Control

CHAPTER 5

I DON’T BOTHER WITH THE TRANSPORT because there’s no button to push. At the end of the white hallway, I see the other metal door. A tiny light beside it blinks green. It’s open!

Behind me, there’s a rush of alarmed voices and running feet. A single deep voice rises above the babble.

“I’ll get her.”

And then I really run.

What kind of crazy, horrific stuff is going on here? God, for all I know, Dyl is being eaten alive by a different set of freaks on the other side of town. I’m not going to be anyone’s experiment. The solution to getting Dyl back can’t possibly rest with those things in there. I never should have trusted Marka.

I smash into the door and it bangs open, revealing a wide spiral stairwell. I expect to see the steps wind all the way down to the ground, but after a few twists, a white plane intersects the stairs, closing it off.

Natural light enters from somewhere, a window maybe. The agriplane. I have to try.

I pound up the stairs, matching each step with a lungful of air, trying to meet the demand my heart requires. I flick my holo stud on.

“Emergency! Police, anybody—” I gasp into the screen, but it’s nothing but gray fuzz. Cripes. I hit the top of the stairs, sheltered under a glowing white dome with a huge fan spinning lazily behind a metal grate. One single door has a red light next to it. Locked again. A few feet away, a window glows so brightly, I shield my eyes for a second. The sound of thudding feet rises up the helix of stairs.

I rush to the window. There is a field of gold and a sky of blue. The real sky. How can I break the window? In a panic, I scan the landing where a pile of stuff sits, as if waiting to be taken outside. I grab a heavy stick with a metal tool on the end, the teeth jagged and sharp. The thumping feet are only one flight below.

I hurl the metal end at the window and it breaks, too easily. An alarm wails—wah-wah-wah—so loud, I want to stopper my ears. With a firm grasp on the windowsill, I hoist myself up, but when I push my body through, the jagged shards from the window frame dig into me.

“Oh god,” I yelp, gasping. I yank a bloodied triangle of glass out of my forearm.

The vibrating alarm is still wailing. One more push, and I drag myself through the window despite the consequences. Glass teeth scrape against my belly as I wiggle through.

“Gotcha!” Behind me, a hand grasps my ankle. I kick frantically, and my foot makes hard contact with something fleshy. The hand lets go.

“Ow! Fuuuuu—”

Two more scrambles and I’m through. The brightness of a sun I haven’t seen in ten months pierces my eyes as I stumble forward. The agriplane is a dazzling expanse of waving golden plants that stand up in walls, separated by evenly spaced narrow rows.

I dash straight ahead, leaving behind the half sphere covering the stairwell. A beeping sounds from behind me, and when I glance back I see the four-armed boy burst out the door, rubbing his chin.

“Hey! Stop!”

Panting, I run as fast as I can, straight into the nearest row between the seven-foot-high stalks. The stringy leaves whip my face and neck. The crunches and thuds of my pursuer grow louder and louder.

I should have listened to Dad. I should have been more careful. Where am I going? I keep running, gulping down as much air as possible, but I know the distance between us is shrinking. Through the bits of open rows ahead, a translucent, glowing blue wall looms in the distance, blending in with the sky. I hadn’t noticed it before; now that it’s closer, I see it’s like a fence, too high to climb. As I head toward it, a white bird gets spooked out of the crops. I hear a fluttering of wings above me as I run wildly forward.

It heads straight for the blue wall, hits it with a weird, electric buzz, and drops into the yellow plants.

“You won’t get past the plasma fence,” the boy yells. He must have seen the bird too. It hasn’t recovered to fly away. It must still be on the ground somewhere, injured, or dead. Possibly fried.

Exhausted, I slow down against my will. My leg muscles are on fire from lactic acid building up, because I’m not getting enough oxygen. My stupid, wretched, small body. I can’t outrun this thing, this guy, whatever it is. I just can’t. Can’t. Can’t.

My mantra of defeat works. To crown a final moment of utter failure, I trip on a root sticking out of the row and fall, face-first, onto the dirt.

“It’s about time,” the boy says. He’s not even breathing hard.

I wipe my mouth with my sleeve, tasting blood. My arm is striped red from the window shards. Squinting up at the brightness of the sky, I see the guy’s not standing above me, but sitting down next to me. He leans back on two arms, while the other two cross his chest. Two dark eyes crinkle in the bright sun, and I notice that his black hair is buzzed neatly on his head. A straight-laced brand of monster.

“It’s okay. Hey, if I saw me for the first time, I’d run too.” He smiles at me for a second before turning to stare at the horizon. “I’m glad you fell. I don’t have four legs, and you probably would’ve outrun me.” He pats his flat belly. “’Cause I ate too many pancakes for brekkie today.”

His attitude is so non-hostile that I’m thrown a bit. I wipe more dirt off my face and just concentrate on breathing.

“Look,” he says. “I know what you’re thinking. We’re not going to eat you for our next meal.” He cocks his head thoughtfully. “You’re only big enough for an appetizer, anyhow. Or, perhaps, an amuse-bouche.”

My eyes must bulge out of their sockets, because he lifts all four hands up in protest.

