Awakening (6 page)

The Tsais had always been on the lower edge of demi-status. Their skin color was a shade or two too pale and tinged with gold. Their eyelids didn’t have a fold, and their faces were too round.

Devak felt a little ashamed that he’d taken such note of the Tsai family’s facial features and how it affected their status. “Rank doesn’t matter in the Kinship,” Devak said, to soothe his own guilt.

Junjie laughed. “Then why do trueborns all stick to their own at Kinship meetings? The lowborns and GEN teams sit with each other, but it’s like there are big fat lines separating the trueborn ranks that they never step over.”

Devak didn’t like it, but what Junjie said was true. He’d seen even Pitamah sit only with his old cronies at the few Kinship meetings Devak had attended with his great-grandfather.

Turning away from the river, he reached Falt sector’s pothole-pocked main street and upped his speed a fraction. Junjie sat silent beside him, maybe thinking about the samples he would deliver to Guru Ling, or wrestling with some knotty gene-bending problem he’d been given.

Junjie adored the technical puzzles of chemistry and genetics. He would have wished for exactly that kind of work if he’d had the choice. But it didn’t seem fair that being a minor-status, Junjie could never hope for anything higher than a tech position.

As a high-status trueborn, Devak could some day take a position as a director in an office, or possibly even make his way up the ranks in government to become a member of Congress. But Junjie was boxed into the tech fields, for no reason other than his family now owned less adhikar land than they once had.

Wasn’t that exactly what the Kinship was trying to change? And if Devak could be friends with a minor-status like Junjie, why not be friends with a GEN like Kayla?

Because it’s different.
The thought fell like bitter poison in his stomach.

It had all seemed so clear in Sheysa when he and Kayla had held each other one last time. His feelings for her had been good and bright and powerful. They would have to be patient. It would be difficult navigating even the trueborn-lowborn divide when the treatment removed her GEN circuitry. But someday she would be restored and they would find a way.

But then his life got torn apart when his father went to prison. His mother left him and Pitamah to fend for themselves. She’d taken with her the adhikar she’d brought into her marriage and managed to claim most of Pitamah’s since he’d given it over to Devak’s father, Ved, some years ago.

She’d even appropriated three-quarters of Devak’s adhikar, declaring she’d be acting as his regent since he was two years away from his majority. Never mind she’d never sent so much as a dhan Devak’s way since then. If not for the strings pulled by Pitamah’s friends, Zul and Devak might have ended up minor-status like the Tsais.

The hope he and Kayla had shared in Sheysa had vanished with his adhikar. He came to understand that each step down in status degraded others’ opinions. It did not pass the notice of other trueborns that he and Pitamah clung to their high status by their fingernails. Bring Kayla into the picture and trueborn scorn would bury them all, with Kayla getting the worst of it. How could they change anything for the better then, when no one would listen to them anymore?

They would be safe only within the cocoon of the Kinship, at meetings or in Zul’s Two Rivers home. But wouldn’t that be worse, if he could only show his feelings for her in those closed
meetings, away from the outside world’s eyes? Wouldn’t that hurt her more?

He’d closed her out of his life, thinking it was best for her. But based on what he saw today, she hadn’t seen it that way at all. He’d hurt her when he’d never meant to.

He supposed his great-grandfather was right. Devak had had long conversations with Pitamah about Kayla. Devak would go on and on about all the reasons it wouldn’t work between a trueborn and GEN. Pitamah’s only response had been that Devak had to clear the air with Kayla. It wasn’t fair of him to change the rules between them without telling her.

He brought his attention back to the pockmarked local road of Falt’s central ward. He had just transitioned to the properly maintained cross-sector road when a muted
boom
echoed across the Plator River.

“What was that?” Devak asked, pulling over. He tried to see behind him past the row of warrens.

“Don’t know,” Junjie said. “Hang on.”

Junjie jumped from the lev-car and ran back to the nearest alley between the warrens. As he trotted back to the AirCloud, a cloud of dust or smoke drifted up above the roofs.

“I bet it’s a demolition,” Junjie said as he swung back into the lev-car. “Explains why the Brigade was there. Likely rousting everyone from the building Social Benevolence ordered destroyed.”

“It wasn’t the warren above the safe house?” Horror washed over Devak at the thought.

“No, it looked like the warehouse opposite. We should get out of here. Don’t want to attract attention.”

Devak pulled back onto the cross-sector road, picking up
speed on the smoother roadway. He gnawed over the strangeness of the Social Benevolence demolition. SB demolished warrens all the time, because they were falling down from shoddy construction or to build them bigger to house more GENs.

But the warehouses were simpler construction and SB generally did a better job building them. And they rarely reached full capacity since the trueborn managers of GEN goods always shorted the deliveries, skimming off the top whenever they could. So why would SB destroy one warehouse to build a bigger one?

