by Sylvia Frost
“Of course. One moment.” Abruptly, Stefania starts to walk over to one of the windowed walls, but then she turns on her heel to face us. Her pert button nose wrinkles. “I’ll need you to leave.”
Orion’s hackles rise. I wonder if I’m so sensitive to him because of the matebond, or if his presence is just that strong. That thought reminds me again of what Stefania walked in on us doing. My blush returns full force.
“No,” Orion says calmly.
Stefania’s thin eyebrows bow upward, making her already wide, sparkling blue eyes seem even larger. “I can’t trust that Artemis’s answers to my questions will be completely honest with you around.”
“What kind of questions?” we ask at the same time.
Orion recovers first and smirks at me as if to say, “See, you’re already following my lead.” I wish I could communicate to him in gestures that “We asked the question at the same time, so therefore I’m obviously not following your lead,” but that would be a lot of information to fit into a raised eyebrow.
“That’s really cute,” murmurs Stefania as she continues to nibble on her lip nervously.
“What kind of questions?” Orion repeats.
“Feminine history questions.”
Orion stares at her blankly.
Stefania claps her hands together in mock prayer. “Please, North, would you mind leaving so I can ask Artemis about her period?”
Orion frowns, but his hand drifts away from its favorite position at the small of my back anyway. “I’ll give you ten minutes.” Then he paces to the elevator at a speed that makes me think he’s trying to make the time move as quickly as possible.
Only after the elevator doors have closed behind him does Stefania speak again. “I’m not really going to ask you about your period; don’t worry. It’s just that you deserve some privacy for what’s about to happen next.”
“What’s going to happen next?” I ask, staring at the lights above the elevator as they shift from four to five. I wish I could will them backward with my mind.
“Let’s go to my desk,” Stefania says.
I watch her go. She may have a supermodel’s body, but she doesn’t have a supermodel’s grace. Her movements are coltish, all stops and starts.
“Come on,” she calls to me as she settles into the wavy chair behind her desk. “I don’t bite.”
I’m not sure I believe that, but I grab an equally ergonomic seat next to her and plop down into it all the same. It bows a little with my weight. But I feel more conscious of my dirty jeans and tshirt than the fact that Stefania is only about half my size.
“So.” Stefania steeples her fingertips. “Since Orion has so generously given us only ten minutes, I’m going to skip most of the question-and-answer and get right to the juicy stuff. I’m going to need a blood sample from you.”
“Right.” I wince. I’m not the world’s biggest fan of blood. It’s not that I hate needles. It’s the substance itself. How it was everywhere after my parents’ death. Oceans of red.
Stefania gives me one of her toothpaste commercial smiles and says, “This isn’t going to be like when you get blood drawn at the doctor’s office. That’s amateur hour. One second.” She ducks underneath her desk and pulls out a small black glass disk the size of a coffee coaster. After she sets it down she frames it with her splayed fingertips, like it’s part of a game show. “This is the leech.”
“The leech?” Nervous tingles run up and down my arms. Whatever the circle is, she really has to work on her branding. “What is it?”
“I’ll show you how it works. It’s really easy and mostly painless. You start by putting your hand on top of the surface, pads of your fingertips down.” She demonstrates, placing the top part of her hand over the black disk.
“Then—” She winces. “A liiittle prick.” After a moment her expression returns to its normal, almost manic cheerfulness. “If it got the sample, it should—”
Ping. “Sample accepted,” says a voice that sounds suspiciously similar to the one that warned me away from the window screens.
“Gotta love the virtues of being linked up to the cloud network. Thanks, Berta,” Stefania chirps to the ceiling before turning back to me. “She’s not a real AI yet, but I do so much voice-activated stuff that I prefer to anthropomorphize her. It’s also part of my prediction that eventually we’ll worship our half-sentient smart devices.” She tilts her head. “That sounded less crazy in my mind.”
I smile weakly, too tired to process.
Ping. “Visualization metrics ready. Shall I show it to you, Dr. Strike?”
