Halfskin (7 page)

He motioned for her to come closer and put a cell phone sized box near her throat. She tasted metal.

The humming died. "You're 39.9%, Cali."

Cali nodded.

"You're one-tenth of a percent from redline."

"I'm aware of that."

The guard looked at it while he snapped the reader back on his belt. There was a long silence.

"Can I go?" Cali asked.

"Sure," the big guard said. "Get comfortable. You're probably going to see this place from the inside,
reeeal
soon."

Cali tightened her lips. She wanted to explain that exponential growth of biomite cells was not an absolute and that her research in the last couple months was showing signs that it could be suppressed by injecting growth regulator code that limited biomite division. Even though she slowed it down, she doubted it could be reversed. Either way, she wasn’t about to tell anyone, not until Nix was out. And they weren’t going to just open the doors and set him free.

She planned on do that.

M0THER

The End of Spelling Bees

Joni Neisler's blue placard poked her in the chin. She walked to the slender mic at the front of the stage, far too timidly for someone at the National Championship. But probably just right for a five-year-old.

She tugged at the pleats in her dress.

The judges were conferring.

There was a man behind them. She couldn't see him so well, it was dimly lit beyond the judge's table, but she saw enough. He sat there with his barrel arms latched over his chest next to his tiny wife. He was scowling. They both were. They'd been doing that ever since the contest started. Always at her.

The judge looked over his laptop, his face bluish. "Spell ‘Otorhinolaryngological’."

Joni was supposed to take a deep breath. She was supposed to ask the judge to use it in a sentence. Ask the origin of the word. Her father told her to make it look like she was thinking it through, but the lumberjack dad and his little wife kept staring at her.

They were so angry.

She just wanted to get off the stage.

"Otorhinolaryngological.

O-T-O-R-H-I-N-O-L-A-R-Y-N-G-O-L-O-G-I-C-A-L.

Otorhinolaryngological."

Joni went back to her seat. She didn't wait to hear if she was right. She was right. She spelled everything right. She didn't know what was so hard.

The crowd rumbled. There was shifting around. The judges leaned their heads together as the next contestant went to the mic. None of the other kids looked at Joni. Joni was half their age, but that wasn't why they always looked at her strangely. It was something else. Probably the same reason the lumberjack dad was mad at her.

And he was standing, now.

He pulled his wife up, too. They were scooting down the aisle not making much of an effort to walk sideways like you're supposed to when you walk down a crowded aisle.

"Quiet, please." One of the judges, the nice one with perfect teeth, said, "Please settle down."

"We're done here," lumberjack dad said.

"Sir, you need to take your seat or your son will be disqualified. Distractions need to be kept to a minimum."

More disruptions.

Someone else stood.

Lumberjack dad stared at the nice judge. Joni thought he was going to slug him one.

"You test her?" He pointed that giant arm right at Joni.

"You have no right!" Now Joni's momma was standing up.

"Did you test her?" Lumberjack dad didn't pay any attention to momma. "The rules clearly state this is a natural-born Spelling Bee. There are competitions for biomite-enhanced young ones, but this is not one of them. And even if it was, that girl is five. She’s too young to be seeded; it’s against the law. So did you test her?"

Arguments broke out in the studio. Judges were standing, crew from off the stage were coming over, and security was already putting hands on the lumberjack dad. People were walking out. One of the contestant’s dad came up on stage and dragged him off by the arm. He gave Joni a mean look.

That's when the first tear came out.

"Did you inspect her brain stem?" Lumberjack dad was shouting over the chaos. He was pointing at the back of his neck while security ushered him away. "There'll be a knot the size of a BB where the seed point is."

One of the judges left. The others were calming the crowd. Joni's face felt hot. Her papa came out of nowhere, put his arm around her. She hid her face while people stomped off the stage. The lights turned up. There was a call for recess, a call for order.

And Joni cried in her papa's arms. She rubbed her tears, smearing them on her cheek, and reached behind her ear. Her little fingers crawled through the hair braided on the back of her head, the braid her mama did for her before the event, and searched the base of her skull.

Where she found a knot the size of a BB.

10

Nix used the white washcloth to wipe his face, his head, rubbed the film off his teeth and changed into a new white jumper. He did these things every time Cali came to visit. Ritual was key to remaining sane in solitary.

And he didn't want his sister to worry.

Nix folded the old jumper and placed it at the foot of the door where a guard could switch it out when he dropped off food. The small table was on its side in the hallway, the chess pieces scattered on the floor. Nix imagined George's computer program suggested he offer a draw after a few more moves.

Or kick over the table and leave.

Nix returned to his desk and straightened the only stack of papers on it. Every week, Avery sent a drawing. Sometimes it was animals, sometimes people. Most of the time, it was scenery, like the mountains or the lake. Regardless, it always had the sun. The sun was bright yellow and shiny, just like he remembered. He could see the sun rise from his window, but it wasn't the same from inside the Center. The sun didn't rise the same when freedom was gone.

