Catalyst (9 page)

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” I haven’t had more time to think about why. Caliga was adamant that it should have worked fine on her. It doesn’t make sense, and I’ve no answer as to why. I go back to examining Caliga. Her flush is gone and she’s breathing more regularly. I replace her empty antibiotic pouch with a new one and feel her cheek. She’s not feverish anymore. I add nutrient powder to another dermal pouch full of sterile water and attach that to the other side of her belly. After a quick change of her dressing, I step back.

“How did you learn to do all that?” Cy asks. Something passes over his face that resembles what I’ve been feeling. We’ve both been left behind in each other’s life, and not by choice.

“I . . . had to do something when you were gone.” I sigh. I can’t explain a year’s worth of my life in a sentence.

“Where are we?” Caliga mumbles, blinking slowly.

“We’re in Dubuque,” I say. “I found someone you know.”

Caliga props herself up on one elbow and peers around me. As soon as she sees Blink and Cy, her hands frantically claw at my arms.

“Where is he? Wilbert? Wilbert!” Her mouth is so dry, she almost chokes on the words.

“Wilbert’s not here,” Cy says quietly.

Caliga’s face is drained of color, and she had precious little to begin with. I’ve seen her nearly permanent bitch face, and this new, hungry expression tears right through me. It’s devastation and anguish all at once. I should know it well enough; I owned it when Cy volunteered his life for mine and Dyl’s.

“He didn’t make it out, Caliga. They took him.”

Caliga lies back down and is mute for a long time. I think she’s fallen asleep, when I see tears tracking down her temples into her white hair. “Where were you?” she finally says in a raspy whisper. She still won’t open her eyes. “I waited for days.”

“We came out on the other side of the lake, but there was a hoverpod searching the area for survivors. We had to run,” Cy explains. His shoulders droop and he wears his exhaustion like a hundred-pound cloak.

“Cy, we should get going,” I say.

“Where do we go?” Blink asks. Her accent is lilting and gorgeous.

“Caliga needs more antibiotics. We’re trying to meet up with Marka and everybody in Chicago.”

“Ilmo’s not such a tough border to cross, last I heard. When are you meeting them?”

The last forty-eight hours have been an adrenaline blur and I’ve hardly slept. I think carefully. “Ten days.”

“They will not let us in,” Blink comments. I have to concentrate extra hard to understand her accented words. “None of us have working F-TIDs anymore.”

“They might,” Cy tells her. “Lots of States have an opt-out clause. They don’t require an F-TID, but you’re monitored and treated like a convict. Hard labor, crappy benefits, crappy pay, stuff like that.”

“Then let’s go. Caliga can’t walk, so we’ll have to drive as close as possible to the entrance registration areas.”

Everyone nods, and Cy and Blink stand back so I can help Caliga get into the front passenger seat. With Cy and Blink crammed into the left corner of the backseat, they’re just beyond the three-foot mark of Caliga’s effect. Since I can’t sit with him, I pile the biscuits and bottles of water on Cy’s lap until he’s blanketed in sustenance.

“Keep eating and drinking. You need your strength.”

Cy smiles gratefully and hands Blink a bottle. As soon as I start the char, I glance at the rearview mirror. Blink leans her head against Cy’s shoulder, her ebony hair clotted with braids full of twigs and leaf fragments. Cy’s eyes are on me.

Part of me overflows with frightening happiness. I’ve found a puzzle piece that’s been missing for too long. But as hard as I try to cram it into place, it somehow doesn’t fit the same way anymore.

Caliga moans, and I take a minute to lean over and adjust her sagging bandage. As I tighten one of the bindings, her face is grim. For a moment, I wonder. She can make everyone else feel numbness, but does it affect her own body?

“Can you feel this?” I ask, tugging one last time.

“I feel everything,” she says quietly.

I know exactly what she means.

CHAPTER 8

W
E KNOW WE’RE GETTING CLOSER TO THE
confluence of Neia’s, Ilmo’s, and Winmi’s borders. Huge Neia-sponsored holo ads started popping up everywhere, begging us to stay in Neia, promising a lax morality code and lovely pale complexion, from the absence of harmful sunrays.