“Yes, please.”
The window screens bloom back to life, color and light completely obscuring the half-dead city below. Instead of dots, this time the screens fill with charts, numbers and figures. Most of them make absolutely no sense to me, but Stefania swivels her chair and claps her hands together once when she sees it. “Excellent. So, as you can see, the leech allows us to look at all kinds of metrics.”
She makes a shooing motion and most of the charts skitter to the edges of the windows. Then a single square filled with a double helix dominates the screen.
“Is that your DNA?” I ask.
“Pretty cool, huh? Much better than looking at little lines in a gel. Faster, too.” She twists her finger and the double helix rotates in unison with her motion. “But that’s only the beginning.” With a flick of her thumb the strands of proteins shrink and the space they’ve left vacant fills with more spreadsheets.
Then, with a sequence of gestures that look more like magic than anything I’ve ever seen before, Stefania makes each of the charts larger, like she did the helix, one at a time. “Here’s genetic predispositions and personality traits. High ADHD and slight Aspergers, that’s me. Strong STEM capabilities.”
She picks up speed as she moves from metric to metric. “IQ, pregnancy status, allergies, et cetera. A lot of this is extrapolated, of course, and not a hundred percent accurate. So it can’t be used for anything definitive yet by insurance companies, even if we gave them the data. Which we don’t. Thank God. Can you say, ‘Hello, crazy dystopia’?”
I can. In fact, I think I’m stuck in one right now.
“Aaand here we go. Matches to any known criminal profiles.” The roulette of numbers and colors finally stops on a picture of Stefania dressed in what looks like the exact same pantsuit she’s wearing now. For a second I imagine her as one of those beautiful anime cartoon characters with a closet full of the same outfit. Next to her picture, THIRTY OUTSTANDING PARKING TICKETS blinks in a bold yellow font.
The FBSI seriously has a problem with people not paying their tickets.
“Can you pay those for me, Berta?” Stefania chirps.
“I don’t have that function at this time, Dr. Strike.”
“Darn budget cuts.” Stefania snaps her fingers, and all of the colors and lights drain into a corner of the screen.
I don’t mention that what Stefania has shown me looks like the antonym for budget cuts. I don’t even want to know how much it cost. But that’s not what’s making me wish she had brought out a needle and a syringe instead of the leech. All the facts of Stefania’s life are now imprinted on the backs of my eyeballs. Some of those pieces of information she might not have known herself before the computer illustrated them for her in overwhelmingly bright colors. What would it tell me?
“Alrighty, your turn.”
I resist the urge to bolt back to the elevator, but only barely. “I think I would’ve rather talked about tampons.”
Thankfully, Stefania doesn’t seem to take my snark as an insult, and nods seriously instead. “Don’t worry. All I really need to check is your DNA and your criminal record.”
The leech is lying innocuously on the desk, and despite its circular shape I can sort of see the resemblance to its namesake. Eyeless, faceless, seemingly harmless… but not. I make a fist, hiding my fingertips. “Is there another way?”
Stefania’s eyes narrow, and
for the first time I see the raw suspicion in her gaze, untempered by her practiced friendliness. “Not an easy one. Otherwise we have to go in and double-check all kinds of paperwork to make sure you’re not stealing Artemis Williams’s identity. That could take months to clear, not to mention tip off Washington that we know something’s up.”
Her face doesn’t change, really. Her nose is still ruler straight, her cheekbones a study in aristocratic symmetry and sharpness I could never hope to achieve, no matter how much I might diet. But she’s suddenly not beautiful anymore. The fear in her eyes makes her ugly. And strangely human.
I get fear.
Ironically, the suspicion that she was trying so hard to hide from me, for fear of freaking me out, I guess, is the one thing that makes me start to trust her.
I offer her a smile. A real one. “I don’t want to put you through any trouble, but I’m worried about my privacy.”
