This Cruel Design

by Emily Suvada

  The perfect blend of those two powers is standing in front of me.

  Mato is not entirely human anymore.

  He has become something else—something alien and dangerous, on a plane that humans should not be allowed to reach. The mask, the cuff, the implants in our skulls. They’re a blurring of tech and violence—weapons we’ve added to our bodies, and I’m not sure we should have been allowed to.

  “You can do better than this,” he says, straightening. His voice is still calm, the merest flicker of frustration crossing his features as he rolls his wounded shoulder. “You’re still so weak. This is why I’m trying to help you. It pains me to see you like this. You can be so much more, Jun Bei.”

  Anna coughs. A wet, shallow sound. Her lungs are filling with blood. Every second that passes is going to make it harder to bring her back from this. I push my focus into her panel, but he’s blocking that too—building firewalls around her tech to keep me from saving her.

  “Please,” I beg. “Let him go. Let me help her.”

  Cole clenches his hands into fists, shaking. “Leave . . . Anna . . . ,” he manages to choke out, but a tremor passes through him, and he lets out a roar.

  I stare at Cole, suddenly confused. I don’t know why he’d tell me to leave Anna. He mustn’t understand how badly hurt she is. If I can’t help her soon, she’s going to die.

  I dig my fingernails into my palm, stretching for the seam inside me, trying to split my mind into a weapon that can combat Mato’s control. Anna chokes beside me, blood bubbling from her lips. A pulse in the side of her neck is fluttering, her chest shaking. Cole is motionless, his eyes wide and unfocused, but it looks like he’s not in pain anymore. It looks like he’s gone.

  I don’t know what Mato is doing, or how I’ll possibly be able to stop him, but I know I’m losing time.

  I wrench open the barrier in my mind, aiming my focus at Anna’s panel, but the instant the world begins to split, her eyelids flutter closed. The beat in the side of her neck ceases.

  “No!” I scream. “Please, Mato!”

  The sunlight gleams off the silvery sheen of the dark blood soaking through her shirt. She’s lying limp, not breathing, but I still can’t get through Mato’s defenses around her tech. There has to be a way to save her. I can jump her panel. I can resuscitate her. She’s only been dead for seconds. I push harder at the split inside my mind, but it’s useless. The controls to her tech are locked down solid.

  “Mato!” I scream, spinning to him. “Let her go!”

  “It’s over,” he says, straightening, tossing a stray lock of hair back from his face. “You were too weak to save her. I’m disappointed.”

  Rage coils through me. I close my eyes, drawing up the scythe from Jun Bei’s folders. I fling it at his panel, but it glances off like a stone skipping from the surface of a pond.

  The merest hint of a smile crosses his features. “Now,” he says, “that’s more like it.”

  I growl, flinging the code again, urging myself back into the same space I slid into when I took down the drones. I know that this is what he wants, but I’m past reason now. There’s a fire blazing through me, and I want him to pay for what he’s done. The implant sends a spike of pain through the base of my skull, but I finally feel it stretching through my consciousness, splitting my thoughts like light through a prism. The world doubles, then doubles again. Four voices within me whisper, sending the scythe through Mato’s defenses. It’s still bouncing off his firewalls, but now I’m sending it from four directions. Now eight. The world begins to shimmer; a buzzing starts up in my ears.

  This is more fractions than I’ve tried before, but I feel like I’m getting stronger each time, and Mato’s eyes are finally glazing with the effort of fighting back the attack. His control on Cole’s panel is slipping. I tilt myself harder into the attack, flinging more viruses at him. Dozens of weapons are waiting inside my arm. My hands begin to shake, my control over the fractions fading, and I make a move for Anna’s rifle, but Mato swings his gun at Cole.

  Ice shudders through me. The chorus of death inside my mind falls silent. I look at Cole, still frozen on his knees. Defenseless. Wounded. Vulnerable.

  I can’t lose him, too.

  “Wait,” I beg. “Please, Mato. I’ll stop fighting you.”

  Mato’s finger hovers on the trigger, the gun aimed at Cole’s head. “I’m doing this for you.”

