Awakening (11 page)

First the hyper-fast healing and now a problem with her annexed brain. And what about how difficult it had been to keep her temperature regulated on her way here?

Maybe it all meant nothing. Or maybe it did mean something.

Maybe she really was broken.

A
s the tunnel leading to the safe house jogged sharply right, a murmur of noise reached Kayla’s ears. As she continued toward the increasing light spilling into the tunnel from the safe house, the sound grew louder, separating itself into shouting voices, as if everyone in the safe house was calling out all at once.

Her first panicked thought was that an enforcer raid was imminent or even in progress, that the Brigade had breached one of the other access points. But the plassteel door at the end of the tunnel hadn’t been slid shut. In any case, she refused to run to save her own skin if her help might be needed.

She stepped from the tunnel and nearly collided with a fourteenth-year GEN boy. The shouting was deafening in the cavernous space, voices echoing off the limestone walls and ceiling. With so much noise, Kayla worried they could be heard aboveground.

Then she saw the joyful, awestruck smiles on nearly every face. Everyone except the dozen or so Scratch-infected GENs
dying in their cots surged in one direction—toward a tall high-status trueborn in the center of the room.

Zul Manel was here. Devak’s great-grandfather, the leader and founder of the Kinship. He towered over nearly everyone here, both physically and with his presence, his high-status rank as obvious as the rising of the twin suns. His booming voice cut through the noise. An old tattoo marked his left cheek, a vestige of his first experimentation with GEN technology decades ago.

Everyone near him, everyone he spoke to, looked ready to kneel at his feet—GENs, lowborns, and trueborns alike. A pair of minor-status trueborn medics were giddy at his presence. The lowborns who managed the safe house and the GEN caretakers who did most of the hands-on work with the sick looked as worshipful as if they’d seen the Infinite Himself. Even the silent, dying GENs smiled wistfully as if wishing for one more moment of life to be with him.

Kayla couldn’t stop herself from searching for Devak in the cavernous thirty- by forty-meter oblong room. Devak had the same Manel height as his great-grandfather. She should be able to see him easily even in this crowd.

Zul spotted her, then extricated himself from the crowd. He cut a path toward her, looking vigorous and strong, with none of the weakness she’d seen in him two nights ago. If he’d brought his lev-chair, she couldn’t see it. Had he risked a dose of crysophora to be here? The powerful stimulant had nearly killed him more than once.

With a nod, Zul urged her to walk with him around the perimeter of the safe house main room. The cacophony of voices quieted as GENs and lowborns returned to the tasks Zul’s arrival had interrupted.

A half-dozen workers streamed back into the small kitchen alcove. Opposite the kitchen in the sick room alcove, a pair of medics tended the Scratch victims. Other men and women busied themselves stitching torn clothing or minding the GEN and lowborn children, or sweeping the limestone dust that continually settled. A pair of oldsters, one GEN, one lowborn, whiled away the time by painting a mural on one wall, what looked like representations of the Infinite and the Lord Creator smiling, side by side.

Kayla couldn’t help taking one last look around the room for Devak. Seemingly reading her mind as he often did, Zul said, “Devak’s not here.”

She squelched her disappointment. “No reason he would be, I guess.”

Zul nudged her aside as a pair of rambunctious fourth-years dashed past them. “We can’t always do what we want to do, Kayla.”

Irritation flared up inside Kayla. “I don’t even know what that means. Are you saying he’d be here if he could?”

“I asked him to come along.” Zul smiled at a GEN woman who handed them each a cup of steaming kelfa drink. “He declined.”

“Because he had something else more important?” Kayla took a sip of kelfa, steeling herself. “Or because he knew I’d be here?”

Zul swirled the hot spicy drink in his cup. “I told him I was coming here partly to meet with you.”

She sucked in a breath as Zul’s honesty cut deep. But she couldn’t let the old man know how much Devak’s avoidance of her hurt, especially if there was a chance he would pass that
on to his great-grandson. Instead she shrugged and swallowed back her pain with another mouthful of kelfa.

