Catalyst (18 page)

“Does it matter? Anything associated with us right now is pretty bad. Some guy out there is leaking info and wants us dead.”

“Who?” Blink and I say it simultaneously. She smiles shyly at me and I allow a tiny smile back.

“No one knows. I guess that’s why Julian is desperate to meet with the Inky politicians tomorrow. Some of those products are made at our factory in Inky. The SkinGlow, and SkinChange.”

I remember seeing ads for those. SkinGlow is a party drug that allows you to glow in the dark. And SkinChange is similar, but lets you flash rainbows.

“That’s our money, our lifeblood.”

“Does Julian have any idea about who’s leaking the information?”

“I hope so,” Tennie says. “Anyway, time to meet your charges.” He cups his hands, hollering, “Hey, delinquents! Come meet your other nannies.”

The two kids splash over to us, drenching my legs. The little boy with the wraparound sunglasses swims up to us, and another girl who looks totally normal, maybe seven years old?

“I already met them!” the boy yells, and flops backward into the water.

“So polite! That was Jensen,” Tennie tells us. “This is Penelope.”

“Hi,” Penelope says, and then points beyond us. “Can I play with that mouse?”

Blink and I spin around, searching the ground for vermin. “What mouse?” I say.

“That one.” She points again, to the far rock wall, full of dark crevices and moss.

“There is no playing with mice. Or rats. Okay?” Tennie tells her. At our confused faces, he adds, “She has superior vision. You’ve probably heard of her product, Visionite. The big game hunters in Utaz love it. She can see a fly from a mile away. You’re lucky she didn’t analyze your wrinkles.”

“I’m eighteen. I don’t have wrinkles,” I say, frowning.

“According to Penelope, everyone’s face resembles a dry lake bed.”

Great. My face is already geriatric.

This underwater cavern is astonishingly real. The ceiling is covered in bone-colored stalactites that bare their teeth fifteen feet above eerily glowing water. I stoop down to the water, swirling it. The eddies and whirlpools flash with liquid foxfire.

“Amazing,” I murmur. “How did you guys do this?”

“Ask Cela,” he says, disgusted. Tennie points to where a figure is swimming toward us beneath the water. Every inch of her naked skin is faintly aglow in blues and greens, the same ones throughout the cavern. When she breaks the surface, she spits water at Tennie, and not in a joking way. It’s the same water girl who took Ryba into the oasis pool.

“What are you doing here?” she says to Tennie.

“I was assigned, okay?” He crosses his arms. Cela gives me and Blink the once-over and crinkles her nose, like we’re yesterday’s garbage. Might as well try to be civil.

“Hi. I’m Zelia,” I say. Cela keeps frowning at me. “I love what you did with the bioluminescence. How did you do it?”

Cela bares her teeth. Her canines are sharp and shiny. “I spliced luciferin and luciferase genes into the natural bacteria of the water. Is that good enough an answer for you?” She turns around and then disappears into the depths.

Oooookay.

Tennie shakes his head. “Don’t take it personally. She hates your dad almost as much as she hates me. She thinks of herself as being a victim of . . . let me see if I can get the words right.” Tennie take a deep breath and in his best professorial voice, intones, “
The ultimate objectification of personhood down to the basest molecular level
.” When I give Tennie a blank stare, he shrugs. “Being created for the sake of her genes, rather than for the sake of making a human being.”

I raise my hands. “Yeah, if anyone is listening out there. I had nothing to do with that!” I say, exasperated.

“I know. Like you had nothing to do with making me like this,” he says, waving his one good hand. I don’t notice anything at first, and then I see that his hand is dripping water all over the rock he’s standing on. It’s like he’s sweating water all over the place.

“You’re gifted with excessive, voluntary sweating?”

“Ha. Not
perspiration,
but
precipitation
. I condense water out of the air by negatively charging the ions around me.”

“Julian and Renata are your parents?” Blink asks. We both stare at her, surprised. She’d been so quiet, we almost forgot she was here.

“Yep.” He smacks the moisture off his hand onto his shorts.

“But you tried to escape,” she says, frowning.

“I never said we got along.”

“You are blessed to have parents who love you.” She takes off her sunglasses and she wipes her eyes with her sleeve.

I feel bad for her. I know what it’s like to have a parent who seemed to care, even if Dad wasn’t truthful with us. And I have Marka now.

