“Being an Icon Child?”
“Being Grass.”
“What if it is?” He stares at me for a long time. As if there was any kind of answer to his question. As if his mother wasn’t the Ambassador. As if he didn’t already know where his whole life was going to lead him.
Not to the Grass.
I stand up, sliding expertly from beneath Ro’s deadweight arm.
“It’s not. So you can tell them not to worry about it. Tell her. We don’t want you.”
I push him out the door and close it before the tears come.
It has been two days since our “conversation” with Colonel Catallus.
They haven’t sent for us again. Not Colonel Catallus or the Ambassador.
Not a single Sympa.
Ro stays in my room with me. They must know he’s there, but if they do, they haven’t said anything about it.
The first day we are exhausted and do nothing but sleep. By the second morning, though, we are starving, and there is no sign of a food tray coming.
That’s when Ro and I decide it is time to think strategically. We need a plan beyond anger. We need to find a way to get out of here.
Time to venture beyond Santa Catalina Examination Facility #9B.
We walk the long halls of the Medical Wing, looking straight ahead, keeping to one side of the corridor. “Don’t speak to anyone,” says Ro. “We just need to get our hands on a food tray.”
“We need more than that,” I say.
He nods. “But first, food. We should probably load up. We can’t just walk out of here, and we don’t know how long it could take to find a way to escape.”
“Don’t talk about it,” I say, lowering my voice. “Not inside.”
I point up at the round grating in the ceiling.
“Got it.”
The room with the door marked CAFETERIA is full of people when we enter. Doctors, officers, Sympa guards. The room is huge and the ceiling is plexi, seamed by metal ribbing that reminds me of the carcass of an animal who has come to die in our field and his flesh rotted away.
The windows would let the light in, if there was light. There are only clouds, though. So the glass lets the gray in.
I see Lucas at a table in nearly the center of the room. Just seeing him makes me stumble into a chair as I pass by, but I collect myself.
Ro lets his hand brush against mine, letting me feel his presence. “Easy there, Dodo. We’ll just grab a couple trays and go.”
I swallow a smile. Ro hasn’t asked me anything about Lucas, not directly, but he hasn’t said anything, either. To be honest, there isn’t much Ro and I have wanted to talk about, these last few days. His “conversation” with the Sympa was probably harder to endure than the one I had with Colonel Catallus.
Either way, they aren’t conversations we will be having again. Not if we can help it.
Lucas catches my eye. He sits stiffly beside the silver-haired girl, the one from the Chopper. She looked almost like an apparition then, and she doesn’t look real here, either; now that I can get a closer look at her, I see she’s slight as wild bamboo. Her fingers flutter as she talks, moving with a different emphasis for every word. They tell stories, her fingers, like a dance. It’s mesmerizing.
My mind stretches toward her, and I catch flashes of terrible things. Disasters and creatures. Storms and slides and fires. I pull back, and she turns toward me.
Strange.
She shouldn’t have felt it, shouldn’t have felt anything. Most people can’t. And yet it looks like she has, just as Colonel Catallus did, during his stupid test. I know Ro can feel me when I am connecting to him. It seemed like Lucas could, too.
But why can she?
The girl is painfully beautiful, and it’s only now that she fixes her eyes firmly in my direction that I realize I am staring.
Ro pulls me, gently, closer to the food counters. A reminder. He is here. I relax into him, letting the heat in my stomach radiate through me.
Moments later, when my tray is full, I follow Ro toward the door.
“When you get to the door, ditch the trays, just carry as much as you can.” He speaks quietly, only to me.
“Fast,” I say. I’m not comfortable talking about our plan to leave, but given the lunchtime clamor in the room, I’m not sure Doc could hear us.
“Where are you two going?”
Lucas stands between us and the door. He looks smug, like he’s caught us in the act of some anti-Embassy crime—which, in a way, he has.
“Nowhere. Back to our rooms.” I don’t smile.
