Feuds (6 page)

Worsley just didn't look the part of a fighter. He was strong but sinewy, much leaner than Cole. He was over six feet tall, with dark hair that was always flopping into his eyes. Worsley had long, bony fingers and he wore glasses, too: a prescription he'd written himself. He was the closest thing they had to a real doctor in the Slants. And he was the only one Cole knew in the Slants who had a college education. Worsley had attended university in New Pacific—the northwestern region of the New Americas—at a prestigious institution in Helena. It had been funded by his FEUDS winnings, plus a rare and coveted Columbus Academic Exchange Scholarship less than a decade ago.

Worsley could fix this.

They were less than a few feet from shore when water began to accumulate at the bottom of the wooden vessel. It lapped against Cole's shoes, the only pair of decent ones he owned. The motie saw Cole looking down at them and laughed.

“What's so funny?” Cole asked, annoyed. Tension crept through him, making him feel like he was being strangled. But the motie just kept on laughing to himself and ignoring Cole, and water kept on building up at the base of the boat.

Cole looked around him; they were maybe halfway across now, but he couldn't make out the beginnings of either side of the shore, and the water around them was pitch black and menacing.

“Turn around,” Cole said to the motie. But the old man ignored him and they kept moving forward, the waves lapping at the side of the boat. Cole had no choice but to shut up and pray.

When they finally got to the Columbus border, Cole scrambled out of the boat, his already drenched shoes slapping against the muddy surface of the shore. He hefted Caitlyn onto his shoulder, reaching back only to place a single dollar in the man's hand. It was all he had.

There were roughly fifteen separate small communities in the Slants. They were really just groups of leased trailers and other “temporary” housing structures clustered around public bathrooms, schools, bars, and rec centers that were owned and operated by North Quadrant. A child peered out from behind the flimsy screen door of a trailer, and Cole held a finger of his free hand to his lips. The child nodded. Kids here grew up fast.

By the time Cole reached his own narrow three-room mobile home, he could barely feel his arms, and the girl hadn't made a sound in half an hour. He kicked open the screen door to confront five startled faces: his brother Hamilton's friends. The room smelled like stale beer and sweat. Tom Worsley was there, thank God. He jolted up so fast at the sight of Caitlyn that his glasses jumped on his nose, and he knocked over his stool. Hamilton was on his feet, too, rushing toward Cole.

“She needs water,” Cole told him. “Maybe medicine, I don't know. I don't know what's wrong with her.”

“Worsley,” Hamilton said over his shoulder. “Do you have your bag with you? Looks like the girl's strung out on something, maybe OD'd.” Worsley nodded, pushing his hair out of his eyes with one palm as he darted past Cole, presumably to grab his medical kit from his house two doors down.

Cole struggled to kneel, placing Caitlyn's body on the pallet they used as a sofa. He looked up to find Hamilton's eyes narrowing, his face set in an expression of disbelief. Cole braced himself. Even with blood trickling from her mouth, it was easy to see what Caitlyn was.

“You brought home a Prior,” Hamilton growled, his voice low. The other three guys shifted, and someone let out a cry of disbelief.

“I didn't know what else to do,” Cole told him. “She needed help. I couldn't go to the hospital—”

Hamilton lunged at him before Cole could finish his sentence. He grabbed Cole by the shirt collar, and Cole allowed his brother to yank him into the bedroom. He could have resisted—Hamilton was taller, but he was skinny, and Cole could have creamed him in a fight any day. But Cole's entire body felt numb. He couldn't find it in himself to fight.

Hamilton slammed the door behind them, kicking it shut with his heel.

“How could you be so stupid?” Hamilton hissed, keeping his voice low. The veins on his forehead were pulsing, and he looked more furious at his little brother than he'd ever been. All at once, he seemed to take in what Cole was wearing: his nice shirt, his clean, pressed jeans. “What the hell is going on, Cole? What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking I'd help her!” Cole snapped. “You saw her—I couldn't just leave her!”

“Where did you even find her?” Hamilton released him. “Never mind. I don't need to know. We'll talk about this later. Dammit, Cole…” He trailed off, still pacing the room, both hands massaging his temples.

