Control

CHAPTER 6

I AM NOT A VIOLENT PERSON.

I am the timid girl in the back of the room, the one who finds comfort in the shadows of stronger people.

“I want to talk to Marka. Now.” I practically spit out the words.

Cy regards me like I’m a new brand of irritation, worse than a splinter and slightly more entertaining than fire ants. He plays with the ebony metal ring in his lower lip and raises his other hand.

“If she passes out, it’s not my fault,” he says to the walls.

“I hear you, Zelia.” Marka’s voice enters the room, sounding patient but tired. “I’ll tell you everything I know, but I insist you be treated first.”

I let my arms slap down on the examining table, splattering candy-red drops of blood against the pristine surface. A wave of dizziness hits me, and my fingers start to tremble and tingle. Darkness nips at my peripheral vision as I push extra breaths in and out, but it doesn’t help. So this is what exsanguination feels like. Great.

“You.” Cy points at the long examination table. “Lie down. And stay down.”

I flop onto the table, attempting to keep the light-headedness at bay. Cy leans over, holding a silver instrument that can only be described as an elephant’s tweezers, but fancier. They drip purplish fluid from the glistening points. I clench my fists, expecting pain, but none comes. After a light tug, I hear the first glass shard hit a metal collection tray.

I start to relax. Lying on my back, there’s nothing to look at except Cy. I notice again that behind all the tattooed skin is a good cheekbone. He works steadily, never looking up. My heart hardens a little more. The distance he’s put between us feels like an insult.

Plink, plink, plink. The shards are leaving me faster and faster. As his fingertips touch the sensitive inner part of my arm, I squirm.

“Stop moving,” he hisses. He pushes my shirt up and moves onto the few shards stuck into my abdomen. My belly involuntarily quivers when he touches me. He hovers so close, I can smell him. Unlike the boys at school, there is no rancid boy/sock odor. It’s something else. Smoky, but not awful like illegal cigarettes. It’s earthier, better. I wonder if Dyl has ever downloaded a scent like this—

“Let’s go.”

Cy goes to the door. We’re already done? I look down at my arms, and they’re red, but the skin is already knitted together. That fast?

“Any time this century would be nice.”

“Okay, okay!” I jump off the table, testing myself for dizziness, but it doesn’t come. I’m impressed. I follow him out the door, trotting to keep up with him because he’s almost a foot taller than me. God, are there any short people in this place? The gap between us widens, and Cy never checks to see if I’m keeping up as we head down several sets of stairs. It’s clear he prefers I didn’t exist. If it weren’t for his cheekbones and eau de handsome scent, I’d prefer he didn’t exist either. Trust no one, I scold myself. Even if they smell good.

I keep trailing behind as a half-dozen rooms pass by with no chance to see inside.

“What are those rooms for?”

“I’m not your cruise director,” he says dryly. Something about his tart attitude peels away my normal politeness.

“So, what’s your affliction?”

“Don’t call it that.”

“Why not? If it were such a great thing, you wouldn’t be hiding in Carus House, would you?”

“God, you’re so naïve.”

Cy’s snippy retorts only provide a target for the anger I didn’t realize I was feeling so strongly. I decide to embrace this newfound smart-assed-ness. “So, you aren’t an odd color, and you don’t have any extra appendages. Rudeness isn’t really a special trait.”

“Sorry to interrupt your analysis, but I’m done babysitting.” Cy steps aside to reveal a door at the end of a corridor, turns, and leaves me there.

“Jerk,” I say under my breath. As I step forward, the door opens.

It’s a room unlike any I’ve ever seen. The enormous walls on either side are floor-to-ceiling glass cases backlit with a golden light. Inside them, hundreds of identical tiny glass-stoppered bottles are lined up precisely. They remind me of costly perfumes from a century ago, before downloaded scents became available.

I read the labels on the bottles right by the door. Bipolar Disorder, Viral Schizophrenia, and Classic Depression sit side by side.

Marka sits at a single table in the center of the room. An ancient spectrophotometer in remarkably good shape rests beside a few labeled bottles and a rack of test tubes. I point to the glass case.

“What is this stuff?”

“They’re scents. For me to learn from.”

“You can smell viral schizophrenia?” I ask, incredulous. I don’t even know what that is.

“I can now, though it’s taken me a lot of practice.” Marka lifts her face a touch, sniffing the air that preceded me when I walked in. In a flash of déjà vu from our magpod ride here, I realize she’d been reading me like a hospital chart. That’s why she knew I had a headache. “So this is your trait?”

