This Cruel Design

by Emily Suvada

  “We have to go,” Leoben says. “Those clouds are everywhere. I don’t like it any more than you guys, but I think it’s time to turn ourselves in.”

  “We could go to Entropia,” Agnes says. “The basement levels will be safe.”

  “Nowhere will be safe for much longer,” Cole says, kneeling to pick up Anna’s body. She’s still limp, her tech dark, but I see a vein pulsing in the side of her neck. “They have the scythe. They’re going to use it on everybody on the surface. There’s a bunker near here that we might just make it to if we take the Comox.”

  “No, we have time,” I say, looking at Mato’s unconscious form. “Mato said Cartaxus was going to round up as many people as possible. Brink is razing the settlements. That has to buy us time.”

  “Time for what?” Cole asks. “This is over, Cat. How can’t you see that? If you stay out here, you’re going to die with them.”

  I look back at Mato. He wanted me to use the Origin code to stop this by doing what Lachlan has been planning all along. But I don’t remember the code—I can’t use it, and I don’t think that’s the right way to solve this, anyway. There has to be another solution. Something that isn’t based on death or forcibly changing people’s minds. If erasing the Wrath from Cartaxus’s leaders is the only way to save us, then I don’t know if humanity is worth saving.

  “I don’t know what to do, but I’m not running away,” I say. “I want to go to Entropia. Maybe the genehackers have a plan.”

  “You want to go back to Regina?” Cole asks. “She took your hand, Cat. And Lachlan is there.”

  “Then maybe they can help us stop this,” I say. “Brink is wrong. He’s not going to be able to control the pigeons, which means the vaccine isn’t going to last. Mato said we need to move past the vaccine, and I’m starting to think he’s right. We need to think of better ways to stop this plague, and Cartaxus’s scientists aren’t going to be the ones who’ll invent them. They need bigger ideas—bolder ideas. They need Entropia. We just have to figure out how to make that clear to Brink.”

  Cole sighs, frustrated. “Wherever we go, we can’t stay here much longer.” He heads through the front door, Anna in his arms, and strides out into the driveway to the jeep.

  “I’m with you, squid,” Leoben says. He jerks a thumb at Mato. “What about him?”

  “Shit. I don’t know.” Part of me wants to leave Mato here for the clouds. He was going to kill Cole, he shot Anna, and he tried to break my mind apart to bring back Jun Bei. But that doesn’t stop something twisting inside me at the thought of leaving him here.

  Jun Bei cared about him. Whatever he’s done, I don’t think I can let him die.

  “Bring him,” I say. “He’s central command. He’s useful as a hostage. Just make sure he doesn’t wake up.”

  “My pleasure.” Leoben picks up Mato and heads outside.

  Agnes takes my arm as I follow them out onto the driveway. The pigeons’ cries form a low rumble in the distance, and I can hear the crackle of the cloud’s electricity as it rolls closer. Agnes takes my chin in her hand and tilts my face, peering at me.

  “Bobcat,” she says, “you look awful. Have you been eating?”

  “Not really,” I murmur. “I’m just so glad you’re okay.”

  “We have a lot of catching up to do,” she says. “Come on. Let’s get moving.”

  There’s a battered green pickup truck parked in the driveway that Leoben and Agnes must have brought here. The Comox Anna and Cole flew here in is parked in the dirt, its ramp extended to the ground. Leoben climbs inside with Mato. Cole is standing behind his jeep with the rear doors open, lowering Anna in.

  I walk over and lift my pack from the passenger seat, reaching into the back to grab my holster. I shoot a glance at Cole. “What are you doing with her?”

  “I can’t take her into Entropia,” he says, swinging the rear doors shut. “I’ll send the jeep back to a base.”

  “You don’t have to come—”

  “I’m not leaving you,” he says. “You have to decide for me, too.”

  I step back, shaking my head. “That’s not fair. Don’t make me do that, Cole.”

  “Whatever you want to do, we need to go,” Leoben says. “This cloud will be here soon.”

