Awakening (32 page)

Except what if Junjie knew about Raashida because FHE had something to do with her and Gemma’s healing ability? FHE’s programming had speeded up Kayla’s healing process, long after the effects of Gemma’s touch had worn off. What if another FHE tweak could transfer that healing from a GEN to others?

Jemali turned his sharp focus on her. “Is there another GEN healing people? If there’s more than one, it’s something the Kinship should know.”

Why
didn’t
the Kinship know? Even if Mishalla hadn’t reported to Zul, wouldn’t Devak, despite Mishalla’s plea not to? But then, knowing Zul, if he’d been informed about Raashida, he might just keep her and her healing abilities secret.

“Raashida was just a GEN I knew in Chadi.” If Zul could keep secrets, so could she. At least until she knew if FHE was involved. “What if the healing has nothing to do with Gemma? What if the Scratch virus has changed and now GEN healing works against it?” Kayla turned to Junjie. “That’s possible, isn’t it?”

“Sure,” Junjie said readily, maybe because he was glad to deflect FHE involvement. “Viruses mutate all the time. Although Guru Ling and I haven’t seen any mutation in the lab that responds to GEN self-healing.”

“But it’s possible,” Kayla said.

“No,” Gemma said, then she took hold of Kayla’s hands. Gemma shoved up the long sleeves of Kayla’s shirt. Devak’s eyes narrowed and anger flickered in them. “Where did all those bruises come from?”

She’d barely paid attention to them when she’d dressed that morning. But now several of them had purpled up impressively. Her circuitry had healed the cuts, but the blood still pooled under the skin.

“I had to rescue someone from a creek yesterday in Skyloft sector,” Kayla said, leaving it at that.

Gemma gripped her more tightly. “Do you feel it?”

Kayla did. Warmth traveled up her arms, the heat throbbing within each purple bruise. She could feel her ramped-up circuitry speed the process even more until she felt lightheaded.

Gemma’s eyes were closed, her face rapturous. Kayla watched as the bruises on her arms faded before her eyes, and she felt even woozier. Even the aching soreness of her muscles vanished.

Kayla was too stunned to react quickly enough when Gemma’s grip loosened and the GEN girl collapsed. Devak caught her before she hit the hard stone of the tunnel.

Kayla took a step toward her. “I’ll take her.”

“I think touching you is what made her pass out.” Devak lifted her in his arms. “Better to not take a chance.”

“What if she tries to heal you?” Kayla asks.

“I’m not sick.”

“What about wounds, like what I had?” Kayla asked.

“Nothing for her to heal,” he said. “Jemali, do I take her back to the sick room?”

Jemali rested his wrist against Gemma’s forehead. “She’s a little feverish, but I don’t know that she’d be safe in there. I don’t think she can control when she heals, and it seems the more ill someone is, the more it takes out of her. Someone ill enough could hurt her badly.”

“Then I’ll take her to Two Rivers,” Devak said. “Pitamah will know what to do.”

Jemali looked from Gemma to the sick room beyond the tunnel. “I should stay here. See what I can do to ease Mephi’s pain. Devak, can you take Kayla and Junjie where they belong?”

She’d rather walk the seventy or so kilometers back to Risa’s lorry in Daki sector than ride in Devak’s lev-car. But Junjie smiled with relief, no doubt planning to use Devak as an excuse to clam up about FHE. If Kayla wanted to pull more of the truth out of Junjie, she was going to have to figure out a
way to get him alone. Maybe she and Risa should kidnap the boy.

For now she had no choice but to endure the close quarters with Devak. She followed him and Junjie down the tunnel.

A
s they walked through the misty night air from the alley where they’d exited the tunnel to the AirCloud, Devak calculated all the ways he could avoid sitting next to Kayla. Junjie could drive so Devak could sit in the back with Gemma. The two GEN girls could sit together, but that wouldn’t fly after he’d insisted Kayla not touch the fragile Gemma. There wasn’t enough room in the front passenger seat for both Junjie and Gemma, and the half-conscious girl shouldn’t be up there alone. Which meant Junjie and Gemma in back and Devak up front with Kayla.

