Fear My Mortality

by Everly Frost

  I thought about the homeless addict in the park who’d been desperate to get at the ampule in my back. “Safe enough doesn’t mean safe.”

  He inclined his head. “Over time, we perfected it. We got rid of the hallucinogenic effects, but nothing seemed to change the extra strength it gave him, no matter how we adjusted the formula.” His eyes were suddenly hard and piercing. “When we first gave you nectar, it was the raw stuff like Josh had the first time. But you compartmentalized your brain, protecting the part of your mind that controls reason and logic.” He tapped my temple before I could shove his hand away. “It’s like you built a barrier in there. A wall.”

  Walls. The ones Michael didn’t want to talk about.

  “Unlike your brother, you stayed aware of what was happening—you controlled the effects and tried to escape. Your strength increased even more than Josh’s. That room’s made of concrete, Ava. It’s twelve inches thick and you put cracks in it. If we’d let you get to the door, you wouldn’t have just dented it.”

  He gestured at the now frozen screen and my brother’s small face. “It was only because of Josh’s reaction to nectar that we tested his blood and discovered he was nothing like the rest of us.”

  My teeth chattered. I tried to stop them, but it was no use. They’d known all along about Josh, about his mortality.

  “If you had him, why do you need me?”

  “You’re a girl.” His expression was grim. “We tried for years to replicate Josh’s DNA, but it was too unstable. We finally realized that the male Y chromosome was making it impossible. We hoped that two X chromosomes would make a difference and we were right: the gene that inhibits regeneration exists on both your X chromosomes. But here’s the thing: both genes are active.”

  I must have given him a blank look because he said, “Usually, the genes on one X chromosome are inactivated. In your case, the additional gene contains the extra information we need to stabilize the formula. Think of it like a bullet without gunpowder. Josh’s DNA gave us the bullet, but without the gunpowder it’s useless. Even as a mortal, you’re a scientific anomaly.

  “We always suspected you’d be like Josh, but we didn’t want to pull you in unless we had to. Keeping his secret was hard enough, let alone keeping two of you under control.”

  “And the park? Why did you leave me in the park?”

  “For so many reasons. For starters, we needed to give you the nectar ampule and place you in a situation that would trigger it. We could have done that here, as you’ll soon see, but we realized something else. Well, Robert realized it. You have a strong protective instinct. We saw it in your brother many times, especially the night he tried to save you. We always thought it was a personality thing with him, trying to help other people. But then we saw it in you too. You remember that little boy who got hit by the car outside your house? I watched you, Ava. You wanted to rescue him.”

  I remembered the drone that morning, hovering in front of my face, studying me. I remembered his mom calling the Hazards, but hardly looking at him, worrying about being late for work.

  Cheyne scratched his chin. “It made us wonder—what else do mortals feel? Could you have instincts, reactions, that we don’t have? If those instincts are dormant, but coded into your DNA, then we need to activate them somehow. Your reaction to nectar was exponential and if we combine that reaction with instincts that make you move faster, that cause you to protect people you love, then there’s no limit to what you could do.” He studied me, a look of wonderment in his eyes. “Boy, you didn’t disappoint. That drug addict in the park didn’t know what hit him. We left you out there as long as we could, but the Bashers were closing in.”

  I didn’t move. “You gave me the ampule to keep me alive, and then you used Michael as leverage to get me to come in.”

  “If we calibrate the dose of nectar exactly right, we can give you the gift of healing without the side effects. We did the same for Josh. He went on with his life. If things were different—if your mortality wasn’t public—you could have done the same.”

  The image of my brother bashing himself against the metal door wouldn’t leave me. Instead of pulling away from Cheyne, I snatched at his shoulder, pressing my fingertips into him, wrenching closer. “If my brother had a nectar ampule, why did he die?”

  Cheyne shouted. “He wasn’t supposed to!”

  With a shove, he dropped me, and I landed on my knees, barely feeling the bruise before it vanished.

