This Mortal Coil

by Emily Suvada

  CHAPTER 2

  Two Years Earlier

  “THIS LOOKS LIKE FUN,” DAX says. “What are you up to, Princess?”

  “If you call me Princess one more time, I’m going to shoot you instead.”

  The sky is a clear, cerulean blue, the sun pitched high above me, its light catching the feathers of a flock of passenger pigeons. They shimmer gold and white, dazzling as they loop and swirl, filling the air with their strange, percussive cries. I’ve been standing on the cabin’s front porch, aiming my father’s rifle at them for the last five minutes, but I just can’t pull the trigger.

  “You know, Princess, you’re holding it wrong.”

  I groan and spin around, but find Dax standing right behind me, and the barrel of the rifle swings into his chest. He grabs it in a flash, flicking on the safety before I can blink. “Well,” he says. “I suppose I should have learned to take an Agatta at their word.”

  “Sorry,” I blurt out, staring at the rifle. “I . . . I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Not thinking? Now that would be a first.” He leans the rifle against the cabin’s side and crosses his arms, giving me a playful smile that sends my heart rate skyrocketing.

  Dax is my father’s lab assistant, and he’s lived at the cabin ever since he showed up alone, begging to work with the great Dr. Lachlan Agatta. He’s just seventeen, two years older than me, and he had no references, no degree, but Dax is the kind of guy who’s impossible to refuse.

  He also happened to be the author of a hepatitis app that my father said was one of the most beautiful pieces of code he’d ever seen.

  “I’ve had some issues with my genkit,” he says, stepping closer. “Someone’s reprogrammed it to play videos of porpoises whenever I type a command.”

  “Oh?” I ask, leaning back against the railing. “That’s odd.”

  “Yes,” he says, moving forward until I can feel his breath on my skin. “They seem to have some strong opinions about my coding abilities in relation to yours. Quite disparaging. They suggested saving my work to /dev/null.”

  I stifle a smile. “Clever porpoises.”

  “Indeed.” He steps away and glances at the rifle. “Doing a little hunting?”

  I shrug. “I was trying to distract myself from this whole end-of-the-world thing.”

  From the broadcasts on every channel. From the hourly reports of new infections, and the video of Patient Zero they keep replaying, showing him throwing his head back, showing him detonating, showing the clouds of pink mist racing through the streets of Punta Arenas.

  “Right,” Dax says, nodding seriously. “And we’re taking it out on the pigeons, are we? Fair enough. I’ve never liked their beady little eyes.”

  I can’t help but smile. “I was trying to get a sample to sequence. This flock looks like a new strain. I think they might have the rest of the poem.”

  The poem is a sonnet. I already have the three quatrains, and I’ve been waiting four months for the couplet to arrive.

  “Ah,” he says, snatching up the rifle. “No time to waste, then. We have some birds to shoot.”

  When the genehacked pigeons first appeared in our skies six months ago, it was my father who shot one down to take a look at their DNA. Their genes were expertly coded, except for one tiny section, a messy string of DNA that didn’t seem to fit. My father said it was junk, but it bugged me, so I took a sample to analyze on my own. I ran it through my trusty laptop genkit, a portable genetic sequencer, but none of the built-in search algorithms could find a pattern. Finally on a whim, I translated the base pairs into binary, then ASCII, and into a string of alphanumeric letters.

  Then it all made sense. It wasn’t a gene—it was a message. That odd patch of G, T, C, and A was hiding the words of a poem.

  That’s the beautiful thing about gentech—the science of genetic coding. You can get lost in the minutiae, but then you step back sometimes, and patterns appear like sunlight bursting through clouds. Reading the genetic code behind a feather or a cell can make you feel like you’re reading poetry written by God.

  Unfortunately, the poem in the pigeons was written by amateur genehackers, and it’s not the best thing I’ve ever read, but I still want to know how it ends.

