This Cruel Design

by Emily Suvada

  He climbs out and heads through the crowd. I slide from the back of the jeep with Mato, swinging the doors shut behind us. A smile plays across his lips as we head into the crowd.

  “Why do you rile her up like that?” I hiss. “She’ll kick your ass.”

  He shakes his head. “She can try any time she likes. They think they’re better than us because of their bodies and what they’ve been trained to do. They have no idea how the world really works. They’re never going to be in control of anything.”

  I stop, grabbing the sleeve of his jacket, yanking him to face me. The urge to defend the others is sudden and overwhelming. “That’s my family you’re talking about. You can’t say things like that. I care about them.”

  Mato looks down at my hand on his arm, surprised. “Do you?” he asks, but there’s no edge to his voice. He sounds genuinely curious. “Then why was Jun Bei in Entropia three years ago while they were locked up in a lab?”

  I draw my hand back from his sleeve. “Lachlan brought her here. He must have been keeping her prisoner.”

  Mato steps closer. “Don’t play the fool, Catarina. You’re smarter than this. We both know Lachlan didn’t give Jun Bei that cuff on your arm. It’s not the kind of thing you give to someone you’re keeping prisoner. How else would she get it?”

  I drop my eyes to the gleaming black glass around my arm. “I—I don’t know. I haven’t figured that out yet.”

  Mato peers at me, intrigued. “Well, hopefully you can find out once we get in.”

  He starts to head back through the crowd, waiting until I follow him. A couple of people stop talking as we walk past, their eyes pausing on my face in recognition. I slip the elastic out of my braid and unknot my hair, letting it hang in curtains around my face.

  The crowd grows thicker around the market. Long tables are lined up below tarpaulin awnings, selling piles of produce and salvaged pieces of tech. Some of the people look like they’ve come from miles away—survivors in trailers, families with children—but there are plenty of wild-looking genehackers who look like they’ve come from inside the city. The air smells like burned plastic, the scent wafting from a hulking line of solar printers. A group of people are gathered around the crush chute line, tossing in scrap plastic, pulling out freshly printed tools and components.

  Mato walks toward a stall selling genehacked vegetables. Long, curled bean pods with strangely translucent skin are piled beside mounds of potatoes in various colors. A girl steps forward to meet us. She’s clearly a genehacker, with brown, strangely smooth skin that glistens in the sun and forms narrow, straight folds around her joints. Her muscles are long and angular, her face exquisitely crafted. She looks like a doll come to life. A pendant hanging around her neck holds an ID glyph that my panel throws into the edge of my vision, offering me her public profile, pronouns, and name. Rhine.

  “Mato,” she says, smiling. “I heard whispers you were back. It’s been a long time.”

  “News travels fast,” he says, pulling her into a hug across the table. “Rhine, I want to introduce you to Catarina.”

  “I know who she is.”

  I hold out my hand. She shakes it firmly, her skin cold and smooth, like leather.

  “I’m glad I found you,” Mato says. “I was actually hoping to make a deal with you.”

  “Oh yeah?” she asks, running her fingers across a block of something on the table. It shivers under her touch, and I flinch, staring at it. It is exactly what it looks like. A slab of pale meat, grown to the exact size and shape of the scratched plastic container beside it. Its skin is light pink and eerily wrinkled, dusted with the finest layer of gossamer blond hairs.

  Rhine follows my eyes. “We call them kilomeat. They’re all vehicle, no driver, with the absolute minimum of nerve fibers. Portable protein.” She lifts the pale oblong up and turns it in her hands, holding it out for me to hold.

  I back away. “I’m okay.”

  “You prefer the real thing?” she asks. “You like your meals to come from something that had to die for you?”

  “I don’t eat meat,” I say.

  Rhine grins. “Like hell you don’t. Where’d you get your doses?”

  “Well, except for that.”

  She flips the kilomeat between her hands. “These can be infected with a syringe, but you have to be careful about making sure they get to second stage.”

  I blink, staring at her. “That’s human?”

  “Mostly.” She sets it back down on the table. It twitches, and I suppress a shudder. She looks back at Mato. “So what do you need?”

