by Casey Hays
“I don’t trust him,” I repeat. “But he’s here. We can’t change that now. So maybe,” I look off into the horizon as the rain begins to beat the earth. “Maybe I need to start believing he can fix this because he’s the one who broke it.”
With an understanding nod, she furrows her brow. “We need to pray,” she whispers. “For Nicholas and for your father.”
I study her beautiful face. Her heart is so big, and I tug her closer, nodding. We do need to pray, because I’m not sure Liza and Jesse are going to find Nick. But God knows right where he is.
My heart thumps as loud and heavy as the pealing thunder, but I feel peace in that thought.
Chapter 19
While thunder rumbles overhead and rain pummels the roof, Dad peers into the lens of a battery-operated microscope. His body is rigid, completely still as he studies the splatter of dark blue Serum spread across a slide. Only his lips move, silently wording whatever runs through his brain.
I sit on a stool against the wall, legs propped up on the first rung, arms crossed, and I watch him work. It’s something I did many times as a kid. I was mesmerized by everything he did. He was an amazing and invincible man in my mind, and in the end, I was sad. And angry. I wanted to admire his brilliance, but I couldn’t. His own ambitions had made him dangerous.
I haven’t spent more than two days with my dad since I left Eden. Since his arrival, we’ve said virtually nothing to each other. Honestly, I don’t know him anymore.
I study him now. He’s intense, focused, investigating every angle. I have no doubt his mind is on the cure, especially once he was able to confirm that Nick and Stephen were the two baby boys born with the virus. The red spot detected in Stephen’s scan was the indicator. Dad says Nick will have it, too. In those two boys, the Serum is potent… because it had to be… to kill the virus. In the process, it’s left a trace of superhuman ability stronger than we’d anticipated.
From studying Nick’s old scans, Dad determines he would have died within days had he not been given the Serum. Stephen, on the other hand, was not as sick. He would have lived a few months, like Tabitha.
I tap my fingers against the edge of the stool, running everything through my brain again. The cure is real, but it comes at a dangerous cost. It comes with the promise of a violent life. I haven’t changed my mind. This “cure” is not safe to distribute to anyone. Ever.
Dad suddenly straightens, his mouth dropping open. He holds completely still for a good five seconds, then pulls the slide free and inserts another, peering in again.
“That’s it,” he whispers.
He pulls the slide, inserts a third, and examines it. After a second, he sits, wheels the stool a few inches to the computer, and types furiously. I straighten.
“What is it?”
“The answer.” He looks at me. “Son, get Penelope.”
My hope rises an inch, and he doesn’t have to ask me twice. I hop off the stool and go.
I slide on my hoodie and bust out at full speed into the pouring rain. Even with my speed, it’s raining heavy enough to soak me by the time I zip up the steps of Sophia’s porch. I slip in, sopping water onto the wood floor.
I can see Penelope from the entryway. She’s in the living room, reading the story of David and Goliath from the Scriptures.
“How many stones did he have?” Aria asks.
“Five,” Penelope answers. “Five little stones, but it only took one.”
She spots me and lowers the book. All four kids turn. I pull my hood back and step into the room, dripping.
“It’s raining hard!” Stephen laughs. “Justin looks like a wet mop.”
I smile at that, grateful to see Stephen out of the cage. I say a quick prayer that we can keep it that way.
“I bet Justin is as big as Goliath,” Jacob announces, and the others nod in agreement.
“Not quite, buddy.” I bend and tousle his hair before I turn my attention to Penelope and lower my voice. “Dad wants you. He found something.”
She scuttles to her feet. “Okay kids, head upstairs and tell Sophia you’re ready for baths.”
“Baths?” Stephen scowls. “We aren’t ready for baths.”
“Uh, yes. You are.” Penelope playfully pops him on the bottom when he stands. “Go on now.”
Klayre lingers back. She tugs on my wet hand.
“Did your dad help us?” she asks. “Is Nick going to get better so you can let him out of the basement?”
I bend, taking her hands. We haven’t told the kids Nick is missing. Even Stephen has kept quiet about it. But the mention of Nick’s name sends a panic through me. A peal of thunder rattles the room.
“Yes.” I say it with confidence this time. Because I want to believe it. “My dad is going to help.”
She throws herself into my arms for a hug. She’s always been the most intuitive of all the children. Quiet. Only speaking when she has something of value to say. It’s a great quality to be observant. To assess every angle before making a move. Klayre has this gift already. I admire her for it.
The minute we reenter the lab, my dad ushers us over to the microscope, an excitement outlining his features. We stand on either side of him, drying off with worn towels, as he inserts a slide and gestures for Penelope to have a look. She peers in.
“What am I looking for here?”
“This is Stephen’s sample,” Dad begins. “As you can see, the Serum is very active.”
“Yes,” Penelope nods and pulls away, rubbing the towel the length of her hair. “I’d surmised as much from the scans.”
I take a look. Through the scope, the Serum is thicker and full of tiny bumps moving erratically in swirling circles across the slide. These, of course, are the nanos. They seem agitated, clearly not comfortable with being removed from their cozy home inside Stephen’s body.
