This Cruel Design

by Emily Suvada

  “Hold up,” I say. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Can it wait?” he asks, avoiding my eyes. “I could do with some food.”

  “It’s important.” I unbuckle my harness, standing with my wounded arm held against my chest. Leoben glances back at us when he reaches the front door, catching my eye, then pushes through and urges Mato inside with him.

  “I don’t trust that guy,” Cole says, watching the door swing closed. “I don’t trust anyone in central command, but Mato seems especially dangerous.”

  “Is that why you’re being weird?”

  “I’m being weird?” he asks, his gaze finally meeting mine. “Cat, I just watched you kill someone with a weapon that horrified you when you saw Jun Bei use it. Why didn’t you tell me you still had it?”

  “Because I didn’t know it was still in my arm.”

  His brow furrows. “Then how did you use it?”

  I look down at the Comox’s scuffed metal floor. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. When that soldier was hurting you, I saw more memories. There’s more of my past inside me than I thought.”

  Cole’s breathing stills. “How much more do you remember?”

  I kick at one of the rivets in the floor. “That’s the thing. I felt like I remembered a lot more, but now it’s gone again. I think Jun Bei’s memories are still being suppressed by the implant. They felt like an ocean when I glimpsed them—like they were going to sweep me away.”

  Cole’s face pales. “What do you mean, sweep you away?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, looking back to him. “There’s just so much of her, Cole, and there’s not much of me. I don’t know who I’d be with those memories inside me. I feel like I’ve already changed so much with the glimpses I’ve seen, and this is much more than that. There’s a wall holding it back right now, but I don’t know how long it’s going to last. I felt it cracking when the soldier was hurting you, and that’s when I ran the code. I didn’t even know what I was doing.”

  His expression softens. “You didn’t mean to kill him?”

  “No,” I breathe. “I don’t know if that’s better or worse. It just happened on instinct—but it was her instinct, Cole. It was an instinct from before Lachlan changed me. I’m acting more like her, and I don’t know if I can stop it.”

  Cole brings his hand to my cheek, his eyes tight with worry. “You have to lock that down, Cat. This is your life. It’s your mind. You have to take control of this before it takes control of you.”

  Something in his tone makes me take a step back from him. “Do you mean take control of the scythe, or of Jun Bei’s memories?”

  He glances at the house. “I think both of them could be dangerous. I told you Lachlan used to erase our memories all the time when he was running experiments on us. That’s why we stored the VR files and kept our scars. Erasing memories is easy—but suppressing them is hard. Why would Lachlan suppress Jun Bei’s memories rather than erasing them?”

  “I . . . I don’t know,” I say, “unless he wanted me to get them back someday.”

  “Exactly,” Cole says. “But why?”

  “They started coming back during the decryption,” I murmur, “but not completely. Dax said there was a part of the procedure that didn’t finish back at Sunnyvale—a command to the implant that glitched because I’d cut my panel out.” I look up suddenly. “What if Lachlan meant for me to get my memories back during the decryption? What if that’s what the code that glitched was supposed to do?”

  Cole’s eyes go distant, but he doesn’t answer. I stare at him, my mind spinning. Most of Lachlan’s plan has been brilliant—he faked his death, escaped from Cartaxus, and convinced us to send his code into every panel on the planet. But one thing hasn’t made sense—the fact that he thought I’d join him. After everything he’s done and everything I saw, he actually thought I’d help him.

  The thought is ridiculous. So ridiculous that it’s hard to believe that it was Lachlan’s plan at all. . . .

  And maybe it wasn’t.

  “He couldn’t have predicted that I’d cut my panel out and that the code would glitch,” I say. “He thought I’d have Jun Bei’s memories when he launched the attack on Sunnyvale.” The thought makes my breath still. With those memories back, I could be a different person. I don’t know if I’d be Jun Bei or if I’d still be me, but there’s a chance I would have seen that night through different eyes.