Ro steps up next to me. “Too many Stooges around, Buttons. A guy could lose his appetite in here.”
Lucas frowns. “You can’t take trays out of the cafeteria. Embassy rules.” He’s being awful. He knows he is.
I slammed the door, I think. He’s hurt. That’s what this is.
I reach for him but all I feel is a cold stripe of black fog.
“What, are you going to tell on us to Mommy?” Ro practically snarls.
“No. Not her.” Lucas smiles. “Doc? Could you secure the cafeteria doors? There seems to be a breach of protocol.”
I hear Doc’s voice before I can interrupt. “Initiating locking sequence now. Doors are locked, Lucas. Notifying Embassy personnel of protocol breach. Officers will be dispatched shortly.”
Ro tenses. I can see what’s going through his mind. He’s three seconds shy of running for it.
I shake my head slightly.
No. Not now.
We need to see what happens around here.
We need to know what is going on.
Lucas gestures to the table behind him. The only empty seats in the entire room are at his table. Of course. He probably arranged that.
Or perhaps no one here dares sit with him.
Only the silver-haired girl.
Ro sighs. “Just eat fast.”
I don’t want to eat.
I know that if I walk over there, I will have to meet a girl who holds terrible things in her mind, and be forced to talk to Lucas, who delivered me to his mother.
More new people, with complicated lives and complicated emotions that I will have no choice but to feel, or at least make the exhausting effort not to feel.
I want to run.
Instead, I follow Lucas toward the table.
Ro kicks out a chair and slides up to the table, dropping his trays, which are piled high with crusty loaves of bread, lumps of soft cheese, whole fruits, and handfuls of nuts.
Lucas eyes Ro’s two trays, stacked on top of each other, a layer of food-laden bowls and plates on each. “Don’t hold back. You should really try to eat something.”
“And you’ve got a real future as a comedian, Buttons.” Ro takes a bite out of a massive loaf of bread.
Nobody else says a word. The girl looks like she wants to stab Ro in the face with her fork.
I sit between Ro and Lucas, across from the silver-haired girl. I wonder if I will be able to eat a thing, sitting so close to such an unsettling presence. Even her clothes are gray and silver, the colors of the steel-reinforced room around us. As if she wears institutional camouflage.
Lucas ignores Ro, speaking only to me. “I’m glad you’re feeling better. Eat up. We’ll wait for you, if you like. Then we could show you guys around, or whatever. I mean, if you wanted.”
He’s testing the waters, pretending everything is fine. Like he hasn’t just locked us in this room, or handed us off to the Ambassador. But I want him to know where we stand.
The waters are rough.
“I’m not hungry.” I’m starving, but I know I’m right; I’d no more be able to eat in this room with these people than I could fly.
The silver-haired girl watches us, but she never stops moving, as if she’s a whole constellation of actions rather than just one person. I look away but I can still sense her. Inside, she is not a quiet person, or a happy one. I keep my eyes open, not letting myself blink. If I do, I’m afraid I w
ill see the disasters behind her eyes again. She doesn’t want me to see them, I know that much. I wonder what she’s hiding, and why.
“You’re the girl Lucas found. I saw you, that day at the beach. Up the Tracks.” It’s an accusation, almost a crime. She says Lucas’s name as if it is an Embassy holiday, the word ringing out in the great empty space.
Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Lucas Amare.
For all I know, his birthday really is a holiday around here.
“Dol,” says Lucas. “Her name is Dol.”
“Really? What a strange name.” She doesn’t smile, and I realize she isn’t joking.
“Is it?” I don’t smile back. She doesn’t seem to care either way.
“Orwell? Tell us about this Dol person, please?” She lifts her head as she speaks, raising her voice toward the center of the table.
I see the circular grating before I hear Doc’s voice. She speaks differently to him, more comfortably. He can’t hurt her, this Doc-with-no-body. It makes sense that she would prefer him to the rest of us.