  “No,” I say. “Hurting him isn’t going to help me remember who I was. All it’s going to do is make me hate you.”

  He shakes his head. “You don’t know what you need, Jun Bei. That’s why I’m here. All I’ve done is help you, and I’m growing tired of being forced to explain myself. I’m not the one who’s been planning to take away your freedom and your mind.” He throws out one arm, gesturing to Cole, dragging him out of his trance. “Ask him, if you’re so concerned with his safety. Ask him what he and Anna were planning. I’ve read their texts. I’ve heard their calls. Ask Cole why he was searching for you all these years.”

  My heart skips. This is what Cole and Anna were arguing about at the creek. This is what I overheard back at the safehouse, what they’ve been talking about since Anna first arrived.

  The reason Cole said that I was his responsibility.

  “Cole, what is he talking about?”

  Cole’s voice is rough, his body stiff. “It’s not what you think.”

  Mato stalks behind Cole, straightening his jacket, the mask on his face growing clear. His eyes are locked on mine, fierce and sincere. This isn’t a game for him. This is deadly serious.

  “I know what they were doing,” he says. “Do you think he was searching for Jun Bei because he loved her?”

  “I did—” Cole starts.

  “Liar!” Mato snaps, and Cole bends over, letting out a cry of pain. “I loved her,” Mato shouts. “I was the only one who ever understood her. Tell her the truth!”

  Cole straightens, shaking. He’s not even looking at Anna. Her pulse has stopped, and she’s not breathing. We’re running out of time to resuscitate her, but he doesn’t seem to care.

  “We were trying to stop Jun Bei from using the scythe,” Cole says. “Killing those guards at the lab when she escaped was just the start. A few months after she escaped, sixty people died in a military base around a signal tower from what looked like lethal code. Cartaxus covered it up, and I didn’t put it together until later, but her panel ID had been part of the attack. She wasn’t going to stop, Cat. I don’t think she could.”

  I rock back on my heels, staring at Cole, the storm in my mind whipping into a gale. “You think she killed sixty people and you didn’t mention it to me?”

  “You were barely holding yourself together,” he says. “We had a mission. I didn’t want to frighten you, and I don’t even know if it’s true. But I know you’re not that person anymore.”

  My head spins. “This is why you freaked out every time I used the scythe, isn’t it? Were you seriously afraid I’d snap and commit genocide?”

  “I didn’t know—”

  “You didn’t know?”

  A presence stirs on the edge of my senses, darkening now with rage. Cole and Anna were hunting me. They thought I was a threat—something that needed to be controlled. I should never have trusted them. My fists tighten, code that promises pain and control sliding through the shadowy recesses of my mind.

  “You were going to kill her,” I say.

  “No,” Cole gasps. “No, I could never have done that. I wasn’t going to hurt her. I was going to talk to her, and if it was true, I was going to convince her to remove her panel. She was too powerful. She couldn’t keep going like she was. Every time she lashed out, she was taking people’s lives in her hands.”

  “And when she refused?” I spit. “What then, Cole?”

  His face tightens, and lightning crackles through me. There is shame and guilt and something darker—something worse—in his eyes. “We were going to erase her memories and remove
her panel,” he says, “but I was going to have the same done to me. I was going to start again with her—both of us, together. It was the only way.”

  I just stare at him, pain slicing through me—but it isn’t in the base of my skull. It’s in my heart. Cole was kissing me just hours ago. He told me he was in love with me. The storm inside me keeps whipping higher, the ocean rising in my mind. He’s supposed to be my soul mate. My friend and guardian. He and I were supposed to run away to the beach together.

  But he wanted to remove my tech. To wipe my memories.

  He was going to do the exact same thing Lachlan did to me.

  “No, Cole,” I whisper, my legs growing weak. The pain in my heart feels real, wrenching at me. I don’t know how much of a threat Jun Bei was, and I don’t know what happened with that signal tower, but I do know that when she was here with Mato, she wanted to improve the human race. She wrote the Origin code—a way to erase our violent instincts. That’s not something a person does before committing genocide. She was thinking about the future.