All those mental machinations of who should sit where only showed how turned inside out he was about Kayla. He even completely forgot to take much care to conceal himself and the others from possible onlookers as they exited the safe house.

Both suns had set, and although the rain had stopped, thick clouds concealed most of the trinity moons’ light. And although the warehouse district was ill-lit enough obscure
them, if an enforcer had happened along, Devak would have had a denking hard time explaining what he was doing carrying around a sick GEN.

Still, they made it to the AirCloud without being seen— or at least no one confronted them. Junjie helped Devak get Gemma situated in the back, arranging the girl as comfortably as they could on the narrow seat. Junjie even offered his lap as a pillow for her.

Devak was about to pull out when Junjie said, “Wait. Turn up the illuminators.”

Devak did, then went up on his knees to see over the seat. Junjie pushed aside Gemma’s short dark hair. New red marks striped the girl’s face. “The Scratch is coming back,” Junjie said.

Kayla leaned between the two front seats to see, her shoulder only millimeters from Devak’s left arm. “Was she never really recovered? Her body just fought it off enough that she seemed healthy?”

Devak caught himself leaning closer to Kayla and pulled away instead. “Could she have caught it again from all the Scratch-infected in the sick room?” he asked.

“It can’t have been that,” Junjie said. “Scratch isn’t infectious person-to-person.”

Kayla tipped her head to one side, bringing her closer again. “Could the sickness have somehow boomeranged back on her when she was healing?”

Junjie scrunched up his mouth. “There’s nothing scientific about that.”

“There’s nothing scientific about her being able to heal either,” Devak said.

“Yes there is. We just haven’t figured out the process yet.” Junjie sighed. “I wish I could have tested her when she was well. To see if her body had cleared the duwu out of her lymphatic system.” For Kayla’s benefit, Junjie explained, “That’s a fluid that collects in GEN systems when they’re Scratch-infected.”

Devak faced forward again and powered on the AirCloud. “We’d better get going.”

Kayla hadn’t settled in her seat yet and as the lev-car jostled on the pocked road, she was thrown against Devak. She quickly moved away and strapped on her restraint, but sensation lingered all along Devak’s arm where she’d touched him.

“She’s not glowing anymore,” Kayla said.

“Why in the Inf— Lord Creator’s name would she glow?” Junjie asked.

“You didn’t see it before? When I first saw her in the sick room, it seemed like she was giving off kind of a light. Energy of some kind. I felt it when she touched me. Heat shooting up my arm.”

Like he’d felt when Kayla brushed against him. “I didn’t feel anything like that when I was carrying her.”

“She might have used the last of that healing power of hers on my bruises,” Kayla said. “What about earlier, when you walked her from the sick room?”

Devak considered. “I might have felt some warmth, but there wasn’t anything in me to heal.” At the time, he’d thought it had something to do with Kayla being so near.

From the back, Junjie said, “I know I felt it. I didn’t know what it was. But look at my hand.” He thrust his right hand between the seats. “I cut that second knuckle on a broken flask yesterday. Some reagent splashed into it, so it got a chemical burn too.”

Devak glanced over. Junjie’s knuckle at the base of his middle finger was as smooth and unmarked as the others.

“Then she can heal GENs, lowborns, and trueborns alike,” Kayla said. “Or could. If you can’t feel anything from her now, Junjie, maybe she can’t anymore.”

“She just feels feverish,” Junjie said. “Can you kill the illuminator? I think it’s bothering her.”

Devak did, plunging them into darkness. He could hear Kayla breathing beside him, and a fragrance drifted from her—flowers? A hint of qerfa spice? Or was it just
Kayla,
a scent unique to her?

As he guided the lev-car up the ramp to the northbound skyway, Kayla turned toward him. “Are you taking me to Risa first? Gemma needs care sooner than I need to be back at the lorry.”

