Catalyst (34 page)

“Dr. Benten expressly asked that it be kept from you,” Kria tells her. “The plans were dangerous and he didn’t want you involved until the very end, when you could be brought here safely. When he died, this place wasn’t ready, which is why Zelia and Dyl went to Carus, instead. But we never anticipated that the senator would be assassinated, or that his death would set off that chain of events that caused Carus to be attacked.”

“So you know who attacked him? Who poisoned him with my old elixir?” I ask.

“No. We still don’t know,” Kria admits.

Cy comes to stand next to me. “So. What do we do now? Stay here forever?”

“For the time being. Minwi was bribed with a good deal of money to keep this area uninhabited for a few years.”

A few years. They could go by in a snap. And then what? I sit down on the nearest chair, exhausted. I’m so tired of being chased like an animal, always on the verge of becoming history.

“Now we have to fight to get you rights,” Kria goes on. “Freedom, like every other human.”

Marka, Cy, Kria, and Vera start talking heatedly, of which States might be willing to break federal law to help us, or how we’re even going to manage to have a voice when we’re in hiding. I hear them talk about supplies, and money, and how risky it will be to rescue other traited kids across the States.

I think of Renata, now alone with her children. She’ll have to face those Inky senators by herself, without Julian’s silky behind-the-scenes deal-making. They’re still waiting on a promise for my trait to be made, and I’m gone. There’s only so long before they’ll demand what she doesn’t have.

While the discussion heats up even more, I quietly get up and leave the room. In the hallway, the trees along the walls and the transparent ceiling of ice-blue quarry water don’t feel ephemeral or unique anymore. They’re just fancy walls to yet another cage.

The question is, how can we get out and be free, once and for all?

CHAPTER 31

W
E SPEND THE DAY WANDERING AROUND
W
INGFIELD,
built beneath the water-filled, abandoned mine of the same name. The curving vortex of hallways all share the force field that acts as a ceiling, keeping the water at bay.

We also meet the other members of Wingfield. There’s about twenty of us in total. It’s all so overwhelming that I can barely remember any names. There’s a girl with bat-like wings, and an eyeless young boy who can navigate the vortex-like hallways easily, amongst others. I’m astonished by all of their varied traits. Traits I never imagined might exist.

That night, I curl in bed and Cy slides in next to me. When he wraps his hands around my waist, I take his hand and stare at it. Long, strong fingers and wrists so smooth, you’d never know he’d once regularly dragged broken glass across them.

“What are you thinking?” He breathes, rather than speaks the words.

“About practicing.”

“What, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation? I’m ready,” he teases.

I smack his arm. “I mean your trait.”

He sighs in resignation. After a few more coaxing words, he starts. We use only our hands to experiment on. Cy tries to pinch off the circulation to a finger at a time, then a toe. It doesn’t always go smoothly, though. I get really dizzy and my heart races when I realize my whole body is being constricted, like I’ve got a python wrapped all over me.

“Stub,” I say, my speech slurring from the lack of blood to my brain.

“Stub?”

I gasp. “Ssss . . .
stop
!”

When he sees that I’ve gone red in the face, he releases me. “Oh geez! Zel, I’m not doing this anymore!”

Luckily, I recover in a few seconds. It takes forever before he’s willing to practice again. By two in the morning, he can make any finger of mine turn white easily. Even my leg, or my arm.

I yawn. “That was really good.”

“I almost killed you. That’s good?”

“Yeah! A miss is as good as a mile, as they say.” I snuggle closer and curl into his arms. Cy’s body radiates warmth straight into my bones.

He soon falls asleep, his body sagging into the bed. I carefully unwrap myself from his arms, watching his effortless breathing. His face is so peaceful, so perfect. I wish I could bottle this—the feeling I get from being within his orbit. That’s a product that Aureus could have made a killing on.

I can’t sleep. There are too many unanswered questions fighting for space in my mind, so I leave and walk through the darkened, spiral corridor in my nightgown.