  “One or two? Big or little?” Dax squints through the rifle’s scope at the swirling flock of birds above us. His shoulder-length red hair is tied back in a low ponytail, a few loose strands hanging around his face. One streak is white blond, more a boast of his coding prowess than a fashion statement. A whole head of hair is easy to hack, but you have to be a coding wizard to zero in on just a few strands.

  I cross my arms, looking up at the birds. “You really think you can just hit one?”

  “I know I can.”

  I roll my eyes, but he’s probably right. Dax’s ocular tech is state-of-the-art, along with every other app running from the panel embedded in his arm. It stretches from his wrist to his elbow, a soft layer of nanocoded silicone glowing in a stripe of cobalt light beneath his skin. Inside it, tiny processors run gentech code, packaged up as individual apps to alter his DNA and change his body. Those apps govern everything from his implanted sensory upgrades to his metabolism, even the streak in his hair.

  The computers that can handle manipulations on DNA were once the size of a room, but they eventually became small enough to bury inside your body. The gentech panel is a perfect combination of hardware, software, and wetware, generating constant streams of algorithmically designed nanites. Those nanites move through a network of cables inside your body, then bleed through your cells, building and destroying coils of synthetic DNA. Gentech can grow wires and circuits the same way your body grows bone, or it can grow your hair in perfect ringlets even if you were born with it straight. Almost everyone has a panel, budded at birth to grow inside them, and most people carry hundreds, even thousands, of apps.

  My wrist holds just six lonely dots. My hypergenesis, an allergy to the nanites that run most gentech, means the panel in my arm is little more than a glorified phone. I have standard healing and sensory tech, and a glitchy twelve-kilobyte comm that my father personally coded for me. But if I download anything else, even the simplest of apps, the nanites will shred through my cells and kill me within hours.

  It’s ironic, really. I’m the daughter of the world’s greatest gentech coder, but I’ll never be able to experience most of his work.

  Dax fires the rifle. A shot rings out, and feathers puff through the air. A single bird arcs up parabolically, then tumbles to the ground. He lowers the rifle, leaning it back against the wall, and arches an eyebrow. “What do you say, first one to the bird gets to finish the poem?”

  My jaw drops. “No, this is my project. You can’t finish it. That’s not fair.”

  He launches himself over the porch and lands in the grass with catlike grace, then tilts his head to smile up at me. “Life isn’t fair, Princess.”

  “Oh,” I breathe, cracking my knuckles. “You are so in for it now.”

  I bolt down the stairs and race through the grass, my long dark hair streaming out behind me, veering left as Dax tries to block my path. He’s stronger, but I’m faster, and I dart past him, skidding to a stop on the lake’s pebbled shore, snatching up the bird with one outstretched hand.

  I’m fast, but not fast enough. Dax hurtles into me, knocking me to the ground, yanking the pigeon from my hand. I roll over on the grass and scramble up just in time to grab a fistful of his hair.

  I yank it back, hard. He lets out a cry, dropping the pigeon, and spins to face me with a wild look in his eyes.

  A few seconds ago we were two coders discussing DNA, but now we’re like wolves, circling each other, fighting over something neither of us need. The pigeon doesn’t matter. Any one of the feathers littering the ground could yield its DNA, but this isn’t really about the bird, or even about the poem. This is about Dax and me, and the tension that’s been building between us since he kissed me last week when my father was away. We haven’t ta
lked about it since. I tried to pretend it didn’t happen, too frightened that my overprotective father would find out and fire Dax. We’ve spent the week trying to work together, to ignore the energy crackling between us, like two humming electrodes just waiting for a spark.

  My eyes drop to the pigeon. I make the slightest move toward it, and Dax’s arm whips around my waist, lifting me clean off my feet. My heart pounds at the feeling of his chest against my back, but his feet slip, and for a heartbeat we sway together before tumbling into the lake.

  “Dax, no!” I shriek, scrambling away, shoving my sopping hair from my face.

  He just laughs. He flicks his head back, sending up a glistening Mohawk of water. “I wasn’t going to take the damn bird.”

  “Then why did you start this? How are we going to explain this to my father?”