  I wouldn’t have been as afraid, that’s for sure. I have a scythe in my arm. When I faced Lachlan in the lab, he said that nobody in Sunnyvale posed a threat to me during the attack, and he was right. I could have walked through that crowd unharmed, leaving a trail of bodies behind me.

  I look up at Cole, my stomach tightening. “Does he think I’ll join him if I get Jun Bei’s memories back?”

  “I don’t know,” Cole says, his hand rising to my arm, gripping me. “What I do know is that you have a choice. If there’s a wall between you and those memories, it might be there for a good reason.”

  I close my eyes. I can’t imagine any memory that would change my mind so completely that I’d choose to work with Lachlan. His plan for the vaccine goes against everything I believe in. Personal choice. Freedom. The right to make up our own minds about our own bodies.

  But I can’t imagine a memory that would have made me kill another person as easily as I killed that soldier, either.

  I open my eyes. “Would Jun Bei have killed that soldier?”

  Cole looks away, dropping his hand from my arm. “It doesn’t matter what she would have done.”

  “It matters to me. Please. Would she have killed him?”

  He turns back, his eyes rising slowly to mine. It doesn’t feel like he’s really looking at me, though, as much as searching. Hunting for the answer to a question I don’t know. “Of course she would have killed him,” he says, his voice low. “She was protective of all of us, but especially of me. Jun Bei would have killed every person in that room, but not for hurting me. She would have killed them just to take the Comox.”

  CHAPTER 12

  COLE STEPS DOWN THE COMOX’S ramp and into the sun, squinting as he scans the desert. I follow him out across the cracked earth, the sun blinding overhead. I don’t know if it’s because of what Cole said about Jun Bei, or because I know it’s true, but even thinking about the ocean of memories locked inside me is suddenly enough to kick off a flare of panic.

  I don’t want to live with walls inside my mind, but I don’t want to lose myself, either. I don’t know who I’ll become if Jun Bei’s past sweeps back into me. I’m already chewing my nails like she used to, and I never did that at the cabin. Her past might be leaching through me in more ways than I can recognize. Would I even know if I was changing? I might be like the fabled frog in boiling water—not realizing that I’m becoming someone else until it’s too late.

  “I’ve never been to the desert before,” Cole says. “The colors are amazing.”

  I look around at the barren, rocky landscape, but all I see is shades of brown. My mind drifts back to his sketchbook, still hidden away in his backpack. “Do you still want to be an artist someday?”

  The question seems to take him by surprise. “Maybe. I want to make sure we have a someday to look forward to first.” He pauses, one hand rubbing the bandage on his ribs, and stares into the distance. “Someone’s coming.”

  I follow his eyes. There’s a vehicle heading toward us, kicking up a cloud of dust. “I’ll get the others.”

  “Wait . . . ,” he says. “I think that’s my jeep.”

  I squint, staring at the vehicle. It’s dark, enveloped by the dust, but now that I’m looking for it, I can make out the familiar lines of a hulking black Cartaxus jeep. It’s scuffed, the solars slightly too small. Definitely Cole’s. We had to replace the solars Marcus stole when he cut the healing tech core out of my panel, and Cole couldn’t find a proper replacement. “Maybe Cartaxus sent it down for us.”

  “No,” Col
e says, a smile spreading across his face.

  The door to the house flies open behind us, and Leoben runs out, a rifle in his hands. He slows as he sees the jeep. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

  “What is it?” Mato asks, following him.

  “We’ve got backup,” Leoben says, grinning.

  The jeep races across the desert, bouncing indiscriminately over rocks and shrubs, its engine whining. It skirts a patch of boulders and then screeches to a stop in front of us, kicking up a wall of dust. I shy away, closing my eyes against the cloud of dirt and grit, and the jeep’s driver side door swings open.

  A girl my age steps out. She’s tall, dressed in black tactical pants and a Cartaxus tank top, her long blond hair pulled back in a high ponytail. Her skin is tan, a dusting of freckles on her nose and cheeks, her piercing eyes the same ice-blue shade as Cole’s. Lean muscles flex beneath geometric patterns tattooed on her arms, and a jolt of memories runs through me as she strides across the desert.

