Awakening (18 page)

“Oh, dear.” Hala sighed heavily. “Then there’s no hope for her.”

“There may still be if we can find her quickly enough,” Akhilesh said. “I understand the Scratch infection is recent, so we might still be able to counteract it. We’ve made recent strides in our experimental vaccines.”

“Surely you can locate her via the Grid,” Hala said.

“We . . . ah . . . had her temporarily removed for the course of the experiment,” Akhilesh said. “Stupid now in retrospect, but the pings were interfering with our uploads. Our last visual report from the Brigade told us she’s been traveling with the allabain, although they hustled her away before she could be returned to safety. The allabain mistrust trueborns and they dislike the Brigade even more, so extricating her from them will be difficult.”

“Then we send a lowborn out to search for her,” Hala said, his raspy old voice bright with enthusiasm. “I know exactly the person to ask.”

“You would be doing a tremendous service not only to trueborn society but to GENs too.”

“Yes,” Hala said. “I’ve never agreed with GEN sterility. They deserve to procreate as much as any trueborn or lowborn.”

Junjie’s jaw dropped at Hala’s passionate statement. It was no surprise that he held that position, but to state it so blatantly outside a Kinship meeting seemed terribly risky.

After a long moment of silence, Akhilesh finally spoke again. “I forget sometimes that you were involved at the beginning, Hala. I suppose you can be forgiven your . . . eccentric views. But I would truly appreciate your help. We do have someone else out in the field, but thus far that hasn’t borne fruit. Here, come take a look at this.”

They moved farther away from the door, likely to Akhilesh’s computer system that was installed in the back corner of his office. Junjie might have been able to increase the gain on his amplifier and still hear them, but the need to make his call pressed on him, especially with this new information in his possession.

He took the carton of gulab jamun back to the lab with him. He’d take them home, give them to his auntie. She liked them well enough.

Activating the security lock on the door so he would get a few extra seconds’ warning before someone entered, Junjie tapped out the call code on his wristlink. The person answering used audio only, their secrecy too tight to let a field agent like him become familiar with the faces at headquarters.

“Yeah, s’me,” Junjie said. “Is she there?”

“Yes,” the boy responded, all business. “I can get her for you.”

“Thank you.”

There was a long pause and Junjie figured the boy had left. But then he asked, “How have you been?” in that familiar warm and friendly tone that Junjie liked.

“Good, thanks. How about you?”

“Fine,” the boy said.

Another silence stretched and Junjie hoped the boy would say a few more words, but this time it seemed he’d gone off to find
her.
Junjie sighed, wishing the boy would at least give his name. But none of them did, including
her.
Junjie had taken to calling her Neta—“leader.”

Whoever Neta was, Junjie knew she was important. He knew she and her compatriots were taking Loka in the right direction in spite of some of their methods.

While Junjie waited, he rolled around in his mind what Akhilesh had said. Not about GENs being allowed to have babies, but the other part—about using upload programming to change genetics.

That part was far too close for comfort. He should be letting the Kinship know about the conversation too, not just his other compatriots. But he didn’t like what that use of upload programming might reveal. He’d decided months ago which loyalty superseded which, and it wasn’t the Kinship that won out.

So he wouldn’t be telling Devak or Zul what he’d heard, despite a stab of guilt for not confiding in Devak at least. Maybe he’d get permission to share it all later.

The boy’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Here she is.”

“Junjie,” Neta said in the cultured tones of a trueborn. “What do you have for us?”

He gave his report, not leaving out a single detail.

A
bran!” Kayla shouted across the loading dock, “Lock down those crates!”

Abran, halfway back to Peq sector’s foodstores warehouse, made an abrupt about-face and raced back to the lorry. He got into the bay just in time to catch the stack of crates as it started to sway. He palmed the magnetic catches on the top two crates he’d just loaded. The tower steadied into place.

He grinned at Kayla as he hopped back out of the lorry bay. “That was close.”

