Origin

by Jessica Khoury

  He nods toward the other corner, the one opposite Eio, and I see suddenly that Aunt Harriet is sitting in the shadows, face downcast and arms cradling herself.

  “What do you want with her?” I ask.

  “Truth, dear Pia. And such truths as we could not have imagined. Dr. Fields and I had a fascinating conversation while you were in your room, before we were interrupted by your friend’s attempt to fry himself on our fence.”

  “You told him about Eio and me?” I ask her flatly. She doesn’t meet my eye, but she nods.

  “That…among other wonders,” Paolo adds. “Apparently you’ve made a breakthrough discovery of your own? Care to share?”

  Cold with horror, I stare in shock and dismay at Aunt Harriet. “You told him? About—” I stop, just in case I’m wrong.

  But I’m not. He smiles. “Yes, Pia. She told us. After all this time, the secret to reproducing elysia is you. It’s absolutely incredible. Such a curious life cycle for a plant to have.”

  “Traitor,” I whisper. She still won’t meet my gaze; she keeps her eyes trained on her shoes. Her shock of red hair hides all expression on her face. If she were close enough, I’d spit on her.

  “Can I go now?” she whispers.

  Paolo dismisses her with a wave.

  As she passes me, Aunt Harriet murmurs, “I’m sorry, Pia.”

  The door shuts behind her, and Paolo sighs. “People will do anything for the right price, Pia. Discover their deepest desire, and you have them in your power. This wonderful principle applies, my dear, even to you.”

  He nods toward Eio.

  I meet Paolo’s eyes squarely, trying to find the uncle I once knew somewhere in that cold gaze. It’s impossible. I know the face, but not the man. “This is me, Uncle Paolo. Pia. I’ve known you my whole life. Don’t do this.”

  While we were talking, the others have been at work on Eio. His face has been cleaned of the paint, and even his jaguar necklace is gone. Everything that made him Ai’oan has been stripped away. He looks more like Uncle Antonio than ever. Do they know who he is? Who his father is?

  It’s Jakob who unwittingly answers when he mutters behind me, “Imagine being an immortal beauty like her and falling for some poacher’s bastard. Damn shame.”

  “Don’t make me do it. Uncle Paolo,” I try to sound reasonable and contrite, “I’ll do what you say. I promise. I swear I will, just let him go! Test me, if you like!” It’s a lie, of course, but they don’t need to know that until Eio is free and far from here.

  “But you see,” Paolo says, “this is the test.”

  They shove me toward him until I’m only inches away. I can smell the jungle on his skin, wet and fragrant and alive.

  A lump the size of a tennis ball lodges in my throat. Tears blind me but don’t fall, and my stomach feels as if I’ve swallowed Uncle Will’s titan beetle alive and it’s gnawing its way free through my skin.

  “You were made for one purpose.” Paolo’s voice is steel now, hard and unforgiving, a voice I’ve rarely heard from him before. In a matter of hours, he’s become a complete and horrifying stranger. “To create others like you. I don’t intend to be the one scientist in Little Cambridge who gets remembered for failing. You are my success, whether you like it or not, and you will comply, or you will be forced to. Which is it to be?”

  I shut my eyes and stay silent.

  “Very well,” he sighs.

  He grabs my hand, and no matter how hard I strain against him, the combined weight of three men—of whom even one could overpower me—is too much. He lifts my hand, the needle pointed downward, to the level of my face. Eio stares at me, and I’m amazed at how calm he is. He’s stopped struggling; now he just looks at me with the whole of the jungle in his eyes. It’s almost as if he wants me to do it.

  “Remember,” Paolo whispers as I feel his arm tensing for the thrust downward. “It didn’t have to be this way.”

  He pushes my hand down and the needle slides into Eio’s side, just above his hip. Eio doesn’t make a sound, but the muscles in his abdomen clench from the pain. I taste bile on the back of my tongue. As I struggle to keep my thumb raised, refusing to press down on the syringe, I can hardly see for the tears in my eyes. Paolo presses my thumb with his own, trying to force me to inject the elysia into Eio. But I strain against him, wondering at how it all comes down to this—my damned weakness. My one, frail finger is all that stands between Eio and his death. I feel my strength giving way—Paolo is too strong, too strong—and the door to the lab bursts from its hinges behind us. Everyone whirls and ducks as bullets pound into the ceiling above our heads. Paolo keeps a grip on me, preventing me from darting away.