He rubbed the waxy, yellow circle peeking over the lush hills. No liquid there. Just a sterilized piece of paper. Nix smelled it. It reminded him of home. Reminded him of when Cali and Thomas would be working at the lab late at night and Nix would put Avery to bed. He'd take a book from her nightstand and open it and the smell of the pages would fill his nose with memories. That's what those old pages smelled like: memories. They were old books, books that Cali read to him when he was little.

Remember the wild rumpus?

He smelled the paper again. He knew they were watching him. There were cameras that captured his every move, little eyes in the corners. Nothing went without record.

He was counting on it.

Nix pulled the chair in front of the monitor. He placed the pictures on his lap and waited.

Hours later, the monitor flickered.

His image disappeared, replaced by another sitting in a similar chair in a white room, hands on her lap.

"Little brother."

Nix smiled. He was always surprised how much the sight of his sister could warm him. Even if she was a faint shadow of what she used be. A waif. A troubled soul. Her shoulders were pointy, her cheeks drawn. The room was well-lit but, still, shadows darkened her eyes.

"How are you?" he asked.

She looked at her lap, picking at her fingers. "I'm well."

"You're eating?"

Nod.

She's too demure. She's thinking about it too much.

"How's the little angel?"

The shadows lightened. Her teeth showed pearly and white. She told him about making cookies. Avery came up with her own recipe: chocolate chip and potato chip cookies. Sounded gross because it was. They made jelly bean and peanut cookies, gummy worm cookies, and, finally, a batch of sugar and syrup cookies. They decided to take them to the volunteers at the animal shelter. They were going to form a group called Baking a Difference and would get the neighborhood kids involved.

Cali loosened up. She always felt relaxed when she talked about Avery. They went on to talk about other things, like the new playground down the street and the neighbor’s new baby.

Something slid under the door.

Nix saw the drawing. The corners of the paper were folded up. He looked at Cali. She was speechless.

He retrieved it and sat down. This one was an ocean with a dolphin. It was jumping out of the water with a big smile, free at last.

Free at last.

Nix touched the sun.

"She misses you." Cali sniffed. She didn't have to pretend. "She wants to know when you're coming home."

"What do you tell her?"

"I tell her soon."

"Maybe you should tell her the truth."

"I've petitioned the government to open a new branch in our lab. Our research was showing strong signs of biomite remission when exposed to RNA injections before they cut funding. If we can just have a year or two, Nix, I know I can bring your biomite levels below 40%."

"A year or two."

She looked back at her fingers. She was making all this up. There was no remission evidence in laboratories, public or private. Maybe in the basement, but not at the lab.

"You'll get me out of the redline?" Nix muttered.

"And out of here, if they just listen."

"That's a lot of ifs."

"That's all I got." Cali wiped both eyes. "You're all I got."

There was a lot of truth to that. Only Nix was aware of just how true it was. He stared at the picture, remembered going on vacation to Folly Beach outside Charleston, South Carolina and seeing dolphins for the first time with Avery. Remembered sleeping on the beach towel in the afternoon while she built castles and Cali and Thomas went for a long walk. That was vacation. That was a long time ago.

"She worked hard on that," Cali said. "I got her a new set of pencils with special colors just for you. She must've spent months drawing that one."

"I like it." He held it up. "Tell her thank you."

"Maybe one day you can tell her."

They talked about neighbors. Talked about his old friends. They filled the gaps with words, making it all seem normal. Finally, Cali stood up.

The screen went blank.

Nix sat for several minutes, looking at the colors. It was just like the other ones, pictures from a lovely girl to a loving uncle. He lifted it to his nose and breathed in the waxy aroma.

His sinuses tingled. A tickling sensation penetrated the porous bone plate that separated his olfactory senses and entered his brain like a virus. Like living cocaine. He held the back of the chair, kept his eyes open even though the room was spinning.

Special colors just for you.

Nix made it to his bed and lay down without looking suspicious. Cali told him on the last visit that Avery was working on a special drawing. He knew something was coming. Intuition told him to smell it.

Something embedded in the colors.

His sister was a genius. She spiked the drawing with something—probably a new breed of biomites, ones that eluded the ring’s effect. Nix could feel them spread out in his head like cold webbing. If the guards suspected something, they would already be in his cell.

She discovered something new.

Something undetectable.

Nix lay back and closed his eyes. For the first time in a long time, since the day that ring went around his neck, he smelled the ocean.

11

Cali wiped her eyes with a tissue. It was the first time she'd teared up during a visitation. She cried when they took her little brother from the house, but not since. Not ever. She'd never allowed herself to feel those emotions, but the thought of her little brother coming home was just too real.

It got to her.

It probably didn't hurt her performance. It would be completely expected, probably bored all the people watching.

She walked out without a word from any of them. She stopped outside the final door. The sun was overhead. Nix didn't see that very much, at least not on his own terms. That's what he always requested of his niece to draw for him: suns.
Draw me something yellow,
he would say.

Cali peeked through the back of the car. Avery was laid out on the seat, eyes closed. Cali closed the door behind her quietly so she wouldn't wake the angel. She stopped herself from giving her daughter a hug, giving her the good news.

Uncle Nix will be home soon.

12

The head of the table was empty. Marcus entered.