This Cruel Design

by Emily Suvada

  “It isn’t you, okay?” I say, wrapping the towel around my waist, shimmying out of my leggings. I yank the dry ones on over my damp skin, hopping on one foot to pull them on.

  Cole scrapes his hand over his face. He looks like he’s on the verge of tears, spots of color blazing in his cheeks. “You’re just shutting me out? Cat, tell me what happened.”

  “Nothing happened.” I unwind the towel from my waist and drop it on the shore along with my ruined clothes. Maybe one of the houses will have something I can wear. I sling my backpack over my shoulder with my good hand. “I just need to be alone. I need to calm down.”

  “Cat, talk to me.” He looks so lost and so bewildered that it’s wrenching at whatever shreds of self-control I still have left. I want to cry; I want to break, to cross the space between us and step into the comfort of his arms. I want to give up the war I’m waging against my past. It’s like fighting with a shadow. I’m trying to hold back a force I don’t understand, and I’m so tired that part of me just wants to yield to it.

  But I can’t. Not yet.

  Cole’s words are echoing inside me, and they’ve taken hold. If we can’t find a way to save ourselves without more bloodshed, then maybe Lachlan is right. There’s no future for humanity if we can’t find a way to live together. Cartaxus is planning genocide, and all I can think of is how to launch an attack against them first.

  Because that’s exactly what Jun Bei would do.

  “I told you I had more memories inside me,” I say. “That they’re behind a wall.”

  Cole nods, his face tight.

  “Well, right now, that wall is cracking. I need to be alone, or I don’t know if I can keep it together. If there is a way to save us, then I need to clear my head to think of it. Right now, all I can think of is what Jun Bei would do, and it involves killing absolutely everyone who might pose a threat to us.”

  A shadow crosses Cole’s face. “Cat—” he starts, but I cut him off.

  “The others will be here soon,” I say, forcing myself to take a step back toward the path. “We’ll need to figure out a plan, and I need to get my head straight first. I’m going to go check this house for clothes, okay? I’ll see you soon.”

  He searches my face for what feels like an eternity, then nods. “Okay. I’ll be here if you need me.”

  I turn, driving my fingernails into my palm, and stride up the path to the closest house, feeling Cole’s gaze burning into my back as I leave.

  The path winds through an overgrown garden to the house—a cavernous, majestic thing, with a wall of double-story windows overlooking a leaf-strewn wooden deck. The front door is glass, the handle unlocked. I push it open, expecting the inside to be trashed, but it’s spotless. The kitchen is white marble, opening up to a living area with black leather couches curving around a chrome coffee table. There’s a sweater crumpled on one of the couches, an empty glass on the kitchen counter. It’s creepy when a place is neat like this. Most of the houses I’ve broken into were ransacked and full of rats, or had a wall missing after someone detonated inside. This place looks like the owners just went out one day and never came back. Even their shoes are lined up by the door below a pair of jackets in matching beige.

  I head for the stairs, trying not to think about the look in Cole’s eyes when he thought he’d done something to shock me like that. Every time I force his face from my mind, though, I just see Mato instead. His smile. His lips at my ear. He and Jun Bei were definitely together. I don’t know why he wouldn’t have mentioned it to me.

  What other secrets did Jun Bei have that I haven’t remembered?

  I climb the stairs, heading into the master bedroom. The bed is made, the closet open, holding two racks of women’s clothes. Nothing in my size, but I grab a denim jacket, a T-shirt, and a pair of socks, and head into the en suite. It’s tiled in white, coated with a layer of dust but otherwise clean. I dump the new clothes on the floor and sit on the edge of the tub, pulling a packet of Cartaxus cleaning wipes from my backpack, then peel off my T-shirt and drag one of the wipes over the blood and foam plastered to my skin. It takes half the packet just to clean my shoulders and arms, but there’s not much I can do with the foam in my hair. I rummage through the bathroom cabinet, pulling out a comb, and pause when I see a bar of lavender soap.

  It’s factory made, at least two years old by now, but the scent of it as I hold it to my nose brings back a rush of memories. Agnes and I made lavender soap in her basement last year. I spent days coding a hacked algae strain for her, designed to chew up soybeans from the farms near the mountains and create glycerin, and she gave me a stack of hand-cut bars in return. Violet, flecked with tiny purple flowers. I washed in the lake with one the next day, and it was the first time I’d felt truly clean in a year.