“It’s only a short drive to Daki sector. If I took you to Two Rivers with me, I doubt I’d be able to get back this way before morning. I’m sure Risa wants to get on her way.”

“And I’ll be out of
your
way,” she said quietly.

He got as far as taking a breath, the words on his tongue. Then he shook his head. “I was going to say, ‘It’s for the best.’”

“Do you think it is?” she asked.

He glanced in the rear viewer and saw Junjie slumped against the window, his mouth sagging open. Hopefully asleep.

“I think,” Devak said softly, “that it’s all getting too heavy for me to carry. I think you were right.”

“About what?” Kayla asked.

“That by making decisions
for you
I’m making you
less.
And that’s wrong.”

She stared out the windscreen. “I suppose that’s your way.”

“It has been. But I’ve been rethinking a lot of what my parents taught me. Even what I learned from Pitamah. Between some things that Junjie made clear to me and what I found out tonight in Nafi sector, I’ve realized even the Kinship isn’t what I thought it was.”

She turned back to him. “I’ve been seeing that too.”

“Do you know about the new evacuation procedures for safe houses?” he asked. When she shook her head, he related what Waji had told him.

“Oh,” was all she said at first. “But Zul—”

“He was against it, but they ruled him down.”

“I think I heard a little of that the morning you and I and Mishalla met in Esa. I called him on Risa’s wristlink and interrupted him at a Kinship meeting. Can’t Zul do anything to change it?”

“He’s lost power,” Devak said. “That’s what happens to trueborns when their status slips.”

“And GENs are always the pawns.”

“Yes, more than anyone else,” Devak agreed. “But sometimes I feel like a piece on a sarka board too, always moved by someone else’s hand.”

“All the more reason for you to leave all of us to our own choices,” she said. “GENs. Other trueborns like Junjie. Anyone you feel you have to
guide.”

He knew what she said was right, but still anxiety clutched at him. Fear that if he didn’t control his world, it would shatter around him.

But hadn’t it anyway?

Devak groped for a way to explain it to Kayla. “I’ve been so afraid of being like my father, but I think I’ve become too
much like Pitamah. Nudging others,
guiding
them. With all his years, I always thought he
does
know better what we all should do, so it made sense to live by his example. Except now, I’m not so sure.”

He could feel her gaze on him. “Even if he did know better,” she said, “Zul ought to have left it for people to choose for themselves. GENs, lowborns, trueborns. Give them all the information and let them decide.”

“You don’t think some things should stay secret?”

He heard her sharp inhalation. When he glanced over, her mouth was open as if she was about to say something. She looked over her shoulder at Junjie, her eyes narrowed.

Finally, she said, “There’s power in secrets, power it seems Zul doesn’t want to share. There was a time, back when GENs were first created, that Zul might have changed things if he hadn’t been holding back so much about GENs. By keeping things secret, it made things worse for us. Have you ever thought of that?”

“I know he was grief-stricken over great-grandma Fulki. Not thinking as clearly as he should have.”

“But that didn’t last forever. He saw which way things were going.” Kayla sighed. “I know he was ill. But he could have spoken out.”

Devak let that idea settle inside him. “Yes. He should have.”

She swiped the air with her hand. “Water down the Chadi River. He’s doing what he can now.”

“I wish I could do more.”

One corner of her mouth quirked up in a half-smile. “As long as
more
doesn’t mean deciding for others. For me.”

“No, that’s not what I meant. But . . . what if I think that
you’re making a mistake?” He could see her walking close beside that GEN boy.

She was quiet a long time. “It’s my mistake to make, Devak. And sometimes it’s not a mistake at all. Sometimes it’s just making the best of things.”

As they pulled onto the skyway toward Daki sector, Devak worked up his courage. “I made a mess of things that day you called after picking up the GEN boy. Now I want to be honest with you. Truthful.”

A wary look lit her eyes. “About what?”

He let out a long breath. “I’m finally facing reality. I hate it, but I’ve figured out that trueborn society isn’t ready for GENs and trueborns to be together.”