True Born

by L. E. Sterling

  “Better than a pain in the ass, I reckon,” I murmur.

  I expect him to get mad, but he barks a soft laugh, stirring my hair. “Very true.”

  “Jared,” I croak.

  “What?”

  “Do you think we could be different, different? Like, maybe, True Born different?”

  For a moment he pauses his slow, languid touches. I feel like I’ve lost something precious and wiggle my back a bit.

  “All right, all right, pussy cat.” He rumbles a laugh and continues the slow drag of his fingers. I can feel him breathing in the scent of my hair. “My mom used to do this when I was a little kid,” he murmurs. Then, “I don’t know how to classify you,” he admits.

  My heart knocks loudly against my ribs. He seems to be talking about more than my genetic code.

  “Do you think—do you think that’s…why?”

  I don’t need to spell it out. What happened to Margot has changed everything, possibly forever. The only question that really remains—other than the obvious “why” and “who”—is by how much? For a moment Jared splays his hand flat against the skin of my back, almost as though he’s measuring his flesh against mine. I tilt my head up, catching the bright green of his eyes. Jared’s lips purse slightly.

  “Maybe. Probably,” he admits.

  A ribbon of relief flows through me. I didn’t realize how much I needed to know he’d be honest with me.

  Jared’s fingers inch up and tangle with my curls, pulling them away from my face in long, unhurried strokes. Slowly I relax, my body growing heavy. “You have beautiful hair.”

  I wonder if he realizes he’s said it out loud. I cock open one eye to glare at him. “This doesn’t change anything,” I tell him. My voice thickens with sleep as the darkness comes to claim me. “I still don’t like you.” I glimpse the wink of his teeth, the deep dimple beside his very generous mouth. Something tightens in my chest.

  “That’s as it should be, Princess,” he tells me with conviction.

  And I slide off into the dark, safe at last.

  Chapter Nine

  I wake tangled in Jared’s legs, heavy warm logs under my head. His arm curls around me, twists in my shirt. I peek up at him. His perfect lips pull up in sleep, making him look like a little boy with a secret. One blond lock hangs down and cradles one eye. As I stare at him, he stirs and stretches, cat-like, before cocking one eye open.

  “You make a terrible guard,” I grumble, frozen to the spot.

  Jared just looks at me, curiously peaceful. “You say that now, but you actually slept through the night.”

  “And so did you,” I accuse.

  “I don’t sleep. Not on duty.” He rubs his eyes.

  I snort and roll over, sitting up. “What am I, if not a duty?” He doesn’t answer, but lets his hands fall onto his legs as we contemplate each other. This morning they are a miraculous blue. Up close they aren’t blue exactly but ocean blue shot with green and gold, and I wonder how they look indigo sometimes. My fingers reach up as if to stroke his face. “Your eyes change,” I murmur, unsure I’ve said it out loud until he answers.

  “A lot of me changes,” he says after a long beat but doesn’t spin snark into his words. We’re still close, close enough for me to study a faint freckle near his left eye. He’s so warm and alive as I breathe him in, out. For a moment I close my eyes, dizzy with sensations.

  A ghost of regret maybe, maybe even a hint of panic, passes over his handsome features. He swallows and suddenly I’m nervous as a cat as he leans back and slowly, like he expects me to jump him, pulls himself off the bed. He looks around the dim room like he’s never seen it before and announces, “Let’s get breakfast.”

  ...

  It’s barely seven when I slip into my sister’s room. The room is bright, the drapes wrenched open at awkward angles like someone’s clawed at them. Margot’s curled up in one corner, snail-like. Her sleepy blood surges through my veins.

  “Margot,” I whisper. I take her hand. It’s clammy and hot with sleep. For a brief moment I panic over fever, but then remember the doctor telling us that Margot’s system might react to some of the shots she was given.

  I run my fingers through her silky hair, feel it catch between my fingers. The troubled lines of her face, what little I can see, at any rate, smooth out at my touch. After a few minutes I kiss her cheek, cold under my lips like china, and creep out the door.