  I set the bar down, sliding into my cuff’s menu, pulling up my comm-link. There’s a string of messages sent from me to her over the last two weeks, and then a rush of replies that she sent after the decryption. She was tracking Lachlan in Nevada. She said to follow the pigeons.

  But I did, and she wasn’t waiting there for me.

  “Agnes?” I ask, opening a comm channel. Part of me knows it won’t work—it hasn’t worked in weeks, but I can’t stop myself from trying one more time. “I really need you right now, Yaya. I don’t know what to do. I can’t stop Lachlan, I can’t stop Cartaxus, and the plague is out of control. I don’t want to go into a bunker, and I don’t want to give up. I just wish I could hear your voice right now.”

  The comm bounces into Cartaxus’s network. If Agnes is on the surface, she’ll see it. She hasn’t replied to me all week, and I’m not expecting her to now.

  I just wish I could know if she’s okay.

  I drag the comb through my hair, flicking away the worst of the mess as an engine rumbles in the distance. A low thumping sound, loud enough to rattle the windows. A Comox, flying from the direction of the safehouse. The others are here.

  “Hold it together,” I murmur. I look between the clean shirt I found in the closet and the squid shirt Leoben printed for me, and tug on the squid over my still-damp bra. I leave the cleaning wipes in a dirty pile on the floor and haul on my backpack with my good hand, then jog down the stairs and outside just as the Comox lands in the road. Its rotors kick up a plume of dust and dried grass. I hurry down the path from the house as the ramp extends.

  Anna strides down it, a rifle slung over her shoulder. Her blond hair is in a high ponytail, her skin smeared with dirt. She’s back in Cartaxus gear—black tactical pants, a gray tank top that shows off the lean muscles in her shoulders and the tattoos on her arms. The white scar on her neck gleams in the sunlight, and the sight brings me to a stop, guilt tugging at me.

  Everything I’ve learned about Jun Bei just frightens me more. I don’t know why she would have cut Anna’s throat and jacked her into a genkit if not to torture her. No wonder Anna hates me. I know how much it hurts to become someone’s experiment when you think you’re part of their family.

  That’s what Lachlan did to me, and it’s what Jun Bei did to Anna in that lab.

  “What the hell happened to the jeep?” Anna asks. She looks me up and down. Some of the anger from the last time I saw her seems to have faded. “And what happened to you?”

  “Crowd caught us in the tunnels while we were getting out,” I say. “Some of them blew.”

  She winces. “It’s bad out there. Hey, uh, thanks for taking down those destroyers.”

  I look down, shifting my weight uncomfortably. “Thanks for coming back for me.”

  “Yeah, well,” she says. “That was mostly Cole.”

  “Thank you anyway.” I force my eyes back to her face. I don’t know if the two of us have any hope of building a relationship again, but I’m not the girl who hurt her in that lab. I’m not the girl she grew up with, either, but there’s still something between us that I don’t want to lose. “I’m sorry,” I say.

  Her brow creases. “For what?”

&n
bsp; “For everything. For leaving you all behind.”

  A shadow passes over her features. “I thought you said that wasn’t you.”

  “It wasn’t, but . . .” I pause. “It’s hard to explain. I’m just sorry, okay?”

  Leoben strides down the Comox’s ramp, shooting me a grin. “Look at you two, huh? Bonding over blowing shit up. Why didn’t you ever figure this out at the lab?”

  “Shut up, Lee,” Anna says, shoving his arm.

  “Where’s Mato?” I ask.

  Leoben motions over his shoulder at a dark speck in the distance on the highway we drove in on. My tech zooms in on it, focusing until I can make out the vague shape of a motorbike.

  “He said he still couldn’t get through to Cartaxus,” Leoben says.

  “Do you know if Dax is okay?” I ask.

  “He’s still alive,” he says. “I haven’t been able to comm him—Brink is locking down communications everywhere, but I hacked into his lab’s systems, and it looks like he’s there. That’s all I know. Regina said the patched vaccine is working just fine. I don’t know why Cartaxus won’t release it.”

