This Cruel Design

by Emily Suvada

  “You’ve been injured,” Regina says. “This is a significant concussion, but it looks like you’re almost healed.”

  Goose bumps rise on my skin at the sight of the giant shadow. “Mato said it happened during the decryption. Is that dark patch where I’m hurt?”

  “No, the damage is the blue line,” she says. “The implant keeps a map of your neural abnormalities like this. The dark patch is unusual too, though. It’s an orphan—a part of your brain that’s locked away from the rest of it. It usually happens after injuries, but they can be created with the implant.”

  “Could it be memories?” I ask, thinking of the ocean I glimpsed inside me while Mato was hacking the implant.

  Regina nods, a crease folding on her brow, crinkling the pattern of scales on her face. “That would make sense. Lachlan might have created a cage using the implant to hide memories from you without erasing them. This is a lot of memories, though. Reabsorbing this amount of neural connections is dangerous, and so is wiping them. You’ll need to learn how to control the implant either way.”

  I blink, looking up at her. “Do you mean that I could use the implant to control my memories?”

  “Certainly. I can teach you how, if you choose to stay here. The implant is designed to reorganize our minds in any way we want—you could build a filing system for your memories if you really wanted to. Almost anything would be better than this, though. An orphan that size is a stroke waiting to happen.”

  I stare at the image, torn between excitement and horror. Being able to control my memories would be perfect. I don’t want to erase Jun Bei’s past, but I’m not ready to reabsorb it either. And yet the sight of the network of wires coiled through my brain sets my teeth on edge.

  “It’s so creepy,” I say.

  Regina looks amused. “The implant?”

  “It’s like an alien inside me, with tendrils controlling me.”

  She tilts her head back and laughs. One of the birds in the cages above us shrieks in surprise, its wings flapping.

  “How is that funny?” I ask.

  “It’s not,” she says, her laugh subsiding into a wry smile. “You’re just so young. I forget how much you have to learn.” She looks down at the image of the implant, then steps silently across the floor to stand beside me. “Close your eyes and picture yourself.”

  I give her a cautious look.

  “Go on,” she says. “I won’t bite.”

  I close them reluctantly, trying to conjure up a picture of my face. An image rises in my mind, stitched together from memories that blur and overlap, morphing constantly. My features in the mirror. A girl in a Cartaxus tank top lying beside Cole.

  Jun Bei’s eyes scrunching shut as she runs for the fence.

  I open my eyes, blinking the image away.

  “What did you see?”

  “I—I don’t know. I still don’t really know who I am.”

  “Then describe the first image that comes to mind when I say Catarina.”

  Her prompt works. An image flashes, clear and brilliant. It’s me, standing beside the Zarathustra lab after I realized Lachlan was alive. The moment I knew that I had no choice but to stop him. “I see a girl who’s been through a lot,” I say. “Her fingernails are broken and there’s blood in her hair, but she has a mission.”

  A light smile plays across Regina’s face. “Wrong.”

  I shift uncomfortably. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  “It’s not what I want you to say,” she says. “It’s what I want you to see.” She reaches out and slides one obsidian-skinned finger across my cheek. “You are not your face, Catarina. You are not this body, either. I could take either of them from you, theoretically, and you would still exist. You don’t have blood in your hair or broken fingernails. You don’t have any hair at all. The entirety of you weighs a little over four pounds.”

  She waves her hand, and the image of the implant changes, showing a transparent human body with the brain, spinal column, and network of nerves shown in red. “Does this look familiar?”

  I blink, staring at it. It’s just like the implant—a tight core with tendrils stretching out from it.

  “That’s what you look like,” she says. “You are small, round, and you have a lot of tendrils that you use to control the body you’re in. Everything else is an illusion. If you drive a car, you don’t become a car. You’re always just the driver. Don’t buy into the vehicle of your own flesh. You of all people need to understand who you really are, because you can change yourself.”

  There’s a hunger in her eyes as she says the word change that makes me glance back at the laboratory door, wondering if it locks from the outside.

  “I know about your gift,” she says. “I’ve dedicated my life to understanding the human body and its brain, and the work is still so limited. If you were to work with me on researching how you can change your mind, then the possibilities could bring about the dawn of a new world.”

  A shiver runs down my spine. That’s the language Lachlan used in the note Mato found.

  “Think of the possibilities,” she says. “Imagine being able to control your thoughts like we control the apps inside our bodies. Imagine being able to stop distractions from barraging us every minute of every day. Our minds are natural and overgrown, like wild forests thick with brush that we have to fight through in order to stay focused, but one day, with your help, we may learn how to tame them into beautiful gardens.”

  “Is that why you wanted to bring me here?” I ask.

  “Partly.” She turns away, lifting the raven from her shoulder, settling it on her wrist. “I wanted to make amends, too—in whatever way I can. You and your friends have a place here in Entropia if you want it. I wasn’t lying when I said that the Zarathustra initiative was the cruelest thing I’ve ever witnessed. It’s the reason I left Cartaxus.” Her eyes slide to the floating bodies in the tanks on the wall. “I managed to get some people out with me, but I couldn’t save the five of you, and I’ve regretted leaving you behind ever since. Lachlan and I tried a couple of times to get you all out, but we never succeeded.”

