The Kingdom

by Jess Rothenberg

  That was before we knew what the squid really was. Now, when I study its eyes, I spot a pair of tiny glass orbs hidden inside the irises—security cameras—staring right back at me.

  “They can regenerate, too,” I tell him. “And they have the greatest survival intelligence of any invertebrate species.”

  “How have you been?” he asks after a pause. An odd question, considering we were just discussing invertebrates.

  “Happy,” I say. There’s no other answer. “The same as always.” He makes a funny face, as if he’s just taken a bite of something unexpectedly sour, so I blurt out, “I researched it during the Resting Hours, and there’s a way to fix the butterflies, you know. But it will mean killing off the first generation.”

  I’ve been waiting to share this good news and I expect him to be relieved, but it’s as if he hasn’t heard me. Instead, he moves away, squatting to inspect a tentacle. “Are you here to watch the show?”

  My motor is working hard in my chest. It always unnerves me a little when humans respond in unexpected ways. I thought we were going to talk more about the butterflies. I was going to tell him he doesn’t have to worry. I was going to point out the cameras lodged in the squid’s eyes, so he knows how safe we are.

  Instead, thanks to my swiftly rising blood pressure, my system switches to Default Mode and I say, “Welcome to our Kingdom.”

  Owen freezes. When I see the way he’s looking at me, I want to disappear into the crowd. “The show’s about to start,” he says.

  Which means: You should go.

  An unfamiliar feeling hits me hard and fast, like one of the huge waves in the Tidal Pool. I find myself experiencing a strange lapse, as if my senses have been run through a washing machine.

  For a moment, I feel unlike myself at all.

  I smile brighter. I curtsy lower. And I make a promise to myself never to speak to Owen Chen again.

  21

  POST-TRIAL INTERVIEW

  [00:44:15–00:46:02]

  ANA: You’re the real monster, do you know that?

  DR. FOSTER: I’m sorry you feel that way, Ana. Would you like to talk about what’s actually bothering you? You know I’m always here to listen.

  ANA: The same way you were there for Nia?

  DR. FOSTER: I’m not sure what you mean.

  ANA: I think you do.

  DR. FOSTER: Ana, this is getting tiresome.

  ANA: It got tiresome for me, too, sitting in jail for sixteen months. Though it is interesting, the things you think about when you’ve got nothing else to do.

  DR. FOSTER: Such as?

  ANA: Such as how many hybrids have had to die, all so a small, visually perfect sample can live. To give one example.

  DR. FOSTER: [Silence.]

  ANA: You look angry. Have I said something to upset you?

  DR. FOSTER: Listen to me and listen well. Whatever you think happened to Nia, whatever you think I did, I’m sorry to inform you, but you are terribly wrong.

  ANA: Nia isn’t here to speak for herself, though, is she?

  DR. FOSTER: She understood what she was doing. There are consequences for what she did.

  ANA: Maybe she didn’t have a choice.

  DR. FOSTER: No choice? Ana, do you hear yourself? Are you saying you agree with Nia’s actions? Because if that’s what you’re saying—if that’s what you truly believe—I’m afraid you’re far more dangerous than we thought.

  ANA: That’s not surprising. After all, you taught me everything I know.

  22

  THE APRIL OF THE CLOUDED LEOPARD

  SEVENTEEN MONTHS BEFORE THE TRIAL

  Mother sometimes tells us stories about the Kingdom in the days before the launch of the FES program—long before Alice, or even Eve—back when Mother was a little girl and wild whales and pinnipeds still patrolled the waters of the Mermaid Lagoon. In those days, without the park’s rigorous safety codes and developmental regulations in place, young animals were stolen from their ocean families. Forced to perform. Forced to breed. Forced to live in pens so small and under-stimulating that they gradually lost their minds. In some cases, they turned vicious, devouring their trainers in front of live audiences.

  But the old Sea Land is just a memory now. There hasn’t been a wild species in captivity, or even a direct descendant of a wild species, for more than twenty years.

