by Emily Suvada
“We’re here because of the vaccine,” Mato says. “We’re looking for Lachlan. It’s important.”
“Then you should have called,” she says. “It’s been years. I haven’t heard a word from you.”
“You banished me,” Mato says.
She turns to him. “You still could have called. I didn’t know if you were alive or dead.”
Mato sighs. “You knew I was alive, Regina.”
I look between the two of them, confused. They’re talking to each other like a mother and a child. “Are you two related?”
Regina’s head snaps to me, her eyebrows rising. “No. But I have known Mato since he was born. His parents worked with me, here in Entropia. They’re in a bunker now. I’m sure he calls them.”
Mato tilts his head back, closing his eyes in frustration. “Banished upon pain of death. Those were your words.”
“Oh, you had to leave,” Regina says, “and not just because of your little coup. There’s a reason we don’t allow children at Entropia, and I shouldn’t have made an exception for you. This city is a place of radical ideas, but its citizens have all chosen to embrace them. You didn’t get that choice, and it was a mistake to take it from you.” She looks him up and down appraisingly. “It was important for you to leave and experience another culture.”
Mato scrapes a hand over his face. “Yes, yes, my personal development. I remember. Look, we need your help. There’s a new strain of the virus, and it’s resisting the vaccine.”
“Yes, I’m aware,” she says, turning to another one of the cages. She swings open the door and lifts in the raven from her shoulder. “I’ve had people trying to get a sample of it, but they haven’t been able to. The infection rate seems low. I’m not concerned yet.”
“But it still has an infection rate,” I say. “That’s dangerous. The virus could evolve if it can keep spreading like this.”
“You sound like Lachlan,” she says. “And no, before you ask, I don’t know where he is. I’ve been trying to patch the vaccine. I’d like to keep my people protected from this little outbreak too.”
“This little outbreak has gone global,” Mato says. “Yes, the infection rate is low, but it’s not being contained, either. Cartaxus has given us three days to find Lachlan and patch the code before they launch flood protocol.”
Regina goes still, her hand frozen on the side of the cage, then shakes her head as though shaking a thought away. “Brink won’t actually do that,” she says. “And Lachlan would give him the code before he did, anyway. They’re just old friends having an argument.”
“This is real, Regina,” Mato snaps. “People are dying from this outbreak, and Cartaxus is serious about flood protocol. Brink has a scythe now, and he’s planning to use it. You’ve been in your bubble too long.”
“Maybe you’ve been at Cartaxus too long,” she says, her voice growing sharp. “This is obviously about the Origin code that Lachlan added during the decryption.”
“Origin code?” I ask. She clearly means the extra four million lines that were added to the vaccine—Lachlan’s daemon code.
Regina nods. “Yes, Origin code. A road map to the human mind. I’ve been working on my own version for years, but it isn’t nearly as advanced as Lachlan’s, from what I’ve managed to read so far. We’ve been altering our bodies for decades, but we’ve never had much of a chance to change our brains. I’m thrilled he’s finally created code that will let us do it.”
I almost laugh. I have a cuff around my arm and an implant in my brain that were designed by Regina. She’s leading a city full of genehackers who treat her like a queen. She has to be one of the most innovative engineers in human history.
But she also seems completely oblivious.
“Lachlan doesn’t want to let us do anything,” I say. “He added that code to the vaccine so that he could alter the minds of every person on the planet. It’s not a tool for us to use. It’s a weapon he’s using to change us all because he thinks we’re broken.”
Regina looks genuinely surprised. “Are you sure of that?”
“Of course I’m sure. Mato, show her the note.”
Mato’s eyes glaze, and a page of text hovers in the air between us. It’s the note we found when Mato was hacking the implant in my head. The last line sends a chill through me.
A new era for humanity has arrived, and the world will never be the same.
Regina stares at the note for a long, silent moment before turning, pacing across the room. “I know Lachlan well, and he’s an idealist, but this is extreme even for him.” Her eyes go distant, turning something over in her mind. “We’ll have to figure out a way to contact him.”
