Inhuman

1

Now that I was actually on the roof of the skyscraper, I was having second thoughts. Maybe it was the spotlights sweeping the streets below, or the patrol planes flying in pairs along the top of the Titan wall, or maybe it was just my good sense reasserting itself. What we were about to do was not only stupid and dangerous, but also illegal, and in my sixteen years of life I’d made a point of avoiding activities that could be described with even one of those adjectives.

I paused halfway across the roof, letting the boys hurry ahead. “I’m suffocating.” I tugged at the scrap of white vinyl — supposedly a vest, more like a corset — that I’d somehow let Anna talk me into wearing tonight. Without a shirt.

“Don’t be such a slave to comfort.” Anna pulled my hands away from the vest and gave me the once-over. Her short curls bobbed with her nod of approval. “Funny how a tight top can loosen a girl right up.”

“I’m not sure loose is a good thing at thirty stories up.” Or ever, for that matter, I thought.

“Now remember, I want it back, so don’t go wild.” Her dark eyes narrowed as she took in the rooftop gardens around us. “And no rolling in the dirt.”

“Ew.”

“Not even if Orlando asks nicely.”

“Ew again. I told you: I am not into Orlando.” Curiosity had propelled me up here, not the desire to roll around with either of the guys we’d come with — guys who were now fighting over the remote control for a toy hovercopter.

“It’s my ’copter.” Camden clutched the toy while warding Orlando off with an elbow.

“My roof.” Orlando latched on to Camden’s wrist. Anyone hearing them would think they were first graders, not seniors.

Music and laughter floated up from the penthouse below, and I wondered what part of tonight would upset Orlando’s parents the most. That their son was having a party while they were out of town, or that he was on top of their building compromising national security? Probably the latter, though having so many people in their apartment — touching things, spreading germs — that would send a chill down any parent’s spine.

Suddenly the boys’ tussling sent them lurching toward the roof’s edge. I gasped and Anna clapped her hand to her mouth. Just as fast, they reversed direction, still grunting and scuffling, completely oblivious to how close they’d come to falling. I exhaled slowly. As much as I loved animals — even the strays — I hated it when boys acted like animals. Out of control. Vying for dominace. Ugh.

“If you’re not into Orlando, why are we up here?” Anna demanded.

“You know why.” I swept a hand toward the wall that loomed like a mountain range, even though it was just across the street. “The Feral Zone.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Yes!” Orlando wrested the remote control from Camden’s grip and lifted his arm in triumph. “Let’s get this baby in the air.”

I split my long ponytail into two sections and yanked them apart, forcing the rubber band tight against my scalp. The tighter my hair was pulled back, the better my brain worked. Anna reluctantly followed me over to the roof’s edge. I’d never been so close to the top of the Titan before and the sheer enormity of it loosened a flutter in my chest. The reparation wall, the quarantine line, the blight — all the names for the wall, even the bitter ones, were said with awe. Because the Titan wasn’t just any wall. At seven hundred feet tall, it towered over downtown Davenport and stretched to infinity in either direction. The guards stationed along the top all had their guns and telescopes pointed east, toward the half of America that was lost to us — now known as the Feral Zone.

That’s what really carbonated my blood: the thought that via toy hovercopter, I might finally get to see what was over there. When the wall went up eighteen years ago, that part of the country became as mysterious to us as Africa was to the rest of the world in the nineteenth century. The Feral Zone was our Dark Continent.

Anna, however, seemed immune to the zone’s allure. She took one look at the gun turrets and scooted back, her dark skin ashen. “This is a very bad, very stupid idea.”

“Worst-case scenario, I’m out a camera,” I said lightly.

“Really?” She propped her fists on her hips. “ ’Cause I’d say the worst-case scenario is we all get shot for crossing the quarantine line.”

“We’re not crossing. That is.” Orlando pointed at the toy hovercopter in Camden’s hands. “And it can’t catch a virus. So technically, we’re not breaking quarantine.” His blond hair was as rumpled as his shirt. At least he wasn’t in his bathrobe, which was what he usually wore during our virtual classes even though we were supposed to log on every morning at eight, fully dressed.

Camden tipped the mini hovercopter to check the camera that I’d attached to the underside. He gave a nod. “Let’s do this before it gets too dark to see anything.”

We probably wouldn’t see anything anyway. The toy hovercopter had to fly over the wall and across the Mississippi River before it officially reached the Feral Zone. But I would be happy even with a distant shot — one that I could enlarge later.