“I’m just kidding! I swear!” He grins again, and extends one of his right hands. “I’m Hex. Your new . . .” He wiggles his head in an effort to find the right word, and then blinks hard. “Your new brother.”

I hesitate. Hex gets a hurt look when I don’t shake his hand, then wipes it on his pants instead.

“Zelia,” I whisper.

“Nice to meet you.” He puts his hand back down on the ground, and a different one comes up to rub his sore chin thoughtfully. “So, you know, just ask.”

“Ask what?”

“What you’re dying to ask me.” He lifts up all four arms in what can only be described as a pose fit for a Hindu god. He wiggles all twenty fingers. Even the best Broadway performer from last century couldn’t do jazz fingers like this kid.

“Okay.” I swallow, my throat so dry, I almost choke. “Did it . . . hurt when they did that to you?”

The boy throws his head back with a hearty laugh. “Do this to me? Nothing here gets done to you. Nah, I was born like this. My parents took one look at me on the ultrasound and signed me up for New Horizons when I was one minute old.” There isn’t a trace of anger or resentment in his face. I am duly impressed.

“So . . . all of you guys were just born like . . . that?”

“Yep. Just like your sister was born the way she was.”

Whoa. Do all the members of Carus House know my life situation? I decide to feign stupidity.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, she’s gifted. Like we all are. Well, maybe not you, but you’re an exception. A rarity, shall we say, for Chez Freak.” He springs off the ground like a jumping spider, brushes the soil off his hands, and extends the cleanest one to me.

My legs shake from the recent sprint, and the cuts on my arms awaken with fresh agony. I take his hand, and it’s soft and strong and warm. I’m surprised. I guess I thought it would feel less human.

“Thanks,” I say.

He points the way back to the stairwell. When I still don’t move, he pats my back with short little taps, like I’m a puppy. His arms are strong, so every little pat sends me scooting forward.

“Look, Carus is a decent place. And Marka is a real sweetheart, you’ll see. The other kids are pretty harmless.”

I give him a suspicious look.

“Okay, well. They’re irritating, occasionally. Maybe most of the time. But basically harmless.” At the door, he keys the pad and it swings open for us. The alarm is no longer wailing. Inside the dome, we walk down one flight of circular stairs to a door invisibly set into the wall.

“It’s Hex, open up,” he says to the door.

“Password,” a boy’s voice intones.

“Just open the door, you rectum.”

“That’s not protocol!” the voice complains.

“I’ll show you four fistfuls of protocol if you don’t open the goddamn door,” he bellows. My face must be blanching white, because he coughs and sweetens his tone. “Our new guest is waiting, turd.”

The entrance slides open, but I don’t cross the threshold. I just stand there. Ahead is a dark hallway, lit with oval medallions on the doors glowing an eerie blue. I know that when I take that step inside, I’m agreeing to something, but to what, I’m not sure. Somewhere in there might be answers about Dyl, about how to get her back.

Hex steps inside, waiting. He shrugs, which, for a four-armed boy, looks like his whole body is expanding upward for a moment.

“Come on inside, Zelia.”

I feel the air entering me and leaving, my body ticking down to a decision. Hex leans in closer, and his eyes are kind.

“It’s what your dad wanted.”

I freeze. Dad and Carus don’t exist in the same universe. How could they? He smiles when I step forward. The door slips shut behind me.

“How could you know something like that?”

“We just know. After all, we’ve known him for what, almost two years now?”

“You knew my dad? How? We’ve only been in Neia for ten months. We’ve only ever been in one place for ten months.”

“You were in Okks before this, right?” He leads me down the black and phosphorescent hallway, down a few steps. I try to keep up with him. He may not have four legs, but he’s at least six inches taller than me.

“Right. South of Kansas City. How . . .” My mind churns in thought. I remember Dad’s work hours were even longer than usual while we lived there. He went from distracted to totally out of touch with our lives then, but we figured it was stress. Okks and Neia have a looser border policy with each other. He must have taken the high-speed magtrain into Neia all the time. I grunt, half exasperated, and half out of breath. “So, my life is an open book for everyone here, but no one’s bothered to tell me?”

“Whatever happened to ‘ignorance is bliss’?” Hex turns to raise his brows at me.

“Ignorance is a four-letter word to me.”

“Ah.” Hex stops at a door that’s lit with a faintly glowing oval medallion, pink instead of blue.

“Cy? We need to get into the infirmary,” he says to the door. I’m wondering if all the doors have assigned names, when the door clicks open. Hex snorts. “Good. He’s acknowledging my existence today.”

“The door?” I ask, confused.

“I wish. My life would be easier if I only had to talk to doors in this place.”

Hex touches the door and it slides open. Inside, it’s dim except for the yellowish glow along the edge of the floor and several green lights dotting the wall. I can see already it’s an oval room.

“Do you need permission to get into all the rooms here?” I ask.

“No, just this one. We kept running out of some of the meds because we helped ourselves to the first aid stuff. Only Cy has access now.”

Huh, so all the other rooms are a free-for-all. Otherwise, it’s only hard to get into Carus, or hard to get out. I tuck that away for future reference.

