Control (26 page)

THE CHAR FINALLY JERKS TO A STOP.
Caliga opens the door and clickity-clacks in her heels away from the char. I stumble as I get out, and Tegg grabs my arm before I hit the pavement.

“Careful.”

“Like you really mean that,” I say.

“Look,” Tegg says blandly, “I really have nothing against you. It’s not personal.”

“It’s always personal for the losers.”

“We’re all on the losing end,” he says. “We’ll give you more of a life than that crap hole you lived in.”

“Complete with getting drugged out of my brains when I don’t do what you want? Or chopped into bits?”

“I didn’t say it was perfect,” he says quietly.

My vision returns in increments. First it’s grainy and gray, then bits of light flicker in and out. We enter a transport and fly diagonally but definitely downward, beneath the surface of Neia.

I can hear and feel a faint thrumming under my feet, like an enormous heartbeat. The transport doors open to a painfully bright room where the thrumming is a bit louder, and Tegg pokes a spiny finger into my shoulder, forcing me inside.

It’s white and glossy, furnished in white designer pieces. It’s what heaven looked like in the old movies I used to watch. But it can’t be heaven, for one simple reason.

Micah is here.

He is the only dark thing in the brilliant room. Sitting on a snowy chaise that belongs in Louis XIV’s sitting room, Micah pushes off and comes to meet me. His clothes are expensive-looking, his frame perfectly proportioned for any girl with eyeballs to notice. For a minute, there is nothing but that insistent beat vibrating through the floor and into my legs, my chest.

Tegg and Caliga hang way back. Do they know what’s coming?

“I’m so glad you came,” Micah says, his voice deep and velvety. He lifts my fingers into his, gently. The warmth of his hands doesn’t hurt, but I pull them back anyway.

“You didn’t really give me a choice, did you?”

“It’s the best choice. You’re on a winning team now.”

My right hand shoots out to slap him across the jaw, as hard as my exhausted body can muster. The crusted blisters of my palm open again on impact, and Micah jerks back, touching his red-smeared cheek. Before he can process his surprise, I slap him again.

“That’s what I think of your goddamned winning team. Now let’s get this over with.”

Micah’s face goes from beautiful to terrible in a single breath. “Then let’s go.” He grabs my wrist, and it burns as if he’s holding me over a torch.

It’s unbearable. My knees buckle, but Micah doesn’t let go. My screams echo against the white walls, until I’m hearing myself in 3-D agony. Tegg coughs uncomfortably.

“C’mon Kw, that’s enough.”

Micah releases me and I crumple to the floor, cradling my wrist. The pain is white-hot, worsening instead of getting better. I open my eyes to see a bubbling mess of blisters and red skin. My brain is pounding, yelling at me to run away, undo every choice I made to get to this moment. I think of Ana and her fingertips and my sister. What have I gotten myself into?

“I’m sorry, Zelia. I didn’t want to do that.”

I suck in my tears and swallow the pain. Micah yanks my good arm without shocking me, pulling me to my feet. I am led toward the other end of the room. A panel opens to reveal a place so dark that I think the lights must be out.

One thing is unchanged since I’ve arrived, though. The incessant heartbeat of Aureus doesn’t stop. It throbs right into my brain, and I wonder if the walls have blood and guts flowing within them.

This room is four times as big as the white one. There is a man sitting in a large armchair with a gilded book in one hand, a teacup in the other. He lifts his head, turns his profile only a single degree in a glance to make sure I am who he thinks I am—the newest acquisition to Aureus—and goes back to his book. How he reads in such gloominess is beyond me.

To my right, the thick squat boy from the club sits on the floor, picking his teeth. He doesn’t look at me, and actually turns away when I step closer, as if he’s afraid to make eye contact. On the left, a girl with espresso-colored skin and a bob of black hair lies on her stomach, reading a book. She’s clothed in more black, making her a living shadow in this dark room. A pair of wraparound sunglasses covers her eyes, the same ones you see old people wear in bright sunlight. An odd thing, given how dim the room is. I wonder if this is Blink, the one Ana said swims in the black.

