by Melissa Faye
BY SUNRISE, I WAS STRUGGLING to stay awake. I woke Etta and Sven so we could stop to eat. And maybe I could rest. Sven had other plans.
“I’ve been reading about guns,” he said. “We need to practice with them. There are only three of us, and if we don’t even know how to use weapons, we don’t stand a chance.”
We hopped out of the truck to stretch our legs and Sven pulled the bag of weapons from the back. He laid a few of the guns out in front of us.
“What do you want to do?” Etta asked. “Show me how to use those.”
Sven smiled. “Let’s start here.” He pointed to a picture on his holoscreen of a man standing with his legs shoulder distance apart, holding the gun with two hands straight out in front of him.
We practiced without the guns first. It felt like a game. Stand here, elbows up, knees bent slightly, lean forward to brace for recoil. Etta and I couldn’t stop smirking, and after Sven made us practice our grip by clenching each other’s hands tightly, we burst into a fit of giggles that we couldn’t stop. Sven stood near us, watching us laugh and shaking his head. We teased him for his stubbornness and eventually got him laughing too.
Sven made sure the guns weren’t loaded so we could practice holding them the right way. We found the safeties and clicked them off and on. We found a group of bushes to practice aiming, looking through the sights while maintaining our stance and grip. Sven got into it, walking around with his legs out wide like a cowboy from an old movie.
Our joking and laughing ended almost as soon as we started practicing with bullets. I struggled to keep all the pieces in my head at the same time while making sure the gun was pointed far away from Etta and Sven. It was different when the camp was attacked. I held the gun loosely, uncomfortable with its weight. I was acting on adrenaline alone. Now we needed to be prepared. We needed to stay level-headed.
Etta shot her gun first. She took her stance, gripped the handle, and placed her finger on the trigger. I held my breath.
The sound of the gunshot sliced through the dry air. Etta’s arm’s recoiled upwards after she shot, and she grimaced. She lowered the gun to the ground with one arm and used the other to massage her own shoulder.
“Don’t look at me like that, Charlie,” she said. “That’s harder than I thought.”
We took turns practicing shooting into the bush, then switched to aiming at targets. We used an old water bottle at first until each of us hit it at least once. I was ready to collapse, and begged for a break.
Sven grabbed some protein packs and water from the truck, and we sat on the ground to eat. I kept thinking about the gun I had used when the camp was attacked. I still didn’t think I knew enough to hold one properly or aim it accurately. And I could never fire one at someone. I wondered if the others felt the same. Etta probably did. She wasn’t the least bit aggressive. Then again, she might be the best out of all of us. It was her daughter the Gray Suits had stolen.
Yami messaged with an update from Gentle Acres. Ann had responded surprisingly well to our escape attempt, and Yami was able to get her sprained ankle treated at the Med. I told her about our gun practice. She seemed at least a little amused at the thought of me or Etta with a gun in our hands. Sven – it seemed a bit more natural for him. He wasn’t aggressive or combative, but he was the type of person who would step up in any situation to help someone out. I liked to think I could be that person, too.
WE DROVE TOWARDS THE school, keeping an eye on our location compared to Alexis’s sketched map. I fell asleep for several hours in the back seat while Etta and Sven barely spoke up front. I woke to hear them talking about the school.
“I can’t imagine where all the kids come from,” Etta said. Sven was driving for a while, and she stared wistfully out the window. “I thought I was the only one. Then I thought it was just me and the other Etta. But from what Alexis described, it sounds like there could be dozens.”
“Who can say?” said Sven. He wasn’t as good a driver as Etta, and he gripped the wheel so tightly that his knuckles turned white. “I can’t tell rumors from fact anymore. I don’t know why the government would do something like this.”
I sat up and rubbed my eyes. The landscape was different, but only slightly. The noncomm was dull once you left sight of a community or camp.