  He pulls back his sleeve to show her the puncture wound from the weevil, but pauses, looking over his shoulder.

  I follow his gaze. The jeep is still parked at the edge of the market, but Cole is standing outside it, his rifle in his hands, watching a busload of people that has just pulled in. They’re getting off slowly, carrying suitcases and bags, and one of them seems to be arguing with the guards at the checkpoint. They have gas masks and goggles strapped to their faces, which would normally be common in a market like this, but nobody else here is wearing them.

  Cartaxus hasn’t broadcast the news about the mutated strain yet. As far as these people know, they’re vaccinated and safe.

  I glance back at Cole. He’s moving through the crowd now, heading toward us. Rhine’s smile freezes as the shouting near the bus grows louder. She reaches beneath the table, sliding out a shotgun. Everyone in the market is stopping what they’re doing, turning to the group, and Cole picks up his pace, his eyes flashing to black. My stomach clenches. People are surging for the checkpoint, running toward the group.

  It takes me a long, confused moment to understand what’s happening.

  But then I see her.

  A woman. Young, dark-haired, wearing a camouflage jacket and cut-off shorts, her hair pulled back. Black-and-blue bruises cover her face and the exposed skin of her legs. Her eyes are glazed, and she’s shouting at the guards at the checkpoint, swinging at them, but the people in the gas masks are holding her back. They look like her friends or family—like they’ve brought her here to get help.

  But instead they’ve just brought an infected woman into a crowd.

  I suck in a breath, catching the barest whiff of sulfur, and clamp my hand over my nose. Suddenly the rising energy in the market makes sense. The raised voices. The people running for the group in gas masks. This is the Wrath. The woman’s scent is drifting through the crowd. My fingers are pinched over my nose, but I can already feel the response rising in me.

  It’s wrong, though.

  This woman is first stage, no doubt about it. The mottled black-and-blue bruises on her skin are unmistakable. They’re the first sign of infection, and they always fade to yellow or green by the time the second stage hits. This woman shouldn’t be carrying the scent right now. She shouldn’t even be walking. She should be laid up with a fever, not fighting wildly with Entropia’s guards. I glance back at Cole, grabbing Mato’s arm, pulling him away from the group, but the crowd is thick on every side, and the Wrath is spreading fast. It’s most dangerous in a crowd like this. The response can spread like wildfire, and a group of people this big can turn on one another instead of the infected.

  If we don’t get out of here soon, we might lose ourselves to it too.

  “Come on!” I yell, dragging Mato back through the crowd, heading for Cole, trying to keep my hand locked over my nose. A man shoves past me, almost knocking me down as he bolts for the checkpoint. The screaming is getting louder, the energy of the crowd growing frantic. “We need to get back to the jeep!”

  Mato’s hand is clamped on his nose too, but I can see him fighting back the response, shaking against the Wrath. Cole is running for me, shoving past people, shouting something I can’t hear. I push past a table piled high with broken genkits, elbowing my way through the throng, when a woman grabs my wrist, fingernails clawing into my arm.

  It’s too late. The crowd is already turning on on
e another.

  “Cole!” I shout, shoving the woman away. I have to drop my hand from my nose, and the scent that takes its place hits me like a wave. “Nightstick!”

  But I don’t know if he can hear me. The woman stumbles, snarling, but more people take her place, grabbing at my face, my cuff, my shirt. I bring my arms up to shield my eyes, looking behind me for Mato. Across the marketplace, the infected woman breaks free from a snarling pack of people, her panel blinking, her body bitten and bleeding. There are gashes on her legs and face, a pulse of blood pumping from her neck.

  She straightens, shuddering, and horror grips me as she throws her head back.

  A roar rips through the air as she detonates.

  CHAPTER 16

  I THROW MYSELF ONTO THE ground as the shockwave hits us. A billowing wall of steam slams into the market, toppling the tables. Food and broken pieces of tech go flying. Umbrellas rip free of their holders and wheel into the air, and the bus tilts and crashes onto its side. I bring my hand up, locking it over my nose and mouth out of instinct, but this cloud isn’t the scarlet mist I’m used to seeing. It doesn’t rise into a plume, a single finger of fine droplets stretching up for the wind to carry it.