  Cheyne towered over me. “Michael thought the final fight was in that room. He was supposed to delay Josh so we could get to you. We were going to run the tests and take your blood during the Basher attack and send you to the recovery center where your parents would be waiting. Nobody was supposed to know about it. Josh wasn’t supposed to die. But his ampule wasn’t implanted. He didn’t take it out himself because that’s impossible. You know that already—your skin heals too fast. Someone took it from him!”

  I remembered Cheyne pushing Josh over after he died, cursing at the strange, puckered patch of skin on my brother’s back, right in the same place my own ampule was located.

  My breath hurt. My ears buzzed. “If you knew everything about my brother, how come you didn’t know he was a Basher?”

  “We knew. We promised him that if he infiltrated their organization and fed us intelligence on their plans, we’d let you both go. When he told us about the planned attack on Implosion, we knew we could use it to keep you alive and get what we needed.”

  “You tricked him.”

  “We had to. We needed you. This country needs you.”

  I gritted my teeth and stared up at him as defiance poured out of me. “I will never participate willingly in anything you do.”

  His expression turned to rage as I refused to look away. As I refused to give in. He snarled. “You think you don’t need us. You think you can survive without us.”

  He hauled me to my feet and half-dragged, half-walked me out of the room, further down the corridor, until we halted outside another door. I waited for it to open. I wondered if there would be more people laid out on metal beds—if it would be my parents or even Josh’s dead body.

  Cheyne hissed. “Just remember how much you think you don’t need us. Think about that while you’re in there. Without this to save you.”

  His hand snaked out. A knife glinted.

  I tried to run, but he grabbed my shoulder, spun me around, and drove the point into my back. I screamed as he angled it, twisted, and pulled. Before I could do anything, something sprang into the air and clanged against the opposite wall. It was a metal cylinder, as long as my thumb and shaped like a golden teardrop.

  The ampule of nectar. Etched into it was the outline of a scorpion.

  It wobbled a foot down the corridor and skittered out of reach. I grabbed Cheyne, to hit back, but he shoved me into the room and slammed the door behind me.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I landed on my hands and knees in the black room, unable to see anything. My back throbbed where Cheyne had ripped out the ampule.

  I tried to see where I was, but it was no use. The metal door had sealed behind me, shutting me into some kind of caldron. The only sense I had was that the walls curved because as I scratched at the door behind me, the sound bounced.

  My skin prickled a second before pale gray lights flickered on, dotting the ceiling, soaking the room in a soft glow. The room was circular, except that the walls were covered from floor to ceiling in an intricate net, anchored at a multitude of points. The floor was uneven, shaped out of what appeared to be many overlapping panels like a snail shell, or an iris.

  If I thought I was alone, I could have dealt with the almost-dark and the not-quite silence, but it was impossible to ignore the sense of being watched.

  I blinked, looking for any hint of a shape in the walls behind the netting. If there were cameras or CCTV drones, they were well hidden. I shuffled through the gray haze, trying not to c
atch my feet on the floor, seeking the nearest wall, but everything curved and I couldn’t tell how they were seeing me.

  A quiet slither was the only warning I had as the nets began to rise, skimming the walls, inching upward. I eyed the movement, unsure what to make of it, whether it should worry me.

  Then the floor creaked.

  I wobbled, trying to keep my balance. Panels slid beneath the balls of my feet and an immediate shudder rocked my legs.

  The floor was opening. A growing hole appeared at the center of the room, opening wider and wider like a camera shutter. I staggered backward, caught my toes against the edge of a moving panel, struggled to stay upright, and crashed forward at the edge of the hole, my hands gripping it even as it expanded.

  Darkness. That’s all there was under me.

  I gasped, and the sound sucked down and down and I imagined that there was a pit somewhere down there, too far to see. I scrambled backward, scooting on my backside, catching my fingers in the moving panels. It was no use pressing up against the walls. The opening grew and it would expand until there wasn’t any floor left.

