Catalyst (17 page)

I think of Caliga in her room, unable to touch the one person she loves, unable to numb herself of her own pain. Of how a beautiful sunrise would agonize Blink, and how Cy used to tattoo himself daily, only to wake up to a new canvas ready for punishment. Even Micah isn’t immune to the very electrical pain he produces.

And someday, with my longevity trait, I will outlive every person I’ve ever held dear to my heart.

What’s the point of being created to be special when you’ve also been given a unique way to be tortured too?

“Thanks, Dad,” I whisper into the gloom.

Despite how exhausted I am, it takes a long, lonely time to fall asleep.

CHAPTER 15

I
TOSS AND TURN ALL NIGHT LONG,
until my bracelet buzzes. I withdraw my wrist from the covers and a holo screen pops up.

“Good morning,” it chirps.

“Not really.”

“Your duty roster is as follows. Please arrive when prompted or you will be issued warnings.”

Warnings.
Ha. Why don’t they just say that they’ll zap us like cattle?

BREAKFAST: Rose Garden

MORNING and AFTERNOON ASSIGNMENT: Childcare Duty Group 2

LUNCH: Childcare Duty Meal Supervision

DINNER: Roof Gazebo

FREE PLAY TIME: One hour

CURFEW

After washing up and dressing in a slim purple tunic presented by the bots, I leave my room. The hair bot mercifully leaves my head alone, but the makeup bot sulks until I let it apply lip balm and moisturizer. When I leave, others kids are yawning and heading for the transport.

Out of curiosity, I try to explore a corridor behind the meadow. My bracelet buzzes uncomfortably, and a holo warning pops up.

Area not authorized.

I take a few more steps in the wrong direction and my wrist buzzes with very real, very electric pain.

“Ow! Okay, okay. I get it. Bracelet equals dog collar.” I quickly walk back toward the transport doors. Caliga emerges from her room wearing a similar outfit but in dusky pink. The medicines for her leg must be working well, because she’s not using the cane today, although she’s still tottering a little. After hesitating, I give her my arm to lean on and she takes it.

“Where are you assigned to this morning?” I ask, yawning.

“The medic office. I’m supposed to help numb up any boo-boos that come my way.”

“Well, that’s a nice change,” I joke.

“What, is it so hard to believe that Aureus members aren’t pure evil?” Her eyes are bitter and angry, like when she first arrived at Carus. “When are you going to understand that you and your sister were a job that had to be taken care of. It was survival, and I wasn’t ready to die. I’m still not ready to die.”

I tear her hand off me and she winces at the violence of it. “So after we saved your ass, you’d still sell us out to whoever will save you the next time around?”

“I didn’t say that!”

I wipe my hand across my mouth. “Get your story straight, Caliga. You either sell your soul to the highest bidder, or you don’t.”

Caliga turns awkwardly to limp to the transport. Our angry words hang heavy in the air, thicker and denser than the scent of the meadow flowers. As I stand there by the undulating grasses, I wonder. Is a stab wound such a bad thing, if the hand holding the knife is sorry?

I take the next transport down. The scent of blossoms is overwhelming when the door opens. The garden is covered in manicured shrubbery and artfully placed rosebushes of countless varieties. Clusters of cast-iron tables are grouped together and most of the Avida members are already halfway through their coffee, tea, and pastries.

None of them talk to each other. Caliga’s again eating alone at a table. Correction: sitting alone. She’s not eating a single crumb. Everyone else stares dully past each other at the too-perfect roses, chewing mechanically. It’s nothing like the chaotic meals at Carus, when Hex would try to steal bites from everyone’s plate, and we’d all pretend we didn’t see while surreptitiously refilling our plates with his favorite foods. Ana and Dyl would have secret conversations over their latest poetry holo lessons and Marka would chide me for getting three new dreads in my hair because I’d forgotten to brush it.

“It’s not like Carus, is it?”

I jerk in surprise to see Cy standing right next to me. He’s got dark circles under his eyes, but seems less gaunt than when I found him in Dubuque. I find myself holding my breath, standing so close. It never fails to surprise, how easily he can unmoor me.

“No, it’s not,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm.

Cy clenches his jaw. Most wouldn’t notice, but I see the telltale ripple of muscles along his cheek. He rubs his forearm absently. He did that yesterday too, after disembarking the magtrain.

“Is your arm okay?”

“Oh. Yeah, fine.” He smiles at me, but it’s a shallow smile that doesn’t touch his eyes. “Where are you assigned?”

“Childcare.” I slump my shoulders. “Julian told me yesterday he wouldn’t let me near a lab with a ten-foot pole. Not until I’ve
earned
it.”

Cy doesn’t seem to be listening anymore, because Julian and Renata have entered the garden. They’re having a heated argument that ends with Julian hissing, “Not in front of the children. We’ll get more medicine when I say it’s necessary.” Renata’s hair is in frizzled disarray and she’s still wearing a powder-blue nightgown. Her brown cheeks are dulled, and dark circles shadow her eyes. She sits at a table next to Xiulan and grabs a cup of coffee, slurping it. Behind Julian’s back, Renata pats Xiulan discreetly on the shoulder and her skin flashes green before quieting to a putty color. Renata’s eyes brim with tears, and a single drop rolls down her cheek and salts her coffee.

Julian walks up to me and touches my waist. I sidestep him, but the possessive hand stays planted on my side. “Zelia. Sit with me. You too, Micah.” I glance over my shoulder to see Micah walking slowly toward the garden. His skin is ashen and his hair messy, like he didn’t sleep a wink. He holds his braceleted wrist at an angle, away from his body. Reluctantly, he sits down at his newly appointed seat at our small table. Cy joins Blink at another table.

