by Jacob Whaler
Like a flow of warm water, calmness floods her veins, slowing down her pulse. Since she’s come to Genesis Corporation, she’s acquired a bad habit of relying on pharma-junk to maintain a cool exterior. Everyone does it. It’s part of the Genesis corporate culture, broadly encouraged by Mr. Mercer.
As the floors rush by in the transparent elevator shaft, she takes another deep inhale, filling her lungs and letting the air slowly bleed out.
For a few precious seconds, she’s back in Mumbai, a six-year-old girl walking home from school down a long avenue lined with Kadamba trees.
Before she was shipped away to England.
The heavy scent of honey and wood lingers in the air. The sun is three hours from setting, and she has no homework. There will be time for a walk along the river to her favorite spot where she can sit and think and daydream until dark. Maybe she’ll play with the elephants that come to the banks for a dip in the water. A gust of wind pushes her skirt against the back of her knees.
The elevator slows down, and she feels gravity pulling her away from the past, like a stop-motion time lapse, through all the years and hard work and empty success. When her eyes slide open, the smells and sounds of Mumbai are gone. Her fingers hum with a gentle vibration.
The jax.
She taps the end with her thumb. A round holoscreen hops above her hand with glowing text in the color that can only mean it’s from Mercer’s female assistant. The one who wears only black leather.
Mr. M would like to see you to discuss the results of your research on the molecule. Tonight after dark. He’ll come by your office.
4
CREEP
You’re incredibly beautiful.
Staring out the window at the lights of the City across the East River, Jedd tries to push the words out of his mind, but their pathetic sound plays over and over, an infinite loop in his head. His eyes sweep the familiar skyline, quickly picking out the Genesis Corporation building where Qaara Kapoor is pulling another all-nighter with her holograph and lab equipment.
You’re incredibly beautiful.
How many other men have said the same idiotic words to Qaara? He cringes, turns and falls backward, his head making contact with the pillow.
“Let me guess, Jedd.” There’s a chuckle from the bed against the other wall. “Another girl? Who is it this week?”
“Come on, Ricky. You’re my best friend. We grew up together.” Jedd opens his hand and stares down at the capital F tattooed on his open palm. “We escaped from Moses and the Family together. Went through hell together. You know me better than that. I’m picky. I don’t fall for just any girl . . . or woman.” Jedd knits his fingers behind his head and studies an army of cockroaches crawling across the rough plastic rafters. The stench of home-brewed fish whiskey wafts up from the apartment below. He wrinkles his nose.
Most people in the Fringe will do anything to get a buzz.
Ricky leans his head against the wall, eyes on the clear slate in his fingers. “I know you, all right. You’re thinking about a girl . . . or a woman. Anyone I know?”
“Probably not. Maybe.”
“Try me.” Ricky puts his slate down on his lap and looks up.
Remembering that he hasn’t had anything to eat all day, Jedd reaches over his head and slides his chopsticks out of a crack in the wall. “Mind if I have some of the Chinese you brought home?”
“I’m done. You can have the rest. But tell me about the girl. I’ve been watching you. She must really be something to have you stirred up like this.”
Jedd leans over and picks the carton of rough green paper off the low table between them and stares into its contents. “You always eat all the meat and leave nothing but noodles and veggie chunks.”
“Don’t worry. You didn’t miss anything. It all comes from the same lab. Pseudo protein with the faint taste of plastic and dirt.” Ricky shudders, and his eyes go to the window like he’s trying to look back in time. “What I wouldn’t give for real beef right now. It’s been a long time since I had a T-bone.”
With the chopsticks in his left hand, Jedd digs into the carton and comes out with something long and slippery. “You’ve never had a T-bone, other than in your dreams. That’s City food for rich genmods. But I do remember the time you and I found that scrawny old cow, back when we were kids. Moses even let us have a piece. Haven’t had any real meat since. Probably just make me sick anyway.” He brings the end of the noodle to his lips, grabs it with his teeth and slurps. It travels up, swimming into his mouth without effort.
“Are you going to tell me about the girl or not?”