  “WHERE IS MY SON?” Uncle Antonio bellows, leveling the two AK-47s he’s holding at the lot of us. “Get away from him, you bastards!”

  I want to cheer. Instead, I bite down hard on Paolo’s hand, and he curses and lets go long enough for me to dance to the other side of Eio’s gurney. I rip the tape and the syringe from my hand. Trusting Uncle Antonio to handle the scientists, I grab a scalpel and start slicing the straps holding Eio.

  “Antonio,” Paolo says agreeably, as if they’ve just met in the breakfast line. “Son? My, my…any other secrets you’d care to share with the class?” His eyes are bright and hard and angry, so angry I half expect steam to be pouring out of their sockets.

  “I said, step away!” Uncle Antonio’s eyes are blazing, looking as dangerous as the massive guns in his hands. Where did those come from? Timothy’s secret stash, probably. Uncle Antonio knows more of Little Cam’s secrets than I ever even knew existed.

  The scientists slowly stand up and walk to the corner where Aunt Harriet sat earlier. Their hands are raised or linked behind their heads, and all of them have eyes only for the guns.

  “We don’t have long, Pia,” Uncle Antonio warns. “The others will be here soon.”

  The last strap is only halfway cut, but Eio snaps it and jumps to his feet. We run to Uncle Antonio and duck behind him as he begins to back out the door.

  “Pia!” Paolo yells. “Come back, Pia. Please. We can work this out. There’s still a chance. You can still be a scientist, still live your dream—”

  “It was never my dream,” I reply. “It was yours. You just made me think it was mine. Well, I have a new dream, and, trust me,” I stare him straight in the eye, “you don’t appear anywhere in it.”

  “Paolo,” Uncle Antonio says, “join us. Now.”

  He rises slowly, then, at Uncle Antonio’s impatient bark, walks briskly to us. Uncle Antonio hands one of his guns to Eio, then grabs Paolo’s upper arm and holds him in front as a shield. Paolo is as still as a sculpture, but his eyes follow me like twin lasers.

  We leave the rest of them cowering in the corner.

  And run like hell.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  The first thing I notice when we burst through the doors of A Labs is that it’s finally stopped raining. The world is vivid and sharp, as if it’s been repainted three shades too bright. I feel exposed and vulnerable, despite Uncle Antonio and his AK-47s. People are already gathering. News travels fast in Little Cam.

  So does, apparently, the sound of gunshots.

  “Stand back!” Uncle Antonio bellows, swinging his gun like a scythe. Eio keeps his own trained on Paolo’s head. I’m surprised at how steady his hands are, despite his distaste for the weapon. But I have a feeling his bow and arrows just wouldn’t have the same effect on the crowd closing in on us.

  It’s one of the strangest moments of my life so far. I’m surrounded by familiar faces, but the eyes that stare out of them are those of strangers. These are the people who raised me, taught me, ate with me, and celebrated my birthdays. Jonas and Jacques and Sergei. Even Aunt Brigid and Aunt Nénine. They are all looking at us with eyes like ice; some burn cold and some fiery, some with confusion.

  Who are you people? What have you done with my Little Cam?

  If Aunt Harriet is among them, she manages to evade my
eyes. Which is probably just as well; if she appeared, I might ask Uncle Antonio to shoot her.

  And where are my parents?

  Suddenly we hear heavy footsteps, and Timothy and a dozen of his men shoulder through the crowd. They all hold guns, some even bigger than Uncle Antonio’s.

  “Stay close to me, Eio,” he whispers. “You aren’t bulletproof like Pia is.”

  We stay in a tight knot with Paolo in front of us, still rigid.

  “Get out of our way,” Uncle Antonio commands.

  “Antonio, my friend,” Timothy says softly. “I believe there has been a misunderstanding. Stop all this. Why worry about one wild boy? Tell you what. Put down the guns, and we’ll let him go back to his jungle. And we can work all this out.”

  “Out. Of. Our. Way.” Uncle Antonio levels his gun at him.

  Timothy spreads his hands, his rifle pointed at the sky. “Easy, friend. Remember all the favors I did you, yeah? The magazines, the maps, the radios…We have been in business a long time, no? Today is the same. Put down the gun. We’ll work a deal.”