  They wouldn’t let me fall. They needed me. I tried to rationalize the situation and ignore the instinct that told me to run. I could stay put and wait for the floor to stop opening.

  It will stop before I fall. It has to.

  Cheyne had captured Michael in the park and left me there. He’d planted a bomb in Michael’s bag. If there was anything I knew for sure, it was that he was unpredictable. He’d pushed me to my limits before and he wouldn’t stop now. My instincts won out.

  Springing to my feet, there was just enough floor left to jump. I lunged, caught the bottom rung of the net in one hand, swung my other arm up and snatched at it, scrabbling my feet on the smooth walls. I darted a glance below me, but the floor was already gone. There was only an abyss.

  I closed my eyes and tried to breathe. The rope netting was rough but thick. I readied myself to push up with my feet, to climb, and just managed to grab a higher rung with my right hand. It was enough to give me leverage. Rung by rung, I progressed upward, pushing my legs against the wall, until I had both feet on the netting. My head was a couple feet from the ceiling. At least the net had stopped retracting upward.

  Panting, I clung. For a moment, I breathed, letting the air in and out of my lungs, not looking down into the dark. I decided to wind my wrists into the netting because I’d get tired and I didn’t know how long I’d be there, and that way I could rest.

  Just as I twisted the rope around my left wrist, there was a snap. I jerked, held on, searching for the source. One of the holds, keeping the net anchored against the wall to my far left, must have broken because a part of the net hung limply further off the wall than the rest.

  There was another snap, this time right next to my foot. Then another at my left hand. I jerked backward, clinging, holding on. In quick succession, the net ripped off the wall all around me, my weight forcing it down even further. Like a constant deadly beat, rows of holds across the ceiling broke and I dropped backward, still gripping the net, until I was almost horizontal, the fall sending my stomach spiraling down into the void. The ropes creaked and the sound shuddered through me.

  As fast as I could, I wrapped my feet into the netting. There was nowhere between me and the chasm below, nothing to grab hold of or break my fall. My hands and arms were slick with sweat, icy with fear. One of my feet slipped and I stretched my toe, finding the nearest rung just in time, but it wasn’t enough. I was going to fall.

  At the last moment, there was a whir. At the level of my face, the iris began closing, panels grinding, spinning toward me, faster than it had opened. I was too far down and the iris was going to close around my body. I struggled with the net, trying to pull it taut, yanking on it, attempting to get higher and avoid the crushing floor, but the holds kept breaking and the more I struggled, the worse it got. As the iris closed, I wrenched upward, out of the way, and it snapped shut beneath me, pinning the edge of my t-shirt.

  The last of the netting broke free and I thudded against the floor, ripping at my shirt until it tore from the panel, and then I curled up under the rope lattice, chilled to the bone.

  I told myself to get up. I had no idea what they’d throw at me next. I forced my shaking legs to function and rose onto my knees. It was all I could manage before the lights came on.

  The door swung open. Cheyne dragged the net off me, cutting the tangle from my shoulders and head.

  He held out the ampule, the gold metal glinting. “Do you want this now?”

  I staggered upward and made it to my feet. I fixated on the ampule and the scorpion on its surface. If I had it, I wouldn’t have to be afraid anymore. I could live without fear of being hurt, without fear of dying.

  They’ll use it to control you. Michael was right. My eyes flicked to Cheyne’s smug face. They wanted me to need their help. They wanted me to stay willingly, of my own accord because they could offer me the one thing that promised safety.

  He hadn’t given me the ampule to keep me safe. It was to keep me under control.

  They’d done it to Josh and my brother had told me: Don’t let them break you.

  I pressed my palms into my thighs. I didn’t know if it was the right answer or not, but I said, “Maybe soon.”

  “Hmm.” He looked a bit less pleased. “Well. We’ll fix that.” He took hold of my arm and pulled me down the corridor again. It curved gently and we passed another three doors before he spoke.