  She was trying to help.

  “You’re just like Lachlan,” I say. “Was it all a lie?”

  “No,” he begs. “But someone had to step in. That code in her panel wasn’t just a risk to us. She was a risk to everyone on the planet. She could have killed them all without even really thinking about it.”

  “You think she was just a cold-blooded murderer? Cole, she was a child. She was frightened. She needed to get out of that lab and heal, and that’s exactly what she did until Lachlan took her again. She didn’t want to hurt people. You don’t understand—she was trying to make the world better. She wrote the Origin code.”

  Cole’s eyes are full of horror. He doesn’t understand, because he’s not trying to understand. He’s already made up his mind about Jun Bei because she left him. She broke him, and it’s easier for him to believe that she was a monster than a scared girl who ran away and was too afraid to go back.

  I turn away from him, forcing myself to breathe. The storm in my mind is a gale, and the ocean of memories is raging. Mato stands watching me, his eyes alight. It’s almost like he can sense how close I am to the edge of the cliff. How thin the wall between me and my past has grown. This is exactly what he wanted—to tear me down, and to bring back the girl he loved.

  “I see it now,” Mato says. “It wasn’t hurting you that prompted your memories to return. It was him, and the others at risk. That’s what’s breaking through the barriers inside you.” He looks at Cole. “If he dies, then your link to your past weakness dies too. You can finally be free. He’s already admitted that he was prepared to erase you. You’ve left him once. Do it again. He doesn’t understand you like I do, Jun Bei.”

  I stare at Cole. I don’t know if I can forgive him for what he was planning, for lying to me like that, but I know that I can’t stand here and let him die.

  “My name isn’t Jun Bei,” I growl. “Let him go.”

  Mato flinches. He waves a hand at Cole. “This is what you want?”

  “I love him.”

  Mato closes his eyes. “That’s your weakness talking. You don’t understand how much he’s holding you back. You have no idea how strong you used to be. If you’re not ready to kill him, then maybe I should do it for you.” He lifts the gun, raising it to Cole’s head, and a single shot rings out. . . .

  But Cole doesn’t fall.

  I spin around, searching for the source of the shot. A woman stands in the open doorway, a shotgun in her hands. Wispy gray hair, keen eyes that lock on mine.

  “Hello, Bobcat,” Agnes says.

  CHAPTER 34

  MATO STUMBLES BACK, CLUTCHING HIS stomach, blood trickling over his fingers. There’s a blur of blood-streaked blond hair through the door as Leoben rushes through, knocking the gun from Mato’s hands. Cole launches himself from the floor, a crack echoing as his fist connects with the side of Mato’s mask, splitting it across his forehead.

  Mato slumps to the floor, his head rolling back. I stand, shaking, staring at Agnes in the doorway. She’s dressed in a tattered jacket, her hair pulled back, sand and grit caked into the creases of her face.

  She’s alive.

  “Yaya,” I breathe.

  “Come here, Bobcat,” she says, opening her arms.

  I run across the room to her, wrapping her in a hug. She smells like lavender and ash, her skin damp with sweat. Memories rush into me at the scent of her—but they’re mine this time, and the relief of feeling a memory of my own makes me want to cry. She’s my yaya, my friend. My lifeline for the last two years. I step away, still clutching her shoulders, staring at her.

  “I thought you were dead,” I gasp. “Why didn’t you answer my comms?”

  “It’s a long story,” she says, lifting the shotgun to rest on her shoulder. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there, but I’m here now.”

  I just shake my head. “How did you find me?”

  “I went to the location you called me from. Your friend was there. I don’t know where you keep finding these soldiers, but they’re marvelous.”

  “We’re limited edition, ma’am,” Leoben says, stepping away from Mato. He shoots me a worried smile. “You don’t look so great, squid.”

  Cole moves to Anna’s side, but neither he nor Leoben is reacting to her being shot. She’s lying cold on the floor, her blood spilled across the tiles. She must have some kind of tech to make it just seem like she’s dead. But I still can’t understand why neither of them are more worried about the gunshot in her chest.

