by A. L. Davroe
Aaron grimaces. “Aw, come on, do I have to? What’s the point?”
“The point,” Delaney says, standing, “is to not count our chickens.”
Rolling his eyes, Aaron mutters, “Would be nice to have chickens at all.”
The little girl named Ani looks up at Aaron. “What’s a chicken?”
“It’s food,” another little boy, this one with fair skin and hair, says. “Stuff we don’t get to eat ’cause it don’t exist no more.”
“Oh,” Ani breathes, and I can tell this disappoints her.
“All right,” Aaron says, “let’s get it on, then.” He makes a shooing motion with his hands and the other Disfavored climb down and start shuffling through the rubble once more.
Delaney bends and picks up a large bag that clanks. “Shall we?”
I glance at Quentin. “Is it okay to leave? What if Violet and Bastian come back looking for us?”
“They’re past their return time. The agreement was that we’d go on without them,” he reminds.
“Still.” I worry my hands together. “I feel like we should go back and get them, not go wandering off with someone we don’t know.”
“Perhaps I’m being too civil,” Delaney says, showing his teeth in a fake smile and patting the gun now holstered at his hip. “You don’t have a choice. I’m just trying to be nice. Show some decorum. Wouldn’t want you Domites to think badly of us Disfavored.”
Quentin gives me a tight-lipped expression, which means I shouldn’t press my luck, so I don’t. Instead, I quickly repack my sleeping bag and we follow Delaney as he leads us across the dump zone. I hear two more people skitter over the rubble behind us and take up our flanks.
“We’re not going to try anything,” Quentin mutters.
Delaney shrugs. “They’re just making sure. They can be a little overprotective.”
“Who,” I ask, “or what, exactly, are you people?”
Delaney swings his bag over his shoulder and grins. “Just your friendly neighborhood trash pickers is all.”
A low grumble escapes Quentin and I smirk. Obviously he’s about as pleased with that vague answer as I am. “Delaney is part of the rebel group we orchestrated the raid with,” Quentin informs. “Mac is their leader, Clairen’s second in command.”
“But if you know each other and are on the same side, then why the hostility?”
“They don’t know me. They know Zane. He’s the face of the Aristocrats in Outer Block. They only trust him.”
“Correct you are,” Delaney says. “Even then with a grain of salt. Especially after getting into the dome proved to be quite perilous to our people.”
“But,” I hedge, “that was an accident. Uncle Simon—”
“Yeah, yeah.” Delaney waves his hand. “I know, wasn’t in the plan, all that, blah, blah, blah. Look, I lost a lot of people in there. Good kids that shouldn’t have died because your crazy robots went nutso-defuncto. So, I’m sorry if I ain’t feeling forgiving, accident or otherwise, you Domites are on the naughty list, princess.”
I grind my teeth.
After a few minutes of walking, the distance between us and him growing due to my slow pace, Delaney stops and turns. He looks like he’s going to say something, but after watching us close the distance, Quentin’s hand on my elbow to steady me on the uneven ground, he stays silent until we’re close to him once more. “Claire’s good with medicine,” he says, turning to lead the way again, “Maybe she can take a look at your leg. I’m sure she would.”
I lick my lips. “It’s not really the sort of thing that just anyone can fix.”
“Claire’s not just anyone.”
“Did you ask her if she was single when you met her, too?”
Delaney’s eyes slide sideways and he examines me hard. “You’re not like a normal Domite. How’d you end up in the dome? Drexel adopt you or something?”
A scoff chuffs out of me before I can stop myself. “Uh, no. Actually, I’m his real daughter.”
He’s looking all the way at me now, his handsome face close to mine. “But you’re a Natural. He was a full-blown gene-tweak.”
Gene-tweak? He must mean Customized. “I’m half Custom,” I say, suddenly feeling like I need to justify myself. “Dad was an Aristocrat, born and raised. Mom was a Natural.”
“Oh,” he breathes, his face suddenly relaxing. “That makes way more sense. Me, too.” He turns away, like that ends the conversation.