“Hamilton,” came a voice from the main room. “Hamilton, you better get in here quick, man.” Cole and Hamilton pushed back into the room just as Worsley came through the front door with a large canvas bag in tow.

One of the guys from the table, a kid Cole had never seen before, was staring at Caitlyn, his face ashen. One of the other guys had left—
Not to get the police,
Cole prayed. Even though the police force in the Slants had been put in place by the Priors specifically for the Gens' protection, they were notoriously vicious. The third guy had been pressing a damp cloth to Caitlyn's forehead. But now he'd backed off. Because Caitlyn was bleeding from her ears and nose, too, now—not just her mouth. Her ears and nose were gushing blood, and her face was frozen into an expression of misery.

Worsley inserted his body between the brothers. “Let me take a look.”

“Can you help?” Cole could hear that he was pleading. “Please?” Worsley didn't answer. Instead, he opened his bag and bent over Caitlyn, shielding her from Cole's view.

Cole couldn't help being relieved. He'd seen a lot of blood in his life, but never anything as horrifying as this.

“You said you were going to the mines,” Hamilton said to Cole while Worsley worked. “And I thought that was bad. But this is pure idiocy! How could you be so careless? If someone had seen you—” He broke off, breathless. “You'd have been arrested, maybe worse.” Cole glanced down at Caitlyn's inert body, still covered in her tight white dress—now horribly stained—and expensive shoes. He
was
an idiot. Anyone could tell she was a Prior. But he'd had no choice other than to bring her home. “Make no mistake,” Hamilton continued, “if this happens again—if you
ever
go back to the other side—I'll call the police myself. I'll get you thrown in jail faster than you can throw a punch. I will
not
watch you put our family at risk.”

“Hamilton,” Worsley interrupted. “Be quiet and sit down. You're not helping.” Worsley's voice sounded strained, as though he were speaking from a distance. He adjusted his glasses with one hand.

“I didn't know what to do,” Cole said to no one in particular, hating himself for how weak he sounded, how afraid. “I thought she was about to die. I didn't mean for any of this to happen.” Cole sat down heavily on a kitchen chair, unable to process everything he was hearing. He gave his brother a long look, and Hamilton's expression softened. He crossed the small space to join Cole at the table.

“You really didn't, did you?” Hamilton asked, the rage gone from his voice. Cole shook his head, and Hamilton laughed ruefully, shaking his head, too. “Only you, little brother. I don't know how you get yourself into these things.”

He patted him on his shoulder. “Go lie down,” he told Cole, his voice kinder now. “We'll take care of this. It'll be okay.”

As much as Hamilton could be hard on him at times, he was still his older brother, and Cole knew that when things got really,
really
bad—like now—Hamilton had his back. Grateful, he nodded up at him, breathing more easily.

“What's happening to her?” William, a friend of Hamilton's—the one who'd given Caitlyn the washcloth—broke in. He pointed a trembling finger at Caitlyn's inert form. His expression was of pure terror.

Cole turned his attention back to Caitlyn, whose face now looked mottled, as though her capillaries had begun to burst. Worsley bent over her just as the redness in her skin began to form long, jagged cracks that split and leaked until her whole face was covered in fissures and blood. It looked like her face was a mask that had begun to break apart. Cole took a small step back and stumbled. He gripped the wall for support.

“Narxis,” Worsley said, straightening up. The room went silent. “I had a professor in West Freedom who talked about it. There were rumors, mostly—no tangible evidence. But this is exactly what he described.” Worsley's face was ashen.

“Narxis,” Cole repeated, afraid to keep looking but unable to look away. “What's going to happen to her?”

Worsley met his eyes. “If it really is Narxis,” he said, “she'll die. There's been no research for treatments. There's no cure. Everyone who gets Narxis will die.”

“Die.” Cole allowed the word to roll off his tongue and sink into his head. He glanced toward Caitlyn's body, where it lay prone on the floor. Her face was now bleeding so heavily that he could no longer make out her features. He sank to the floor and knelt beside her, wanting to grab her hand but afraid to touch her now.