“Qaara,” Jedd says. “Qaara Kapoor. She works on the 250th floor at Genesis Corporation.”
Ricky’s eyes go wide. “The Qaara Kapoor? The one who invented Graff?”
“The one. The only.” Jedd inhales another noodle. He doesn’t know why, but he feels a sense of wonder at simply saying her name. Qaara Kapoor. It feels good on his tongue, like he’s speaking some exotic foreign language.
“Look,” Ricky says. “I’m all for a guy aiming high, but she's light years out of your league.” He laughs so hard his bed shakes and knocks against the wall.
There’s a loud thud from the floor above.
“We got to be quiet.” Jedd chews on a gob of fake onions held together with sticky brown sauce. “Neighbors’ll get us thrown out.”
“So, did you ask her out?”
Jedd can’t suppress the smile that makes it hard to chew. “Yep.”
“And?”
“She said yes. Sort of.”
Ricky stops laughing and is suddenly serious. “Sort of? What do you mean?”
“I think her exact words were perhaps some other time, but I could be mistaken about that last word.” Jedd drops the empty carton to the floor, licks off his chopsticks and slides them back into the crack in the wall.
“I’m not sure that qualifies as a yes. Sounds more like a polite turndown to me. A maybe at best. How long have you had your eyes on her? You and everyone else, that is.”
Rolling his head backward, Jedd grabs his slate from under the covers. “Six months. Ever since the day she showed up at Genesis Corp.” He props himself up on an elbow and touches the slate, making it luminesce from dark purple to light pink. “I finally worked up the courage to walk into her office today and have a meaningful conversation with her.”
“Meaningful conversation?” Ricky cocks his head to the side, causing his thick-rimmed glasses to tilt at an angle on his face. “About what?”
“Floor stains.”
Ricky chuckles, and his bed creaks with every movement. “You call that meaningful?”
Jedd grins and lets his gaze drift out into the middle of the room. “She’s even more beautiful up close than from across the lobby. Like a Bollywood princess.”
“One conversation, even with a princess, isn’t going to do much for you.” Ricky shakes his head. “She was just being nice, like any woman from India. You need more than that.”
“Ahh, but it was more than just one conversation.” Jedd says. “What do you think?” He lifts up his slate for Ricky to see. “Now I’ll be able to watch her all night.”
There, on the glossy surface of the slate, Qaara can be seen from behind, standing in her lab coat in front of a massive window. The lights of the City shine in the distance beyond. She’s looking at a holographic model of some super-complicated molecule, the same one Jedd saw in her office earlier, moving parts here and there, shaking her head, hands on her hips.
“No more idiot Mesh dramas for me.” Jedd props a pillow up against a large brown stain on the wall. “From now on I’m just gonna watch her. Welcome to the Qaara Kapoor Show. Every night.”
Ricky exhales. “Jedd, you’re a first class creep. If Genesis finds out you’re spying on their star employee, you’ll be out of a job and out of the City for good. Maybe even dead. You know Frank Mercer. From what I hear, his enemies have a life expectancy measured in hours. Worse than
his father.” His eyes come up off his slate. “How did you pull it off?”
“Easy,” Jedd says. “I put one of these on the wall behind her.” He squints his eyes and holds up a tiny lens half the size of a grain of rice between his index finger and thumb. “Got it off the Mesh from some ghost site in Fiji. Cost a month’s worth of wages.”
“Looks kind of big and clunky to me. I wouldn’t trust it. You know the penalty for data-sniffing.”
“Yeah, I know. A one-way trip to Sing Sing. If you even get there alive. But don’t worry. It’s guaranteed to be untraceable, at least for a while. Regular scanners won't find it. That’s what the Mesh-site said. No one will know it’s there unless they’re looking right at it. Besides, who would scan Qaara Kapoor’s office, anyway?” He settles back into his bed, staring into the slate. “It’s going to be worth every penny.”
“I still think you’re crazy. Playing with stuff you don’t understand.” Ricky shakes his head. “And that always gets us in trouble.”