And finally, the boy who helped take Dyl at New Horizons sits on an ottoman. Even now, he’s popping the black jelly beans. His hair is oily and carroty, and he nods at me with recognition. He smiles only briefly, showing teeth smeared with black gunk. Disgusting.

“Wot’s that? In the bag?” A woman’s voice with a decidedly English accent sounds from somewhere in the room, but I can’t find the source. Maybe it’s like Ana, someone who can talk in my head. I can’t decide if I like the voice or not. It sounds eager, like a child’s, but has the tone of an older lady.

“Hush, Aj. In time, in time.” The man has a similar accent, but his tone is far less energetic. In the armchair, he rubs his grandfatherly silver hair and adjusts his plaid flannel shirt. In a room like this, I’d expect a crimson velvet robe and a silk cravat. Nothing quite fits together. “So, Zelia. I’ve heard so much about you.” He licks his finger and turns the page, but still won’t look me in the eye.

“Who are you?”

“Of course. I didn’t introduce myself. I am Sun.”

“How egocentric of you.”

“Perhaps. You may blame my dead mother for the name. Keep in mind, young Zelia, that insolence is not tolerated here, and arrogance is earned. And you haven’t earned a cent thus far, despite what your father has done for us.”

“My father.” The words escape my lips before I can stop them.

“Yes. We owe him a great deal, even though he kept his biggest contribution to society a secret for too long.”

“I already know.”

“You do? I am surprised.”

“He helped people. The illegal kids.”

Sun leans back in his chair. “Well. You are more enlightened than I thought, if that’s what you think he did.”

Now I’m thoroughly confused. Holo-Dad already told me he cared for the illegal kids. What’s going on? Sun opens his mouth to continue when that English woman’s voice interrupts him.

“She doesn’t know, darling. Her own father didn’t tell her. It’s quite a shame.”

“Aj, not now.” Sun talks over to his right, but still I see no one. The people in the room are totally unperturbed with the comments from this bodiless voice. The voice echoes again, more insistent. Hurt.

“Stop silencing me, Sun. You promised you would be better. Let me speak.”

Sun blinks several times, then shuts his book. He shifts within the armchair and turns his shoulders to face me.

“Oh!” I blurt out, covering my mouth with my hand. I should be used to this after being in Carus, but still I’m not prepared.

On Sun’s head, protruding out of his temple and cheek are a small face, legs, and arms, as if a geriatric fetus had been pressed into his head and stuck fast, like putty. The wrinkled face is palm-sized, with a mouth larger than the other features. The eyes are garishly painted, with sparkling blue eye shadow and too much mascara, the color disturbing and unexpected. The tiny blunted limbs writhe with gentle excitement.

“Don’t look at me like that. You’re no better than I am. We’re equals here.” She curls her mouth, and her pale blue eyes glisten as she studies me. “You don’t look like your father. You look honest.”

“My dad was just a doctor.” I squeeze my blistered palms into fists that hurt no one but me.

“You underestimated him, as we did. Yes, he was a doctor, but more than that. All the gifted children you see here”—she wiggles her pathetic stumpy arm around the room—“are his doing. He visited so many women in the last decades, switching out their vitamins for carefully crafted gene-modifying agents to improve their offspring.”

“No.”
That’s not what he said. That’s not what he told me.

“Yes. We didn’t know that he experimented with your own mother. Not until the test from New Horizons came back positive.”

I feel sick. So much sicker than Caliga could ever make me. Is that why my mother left us? Because she was part of an experiment too? The story behind her departure always made it easy to hate her. I’d been told that she selfishly wanted her own life, and that Dad’s traveling job, along with the baggage of children, was too inconvenient. But maybe she wanted to leave for an entirely different reason. Because we—and our father—were monsters.