  “Because the last time they sent out code from Lachlan that they couldn’t understand, they had to blow a whole city into dust,” Anna says. “Lachlan is being an asshole. He needs to hand himself in.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore,” I say. “Now that the virus is in the pigeons, there’s no stopping it.”

  “Sure there is,” Anna says. “They just have to scorch the goddamn surface of the planet. Don’t think Brink isn’t planning to do that right now.”

  “So what are we going to do?” Leoben asks.

  “We go back to base, of course,” Anna says. “This mission is over.”

  “I’m not going in,” I say. “I made it through two years without a vaccine. We can do it again. There has to be a way to stop this that doesn’t involve slaughtering millions of people. I’m not ready to give up.”

  “You and me both,” Leoben says, “but this is a pretty big enemy, squid. Hey, how’s your hand, anyway?”

  I look down, tightening my fingers into a fist. “It’s not my hand. Regina switched it.”

  Anna blinks, staring at me, then covers her mouth, stifling a laugh. “Shit, I’m sorry!” she blurts out. “Oh my God. It’s really not funny.”

  Leoben shakes his head. “You’re terrible, Anna. She’s been through a lot. Give the poor girl a hand.”

  She snorts, clutching her mouth.

  I can’t help but smile. “Guys . . .”

  “No, I’m sorry,” Anna says, catching her breath, fighting for composure.

  “We have to keep it together,” Leoben says. “This is serious. It’s all hands on deck.”

  “Lee!” she yells, smacking him in the arm.

  He grins, slinging an arm around my shoulder, squeezing me. “Don’t worry, squid. We’ll get through this. Any food inside that house?”

  I glance back over my shoulder. “I didn’t check.”

  He shakes his head. “Rookie mistake.”

  He presses a kiss to my temple and heads up the path and into the house. Anna runs her hands back through her hair, still breathing slowly, trying not to laugh. “Is Cole okay?” she asks.

  “Yeah, he’s down at the creek.”

  “I’m going to go check in with him.” She starts to head down the path to the water, then stops and glances over her shoulder at the highway, where Mato’s motorbike is still just a speck in the distance. “You waiting for Mato? He’s not going to be able to change Brink’s mind. If Cartaxus is still planning flood protocol, there’s nothing we can do to stop it. You know that, right? They have bases all over the world. I don’t care how many drones you can bring down, it won’t be enough.”

  “I know,” I murmur, watching the motorbike roll closer. She’s right—we have no leverage and no plan. Part of me can even understand where Brink is coming from. He has three billion people to think about and protect. He doesn’t need the people on the surface any more than we need Cartaxus.

  We’re just in each other’s way.

  “I’ll go and look for food with Lee,” I say. Anna nods, heading down to the creek. I walk back along the path to the house’s front door, pausing when I reach the porch to look back at the distant smudge of Mato’s motorbike.

  I don’t know how to deal with him when he arrives—if I want to confront him or pretend I still don’t know the truth. It seems ridiculous to even be thinking about something as trivial as him kissing Jun Bei while Cartaxus is planning to launch flood protocol, but I can’t get the memories out of my head.

  I can’t talk about it with Cole, and I’m definitely not going to talk to Anna about it.

  Lee might understand, though.

  I push through the front door, looking for him. Packets of cookies and dried noodles are stacked on the kitchen counter, but there’s no sign of Lee. A hiss is coming from upstairs, though—a shower. Leoben’s voice humming a low tune. I let out a frustrated sigh. I didn’t even think to check if the water was running.

  I walk across the living room to the wall of glass at the back of the house. It overlooks the creek, where Cole is standing with his arms crossed, talking to Anna. He looks upset, but I can’t hear what they’re saying. All my audio chip can pick up is the shower and the distant murmur of their voices. I stare down at Cole, straining to hear him, my mind searching instinctively for something to sharpen my audio tech when a pulse ripples from my cuff unconsciously.

  Cole’s panel glows in my vision, Anna’s beside him. I’m distantly aware of the Comox and the jeep behind me, Lee upstairs in the shower. A rush of sound patches into my ears—muffled and rough, but clear enough to make out Cole’s voice along with Anna’s murmuring reply.