“He’s in your city,” I say.
Her head lifts. “Why do you think that?”
“Because I have one of your implants in my head with a tracker in it, and we traced him back to here.”
She searches my face, her black eyes narrowing, then turns to the pale-furred genehacker at the door. “Cambear.”
The hacker steps forward, a rifle clutched in her claw-tipped hands. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Send drones to watch the entrance tunnels.” Regina strides to a cabinet above one of the benches, swiping her thumb over a black lens in the door to open it. She pulls out a steel box. “Get me security footage from the city and scan it. He might have altered his facial dimensions again—make sure you’re being thorough.” She swings open the box and pulls out a clip of what looks like ammunition. “If you see him, try to hit him with one of these.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Cambear steps forward and takes the clip, then turns and hurries out of the lab.
“What was in that clip?” Mato asks.
“Weevils,” Regina says, closing the box, pressing her hands to the lid. “Yours are programmed to keep you out of the city, but if we can hit Lachlan with one, then we can keep him in.”
“So you’ll help us find him?” Mato asks.
“I didn’t say that. I’ll find him,” she says. “I’m not convinced that any of this is the threat you think it is, but you’ve concerned me enough to look into it.”
“Let us in, then,” Mato says. “We can help.”
“You’re still banished,” Regina says. “I might be willing to come to an agreement for a temporary stay, though. For the right terms.”
“You’re not in a position to barter,” Mato snaps. “Flood protocol will kill you and your people too. Even if you don’t believe me, you can’t take that risk.”
“They’re my people,” she says, crossing her arms. “I’ll take whatever risks I please.”
“Fine,” Mato says, sighing. “What do you want? Comoxes? Code? I can get you practically anything by the end of the day.”
Regina lifts her head, thinking. “I’ll take Catarina.”
I step back, my elbow hitting the invisible wall of the safehouse. “What do you mean, you’ll take me?”
“Your DNA has fascinated me for a long time,” she says. “I’ve been trying to design ways to change people’s natural DNA for decades now.”
“I thought your city was founded on not experimenting on other people,” I say.
“Oh, it is,” she says. “Not against their will, at least. You wouldn’t be a subject, though. You would be one of the scientists. I’ve seen your code. I know you’re perfectly capable of doing research on yourself. I’d merely be supervising and guiding your work. Come and work with me in my lab while your friends are searching for Lachlan. You’d all be welcome guests in Entropia. You might even like it here.”
“She’s not a bargaining chip,” Mato says. “She’s part of this mission.”
“It seems to me like you don’t have a mission if you can’t get into the city.”
Mato throws his hands up. “I’m not trading Catarina to get back into my home to save you. I’m sorry I tried to take over your city, but you’re in danger right now—all your people are in danger—and if you can’t see it, then you don’t deserve to be lead
ing them anymore.”
A look of pain flashes across Regina’s face before she turns away. “Fine,” she says, crossing her arms. “If that’s how you feel, then you clearly don’t need my help. You can go back to Cartaxus and tell Brink I’ll fix the vaccine myself.”
She waves a hand, and her laboratory disappears.
CHAPTER 15
I BLINK BACK INTO THE safehouse, my eyes slowly shifting into focus after the VR session. Cole grabs my arm to steady me, and I can’t help but flinch at his touch. He draws his hand away, confused at my reaction.
Mato grabs the wall for balance, shaking his head as though trying to clear his vision. Leoben and Anna are standing across from us, watching him. They must have been here the whole time, listening to everything we said.
“That sounded like a shitshow,” Anna says. She lifts her arm, showing Mato a red puncture wound in the middle of one of her tattoos. “Was it part of your central command plan to get shot and locked out of the city?”
“No,” Mato says. “That wasn’t what was supposed to happen. She’s worse than she was when I left.”
“She offered us a way in,” I say. “She wants to work with me and study my DNA.”