I stop short. “Wait, what?”
“I’m half Custom, too,” he says very slowly, like I’m stupid. “Though, my father didn’t claim me like yours apparently did.” He shrugs. “I’m jealous. I would have much preferred to grow up in there than out here. I hear Aristocrats are assholes to Naturals, but it can’t be any worse than being a mixed blood out here.”
I stare at him, mouth open.
Quentin leans in close to me. “They’re called Unmentionables out here, Elle. It’s not a blessing to be a mixed blood in Kairos. It’s the second-class citizen to the second-class citizen.”
Face suddenly hot, I shut my mouth and look away. “I-I didn’t realize there were others like me.”
“Oh yeah, plenty,” Delaney adds, “Natural by-product of Doll Houses, right?”
Yes, I’d forgotten that Doll Houses dealt in all manner of flesh, not just in selling Disfavored to people like the Cyrs to experiment on.
“You’d think,” Delaney goes on saying, “considering how natural a by-product and how numerous we are, that those in Kairos would be a little more accepting of we Unmentionables. But you know how people can be. Natural, Aristocrat, when you come down to it, humans are jerks to each other. Nobody likes different.”
I giggle at that. I like this guy. Then I sober as I come to a realization. Everyone who had just surrounded us had something uniquely un-Disfavored about their features. “Those kids back there. Are they all like you?”
“Yeah,” he says, voice somber. “There’s a whole group of us. Mac started it with me and Claire. Took us in, got me off the street, got her out of the Doll House, gave us honest, fulfilling work to do. She and I, we pay it forward—do it for others now. Safety in numbers of those who are like you.”
“I suppose I understand that.”
“My unit was bigger, but I lost quite a few in the raid.”
“I’m… I’m sorry.”
Trash gives way to rubble gives way to packed, dried mud as Delaney leads us farther down the dump zone and closer to The Waste. Here, the air grows staler and the stench changes to something more organic.
Quentin coughs
“You get used to it,” Delaney says.
“I don’t think I want to.”
Delaney kicks a tin can and it clatters down the trash heap. “This is nothing. Some of the other cities smell even worse.”
I cock my head. “There are more cities like this one?”
“Well yeah. I mean, every dome’s got one. Would be pretty stupid for people not to build under the nano-nets, right?”
“But you’ve been to them?”
“Nah,” he corrects. “Mac has only ever let me go on runs to Norsha. That’s the city around Adagio. No one lives there anymore. Dome is dead so most of those people either moved here or to Adagio’s sister city. Annex is the city around Cadence, but Mac won’t let me go there. He says my mouth would get me into trouble.” He reaches up and taps the mask on his face. “You might wanna put your masks on. Not sure if you noticed, but the net is down.”
“Oh, right.” I move to pull out the mask that was provided in my pack and I hear Quentin doing the same beside me. How stupid. I watched the net fall last night and here I am walking around mask-less. I’ll have to learn fast to think about these sorts of things.
Wrinkling my nose, I adjust my mask, uncomfortable with how it sits on my face.
“You’ll get used to that, too,” Delaney says, grinning.
“You shouldn’t have to be used to it,” Quentin says. “Isn’t that
why you live under the net?”
“Those of us who live in thin air wear masks all the time,” Delaney explains.
I lower a brow. “Thin air?”
“Yeah, the farther from the wall, the thinner the net. Eventually you’re living in an area of thin nano-coverage. Hence, thin air.”
“Oh.”
The trash diminishes more and more until we’re finally walking on flat, cracked earth. “Welcome to The Waste!” Delaney yells, flinging up his arms in a grand gesture. “Ain’t she beautiful?”
Now that we’re closer, I can see that while Kairos is built in a ring around the city, there’s another sort of ring around Kairos. A ring of the dead.
Interspersed between the bits of hollowed and forgotten bits of America’s past are thousands of makeshift markers for graves. Some are bits of plastic or rebar tied to each other to make up crosses as some of the Disfavored still follow religion. Others are just pieces of trash with little things written or carved into them. One of the crosses closest to me has a half-rotten little doll propped against it. “It’s a graveyard?”