“Our Chancellor was so set on experimenting on us,” Etta said. “The whole thing...I can see why Ann’s team wants to use our samples as a model for finding a cure. But they were doing tests on us while we sat there, sedated. They did testing on Hope before she was even born. It was too dangerous. Why did it have to be like that?”
“I think everything he does is a way to keep power,” I said. “He holds onto his reign over the community like Sven grips that steering wheel.” Etta giggled but stopped when she saw Sven’s face. “He controls everything. Why not control the first pregnancy the community has ever experienced? Why not do everything he can to learn about it, so he’s the one making decisions about what to do next?”
Etta turned to face me in the back.
“How many kids are out there though? The Chancellor wanted Hope, but does he know there are others?”
I didn’t have an answer. I chewed on my thumbnail, thinking. The Chancellor was a dangerous man; we were lucky to have escaped him once. What would he do if he found out about the school? About the Gray Suits?
“I’m also concerned about how many kids we’re going to find,” Sven said. “The truck isn’t that big. How many kids can we transport? Five? Ten? What if there are twenty? Fifty?”
“Teo is around ten, right?” I asked. “If he’s not even the oldest one out there...who knows how many the government have found and collected.”
Etta exhaled slowly. Collected was a poor word choice for what the Gray Suits had done. The kids weren’t collected; they were stolen. We sat in silence for a while longer. I wondered if other kids were out there in hiding right now. How long before they were stolen from their parents too?
“We should get there before sundown,” Sven said. “We’ll find out then.”
Chapter 13 – Yami
The next day, Breck and Alexis drove me to the F-Lab. Although we had only provided them with Breck and Etta’s genetic samples a few days ago, one of the researchers messaged Breck first thing in the morning about a new development. Breck drove the cart a little faster than the people out on the streets seemed to like. I winced when we hit a bump and my ankle smacked against the floor.
I hopped around on my crutches as quickly as I could. I didn’t like holding everyone up and didn’t want to miss out on whatever the researchers were doing. Antonio, the researcher who studied Breck and Etta’s samples, greeted us warmly and invited us to join him and his coworkers.
“There’s an obvious difference in genome between Etta and the other women in the lab,” a scientist said. Antonio introduced her as Betty. “Look at these chromosome maps.”
Someone pushed a machine towards us with a large screen in front. The chromosome map was labeled with Etta’s name and looked no different from the ones I had studied in school. We rarely looked at those in the Med; most hereditary illnesses had been cured a long time ago.
“It looks the same now, but Betty, show them what we found,” said Antonio. Betty touched a few buttons on the screen and the image zoomed in onto one of the chromosome pairs.
“What are we looking at?” I asked. I squinted at the image, but didn’t know what to look for.
“Like everyone else, Etta’s DNA has 32 chromosome pairs, including two X chromosomes. When the fertility crisis started, scientists found that certain genetic materials within the X and Y chromosomes were deleted. No one knows why, and no one has been able to replace that genetic material or adjust other factors in the chromosomes to impact fertility. But this didn’t account for all fertility issues, just some. We haven’t been able to identify the cause of infertility in about 50% of the population.” Antonio’s mouth twitched while he spoke, as if he was on the edge of a big,
triumphant grin.
“Even doctors back in the twenty-second century, with their most up-to-date technology, could view chromosome maps and identify the translocations that previously caused couples to struggle to conceive. But as infertility rates increased, we weren’t able to track all of the problems. And standard treatments didn’t help.”
“Let me zoom in more,” said Betty. “This is the highest resolution karyotype we’re able to get.” I leaned forward, balancing precariously on my crutches. Betty had zoomed right in to one of Etta’s X chromosomes and a thin line was highlighted in yellow.
“That’s it?’ I said, pointing. “That little line let Etta get pregnant?”
Antonio shrugged. “Almost. It’s almost the exact genetic material that disappeared from many people’s DNA hundreds of years ago, so it certainly helped. We just don’t think that could have happened without help from Breck’s DNA.”
Betty switched to a different screen with Breck’s karyotype.