Abran had a habit of using that brilliant smile to squeak his way out of trouble. Surprisingly, it worked with Risa, since it turned out Abran bore a faint resemblance to the son she and Kiyomi had fostered. But for Kayla, her mistrust of him built a sturdy wall between them and made her immune to his seemingly irresistible good looks.

She grabbed Abran’s arm as he started past her, using enough of her strength in her grip to be sure he was paying attention. “You will denking well lock those latches down on
the crates before you walk away. If any of that kel-grain gets scattered and spoiled, it’s me and Risa who take the heat.”

Abran gave her a dark look. “I forgot, once.”

“It’s not the first time, Abran,” Kayla said. “You know how many times Risa or I have had to follow behind you these past two weeks, fixing your mistakes? And with a sket like yours, a brain-worker, I would have expected better.”

His jaw worked, resentment flickering in his eyes. “I’ll be more careful.”

“And you’ll do your share,” Kayla said. “I don’t expect you to carry what I do, but I want you ready to work when we are.”

“I was only gone five minutes,” Abran protested.

“That was five minutes too long,” Kayla snapped.

She knew she was being unfair. He’d asked to hop out of the lorry just as Risa was about to turn into the alley that ran along the warehouse. Kayla had thought he wanted a public washroom since he seemed to feel so awkward sharing the lorry’s small unit with two women.

But instead he managed to find a pretty young GEN girl with near-high-status color skin selling sweet kel-grain bread. No doubt he’d gotten his pastry just on the force of that smile of his and kept the quarter-dhans Risa had been paying him in his pocket.

“So while we were working, you were eating,” Kayla said.

“I was right behind you when you were carrying your first crates,” he pointed out.

“You jiks!” Risa shouted from the back of the lorry. “Chut on your own time. Get back to work.”

Risa was only putting on an act, using the coarse word to make her anger seem more real for Abran’s sake. But Abran
didn’t know that. His cheeks turned darker, and when he flicked a glance over at Kayla, she could see his unease.

It made sense that a GEN boy as good-looking as Abran wouldn’t be interested in a drab-colored girl like her. That still stung, despite her disinterest in him.

Except for Devak. But that had never made sense. And now she understood that it had never been real in the first place.

Sweet Infinite, her heart still felt in a million pieces after the conversation with Devak. Having an outsider like Abran here just made matters worse. His presence complicated everything. She couldn’t use the wristlink. She couldn’t go to safe houses. She and Risa had to watch every word they said.

Zul had effectively put their mission on hold while they babysat Abran. Yet again, he had made a pronouncement, and Kayla and Risa had to deal with the consequences.

It didn’t help that Risa had taken to Abran so quickly, when it had been weeks before the lowborn woman lost her dislike of Kayla. Kayla knew Risa didn’t trust Abran any more than she did, but Risa
liked
him nevertheless.

And it wasn’t just Risa. Every GEN female they came across in their travels, from a thirteenth-year to a thirtieth-year, seemed to fall in love with Abran the moment he directed that brilliant smile on them.

But Kayla sensed something behind that ready smile, those good looks and easy charm—a hollowness, a darkness. Likely that sprang from the mistreatment by his patron, and she ought to be sympathetic. But intuition—or maybe the Infinite’s own voice—told her to be cautious.

They resumed their mindless work, toting crates from warehouse to lorry, the dampness of a sullen mist soaking their
clothes and chilling their skin. The work warmed them, but nothing, not even GEN circuitry, could dry the soddenness from their rough duraplass rain gear.

Since she was keeping her eye on him, she realized Abran shivered quite a bit as he worked. She’d also noticed it when they’d started loading, but she’d been cold at first too. Did he not want to utilize his GEN circuitry to warm himself? Some GEN boys were like that, insisting they were tougher than the cold, or pain. They considered using the circuitry the easy way out and would instead gut it out through discomfort. And since Kayla could out-lift Abran almost four-to-one, he probably was looking for a way to prove himself.