  But this isn’t an audio filter I’m running.

  I’m hacking Cole’s tech.

  Horror surges through me. I didn’t even mean to hack his panel. I have no idea how I’m even doing this. Part of me wants to cut off the connection—it’s one thing to strain to hear him through the glass, but it’s another to break into his tech. Pain blisters at the base of my skull. This is wrong. It’s a violation. The wrongness of it makes me want to turn away, but I can’t stop myself from staring down at him.

  “She’s confused,” he is saying. “She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

  “You just don’t have it in you,” Anna says. “You still love her. I can smell her all over you.”

  Cole turns away, his face dark. “That’s why I have to be the one to do it. She’s my responsibility.”

  CHAPTER 30

  I STUMBLE BACK AND OUT of sight. The echo of Cole’s voice in my ears feels like a knife cutting through me. The room tilts. I double over, dragging in a breath, a wash of silver rising in my vision.

  What the hell did he mean—she’s my responsibility?

  The words open up a wound inside me, and I can feel my strength folding in toward it, the pillar of my resolve swaying beneath me. This is more than concern. He’s not just worried that I’m getting dangerous. He’s actively planning to control me. To stop me somehow.

  I have to be the one to do it.

  I close my eyes, fighting the urge to throw up. There was no emotion in his voice when he said those words. Just steel and training. He held me in his arms just minutes ago and told me he loved me. I was ready to give myself to him.

  Has he been lying to me this whole time?

  A cry of betrayal rises through me, unbidden, but I clutch my hands over my mouth to stifle it. I can’t let them hear me. Leoben is upstairs, and I don’t know if he’s in on whatever Cole and Anna are planning. My eyes cut to the door, the urge to leave singing through me. The jeep is damaged and strewn with foam, but I know how to control it, and it’ll get me out of here.

  I clutch my backpack to my shoulder, hurrying across the room and out the door. Every time I blink, I see Cole’s face. The tears in his eyes after Sunnyvale, when he realized who I was. The way he hel
d me to his chest and told me everything was going to be okay. My fear and confusion are coalescing, combining into a shimmering ball of rage.

  All that talk in the creek about me being better. About finding a way to save us without more killing. He’s been holding me back from my past, and for what? Because Jun Bei is slipping back through me? Because I’m becoming dangerous?

  He doesn’t know the half of it.

  I make it to the driveway and break into a run. Past the Comox and over to the dented, foam-streaked jeep. I don’t even know where I’m going, but I’ll figure it out. I can’t stay here, not anymore. I yank open the driver’s door, but a cold hand catches my arm.

  “Are you okay?”

  I spin around. Mato is standing behind me, the glass of his coding mask clear and sparkling. The motorbike is parked behind him.

  “Let go of me,” I whisper, glancing back at the creek.

  He steps closer, but his hand doesn’t drop from my arm. “What’s wrong?”

  I open my mouth but don’t know what to say. Mato’s been lying to me too, and I know I can’t trust him either, but some part of me is still stretching for him. All he’s done since we’ve met is try to help me recover the strength I used to have, while Cole has spent the whole time trying to get me to turn from it. Mato hasn’t told me the truth about him and Jun Bei, but he was honest about knowing her. Maybe he thought it would be too much to take in to tell me everything. Maybe it was nothing more than a single stolen kiss.

  Or maybe I’m just lost and desperate, and terrified of leaving here alone.

  “I—I need to go,” I whisper. “I need to leave, right now.”

  He glances back down toward the creek, his mask darkening. “Are you sure?”

  I nod. He watches me for a long moment, then drops my arm. He pulls open the jeep’s door and gestures for me to get in. “Come on, I’ll drive.”

  I glance back at the creek. Cole has probably heard us. I climb into the jeep, and Mato turns swiftly, walking over to the Comox. He slides something from his pocket—two small black squares. He presses one to the Comox’s side, the other to the handlebars of the motorbike, then strides back to the jeep. The foam sprayed across the seats has dried, but the air still stinks of infection with a sour note of decay. Mato slides into the driver’s seat and pulls the door shut behind him. Cole jogs up the path from the creek and stares at us, confused. Mato glances back once, his face expressionless, then floors the accelerator, sending us racing back along the driveway and up to the highway.