  Instead, it explodes outward, in a spray of droplets, splinters, and shredded meat.

  My stomach heaves at the feeling of it splattering across my skin. I want to keep holding my breath, but my lungs are burning, and it’s no use, anyway. I’m already covered in it. The infected woman had a panel in her arm, which means this is the mutated strain of the virus.

  It’s resisting the vaccine, and everyone here is covered in it.

  I push myself shakily to my knees, my ears whining in the aftermath of the blast. The crowd is silent, held in a moment of collective disbelief. The woman nearest me scrambles to her feet, glassy-eyed with shock. A metal rod from the scrap table is jutting from her abdomen. She looks down at it, swaying, and lets out a scream.

  The crowd’s silence shatters like glass.

  Screams rise around me. I drop my hand from my nose and heave in a lungful of air, choking on the hot, humid stench of blood and plague. The scent has shifted away from the crucial notes that trigger the Wrath, and people aren’t fighting with one another anymore. Now they’re terrified, covered in infected blood, scrambling to get away from the marketplace. My eyes burn, my vision swimming with tears as I push myself to my feet. Cole barges through a group of people, his eyes black, and grabs the top of my arm to haul me up. “Come on!” he shouts. “We need to get out of here.”

  I grab the side of a toppled stall for balance, turning to look for Mato. He’s behind an upturned table, pushing aside boxes of cables and wires to get back to the jeep. A stampede is starting—hundreds of dirty bodies scrambling over each other to get away from the crater. The crowd is panicking. Everyone knows that blower wasn’t normal. People don’t carry the scent in the first stage of infection, and they certainly don’t detonate. There was no proper cloud, no climbing mist. Just an assault of biological shrapnel sprayed across the market.

  And it might have infected us all.

  Cole drags me away from the stall and back toward the parking lot. Mato follows, and the jeep races closer, swerving through a stall, sending it toppling. The doors swing open, Anna leaping out of the passenger side, her rifle clutched in her hands. “Get in!” she yells.

  Cole breaks into a run, dragging me with him. Leoben is in the driver’s seat, watching the crowd, his shoulders tight. We climb through the rear doors and into the back, scrambling in to make room for Mato. Anna slams the rear doors shut behind us, racing to the front, and we surge forward as Leoben floors the accelerator.

  “What the hell?” he asks, whipping his head around. “Are you infected?”

  “I’ll check,” I say, summoning my cuff’s menu, trying to get it to give me a reader wire.

  “Head for the city,” Mato says.

  “We can’t go there,” Anna says, lifting her arm, showing us the puncture wound from the weevil. “Did you forget about these?”

  “We don’t need to get inside,” Mato says, “just into Entropia’s perimeter. Regina has a no-fly agreement with Cartaxus, but it doesn’t extend out here.”

  Leoben wrenches the wheel, turning us around, the jeep’s tires bouncing over a toppled stall. We speed back toward the scattering crowd, heading for the gates at the checkpoint. They’re open now—vehicles pouring through. The screams from the market fade as we careen onto the road and join the flood of cars speeding along the dusty trail that cuts through the razorgrass border. But I don’t know why everyone is running. If we’re all infected, then getting away from the crater isn’t going to help.

  “Why do we need to get into a no-fly zone?” I ask.

  “Because Cartaxus is quarantining the new strain,” Mato says.

  My breath hitches. He means that drones are coming. I close my eyes, remembering the points of light racing across the sky before Cartaxus’s drones blew Sunnyvale to hell. That’s what quarantining means. Blasting potential threats into dust.

  Cartaxus is going to do the same thing to the marketplace.

  The reader wire slithers from my cuff. I grab it with my filthy hand, unfurling it.

  “Here, this is faster,” Mato says, pulling the metal pen from his pocket. He flicks off the cap and jams it against his wrist, then passes it to me. A blue circle blossoms across his skin. “As long as this stays blue, we’re okay.”

