
I clench my teeth, biting back a scream, and blink out of the lab.
A new memory kicks me through the wall in my mind, and this time there is no fighting it. I’m in the desert again, lying on a bed, a drip in my arm filled with a green, glistening fluid. There are bandages on my hands and the sticky tug of tape on my neck. A humming genkit stands on the far wall beside a pair of clear glass doors with dark storm clouds beyond it. The air flashes with lightning, tracing the silhouettes of a flock of white-and-gold passenger pigeons.
This is where Lachlan c
hanged my DNA.
I can feel it in my skin, my bones. He didn’t transform me in the cabin. It was in another lab. There are notes scribbled on the walls and piled in stacks across the floor. Lachlan is standing at the window, staring through it at the pigeons, his arms folded behind his back.
I blink back into the Zarathustra lab, my own scream echoing in my ears. I’m slumped across the table, with Dax standing over me, his green eyes wide with shock. The rows of wires that erupted from my forearm are wriggling back into my skin, leaving bloody punctures behind them.
“Princess,” Dax breathes, grabbing my shoulders, helping me up. “It’s over.”
I let out a gasp, my throat raw. Blood is streaming down my arm, dripping from my elbow. I don’t know why dozens of wires just erupted from my skin, but they’re gone now, and anesthetic is surging through me, making me dizzy. “Did it work?”
“Yes,” Mato says, the black glass of his mask flashing with faint glyphs. “The implant rebooted. I’m tracking the ping now. It’s not just a ping, though. I think Lachlan is using the implant to track more than your location—he’s checking that you’re healthy. It’s feeding him a full vital scan.”
I scrunch my eyes shut, clutching my bloodied arm to my chest, my head spinning from the blood, the anesthetic, and now the thought that Lachlan has been watching my vital signs. He’s not just tracking me. He’s studying me.
I really am just one of his experiments.
“I traced the ping,” Mato says, his voice lifting. “We got him. He’s in Nevada. He’s in Entropia.”
I blink, fighting the wave of dizziness from the anesthetic. Entropia. The city run by the hacker Regina. That would match the pigeons I saw in the memory, the desert mountains on the horizon. Lachlan must have a lab there. If it’s where he changed my DNA, it makes sense that’s where he’d be hiding now.
“There’s more,” Mato says. Text blinks across the lab’s screen. “This was on the implant in a hidden folder. I think it was attached to the code the implant added to the vaccine.”
I scan the text, the edges of my vision blurring. My arm is still aching, my blood pressure dropping. I should lie down. I should get some healing tech, but I can’t move. I can’t even breathe.
There’s a message from Lachlan blazing on the laboratory’s screen.
If you’re reading this, it means I have won. This work will usher in the dawn of a new age and recode humanity into a better, stronger species. You cannot stop this change any more than you can stop the sun from rising. A new era for humanity has arrived, and the world will never be the same.
“Holy shit,” I breathe. “Are you seeing this, Dax?”
But he doesn’t reply. His hand is over his mouth, and he’s staring at me. The screen changes to a report—the log from the ping that Mato just traced. It shows our location in Canada and a set of coordinates in the Nevada desert. Entropia. The hexadecimal ID from Lachlan’s panel is printed beside his location on the map, and there’s another ID shown beside mine.
But it isn’t mine.
It’s not the ID number Dax knows, at least. It’s the string of hexadecimal digits that Cole read out to me back in the cabin when I was trying to locate Jun Bei for him. I found a signal with her ID, but it was masked—bouncing between cities, between servers, hiding her location. It proved that she was alive but didn’t reveal where she was.
But it wasn’t Jun Bei’s panel that I found that day in the cabin.
It was the tracker Lachlan left in my own skull.
“Oh my God,” Dax says, his face paling. “You’re not Catarina. You’re Jun Bei.”
CHAPTER 10
MATO STEPS BACK, AN UNREADABLE expression on his face. Dax is deathly silent, a look of horror in his eyes. He half stands from the chair, blinking. . . .
Then he launches himself across the table at me.
“What did you do to her?” he shouts. He grabs my shoulders, dragging me off the chair, and slams me back into the floor. The wire screeches from my panel, the cable in my head disconnecting. My wounded forearm hits the concrete with a burst of blinding pain. “Where is Catarina?”
I shrink away, gasping. “It’s me! Dax, it’s me!”
“Don’t lie to me!” His eyes are wild. “Tell me where she is!”
“I’m n-not lying!” I gasp. “I’m not Jun Bei. Not anymore.”
“Get off her!” Mato grabs the back of Dax’s coat, yanking him off me. “I called the others. They’re coming.”
Dax lets me go, stumbling away. I scramble back, sucking in a gulp of air. There’s a trail of my blood on the floor, and the pain in my arm is strong enough to make my vision waver. Dax stands, heaving in a breath, my blood on his hands. The doors to the hallway fly open, and Cole and Leoben burst into the room, followed by a troop of guards. My vision flickers, and Brink appears beside them, staring down at me. I try to shuffle back, but there’s nowhere to go.