They’d reached the sick room. Seeing the Scratch patients lying there ill and suffering, Kayla put aside her pain at Devak’s apparent abandonment. They stepped inside the alcove, Zul ducking to clear the low doorway.

Those of the Scratch-afflicted who were awake stared avidly at Zul. He went from bed to bed, offering water, asking one of the medics for an analgesic for two who writhed in pain. Kayla did what she could, carefully lifting and repositioning one woman off an open sore on her hip. But it was Zul they wanted to see, Zul who gave them hope.

As they left the sick room to continue around the safe house, Kayla said, “You’re walking around. You seem healthy. But it doesn’t look like crysophora.”

“This is something different,” Zul said. “A special injection series. I feel as if I have ten times the strength I did with the crysophora.”

Kayla handed off the two empty cups to a passing mess boy. “But just two days ago you were so tired you couldn’t speak to me.”

“My debilitation is so severe, that the injection sequence took longer to take effect in me than it does in others,” Zul said. “I needed a few days of recovery time.”

The safe house manager approached with a sekai and held it out to Zul. Zul scrolled through the display, then acknowledged what he’d read with a thumbprint. He and Kayla moved on, the busy crowd parting for them.

“What’s this injection you’re getting?” Kayla asked. “Another drug?”

“Not exactly.” His evasive tone made Kayla uneasy. “More a treatment personally derived for me.”

“Derived by who?” she prodded.

He pulled her into a private corner, near the tunnel where she’d entered. “Akhilesh Garud. The head of GAMA.”

At the mention of GAMA, nausea crawled up Kayla’s throat. The Genetic Augmentation and Manipulation Agency was responsible for designing and creating GENs. To her mind, GAMA, more than any other trueborn institution, was the source of GEN enslavement. They were the ones who tinkered with tankborn genes, contorting and twisting them to suit trueborn wishes.

“He can’t be Kinship. Or is he?” Had the Kinship pulled a high-ranking GAMA official into its ranks?

“No,” Zul said. “But he’s doing some landmark work. He’s a key figure in the search for a Scratch cure as well.”

“But how can you trust him if he’s not Kinship?”

Zul gripped Kayla’s shoulder and gave her a little shake. “There are some good people who aren’t Kinship. Akhilesh. Guru Ling, who Junjie works for. I wouldn’t reveal Kinship work to them, but it would be stupid not to take advantage of their skills.”

Kayla looked away, realizing she felt ashamed for questioning him. Then she got angry with herself, with her habitual response of always considering a high-status trueborn right and herself wrong.

She glanced up at Zul again, and saw his gaze had softened. “I’m sorry,” he said, as always astounding her with his trueborn apologies. “I thought you might be happy with my improvement.”

“I’m glad the injections are working for you,” Kayla said, pushing aside her reluctance at saying the words.
I just don’t trust it as much since it came from a non-Kinship gene-splicer.

They started off again in another circuit of the safe house. The sharp scent of fried patagobi root spiced with a hint of curry drifted across the room from the kitchen alcove. GEN and lowborn young people were setting up trestle tables and benches in the center of the room.

“There are a couple of issues I wanted to speak with you about,” Zul said. “One critical.”

“What?”

They were passing the sick room again. Within the alcove, the pair of medics were pouring some kind of dark brown broth into cups. They passed the cups to the Scratch patients who could sit up. The prone they supported and encouraged to take a sip or two.

Zul cut through the main room to take a seat at one of the trestle tables. Kayla sat opposite him.

“First, the GEN restoration treatment,” Zul said. “I’d asked the Kinship research team to fast-track the production of a dose for you. I was hoping we’d have it within the next week or two.”

Doubt jabbed at her at the thought of restoration happening soon. She should have been rejoicing at the possibility. Why would she hesitate even an instant at the chance to no longer be enslaved to the trueborns?