  He grins. “That’s what I came to tell you. He knows, Princess. We had a chat, and he’s okay with it, but he kept telling me that some things are better when you wait for them.”

  I almost choke. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Nope. I don’t know if it’s the whole apocalypse thing or not, but I got the Agatta stamp of approval. I hope you know that when we get married, I’m taking your name, and then we’re calling all our future children Lachlan, after your father. It might be hard on the girls, but I’m sure they’ll understand, and—”

  “Catarina!”

  We both spin around as my father throws open the front door.

  I glance at Dax, whose face has paled. My stomach drops. He was lying. There was no conversation, no Agatta stamp of approval, and now the two of us are dead. I’m fifteen. It’s reckless. I should have known better than to let us get so close, and now everything is going to be ruined.

  Dax will be sent away. I’ll go back to boarding school. The brightest, happiest time of my life will be over before it’s begun.

  “Both of you in here, now!” my father shouts.

  “We were just . . . I shot a pigeon,” I say. “The poem . . .”

  “I know,” my father says. “Forget about the damn bird and get inside.”

  Dax and I exchange nervous glances as we hurry up to the cabin. My father only curses when he’s angry, but it doesn’t sound like he’s angry at us. Dax hops on one leg to pull his sneakers off while I unzip my wet sweater and drop it on the porch.

  Inside, my father is standing in the center of the living room, dressed immaculately in his lab coat, staring at the walls. Only he’s not really staring at the walls. He’s not even really staring. He’s back in a virtual reality session, watching something through his panel. A live feed of images, sent from his panel through fiber cabling inside his body, pulsed directly into his optic nerve. To his brain, there’s no difference. The feed from his panel and his eyes merge and intersect, creating a single, seamless image. When my father stares at the wall, he could see a screen with video footage, or a painting, or a scrolling stream of headlines.

  Or he could see something else entirely. A beach. The stars. His panel could thrust him from the cabin into a fully rendered world. At least that’s what I’m told. I’ve never tried it myself. The only graphics card that works with my panel is too weak to render VR. All I have is an ancient chip that can run basic ocular filters and sketch a few lines of text in my vision. That’s enough to send messages through my comm, but not enough to watch movies, play games, or even code the way the rest of the world does.

  One sleeve of my father’s lab coat is rolled to his elbow, and his crypto cuff is strapped around his forearm. It’s a sleek sheath of chrome that scrambles the transmissions from his panel’s wireless chip, and he only wears it for important calls, to stop Cartaxus from listening to his conversations.

  I stare at the cuff, my stomach lurching. My father wasn’t angry at Dax and me. He’s been talking to someone about the outbreak. Whatever he heard, it’s left him practically shaking.

  “What’s going on?” I touch his elbow to let him know I’m here. His eyes are glazed; his vision is probably 360 degrees of pure VR.

  “The virus has swept through Nicaragua,” he says. “Now that it’s past the canal, there’s nothing left to stop it. They’re planning airstrikes.”

  “On civilians?” I glance at Dax. “Who’s considering that?”

  My father blinks out of his session. His eyes refocus, and he turns to me. “Everyone, darling. Every government in the world is considering it.”

  I swallow, taking in my father’s bloodshot eyes, the strain in his face. Everything about this outbreak is terrifying, but none of it worries me as much as the lines etched into his brow. He’s the world’s greatest gentech coder. He wrote the cure for Influenza X, and I’ve never seen him like this.

  We must be in serious danger.

  “Nicaragua,” Dax repeats, his brow furrowed. “That’s close. It only broke out two days ago. If it keeps spreading that fast, it could be here within days.”

  “Hours,” my father says. “It’s spreading exponentially. It’s going to be chaos when it hits the cities. There’ll be panic until a vaccine is released, and I fear that might take a very long time.” He takes my hands. “There’s food in the basement, clean water in the lake, and new solars on the roof, and you can always hide in the old mine shafts in the mountains.”

  “What . . . what are you saying?” My eyes drop to the crypto cuff. “Who have you been talking to?”