I lifted my dial, which hung on a delicate chain around my neck. We all wore them. For our parents, the glowing discs were more than just phones. Our dials were their spy cameras. With a push of a button, a dad could see what his daughter was doing (and with whom) through her dial’s screen, even if she didn’t “take” the call — like that was ever an option.

With a tap, I activated the link between my dial and the camera. A second later, Camden’s feet popped up on the dial’s round screen. I pointed at him. “Action.”

Camden lifted the hovercopter over his head. “Let ’er rip.”

Orlando flicked a button on the remote, the rotor blades started whirling and the toy lifted out of Camden’s hands. The boys whooped and punched the air. Anna met my gaze with an arched brow.

I smiled. “Come on, you know you want to see what’s over there.”

“I know what’s over there.” She plucked a bottle of hand sanitizer from the back pocket of my jeans. “Rubble and disease.”

“And mutants,” Camden added without taking his eyes from the little hovercopter zooming toward the wall.

“There are no mutants.” Anna squeezed a glob of gel into her palm. “Everyone over there is dead.”

Orlando thumbed the remote, putting the hovercopter into a steeper trajectory. “If everyone’s dead, why do we have guards patrolling the wall night and day?”

I looked up from my dial. “To keep the chimpacabras out.”

“Don’t even bring that crap up.” Anna chucked the bottle of sanitizer back to me. “Because of you, I still sleep with the light on.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have begged me to tell you about them every time we had a sleepover,” I said with a laugh.

Camden glanced over. “What’s a chimpacabra?”

“Nothing. A monster my dad made up.” Back when I’d believed his stories. Well, half believed. He’d started telling me fairy tales about a brave little girl and her adventures in the Feral Zone when I was eight, right after my mom died. She used to sing to me before bed. Stories were Dad’s way of filling in the silence.

“A chimpacabra is a mole-monkey thing that has poison spit and lives underground over there.” Anna pointed beyond the wall with a shudder. “It creeps out at night to steal kids from their beds. One bite and you’re paralyzed and you can’t even scream while it eats you alive.”

I tore my gaze from my dial to stare at my best friend. “Um, Annapolis, chimpacabras aren’t real. My dad made them up. Well …” I couldn’t resist. “I mean, I think he did.”

Anna circled a hand in front of her face. “See me not laughing.”

At least Camden laughed.

“Here we go,” Orlando crowed as the toy hovercopter sailed over the top of the Titan. “Fifty feet across and we’re —” Loud popping cut off his words.

My dial cut to black and I looked toward the wall. “What happened?”

Along the far side of the ramparts, gun turrets swiveled toward the West, all taking aim at the sputtering hovercopter.

“Get down!” Camden dropped into a crouch as more shots rang out. Anna and I hunkered next to him, but Orlando took off for the door to the stairwell.

“It’s okay,” I whispered. “There’s no way for them to know where the ’copter came from.” Just then a spotlight swooped across the roof of the next building, scouring the shadows as it arced toward us. “Oh, crap. Run!”

Anna and I bolted with Camden at our heels. We dove through the door to the stairwell. Two minutes later, we slipped into the zoo that was Orlando’s living room, acting like we’d been there all along.

Anna and Camden collapsed on the couch laughing. I couldn’t — not with my heart still lodged in my throat. The loud music and press of bodies weren’t helping. There had to be at least twenty-five kids inside the apartment, all face to face and breathing on each other. Some were even kissing. No, not just kissing. Old-fashioned kissing. Actually swapping spit. I couldn’t dig out my hand sanitizer fast enough. Had they slept through every health class we’d ever taken, starting in kindergarten?

A pack of guys charged past me howling like wolves, carrying a laughing girl. “Not on the couch,” Orlando shouted just as they tumbled the girl onto it, shoes and all.

Between the noise and Anna’s vest doubling as a tourniquet, I couldn’t even breathe my way into a zen state. I reached for the top snap, and then noticed Orlando watching me. We’d spent a lot of time online this week, planning our failed venture, but he’d thrown in a couple of cheesy compliments too. Now that we were together for real, I didn’t want him getting the wrong idea. I left the vest snapped and plucked up my dial. With a touch, I deleted the brief recording of the wall — aka incriminating evidence — and then hit record and made a show of filming the party.

I wound my way through the crowd and onto the balcony to see what was happening on the wall. Nothing much. The guards were back in position. They must have found the broken toy and decided it wasn’t worth investigating further. At least, I hoped that’s what they’d decided.

For once I was grateful for the bars that enclosed high-rise balconies. Usually they made me feel like a caged bird, but tonight that cage was helping to keep me from the guards’ view. Our parents liked to call the bars trellises and said that they’d been installed to support climbing vines. Who were they kidding? We knew the cages were yet another safety measure. Were kids really falling off balconies right and left before the plague? Doubtful. But there was no reasoning with a nation of trauma survivors.