Because her only path to freedom was to become a lowborn. To become someone else. She’d still have her thoughts and memories. But the treatment would change who she was. She wouldn’t be a GEN anymore. She might have started life as a
trueborn, but she’d only been a fourth-year when she became a GEN. It felt like she’d always been one.

And what about her nurture mother Tala and nurture brother Jal? How could Kayla become a lowborn without them? She couldn’t free herself without freeing them.

Zul patted her hand to offer comfort she wasn’t sure she wanted. “They told me they’re just too caught up in the hunt for a Scratch cure. Production of the various experimental Scratch inoculations has been too time-consuming. And since GENs are dying from Scratch, that cure takes priority.”

She held back a smile of relief. “That’s okay. I can wait. What else?”

“Then the rather worse news.” Zul leaned toward her, his long arms resting on the table. “Devak’s father has vanished from prison.”

Her stomach knotted, and the kelfa she’d drunk threatened to come up. “He escaped?”

His dark eyes sharp with anger, Zul smacked the table with his open palm. “He may have walked right out with the guards looking the other way. If enough dhans change hands, even a respectable man might be tempted. And there are many less than respectable men at Far North prison.”

“But where would Ved get the money?” Kayla fussed with the hem of her shirt, twisting and untwisting the rough cloth. “The Council took nearly everything from him.”

“There were many who felt his imprisonment was unjust,” Zul said. “That a high-status trueborn should never be subject to judgment, particularly when the only ones harmed were lowborns and GENs.”

Kayla had always worried that Ved knew about her and Mishalla’s connection to his being sent to prison. What did his escape mean? Was he only interested in regaining his lost power? Or did he have some plan to come after her and Mishalla?

The tables were filling up, a GEN boy jostling against Kayla as he took his seat. No one had the temerity to sit close to Zul. The space next to him remained empty.

Servers brought out bowls of kel-grain topped with slivers of synth-protein and thick slices of fried patagobi and other root vegetables. Zul waved off a serving. Kayla shook her head, her stomach too roiled.

“Where do you think he is?” Kayla asked, raising her voice against the rising noise.

“Calling in favors, I suspect,” Zul said. “Looking for ways to rebuild his adhikar. Certain Judicial Councilors and high-status members of Congress no doubt fear what he knows about their corrupt practices. He’ll take what he can from them in exchange for silence.”

Bad enough Ved was out and free. Ved regaining his power frightened her. Her fingers still twisting in her shirt hem, Kayla felt something give. She realized she’d put her fingers through the cloth. Another mending job.

She forced herself to relax her hands. “I don’t see what he could do from someone’s adhikar. As well known as he is, he can’t let himself be discovered. He’d only be sent back.”

Zul made a face, as if he was tasting something bitter. “Ved’s compatriots have been working behind the scenes to have him pardoned. Memories are short amongst the high-status. If he can stay hidden until the proper strings are pulled, he can walk free.”

“The last time Ved was free, he turned lowborn babies into GENs,” Kayla said.

“He won’t do that again,” Zul said. “The Kinship wouldn’t let him.”

“Would he go after Mishalla?” Kayla asked.

“Ved doesn’t even know Mishalla exists. She’s safe enough as a lowborn.”

Kayla’s mind turned to a new worry. “Is Mishalla safe from Scratch? She still has tankborn genetics. Could she get it?”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Zul said. “The only GEN sector she visits is Chadi and they haven’t had many cases there.”

“But that could change now that she’s joined the Kinship.”

“I suppose,” Zul said.

He had only half his attention on her. The lowborn house manager was motioning to him from a doorway between the sick room and one of the escape tunnels. Larger safe houses like this one included meeting rooms where the Kinship could gather.

Zul rose, gesturing to the manager that he’d be there in a moment. Kayla got to her feet too, realizing she only had a few more moments with Zul. “Was it you who persuaded her to join?” she asked.