Catalyst (33 page)

Jess leans over me, patting my head. “When you wake up, you’ll be right as rain.”

With that my brain succumbs and slips into a dark, depthless sleep.

• • •

I
HAVEN’T BEEN THIS COMFORTABLE IN A
long time.

As I start to rise out of my deep slumber, little things make me smile. Cy is here. Marka and Dyl too. My fingers slip under the soft cotton sheets over my body. I feel clean. Did I take a shower? Who got me into this nightgown? I can’t remember. My nose nuzzles the pillow, scented faintly of verbena and the ocean.

I stretch luxuriously, and reach for my breathing necklace.

It’s not there.

What?

I slept a whole night without my pacer? My hand goes to my neck and touches a sore spot at the base of my neck. There’s a tiny lump there. Flat, as if they’d slipped an antique dime under my skin. It’s in the same exact place where Endall had a scar.

“Well,” says a voice. “What do you think?”

I sit straight up in bed to see a woman on a chair, watching me. It would be utterly creepy, except for the uncreepy smile warming her middle-aged features. She’s wearing a long shift the color of a spruce tree. Her brown hair is in braids, bundled up on top of her head, and her hands are clasped on her lap, as if anxiously awaiting something.

“I didn’t ask for a pacer,” I say, wary.

“Why wouldn’t you?” she responds, perfectly surprised at my response. “And anyway, it was your father’s wish that you have that placed as soon as you arrived.”

“My father ordered this to be here?”

“Before he died. He said it was the first thing I should do, if you made it here. And here you are.” Her brown hair is familiar. As are her eyes. They’re wide and intelligent, self-conscious and stubborn, all at the same time. “Welcome to Wingfield,” she says, standing up. She walks to the bedside and offers a hand to shake. “My name is Kria.”

“I know who you are,” I say evenly. “You’re my mother.”

CHAPTER 30

W
E JUST STARE AT EACH OTHER,
the unsaid things sharpening the silence between us.

Kria’s eyes are shiny and pink-rimmed, as if she’s on the verge of crying. She awkwardly approaches me, enveloping me in a warm, gentle hug. She smells of lavender soap and contentment. I’m stiff as a twig and don’t hug her back.

“Why?” I ask.

“Why what, dear?” She raises her pin-straight eyebrows.

“Why
everything
.”

She sighs and, thank god, goes back to her chair. I’m already suffocated by her proximity and the overwhelming lavender. A scent that I no longer like very much.

“We wanted to protect you. You wouldn’t have understood what was going on with me if I’d stayed.”

“I wasn’t five years old anymore,” I argue. “He could have said something. You could have.”

“And for that, I’m sorry,” she says, wringing her hands. “But it was also important for your father to hide my identity. I had a trait that Aureus would have killed for. They looked for me, but your father kept me hidden and safe. He would have put you in danger, had you or Dylia known of my existence.”

It all comes together at once. Julian’s first conversation with me, and the damned list that everyone wanted, to find out who was made, and how.

How.

Kria
is
the how.

“You’re the key?” I say, incredulous. “The key that unlocks the terminator technology. That keeps us from being suicide seeds, so we can procreate. It’s in you?”

“Yes.” She beams at me, as if I’ve just answered a prize question in a game. “Good for you, Zelia. He said you were smart!”

“Don’t patronize me!”

Kria recoils. “I’m . . . I’m sorry.” She takes a huge breath and tries again. “The key is in me. While I was away, I gave birth to so many traited children. Tegg and Caliga—”

“Caliga?” I inhale my spit and cough spastically.

“Yes. But your parent DNA is different. My own DNA isn’t in all the children. Your father decided on the parentage and created the traits by altering the embryonic DNA, by design. But I was only one woman. So your father isolated the proteins in me that were necessary to create and carry traited children, and gave them to normal women to increase production of traited children. I believe you know Renata—she was perhaps the only woman who agreed to the process. Very prolific too. The other women never knew. They thought they were taking prenatal vitamins.”

