Catalyst
Authors: Lydia Kang
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Dystopian, #Action & Adventure, #Survival Stories, #Science & Technology
KATHY DAWSON BOOKS
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Copyright © 2015 by Lydia Kang
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kang, Lydia.
Catalyst / by Lydia Kang. pages cm Sequel to: Control.
Summary: When their foster home is invaded, Zelia, her sister, and a band of outcasts with mutated genes go on the run, trying to find a safe place and make sense of what seems to be a larger conspiracy against them.
ISBN 978-0-698-19142-6
[1. Science fiction. 2. Genetic engineering—Fiction. 3. Survival—Fiction. 4. Conspiracies—Fiction. 5. Love—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.K127644Cat 2015
[Fic]—dc23 2014019238
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Version_1
Contents
F
OR
B
ENJAMIN,
M
AIA, AND
P
HOEBE
PROLOGUE
CALIFORNIA SENATOR ALEXANDER MILFORD IS DEAD AT 64
9.6.2151
(S
TATES
N
EWS
P
RESS
)—Alexander Milford, Senator from the State of California for twenty years, died Sunday morning.
Senator Milford had been diagnosed with cancer only three days before his death, after passing a health screening one month earlier. Test results have strongly suggested a biological attack, and a subsequent homicide investigation has been opened.
“Preliminary reports show that foreign, altered DNA was found in the senator’s tissue samples,” said Dr. Meerhoven, Chief Pathologist at Sacramento’s state hospital. “Every cell type in his body had become cancerous.”
Senator Milford spent the last few years of his life rallying against HGM 2098, which outlaws genetic manipulation of human DNA. While not a direct proponent of the practice of genetic manipulation, his concern was for the human results of such experimentation. Others, however, have strongly disagreed.
“Human DNA must remain pure,” said Dr. Meerhoven, a vocal advocate for HGM 2098. “Those carrying aberrant DNA—who are capable of poisoning the gene pool as they did with Senator Milford—cannot be allowed to exist. We will find the source of this altered DNA. We will find this person and others like them. And we will purge them to protect our society.”
State lawmakers are already pushing for amendments to strengthen the law, calling for mandatory population screening to prevent possible deaths. Quarantines are already being prepared in every State.
“There will be no judge or jury. By federal law, anyone with artificially altered DNA should not, and cannot, exist,” said a U.S. marshall at a CDC press conference.
Many elected officials are now having their own blood tested for signs of the abnormal DNA. Thousands of citizens across the States have lined up at local clinics for testing, and orders for CompuDocs CancerClean screening programs have risen exponentially.
CHAPTER 1
A
LONE
IS A FOUR-LETTER WORD.
Of course, no one in our crazy makeshift family at Carus House will ever admit this, especially while setting up for our nightly slumber party.
“Hex, get your Bomb Bed out of my corner.” Vera is stomping around our common room, a blur of gesticulating green arms. Blankets and pillows are piled everywhere.
“Stop calling it that.” Hex pushes his bedding back against the glass wall. He likes to sleep with his four arms splayed out, so he laid an extra mattress across the top of another and piled on countless pillows, giving it a mushroom-cloud shape. Hence “the Bomb Bed.” It’s also a convenient reference to the fact that Hex gets bomb-tastically gassy after dinner from Vera’s fiber-rich meals.
“Anyway, you don’t even need to sleep in here. The temperature in your room is perfect,” he says, dodging a swipe of her green hand. Vera and her skin-embedded chloroplasts thrive in warmer temperatures, yet she loudly complains about her hot room anyway. But she just doesn’t want to be alone. Same as the rest of us.
Since we lost Cy over a year ago, everyone finds all sorts of reasons to be in each other’s presence, as if the world and our fear are cramming us closer every day. Dyl doesn’t complain when I insist on brushing her hair before bed. For a whole hour. It’s a miracle she has any hair left. And I say nothing when she and Ana sit reading on the floor by me, each leaning on one of my legs, fixing me in place while I work on my e-tablet. My legs get all hot and claustrophobic when they do that, but I can’t bring myself to tell them.
We’ve been sleeping in the common room because the environmental controls have stopped working in parts of Carus House. Our home is growing decrepit, in bits and pieces. Wilbert, who had all the know-how for fixing things, went back to Aureus. And after our battle in the junkyards last year, we lost access to parts and equipment anyway. Even before the assassination of her senator uncle, Marka’s allowances outside Carus were limited. Were it not for Vera’s wicked gardening skills, we’d have gone hungry a long time ago. Even so, there’s a clock ticking down in Carus. We can feel it in our bones.
The common room is one of the only rooms left that doesn’t feel like Antarctica or the Sahara all the time. We could spread out to different corners of the room. It’s big enough. But instead, we end up sleeping like a big egg yolk in the middle, within arm’s reach of one another.
In the middle of the night, I sacrifice sleep to simply watch them, hugging my arms to myself. Savoring the hours we have together. I watch Hex and Vera hold hands all night long. Ana curls into Dyl’s arms, even though Ana’s the tall one. It pains me that Cy can’t witness this sweet evolution of our family.
Marka, the only adult at Carus, sleeps at the center of our human galaxy. She takes turns resting with her hand on Hex’s ankle or Ana’s wrist, as if afraid they’ll disappear before dawn. Last night, when her blind search for my hand came up empty, she found me sitting against the glass wall.
She came over and started combing her fingers through my frizzled hair. I’d have stayed there in silence for hours, but Marka knows when I’m playing chicken. She always knows.
“You miss Cy,” she whispered, matter-of-fact.
“I’m fine.”
Marka wrapped her arms around me. “You’re a lousy liar.”
And that’s when I cried.
No one brings him up anymore, and I don’t talk about him. I don’t want to be a downer, so every day I wear my plastic happiness like a suffocating, form-fitted skin with no cracks.