Stefania’s eyes soften. “I see. You’re worried because Orion told you that someone accessed my servers to hide you from me. You don’t think my servers are secure.”
“Right,” I lie.
Well, it’s not a complete lie. If I had realized someone had tampered with her servers I would’ve cared, but it didn’t even occur to me. I’m more worried about giving Stefania—a complete, and probably not entirely sane, stranger—access to intimate biological details about myself. I don’t like anyone to have too much information about me. Especially the FBSI. With cause.
Right after the attack and Timothy Higgins’s reveal, my house was swarmed by reporters. My aunt told me that I should go on the talk show circuit. That if I gave them just a little bit of information they would go away. By the end of my week-long tour the number of reporters banging on my door had doubled.
I have a feeling that giving information to Stefania, to the leech, will be like that. Because if the charts Stefania showed me are anything to go by, I won’t be giving her a little information.
I’ll be giving her my life.
Stefania isn’t aware of any of that, though. Awareness, I’m beginning to learn, really isn’t her thing. Or rather, she’s aware of so much, her wide eyes drinking in the entire world around her, that some details slip past her.
She continues, “Well, then, you’ll be happy to know that after I realized that our system had been compromised, I set up a secret server not connected to the national FBSI network. In fact, I’m the only one who has access.” She waves her hand up to the screen and instantly light floods it again. “It’s all locked to me.”
None of that makes me feel any better, but the longer Stefania talks the more I realize I don’t have a choice. Until I prove to her that I am the real Artemis Williams, that will always be the starting point of the conversation, not How do we find Lawrence?
And hard data is the only thing that will satisfy her.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll do it.”
“Great.” She takes out a small antiseptic cloth from a drawer in her desk and wipes down the leech. “Just put your hand right there.”
Before I can stop myself I place my hand on the disk. It’s slightly warm, which surprises me. I tense, waiting for the pain. “I don’t think it’s—ouch.” The sensation isn’t so much a needle prick like Stefania said, but a kind of sucking. It’s one of the weirdest things I’ve ever experienced.
“It’ll be over in a second,” Stefania assures me.
She’s right; the sensation does stop after a few seconds. Then a cool gel rises up out of the place where the sucker once was.
“You can take your hand off it now.”
I dart my hand away as quickly as I can and turn over my finger, looking for a cut or scar, or… something.
Ping. “Processing sample.”
My hand looks exactly the same. I wish there were a gaping wound, some proof of the danger I’m sure is lurking in this technology.
Ping. “Processing completed. Displaying visual data.”
Numbers and letters burst back onto the screen, a deluge illuminating every corner of the office. If I look down at my hands I can see the reflections of the information gliding across my skin.
Stefania raises one tapered finger and with a quick flick sends most of the data fleeing, like multicolored koi darting into the shadows of a fish pond. Soon a slowly rotating double helix fills the window screens.
“Alrighty,” she says with unrestrained enthusiasm that makes me wince as much as the sucking sensation of the leech. “Let’s see who you are. Berta, match DNA to all public records, making sure to take processing encryption route 43-2-B.”
Behind the DNA an avalanche of faces tumbles by, too quickly for me to catch any of their features. “How do you have DNA records for so many people? Is it the same way you’re tracking them?”
“If I told you, I’d have to kill you.” Stefania winks at me.
I feel the color drain out of my already pale face.
Ping. “Match found.”
The ocean of information halts abruptly, replaced with two pictures. One I know well. It’s a chubby-cheeked thirteen-year-old me, proudly displaying a mouthful of braces and baggy clothes to hide her newly grown boobs. Beside her is written PARTIAL MATCH.
The other photo is an older girl, with hair just as curly and lips just as full. She has the PARTIAL MATCH label next to her as well. But she’s not me. She can’t be. Because besides being a shade too skinny, her skin is pale and lifeless and across her throat is a long, bloody gash. Claw marks.
And underneath the label PARTIAL MATCH is written one more word:
DECEASED.