“Yeah, we figured that part out,” Cole says. “I agree with Mato—you’re not a bargaining chip. If she’s working with Lachlan and he needs your DNA, then going into her lab would be the end of his plan. You can’t seriously be thinking about doing that.”
I rub the puncture wound on the back of my hand, glancing at Mato. Part of me knows it would be wildly dangerous to agree to Regina’s terms—if there’s a chance she’s working with Lachlan, then giving her access to my DNA would be the same as giving it to him. I’ve been worried about walking into a trap, and this is probably the most obvious trap I could imagine.
It’s almost too obvious.
“I don’t think she’s working with him,” I say. “She doesn’t seem to have any idea what’s going on. She’s organizing a party right now. She wants to study my DNA, but I don’t think she’ll do anything against my will. Mato said Entropia’s currency is code, and I think she’s just making an offer in the terms she’s used to.”
“You’d really consider her deal?” Mato asks.
“I guess so. I mean, I’m not thrilled about it, but she has drones, and guards, and cameras. She can help us find Lachlan.”
Cole shakes his head. “She wants to make you an experiment. She’ll hurt you, I promise. You can’t trust these people. They’re all the same.”
I pause, my finger still pressed to the wound on my hand. “What do you mean—these people? Do you mean coders?”
Cole shakes his head. “You know what I mean.”
But I don’t know if I do. I’m a coder too, and it’s starting to become clear that Cole doesn’t trust me either.
“It’s Catarina’s decision,” Mato says, an edge to his voice. “She can protect herself. She made that clear when she used her scythe to get you and Leoben out of that lab.”
Cole looks between me and Mato. “You can’t really be thinking of making this deal. This is madness. I’m calling Brink.”
“Brink isn’t accepting comms anymore,” Mato says. “Not after Catarina threatened him.”
“What?” I ask. “Does he seriously think I could kill him with a comm? I was bluffing.”
“Well, it obviously worked,” Mato says. “He’s gone into lockdown, so I’m the highest-ranking central command officer you’re going to be able to reach right now. I think we still have a chance of getting into the city without this deal, but if we can’t, then it’s up to Catarina as to whether or not she wants to take it.”
“How else would we get in?” Leoben asks, lifting his hand. There’s a puncture wound in the same place as mine—the pad between his thumb and forefinger. “I’m pretty into tech, but I have no idea how to remove one of these things.”
“I know someone,” Mato says. “A skinhacker. She works at a market near the closest checkpoint. We can drive there and see if she can remove them. She’s expensive, though. We might need to trade the Comox.”
“That’s a hell of a deal,” Leoben says. “I hope you know, it sounds to me like we’re giving away a Comox because you wouldn’t call your mom.”
“Regina isn’t my mom,” Mato says.
“Oh, shut up, you guys,” Anna groans, pushing away from the wall. “Let’s go. I want to get this thing out of my arm.”
Leoben and Cole check the house over before we pile into the jeep and pull away, Cole driving with Anna beside him in the passenger seat. Leoben is sitting cross-legged with his back against the rear doors, and Mato and I are opposite each other, leaning back against the jeep’s sides.
None of us are talking, but Cole and Anna make small noises of amusement every now and then that make me think they’re texting each other. I open my comm interface, but there’s nothing waiting for me—no group chat—just a backlog of Novak’s broadcasts from the Skies mailing list and a picture of a squid wearing sunglasses that Leoben sent me while we were flying. Whatever Cole and Anna are talking about, they’re keeping it private.
I still don’t know what to make of the conversation I overheard between them. They could be worried I’ll do something reckless—I did blow up an airlock at Homestake, and I knocked Cole out when I went in to face Lachlan at the Zarathustra lab. I got Cole and Lee out of the lab by using lethal code I didn’t even know I had, so I guess it makes sense that Cole might be worried I’ll do something to jeopardize the mission.
But that still doesn’t ease the pain of hearing him talk about me like that.