“Since birth.”

I shake my head. It’s all so overwhelming, but I need focus like never before. I take a huge breath, as if it’s got to last me an hour. It’s time.

“Please. Can you tell me now? What happened to Dylia?”

Marka pushes the test tube aside so she can clasp her hands together in front of her. “She’s in a place called Aureus House.”

There isn’t even time for me to exhale. That was way too easy.

“Aureus House? Where is that?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s in Neia. Cy’s been trying to track them down, but unlike us, they move every few months.”

“Let me guess. They’re off the grid,” I say, and Marka nods reluctantly. “Why?”

“Carus and Aureus members are all off, due to the nature of their inhabitants. You being the exception, of course. Do you remember that law on human genetic manipulation, the HGM bill from 2098?”

“Sure. We’re not allowed to fuse humans with frogs and stuff. The docs in my labs always complained about how limiting the laws are.”

“Exactly, but that’s for direct manipulation of the human genome. There is a corollary to the law that few people know. Any genomes with significant mutations that could potentially alter the evolution of ‘normal’ humans are also outlawed.” She waits for the understanding to show on my face.

“Any genomes with . . . Wait, you mean people? Even if it happens naturally, from birth? They’re illegal?”

“Yes. Illegal, and if not fixable by a simple surgical procedure and sterilization, then they are removed from society.”

“You mean, stuck in this place.”

Marka’s face grows impossibly sad. “Or killed.”

I swallow. “Who? Who kills them?”

“It’s very strict. If you show up anywhere outside of our home, your life is forfeit. It starts with an arrest. After that, you disappear. There are no second chances.” She picks up a bottle and turns it in her hand. “You’re either on the grid, or you don’t exist.”

“Why doesn’t everyone know about this?”

“People don’t question what they don’t see. It’s been going on for decades now.”

The warping of my world order is disorienting. I pull my necklace out of my pocket so I can hold the tiny, cool, black box, letting the familiar mass sink into my palm. I run my thumb along the edge, letting the atoms rub off on my skin. Maybe they’ll strengthen me for the next few questions I have.

“How many Aureus and Carus houses are there out there?”

“There’s only one Aureus, but I believe it controls several underground houses. There are only a few unassociated places, like Carus. I know of one in Chicago; possibly another on the West Coast.”

“So Dylia has some trait we never knew about?”

“Yes,” she says, lining up the rack of test tubes perfectly parallel to the spectrophotometer. “I promised your father I’d get you both if something happened to him, but I never imagined it would be under these circumstances. Your father never told me that Dyl was gifted.”

“So he knew? About Dyl?”

“He must have. How he managed to get her a valid F-TID without being detected by the government, I have no idea.”

“He should have said something to us. To her. Dyl had a right to know.”

“He was probably trying to protect you both. He could have told me. Carus is built on secrets. I could have held one more.” Marka’s disappointment rises to color her cheeks.

“Is Aureus just like this place?” I say, hopeful. Except for surly Cy and the green girl, everyone else seems kind of nice. But then I remember how Dyl was taken. I know the answer won’t be good before Marka opens her mouth.

“Aureus doesn’t have the same philosophy as we do. I believe our kids have a right to be normal and simply be. Maybe share their talents, if the world was willing to accept them. Aureus has more of an . . . industrial philosophy.”

“Industrial? You mean, marketable?”

“Have you ever heard of SkinGuard?

“Of course.” The ads are everywhere. It’s supposed to make your skin hard, like an insect shell. They use it in combat and on the police force. Only the Neanderthal bullies in school obsess over buying it. “So—Aureus makes that?”

“Right. Costs a fortune. The public doesn’t know where it actually comes from. Aureus uses a middle agency to be the front and pay people in the government to look the other way. It’s legal because the formula doesn’t tamper with actual genomes.”

“Dyl isn’t safe, is she?” I whisper. Marka shakes her head. The answer is so awful, she can’t even say it out loud. “But you can get her back, right?”

“I don’t know, Zelia. I’ve been thinking about it, and I have no answers. Carus’s relationship with Aureus has always been defensive, not offensive. I could risk everything—everyone—and it may not even work.”

If Marka won’t save Dyl, then who else would battle such a beast? Marka walks over to one of the glass cabinets and pulls out a small vial. As she approaches me, I keep my hands clasped together so they won’t tremble.