“Breck has a different mutation on his X chromosome. It’s also new to us. It must be completely random. But if both Breck and Etta didn’t have those types of mutations, they wouldn’t have been able to have Hope. In fact, they likely wouldn’t have been able to conceive a boy, since a boy would inherit Breck’s untouched Y chromosome.”
Breck sat down on a stool and covered his mouth with his hand, deep in thought. Alexis stood next to me and cocked her head to the side.
“What caused this mutation?” Alexis asked. “What would make this happen to Breck and Etta’s DNA?”
“We can’t tell,” Betty said. “We may never know. After all of our testing – excluding the recent years where we were working with flawed samples and programming – it’s unlikely that we’ll find an external mutagen.”
“What about Hope?” asked Breck.
“She inherited these chromosomes,” said Antonio. “She should be fertile. She has the mutation on both of her X chromosomes.”
We sat in silence. A few other researchers had come to watch the conversation. Someone messaged Ann, and she was expected to arrive soon.
“So that’s it? Just those small adjustments in the genetic chain, and two people can conceive?” I asked, breaking the silence. “We’ve had success in adjusting genetic chains before, adding or removing genetic material. Can we replicate this?”
“We haven’t had time to try,” said Antonio. Betty looked away with pursed lips. “We may not be able to make people fertile if they aren’t already. We’ll experiment with genetic material spread through cloning to see if we can adjust at that stage.”
“But here’s the other part,” Betty said. “There could be thousands of people around the country who have this mutation, or another one, that supports fertility. If Etta wasn’t with Breck, Hope would never have been born. We can devise a test for this genetic mutation to help connect potential parents.”
That idea scared me. I looked around the room at people with no insignias, no castes. Now there would be a new system to separate us: those who were the lucky fertile few, and the rest of us. What would that mean for all of us?
“What’s next?” asked a voice from the back of the room. Ann had arrived with two council members, and looked eager to learn more.
“Oh...mmm...” Antonio stumbled. “We need to test whether this mutation can be transferred to embryos. And we need to test as many adults as possible to see if they have this same mutation.”
“What if others exist, though?” Alexis asked. “There could be a hundred other mutations that lead to fertility.”
“Let’s start with this one,” said Ann. “We’ll test everyone in Gentle Acres for this exact mutation and learn how common it is.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Antonio.
We watched as Ann walked around the room, shaking researchers’ hands. Energy was high. Antonio couldn’t seem to stop smiling. I still felt unsure. Whether this was a huge advancement or merely a small one, the implications for our society were unpredictable.
I ATE LUNCH OUT IN the park with Alexis and Breck to hear what they were thinking.
“This is a major accomplishment,” Breck said. “I can’t believe it. I didn’t think this would be how I contributed to finding a solution, but here it is.” He took out his TekCast and sent Etta an update.
“Ann ignored your question, Alexis,” I said. “I thought it was a good one. If this mutation works, why wouldn’t other ones?”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Alexis said, waving her hands in frustration. “The only way to learn about other mutations is by finding those kids and their parents. And Ann doesn’t want to do that yet. She wants to stick with this one victory for now.”
“I guess I can see that,” I said. I was trying to better understand the Director’s perspective since she had been so understanding of ours. “We all need a victory right now. And if we ask more questions, we’ll just open ourselves up to more failures. The raid on the school could be...”
We were all thinking it, though no one said it. Javi, Charlie, and Etta were risking a lot right now. They had weapons, but didn’t know how to use them. The school could be any size and guarded by any number of Gray Suits. I wished I was there, but knew in reality that one more person might not even make that much of a difference. We needed to get more people to them fast.
“Etta asked the same thing.” Breck snapped his TekCast shut. “If her genetic line carries that mutation, it explains why Etta 2 also had a kid. But what about Teo’s dad? What about the other parents? It’s possible other mutations exist.”
“What can we do?” I said. My ankle was aching and I readjusted it, resting it on the bench next to me. “Ann hasn’t spoken with the council yet, and we promised to stay here and help.”