At the innermost coil, there is a single door. It opens to a staircase, and then to a huge, dark cavernous space. Something clinks in the distance. Sounds like a dropped screwdriver.

A distant voice huffs in annoyance.

“Hello?” I call.

Suddenly, the lights pop on. I try not to squeal in surprise. There’s a huge hoverpod taking up a hangar barely big enough to shelter it. The hoverpod is shaped like a square pillow, with black metal encasing the structure. There’s a shuffling sound, and Kria walks out from behind the hoverpod, wearing dirty work clothes.

“Zelia! What are you doing up?” she says, wiping her dirty hands on her pants.

“Nothing. Sorry,” I say, immediately turning back to the door. I don’t really want to chat with her right now. And anyway, she’s busy.

“Please. Stay a few minutes. I could use your help.”

“I don’t know a thing about fixing hoverpods.”

“Neither do I. We’ll be ignorant together.” She smiles, but a certain desperation lurks behind her eyes.

I’ve no idea how to help. Kria opens the hatch to the hoverpod and steps inside, and I follow. Inside, she squats by an open panel revealing a million wires and circuits, blinking in red, white, and green. “It’s like a glowing Italian flag in here. I don’t know what I’m doing,” she confesses.

“Why don’t you ask Wilbert? He’s good at this stuff.”

She scratches her head. “Wilbert is with his wife for the first time in ages. I’m not going to bother him for this.”

Oh. The first time they’ve been able to be together. As in,
together.

“So you made the vaccine for Wilbert?”

“Oh yes. It was the first thing we worked on after I got him out of Aureus.”

“So that was really you? You attacked Aureus?”

She touches the frazzled braids over her head. “I don’t look very fierce now. But it helped to have the right equipment and friends.”

“So you killed SunAj?”

Her face clouds over. “It didn’t go as planned. He attacked first when I arrived at their new base in Okks. I wish so many Aureus kids hadn’t run away, it would have made things easier. But the kids are safe now, so it was worth it.” There she goes again, with the safe thing. She’s delusional, if she thinks hiding equals safety. She points to some flashing lights, and says, “The cloaking buttons aren’t working on the starboard side. Everything outside is okay, so it’s an internal issue.” She wiggles a few circuit relays, then throws her arms into the air. “Ugh. I really should just wait for Wilbert tomorrow.”

“Why’d you bother?” I ask, before I realize the question is a little rude.

“Why not? Funny, your father would have said the same thing. It used to drive him crazy when I started something he assumed I couldn’t finish.”

Never start something where failure is likely.
He used to say that to me too. I look at Kria, up in the middle of night, working on something stubbornly, despite the odds. It reminds me of someone.

Oh.
Me.

“So.” I stand up and back away a little, as if my upcoming question requires space. “So if you’re my mom, are you . . . How much of me . . .”

“You want to know who you are?” She crinkles her eyes at me. “What you are?”

It sounds like I’m asking for ingredients to a pot roast. “Yes.”

“You’ve grown into such a pretty girl.” Kria barely suppresses a smile. “Well. That hair is mine, so I’m sorry about that. Your father designed your longevity trait, and your body has developed slower because of it. I added Marka’s genes, as an extra gift.”

I’m definitely feeling like a pot roast now. “Why the extra scent trait? Why is it showing up now?”

“Your father wanted some children to have two traits.”

“Who made you?”

“A long as there’s been gene manipulation, there’ve been scientists who wanted to experiment. Really, it could have been anyone.”

“How could you want to give birth to these kids, to us, and not know . . .
everything?
”

Kria’s lip trembles. “I loved him. He was a brilliant man, doing great things. I didn’t ask to be in charge of it all. He was supposed to be here. With us.”

I feel a pang of sympathy, thinking of the year I had without Cy.