“Sorry about your camera.” Orlando joined me by the finely wrought bars.

“That’s okay. It was an old one. I figured it —”

He angled in for a kiss, his mouth on mine before I could think to sidestep him. Now, with the bars at my back and him leaning into me, it was too late. No matter how gently I pushed him off or squirmed away, it would end up awkward and awful. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings; I just didn’t want him exhaling on my cheek or — suddenly his kiss turned wet as he tried to push his tongue into my mouth.

I wrenched my face aside, ducked under his arm, and stepped free.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, sounding more confused than hurt.

I dragged a hand across my lips before facing him. “Sorry,” I said, trying for a light tone. “Reality overload.”

Orlando’s brows drew together, creasing his pale skin. “But all week you —” A siren cut off his words. We stared wide-eyed at each other for a second and then whirled to peer through the balcony cage.

Anna skidded out of the apartment. “Are the line guards coming for us?”

“No way,” Orlando said, though his voice quavered.

The siren screamed closer and then cut off abruptly. The flashing lights lit up the street below. They were not atop a fire truck or police car but a gray van, which meant only one thing….

Orlando slumped against the bars in relief. “It’s a biohaz wagon.”

Six biohazard agents in white jumpsuits burst out of the van and pushed through the building’s gate. Biohaz agents spent their time rounding up serious threats to public health, like contaminated meat and quarantine breakers. They wouldn’t waste their time on a toy hovercopter. The line guards might; the jumpsuits, not a chance.

After a sidelong glance at me, Orlando clearly decided not to pick up the conversation where we’d left off. “Call me if they haul someone out,” he said as he headed back into the apartment. “Their faces crack me up. They never see it coming.”

Anna threw her hands up. “Well, there goes my night.” At my blank look, she added, “My parents.”

Right. Like the rest of the exodus generation, Anna’s parents were massively overprotective. My dad was paranoid too, but he traveled a lot for work, so he couldn’t keep me under constant surveillance. Instead, he signed me up for survival skills classes. As if knowing how to make a basket out of bark would keep me alive if there was another outbreak.

“The jumpsuits are probably after a fetch,” I said, feeling a twitch of excitement. Almost no one fetched stuff anymore, even though plenty of people would pay top dollar to have a beloved item retrieved from the East. But these days you had to be desperate or demented to risk sneaking across the quarantine line. “Biohaz agents hunt down felons. Nobody you would have come in contact with.”

“Are you using logic?” Anna demanded.

“Oh, right.” I smiled. “Silly me.”

She glared at the people gathering on the sidewalk. Many had taken out their dials to report the big event to friends or record the poor quarantine breaker’s walk of shame.

“I may as well leave now,” she grouched. “This is going to hit the Web before the jumpsuits even get the guy in the van.”

And once his face got plastered across the news outlets, anyone who’d ever crossed his path would storm into an ER and demand a blood test. “I’ll go too,” I told her. “I need to get home and feed the gang.”

She gave me a faint smile. “Your pets can go an hour without you. Stay. One of us should get to live a little.”

A voice from inside the living room shouted, “Turn down the music! Someone’s banging on the door.”

They sure were. So loudly we could hear it out on the balcony. The music shut off abruptly.

“Hey, who said —” Orlando’s shout was obliterated by the bang of the door opening, followed by a girl’s scream.

“Don’t move!” ordered a male voice.

Anna and I exchanged an alarmed look and rushed into the living room.

“I said, nobody move!” Agents in paper-thin jumpsuits and disposable face masks fanned out across the room. Only their eyes were visible. Not that we needed to see more to know that they meant business.

When Anna slipped an arm through mine, I shot her a sympathetic look. Knowing her parents, they weren’t going to let her out of their apartment for the next year after this.

“It was just a toy hovercopter,” Orlando said weakly. “We didn’t —”

A jumpsuit stopped in front of him. “Is this your home?”

Orlando’s nod was barely perceptible.

“We’re here to collect Delaney Park McEvoy,” the jumpsuit said. “Point her out.”

My vision blurred into a single white smear at the end of a long tunnel. Delaney Park McEvoy — me. They’d come for me. But why? I’d never been anywhere. Biohaz squads rounded up line crossers and criminals, not a homebody who spent her Saturday nights editing shorts about the local animal shelter.

Anna’s hold on my arm tightened like a blood pressure cuff. “That can’t be right.”