  Jared is leaning against the wall, waiting for me, as I come out of the room.

  The hallway is wide and well lit, but closed in with Jared, it feels small. He hides a small smile and claps a hand on my shoulder and points down another hallway. “Kitchen is that way, Princess.”

  “You’re taking this stalking thing to whole new heights,” I tell him.

  “How is she?”

  I shrug. “She’s asleep.”

  “Trust me, that’s a good thing.”

  “And what about when she wakes up?”

  His eyes glitter. “Then you get on with the rest.”

  We arrive in the spacious dining room just as the dark-haired woman comes in carrying a tray of French toast. She barely glances at me, so I am able to catch the fine web of lines that pulls across her eyes as she smiles at Storm, sitting at the head of the table. I peg her at our mother’s age, maybe a bit older. Sometimes it’s hard to tell with the Lasters. Then again, I think, recalling where I am, she may not be a Laster.

  “Thank you, Alma,” Storm says, setting down his NewsFeed to look me over. He seems larger today, if that’s possible. His black turtleneck sets off the wintry steel of his eyes. The crackling, interlocked energy framing his head is becoming flesh and bone. “Good morning, Lucy. I hope you slept well.”

  The wooden table gleams, nearly as big as ours back home. Jared comes around behind me as I sit down. I color. “Eventually.”

  “Good. We have a few things to discuss after breakfast.”

  I reckon my father might be one of them, Margot too. Jared graces Alma with an all-but blinding smile. She tutts and fusses over him before coming around to me.

  “Come on, eat up,” she says warmly. “You’ll need your strength.”

  I eye a heaped plate of French toast, another beside it stacked with bacon and sausage. I wasn’t hungry before, but suddenly I’m ravenous.

  I’m halfway through my plate when my hunger leaks away. I feel the familiar pull, now laced with pain and something so dark I don’t have a name for it. Wild, maybe. My fork clatters to the plate, and I stare into space for a moment, adjusting to Margot’s weight inside me.

  Storm scans my face. “Lucy.”

  “Margot’s up.” The words are filled with the false optimism of a Protocols nurse. I don’t know if they believe me or care. I only care that they don’t see it when, scrambling to get to my sister, disoriented by her chaotic state, I stumble against the wall. I should know better by now.

  A hand clamps over my arm and pulls me upright. “How did you manage to survive so long without me, Princess?” a familiar voice grouches.

  There must be something in my face. Jared stops cold, swears under his breath. His fingers prod me softly until I’m leaning against the wall. “Dammit, Lucy.” His eyes bore into mine, taking on that faint green sheen I now realize means he’s getting upset. I bat at the arms he’s clamped over my shoulders, but I’m distracted by the closeness of his mouth, the look of total concentration stamped over his handsome features.

  He doesn’t say anything more. Not what I expect. “What?”

  “You can’t keep doing this to yourself.”

  “Do what?”

  “This. You’re letting her torture you.”

  “Don’t say that,” I yell, genuinely shocked. “Don’t you ever say that.” Jared doesn’t understand. Even if Margot weren’t my twin, my other half, it’s my responsibility to make sure she’s okay.

  Tears burn behind my eyes, leak onto my face. And maybe I’m as surprised as Jared when he pulls my head onto his
shoulder and just holds me. He pulls me tight against his body until the tight knot in my throat starts to dissolve and all I’m left with is the hard lines of his muscles beneath my hands. The smell of him. The tingling heat that seems to fill my body whenever he’s around.

  His hands trace down through my hair, capturing my full attention. Time slows to a crawl. Margot’s tug inside me, I realize blankly, has subsided to a small ball of ache, something I can manage. My hands run down his back. I hear a small hiss in my ear. I pull back an inch and instantly regret it. Some part of me feels untethered without his heat pressing into me.

  “Why are you doing this?” I croak. He tilts his head in confusion, and I wonder if it’s because I’ve left my hands on his chest.

  “Doing what?”

  “Being nice to me.”