“I think all we can do is wait,” said Breck. “Etta said they practiced using the guns and are almost at the school. She promised they won’t do anything without messaging us first. As long as Charlie doesn’t make a move first, right Yami?” I shook my head. It was very possible that Charlie wasn’t going to follow Sven’s directions. Not possible – likely.
I messaged Vonna to tell her the news.
“A genetic mutation? What are you going to do about it?” she asked.
“Wait and see.”
“You’re not the ‘wait and see’ type, are you?”
I laughed. “What we really should do is go find those kids and their parents. We can identify the mutations that let them conceive.”
“Then why don’t you do that?”
“It’s not that easy, Vonna,” I wrote.
“Isn’t it? I thought you could make anything happen.”
I felt myself being buttered up. “I can’t do everything, Vonna. Right now I’m in Gentle Acres. I’ll tell you if I go anywhere else, ok?”
BY SUNSET, I FINALLY felt like I had mastered my crutches. My ankle didn’t hurt anymore, though that may have been from the pain medication. I made Breck admire and applaud how quickly I could skirt down the sidewalk. I paused to check my TekCast
“Charlie says they’re almost at the school,” I said. “What do you think they’ll find?”
“Hope,” said Breck. “Can I tell you something without you snapping at me?”
“Maybe,” I said. We walked at a slower pace now towards Alexis and Javi’s house. I focused on keeping my steps even and flowing. The less I hobbled, the more normal everything felt.
“I don’t care about any of this,” Breck said with an exhale. “I just want to get Hope back.” He paused for a few steps. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad the researchers think they figured things out. And I want to help Teo. And when I think about those other kids, and their parents...”
I sucked in my lips and looked away. I knew what Breck meant, even if Hope wasn’t my own.
“They must be as miserable as I am,” he said. “But I don’t care. I just want us to save Hope.”
I snickered.
“You picked an appropriate name, I suppose,
” I teased. “But no, I won’t snap at you. I mostly want to save Hope and Teo and get out of here. But we can’t really do that, can we?”
“No.” Breck shook his head and kicked the dirt under his sneakers. “It’s bigger than us. That’s what everyone was always trying to tell you, right? Omer and everyone? It wasn’t just me and Etta. And it’s not just Hope and Teo. There are a lot more people involved.”
“Can I tell you something without you teasing me?” I asked. Breck grinned and nodded.
“I can’t stop thinking about what Ann said.” I played with my crutches, swinging myself around. “This is her community, and she’s in charge of their safety. Not like Chancellor Lorenzo. Young Woods was his community, but he wanted to control it. Ann actually wants to meet everyone’s needs. I’ve never seen that before.”
“Matana was like that,” Breck replied. “That’s why she gave you so much trouble. She put her own camp over your needs, even if you thought yours were greater. I mean, not that I would have disagreed.”
“Well, I don’t know what we do when we all have reasonable needs and our own people to protect,” I said. “And I can’t just step back and let her have what she wants at the expense of...of Hope. And the other kids.”
Breck’s face was tightly drawn. I hoped he wouldn’t notice how exhausted I was from trying to prove myself on my crutches all day. We were almost at Alexis’s house when I heard it. A sound I’d only heard once before, at Matana’s camp. Gunshots.
I jerked around on my crutches to look for the source. Breck was already running. There was screaming now, just like at the camp. People came out of their houses in what used to be the Silver neighborhood and ran after Breck. I tripped along clumsily.
I was nearing the town center when I saw it. An army of Gray Suits marching in from the northwest corner of the community. There must have been forty or more of them, each carrying guns and wearing thick black vests and helmets. It was like news footage from ages ago. World War I maybe. They swarmed into the town center from three different roads, then turned south. People screamed and cried out. These Gray Suits didn’t hesitate to point their guns directly at the citizens with no warning or cause, and now people were running in all directions. I saw a body lying on the ground in the park.