“Well yeah, where else are we gonna put the dead? Leave them in the streets to rot? Place smells like shit anyway, ain’t gonna make it worse. This way.”
He acts like death is no big deal. Quent and I glance at each other.
We remain quiet as he leads us along what looks to be a cracked and ground-down old road along the outskirts of Kairos.
“Is it safe to be out here?” I ask, blinking at the sun, which is an unforgiving orange ball on the horizon. It’s still low, so it should only be early morning, but already I’m sweating. I glance longingly at Quentin, who is engineered not to sweat at all, though he looks far more uncomfortable because of it. “What about the cannibals?”
“Oh them? Nah, they only come at night. If they came in the day we’d know they were coming. Those big rigs they drive kick up a lot of dust. They’re gonna be pissed when they do their next raid, lemme tell you that.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Haven’t you noticed something?”
“There aren’t any people in the city,” Quentin says. “I’ve been keeping an eye out, and I’ve seen barely a handful today where there were hordes yesterday.”
He’s right. I’ve noticed it, too. I can tell, even at this distance. I’ve made a study of the living movements of the city that lurked in the shadow of my home. The arteries of her streets, the workings of her human cells, the beat of her heart of Disfavored determination. Kairos is dead. There are no people in her streets, no arteries clogged with the cells, and no beat to drive them anymore. “Why? What’s going on?” Is it the robots? “The biospores couldn’t have killed them all that quickly.”
“They’re scrambling, moving to safer ground.”
“Safer ground?”
He grins and sing-songs, “You’ll see.”
After a good half hour of hobbling along the uneven road, we turn up an abandoned alley. Delaney lets himself into one of the shacks, low and squat with a torn bit of canvas across the doorway. We go to the back, through two adjoining rooms stacked with crates, and down a set of steps into the ground.
He leads us to the back of a basement where another Disfavored, this one sporting the more typical dark features I expect, is standing guard, a shotgun slung at his shoulder. “Hi, Faulk.”
Faulk yawns wide and steps off to the side as Delaney unzips a door out of a wall that’s nothing but a cleverly painted bit of canvas. “This way.”
One of Delaney’s men switches places with Faulk and Faulk steps in with us, leaving the other two outside.
Delaney zips the door closed, pulls his mask off, then reaches out and tugs ours off as well. “Boop! That’s better. You don’t have to hold your breath,” he says, grinning. “The biospores can’t get in here. And the radiation…well, you can’t escape that, but we keep a counter on at all times. Hasn’t spiked in a while. I think we’re far enough away from the nearest ground zero.”
Without his mask, I stare at him. Delaney is attractive, and I understand why, now that he’s explained his Custom heritage, but even he hasn’t escaped the horrors of living outside of the dome. His tawny skin is finely scarred from acid rain and radiation burns. “Seriously,” he whispers. “It’s all right. I promise.”
We follow him down the hallway—a metal framework covered in canvas. We’re below ground, and I assume the canvas is to keep the damp and the dirt out. Eventually, we turn into a smaller hall lined with zip-closed rooms. We bypass all of them and head toward a central area where a large number of people are attending all manner of vehicles, setting up equipment, staring at small screens on antique bits of technology, and talking to each other in hushed voices.
Delaney angles us off to the side, toward a number of people who stand huddled together over a map. One of them I recognize, even at this distance. And when he sees us coming, he turns entirely and smiles.
“Zane?” Quent gasps. It’s a word that reveals more weakness than I want to admit in Quentin, yet at the same time, it only seems to make him stronger.
Zane flashes his winning Broadcast grin and I instantly see the resemblance between them. How did I never see it? “Hey.”
Quent begins to sputter, “What-but-I-I thought you… You were dead.”
Zane puts his hands in his pockets and gives a noncommittal shrug. “I have to keep it interesting, gotta keep ratings up.”