  His hands frame my face. He studies my hair, my earlobes, my lips like he’s reading something fascinating before answering. “I like pains in the ass,” he says with a hint of a smile. “They remind me of me.”

  I grab his wrist. “I mean it. Why are you all being so nice? Saving us?”

  When Jared sighs and steps back, eyes shuttered, I shiver. “That’s something you need to talk to Storm about.”

  My stomach drops. Of course, I remind myself cynically, even the most basic kindnesses being extended to the Fox sisters must have a price tag. I tear myself from Jared’s embrace and straighten the fabric of my blouse and skirt.

  “Right. Thank you. For a moment there I had almost forgotten. All we are to you is a job.”

  Jared’s eyes green as they narrow and his back turns ramrod straight. “Forget I said anything, all right? Go ahead, let your sister eat you alive. I must have lost my mind thinking that you might be different from all the other self-entitled, grabby Uppers, but seems I was wrong. You’re worse.”

  As he spits the words out he inches closer and closer, and I keep moving back until I’m splayed flat against the wall and his face, his angry, beautiful face is just a hair’s breadth from mine. I suck in a deep breath as Jared blinks and shudders. I bite my lip so as not to cry and push hard at his chest. He moves easily enough now, and I stumble down the hall to Margot’s room—but now I stumble for another reason. I feel his eyes on me as I retreat, the heat of his simmering anger.

  Just another bodyguard, my head tells me. A mean one, at that. The sharp ache in my chest says differently.

  ...

  I spend the day fussing over my sister, avoiding the rankling in my heart. It has never bothered me before, what other people have thought of us, the Fox family. Me. But Jared’s words haunt me. And each time they circle round, I feel them sinking in and deepening like a bruise.

  By nightfall Margot is feeling well enough to sit up in bed and chat. Doc Raines visits her again and says she’ll do. Once the doctor leaves, Margot all but drags me out of the room. “Come on, Lucy,” she says, “I want to catch up with some kids from school and go to sleep.”

  I go, though unwillingly. Half of me is impressed. I can feel what my sister feels, but I still can’t understand what it’s like to be her: able to slip off whatever responsibility or duty or danger crosses her path as easily as changing a dress.

  I can’t rid myself of the feeling that if I leave Margot for even a second she’ll disappear. And somehow it will be my fault. But as I close the door behind me and thread my way through the elaborate hallways of Storm’s tower in the direction of his office, I can already hear her giggling at some silly thing Deirdre Phalon is saying.

  It will be up to me to fix things. As usual, I think with a sigh.

  ...

  “Why are they like that?” I point.

  Storm stands framed by floor-to-ceiling windows and crowned with a thorny, mature set of antlers that twinkle darkly in the glass. One ankle slightly crosses the other, like an elegant buck. He focuses on something below, lost in thought. Sad, too, as though he’d be alone even surrounded by people.

  Storm cracks the tiniest of smiles as he beckons me over. “It would be pretty difficult to fit through the door if they were more substantial, don’t you think?”

  I laugh and come over to where Storm is standing. He smells different than Jared, more like spice and cloves and something dark. “Look out there,” he says. I follow his outstretched finger. Red drips from on the top of a building, far below. But even from here the letters are huge. EVOLVE OR DYE.

  “They can’t spell,” I observe.

  “True”—Storm nods—“but hardly the point.”

  “What is the point?”

  Storm leads me to the couch. “Evolution, Lucy. Evolution is the point.”

  It’s not the answer I want. I want to actually know what’s happening, why the rabble are after us, why those test-tubers or whatever they were in the Clinic wanted to grab us. I want to know how and when we will be safe. I want to know when my parents will be home.

  More than anything else: I want to know what we are.

  Storm leans over his thighs. “Shane called your father,” he confesses apologetically. “I wasn’t able to prevent him. With both of you gone yesterday…”

  “Oh. What did he—what did they say?”

  “They’ll be back as soon as they can. They have some business to wrap up first.”

  I whisper, “Of course,” and try to shrug off a dose of disappointment. But what did I expect? I picture our mother fiddling with her pearls in a hotel room in Paris or Russia or wherever they are. Our father beating his gloves bloody against his palm. Cold, so cold. “Do they know…?” Storm shakes his head. “Are we going home then?”