The squeeze should have jerked me into the moment but somehow I’d floated up to the ceiling. At least, that’s how it felt — like I had an overhead view of everyone’s reaction, could see them all backing away from me.

The jumpsuit pivoted to Anna. “Are you Delaney McEvoy?”

“No. Annapolis Brown.”

“But you know her.”

The threat of having to be identified snapped me back into my body. “Me.” It came out as a croak. Swallowing, I tried again. “I’m Delaney.” The jumpsuit slid his focus on to me, assessing. Was I going to be a problem? “Get your things.” He ordered me forward with a curl of his gloved hand.

“Wait!” Anna cried. “You can’t just haul her off without a reason.”

Sensing trouble, the other agents closed in. “We have a reason,” the main jumpsuit replied in a voice devoid of feeling. “Potential exposure.”

I gasped. “To what?”

Why had I bothered to ask? Only one disease brought the jumpsuits out of their dungeon. Now I watched the man’s mask move as his lips shaped the answer that I didn’t really need.

“The Ferae Naturae virus.”

Ferae Naturae: “of a wild nature.” Supposedly it was a fitting name for the virus that had killed 40 percent of America’s population, though some people said that it also described how Ferae affected the uninfected. Their natures turned quite wild when confronted with the virus’s existence. Like now, I realized, seeing the growing anger in my classmates’ expressions. I had just ruined their senior year of high school. Even if my blood test came back clean, there would be no more in-person get-togethers where a laugh could spray microscopic dots of saliva into someone else’s eyes. The only contact they’d be allowed to have would be through their computer screens. We weren’t alive nineteen years ago when the epidemic decimated the eastern half of the country, but we’d all grown up with the gruesome photos and footage — images that had to be flooding their minds now.

Backing off, Orlando swiped his arm across his mouth. “Crap, I kissed you!”

Yeah, suddenly they all seemed of a wild nature. So I didn’t resist when the jumpsuit ushered me toward the door. I would much rather be poked and prodded in a quarantine center than ripped into bloody chunks by my classmates.

Anna took up my free hand, which surprised me. For all she knew, I could be contagious. “What are you doing?”

“Coming with you,” she announced, her expression defiant.

The jumpsuit stopped short. “You’re not. She’s wanted for questioning and you’re staying here.” He faced the room. “You are all under house quarantine. No one comes or goes, except medical personnel.”

Anna’s grip on my hand tightened. I stared at our entwined fingers and swallowed against the rising ache in my throat.

Orlando shoved through the crowd. “How long are you going to keep us here?”

“Until you’ve all been tested and the results are in,” the jumpsuit said in a flat tone. “Only a clear negative gets you out of here.”

Swearing under his breath, Orlando snatched a bottle of vodka from his parents’ liquor cabinet and took a gulp, but didn’t swallow. Instead, he threw back his head and gargled the alcohol.

“Let go of her,” the jumpsuit told Anna. “Now.”

Reluctantly she released my hand.

Maybe Anna couldn’t come with me, but she’d tried to. I wanted to wrap my arms around her and cry and thank her for being such a loyal friend. Actually, she’d gone beyond friendship — I should know.

Orlando angled closer, glaring at me. He gave the vodka in his mouth a last loud swish and then spat it on the floor, within an inch of my foot.

When we exited the elevator into the marble and glass lobby, the jumpsuit clamped a gloved hand onto my arm, as if I was going to try to make a break for it. The doorman practically dove out of the way as the biohaz agents propelled me through the glass door and onto the sidewalk. So many glowering faces. My stomach coiled in on itself. As soon as I was within five feet of them, the gawkers skittered back. Then they lifted their dials and my humiliation was complete. My vision blurred as I ducked my head.

A jumpsuit opened the back door of the van and thrust me forward. My knees locked. I couldn’t climb inside the van. I didn’t know these men.

“Move it,” the jumpsuit growled.

I gritted my teeth and did as I was told. Clearly stranger-danger rules didn’t apply to government agents.

Much of the van was crammed with high-tech equipment, all clicking and humming. I squeezed onto a metal bench. The agent clambered in, pulled the door closed, and settled on the bench across from me. Through the Plexiglas partition, I saw the other jumpsuit drop into the driver’s seat.

“Give me your dial,” the man ordered through his mask.

I wanted to use it to call our live-in housekeeper, Howard, and let him know what was happening, but I slipped the chain from around my neck and handed over my dial. The careless way the jumpsuit clicked through my screens made my face burn. Or maybe I was coming down with a fever….