Micah’s wrist is raw and oozing beneath the bracelet. He can’t rest it anywhere without cringing in pain. He pushes away the plate of pastries and just sits there, staring at his wrist. I’ve never seen him like this.

Julian didn’t clip his wings; he singed them to ashes.

Julian sits down and takes a huge bite of an apple turnover. “He was hard to figure out, you know.” He waves his bitten pastry at Micah.

“Excuse me?” I say.

“His trait. I make sure I’m immune to every person’s trait in Avida. Took a page out of SunAj’s book. Micah generates current, so I found a medicine that makes my skin nonconductive to electricity. Then I simply grafted immune-compatible artificial skin to his wrist, and his own protection against it was gone. Simple. Elegant.”

I stare at the raw, burned flesh around his bracelet and lift my eyes, meeting Micah’s.

“There’s nothing elegant about torture,” I say slowly.

“Discipline! There’s a difference. Anyway, my next project is her.” He slides a look to Caliga. She’s sipping her coffee, oblivious to Julian’s lecherous stare. “My lab is already working on it. Or you could help me. I understand you’ve already seen the formula.”

“I don’t remember it.”

Julian laughs. “You need to work on your lying skills, Zelia! You’re so absurdly obvious.” He leans forward. “There’s an art to lying, Zelia. Ask this one.” He nudges Micah, who scrunches his face in pain. “Well, I’m off. We have a big day tomorrow, Zelia.”

“Tomorrow?”

“I’ve arranged a meeting for tomorrow afternoon with several senior Inky officials. They’re quite interested in meeting you. Your first lesson in politics! I promise, it will go swimmingly.”

He grabs Micah’s forearm, and Micah cries out in agony. Everyone at breakfast goes deathly silent. “You’ll perform
perfectly,
because you already know the consequences if you don’t.”

Julian drops Micah’s arm and leaves the rose garden. Slowly, everyone recovers except Micah, who sits trembling in the chair next to me.

My bracelet buzzes a warning, and a holo pops up to tell me I’m due to attend my childcare duties.

I get up to join a group leaving the garden, not knowing what to say to Micah.

“Zel.” He grabs my wrist with his bad hand and gently pulls me back to the table. I don’t have the heart to jerk away, knowing how much it would hurt.

“What?”

“I meant what I said before. I didn’t sleep with Dyl. And I didn’t sleep with Ana either.”

Pressure rises in my chest and I fight the urge to yell at him. “I don’t believe you.”

“SunAj was obsessed with trying to figure out how your dad created traited kids. Dr. Benten didn’t share the code with him, and SunAj was desperate to make new products. He took complete control of the entire process. They were both sedated and impregnated
in a lab
. It wasn’t me. It was never me. I’m telling you the truth.”

I lean closer and stare him down. “You manipulated innocent girls. Children! You victimized them. You’re just as guilty as you were before.”

CHAPTER 16

I’
M WAITING AT THE TRANSPORT DOOR WHEN
Blink walks up to me. We both enter it and scan our bracelets, but only one floor lights up: the lowest level.

“Oh. Are you babysitting too?” I ask, though inwardly I’m all
Please say no
.

“Yes,” she says stiffly.

Oh joy.

The doors open to a gigantic, dimly lit underground cavern. A wetsuit-clad boy welcomes us—Tennie, the boy who lost a hand trying to escape. Two kids splash around the shallow end of the water, which glows with a faint blue-green phosphorescence. I’m surprised there aren’t more.

“Welcome to Mutant Nannying 101,” Tennie says, grinning.

“Tennie,” I say. “Like Tennis?”

The boy laughs. “No. Like Tennessee Williams. Renata went through a playwright phase when I was born.”

Blink stands there staring at us, until I clear my throat uncomfortably. “Uh, Tennie, this is Blink.” I flinch at my own mistake. “I mean Élodie.”

“You may call me Blink,” she says delicately.

I frown. “I assumed you’d hate the name Blink.”

“
Oui. Je déteste ça.
But it defines me. So.” She shrugs.

“How many kids are in Avida?” I ask Tennie.

“Twelve.”

“Wow. Such a big place for so few people.”

“Well, it used to be fifteen. Three have died in the last year.”

Surprise stops me cold. Those are horrible odds. “What? Why?”

“We don’t know,” Tennie says. “A couple of the kids kept getting sick. They’ve been trying to figure out if it’s related to their traits maybe . . . I don’t know, making their bodies expire? It’s weird.”

That’s so strange. No one in Carus ever got sick, except for Hex, from eating too many lemon bars in one sitting. Kids in Aureus were killed all the time when they were deemed useless or noncompliant, frozen in that blue ice wall I’d seen. But sickness? Then again, my dad did help when some kids weren’t healthy. Vera mentioned having vitamin deficiencies that he’d balanced out for her particular physiology.

“Anyway. We’ve got way worse problems now, right?” he says, knowingly nodding at me. “No? You don’t know?”

“Know what?” Blink asks.

“Didn’t you hear the news?” He turns on his bracelet holo, and the scrolling news channel pops up. A headline about illegal products flashes in red. “See? Our products are being taken off the shelves and destroyed. Someone sent information to the press that proved that Teggwear, ForEverDay, and those skin-healing serums from that new guy—Cy?—were derived from people with altered DNA.”

“But none of those products change people’s DNA. They’re just pharmaceuticals made from the same chemicals that traited bodies make,” I argue.