At least after her scold, Abran managed to finish the rest of the loading without forgetting to lock crates in place. Kayla didn’t take that on faith, assuring herself that not only were the magnetic locks on the crates in each tower engaged, but each tower was locked to the next, and adjacent walls of crates were securely fastened to each other.

Despite her lecture about spoiling kel-grain, they’d all tracked a fair amount of kernels across the loading dock. With all the spillage in the warehouse, it was impossible to avoid picking up kernels in the soles of their shoes. Trueborns didn’t waste the sealed plasscine sacks used for their own stores on GEN food. Instead, the kel-grain went into the cheaper, reusable crates.

But kel-grain didn’t pack as well in crates. The small kernels leaked through the crates’ loose joints. No wonder GEN foodstores warehouses were overrun with rat-snakes. Nishi was in seycat heaven chasing vermin.

As their feet crushed the kel-grain kernels into the
plasscrete dock, their sweet, malty scent teased Kayla. Because of the timing of this load and the Kinship pickup scheduled, she and Risa hadn’t had so much as a moment to grab a nutra before starting work. She was so denking hungry even the kel-grain smelled enticing.

Kayla locked in one last stack of crates, then jumped from the bay. She spotted Abran and Risa crossing the loading dock with what would be the last part of their load, a few sacks of raw plassfiber. But where Risa wore thick duraplass work gloves and made sure to have the sleeves of her rain gear pulled down over the glove cuffs, Abran was toting his sack barehanded.

“Idiot boy!” Kayla said. “You’re going to have plassfiber splinters all over your hands.”

“I told him,” Risa said. “He was too lazy to get the gloves from the cab.”

“It’s only twenty sacks,” Abran said, heaving the plassfiber in behind the towers of kel-grain. “I don’t need gloves for such a small load. It’d be even smaller if you’d help.”

She took a step toward the front of lorry for her own work gloves, but Risa stopped her. “Get the delivery signature.” Risa tossed her sekai at Kayla.

Abran’s gaze fixed briefly on the sekai. Kayla waved it at him. “A problem, GEN? Do you think I’m too stupid to know how to use a sekai?”

His gaze narrowed on her a moment, then he shrugged. “When you get back, I bought extra pastries for the two of you. I know you and Risa haven’t eaten.”

She nodded her thanks, then watched Abran go for another sack. To her exasperation, she had to squelch the urge to run for a pair of gloves for him. Better he should learn his own lesson.

She stepped inside the warehouse, puzzling over how a GEN as careless as Abran could have made it this long without being reset. But maybe he was so good with numbers, even someone as evil as Baadkar could put up with Abran’s shortcomings.

Maybe as a brain-worker, he’d never toted plassfiber sacks. But what about growing up? He would have lived in a cheaply built warren like any other GEN. The plasscrete walls would have been just as substandard where Abran had been nurtured, with raw unprocessed plassfiber used as a filler in the mix. You only needed to brush bare skin against a wall to get splinters in your hands or arms or face.

It had been a nightly ritual in Tala’s flat. Kayla’s nurture mother would check Kayla and her nurture brother Jal before they bathed, and she’d pluck out plassfiber splinters. Sometimes Tala would miss one and it would fester a bit until Kayla’s GEN self-healing would push it out. If Abran had ever experienced that once, he’d never pick up a plassfiber bag barehanded.

He’d better not expect her to pluck out those plassfiber splinters when they finished loading. He’d have to figure that out on his own.

His gift of pastries for her and Risa should have tempered her irritation, but it just annoyed her more. Somehow the generous gesture seemed calculated. Maybe Kayla was just being too suspicious—it was hard not to be when she lived a life with so many secrets. But she couldn’t help but think that the boy cared more about twisting women around his little finger than working hard the way a GEN should.

Deep in the gloom of the warehouse, she was glad to be out of the damp, glad enough not to be handling the plassfiber. Something made her glance over her shoulder and she saw Abran had followed her part way into the warehouse. He seemed to be searching, so maybe he hadn’t spotted her. Kayla’s empty stomach tumbled in anxiety as she wondered what that GEN boy might be up to.