  I look at the horizon. The cloud is moving fast, already less than a mile away. It seems like it’s coming straight for us, the drones above it glowing red, whining across the sky. I let a pulse slip from the cuff on my arm, just meaning to scan the drones, but my tech locks on to their signals automatically. Code scrolls across my vision. I stiffen, letting my backpack slide to the ground. Maybe it’s what Mato did to me, or maybe it’s finding out the truth about Cole, but I suddenly feel like I’m not in control of myself. I’m not the one launching these commands, at least not consciously. The ocean in my mind is surging, though, heaving against the splintering wall.

  Code unfurls from my panel and out across the desert, my mind splitting seamlessly, fractioning into the drones—once, twice, three times, until their controls are a kaleidoscope inside my mind. I lift my hand, my cuff gleaming in the crackling light of the cloud, and send out a pulse in twenty-four dimensions into the hearts of the drones.

  They halt, tilting in the air, then crash to the ground.

  The cloud of triphase hangs for a moment before collapsing, spilling across the desert like a wave. It tumbles closer, cobalt fingers stretching across the plains toward us, diffusing into smoke.

  “Holy shit,” Leoben says.

  I draw my mind back into itself, folding the fraction closed, my reality shrinking down to a single universe, a single pair of eyes. The ocean inside me is still rippling, rushing over my senses.

  And, for the first time, I know what it means.

  I turn to Cole, barely breathing. He’s staring at me, wide-eyed, the others behind him. They all look stunned by the drones on the ground, the collapse of the mountain of death, but none of them can see what I just glimpsed. They didn’t feel the ocean inside me heaving or see the code unfurling from my arm without me consciously launching it.

  They think I’m the one who brought down those drones.

  But I don’t think it was me.

  “Cat, are you okay?” Cole asks.

  I just shake my head, backing down the driveway, keeping my distance from him. He reaches for me, but I slide my gun from its holster and level it at his chest.

  “Stay away from me.”

  His face goes white. He steps back, his hands lifted, staring at me. “Cat, what are you doing?”

  “Hey,” Leoben calls. “Whoa there.”

  “None of you come any closer!” I say, my voice shaking.

  “Cat,” Cole begs. “Please. I’m sorry.”

  There’s a desperation in his voice that wrenches at me, but I can’t tell him what I’m about to do. I haven’t even made up my mind myself, and I know he’d talk me out of it if he knew. He’d run for me and try to stop me. He’d take the gun away.

  But I can’t let him.

  Mato has done what he intended—he’s brought me to the brink. I can see the truth now, but it’s not the one he expected. I just fractioned to take down the drones, but it wasn’t me who did it. Not my code, and not my mind. The virus that just spun from me wasn’t a random scrap of commands—it was wielded like a blade. Clean. Precise. Sent by a hand steadier than mine. I close my eyes, seeing Jun Bei’s face, seeing mist shrouding the three peaks of the Zarathustra mountains. Cole steps forward again, but I lift the gun, my hands shaking.

  He stops, his hands raised. Agnes is watching me, her eyes narrowed, like she’s trying to understand.

  “Don’t come any closer.” I step back, the gun still aimed at Cole’s chest. Rocks crunch beneath my boots, skittering across the uneven ground. I don’t have time to tell them everything, and even I don’t really understand what’s happening. All I know is that I’m out of plans, out of ideas, and this is the only option I have left. There might be just one sliver of ho
pe. One person with a chance of stopping Cartaxus and saving us all.

  But it isn’t me.

  “Cat, please,” Cole says, his hands raised. “I won’t move, I swear. Just tell me what you’re doing.”

  I shake my head, sliding back the gun’s safety. I think I finally know why the ocean in my mind rises into a storm every time I’ve glimpsed Jun Bei’s past or pushed myself to my limits. The answer is echoing through me—that Mato was right—the girl I used to be is still there, locked away inside me, and now I’m standing at the edge of the abyss he tried to push me into.

  But I can see into the darkness now. There’s more than memories locked inside me. There’s a life. There’s a mind, and it’s calling to me. It’s whispering in my senses, rippling across my skin. Breathing a truth that shudders against the walls inside me.