The first symptom of Ferae was a high fever — really high, as in usually lethal. I clenched my hand to keep from pressing my palm across my forehead to check my temperature. I didn’t want the jumpsuit to think I was worried about my health. Because I wasn’t. I did not have Ferae. I couldn’t.

Dogs barked on my dial as the jumpsuit watched one of my shelter clips. “You’re a real budding filmmaker, huh, Delaney?” he said after a moment.

Yes, ever since I learned that the fastest way to get people to care about neglected animals was to show them the animals. But what did that matter to this guy? “It’s Lane.”

He glanced up. “What?”

“I go by Lane.” Only my dad called me by my full name, Delaney Park. It was where he met my mother — in Delaney Park, Indiana. People his age, they owned sentimental, which was why so many of them had named their kids after beloved places — places they knew they would never see again.

The jumpsuit set my dial aside. “Okay, Lane. What do you say we get down to business?” He dragged a metal box from under the bench and opened it on the floor between us. “Put out your arm.”

I braced myself against the vehicle’s sway. “Why?”

“So we can test your blood back at the lab. Don’t you want to know if you’ve been infected?”

“How could I have gotten infected?”

“Spec sheet didn’t say.” He tossed a folded paper into my lap. It was a list of attributes and addresses — a summation of me. The addresses belonged to my friends, the animal shelter where I volunteered, two of my favorite coffee shops, and there were several more that I didn’t recognize, which was just as well because I was already thoroughly creeped out. The description of me was the final insult: brown eyes, brown hair, average build. Why not just say average everything? Instead of smashing the paper into a ball and throwing it at him like I wanted, I handed it back without a word.

“Put out your arm,” he repeated.

When I hesitated, he snagged me by the wrist and pulled my arm straight. He took a hypodermic needle from the box on the floor, and suddenly I was seized with the urge to bite his hand and free myself.

But I didn’t.

I smothered the impulse; I’d never do something so disgusting. So feral. I relaxed my arm and looked away as he inserted the needle.

I figured that I should probably be thankful I wasn’t marched into the quarantine center through the front door. Instead, when I was nudged out of the back of the van, I landed in what looked like an empty warehouse except for the stacked cots along the walls. I breathed against the pinch of Anna’s vest and tightened my ponytail.

A new jumpsuit awaited us, her face mask firmly in place. A one-woman welcoming committee. Her spiky gray hair didn’t move as she strode forward, tablet in hand. I saw my school photo on its screen.

“Delaney McEvoy?” The woman clearly knew she had the right girl, but she waited for my nod before continuing. “I’m Director Taryn Spurling. Head of Biohazard Defense.” She turned to the jumpsuit who’d brought me. “Did you get a sample?”

He handed her the vial of my blood and my dial.

“Is someone going to tell my father I’m here?” My voice came out higher than normal.

Above her face mask, Director Spurling’s laser-blue gaze sharpened. “You know where he is?”

“Visiting galleries in California. He’s an art dealer.”

She stiffened. “You’re going to have to do better than that, Delaney. A lot better. You see, I’ve got all the evidence I need. I can issue the order anytime to have your father shot on sight.”

Her words punched the air out of my lungs. “For what?”

“You’re not going to help him by lying.”

“But he is an art dealer,” I said helplessly.

“Yes, of course.” She spoke through a clenched jaw. “That’s where the big money is. But my sources tell me that Ian McEvoy will retrieve anything if the price is right.”

“Retrieve?” Understanding crawled out of the primordial mud of my mind, tiny and grasping. “You mean from the other side of the wall….”

“Now that look almost works. You almost have me believing that you don’t know” — Spurling leaned in until her face mask grazed my ear — “that your father is a fetch.”

I recoiled. “No. That’s not true.”

Under that mask, the woman was smirking, I was sure of it. Well, Director Spurling was wrong. Dead wrong. My father was no fetch. He wore bifocals and was lactose intolerant. Him, scale the Titan wall and sneak into the Feral Zone? Not possible. But the word fetch had triggered my memory of the last fetch they’d arrested. He’d been executed by a firing squad in front of the Titan. As always, our online classes were cancelled so that we could do the patriotic thing and watch the event in real time. The worst moment wasn’t when the bullets flung the man against the wall, as awful as that had been to see. It was earlier, when they’d forced a black hood over his head, making him face death in total darkness — alone. That seemed beyond cruel.

“Put her in a containment room.” Director Spurling’s thin voice dragged me back into the moment.

“You’re keeping me here?” I began to sweat, which plastered the vinyl vest to my skin.

Spurling didn’t spare me a glance, just headed for the door, tossing off a last order as she passed the jumpsuit. “Call me if she’s still alive in the morning.”