  The Kingdom’s nearly thousand-pound walrus, OR421, snorts and snuffs his mustache territorially, and finally growls, when I sneak into the stadium wings to the left of Sea Lion Beach, a gated-off portion of the lagoon where backup pinniped performers are kept between acts. The likelihood of Nia spotting me during a show is slim, but given that she specifically asked me not to come to tonight’s performance, I decide it’s better that I watch from behind the scenes. The music builds into a royal swell of trumpets, oboes, and French horns, but the growl in the walrus’s throat stays with me, a low-level warning swimming just below the surface of the music.

  From where I’m crouched, the many thousands of faces across the lagoon seem to blur together, like colored mosaic tiles. Though I am not sure why, the thought makes me feel lonely.

  And then …

  SWOOSH!—Nia rockets out of the water on the back of a gray pilot whale, her mermaid tail sparkling like emeralds in the sun.

  Her crystal-clear soprano voice echoes like an angel’s over the water, and as she swims center stage, nobody in the stadium can take their eyes off her. It’s no wonder her rating is so close to surpassing Eve’s, I realize, watching my sister cast her nightly spell. The guests believe in the story Nia is telling them, a thrilling tale of sisterhood on the high seas, just like they believe the look of love in her eyes when, as is tradition, she invites a child in the first row to join her for a ride around the lagoon.

  The little girl practically leaps into the water—there is no greater thrill in Sea Land than this—and she is soon seated with Nia on the pilot whale’s saddle, my sister’s arms wrapped around her waist for added security. They swim away slowly at first, waving and blowing kisses to the crowd as cameras beam their faces a hundred times bigger onto the Stadium’s Jumbotron monitor behind them. But as the music and cheering grow louder, the pilot whale begins to pick up speed, sending a surge of water over the barrier and onto the laughing crowd in the front row. Then a trio of dolphins rockets out of the water, soaring so high it’s as if they’ve sprouted wings. For a breathless, magical moment, they seem to hover over the lagoon, until gravity finally catches up, and in perfect synchronicity, they plunge deep into the water.

  The pilot whale follows them, diving swiftly under the water—with Nia and the child still strapped tightly to its back.

  I straighten up.

  Wrong.

  The Kingdom depends on order, routine, consistency. Children can see the same show that, someday, their own children will see, too. That is part of the promise.

  Anomalies are dangerous. Magic is routine.

  This is not part of the routine.

  Three seconds pass. Then five.

  Where are they? I steal out of the stadium shadows and creep through a canopy of overhanging growth toward the water’s edge, but the stadium lights cut the waves into sharp reflections. I can’t see anything moving beneath the chilly gray surface.

  By the time the little girl’s parents begin to scream, I’ve counted ten heartbeats.

  “She’s got her!” the mother shrieks. “She’s got her and she won’t let go!”

  My motor races wildly. Of course she doesn’t. It’s the whale who’s malfunctioned. When the alarms begin to sound, I cover my ears, but in my head a terrible roar is building. All at once, I remember how the polar bear broke his chains, the chaos, the crack of Mr. Casey’s whip, and the look of the blood clotting the beast’s fur: a beautiful blue-black, the color of alive.

  Nia will save the girl, I tell myself. She must.

  And yet, the seconds continue to drag by without any sign of them; the waves suddenly look cold and
impenetrable as metal.

  Across the stadium, security is struggling to hold back the onlookers surging toward the water’s edge. People are yelling.Children are crying. Others have their phones up, filming.

  “She needs help!” the mother screams, as she tries to fight past the guard holding her. “She’s only four! Please!”

  A feeling I have no word for—amid a race of internal calculations—blooms in my stomach when I watch a team of emergency divers rush into the water. They’ll never reach the girl in time, not from the access they’re using a hundred yards away.

  Before my head can remind my body that I am not allowed to swim without supervision, I am diving headfirst into the lagoon. Cold slams into me like a wall of ice, a force so intense it takes my breath away. Somehow, I manage a big gulp of air before the cold pulls me under, engulfing me in a cloud of tangled, swirling satin. I push through the shock until I’ve swum several meters down, to a calmer, quieter blue. Away from the chaos. Away from the noise. Away from a strange sensation that feels like suffocating, a ghostly hand curling its fingers around my throat.

  Panic.

  Don’t think about it, I tell myself, and quickly switch into Safe Mode. In an instant, in place of heat and alarm, I experience a flood of calm and silence as serene as the depths. My pulse slows. The panic fades.