“So . . .” I start carefully. “Did they abandon you?”

Her wide black eyes turn on me. “Abandon? No. I wish they had. They slapped me into silence when I cried in the sunlight. They locked me in a brightly lit room, trying to force my trait to go away. And when they realized how well I could see in the dark, they made me steal things, in the worst parts of Montreal.” She stares at the cavern wall. “So much evil happens when the lights go out. I saw it all.”

“Geez,” Tennie says. “I’m sorry. Well, you’re safe now.”

Blink takes a step back from both of us. “We’ll never be safe, as long as we’re abnormal. We’ll always be used as cattle. I wish we’d never been born.”

Blink retreats to a mossy stone and puts her sunglasses back on. Tennie throws pebbles at the water when the transport door behind us opens. I’m surprised to see Tabitha walk toward us. She’s wearing nothing. I wonder if that’s still considered naked if she’s covered in fur.

“So. They let the Wookie out of the freezer, huh?” Tennie says, smirking.

Tabitha ignores him and steps to the water’s edge, far away from where the kids are splashing around, and taps the surface of the water. Tap, tap, tap, pause. She repeats the rhythm until Cela’s lithe body appears, bucking beneath the surface toward the rocky shore. When she surfaces, she speaks in low tones with Tabitha. I catch a few words of it. Something about breathing, and turnover, or something. Cela twists back into the water, and Tabitha marches in, following her. They disappear into the depths in a few seconds.

“Where are they going?” I nudge Tennie.

“The other water rooms. They’re accessible by underwater passageways.”

“Wow. They really built this place to be pretty complicated,” I remark. The grotto even smells perfectly real. Damp and mossy, with mineral-laden air.

“These caverns weren’t constructed. They’re natural. Apparently, the first person Aureus put in charge here was a water child. She had the building built over this place,” he says, gesturing to the stalactites. “There’s an underwater river in Inky, and a bunch of linked underwater caves too. I hear there are exits to the surface, outside of Avida and Inky, but none of the water kids ever leave.”

“Why not? I’d be out of here in a heartbeat.” Or a breath, if I could hold it for that long.

“Because there’s no guarantee they’d be able to get to another body of water without drying out and dying. Their lungs don’t work so well. Remember the Wookie’s girlfriend, Ryba? I hear she was only out of the water for two hours. Nearly killed her.” Tennie rubs his stump against his temple, thinking. “That’s the thing with our traits. Sometimes they’re like genetic handcuffs. I mean, can you see the Wookie—”

“Please call her Tabitha. Or I’ll start calling you Luke Skywalker.”

“Hey, that would be appropriate,” he says wryly, holding up his amputated wrist. When I don’t smile back, he concedes. “Okay, fine. Anyway, can you imagine Tabitha living in a fifth-world, tropical climate? She’d die. Or Cela living in a desert? We’re trapped by our traits.”

He’s right. I think of this while we watch the kids, chatting about this and that.

Blink joins in and warms up to our conversation after a while. When Tennie walks to the far edge of the water to play with the kids, she blurts out, “He doesn’t like me like that, you know.”

“Excuse me?”

“Cyrad. We are friends. Nothing more.”

“Oh.” I have this crazy need to smile, but I suppress it.

“Micah and Tegg disciplined him almost daily when he first arrived. He’d heal quickly, but he would fight back the next day.
Tant et plus.
He was so angry. No one would speak to him but me. Sometimes we talked all night long about you, and your family.” She picks up an ugly brown rock from the ground. It’s like a rock potato. “You have nothing to be jealous about. It is I who is jealous.”

I feel rotten for how I’ve felt about Blink. Élodie. “Well . . . I am jealous. You’ve spent a whole year with him. A year that I don’t have.”

She nods and we sit in quiet silence for a minute. Tennie bounds over and smiles. The kids are shivering, wrapped in towels and running for the transport.

“Lunchtime! Let’s go.”

We stand up and walk inside the transport. When the doors shut, it doesn’t budge.

“Okay, who didn’t scan their bracelet?” Tennie asks.

“Oh, me. Sorry.” I wave my wrist against the black pad, and it indicates floor three, not the top floor where we’re supposed to go to lunch. “Weird.” I turn on my holo port and a new schedule message pops up.

LUNCH: Holo Room Six

“That explains it,” Tennie says. The transport zooms up when a tiny, cold hand slips into mine. The little girl, Penelope with super vision, tugs at me.