“Crazy or not, I’m gonna to keep my eyes on her just in case—”
Before Jedd finishes the sentence, the blare of a police siren bursts out of his pocket. His hand shoots into his utility pants and pulls out the jax, part glass, part metal, woven together into an organic cylinder.
“Who is it?”
Jedd shakes his head. “Joey.” His body shoots up and off the bed, twisting and dropping the slate onto the middle of the sheets. “Some kind of trouble with the Tribe.” He moves to the door and grabs a long metal rod off the wall. “Let’s go.”
Ricky sighs, his breath intentionally loud. “Look, Jedd. Joey’s always getting himself in trouble just to see what you’ll do. And he knows you'll bail him out. Every time. At this rate, he’s never going to learn. I say you let him grow up a little. Let him get out of this mess on his own.”
Grabbing the doorknob and pulling hard, Jedd pauses at the opening. “First of all, he’s just like you and I were at his age. Living on his own. No parents. And second, you know how vicious the Tribe can be. How can he learn a lesson if he's dead?” Jedd turns to leave. “I’m his guardian. The closest thing he has to a dad. I'm not going to stand around and do nothing when his life’s in danger. Neither are you.”
There’s a loud grumble as Ricky rolls off his bed and follows Jedd out the door.
5
ZERO
Luca doesn’t resist.
The men in white uniforms only hit harder if you fight back or try to get away. As soon as the door opens, her body goes limp and slips onto the soggy futon, face down.
A rough hand grabs her arm and pulls hard, flipping her over so she’s staring up at the broken ceiling past their eyes.
Pain explodes from her elbow and shoulder.
Luca remembers. The beatings started on the day her mother left her at the Institution. A smiling doctor took her into an empty room, shut the door and took a long rubber rod off the wall. Luca wondered if her mother heard the screams as she walked out the front gate.
And the beatings never stopped.
At first, Luca closed her eyes until the men were done. But then she learned to do it a different way, a better way.
She picks one of the men and looks into his eyes. No flinching or blinking. Just staring and trying to understand, trying to cross the divide between them, listening for whatever pops into her mind.
And no talking.
Tonight there are two of them. The tall skinny one with the crooked nose, large ears and puffy red eyes. He smiles sometimes and doesn’t hit as hard as the other one. All the girls call him Giraffe. The other one is shorter with muscular arms, a bald head and a red mark on his forehead like a circle. Zero. He’s mean.
Both of them stare down at her.
A silent woman, the Superintendent of the Institution, stands behind them holding a slate, her crisp mandarin blouse buttoned all the way up the high collar. Luca hasn’t thought of a name for her, yet. It will come.
As they enter the cell, the woman’s fingers dance across the surface of the slate.
She takes a step forward. “You were talking again, weren’t you?”
Luca focuses her attention on Giraffe with his big sad eyes. They dart back and forth between the woman and Zero.
Nobody smiles.
“How many times have we told you, Luca?” The woman shakes her head. “You have to ignore the voices. Stop talking to them, and they’ll go away.” She looks at Giraffe and nods her head.
His eyes narrow, and his grip tightens on the rubber club. Sweat drips from his forehead.
“Do it!” shouts Zero. “You know the rules.”
Never taking her eyes off Giraffe, Luca lets her arms fall down at her sides, palms up, ready to receive.
Giraffe wipes the sweat away. “She’s not going to change. Can’t you see that?” His eyes move from Luca to the woman standing near the door. “No matter how much we hurt her, she’s not going to change.”
“We’re not hurting her, we’re helping. The therapy has been proven effective in 75 percent of the cases.” The woman grips her slate like it’s a knife. “Proceed.”
“Please. Don’t make me do it. Can’t you see? She’s different from the others.” Giraffe stares at Luca, his voice shifting into a whine. “I’ve hit her so much already, and nothing changes. She still hears voices. She still talks to them. No matter what we do, she always will.”
Zero clenches his jaw and emits a loud grunt. “You don’t understand. The girl’s possessed. She let the voices inside, and now they've taken over. Get out of my way.” He pushes Giraffe hard into the wall and strips the rubber club from his hands. “There’s only one way to deal with the voices. Beat them out of her.”