No exit, no escape. This is what I feared would happen. They’ve found out the truth about who I am, and now they’ll never let me go. But they have to—we know where Lachlan is now. I know I can help find him.
Leoben’s eyes turn black as he takes in the scene. He grabs Dax, pulling him away. Cole moves for me, but the soldiers lift their rifles, shouting for him to stop, clicks echoing around the room. One of them yanks me to my knees on the floor, gripping my wrists behind me.
“Well, well,” Brink says. I can hear him struggling to keep his voice calm. He seems genuinely shaken. “Jun Bei. It seems you’ve returned home after all. I should have guessed that you’d be a part of Lachlan’s sabotage.”
“I’m not,” I say, struggling against the soldier’s grip. Blood is streaming freely from my arm, trickling over the back of my hand. “I had no idea what he was planning. I’m not Jun Bei anymore—I thought I was Lachlan’s daughter until a week ago. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. All I want to do is save the vaccine.”
Brink clicks his tongue. “See, I find that hard to believe. You were the one who added the extra code to the vaccine. You’re the one who let us send it out to everyone.”
“She’s telling the truth,” Cole says. “She’s as much a victim of this as anyone. She doesn’t remember her past.”
“It’s true,” Leoben says, but Brink lifts a hand. Half the soldiers aim their rifles at Cole and Leoben, walking them back against the wall.
Brink turns to Mato. “Did you find Lachlan?”
Mato looks around the room. His dark hair is hanging wild around his face, his eyes narrowed. “Yes, I did. He’s in Entropia. He must be working with the hackers there.”
“Good,” Brink says. “But we may be able to save ourselves some time. If Jun Bei here was the one who added Lachlan’s code to the vaccine, I’m going to wager that she’ll be able to tell us how to patch it too.”
My eyes widen. “I don’t know anything about that, I swear. We have to go after Lachlan. I’m not the threat here.”
“We’ll see about that.” Brink lifts a hand, summoning a soldier by the door. The soldier pulls a black telescoping rod from his belt, flicking it to extend it. He twists the handle, and the end of the rod glows with dancing cobalt sparks.
“What . . . what are you doing?” The soldier holding my wrists tightens his grip.
“Stop,” Mato says, his voice sharp. “Brink, we can’t hurt her, not any more than we already have. Lachlan is using the tracker to monitor her vital signs. If he sees us torturing her, he could set off another attack.”
Brink lets out a growl of frustration. He scans the room, his eyes landing on Cole. “Fine. Use him instead.”
“No!” I shout, struggling against the gloved hands holding me locked in place. The soldiers drag Cole to the floor in front of me, and he meets my eyes urgently.
“Stay calm,” he says. “Just keep telling them the truth. We’re not the enemy here.”
“Stop it!” Leoben says, pushing past the soldiers. He grabs one of their guns, and for a heartbea
t I think it’ll be enough. He lifts the rifle, aiming the barrel at the soldier holding Cole, but Brink turns and Leoben’s body shudders suddenly.
Leoben drops to his knees, his eyes black and glazed. He’s still conscious, but he’s staring straight ahead, not breathing, not blinking. The rifle falls to the floor. Leoben’s arms are hanging at his sides, but his muscles are tensed.
It’s like Brink just put him on pause.
“Wh-what did you do to him?” Dax stutters.
Brink shoots a curious look at Dax. “He’s fine. Black-out agents are useful, but central command doesn’t create weapons we can’t control.” He turns to me. “It’s up to you now, Jun Bei. You added code to the vaccine once before. Now you’re going to tell us how to do it.”
“I don’t know how,” I beg. “Please, Brink!”
He crosses his arms and nods at the soldier holding Cole. The soldier lifts the crackling blue rod and brings it down on Cole’s back.
The effect is instantaneous. Cobalt sparks of light crackle across Cole’s shoulders. His head flies back, the tendons in his neck taut. He lets out a roar of pain, the skin where he was hit sizzling, turning black.
Dax flinches, looking away. Mato’s gaze doesn’t waver, but his fingers are digging into his arm.
“Stop it!” I scream, struggling against the grip on my wrists. “Please—I can help you find Lachlan. He needs me. You have to believe me!”
“Again,” Brink says, lifting his hand, and the rod swings down on Cole again, more cobalt sparks crackling across his skin. He lets out a cry, his body shaking. The flesh across his back is blackened in two sickening lines.
“You’re going to kill him!” I scream.
“Tell us how to fix the vaccine!” Brink shouts.
“I can’t! It’s Lachlan’s code. I don’t know anything about it!”
“Hit him again,” Brink snaps. The soldier lifts the rod, its tip crackling with blue lightning, and time slows to a crawl.