  “Here’s a deal for you,” I say, surprising them both. I step in front of my little band, because I am, after all, bulletproof. “How about you get out of the way—and we don’t kill you?”

  “What are you doing, Pia child?” Timothy shakes his head at me. “Throwing your lot in with this madman? Did no one tell you? He’s been insane for years.”

  “If he’s insane, then so am I. Let us through.”

  “Do as she says, Timothy.” Uncle Antonio shoots the ground in front of the hunter’s boots, and Timothy jumps back with a startled cry. “Please,” Uncle Antonio adds.

  They start to move, and at that moment, Eio’s finger unwittingly finds the trigger of his gun. Bullets spray the ground between the crowd and us. I don’t know whether Uncle Timothy or Eio is more shocked.

  Chaos explodes across the crowd. Everyone starts screaming or shooting, and I’m swept one way by the stampede of scientists running to escape the gunfire. Uncle Antonio and Eio run the other way, losing their hold on Paolo as they do. No one seems to notice when I’m knocked over and into a large bush by the door of A Labs. I crawl behind it and watch as everyone not holding a gun flees the scene and Uncle Antonio and Eio retreat behind the powerhouse. Uncle Timothy orders his men to keep firing at them, then yells, “Where did Pia go?”

  Someone points in a direction, and Timothy and the rest of his men charge off. I stand and start for Uncle Antonio and Eio, but then I see Paolo headed in my direction, and at the last minute I crash through the door to A Labs and run down the hall. I burst into the first lab I come to just before Paolo enters the building. Terrified he saw the lab door shut behind me, I shrink against the wall and hold my breath.

  The room is dark, but I know from memory that it’s Uncle Will’s lab. I hear scrabbling in the dark that must come from Babó. Paolo’s footsteps pass my hiding place and continue on, and I sigh in relief. But then the door opens, and a head peers around it—and sees me.

  Aunt Harriet.

  We stare at each other for a long moment, at first in shock, then wariness. There are dark rings under her eyes. She looks like she’s been crying ever since she left the lab.

  “Pia,” she says guardedly.

  “Harriet. You going to turn me in? Again?”

  She sighs and locks the door. Lock on the door. Brilliant, Pia. Can’t believe you didn’t think of that.

  “Why did you do it?” I ask. I don’t have time, but the moment presented itself. Maybe the truth will too.

  She begins slowly, uncertainly. “You once asked me, Pia, what test it was I had to pass in order to get this job.”

  I nod and wait.

  She draws a deep breath before going on. “It was a horse. A black Arabian, the most magnificent creature I’d ever seen. I don’t know where she came from or how they knew that of all the creatures on this earth, I love none so much as the Arabian. Victoria Strauss brought me to her and put a gun in my hand and said that if I pulled the trigger, the job would be mine.” She looks at her hands. “Under any other circumstances, I wouldn’t have done it. But…” She sighs and pulls something from her pocket. It’s the photograph I saw her crying over yesterday. She hands it to me.

  “I lied to you, Pia. Evie isn’t a colleague. She’s my little sister.”

  The girl in the picture is not much older than me. She’s sitting in a wheelchair and smiling, and Harriet’s standing behind her with her arms around the girl.

  “Your sister,” I whisper. “The sister is dead,” Strauss told Paolo. “Fields doesn’t know.” My heart sinks. I don’t dare look at Aunt Harriet.

  “Evie has cerebral palsy,” Aunt Harriet whispers. “It was Strauss who found me, after the diagnosis. She said that Corpus was working on a promising new drug and that it could help Evie if they gave it to her…on the condition I came down here for thirty years. The disease was so advanced, and Evie was suffering so much, Pia, I was ready to try or do anything! Even…even pass that horrible test. Even so, there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t wish there had been some other way, some other choice. You remind me so much of her. Before the disease got bad, she had the same curiosity, the same drive. It’s why I wanted to help you. It was almost like…almost like knowing what Evie would have been, if not for the illness.”

  My throat feels packed with cotton. I can’t tell her that her sister is dead. Maybe I should, but the hope in Aunt Harriet’s eyes…it’s a knife to my heart, and I simply can’t turn the blade on her. She’ll find out soon, anyway. Strauss can’t hide the truth forever; she said as much herself.

  For the first time, I understand why Uncle Antonio tried so hard to keep the truth about Immortis from me. The truth can pierce and destroy even the most indestructible of us.