One of the cloaking buttons falls off our char after we hit a pothole, so we abandon it behind an old house and I grab my duffel bag. In the distance, huge, glowing blue plasma fences line the borders between Neia and Ilmo. There really is no good way out of Neia here except through the legal entrances.

Caliga leans heavily on me as we try to blend in with the crowds converging on the entrance areas. I recognize the building style of the Neia New Citizens Processing Center. It’s all blue glass and silver metal, like a giant dewdrop fallen from the agriplane. We went through a similar building when Dad, Dyl, and I entered Neia from Okks.

They’d given us beautiful strands of sunseed flowers to wear around our necks and hair. We’d pressed our F-TIDs into a tablet that outlined the rules and bylaws of Neia that we were required to obey. I hardly remember them now. Something about a minimum residence of one year; taxes; and morality codes written in a tiny, scripted font meant to be skimmed over with a hurried eye.

I never noticed the rules about HGM 2098, but back then I had no idea it would ever apply to me. And no idea that Neia would cause the worst pain of my life—after losing Dad, Dyl, and, later, Cy there.

We pass the Neia dewdrop building and try to look inconspicuous, but Caliga’s tottering limp captures people’s attention. Her trembling hands tell me she’s more scared than unsteady. For once, I don’t mind having her arms on me. Cy and Blink walk a good ten feet behind us.

Discarded, dissolvable flyers in various states of decomposition litter the ground. If we had legal holo studs on, our holo feeds would be inundated with ads. People crowd thickly at the Fast-Track lines, where previously approved people are set up with jobs and housing. The rest of the untested and undecided swivel their heads, reading the different holo signs and trying to magically extract the truth from the gossamer flyers.

I’m tempted to see if any of them offer a clue about Wingfield or missing mothers. I haven’t told Cy about either one. It seems like I’ll never get a moment alone with him, and the thought suffocates me all at once.

“Stay close,” Caliga whispers, and I remember that I need to be her human shield, so no one will feel her effects. But the crowds are too dense. When a few people clutch their faces and stomachs because of her numbing presence, I dig up a shirt from my bag.

“Hold this to your face and cough like you’re losing a lung,” I offer.

It works. People give us a wide berth. Fear of communicable diseases can be a good thing.

We’re able to dodge most of the solicitors. They’re all dressed in the State colors of Minwi, Ilmo, and Inky: green, blue, and gray, respectively. A few grays are clad in head-to-toe smocks and elaborate headdresses. They’re all women, and one of them beelines toward me and Caliga. All that is human is concentrated onto an oval of pink skin, blue eyes, and rouged lips. She delivers a toothy smile.

“Inky has the lowest rate of State emigration! People never want to leave, because our quality of life is superb.” When she comes too close, I push Caliga farther behind me and intercept the flimsy flyer she places into my hand.

“Inky?” I try to remember my geography. “Inky doesn’t border Neia.”

“We have an underground magtrain that will take you straight to the city of Coventry. We reach out to welcome women to our family.”

She makes Inky sound like a spider with a huge leg span. We have no interest in going to Inky. I take the flyer to be polite. It’s lighter than tissue paper and flashes words in gentle hues of pink and lavender.

INKY: WHERE YOU CAN BE QUEEN!

FULFILL A WOMAN’S GREATEST DESTINY

FULL VOTING RIGHTS

LOW TAXES; GUARANTEED SHELTER

FREE HEALTH CARE

NONEXISTENT UNEMPLOYMENT

FAMILY FRIENDLY

I give her a polite smile, then stick out my tongue after she scurries to hand a flyer to Blink. She can’t fool anyone. The flyer should actually read:

INKY: WHERE YOU CAN BE A BREEDER!