“Let’s see. How about a cheesy sunrise,” Hex says. The room obeys him, and the yellow brightness mixes with peachy pinks that increase at a gradual pace. In a few seconds, it’s easier to see an examining table and a wall of cabinets and drawers, each lit with a tiny green light. A variety of medical devices adorn the walls on clear shelves.

Hex pats the table. “Sit down. Your arms are pretty torn up. You’ll need someone to look at them.”

“But—”

“Hey, blood first, details later. Bleeding to death is one way to go, but I don’t recommend it myself,” he says, pointing to the blackish drops on the floor. Hex turns away from me, speaking to the center of the room. “Cy. She’s ready.” He stares up toward the ceiling, as if an answer might drop down. It stays quiet. “Dude. I think she only has a half pint of blood left.”

Suddenly, a voice comes from nowhere. It invades the room, like it’s materializing out of the air around us. “I’m busy. Ask Marka.”

The room is bright enough now for me to see Hex’s face flush. Ropy veins stick out of his neck. His next words come through his teeth.

“Cy, get your ass up here, or I’ll drag it over myself.” His voice scares me. I squirm away from him and pretend to study the medical gadgets on the wall.

“Goddamned meathead,” Cy responds. A crash of something hitting the floor above us echoes in our room.

“That person is going to help me?” I say.

“Yep. Welcome to the family,” he says with a sarcastic grin.

I turn back to the wall of gadgets. A cracked oval object sits on a tiny shelf. It’s a cardioscope for checking out the heart, but an old one. I breathe in sharply, recognizing the scuff marks. I know this scope. Dyl would steal it from my dad’s medical bag when she was a toddler. She’d sit on it for hours, pretending it was a magic egg.

I point at it, my finger shaking. “Is this . . .”

“Your dad’s. He left it for Cy, actually.” Hex shoves two hands in his pockets and rests the other pair on his hips. “He was our doctor. A mighty good one too.”

I pick up the cardioscope and put it against my heart, almost reflexively. The machine whirrs and I lift it away, to see the results, but the screen is cracked as well. My heart is unreadable right now.

“He wanted us to come here?” I ask, putting it back on the shelf.

“Yeah, if anything happened to him. Of course, I didn’t hear his conversation with Marka. Wilbert did, and Wilbert can’t keep a secret for the life of him, he’s the biggest gossipmonger—”

The door opens. The tattooed boy comes in, clad in dark jeans and dun-gray T-shirt. He’s taller than Hex, with wiry rather than bulging muscles. Up close, the tattoos look fresh and black. No fading to blue or blurred edges. On a firmly muscled left arm, there are bodies swirling in a dark river, shrieking in torment. On his right arm, three women cry out, their heads wreathed in serpents. The snakes climb up and adorn his right neck and sharp cheekbone.

“This is Cy,” Hex says, but Cy goes straight to the drawers in the wall without even glancing at my face.

“Marka should do this. I don’t have time,” Cy says. His voice is so deep, it almost sounds like a growl.

“It’s your job, buddy. Earn your keep for once.” Hex lays a heavy hand on my shoulder and the weight of it presses down on my spine. He whispers, “Don’t worry, he’ll take care of you. He knows I can break him like a twig.” With a wink, he’s out the door.

Cy keeps his back to me. “Sit down.” His order is so crisp that I immediately obey, but then I realize I’m afraid to be treated by someone who won’t even look me in the eye.

“Um. You seem kind of busy, so maybe I should just go to a hospital,” I say, easing back off the table and sliding awkwardly in my own blood. I flinch when he bangs a pair of metal tongs on the table.

Cy lifts his head. “You can’t.”

“But I’ll come back. I won’t run away this time. Marka can even send someone with me.”

“You can’t.” He stands there, a pillar of ash and ink. In contrast to his one pale cheek, his eyes are dark, stippled with gold. They flick down to meet mine, finally, and then to the drip of blood coming off my fingertips.

“Aren’t you capable of saying anything except ‘can’t’?” I snap, surprised at the sharpness of my voice. My mood isn’t helped by the fiery pain from ten or so bits of window still stuck in me.

Cy takes one step closer. “You can’t leave. And even if you did, you couldn’t call a magpod to take you anywhere.”

Now I’m panicked. Even when I was little I had the mag system. And even without a father, or a sister, I have the mag system—just like everyone else does. “Why couldn’t I call a magpod?”

“You’re not registered anymore.”

“You mean registered for magpod use?”

“No. You’re not registered in the entire system.” Seeing my alarmed expression, he throws me a tiny nugget of information. “Once you enter Carus House, outside this place, you don’t exist anymore.”

My hand instinctively goes to my holo stud, when Cy clucks at me.

“Don’t bother,” he says, but I pinch it on anyway. My screen is still just as salt-and-pepper fuzzy as it was on the agriplane. I force myself to breathe really fast, which is my usual reaction to bad things. My normal, shallow breaths are pitifully inadequate for freak-outs and anxiety. Cy watches me as I force the extra breaths in, preventing a wave of dizziness.

“What about my sister?” I say.

“She doesn’t exist anymore either. Especially for you.”