  “Do you know what I really love about this place? There are so many doors. You never know what’s behind them. We can keep opening doors all day if you like?”

  “No. I think I’d like the ampule now.” I stared at the outside of his hand, where the ampule hid in his fist.

  He slowed down a bit. “Good. Just one more then.”

  He stopped and yanked me to a halt in front of a wall. He got out a small electrical device and pointed it at the wall. The shape of a door became visible, sliding back to reveal another bowl-shaped room. He pushed me into it. “Get some rest, Ava.”

  I turned, reaching out. “The ampule?”

  “Maybe tomorrow.”

  “No—”

  The door shut and sealed. I dropped my head against it. This room was white and curved up the sides to the flat ceiling. Light came from somewhere, but I couldn’t see where. I caught sight of a water jug and raced to it, dropping to my knees and putting it to my lips. I tried to go slowly, afraid that I’d bring it back up if I drank too fast. It tasted better than anything I’d had in my whole life.

  Once I swallowed the last drop, I curled up on the floor and listened to the thrumming of white walls vibrating in some kind of tuneless song. It wasn’t long before I realized that it was the rhythm of one of my old dances—the one I’d practiced in the park. It made me remember Michael, the way he’d spun me around, telling me I could dance if I wanted to, that nobody could tell me not to. I crawled over to the place where the floor became the wall, leaning my back into the curve and flexing my toes. I was sure the walls were beating. I closed my eyes and let the vibration lull me to sleep.

  I woke to more beats, but these were irregular, unwelcome. They ended with a pair of boots at eye level, the only black thing in my white room. My bleary eyes peered up, all the way to a shock of red hair.

  “Get up. It’s time for another door.” It was Reid and for once I was relieved to see him instead of Cheyne. My relief didn’t last long, as he said. “You’ll like this one a lot.”

  I was sure I wouldn’t, but I scrambled to my feet. I could see his boots itching to kick me if I wasn’t fast enough.

  “I need to use the bathroom.” I pressed my lips together. I hadn’t meant to say it, but there it was.

  He scowled. He sauntered across the room, kicked the wall, and in an instant a panel slid away and a toilet rose up out of the floor. He turned to face the other direction and I knew it was the best I w
as going to get. I shot daggers into his back until I finished. I took a moment to scrutinize the wall. There were two raised bumps. I hit the one that wasn’t already compressed and to my relief, a small washbasin extended out of the wall.

  “Fine,” I said to Reid’s back after I washed up. “I’m ready for door number three.”

  He snickered and grabbed my arm. “I bet you are.” Then, “Want your ampule?”

  “Um, yeah. Can I have it now?”

  He shook his head.

  “Will I get it after this?” I tried to stay as far away from him as possible, as we left the room and headed down the corridor. I tried to imagine how big this place was, since we never went backward, only forward along the curving corridor. The room with Mrs. Hubert and Jeremiah in it might have been a mile back in the other direction or only a few hundred feet, I couldn’t tell anymore. I wondered if I was back at the Delaney Recovery Center, but the rooms there had been angular, with straight corridors. There were no corners here, only curves. I started counting doors since that seemed the only way to tell how far we’d walked.

  “Only if you’re good.”

  I bit my tongue between my teeth. I regretted sleeping. I should have spent the night figuring out a way out of there. I turned my head, trying to ease the stiffness in my neck.

  We strode a long way down the corridor before he stopped and pointed. “Door number three.”

  I didn’t move, hanging back, almost pulling away. “You’re not going to push me in there, are you?”

  “No way. I’m coming in with you. I want to see this. Besides,” he continued. “You’re going to have questions and I have the answers.”

  The door slid open. This room was as deep purple as a bruise. It didn’t smell right and I put my hand over my mouth to stifle the overwhelming scent of something not quite living.

  Reid whispered. “You’ll get used to it. C’mon in.”

  One foot in front of the other. I barely felt the floor, hardly noticed my legs move, aware only of the person strapped to the chair.