“Okay, but just—just wait.” Dad holds up both pointer fingers excitedly. I back away, and he changes out the slide. “This is Jacob’s.”
Penelope examines the slide. “Okay. Not as active, but very similar.”
“Right.” Dad again exchanges slides. “Now look at Klayre’s.”
I peer in first this time. Klayre’s sample is nothing like Stephen’s. The blue liquid swirls with movement as the nanos swim, but there is no sign of agitation. I haven’t examined Serum in a while, and not so thoroughly since I had to extract the Eden-killer poison from Ian’s blood. This Serum is beautiful, creating patterns that leave wavy curves like an ocean’s current.
“What do you see, Justin?” Dad asks. I pull back and allow Penelope to take a look.
“Art,” I answer with a shrug.
“Art.” Dad claps his hands with expressive glee. “I like that.”
He whisks his chair across the floor, situating himself in front of the computer and tapping out a few keys. Penelope and I move closer to look over his shoulder. He pulls up all body scans for the children, minus Nick.
“The movement isn’t detected as easily in the scans. Not at first. It’s harder to notice the difference in motion on the still images. But right here? The red spot you discovered in Stephen’s scan? It’s surrounded by a white hazy wall of nanos I like to call “male-types” that function in accordance to the amount of testosterone in a body. And since boys obviously carry more testosterone than girls, it’s not surprising to see this in Stephen. What is surprising is the lack of female-types concentrated in that area. They’re almost non-existent.”
“And that matters?” I ask. I pull up a stool and sit down next to him.
“Oh, yes. It matters along the same lines as it matters for life itself. Males and females are both essential. Which is why my design follows that pattern.”
I study Stephen’s scan, honing in on the red area where Dad’s finger lingers. The red dot is pronounced, a bright beacon in the middle of the brain. Jacob’s scan is noticeably different now that I know what I’m looking for. The male to female ratio of nanos seems a bit more balanced. I skim
to Klayre’s scan and pause.
Just like her sample of Serum under the slide was different, her scan is, too. There’s a vacant area in the exact place the red dot appears on Stephen. It’s surrounded by a circle of light that fades from bright white to the same haziness in the boys’ scans. I chew on my lip in thought.
“And Nick?” I look at my dad.
“I imagine he’s suppressed all the female-types in his system.” He nods at the screen. “And Stephen isn’t far behind him.”
“So what does this mean?”
Dad smiles. “It means, I think I can fix this.”
I raise my brows, daring to let my hope lift its head a little, and Dad scurries on.
“The girls are the key.”
He taps at the keyboard, and another screen pops up, full of a conglomeration of numbers and formulated coding. I glance at Penelope. She squints at the screen, following the numbers with her eyes.
“I’ve been reworking code from memory all day. And I had it all wrong. When I designed the latest batch of Serum, I assigned the same formula regardless of gender. Because I over-assumed that as they had always done before, the nanos would level out, balance each other, work in uniformity, pick up the slack as needed. And initially, that is exactly what I saw the first few months of these babies’ lives. But clearly, as their hormonal levels changed, these advanced nanos didn’t adapt in the same way they always have before.”
He pauses, leaning back and staring at the screen as if he’s amazed by his own creation.
“The Serum was designed to communicate with itself based on specific strands of information. Stems, we’ve always called them, and these stems activate by talking to each other based on the code I’ve written. They are assigned roles in the coding. To rapidly heal injuries, trigger defenses, enhance strength and speed, and so forth. Naturally, boys react differently to this coding than girls; their super-ability development differs. But Stephen…” He wags a finger at the screen. “This red dot? It seems to suggest that the Serum has created its own communication center outside of my code.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because…” He exchanges a glance with Penelope, then looks at me. “Stephen had the virus. As did Nick. And the Serum has written its own code to defeat it.”
“You did it,” Penelope whispers.
Dad shakes his head. “No. I didn’t. I only created a formula that caused babies to shift. The Serum taught itself the rest.”
“It doesn’t matter how, David,” Penelope beams. “It’s a cure.”
He risks a small smile, clearly wanting to agree with her, his eyes fixated on the screen. As for me… I’m not quite there. I come to my feet, planning to shove our stark reality back into the scene.
“That’s all fine and good, except for one thing.” I run a hand through my hair. “The Serum is turning on them.”
“Not all of them.” Dad pulls on his beard, thinking. “Only those with the virus.”
“That’s the point, Dad.” I hone in on him, irritated. “It’s dangerous to give this Serum to the infected. We still don’t know what you’ve created with Nick. So how is that any better than the virus?”
“The boys are alive, aren’t they?” he counters.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Are we really having this conversation again? I throw my hands into the air. “Dad, we know the Serum is multiplying.” I try a different angle. “Penelope says it doesn’t seem to know when to stop.”
“This is true.”
“So? What are you going to do about it?”
“I’m getting to that.” Dad looks at me. “The male-types are aggressively fighting the virus in Stephen and Nick—even though they’ve already defeated it. From what I can ascertain…” He indicates Stephen’s images again. “They are no longer functioning to heal and protect the host for the host’s sake but are fighting for their own survival. And not considering that they need Stephen and Nick alive for that survival.”