  It’s Anna Sinclair. Zarathustra Subject Two.

  “Hey, assholes,” she says.

  Cole runs for her, and she launches herself at him, laughing, wrapping her arms around his neck. He hugs her fiercely, his eyes clenched shut.

  “Cole, your hair,” she says, pushing him away, messing with his tousled curls. “You look ridiculous.”

  “Love the tats,” Leoben says, running to join them. Anna throws her arms around him, and the three of them sway in a tight embrace.

  Part of me bends toward them as they hold each other, but I can’t bring myself to join them. I feel frozen, watching them. They look so natural, so right together. A family.

  I’m part of that family too, but I feel like I’m standing outside the sphere of their shared past, and I can’t see a way through.

  Anna runs a hand over Leoben’s buzz cut. “And you’re blond? Who let you guys make these terrible decisions?” She turns, her eyes narrowing as they land on Mato.

  The smile drops from her face as her gaze finally moves to me.

  “Holy shit,” she breathes. Memories rush through me as her ice-blue eyes hold mine. I see her young and frightened, crouching in a white lab with a hairless kitten clutched in her arms. I see her sitting with Cole on a gray bunk bed, laughing with him.

  I see her lying on the floor, a pool of dark blood spreading from a cut on her neck.

  The memories drag a twisted mix of shock, affection, and anger through me. Seeing Anna doesn’t feel the same as it did when I first remembered my past with Cole or Leoben. There is no locked door opening inside me, no sudden surge of love. I can tell that Jun Bei loved Anna, but it’s more complicated than that. There was a divide between them—something cold and vast and violent—and I can feel it unfolding between us too.

  “You look just like him,” she says, stepping closer. A thread of tension tightens in my shoulders as she approaches. She’s a foot taller than me, lean and long-limbed, walking with the same lethal grace as Cole and Leoben. She’s a black-out agent too. That’s what Cole said, and I can see it in her stance and her movements. She doesn’t have any leylines that I can see, but a low hum of danger still seems to radiate from her. Even when I’ve fought Leoben, I haven’t felt as small or weak as I do right now with her standing over me.

  “Anna—” Cole starts.

  “I know who she is,” Anna says, her eyes never leaving mine. “It came up on a spec ops feed from central command last night. I didn’t know whether to believe it or not.” She leans closer, but not to embrace me like Leoben did when he and I first saw each other after I learned the truth. There’s no warmth in the look she gives me, just distant curiosity.

  Curiosity, and a barely concealed undercurrent of threat.

  “You even have his nose,” she says, “his jaw. But it’s really you, isn’t it, Jun Bei?”

  My throat tightens. “It’s . . . complicated. We still don’t really understand what Lachlan did, but my DNA—”

  “Yep,” Anna says, straightening, turning back to Cole. “That’s Jun Bei, all right.”

  “My name is Catarina.”

  She turns back to me swiftly, her eyes wide. “You’re keeping the name he gave you?”

  Her voice is hard, and I feel a lick of anger rising in response. It felt natural to hug Lee when I remembered our past together, and it was natural to fall into Cole’s arms, but it’s completely different with Anna. There’s something between us that I don’t understand. The only thing that feels natural is to cross my arms and return the glare she’s giving me.

  “I’ll call myself what I want. I’m not the same person I was before.”

  She cocks an eyebrow. “You sure sound like the same person.”

  “Whoa,” Leoben says, walking to my side, slinging his arm around my shoulders. “You can call her squid. She likes that.”

  “Dammit, Lee,” I say, but he grins at me, and it somehow eases the tension in the air.

  “She’s telling the truth, Anna,” Leoben says. “She’s not the same. But none of us are really the same people we were back then, right?”

  Anna looks between the three of us, then rolls her shoulders. “Fine, whatever. Let’s talk about this mission.”

  “Yes, let’s,” Mato says, stepping into the circle of conversation. He’s been standing silently, watching us, a frustrated look on his face. “Why are you here, Anna?”