The woman is silent.
In that instant, Luca knows it’s going to be worse this time. Carefully, she moves a few inches to the right, away from the corner where the plant hides under the futon.
Giraffe leans against the wall and turns so he can see Luca out of the corner of his eye.
She watches him as the blows rain down.
Zero starts with her feet and works his way up her body, swinging hard until he stands directly over her face. “Look at her. She’s an animal. Doesn’t feel a thing." He wipes the spittle gathered in the corners of his mouth and starts to raise the club again, high over Luca’s head. “I’m going to hurt her real bad this time. Until the voices leave.”
“Not the face.” The woman wraps her fingers around the club as it reaches its apex. “People can see the face. The back and legs are better. Turn her over.”
Nodding, Zero reaches down and snaps Luca’s arm back.
Pain throbs in her shoulder. She flips over but keeps her eyes open, staring at the thin gap between the door and the wall.
Pain erupts along her thighs and spine. The walls shift. She’s floating above Zero’s head, looking down on him and the others as he beats her small body.
Poor girl, she thinks. But it will be over soon.
Zero breathes hard, dangling his club over the back of Luca’s head. He pulls his arm back for another swing. “One last time.”
“Enough,” says the woman. “Things get messy when they die.”
The three of them shuffle out of the room, Giraffe last. He wipes his eyes and takes a final glimpse over his shoulder just before the door swings shut.
Luca wants to keep floating in the room above the futon, away from the pain. But as the door clangs, the scrape of metal on concrete causes another shift, as if it’s a glitch in a movie.
She’s back in her body.
Like a ring of massive jaws with gleaming white fangs floating in the dark, the pain settles around her, slowly clamping shut. As the fangs bite into her flesh, there’s an instant of agony, but it’s wiped away by the darkness washing over her, leaving only a dull ache in its wake.
That’s when the dreams begin.
Luca is sitting on a rough wood floor in a room, playing with a flat piece of clear plastic. An old sl
ate. Her tiny fingers slide across it, and colorful images move on its surface. A familiar story unfolds. She’s seen it hundreds of times before but never gets tired of watching. An old woman dressed in a silk robe stands next to a giant peach she pulled from the river. An old man is at her side bent with age. They talk about how wonderful it would be to have a son, how hard it’s been all these years to live without children. The woman says that at least they have something to eat and holds a large knife over the peach. She lets the blade bite into the pink flesh and cut it down the center.
Anticipation builds in Luca’s body. The old man and woman are about to receive a wonderful surprise.
As the two halves of the peach fall away, a small boy jumps out of its center, pink and chubby. He puts his hands on his hips and looks up at the old woman and man, calling them Mother and Father. Everyone is happy. Everyone laughs.
Luca watches the moving pictures with rapt attention and giggles. It’s her favorite storybook, and she wants to share it with everyone. As she tries to talk, only a babble of half-formed sounds come from her mouth, not yet words. Gazing around the room, she searches for her father.
On the opposite wall, there’s a sink beneath a window. Fresh leeks and leaves of spinach glisten in a bowl under a faucet of slow running water. The aroma of overturned dirt floats in from the garden just outside the sliding doors behind her. She feels the evening sun on her back.
It’s going to be dinnertime soon. She drools, and saliva runs from the corners of her mouth. Such a long time since she’s tasted vegetables.
Her gaze drifts to the right, where a half-clothed man lies on a stained futon. A woman holds his head as he vomits black viscous liquid into a bowl. His skin is splotched with red, and his hair is missing in patches. He stares into the woman’s eyes with a faraway, hollow look.
The man and woman talk. Luca’s gaze goes back to the piece of plastic in her hand, where the old woman and man still laugh about the new little boy in their life. But their laughter is drowned out by the raised voices of her mother and father on the other side of the room. Luca senses desperation in their tones. She tries to look away, out the window, in the direction of the garden, but she is drawn back, pulled by a deep sense of connection.