  As if in response, a low thumping sound starts up in the distance, and the cries of the pigeons crescendo into a roar. But it’s not the pigeons I’m listening to. It’s the sound of helicopter blades growing louder with each passing second until the windows shake. Through the glass, I can make out two black Comox quadcopters swooping into the valley, their bellies slashed with a white logo.

  I’d know that symbol anywhere. I’ve seen it in my nightmares.

  Stylized white crossed antlers.

  It’s Cartaxus.

  Not the military, and not a corporation, but a massive international amalgam of technology and violence. A mix of public and private interests that has become the world’s biggest provider and controller of gentech. My father worked with Cartaxus for twenty years, until he couldn’t take it anymore and finally wrenched himself free of their iron grip. He told me this day might come, that they might show up and drag him away even though he swore he’d never work for them again. Not after the horrors he saw. The horrors that keep him awake at night, that he still can’t bring himself to talk about.

  Now they’ve come for him, just like he said they would. He turns to me, resignation traced into every line of his face.

  “No,” I blurt out, my voice breaking. “They can’t just take you.”

  “They can, and they will. This isn’t influenza, darling. They’re rounding up everyone they think can help.”

  “But you can hide,” I plead. “We can run.”

  He shakes his head. “No, Catarina, they’ll find me wherever I go. They think Dax and I can write a vaccine for this virus. We have no choice but to go with them.”

  Dax steps back. “They want me? I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You mustn’t fight them,” my father urges. “I worked for Cartaxus, and I know what they’re capable of. They want your brain, but they don’t need your legs.”

  Dax blanches. The copter rotors grow louder, the vibrations sending puffs of dust drifting down from the ceiling. They’re already landing on the grass outside, sending up frothy waves from the lake. The windows rattle as a storm of grass and dust hits the cabin, the front door slamming shut in the gale.

  My father grips my hands in his. “Get in the panic room, Catarina. You have to stay here. I know you can do this.”

  “No!” I yank my hands away. “I’m coming with you. I can help with the vaccine. Nobody knows your work better than me.”

  “I know that, but you can’t come, darling. It’s not safe. You don’t know what these people are like. They’ll torture you if they think it will make me work faste
r. They’ll kill you to break me if I try to resist them. You must stay away from them.”

  “But you can’t leave me.”

  “Oh, my darling. I wish I didn’t have to, but I have no choice. I know you can take care of yourself, but you must promise that you will never let them take you. No matter what happens, you have to stay away from Cartaxus. Promise me you’ll do that.”

  “No,” I choke out, starting to cry. “No, I’m coming with you.”

  The sound of shouting voices cuts through the roar of the copters. My father turns to Dax. “Hide her,” he snaps. “Quickly, they’re coming.”

  “No!” I grab my father’s coat, but Dax wrestles me away. I kick and thrash, but his grip is tight as he jogs to the back of the house with me clutched against him.

  It’s no use. I can’t fight. All I can do is cry. Cartaxus is going to take my father, and I didn’t even get to say good-bye.

  The voices outside grow louder. Heavy boots stomp across the porch. Dax drops me and yanks open the panic room door.

  “Be safe, Princess,” he whispers. He shoves me into the cramped, padded closet, then kisses me urgently, crushing his lips to mine.

  The last thing I see is his face, white with fear, as soldiers burst into the house.

  Then he slams the door on me, and everything goes silent.

  I know there are Cartaxus soldiers outside, and I know they’re shouting, smashing, swarming into the cabin, but I can’t hear a thing. The only sound I hear is my heart as it pounds against my ribs, loud enough that the padded walls and their interference circuits can’t possibly be enough to hide me. The soldiers must hear me. I clutch my hands over my mouth to muffle my breathing, waiting for a black-gloved fist to yank open the door.

  But nobody does.

  Ten minutes pass in blank, terrified silence, until my traitorous heart begins to slow of its own accord. There’s only so much adrenaline your body can manufacture while you’re standing in complete sensory deprivation. An hour passes, then two. Finally, I can’t wait anymore and force myself to flick the pressure lock on the panic room’s wall and swing open the door.