“Certainly, Timora. What would you like to know?” Doc says her name with even precision, stressing all the syllables equally. Ti-mo-ra. Ro almost jumps out of his chair. It’s been three days, but he can’t get used to Doc’s bodiless presence. Life in the Grass will do that to you.
The girl examines me, up and down. “Start with her criminal record, Orwell. I’m guessing it’s lengthy.”
“I’ll start now.”
“Ti-mo-ra? I see why you’re so sensitive about names.” I shrug. I can’t resist.
“She’s just Tima,” Lucas says, drinking from a cup. He shoots Tima a meaningful look. “And like I said, this is Dol.”
“Whatever.” We say it in unison, and then glance at each other, startled.
Ro looks up from shoveling eggs and potatoes into his mouth, pausing to catch my eye.
Tima picks up a silver cup, and for the first time, I see her arm. It’s stitched with colorful embroidery thread in a precise pattern. Scarring—more permanent than henna or ink—lifts each thread, rising into thin lines that will soon overwhelm the stitching itself.
It’s a blood tattoo. This is the first time I’ve seen one, myself. I don’t recognize the design, but three different colors of thread swirl into three shared spirals. Sort of like a yin and yang, I think, but with three parts.
I can’t help but imagine drawing the needle through the skin, pulling the thread tight. The pain is terrifying.
My pulse starts to race. She sees me looking at the tattoo.
“Who did that to you?” The pattern hurts my eyes.
She traces the thread with her finger. “I did this to myself.”
Ro whistles. “You are one freaky chica. And I think I just lost my appetite.”
She ignores him. “It’s a triad, a Gnostic symbol. The three levels of existence. You know, the world soul?”
“The world has a soul?” I don’t know anything about a world soul, though I like the sound of it. The world I know feels like a pretty soulless place.
“Some people think so. It used to.” The girl cuts me off with a look, tapping on the table again. She turns back to the grating. “Any luck, Orwell?”
“De la Cruz, Doloria Maria. Date of birth, 2070. I apologize, Tima. All additional records are sealed.”
“That’s interesting. There should be more.” Tima frowns.
“I apologize again, Tima. Your search has been suspended by a priority communication directed to all four of you. Your instructor has requested your presence in the classroom. Lucas, I will override your command and unlock the doors now.”
“Great,” says Lucas. He looks at Tima, annoyed.
She sighs. “I see. So we aren’t supposed to snoop. Whatever. He could just say it to my face.”
“Who?” I ask, my heart immediately starting to beat faster. Ro looks up, as if he can sense me going on edge, which I suspect he can.
Lucas doesn’t answer. Instead, he shoves his plate away.
“Who?” I ask it again, even though I already know.
It’s Tima who answers. “You’ve met him. Colonel Catallus. He calls himself our teacher but it’s really more of a sadistic jailor kind of thing.”
I want to bolt out of the room, but I force myself to be still. I try to calm down.
Instead, I stare at Tima’s plate. It is empty, except for a single hard-boiled egg, with a single cut across the top. The remaining eggshell is completely intact and completely hollow. Not a drop of the egg’s flesh remains. Who eats an egg like that? I think. Who cares so much about the proper consumption of an egg? Then again, who stitches her own skin?
I find myself wondering what else she can do.
“No,” says Ro, calmly. He doesn’t even put down his fork. “We’re not going to see that psychopath.”
“He’s right,” I say, quietly.
If we hadn’t already been planning on going, we would certainly be leaving now. A conversation with Colonel Catallus is not something we can risk enduring twice.
“What did he do to you?” Tima’s face twists as she speaks, averting her eyes. The silver in her hair gleams, the light reflecting from a thousand tiny gestures she probably doesn’t realize she makes. She’s like a bird. Like a nervous, flighty bird.
I can’t tell her anything. “We had a conversation, I guess.”
“You’re lying. He can’t control himself, especially now that it’s his job.”
“What?”