  My chest tightens. “Lachlan tried to get us out?”

  She nods, stroking the raven’s beak. “There’s no way to excuse the things he did, but you have to understand how controlling Cartaxus is. It was different before Brink took over. The former leader was the woman we used to call the Viper. As sharp, and just as deadly. She had an incredible ability to manipulate people.”

  I open my mouth to ask her how Lachlan was manipulated, and pause. Part of me doesn’t want to know how he might have been controlled. I don’t want to hear excuses for the years of torture he put me and the others through. But the part that still feels like his daughter is desperate for an explanation, any explanation for why the man I loved fiercely for three years would have done such awful things.

  “I don’t expect any of us will recover from what Cartaxus did to us,” Regina says, setting the raven in one of the cages on the wall. “It’s not an easy thing, healing. Not in a world like this.”

  I lean back against the lab counter. “What happened to you?”

  For a moment I think I’ve asked too personal a question, but she doesn’t seem to mind. She lifts her eyes to the cages on the wall. “I tried to leave Cartaxus once, before I finally made it out, and the Viper nearly destroyed me for it. I fell pregnant by mistake—I’d been hacking myself and glitched my birth control. I didn’t realize the hormonal readings were real until I was a few months along.” She looks over at me, tossing the hair from her scaled shoulder, an embarrassed smile on her face. “It was a silly mistake, and it didn’t make much sense to have the baby—I’d never really wanted children before that, and the father was married, but somehow I just knew it was what I wanted. I decided to leave Cartaxus, but the Viper told me I couldn’t. She said they’d keep the child in boarding school so I could keep working day and night. But all I really wanted was a new life with my baby.”


  She lifts her hand to one of the cages, reaching through the bars to scratch at the neck of a lizard curled on a stick. “I told the Viper I was leaving, and she threatened the baby. I ended up running in the middle of the night with nothing but the clothes on my back and the names of some genehackers who might take me in. I made it to the desert and had my little girl. She looked just like I did when I was a child, and for the first time I understood the appeal of natural DNA. But then the Viper found us. I don’t know how. I’d thought about doing a postpartum confinement—I knew my mother would want me to—but I was never a fan of rules I didn’t understand, so one day I went into town with the baby. She was just two weeks old. She came down with a fever that afternoon, and by midnight there were bruises.”

  A chill sweeps through me. “They infected her?”

  She flattens her hands against the lab counter, leaning her weight into her palms. “The Viper thought it would help me move past the barriers that had been stopping me from progressing on a vaccine. I had no choice but to go back to them, coding every moment with the baby held to me until the scent began to rise and I couldn’t be around her anymore. They had to keep her in a glass box, and she wouldn’t stop crying.”

  I cover my mouth, not knowing what to say.

  Regina looks up, smiling bitterly. “I almost did it, you know? I was so close—just another week and I might have finished it. The cure was written for her—it wouldn’t have worked on anyone else—but it would have been more progress than any of us had made in years. But I ran out of time. They dragged me away before she blew, but I heard it. Every time I tried to work on the vaccine after that, I heard that sound again. I don’t think I’ll ever be as sharp again as I was in those two weeks. I gave everything I had, and it wasn’t enough.”

  I just shake my head, too horrified to speak. The thought of Dax’s bruised chest flickers through my mind. He said they’d infected his whole team. He said it had been effective.

  How can Cartaxus be so cruel?

  “That wasn’t even why I left,” Regina says. She tilts her head back, staring up at the wall of caged snakes and birds. “I just gave up after that and let them keep me there. I woke when they woke me, worked when they told me to, slept when it was allowed. I tried to code, but I was empty inside, and my code was empty too. But the Viper saw another way to keep me motivated. She realized that she’d pushed me too far and thought she could make it right.”

  A buzzing starts, low in my chest. “What do you mean, make it right?”

  Regina lowers her head slowly, turning her black eyes to me. “The Viper thought of a way to give me a chance to start over again with my little girl. A clone. A copy of the child they took from me. I didn’t know they’d added her to the experiment—I couldn’t have foreseen it, or I would have left, or killed them, or burned the place to the ground. By the time I knew, she was already six months grown, her little legs kicking in a glass tank, wires stretching from her arm. They open their eyes when they’re in tanks like that, you know? I saw her just the once, and I knew I had to leave or they’d do the same thing—let me fall far enough in love before they threatened her. She’d never be allowed a moment of safety.”

  The air in the room shifts, the buzzing in my chest rising into a roar.

  Regina turns her onyx eyes to me. “You have to believe me. I left to protect you.”

  CHAPTER 21

  THE ROOM SEEMS TO FALL silent—the gurgling of the water running down the walls, the screeching of the birds in their cages all dissolve in the wake of Regina’s words, echoing through me.

  I left to protect you.