It’s sick. She makes traited kids sound like products in a factory, and I’m staring at the walking factory in my room. All those women, who had no idea. Kria tries to smile, despite my expression of utter disgust.

“Why, Kria? Why would you let him . . . Why would you do this?”

“Your father said I could be part of something so much bigger than myself. Something historical, world-changing. He said that creation was the closest we could get to divinity. I believed him. I mean, look at you. How could I argue with his design?”

Her eyes are full of pride and love, but her words make me feel like a thing. A chunk of clay.

“But I am proud of you, Zelia. Your father told me all about your accomplishments, and Dyl’s. He’d show me all your grades.” She drops her eyes to the ground. “He’d even show me holo transmissions of you two sleeping at night. I missed you two. I hated being a lie in your life, but it had to be. It’s what your father wanted.”

“Is it what you wanted?” I ask.

Kria says nothing. For the first time in this whole conversation, I actually feel sorry for her. We do have something in common, besides being mother and daughter. We’ve both been masterfully manipulated by my father.

I rub my eyes. I can’t believe all this. I can, but I can’t. It’s so much. And right now, all I want is clarity, and reason, and understanding. I want the familiar, and I want home.

I want Marka.

“I should get dressed . . . or something,” I say, gesturing to my messy hair.

“Of course, Zelia.” She walks to the door and pauses. “You know, we thought of you the whole time. Of your future and well-being. We planned on building a home here so that we could all be safe someday.”

“Safe?” I cock my head. The word
safe
is so soft, so deceptively neat and easy. “We are still illegal. We’re still being hunted. We’re hiding.”

“Zelia—”

“We may be standing still, Kria, but we’re all still running away.”

• • •

A
FTER
I
GET READY,
C
Y MEETS ME
at my door. He’s clean-shaven and looks like the Cy from Carus, from a year ago. Dark gray T-shirt, dark pants. Only, no tattoos and no piercings.

“Boy, are you a sight for sore eyes,” I say, kissing him.

“You stole my line!” he says, smirking. “C’mon. Marka’s waiting for us at breakfast.”

Wingfield is built like a spiral snail shell beneath the quarry floor. We curve around a long hallway, occasionally encountering another tree embedded into the wall, with its leaves splayed against the flickering, watery light from the transparent ceiling. As we walk, I tell Cy about my conversation with Kria.

“Did she say anything about Endall?” he asks.

“No. We didn’t really get there. I sort of spent the whole time yelling,” I admit. “But look.” I point to the embedded breathing pacer. Cy runs his fingers over the implant and his lower lip drops in surprise.

“I thought you didn’t want an implant.”

“I didn’t.”

“They just stuck it in you. Without your permission?”

I nod. “Apparently, it was on Dad’s pre-death orders.” He’s still making choices for me now, even though he’s gone.

“Well, it’s not like you have another pacer at this point. But we’ll try to make one for you, maybe order one through the black market. And then you can take that one out later.”

He’s right. “Come on,” I say. “Let’s go find Marka.”

We coil our way around Wingfield until we come to a large, central room. Inside, people I know (and plenty of others I don’t) sit in groups of chairs here and there. In the center of the room is a huge, floor-to-ceiling cylindrical tank with all kinds of fish, from black-and-white striped to brilliant amethyst and burnt orange.

Dyl and Ana sit at a little table where Ana is tearing apart a cinnamon bun into a thousand pieces. When she sees me, Dyl walks over with a mug of coffee and a plate of toast in hand. She’s cinching a thick book under her arm.

“Kria told me who she is,” I say, frowning, taking her offering of coffee and toast.

Dyl nods, looking pissed. “I found out last week. Did she tell you about your genetic makeup?”

“Not quite. You?”

“No. She said she would, but she’s been too busy.”

“Yeah, right.” I tip my chin to the book under her arm. “What is that?” I ask, sitting down next to Ana.