  Suddenly we hear footsteps in the hall, and we press against the wall and hold our breaths. Whoever it is, they run past the lab without opening the door—this time.

  “Go on,” I tell Aunt Harriet. I know there isn’t much time, but I need to hear the full story. Otherwise, I may never be able to forgive her.

  “When they told you to pass your final test,” Aunt Harriet continues, “all I saw was myself facing the same decision, the same sacrifice of my soul, and I thought that if only I could stop you, save you somehow from making the same mistake, I could erase my own sin. And for a time, I thought I had.…But then Paolo put it all together. He figured out it was me helping you sneak out, and he said…he threatened to tell Strauss. And then Evie wouldn’t get her treatments and…I still had that gun, Pia, and I knew that if I pulled the trigger, I could prove to them that I was still a team player. Still the amoral scientist they wanted. So I did it. I pulled the trigger. I won back their trust, and I bought my sister’s life. Whatever humanity I had managed to scrape back together, I shot it all to hell. And you, dear, sweet Pia, you were caught in the crossfire. I’m sorry. Truly, miserably sorry. But if given the chance to do it all over…”

  I stare, heartsick, as she starts weeping. “You’d do it again. I know. I understand now, Aunt Harriet.” I hand her picture back and hope that Strauss gets eaten by an anaconda. “Uncle Antonio and Eio are pinned down by Timothy’s men. I need to get to them and get out of Little Cam. Will you help me?”

  She stares at me, sniffling, her red hair looking like some kind of explosion on her head, and then she nods. “I’ll see if the coast is clear, then signal for you.” She doesn’t meet my eyes, but blinks and wipes her eyes, then leaves.

  Less than a second later, the door opens again, and she’s backing into the room, a gun pointed at her face.

  Timothy. And he’s backed up by a dozen armed men, Jakob, Sergei, and even my father among them. Uncle Will holds his gun as if it were a snake about to bite him, and he looks at me with large, frightened eyes.

  “Enough of this, Pia,” says Timothy as he switches on the light. “Just come with us. Let’s work this out.”

  I look at him, look at
the others, look at Jakob’s frown and Sergei’s stormy eyes, and I think only one thing.

  Ants.

  The terrarium is right behind me. There’s a chair right beside me. I glance from it to the terrarium to Uncle Will. He must read what’s in my mind, because he starts to turn very, very pale.

  “Pia, no!”

  But I’m already picking up the chair, swinging it, smashing the glass. Ants pour out like living black water. I look straight at Timothy and smile.

  Uncle Will runs to the alarm and yanks it down, but he can’t get to the insecticide; ants are crawling all over the cabinet. I wonder if the others even know what I’ve released.

  They do. Grown men scream like cornered monkeys and throw their guns down in their haste to flee the room. Timothy tries to keep order, but he’s carried out with the tide. Aunt Harriet, her face a mask of horror, doesn’t wait around either. I’m right on her heels.

  Mass hysteria has broken out across Little Cam. There are people yelling in panic who couldn’t possibly know what’s going on yet. Maybe it’s the sirens screaming at a deafening volume that frightens them. I glance behind just once to see someone—impossible to tell who—disappear under a tidal wave of ants.

  I run to Uncle Antonio and Eio. The men who’d been firing on them have abandoned their posts and are stampeding along with everyone else.

  “Uncle Will’s ants,” I say, and Uncle Antonio blanches.

  “Ants? They’re all scared of some ants?” asks Eio.

  “They’re not just any ants—no time! Let’s go!” I grab Eio’s hand and pull him along with me. The mass of carnivorous insects has moved toward the center of Little Cam, and I see Haruto yanking off his ant-covered shirt. Everyone is still occupied with escaping the tiny monsters, leaving us free to run for the gate.

  Just before we reach the Jeeps, we’re intercepted by Timothy, Paolo, and Sergei, all three of them armed. We freeze. They freeze. No one lowers their weapons.

  “Stop this madness, Antonio,” says Paolo, using his smoothest, most persuasive voice. “It doesn’t have to be this way. We’ll let the boy go, I swear. I didn’t know he was your son. You should have told us. We could have given him a place here. Maybe we still can.” Slowly, he bends down and lays his gun on the ground, then extends his hands. “See? I want no violence.”