Hamilton crouched next to Cole and draped his arm around his shoulders. “It'll be okay,” he told him. “You were right. You did the right thing, bringing her here.” It was what Cole needed to hear. He turned his head, fighting the tears that pooled in the corners of his eyes. A gagging sound came from the corner, and then a splatter; it was William, vomiting into the sink.

“Can't you do anything?” Hamilton asked Worsley, his voice rough. “Can't you at least make her more comfortable?”

“She can't feel anything,” Worsley told them. “She's too far gone.”

A hacking sound came from the pallet where Caitlyn lay. Blood gurgled from her mouth onto the towel Cole had wadded up next to her. Then a rush of more blood, and then she was still.

“It's over.”

Hamilton disappeared and came back moments later with a sheet, their only spare. He draped it over Caitlyn's body, taking pains not to touch her. Cole had been in a hundred fights, but he'd never seen anyone suffer so violently.

“I'm sorry,” Hamilton said, gripping Cole's shoulder. Cole knew that was his way of saying he wished he hadn't been so hard on Cole.

“What is … Narxis?” Cole asked Worsley.

“It's an infection,” he replied. “I haven't ever seen a case myself. It's … it's…” He trailed off, shaking his head.

“Tell us,” Hamilton said. “Please. I want to know what we're dealing with.”

“One of my professors claimed to have treated patients with Narxis,” Worsley explained. “But everyone thought Professor Alkem was senile, and he never had any evidence to support his claims. Prior bodies aren't supposed to be vulnerable to anything. But my friend Jensen swore Narxis was a result of all the manipulations Priors do. The experiments. Jensen had met with Professor Alkem, who said denial was an inherent part of the disease. Priors would never be able to recognize the symptoms in time to contain the virus and prevent it from spreading.”

“So why haven't we heard of it?” Hamilton wanted to know.

“Politics. The Priors suppressed it. They thought they'd gotten rid of it—ironed out the kinks in the technology. Alkem's findings were never recognized. They were never included in any official diagnostic handbooks.”

“What does that mean?” Cole's voice sounded far away, even to himself.

“It means they'll die,” Worsley said quietly. “Every one of them.”

 

5

DAVIS

It was Monday, the day of the PAs, and Davis's dad was late.

“Rock that body, girl,” called out Sasha, winking as she passed Davis in the courtyard just outside Excelsior. It was her way of saying good luck.

“Thanks,” Davis called out weakly, wishing she could manage a smile.

If Davis didn't qualify for the ballet trials … She pushed the thought out of her mind. She would. She had to.

She sat down on the shiny steps of her school's main entrance, adjusting her sunglasses against the afternoon glare, trying to focus her swirling thoughts and steady her shaking hands. She zipped up her light jacket, fiddling with the small pig charm she'd threaded onto Vera's braided leather cuff. Fia had given her the little silver pig that morning, a solemn look on her face as she'd pulled it from a chain of her own. “Pigs are good luck,” she'd said before wrapping her arms around Davis's waist.

“You're all the luck I need,” Davis had told her, kissing her lightly on the cheek before dashing out to face one of the biggest days of her life. Now she waited, staring at the ground, breathing deeply, hoping that luck would work. Her shadow on the limestone slabs was dwarfed by the imposing stone administration office, its peaked roof supported by pillars as thick as tree trunks. A long iron gate marked the school's circumference, separating it from the rest of the city.

Even trying to count the rungs on the gate, she couldn't keep her mind from buzzing all over the place: The party. The boy. The way he'd kissed her … Davis had replayed the events of Friday night over and over again pretty much all weekend. She couldn't get him out of her head. Vera had thought there was something weird about him, didn't get a good vibe. Davis winced at the memory of her friend's disapproval. There
was
something different about him … but for some reason it made Davis's adrenaline spike in a good way. Still, maybe Vera was right that it was just the unexpectedness of it all that had been so exciting. Vera had even offered to hook her up with Oscar's cousin Joaquin, who was going to be home on break from college next month. She knew Vera was probably right that Cole couldn't be trusted. But then why was the memory of it as fresh as if it had happened moments ago? Why did it still, days later, make her weak with excitement? Why were these thoughts interfering with everything she'd done since, from brushing her teeth to making breakfast with Fia to practicing for the PAs?