She unstoppers the tiny glass bottle, sniffs it delicately, and hands it to me.

“This is what you smell like.”

I read the label on the cold glass.

Fear.

MARKA LEADS ME TO A ROOM down the hall. “Wilbert will show you how things work here. We can talk more tomorrow, after you settle in. Okay?”

“Okay,” I say. Marka leans toward me as if to give me a hug, and I stiffen. She’s not my mother. I hardly know what that even is. And my dad was a back-whacker, not a hugger. I only reserved hugs for Dyl, and even those were pretty scarce.

Marka pulls back, her eyes steady on me. “If you need me, just call me through the wall-coms.”

“Thank you.”

“Oh, and you should know. Wilbert’s going through a thing lately.”

“What thing?”

“Puberty. Seems like he’s never going to recover, but anyway. Just to warn you.”

She leaves me in front of Wilbert’s closed door. I feel numb, not yet ready to talk to another stranger. I’m a walking anomaly of physics, weighed down by an absence of knowledge.

I don’t know what my sister’s trait is.

I don’t know where she is.

I don’t know how to get her back.

The door before me opens as I sway closer, still reeling. There’s got to be a way. There has to be. There . . .

. . . are pictures of half-naked headless women in this room.

There’s a bed covered in bright blue sheets. On a bedside table is an enormous bottle of anti-nausea medicine, No-PuK. It’s like, gallon sized. But the walls are what have me gaping. They’re plastered with digitized, rotating images of women. I recognize them, because they’re wearing skimpy, low-cut outfits I’ve seen from the tabloids zooming by on the streets at peak ad time. I don’t recognize them by their faces, because they’ve all been digitally removed.

“Uh, okay,” I say out loud. Maybe it is better that Dyl isn’t here.

“I see you’ve found my room.”

I whirl around, my heart exploding in a drumbeat thrill. The kid with two heads is standing behind me, looking sheepish. He’s got sandy-brown hair, lovely hazel eyes, and he waves energetically, as if I’m far away. I try as hard as possible not to stare at the gigantic, faceless other head bulging out of the side of his neck.

I back away from him. “Oh! Hi. I was just looking for . . . um . . .” Answers, not half-naked, faceless women.

He waves at the pictures. “I know, everyone thinks I’m weird. I always feel like the models are judging me, so I remove their faces.”

A girl’s voice pops through the walls. “He likes to objectify their bodies, guilt-free.”

“Vera!” Wilbert sputters. “This is a private conversation!”

“It’s a hallway. I can listen if I want to. So how’s our princess doing?”

“Go away!” Wilbert hollers. I agree. I don’t like the bitchy way she called me “princess.”

“What’s the No-PuK for?” I ask.

“I’ve got a very sensitive stomach,” Wilbert says, gently touching his belly.

“Living gives him motion sickness,” Vera informs me.

I whisper to Wilbert, “Is she going to listen to my conversations all the time?”

“Why?” Her voice is adversarial. “What have you got to hide?”

I’ve got nothing to hide, but there’s plenty I choose not to share—I don’t give a flying fart about what color she is. I’ve just lost everything I’ve ever known and she’s getting all hydrochloric acid on me.

I point to myself and silently mouth the words What did I do? to Wilbert.

“My guess is, you’re female and you exist. Probably an alpha female thing, like wolves or rats—”

“If you just called me a rat, I’m going to twist both your heads off,” Vera snaps. I wonder if one of those heads includes mine.

“VERA! Go AWAY!” Wilbert half whines, half yells.

“Fine, perv. See ya.”

Wilbert slouches in relief, and his extra head sags accordingly. “Come on in.”

I follow Wilbert into the room, and he points to a circular table studded with tiny lenses. “Carus House. Top level.”

A three-dimensional hologram showing the top of our building comes into view, complete with agriplane above. Wilbert touches the image, pulls it out to expand it ten-fold. It looks like there are four levels to our part of the building.

“First, you need to know about security. Marka and I grant clearance. No one leaves or enters without permission from both of us.”

“Exactly who are you keeping out?” I ask.

“Everyone. But mostly, Aureus members. We’re valuable to them, so we have to keep a tight ship. To get in, there’s both a DNA screen and the mirror-password program—”

“Oh! That was like magic! Did you design that?”

“Yes. We’ll have to set yours up too.” Wilbert beams and his extra head pinks up. “I’m almost done with my doctorate in nanocircuitry. Marka lets me update all the security measures.”