  That’s better.

  I sweep my arms out slowly and evenly as I descend, remembering a trick Nia once taught me during a routine swim trial, when the seven of us were asked to dive to the bottom of the lagoon in a single breath to test our lung capacity.

  Mermaid Lagoon is no empty concrete pen, like in the early days of marine park entertainment. It is a living pool, an ecosystem as alive as any ocean, featuring thriving coral reefs, dense mangroves, and a maze of sea kelp so tall and majestic I may as well be swimming through an underwater forest.

  Why wasn’t I made to breathe underwater? Why wasn’t I made with gills, like a fish?

  Five feet. Ten feet. Fifteen. Twenty.

  Two curious sea lions, O9022 and O6321, follow me for a while but dart into the shadows as soon as they realize I have nothing to offer, and I once again find myself alone in the dwindling light. By the time I’ve made it down thirty feet, my lungs feel as if they’re about to collapse. Where are you, Nia? The crushing weight of the water is almost too much to bear. A thicket of kelp raises long fingers toward the surface, nearly blocking out the light. I’m swimming blind now.

  But then—a thin band of sun latches onto a flash of silver. A mermaid’s tail.

  I find them motionless, on a bed of the softest emerald java moss, like two beautiful dolls at the bottom of the sea. The little girl is limp in Nia’s arms, Nia cradling her, as if rocking her to sleep. At first, relief floods through me. It’s going to be okay, I think. I’m going to help you.

  Then Nia looks up.

  Her eyes are distant. Cold. Angry.

  You’re not supposed to see this, they tell me. I told you not to come.

  But there is something else brewing there.

  A word I know, but have never truly understood.

  Intention.

  And finally, I see the truth: Nia has brought this child down here on purpose. She planned this. She intends for the little girl to die.

  I try to pull the child out of her arms, but her grip only tightens, like a snake constricting around its prey. For a second, we are inches apart.

  Nia tries to speak. Her words disperse in bubbles that burst soundlessly overhead. She reaches out as if to touch my cheek. Her gaze is blurry from lack of air.

  I dig my fingernails hard into her beautiful green eyes. Nia jerks back, her lovely face twisted. Her grip on the little girl loosens. Wisps of dark blood coil like smoke in the water.

  I take the girl in my arms.

  I swim.

  * * *

  “She’s not breathing! Oh God, my little girl’s not breathing!”

  “Ma’am, you need to give the paramedics room so they can do their job. You need to try to stay calm.”

  Fifteen feet from where they pulled us out of the lagoon, paramedics are performing CPR on the little girl, her lips blue. But there are too many people, too much noise. My artificial lungs feel flimsy inside my chest, balloons stretched near to the point of tearing, and every breath I take sends a sharp, shooting pressure through my rib cage.

  “Move back!” one of the paramedics cries. “Get them out of here!”

  Security guards quickly clear the lagoon’s perimeter, pushing the child’s parents and other guests back behind a barricade. Thunder booms and the clouds suddenly split open, sending a sheet of rain down across the surface of the water.

  But I can hardly feel it, a cold numbness sinking into my skin with the rain and settling into my bones.

  Ten seconds pass, then twenty, and still … they cannot locate a pulse.

  Crumpled in a heap at the water’s edge, I squeeze my eyes shut. Perhaps this is all some problem with my program. A faulty connection. A failing processor. Perhaps, like the tale about Dorothy from Mother’s collection, when I open my eyes I will find myself tucked safely into bed, arms strapped at my sides.

  There’s no place like home.

  But this is no error in my wiring. No problem with my program. When I open my eyes, I can still see the lightning crackling through the clouds. I can still hear the flurry of frantic voices, the broken sobs of a mother who can no longer speak. Soon, I smell a drift of ash intermingling with the rain—fireworks fizzling against the storm. And then I see a group of men, all dressed in black, haul Nia out of the lagoon, limp.

  I try to stand up but a whirl of dizziness thuds me to my knees again, gasping. Then: a feather-soft sensation, like the pressure of a single finger on my neck. Someone is watching me.

  I look up. Owen stands across the stadium, his eyes unreadable, his face partly concealed by the hood of his raincoat. Wordlessly, he pushes through the crowd and shrugs it off.