“You make it sound like they can think,” I counter.
“Because they can,” Dad answers, pointing at the red dot again. “But as I said before, the girls are the key. A roadmap.” He looks squarely at Penelope. “Those little girls are going to save a lot of lives, beginning with these little boys.”
“Wait a minute.” I raise a hand. “Are you saying we can reconfigure the Serum in the boys to function like the girls’?”
“No,” Dad says. “Not with these boys. But I now see a clear path as to where to begin with the next batch of Serum.”
“The next—” I break off as shock hits me like a wave of water. I knew this would happen. I gape at Penelope. She holds my gaze, her lips a tight line, and I shake my head. “No. Out of the question. We talked about this, Penelope. No more Serum.”
“Just hear your father out.” Her soothing tone doesn’t make me feel any better. “I’m seeing a clearer picture now that David has explained it.”
I pace away, turn back. I’m not ready to consider anything just yet. Dad watches me, not speaking at first. He tugs on his beard, glances at Penelope, back at me.
“Penelope told me a little more about your encounter with Nick.” Dad lifts a brow. “His nanos? They aren’t just communicating with each other internally. They communicated with yours, correct?”
“Don’t remind me.” The feeling of his nanos tugging on mine reenters my mind, and I shudder.
“I think… there might be a way to find him. And to save him.”
I look up. Now he has my full attention. I narrow my eyes suspiciously. “How?”
“If we’re careful, I believe we can safely trigger this communication center in one of the other children. I think Klayre would be our best subject for this.”
I frown. “I’m not following.”
“Someone needs to reach Nick the way he reached you.”
I don’t like where this is going. “And how do you trigger her?”
“Adrenaline.”
“How much adrenaline?”
Dad shrugs, tosses a glance toward Penelope. “All of it.”
“Our whole supply? For one little girl?” My nerves prickle like needles on my skin. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am,” he concludes. “And I have a theory that is by all accounts extremely probable.”
“Another theory,” I quip. “Wonderful.”
He ignores my sarcasm and keeps talking.
“Even in the lab, Nick and Stephen’s defense stems must have already begun to vibrate because of the invading virus. I just didn’t detect it. This Serum was so new, I wasn’t sure what to look for. But it was the explosion that triggered the adrenaline rush which activated the boys’ coms and sent the Serum into overdrive, stimulating the nanos to communicate with each other in order to beat the virus.” He studies me to see that I’m following, and then, he says it. “A domino effect brought on by extreme shock to the body.”
I swallow, beginning to see where he’s going with this.
“We have to make the Serum believe Klayre’s body is in that much trouble,” he says.
I drop my hands. “That’s dangerous.”
“Everything we do is dangerous,” Dad offers.
He examines the screen, not looking at me, and that sick feeling roils around in my stomach. I’ve spent my life dodging danger, thanks to what I am. And there’s no way around it; Klayre will do the same, but I hate that it has to be today she learns of it. I look at Penelope once more, hoping for an ally. She’s clearly on Dad’s side in this. I run a hand up the side of my face, thinking.
“Why can’t we use Stephen?” I finally ask. “His communication center is activated already.”
“Yes,” Dad agrees. “But Nick doesn’t like Stephen, does he? He may not respond to him.”
I sigh. “Why Klayre?”
“We need a girl to go up against all that testosterone,” he concludes with a small smile. “She’s a little stronger than Aria. Her Serum levels are denser. Based on her tests,
I think she’ll be able to take the adrenaline treatment better.”
“It feels wrong to use Klayre like this.” I stand there, despairing, my heart torn between the two children. “How can we do this?”
“Because if she connects with him…” Dad concludes, running a finger along the vacant spot on Klayre’s scan. “She’ll be directly linked to his nanos, the same way he was with yours. Her female-types are strong. If we tell her what she needs to do, she could very well rally his own. In essence, she could teach Nick what he needs to do to balance things out.”
“She’s four, Dad,” I remind him.
“Yes.” He risks a full grin. “So this could be a scientific breakthrough of the greatest magnitude.”
And there it is. Dad’s real agenda. I chew on my lower lip, defensiveness itching all the way to my bones. Dad has nothing personally invested in the kids. Not like me. No time. No training. No nurturing. I love them all like my own flesh and blood, and I suddenly feel possessive. My chest tightens anxiously. I want to save Nick more than anything. But if Dad triggers the communication center in Klayre? I seek out Penelope, wishing not for the first time that she’d intervene where I can’t. And then… she does.
“Justin.” She stands and rests a tender hand on my forearm. I concentrate on the single silver streak running the length of her long, jet black hair, and work to calm my uneasiness. “I have a very good feeling about this. I think your father is right. We need to trigger Klayre’s communication center.”
I close my eyes, taking in a deep breath. Everything about Klayre is stable right now. She’s made progress; she’s responded well to training. Nick is off the charts. So what if something goes wrong? What if we trigger her aggression, and she’s no better off than Nick in the end?
What if we make things worse?