  “What the hell is going on with her?” I ask.

  “She’ll be okay,” Cole says, stroking the hair back from Anna’s face. “She’s not in danger.”

  I just stare at him, confused. Anna clearly isn’t breathing. Her panel is off. I cross the floor and kneel beside her. The wound on her chest is still closing up. Healing tech does that. It can keep running long after your mind has gone, healing your body, moving through your cells as though nothing is wrong. It can even restart your heart and preserve your body. You can lie in perfect health after death, your organs flourishing, your lungs breathing from emergency nerve stimulation.

  But you won’t wake up—not once the link between the body and the mind is severed. No amount of gentech can repair that. Something irreversible changes inside the mind during death.

  Once the spark of your thoughts is truly lost, it can’t come back.

  So why do I feel like I’m still looking down at Anna, and not her body?

  Cole straightens Anna’s shirt, lifting her head gently in his hands. The scar on her neck gleams in the sunlight. The scar that Jun Bei gave her. An image flashes through my mind—Anna lying on the floor in the Zarathustra lab in a pool of her own blood. Anna said Jun Bei did that to her—she cut her throat—but I don’t feel like it was while they were fighting. The memory is colder, quieter. Anna still hasn’t told me what it is about her DNA that makes her special, but I think I’m beginning to see it.

  Anna’s lips twitch, a muscle spasming in the side of her face.

  I kneel down beside her, a buzzing rising in my ears. There’s color bleeding into her cheeks, a pulse returning in her neck. This isn’t a black-out app that stopped her heart—it was Mato’s bullet. She’s been lying here, dead. I saw her heart stop.

  And now I’m seeing it start up again.

  “She can’t die, can she?” I whisper.

  Cole shakes his head. “Not permanently, no.”

  I close my eyes, reaching my good hand down to the floor to steady myself. I thought my gift was special, but the ability to change my DNA is nothing compared to this. People would start wars to gain control of Anna’s mutation. The world would change if they knew the truth.

  If we could replicate Anna’s gift, we could cheat death.

  “She’ll be okay,” Leoben says, dropping down beside me. “Lachlan must have killed her a hundred times, and she always woke back up. But she said it hurts like hell.”

  I cover m
y mouth in horror. I can’t imagine the childhood she must have lived being literally murdered in that lab, over and over. No wonder she hates Lachlan. No wonder she was so angry at Jun Bei for escaping and leaving her behind. Anna would have hated her for being free while she was still a prisoner.

  Or maybe she hated her because Jun Bei killed her too.

  The memory of Anna lying in a pool of blood in the lab flutters back to me. It was Jun Bei who gave Anna the scar on her neck. Leoben said Jun Bei used to study all of them at the lab—so maybe she was studying Anna. Maybe she cut Anna’s throat to try to understand her gift.

  Somehow, that thought is even more horrifying than the idea of Jun Bei killing sixty people.

  “We’d better get moving,” Agnes says. “There’s a cloud coming in.”

  Leoben stands. “Shit. Those things are fast. We barely outran one on the way here.”

  I push myself unsteadily to my feet and walk to the window. There’s a strange light in the distance, like a storm cloud with lightning streaking through it. But it’s not in the sky—it’s on the ground, rumbling across the desert. A crackling cobalt-blue cloud. It looks like the coiling ropes that made up the glowing fence around the Zarathustra lab, but this cloud is the size of a mountain. My ocular tech zooms in, sharpening the image, drawing into focus the blinking lights of drones above it, the twisting funnels of tornados at its edges. It’s a nanite cloud, like the triphase Novak used to force us to go to Sunnyvale.

  Only, this cloud is big enough to cut through an entire city, leaving nothing but charred earth and ash in its wake. A flock of pigeons is swooping ahead of it, their cries frantic.

  Cartaxus is going to guide these clouds right over Entropia and every other settlement the pigeons are near. They’re going to kill everything in their path.

  “What is that?” Cole asks.

  “It’s Cartaxus,” I say. “Mato said they had airborne weapons they were going to use to try to kill the pigeons. They’re not waiting any longer. Flood protocol is starting.”