“Ratings for what?” This is from a new voice, one belonging to an astoundingly beautiful girl who has just materialized beside him. Tall and willowy with black hair, pale skin, teal eyes, she smiles and addresses us. “He still thinks he’s on The Broadcast.” She smacks his shoulder. “Idiot.”
“Ow,” he says, voice changing to a tone I’ve never heard come from his mouth as he reaches out and touches her hip. “That’s enough out of you.”
“Who is that?” I breathe into Quent’s ear.
“That, I assume, is Clairen,” Quent muses. “The only woman on this earth my brother actually cares about.”
“What? But how?”
“He met her out here when he started covering the Disfavored for that documentary he was doing.” Quentin glances at me, eyes bright. “Fell for her the moment he saw her.”
“Man,” Delaney mutters from beside us. “I’m so jealous, everybody’s so in-fucking-love.”
“Don’t worry, Laney,” Clairen says. “One day your prince will come.”
Turning away, Delaney rolls his eyes. “I’ve done the favor of the century finding these two for you ungrateful assholes. If you need me, I’ll be in my cell writing sappy love songs.”
Clairen lifts her hand to her mouth and calls out to him. “Behave yourself, you know what they say about masturbation.”
He flicks her some strange one-fingered hand signal I’ve never seen before and stalks off.
“Charming chap,” Zane says.
She takes on an apologetic tone as she says, “He grows on you.”
Zane turns around. “So do tumors, but you cut them out and dispose of them.”
She shoots a glare at his back before turning to us. “You must be Quentin.” She offers her hand to Quentin, who shakes it awkwardly.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” he says, blushing slightly.
She smirks, and it’s quirky and crooked. “And I you.”
He grasps my elbow, practically throws me at her like he’s afraid she’s going to reveal something he doesn’t want her to. “This is Ella.”
Clairen isn’t so ready with a handshake for me. “Ellani Drexel,” she muses, crossing her arms. “You’re not what I expected.”
Uncomfortable, I glance from Quentin to Zane, uncertain whether I should be taking offense or apologizing.
“I dunno,” she says, looking at Zane. “I thought she’d be taller or something.”
Zane steps forward, places an affectionate hand on my head. “Good things come in little packages. Easier to deliver. Ri
ght, Quent?”
“Deliver?” I ask, turning to Quentin.
“Oh, don’t look at him,” Zane says, his hand turning my head back. “He’s as clueless as you are.” He steps in front of me, grasps both sides of my face. “Let’s have a look.” He stares at me, eyes sparkling. “Hm… You’ve lost weight. And you look like you could use a good rest. But, of course, you’re lovely as always.”
“Zane, we don’t have time for your flirtations,” Quentin growls. “The dome is down.”
“Yes, the dome,” Zane exclaims, brown eyes igniting—they were once purple—and he looks back down at me. “How did you manage to shut the dome down?”
“I didn’t do anything,” I snap, pulling away. “It must be part of the virus. Some tertiary protocol.”
Zane taps his chin, turns away. “Maybe. Maybe. Kill the power, kill the chips, blow open the gate.”
I stiffen. “The gate’s open?”
My question is ignored.
“What were you thinking,” Zane mutters, but I don’t know who he’s talking to.
“Whatever they were planning, I’d have preferred it if the net didn’t go down,” Clairen mutters.
“Maybe not, if the plan was to get the Disfavored to move into the city as quickly as possible. The job is done.”
“A trap, you think?”
Clearly, they’re in their own little world and I’m not involved in this conversation anymore.
“Wait, wait.” I hold up my hands. “Someone explain what’s going on, please? From the beginning. Zane, how are you even alive?”
“Oh, right. Sorry.” He smiles and it’s almost sheepish. “We’ve been in crisis mode. Too much vita-pep, not really thinking.” He waves his hand dismissively. “Uh, where to start.”
“The aerovator,” Quentin prompts. “You were on the other side, looking for Mom.” His voice wavers, drops a few octaves as he looks at the floor. “I heard the gunshots.”