  I take the pen and jam it into my wrist. It pinches, hissing, a prickling feeling spreading across my skin. I press it to Cole’s wrist, then pass it to Leoben.

  “How long do we need to wait?” Cole asks.

  “Not long,” Mato says. “A minute at most.”

  Leoben stabs the pen into his arm, though he doesn’t really need to test himself, then passes it to Anna.

  “What the hell was with that detonation?” she asks, pressing the pen to her wrist. “Was that because of the new strain?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I say. “That’s what I want to check.”

  I swipe the tip of the reader wire across my arm, picking up a streak of the foam. Dax said the blasts from the new strain were smaller than usual, but he didn’t say they were happening to people who were first stage. That’s unheard of. Dax is first stage. He’s probably as far along now as the woman in the market was. My eyes cut to Leoben. I don’t know if he’s realized what this means.

  My vision flashes, returning the results of the scan on the virus, showing me a dozen charts and genetic diagrams. The infected woman was definitely carrying a mutated strain—it has hundreds of genetic variations I haven’t seen before. Dax wasn’t exaggerating when he said this strain was a serious mutation. It’s practically a different virus. I don’t understand how a strain like this could have evolved so quickly.

  “It’s the new strain, isn’t it?” Cole asks.

  “Yeah,” I say, “but that doesn’t mean we’re in danger. The infection rate is still low.”

  “Well, I’m clear,” Anna says, lifting her hand. I glance at the circles on the others, and on my wrist. All blue. I slump in relief.

  “Well, that’s good,” Cole says, leaning forward, “but we’ve got company.”

  Mato’s head snaps around, looking through the window. A cloud of drones is racing up from the south, splitting as they approach the market. They’re not forming a blast formation like they did over Sunnyvale, though. They’re dividing into two groups. Four drones are heading for the marketplace.

  And another set of four are coming after us.

  “Shit,” Cole says, “we need to hurry.”

  Leoben floors the accelerator. We race across the desert, bouncing over the rocky ground.

  “Can’t you call Cartaxus?” I ask Mato. “Tell them we’re here. Brink doesn’t want to kill us.”

  “I already have,” he says, his eyes glazed. “I called them from back in the marketplace. They’re not listening to me.”

  Leoben sw
erves around a stalled car, the jeep swaying with the movement. “So what do we do? Are we screwed?”

  “We need to make it to the no-fly zone,” Mato says, clutching the side of the jeep for balance. “I don’t know if we’ll be safe there, but it’s our best shot.”

  “And where is that?” Anna asks, loading her rifle. She lowers her window.

  “Just a little farther,” Mato says.

  I crane my neck to look through the windshield. We’re almost through the razorgrass border, just a minute away, but that’s time we don’t have. I turn back to the drones, my heart pounding. The four following us are dropping lower, chasing the stream of vehicles racing in from the checkpoint. Anna swings around in the passenger seat, aiming her rifle at the sky. She fires off a spray of bullets, but it’s like shooting at a tank.

  “Can we hack them?” I ask Mato.

  “I’m trying,” he says. His mask has gone clear, his eyes closed in concentration.

  I stare through the window at the drones, letting a pulse roll out from my cuff, bringing up their wireless signals in my vision. I have no idea how to hack them. I don’t even know if it’s possible, but there are four of them screaming toward us, and it seems like a good time to try flinging viruses at them. It won’t do much good unless they’re networked, though. We’ll never be able to hack them all unless they’re centrally controlled. Each drone would need a separate hack, separate commands and focus. I reach for their connections with my cuff, but there are dozens of layers of security around them, and each of their entrance points looks different.

  “They’re not networked,” I breathe. If I picked one drone, I might be able to take it down, and maybe Mato could too—but we can’t possibly stop them all.

  “We aren’t gonna make this!” Leoben yells back. There’s still a stretch of razorgrass ahead of us—we haven’t hit the no-fly zone yet, and the drones show no sign that they’ll stop when we reach it, anyway.

  “I’m working on it,” Mato snaps. His mask grows brighter, but the drones switch formation suddenly, and the jeep’s dash flashes red.