Aj continues. “What a stupid mistake we made. We started noticing a few years ago. He was reporting fewer successful births. Fewer traited children. So we grew suspicious and began watching the orphanages, finding traited children being abandoned by their parents—children that we should have had in our houses from birth. He pretended he knew nothing about how they got there. We were angry—after all, we paid him well. Nearly ran off with you both before we stopped him.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Of course you wouldn’t. Didn’t you notice a pattern in how often you moved? Every ten months? He’d follow the women for nine months, examine the babies, and send them to us when they were found to have illnesses ‘incompatible with life.’” Sun air-quotes his words, then knots his fingers together in his lap. “And then he moved on. But this time, he wouldn’t do what we asked. For reasons I cannot fathom, he took control over the creation and futures of traited children. And so he had to go.”

It can’t be. How could it be?

My father.

For a minute or a century, I can’t see anything. I can’t hear anything, only a buzzing in my head as the world rewires itself. Small things fill my mind—the scuffed gold ring on his finger, the wiry gray hairs on his head that wouldn’t obey a comb. And his distracted presence, so large that you could feel his away-ness—even when I was close enough to touch him. I’d always tried to please him, to play by his rules, to be the child he wanted me to be. To pin down his presence with my obedience. But it didn’t work. He was always somewhere else.

Because he was
someone else.

I curl my fists so tightly that the nails dig into my bloodied palms. But this pain is nothing to what boils inside me.

So. This is what rage feels like.

God, I thought we were normal. Odd, yes, but normal; a family simply torn apart by a simple accident. That crazy, bobbling magpod in the street . . .

“The magpod accident?” My mouth is hardly able to make the words. “You did that?”

“Yes, well.” Aj sighs. “That was a hasty decision. Little did we know he had with him someone with a longevity gene. A financial holy grail, so to speak. Only second best to . . .” She kicks her thumb-sized foot with irritation.

“Aj, get on with it!” Sun growls with impatience.

“Well, you’re here at last.” She smiles. Her pink lipstick stains her teeth with cherry-colored blotches. “Our family is complete.”

“You’re not my family,” I say, unable to keep my voice from shaking.

“Oh, not according to your definition. But whether you like it or not, we are tied together by your father. And we seek to better our existence, not merely exist to waste our gifts—so selfish! Our valuable traits are made available to the masses, one by one. And when they become dependent on our very existence, we can regain our freedom.”

“Seems like you’re doing just fine now.”

“It’s an illusion. None of us may walk in the light of the sun without fearing for our lives. Not even the unmarred, like Micah. We have our protected playgrounds, but it is not the same. We are worse than second-class citizens. We aren’t even allowed to
be
.” SunAj stands up and comes to crouch over me. Aj’s face is so close, I can see the lipstick bleeding into the cracks around her lips. “We only want freedom. What do you want, Zelia?”

I breathe in measured increments, afraid to speak. Their grand plan seems good, but there’s darkness at its core. Finally, I can’t hold it in any longer. I’m not here to save the world. I’m willing to push aside my father’s betrayal for another time when I can examine it, pick it apart in masochistic detail. But first, Dylia.

“I want my sister.” Such a simple request. “Where is she?”

SunAj goes back to the chair. “In time, in time. You’ll be reunited.”

“I want to see her now,” I demand. “I have something worth more than her, maybe even more than me. I’m offering a trade.”

Sun squints at my brazenness, examining me like an insect. For the first time, everyone in the room perks up. I dig inside Dyl’s bag, pulling out the cold pack with the bottles and the microchip loaded with data. I carefully place the pack on the smoky glass floor and retreat. As if a few steps back could protect me from anything here.

“I’ve figured out how to manufacture my trait. The elixir will delete the telomeres and relink chromosome specific sequences, making them a continuous loop, like mine.”

Sun/Aj, whatever its name is, turns to let Sun speak.

“We have synthesized this as well.” My shoulders fall in defeat. Why did I imagine that I could beat them? When they probably have better equipment and money—

“However, ours has not been successful.”

I almost smile. “Mine worked on our cell culture karyotypes, and we even tested it on a pig—”

“Oy, you mean, this one?” The carrot-haired boy shoves the jelly beans into his pocket and reaches beneath his chair for a large, black box. He carries it over and takes the top off, dumping the contents at my feet.

With a sickening thud, the hairy stiff body of Callie rolls to my feet.