10
We do not know how or when the change happens exactly, but there can be no doubt that there is a change within the weremate at some point between the growing of her matemark and the first child she births. More than that the myths do not say.
Beasts, Blood & Bonds: A History of Werebeasts and Their Mates
By Dr. Nina M. Strike
All I can do is watch the doors glide to a stop, the fluorescents casting sharp shadows on his face. Orion stands with his feet shoulder width apart, hands loosely at his sides, shoulders slightly curved. The posture of an animal about to pounce.
Lazily, he strolls to me until he’s taken a protective position by my side again, his hand on the small of my back.
“O-Orion,” I stammer. “You’re back early.”
“Actually, I’m late.” His eyes narrow as he gazes between me and Stefania and then back again. “Stefania, why is my mate looking at me like I’ve eaten her pet kitten?”
“Did you eat her pet kitten?” Stefania gives a strangled laugh.
“Strike,” he growls.
Stefania sighs, a fluttering, nervous thing. “I was showing her some of my old misadventures.”
I hold my breath, eyebrows almost kissing my hairline. For one tense moment I’m convinced Orion is going to rip her throat out… or maybe mine. Not because he looks angry. He doesn’t. But a werebeast doesn’t need to be angry to commit murder.
Orion’s hand grabs the fabric of my t-shirt so tightly that the rest of the shirt stretches taut over my body. “Which misadventure is that?”
“Oh, a little bit of everything.” Stefania waves her hand in a curt gesture that lacks the flair of her earlier maneuvers, but the result is the same. Data appears.
But this time it’s different.
Blog articles, viral videos, even the occasional meme, and they all have one common theme: Stefania.
The first one that catches my eye is an article with the headline: Daughter of Nina Strike Says Sister Was Kidnapped by Weredragons. But there are plenty of others that are just as ridiculous. Off to the side a video is playing of Stefania on a daytime talk show called Busted; the sound is muted, but the subtitles are in that same clear, bold yellow font.
Stefania Strike: Blueberries are fundamentally hurting fertility rates.
Hannah Everett: And what scientific studies are you basing this on, Ms. Strike?
&nbs
p; Stefania Strike: It’s Doctor, and technically, the sources that I have are classified. A lot of what I’m doing is extrapolating from data. I can’t be a hundred percent sure, but—
If I thought Stefania’s earlier whirligig of information was bad, this is worse. Every corner of the window screens is filled with Stefania’s ramblings, each tidbit stranger than the last.
“This,” Orion remarks as an aside to me, “is why Stefania is so obsessed with verifying her information. I think the blueberry army actually slew her.”
“Coalition, not army, and sued, not slew,” Stefania corrects, but if she’s pissed she hides it well, giving us a self-effacing shrug. “We settled out of court. And I’ve learned my lesson.”
“Have you?” Orion whispers dangerously low. “Because I can’t find a reason why you would show your past missteps to my mate. You’re not laughing, and she’s not either.”
I’m close enough to Orion that I can feel the expansion of his shoulders. His werecall. Fuck.
Stefania must have noticed too, because she’s gaping like a caught fish. Her eyes are wide, panicked.
He’s going to find out the truth.
Better it be from me than from her.
So, ignoring Stefania’s pleading gaze, I say, “Stefania told me that she thinks the bond between us is especially strong, because my parents were murdered and the were territory I was exposed to was marked in blood. She didn’t want me to tell you, I guess because she’s afraid that because you’re a werebeast you must be involved somehow.”
“I never…” Stefania’s eyes widen so far I think I can see the skin behind her eyeballs.
I tense, waiting for Orion to yell or scream at her, ready to use my werecall if necessary. Although I’m not sure if it would work on him.
But all Orion does is sigh. “I thought you had given this up, Stefania.”
“I found new evidence.” She grits her teeth.
For the first time I consider the possibility that Stefania didn’t want Orion to know about her suspicions about me not because she thought he was involved in some conspiracy, but because she knew he would dismiss her concerns. And thus make me dismiss them, too.