“Zel, none of this is easy. Time will help. Love does strange things to your internal chemistry. There’s also so much anger, confusion, and bitterness—”

“Look, I don’t need to know every detail of your relationship with my dad.”

Kria stares at me. “I’m not talking about me and your father. I’m talking about
you
.”

Oh no she didn’t. “Don’t make this about me! It’s about him, and it’s always been about him. About what he’s done to us. How he’s created us and left us to figure out how to fix this mess.”

“He tried to be transparent with me—”

“Ha!” I bark.

“Zelia,” Kria admonishes me. “Your father was trying to help.”

“I might have believed that once. I’m not sure I can anymore, Kria.” I turn and head for the door.

“Zelia, please.” I turn to see Kria, arms out. “Don’t leave Wingfield.”

I cock my head. “You mean like Endall?”

“How did you know about him?”

“We’ve met.” My hand goes to the implant in my neck. “So. What made him leave?”

“Would you believe that he’s claustrophobic?”

“In this place, sure. Who wouldn’t be?”

“Not just about Wingfield. About everything. There aren’t a lot of others like him, with your longevity trait. Your father wanted to make sure that Endall had a breathing pacer.”

“You can’t alter people’s bodies without their permission!” I say, pointing to my neck. My own words illuminate what I haven’t been able to see before. “
Oh.
It’s not that Dad feels responsible. It’s like we belonged to him, like a collection. We’re his little menagerie, aren’t we?”

“Zelia, he wanted the best for you. For all of you. He dedicated his life to you. But Endall went . . . slightly . . . crazy after his implant. He actually dug it out with a knife before he left.” She shivers and waves her hand. “He’s out there. Our doors are always open to him, but I doubt he’ll ever walk in again.”

For an infinite moment, I envy his choice. But turning my back on my father’s legacy would mean turning my back on everyone I love too.

I can’t afford that flavor of freedom. It would kill me.

• • •

I
FINALLY MANAGE TO FALL ASLEEP AFTER
snuggling beneath Cy’s arms, but it doesn’t last. When morning light flickers in through the watery ceiling, I’m up, as if already loaded on caffeine. I inch out of bed to find the poetry book sitting on a chair.

I read a few poems, pausing over the
Anonymous
written under the titles. Why did Dad give Dyl a book full of ownerless verses? I flip to the beginning and read the front matter, where the publisher and publishing date are listed.

Lanier Publishing. 1998.

I freeze.

Lanier was my father’s middle name.

I close the book shut and leave my room and Cy’s sleeping self, running down the curving hallway to Dyl’s room. Someone’s sitting outside of her room.

Micah.

His skin is sallow and his eyelids puffy, as if he’s stayed up all night sitting in this one spot.

“Micah, what are you doing here?”

“She said she’d talk to me this morning.” His arms are crossed on the tops of his bent knees and he stares at the blank wall opposite him.

“So you camped out here?”

“I have to try.”

I sigh. “Micah, I don’t think you should force it. Stalking doesn’t help.”

His eyes rise wearily to meet mine, and he gets up and walks away without another word.

I knock on the door. “Dyl, it’s me.”

The door swishes open and hides half her face behind the doorjamb. “Is Micah gone?”

“Yes. I sent him away. I told him to dial down the creep factor and give you some breathing space.”

“Good. Thanks.” I walk in and we sit on her bed. A school of those fish are wriggling in arcs above her room, casting shadows onto her quilt. “I don’t know how to handle him. He wants a nonstop rehashing of everything and I just can’t . . .” She shakes her head. I don’t blame her. I make a mental note to try to keep him out of her space at least for a few weeks, until we can all settle in.

“I wanted to show you this,” I say, opening up the poetry book. I point to the publisher name and she frowns.

“That’s Dad’s middle name.”

“I know. Do you have a holo we can use?”

“Yeah. Kria gave it to me when I got here. It’s just a general network one.” She pinches the stud in her earlobe and the glowing green rectangle screen pops up in front of her face. She angles it so we can both see it.