“You’re done with college? How?” I don’t get it. This kid looks barely seventeen.

“Oh, this.” He reaches over to tap his other head, which is smooth with no eyes, nose or mouth, but has a soft downy scattering of blond hair. Once again the revulsion swells inside me. It’s like looking at a smashed bird on the street. I want to turn away, but I can’t.

“My brains take turns sleeping. It’s like having two lives in one. This one”—he taps his normal head—“is asleep now. I’m dreaming of cupcakes. Cy’s wearing a flowered apron. Heh.” He stares off into the cornerless room, and makes a face. “Ugh. Lima bean cupcakes with bloody needles stuck in them. Gross. Count on Cy to ruin a perfectly nice dream.” Wilbert finally remembers I’m sitting here, openmouthed. “So now I’m using my consciousness from this guy.” He touches the faceless lump. “There’s a network of duplicate nerves from each brain to my spinal cord and cranial nerves. It’s awesome. I get so much work done.”

“Wow. So . . . doesn’t your body get tired?”

“Sure. I can’t be running marathons twenty-four hours a day. Sometimes my body conks out, and I just read or watch movies when that happens.”

I nod with tepid enthusiasm, but inside it freaks me out. To be awake twenty-four hours a day, obsessing about everything screwed up in my life? No thanks.

“Anyway, here’s the layout of the building. Top floor is the infirmary, Cy’s lab, and his room.”

I perk up. “Cy has a lab? What kind?”

“Didn’t he show you? He was supposed to give you a tour of the labs.”

The words I’m not your cruise director replay in my brain. What a jerk.

“We each have our own lab. It’s part of the deal here. Everyone researches his or her own gift. I guess you’ll get a freebie here. Lucky.”

“Thanks,” I say, but I don’t feel lucky. The one time I could have my own lab and I don’t need it. Unless . . .

“Oh!” I peep loudly, then cover my mouth. Wilbert jumps.

“Are you okay?”

I hardly hear him. All I can think of is Dyl’s trait. With a lab, I could figure out what trait she has, a real step closer to figuring out how to get her back. But as soon as I consider it, Dad’s words slice into my consciousness.

No more labwork.

Don’t start something where failure is likely.

He’s right. I have no clue what I’m doing. Dyl’s trait might be the only thing I can grasp—the only solid step in any direction besides doing nothing—but I have zero idea where that step will lead me. What’s worse, Aureus is a monstrous opponent, and I’m just, well, me. I’m completely blind to the end of this plan.

And I’m afraid.

I inhale deeply. Dad’s not here anymore. If I could make him come back and solve my problems, I would. But I can’t reverse death. It’s one of countless things I can’t do. But maybe, maybe I can do this one thing. I silence his naysayer voice in my head.

“So. Wilbert. Tell me about these labs. I want to know everything.”

Wilbert widens his eyes at my sudden enthusiasm. “Okay, well. My lab’s on the first floor, near the kitchen. Hex’s and Vera’s are on the third floor. Although, Hex hardly uses his and Vera’s on the agriplane half the time. All our food comes from her farm there. Tastes like horse food, but it does the job. Junkyard runs for lab equipment are strictly scheduled, depending on how much bribe money we’ve got.”

I’m barely paying attention, being too engrossed in wondering where I’ll get DNA samples from Dyl. Wilbert starts talking about school, when I realize he just asked me a question.

“Huh?”

“I said, which classes are you taking right now?”

School couldn’t be farther from my mind right now. “What? Oh. The usual senior year stuff. I’m sorry, so where do I take classes?”

“Here.” Wilbert grabs the holographic building, spins it around in a glowing blur, and magnifies some rooms on the second level of Carus. He hooks a room with his finger and turns it around so I can get a 360-degree view. My stomach lurches. I could use some No-PuK right now.

“Ugh. Wilbert, can’t you just show me in person? Like a real tour?”

“Sure. C’mon.” He leads me out of the room and down the curving hallway.

“Just promise me we don’t have to do PE,” I say

“Uh. You’ll have to talk to Hex about that.”

Outstanding. After all this, I still have to deal with PE?

After a loopy ride in a transport, Wilbert ushers me to an oak-paneled door, the kind you’d find at a university library. He pushes it open.

A middle-aged man with graying hair, khaki slacks, and a brown sweater gets up from a gigantic central table to greet us.

I grab the door frame, gasping.

“Hello. And what are we learning today?”

It’s Dad.