  The ocean in my mind pitches against the wall as I scan her face, tracing out the lines of her features through the onyx and emerald scales that cover her skin. High cheekbones, straight, elegant eyebrows. I can see an echo of Jun Bei’s face in hers—but there’s more than that. The curve of her shoulders, the intelligence in her dark eyes as she watches me. There’s not a shred of Regina’s DNA left inside my cells, but I can still feel it. A low, insistent tug.

  “You’re my mother?”

  She doesn’t answer, but steps closer to me instead, her fingers sliding over my shoulder, pulling me against her. I stand, stiff with shock, then let myself lean into her, my head turning so her smooth, scaled cheek presses against mine.

  “You’re home now,” she says.

  The ocean whips higher. There’s something familiar in the smell of Regina’s hair, the press of her cheek. I step away, blinking. “Did—did I come to you before?”

  “Yes, you came here. You matched your DNA to mine in a Cartaxus file. When you escaped, you made your way to Entropia and tracked me down. You stayed here for six months. You didn’t live in the city, but you came in to see me regularly.”

  I turn and brace my hands against the lab counter, my head spinning. I have a mother. I’m a clone, created as leverage against one of the world’s greatest coders. The thought leaves me reeling, but there’s more than that. This is proof that Mato was right—I left the others and ran away. I spent the missing six months of my life here. Coding, working. Living freely, away from Lachlan’s control.

  “I’ve lost you twice now,” Regina says, her voice thick. “I left you in that lab, and then I let Lachlan take you while you were here. I couldn’t save you either time, but I’m going to try now. I don’t want to lose you again.”

  I turn to her, pushing my hand back through my hair. There’s a locked cage of memories inside me, a virus spreading across the world, and a vanishingly small amount of time to stop Cartaxus from launching flood protocol, but for the first time in weeks, part of me feels like I have something to stand on. Solid ground.

  “I don’t want you to answer me now,” she says, “but I want you to consider staying here at Entropia. Your friends will have a place here too, and I can protect you inside this city. As long as you’re within my borders, Cartaxus can’t touch you. I have enough records of the things they’ve done to destroy their reputation forever. You can have a home here, and so much more than that. I can teach you how to control the implant and your memories. We can unravel the mysteries of your DNA together.”

  “We have to survive the next few days first,” I say. “We need to find Lachlan.”

  “Indeed,” she says, her eyes glazing. “Speaking of which, the scan from your implant is finished.”

  I draw up my cuff’s menu to connect with the nub, and a report appears in my vision. It looks like a piece of paper hovering in front of me. I reach for it, swiping my finger, and the pages spill sideways like a deck of cards. It’s filled with readings from the implant that I don’t understand, but there are a dozen pages on the tracker. I scan the rows of specifications, time stamps, server logs, searching for any weaknesses that might give me access to Lachlan’s panel.

  But there isn’t anything.

  “Hmm,” Regina says, her eyes still glazed. “I don’t think the tracker is going to be much help, but I’ll have a closer look at it after the party. It’s almost time to go and begin the celebrations. There’ll be thousands of people out in the desert tonight to watch the flocks arrive. The pigeons are only a few miles away now.”

  “But what about Lachlan?” I ask. “We don’t have much time.”

  “I’ll arrange for a search team to assist you,” she says. “Your friends can have access to my security feed too. I’d like to find him as well, but I think he’ll come to you. Any day now, probably.”

  I push away from the lab counter, tensing. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because the concussion you sustained is clearly the result of an incomplete command. You said it occurred during the decryption, which means there was something else that was supposed to happen, wasn’t there?”

  Regina is sharper than I thought. “I don’t know for sure,” I say, “but I think I might have been supposed to get my memories back.”

  She tilts her head. “Interesting. Well, whatever Lachlan is trying to do, it’s been on pa
use for the last week. I think he’s had to wait while you recovered from this injury. If he’d tried again while you were injured, there’s a chance it could have killed you. But you’re almost healed now, so he’ll probably come for you soon.”

  A shiver races across my skin. I’ve been wondering all week why Lachlan hadn’t launched any more attacks of the Wrath. He could have held entire bunkers hostage to get me to go to him, but he didn’t. He waited. I’ve let myself slip into a semblance of security, thinking he was waiting for me to go to him willingly.

  But maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he just had to wait until I was healed before he ran his code through me again.

  And now I’m in the same city. Now I’ve almost recovered.

  There’s no reason for him to wait anymore.

  “You’ll be safe inside this bunker,” Regina says, “and that’s where I recommend you stay. You’re even welcome to spend as much time in my lab as you like—it might be the safest place in the city. I’ll have people watch you, and I’ll send a team to help your friends search for Lachlan tonight while the party is happening.”

  “I was going to search with them.”

  “That would be unwise,” Regina says. “It should be easier for your friends to blend in and search the city while there’s a crowd this large, but it would also be a good opportunity for Lachlan to take you.” She holds her hand out, and it takes me a moment to realize she wants the nub back. I reach behind my head and pull it out, and she drops it back into its box. Her hand slides to my arm. “Think about my offer, Catarina. There’s so much I want to share with you. Let’s talk in the morning, after the party.”

  She steps across the room to the hallway and waits expectantly for me. I follow silently, flinching as the guard at the entrance shifts her rifle between her clawed fingers to open the door.