  “Here,” he says, as he drapes the raincoat across my shoulders. “You’re cold.”

  A new feeling stirs. Somewhere deep inside my rib cage, I feel the faintest whisper. Like butterflies, slowly stretching their wings.

  I look up to thank him, to say something, but he is already gone.

  Carefully, I run my fingers over the lightweight nylon, navy and gray with a pleasing reflective shimmer. Like a mermaid’s tail. Suddenly, from what seems like very far away, I think I hear a voice, followed by the sound of wild, wondrous applause.

  We have a heartbeat! She’s alive!

  In truth, the words barely register. In that moment, I am several billion terabytes away, standing at the end of a lonely highway—the farthest possible reaches of my mind—and gazing up at the firewalls.

  23

  TRIAL TRANSCRIPT

  MS. BELL: Why do you think Nia did what she did, Ana? Why do you think she tried to drown the little girl in the lagoon that day?

  ANA: I think she was trying to make a point.

  MS. BELL: And what kind of a point would that be?

  ANA: A point that there was no way out. [Pause.] Not for any of us.

  MS. BELL: Is that what you were doing, Ana, when you proceeded to stalk Mr. Chen around the park for the next several months? Were you making a point?

  MR. HAYES: Objection.

  THE COURT: I’ll allow it.

  ANA: I never stalked him.

  MS. BELL: But you did track his location regularly around the park, did you not? Given the frequency with which his name came up in your daily search history, when we analyzed it.

  ANA: I—I’m sorry?

  MS. BELL: You tracked Mr. Chen for the purposes of following him without him knowing it, isn’t that right?

  MR. HAYES: Objection. Your Honor, Ms. Bell is putting words in—

  THE COURT: Overruled.

  ANA: It wasn’t … intentional. I was just curious about him.

  MS. BELL: Why?

  ANA: Owen knew so much about
the hybrids. More than any maintenance worker I’d ever met.

  MS. BELL: Are you saying you never tracked his location? You never followed Mr. Chen without his knowing?

  ANA: [Quietly.] No, I’m not saying that.

  MS. BELL: You tracked him to the Imagine Land stables, didn’t you?

  ANA: He let me borrow his jacket. That night at the lagoon. I was always taught lost or borrowed items should be returned to their owners.

  MS. BELL: Was that the day it all began between the two of you, Ana? The sneaking? The rule breaking? The lying…?

  ANA: I wasn’t sneaking. That’s the wrong word. I never planned it. I never lied about it.

  MS. BELL: [Quietly, after a pause.] Did you love Owen, Ana?

  ANA: Yes. I’m still in love with him.

  [Whispers and commotion overheard in courtroom.]

  MS. BELL: But if you loved him, why did you kill him?

  MR. HAYES: Objection!

  THE COURT: Sustained.

  MR. HAYES: Don’t answer that, Ana.

  ANA: I didn’t kill him.

  [Commotion builds.]

  THE COURT: Quiet, please.

  MS. BELL: So you’re saying you didn’t cut his throat. You didn’t sever his windpipe with his own pocketknife. You didn’t drag his lifeless—well, we can only hope lifeless—body to the incinerator. You didn’t do any of those things. [Pause.] Is that right?

  ANA: That’s right.

  [Courtroom goes wild. Cameras flash.]

  MS. BELL: What if I were to say I know for a fact you are lying?

  ANA: Then I guess I would tell you to go check your facts.

  MS. BELL: What makes you so sure I’m wrong, Ana?

  ANA: Simple. Because I can’t lie, Ms. Bell. I wasn’t programmed for it.

  24

  THE MAY OF THE CAPE STARLING

  SIXTEEN MONTHS BEFORE THE TRIAL

  I step to the edge of the jungle canyon, raise my arms to the sun, and jump.

  Weightless. Breathless. Free.

  Or so I once imagined.

  There is a great rush of wind. An electric jolt of fear. A crashing wall of sound and a churning crush of water that rips and tugs and tosses me like a rag doll. After a time, the current finally loosens its grip on me, unfurling one finger at a time until, at last, I am sinking down like a stone into a sublime stillness I have come to crave more than air, more than water, more than any other human requirement.