  Jun Bei and I are not the same, and I’m not another version of her. I’m not a weaker copy—I’m not a copy at all. I’m something separate, existing alongside her like the two horizons I just glimpsed while taking down the drones. I can feel her now, and I can sense the force of her thoughts pushing against my own like a wave breaking against a cliff.

  She’s smarter than me, stronger than me. She’s outsmarted Cartaxus before. She’s the only one who has a chance of stopping this.

  And I think I know how to bring her back.

  My eyes lock on Cole’s, my hands tightening on the gun. It’s still stocked with custom bullets. Hollow-core, ceramic, filled with beads of healing tech. I still haven’t calibrated them. I don’t know if this will work, but the closest I’ve ever come to breaking through the wall inside me was on the point of death. This might hurt me just enough to finally crack the wall and set the ocean inside me free, or it might leave me bleeding out in the desert while Entropia burns.

  But the fact that I don’t know if I’ll survive this is why it just might work.

  “Cat, what are you doing?” Cole asks, his voice shaking.

  “I love you,” I say. “I want you to know that, just in case.”

  His eyes widen. “What are you doing?”

  I look at Agnes, at Leoben, wishing I could explain, but there’s no time.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper, then lift the gun to my chest and pull the trigger.

  CHAPTER 35

  FOR A MOMENT THERE IS only pain. A world of velvet blackness with no light or form—just the feeling of a bullet tearing through flesh and splintering bone. I clutch my chest, letting out a scream, and the darkness resolves into a vast, echoing room. Concrete walls and ceiling, a gleaming white floor. Dozens of screens hang dark on the wall opposite me, a cluttered lab counter beneath them. Triangular fluorescents glow above me, and a floor-to-ceiling window on the far wall shows the silhouette of three mountains in the distance. Heavy storm clouds hang over their jagged peaks, flashes of lightning illuminating the arcs of pigeons swooping through the rain.

  I’m in the Zarathustra lab, in the room where I blew up the genkits, lying on the floor, shaking, blood pulsing from my chest. Two hands are pressed to the wound, a face above me, but it isn’t Cole or Lee.

  It’s Jun Bei.

  Her dark hair is back in a messy ponytail, the baggy sleeves of a gray sweatshirt rolled up to her elbows. The sight of her hits me harder than the pain lancing through my chest. There’s a stripe of cobalt glowing along the inside of her arm, four leylines snaking from it into the sleeve of her sweatshirt. One rises up her throat, wrapping around the edge of her hairline, disappearing into the soft, downy hair at the nape of her neck. She’s on her knees, leaning over me, trying to stem the flow of blood. Her hands are slick with it, strands of her hair sliding across her face.

  “Of all the stupid things you’ve done, Catarina,” she says, “this might have been the worst.”

  A jolt runs through me as I stare at her. Her eyes are a pure, brilliant emerald, a furrow etched along her brow. This is no dream. No glitching flashback. This is as real as any moment I’ve lived before. I choke in a breath. “You’re still alive.”

  “No thanks to you,” she mutters.

  I stare at her, my mind spinning. This isn’t just another side of my personality. She’s another person. She’s the dark space the implant sectioned off. It hasn’t been memories that I’ve been glimpsing for the last week—it’s been her.

  Jun Bei is the ocean locked behind the wall in my mind.

  “I can’t believe you shot us,” she says, pressing the heels of her hands harder into my chest. Her face reddens with the effort, patches of scarlet soaked into her sweatshirt. Blood is still bubbling up from between her fingers, gushing from the wound.

  But this can’t be real.

  I’m not in the Zarathustra lab. I’m lying in the desert with a bullet inside me. This is just a VR simulation, but Jun Bei’s hands feel real. The tiles are cold and slick beneath me, pooling with my blood, pain lancing through my broken rib from the pressure of Jun Bei’s hands. I scan the room, staring at the humming genkits, the mountains beyond the window. The air is cold and scented with disinfectant and blood. I know the best VR simulations are hard to distinguish from reality, but the level of detail in this one is overwhelming. There is no hint from anything around me that I’m not really here.