  Anna gestures to the jeep. “This thing returned itself to my base last night. I looked up your mission specs and figured I’d come down and save your asses. I told my commander that any mission you were running was sure to be a shitshow and you could use all the help you could get.”

  “Do you two know each other?” Leoben asks, looking between Anna and Mato. “Anna isn’t usually this mean to strangers.”

  “We spent five months stationed in Alaska together,” Mato says, his voice hard. “Small base, tight quarters.”

  Leoben nods. “That’ll do it.”

  “We learned a lot about each other, though,” Anna says, crossing her arms, “including the fact that Mato here has a price on his head if he sets foot inside Entropia. This whole mission is screwed.”

  I turn to Mato. “Is that true?”

  He pushes a hand back through his dark hair, glaring at Anna, but he doesn’t reply.

  “That’s just great,” Leoben says. “Why the hell is there a price on your head?”

  Mato blows out a breath, looking out at the desert. “Because I started a resistance group here. We tried to overthrow Regina’s rule, but we failed.”

  I search Mato’s face. He can’t be more than nineteen now, but it sounds like this was years ago. “How old were you?”

  “Sixteen,” he says, “but age doesn’t mean the same thing in Entropia as it does in the rest of the world. Regina did some of her best work in her teens. You have to understand—Entropia’s only currency is code. Regina’s fortune is considerable, and that’s given her enough power to rule for decades, but she hasn’t been on the forefront of some of gentech’s latest advancements. Her people were starting to question her, and I managed to convince some of them that I had enough potential to take her place.”

  Anna snorts. “Not enough of them, clearly. You had to run away to Cartaxus.”

  “Thankfully I did,” Mato snaps, “otherwise we wouldn’t have a chance of finding Lachlan. It could take weeks to search that city. We’re going to need help, and I’m the only person who can get it for us.”

  Cole shakes his head. “I’m okay with talking to Regina, but not if there’s a price on your head.”

  “I have a plan, trust me,” Mato says, frustrated. “I know how to handle myself here.”

  Anna rolls her eyes. “You know how to handle yourself? You couldn’t fight your way out of a bag. This mission is bullshit. You’re going to get thrown into a cell—”

  “Entropia doesn’t have cells,” Mato says. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Anna. If we’re caught, I’ll be taken to Regina, w
hich is the only way we’re going to reach her. Once I’m taken to her, I’ll be able to talk to her. Otherwise, we can stand around outside this city arguing for the next three days, and Brink will kill us all.”

  Anna frowns. “You want to get captured? That’s your plan?”

  “Millions of lives are at stake right now,” Mato says. “I know you don’t think much of me, Anna, but there’s a reason that I’m in central command and you’re a member of the military division that’s sworn to follow our orders. The three of you can discuss tactics as much as you want, but the mission is going ahead. I’m going to find some supplies. We’ll leave when I’m done.”

  He turns and strides toward the house. Anna watches him leave, her hand clenched into a fist at her side. She lets out a groan when the front door swings shut behind him. “I hate that guy,” she says. “Does he still do the pen-twirling thing?”

  “Oh yeah,” Leoben says. “He’s pretty good at it.”

  Cole’s eyes are distant. “He’s right,” he says. “This plan is probably the best way to find Lachlan. It’s risky, but I don’t know if there are any safer options. We should load up the jeep.”

  “On it,” Leoben says, his arm still around my shoulders. “We’ll scope out the supplies.”

  “Okay,” Cole says. “Anna and I need to catch up.”

  Leoben looks between them for a moment, but nods. “Yeah, sure. Come on, squid. Let’s get you some food.”

  I let Leoben guide me through the front door into a messy hallway with dirt and sand tracked through it. The house looks as bad inside as it does outside, but that’s probably the point. Anyone breaking in will see a dump, and they’ll leave it alone.

  Leoben heads for a hidden trapdoor set into the floor at the back of the house that reveals a staircase leading to a dimly lit basement. I follow him down into a concrete hallway with a massive storage room branching off it, lined with shelves holding clothes, blankets, and toiletries. I look around for Mato, but he’s nowhere in sight.