  He regards me carefully. “Do you want to go home, Lucy?”

  We’d be in familiar surroundings. Shane and the others would be there. And it’s what our parents would want. Above all, there’s duty to the family to consider. But would Margot feel safe? I can’t imagine so. Something in me digs in its heels and rebels at the thought of leaving Storm’s sanctuary.

  And there is the other reason for staying, that small voice whispers inside of me. Shoving back the memory of cozying up on Jared’s lap, I remind myself that Storm knows things. He has resources at his fingertips—not a given, even in our exalted world—and while his job is to protect us, he tells us the truth.

  A glimmer of a plan takes root inside me and begins to grow.

  “Do you want to speak to Margot before making a decision?” Storm asks while the cogs and wheels in my head turn. I nod, grateful to have more time to mull it over.

  But I know the first question Margot will ask. The same one I need answered. “Thank you. But first I need to…may I ask why you’re doing this?”

  He studies me for a long moment before answering. “I’m not sure now is the time or place to get into all the details, but suffice it to say, I have a vested interest in your well-being. Yours and your sister’s.”

  “Why?”

  He rubs wryly at the spot above his head where the antlers swirl and coalesce in a pale electric blue. “You see these? Did you know not everyone can? You’re one of only a handful that I know of. I don’t think your sister sees them. At least, I haven’t caught her looking at me funny.”

  Another secret part of me that is not like my sister? Intrigued, I sink down on the couch.

  “They’re a gift from my father who, come to think of it, was a lot like your father.” Storm winks. “A very strong man. A man who arranged destinies.” Storm points to his crown. “These don’t do much in this form, but they carry a certain significance, like a…family crest, I guess you could say. They signify that I’m one of those people who has…well, I guess you could call it an overwhelming compulsion to make things right for people. My people.” An uncomfortable silence slips in between us. “You know who my people are, Lucy.”

  I feel like I’m standing on the edge of a cliff. Like I’m about to hurl myself into an abyss.

  “True Born,” I whisper.

  He nods slowly. “True Borns are in hiding. All over this city and elsewh
ere. Did you know that Dominion is trying to pass a law to have all True Borns licensed?” My hands shake as I mouth the word “no.” The mention of my father hangs between Storm and me like a blade. Who else could be behind such barbaric legislation? “We can help, you know. We can keep the city running as long as it can. And we can turn it into a new city once the Lasters are done.” His eyes are like lightning as he speaks, incandescent and full of power. But it’s what his words imply that raises a lump in my throat.

  Once the Lasters are done. Extinct. I don’t have time to fully comprehend this before Storm continues.

  “Because the True Borns will still be here, Lucy. Do you understand? And the True Borns are my people, Lucy.” And then: “You’re my people.”

  And with those three little words my life is forever altered. Splicer, Laster.

  True Born.

  I wait for a crazed, overwhelming feeling to rock my bones, but it doesn’t. I’m just quiet-quiet, as though I’ve known the whole time.

  It seems the first step in my plan will be easier than I thought. “Will you let your doctor test us, then?” When Storm nods, I go more boldly. “And will you tell us the results, no matter what? We’re not yet eighteen.”

  It’s a question loaded with significance, and Storm knows it, I muse, as he regards me thoughtfully, calmly, before nodding again, this time more slowly. To run the True Born Protocols and tell us their outcome would be to go against the Upper Circle’s careful code of not making your results public until the Reveal. It goes against what our parents obviously wish for us.

  Under the circumstances, though, it’s the right thing to do. We can’t afford to embarrass our parents. And I’m not so young I don’t recognize that whatever answer lies hidden in our blood aligns neatly with whatever agenda Storm is keeping to himself. Which gets me thinking some more…

  “What kind of True Born do you think we are, then? We’re not like you. Or like them.” I sweep my hand to the door. Storm’s people are more like the True Borns we’ve come to know about: people whose genetic mutations are written on their skin.