Dyl shows me the gilt letters pressed into the cover.
Twentieth-Century Poetry.
The one that Dad gave her years ago.

“You packed that?” I ask, sipping coffee and shoving toast in my mouth.

“No. I wanted to leave it behind. Marka brought it. She said I’d regret leaving it behind.”

“But you’ve been reading it?”

“Yeah,” she says, sounding like she almost regrets the fact. “You know, it’s weird. I’ve been reading so much poetry this last year.
This
book is really strange.” She taps the tome in her hands. “All the poems are anonymous.”

“So?”

“Well, there aren’t a lot of poetry collections by anonymous poets. I never really though much about it until now. Poets may be dripping in creative mystique, but they certainly don’t shy away from getting the credit they deserve.”

“Hmm.” I take the heavy book from her and flip through the pages. “Luna.” “Prayer for My Child.” “The Memory Play.” I’d been avoiding the pain of reading it again, knowing how it reminded me of Dad. But maybe it’s time to try again.
“Can I borrow this?”

“Sure. It’s yours as much as mine,” she says, smiling. When we look up, we see Micah watching us from across the room. Dyl immediately shrinks from his watchful gaze. “He won’t stop looking at me. It’s super-creepy,” she whispers to me. “So you guys actually got along in that place? Avida?”

“We did. Sort of. But I was a captive audience. He said a lot of things I didn’t expect.” When Dyl raises an eyebrow, I tell her everything he’s told me. His actions, his punishments under Julian, and how he crossed Julian to ultimately help us escape. How he said he’d never slept with her or Ana.

“And you believed him?” she says, her voice rising above the din of other conversations. Half a dozen heads turn our way.

“I don’t know. He was so good at lying. An artist.”

“He is an artist,” she says. “A con artist.” Her eyes rise to meet his. He tries to smile, but wilts when Dyl pointedly looks away again. I wonder if she will ever forgive him.

“Zel, c’mon.” Hex is standing behind our couch and claps a hand on our shoulders. “Kria wants to talk to some of us.”

We stand up, and everyone but Carus members leaves. Caliga, Élodie, and Micah are asked to stay, since they’re new too. Marka sits next to Ana, who leans her head on her shoulder. Kria stands by the fish tank column, pressing a button to release food.

“They’re African cichlids, from Lake Tanganyika,” she says. We all wait for something more than a biology lecture. “An interesting example of evolution. Every niche of that rift lake now has a different species. Human evolution has been staggeringly linear, in comparison.”

“What are you trying to tell us? That we’re fish?” Élodie says with a bitterness that we all feel.

“No. You are a species that has unnaturally evolved, with your father’s help. You are precious, beyond words or money.”

“
Personne ne croit que c’est vrai,”
Élodie murmurs. I don’t know what it means, but I can guess. Kria does one of those
smiling-but-ignoring-your-comment
faces.

“So. Are you the one responsible for destroying Aureus?” I ask.

“Yes. But it took years and years to plan. Aureus was abusing its power and turning children into commodities. In the beginning, SunAj agreed to support Dr. Benten and his work. But back then when SunAj built Aureus, there was a different philosophy: Create products to sustain an income, so the traited children could be sheltered and provided for. But then the money and power became too enticing. Dr. Benten stopped bringing them children. So they killed him.”

Visions of my dad in the hospital flood my memories. The missing limbs; the ventilator strapped to his chest. I shut my eyes and Marka grasps my hand. Kria continues.

“Through our contacts, we found a place in Minwi where we could hide children. And your father contacted Senator Milford for the money, weapons, and the hoverpod we’d need to take over Aureus.”

“Senator Milford!” several of us exclaim at the same time. What? I immediately lock eyes with Marka.

Vera’s green fingers curl onto Marka’s arm. “Did you know?”

Marka stands with her hand wide open, as if she’s dropped something she can’t recover. “I didn’t know. Why didn’t my uncle tell me?”