Mato sits up straighter, looking out the window once we hit the road that leads to Entropia’s border crossing. Billboards for the market line the road, offering food and immunity, ammunition and freezepaks. The city itself—and the mountain it’s built on—inches out of the haze, revealing metal spires twisting up from towering buildings, wooden houses leaning against their foundations, a flock of pigeons forming a cloud around the mountain’s peak. The stretch of razorgrass encircling the mountain gleams in the sun, vast and deadly, the color of wine.
“How are there this many people here?” Anna asks, leaning forward to stare through the windshield as we approach the market. Dozens of tables piled high with goods to trade are set up in a loose semicircle around the checkpoint, red-and-white awnings stretched over them. There’s a café with a seating area, and a handful of groups selling supplies in the parking lot from the backs of their trucks. There must be hundreds of people here. I haven’t seen this many since we went into Homestake.
“Not all of Regina’s people live in the city,” Mato says. “A lot of them are out here in the desert. They use markets like this to trade tech and code. Most of this corner of Nevada is populated by genehackers.”
“Nevada can have them,” Anna says, wrinkling her nose. “I don’t know why you people want to turn yourselves into freaks.”
I can’t help but roll my eyes. “Should you really be calling people freaks, Anna? How many chromosomes do you have?”
“Forty-six,” she says, spinning around. “I’m the only one of us who was born with the right number. You really don’t remember anything, do you?”
“No,” I murmur. “Not really. So what’s special about your DNA? What was your gift?”
She stares at me for a second, then turns back to the front, exchanging a look with Cole. “I don’t know. Lachlan never told me.”
Her tone is light, but something tells me she’s lying. I try to remember the paper file that Lachlan kept on her. There was nothing special mentioned—just a few notes about a problem with her skin. It was covered in tiny bumps, and there was a mention of buildup and overgrowth in a lot of her body’s systems.
There are a lot of mutations that could lead to effects like that, though.
“You sure about going into this crowd, Mato?” Leoben asks as we pull in to the market, slowing to a crawl when we reach the parking lot. The people
milling around us glance at the jeep as we roll past, but not with any real curiosity. It’s an unusual vehicle, but it isn’t obviously from Cartaxus. Cole swings us into an empty spot with a view of the market.
“I can see the person we need,” Mato says. “I’ll go and talk to her. It might be easier if you come along, Catarina. Lachlan is something of a celebrity in Entropia, and you will be too after the vaccine’s broadcast. It won’t hurt to have you there to prove that this is important.”
“Sure,” I mumble, hunting through the bag of clothes Leoben printed, dragging out a blue cotton T-shirt to pull on over my Cartaxus tank top. I don’t really like the thought of being a celebrity, especially after the vaccine’s broadcast. Every word of that speech was a lie, and I only said it because I didn’t think I was going to live to see the aftermath.
“I’ll walk a patrol,” Anna says. “We need eyes on the other side of the market, and Cole and Lee are obviously Cartaxus meatheads.”
“Gee, thanks,” Leoben says.
Mato shoots a glance at Anna. “Honestly, you’re probably going to stand out the most here. In Entropia you’d be called a norm—someone who’s clinging to the traditionalist view of what a human looks like. At least Cole and Leoben have leylines. You look like you’ve just stepped out of a bunker.”
“Hoo boy,” Leoben mutters.
Anna’s eyes flare. “Listen, freak. Your rank isn’t going to protect you for much longer if you keep talking to me like that.”
Mato just shakes his head. “Hollow threats aren’t becoming on a black-out agent, Anna.”
She grabs her seat belt to unbuckle it and launch herself at him, but Cole grabs her arm.
“Hey,” he says, his voice low and firm. “Just chill, okay? Lee, why don’t you go and watch from the other side? Let’s focus on getting these things out of us.”
“Okay,” Leoben says, swinging open the jeep’s rear doors. “But you gotta call me back over if those two fight for real.”