  I cough, scrunching my eyes shut. “How come this feels so real?”

  “Because this isn’t just VR,” she says, her green eyes flicking to mine. “This is a simulation I built years ago. It’s linked with the implant, feeding back into our brain. You can feel it the way you feel your dreams. Your mind makes it real.”

  “Then why are you pressing on my chest?”

  “I’m trying to save us,” she says. “I told you—your mind makes this real. Your tech can handle the wound in your body, but right now I’m more concerned with our brain.”

  There’s an edge of desperation in her voice, though I can’t understand how stemming the flow of blood from a virtual gunshot wound could be so important. She lifts one blood-stained hand, looking around, her eyes locking on a dish towel hanging from a hook next to the lab counter. She blinks, and it appears in her hand.

  “I think it’s stopped,” she says, balling the towel up, shoving it down on the wound. “Please don’t do anything like that again. Here, keep pressure on this.” She lifts my wrist and presses my hand down on the bunched-up towel, then rocks back on her heels.

  I just stare at her. I’ve thought for days that Lachlan kept a backup of my memories inside me, but this is something else. He kept an entire person locked away and created someone new alongside them.

  “What the hell did Lachlan do to us?” I ask.

  “I’m still trying to figure that out,” she says.

  “But how do we both exist in the same brain?”

  She wipes her hands on the front of her sweatshirt. “There’s plenty of brain for the two of us. The left frontal lobe is mine, and the right is yours. There’s a wall between us, held in place by the implant, and it’s imperative it remains there if we’re both going to survive. As far as I can tell, the two of us can stay separate as long as the implant keeps up the barrier, but every time it’s come down, we’ve both lost a little of ourselves to each other. I’d like to keep my personality intact, and I’m sure you would too. I think it’s possible for both of us to survive this, but we’re going to need to work together.”

  I shake my head. I still can’t believe she’s real. She’s been there this whole time, waiting. Trapped inside her own body.

  Inside our body.

  “What do you mean, both of us survive?” I ask. “We only have one body.”

  “Oh, I’m aware of that.” She presses her hands to her knees, standing. “I was less than thrilled to wake up and find you inhabiting it too. I thought you were a dream for a while. But it wasn’t a very good dream, and then I realized that something serious had happened to my brain. I don’t know where you came from, but we’re both here now, and we have to figure out how to survive.”

  “We can’t both
survive like this.”

  She tilts her head back. “You’re still thinking so rigidly. Didn’t you learn anything from Regina? Why should we restrain ourselves to the historical definition of humanity? We have two hands, two eyes, two ears. Why not two minds? I didn’t like it at first either, but can you imagine the research we could do? You and I are something new—something unexpected. We could spend years analyzing the way our brain works, and I’d like to do that very much. But first we have to make it through the next few hours.”

  I lift my head, watching her as she walks to the lab counter. The pain in my chest is fading fast. I don’t know if that’s because someone has given me healing tech back in the real world, or if it’s like Jun Bei said—my mind is making this real, and now I’m making myself feel better.

  “We’re going to need to figure out a plan together,” she says, turning on a faucet above a steel sink, washing her hands. I lift myself carefully up on one elbow, still pressing down on the bunched-up towel. I look around at the lab—the mountains outside, the wall of dark screens, the genkit. It’s a perfect re-creation of the room where I killed the puppet.

  “How long have you been in here?” I ask.

  “Not long.” She grabs another towel to dry her hands. “It took me a while to wake up properly, but the first thing I remember recently was lying on that doctor’s couch after he cut your healing tech out of your arm. Marcus, wasn’t it? Lachlan’s code had been generating the ERO-86 until then, and it was keeping me asleep. I remember glimpses from when he was changing me into you, but before that, the last thing I recall was being at the Zarathustra lab.”

  I sit up, lifting the towel from my chest. There’s still blood soaked into my shirt, a hole torn through the fabric, but the skin where the wound was gaping just a few minutes ago is closed.

  “What about Entropia?” I ask. “Those six months?”

  She sighs. “Nothing substantial. Just fragments left over from the wipe. Those months are gone from both of us.”