FULFILL WHAT THEY CONSIDER YOUR ONLY DESTINY

FULL VOTING RIGHTS WHEN YOU’RE NOT KNOCKED UP, WHICH IS NEVER

NO TAXES BECAUSE THEY STEAL THEM FROM YOUR PAYCHECK ANYWAY

GUARANTEED SHELTER IN A BABY-MAKING FACTORY

FREE FERTILITY TREATMENTS

UTERUS FRIENDLY

I hand the flyer to Caliga behind me, where she rips it into tiny sparkling bits of trash, snorting. Plenty of women go to Inky for a few years, gather some money for themselves, and try to leave after they realize what a horror show it is. The sad thing is, you lose parental rights to your own babies if you leave, and half the time, they send the children to neighboring states whose own birth rates are abysmally low, in exchange for a State “donation” of goods or cash.

“Where’s the Ilmo entrance?” Caliga asks impatiently. She’s starting to limp more and her face is drained of energy. This is the most she’s walked since we left Carus.

“There,” Cy calls out from behind us. He’s pointing beyond the crowds.

There’s a blue crescent-shaped awning and a huge line to get in. Nearby, the Minwi line snakes in front of a green tree-shaped entrance. It’s nearly as crowded. To the far right is the entrance to the underground magtrain to Inky. The line of women there is all but obscured by the crushing crowds from Minwi and Ilmo.

“How am I supposed to get into Ilmo?” Caliga whines. If we try to enter the crowd, people will start dropping like hail.

“How did you cross State lines before?” Blink asks. “When you came to Neia from Arla?”

“I went in the sewage tunnels. No people. But that’s how I got this,” she says, pointing to her ailing leg.

“Okay, we’re not doing that,” Cy says flatly.

“We could try the north border. Some of the plasma fences break down. We could sneak through,” Blink suggests.

“But Caliga’s going to need more antibiotics soon,” I tell her.

“That’s not an option, then,” Cy agrees. Blink’s mouth stays a flat line, like she doesn’t care. Interesting.

I glance at the interviewing going on inside the Ilmo entrance. “Look, once we get past the crowd, they ask us stuff across a partition.”

Caliga already looks relieved. “Then I have a chance.”

We’re interrupted by blaring music. Caliga grabs my elbow and points to a flashing holoboard above the green-tree Minwi entrance. A bearded man wearing a tie and green coat smiles garishly.

“Minwi proudly offers the first screening procedures to ensure our citizens have the purest DNA! No need to fear harm from this new breed of mutant convicts in the States!”

I duck my head down and stare at my hands. Anything to take the focus off my fiery face.

“It’s okay, no one’s staring at us,” Caliga says low, her hand on my back. “But look what’s happening.”

I let my eyes flick up quickly. The crowd around the Ilmo line sways and hesitates. The uncertainty spreads like an infection. Several groups of people break away to switch to the Minwi line.

The officials in the Ilmo entrance can’t hide the disgust and jealousy in their faces. They start shouting over the loudspeakers about their imminent plans for state-of-the-art screening, but it’s too late.

The crowd in front of Ilmo’s blue crescent awning is no longer dense. Caliga and I could wriggle our way in without getting too close to anyone. I dip my chin at Cy and Blink, who nod back. We worm our way closer to Ilmo’s entrance.

“How am I going to deal with the physical exams and everything?” Caliga mutters nervously.

“Maybe they’ll have CompuDocs, instead of people. We’ll see.”

Caliga and I stay in the same line, and Cy and Blink go to another one. When we’re nearly at the front of the line, her hand on my arm squeezes me painfully. She’s staring at a huge holoboard behind the rows of cubicles. It’s a news thread going loud enough for anyone to hear.

“On today’s Inter-State Agenda news, the deadly DNA that killed Senator Milford has finally been identified, belonging to a Zelia Shirley Benten. Anyone knowing the whereabouts of this individual is urged to contact their local State officials.”

Oh. My. God.

Caliga lifts an eyebrow and whispers, “Shirley? Really?”

“Shh!” I whisper.

My face appears on the screen, a school photo from two years ago. I hold my breath. Maybe if I don’t move, no one will see me.