“That’s why you’re here, you know. For the tests.” Tima looks at Lucas, and he looks at his plate, ashamed—as if they can imagine exactly what happened between Ro and Colonel Catallus and me.
“That true, Buttons?” Ro looks up, still smiling. He’s trying not to let her get to him.
I concentrate harder, and see a flash of the truth behind Tima—a series of shifting images, one after the other. Tima, writhing in pain, watching helplessly while Lucas suffers his own test in the next room.
“It’s true,” I say, without looking at either one of them.
Ro glares at Tima, and I feel his annoyance. His rise of anger. “So what if he did try to poke at us? It’s none of your business, so lay off.”
Tima returns Ro’s look. She, who is afraid of so many things they crowd my brain, is not afraid of him. As much as I hate to admit it, I’m impressed.
Then she leans forward, pulling a pen from her pocket. She writes two words, on the backs of her hands.
She picks up her plate in one hand and her cup in the other, extending them to me.
“Do you mind bussing my plate, Grass? It goes back there, to the kitchen.”
I want to throw them at her, until I see her hands.
One says KITCHEN.
The other says GARBAGE.
There must be a door in the kitchen. Somewhere they keep the trash. Some kind of way out.
She’s helping us go.
I’m surprised. I see a flash of hatred in her eyes, though, and I understand.
She feels about Lucas the way I feel about Ro.
Family that is not family.
A love so strong, you can’t tell where you end and the other person begins.
I get it.
She wants to help, not because she feels sorry for us, but because she wants us gone.
Ro looks at me, questioningly, when he sees her hands. Lucas pushes his chair back, shaking his head.
“What’s the point, Tima? It’s no use.”
Tima motions her hand in the direction of the nearest grating, raising her voice for Doc’s benefit. “The point is she’s some lowly Grass. So is the boy. They should know their place. As long as they’re here, they can act like the garbage they are. Until someone shuttles them out with the trash.”
The garbage shuttle. That’s what I hear. There is a way off this island. Tima has worked through it in her head, just like that, while we sit here. They put out the trash. Go while you can.
She raises her voice
. “I said, take the plate. Now.”
I back away from the table. Ro grabs the plate and the cup out of Tima’s hands, following.
Tima catches my arm before I go.
I am not sure what passes between us, a moment of trust or anger or something else entirely. But she lets me see one more thing.
She rolls her arm slowly toward me. The blood tattoo slides out of sight; I expect another one. I don’t expect this.
Three silver dots on the inside of her wrist.
She’s one of us—and not one of us—too. Like Lucas.
She’s the third Icon Child.
Fear.
That’s when I begin to understand. Tima may not be afraid of Ro, but I have every right to be afraid of her.
Even though she appears frightened, she is lethal—maybe more deadly than Ro. If I stand in her way, she will come for me. Calculated. Precise. One careful stitch at a time.
She closes her eyes and I see the truth.
I see blood and death and chaos. I see the lengths she will go for the person she loves.
Fear is a dangerous thing.
I grab Ro’s arm and flee toward the kitchen, before she can change her mind. He runs as fast as I do, maybe faster.
He’s seen her marking, too.
RESEARCH MEMORANDUM: THE HUMANITY PROJECT
CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET / AMBASSADOR EYES ONLY
To: Ambassador Amare
From: Dr. Huxley-Clarke
Subject: Icon Children Mythology
Subtopic: Freak
Catalogue Assignment: Evidence recovered during raid of Rebellion hideout
The following is a reprint of a recovered page, thick, homemade paper, thought to be torn from an anti-Embassy propaganda tract titled Icon Children Exist! Most likely hand-published by a fanatical cult or Grass Rebellion faction.
Text-scan translation follows.
12
LONG WAY HOME
From our vantage point, hidden behind the open entrance doors, I can see the kitchen is ten times larger than the one in the Mission, with stoves the size of furnaces, built of metal instead of brick and stone. The smoke rises into giant vents that look like silver mouths, instead of fireplaces and chimneys.
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