“What’s your trait? I can’t see it,” she says. I stoop down until I’m eye level with her. She’s got stunning green eyes and crooked front teeth.

“My trait doesn’t show,” I explain. “My body won’t grow old.” I don’t bother mentioning the scent trait—or that we can develop more than one trait—because I get the feeling it would be bad if Julian found out.

Penelope concentrates hard, trying to understand my words.

“Oh. So you’ll stay here forever with us, right?”

Blink and Tennie immediately drop their eyes to me, waiting for the answer. I go hot in the face, wishing the transport wasn’t so small.

“Well, I don’t know. Maybe. Sort of.”

“Stay, stay,
stayyyyyyyyyyy
!” she sings, clutching my hands and bouncing with a vigor I’m not sure I ever possessed.

I’m saved by the doors opening up on my level. Penelope finally lets go of my hand and when she does, it feels far emptier than before she’d touched me.

• • •

M
Y BRACELET INSTRUCTS ME WHERE TO GO.
It takes me to a boring, navy-blue hallway flanked by closed doors. There it is, room six. I walk in, expecting something interesting from the holo program. Maybe a lunar landscape? Or a bustling Paris city street?

That last thing I expect to see is Cy.

“Cy!” I gasp with surprise. Behind a table set with sandwiches for lunch, he spins around, crossing his arms in front of his chest. Like he’s disappointed.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, quickly turning away and rolling down his sleeves.

“I should ask the same.” I’m crestfallen at his reaction. But when he turns back around, he comes straight to my side.

“How was your morning?” he asks with a tenderness that makes my heart skip. It’s a 180-degree turn from his frosty greeting, but I don’t care.

“Good. I was with Élodie and Tennie watching the little kids.” I bite my lip and decide to just spit it out. “She told me you had an awful time in Aureus. About what Micah and Tegg did to you.” When Cy stays silent, I reach for his hand and he doesn’t resist. “I wish you’d told me, though.”

“I didn’t want to worry you,” he whispers.

“That’s what girlfriends are supposed to do. They worry.” And then with a horrible thought, I blurt, “If I’m still your girlfriend, that is. Because I totally get it if, you don’t, you know . . . I would understand.” I sound like an idiot. Cy pulls me closer and wraps his arms around my waist.

“You are so adorable when you’re flustered.”

“Sorry, it’s just . . . a year is a long time. I don’t know where I stand with you,” I mumble, staring at his chest.

“You’re standing in my arms, Zel,” he whispers. “That’s the only place you should ever be.”

He crushes me into an embrace and for a full minute, there’s nothing else in the world. No Avida, no Inky, no memories of Aureus. He finally loosens his hug.

“So what did you do this morning?” I ask, leaning my cheek against his chest.

“I was in the infirmary. I saw that little girl Victoria. The mini-Hex girl? She looked awful. Headaches, nausea . . . I started to examine her, when Renata whisked her away. It was weird.”

“This whole place reeks of weird.”

“I’m sorry about that,” a voice intones from the door.

We bounce apart like repelling magnets. Julian stands in the doorway clothed in a simple outfit of head-to-toe khaki. They’re like military pajamas.

“It’s fine. Everything’s fine,” I say with stiff formality.

“You know I’m Sean, right?” He takes a step closer. Now I notice that his posture is droopy, his pupils are pinpoints and his eyes are full blue. “Hello, Cy. Julian’s taking Zelia out tomorrow and he’s been working nonstop preparing for it. He’s sleeping very deeply now. I had to find you before he wakes up. But first, eat.”

We sit down and Cy and I wolf down our lunches. Sean doesn’t, just twiddles with his napkin. His nervousness puts me at ease.

“I have a proposal for you both. I need your help,” he finally says. “I need to find a way to keep Julian under control.”

Cy narrows his eyes. “You’re the one in that body, not us. Can’t you talk to him?”

“Julian has always been the dominant soul. He pushes me aside at his whim. As a result, his decisions dominate Avida.”

I frown. “I’m sorry. That sounds awful. But that’s not really our problem.”

“It is if you wish to escape Avida. And Inky.”

Cy and I immediately exchange surprised glances. Sean leans in closer and desperation transforms his face. “I set the programs for where you go within Avida, but Julian keeps the passkey that would get you out of Avida itself. But if there’s a way to incapacitate him, maybe I could get it.”