A sudden realization stabbed him in the gut. Kayla would surely have been out on the street when the explosives took down the warehouse.

“What about—” Devak stopped himself before revealing that he’d seen Kayla. “The Brigade would have made sure to get any GENs off the street too, right?”

“Oh, yeah. The enforcers would have cleared everyone out before a demolition. Probably why they went into the warren, to warn them. That debris can fly pretty far.”

Devak had to be satisfied with that. He’d find out next time Kayla or Risa called Pitamah. Or maybe after dropping Junjie off he’d call Risa on his wristlink.

He turned from the north-south highway onto the east-west exchange that led to the mixed sector, Plator. Once they crossed over the border out of Falt, he merged onto the skyway. Below them, housing blocks and green spaces whipped by.

“Are you and Guru Ling getting anywhere on curing Scratch?” Devak asked. “Or finding a vaccine?”

Junjie made a face. “Since it’s only the two of us really focusing on it, we haven’t made much progress. There seem
to always be much more important trueborn illnesses to be cured.” His voice took on a sarcastic edge. “Like nose warts and toe rashes.”

“At least the Kinship medics and gene-splicers are working on it too,” Devak said.

“Which means no one is making restoration serum anymore. Hundreds of Kinship GENs could be free by now if it wasn’t for the Scratch epidemic.”

GENs like Kayla. Four months ago, she could have had the circuitry in her body dissolved by the restoration serum. But there had been only one dose left, and Kayla let her friend Mishalla have it. Devak wasn’t sure he could have made that sacrifice himself.

Kayla had had other chances for the treatment since then, but had continued to refuse it in favor of other GENs. Now her transformation was put off indefinitely because of Scratch.

Why had she kept saying no, letting others go first? He understood her choice in favor of Mishalla. The two of them were close as sisters. Kayla knew Mishalla wanted to be with Eoghan. With Mishalla’s circuitry gone, there were no status problems to keep them apart.

Devak wondered if it had anything to do with him. It wouldn’t be as easy for him and Kayla to be together as it was for Mishalla and Eoghan. But surely by now he didn’t matter that much to Kayla. He would think she’d want to be free of being a GEN anyway. No longer under the control of trueborns and always at risk of a Brigade reset.

Almost as if he’d read Devak’s mind, Junjie asked, “Would you feel differently about Kayla if she did it? If she became a lowborn and wasn’t a GEN anymore?”

“I would be glad for her to be restored,” Devak said.

“You’re not really answering my question,” Junjie said.

“I told you before—”

“Yeah, yeah, nothing between you and her.” Junjie leaned toward him. “You lie badly.”

Devak sighed into the stretching silence. “Even if there was something between us, how could we ever be together?”

Junjie fixed him with his dark, steady gaze. “You would have to give up a lot.”

Maybe everything.
Could he?

They were nearing southern Plator and the lab where Junjie worked. Plator was filled with minor-status like the Tsais living alongside lowborns, mostly the more affluent who ran their own businesses. Moving from a trueborn sector to a mixed one would have been the greatest shame for most trueborns, but Junjie said he liked living so close to the lab.

Could I live in a mixed sector?
If Kayla were restored right now like Junjie had suggested, no trueborn sector would accept them. They wouldn’t even be allowed in the minor-status trueborn neighborhoods of a mixed sector. Their only choice would be one of the lowborn neighborhoods. Could he live with lowborns?

Could I give up everything?

“Junjie, I don’t know.”

Junjie nodded. “At least now you’re telling the truth.”

“I
do
want what’s best for her. But I’m so mixed up about what that is.”

“Maybe you’re not the one who’s supposed to figure that out.”

Devak took the next exit and dropped off the skyway. They wound their way through south Plator’s local streets in silence.

Devak pulled up to the low-slung building that housed the lab. This was headquarters of the Genetic Augmentation and Manipulation Agency, but the building was as boxy and plain as a GEN warren, with only a small sign beside the door inscribed with the GAMA initials. But as simple as it was, GAMA headquarters was better built than any tankborn warren, with plassteel beams and high-grade plasscrete walls. After all, trueborns had to work there, and even minor-status deserved someplace safe.

But not those they created, the GENs. Devak didn’t miss the irony.

He put aside his gloomy thoughts and turned to Junjie. “That experimental stuff you’ve been giving to Scratch victims—has it been helping?”

Junjie sighed. “No. It’s made to give a little jolt right away, then help the symptoms over time. But none of the GENs we’ve tried it on showed any improvement at all.”

“How many GENs have you tested it on so far?” Devak asked. “Maybe it only works with some.”

“Hundreds,” Junjie said, gathering up the carrysak at his feet. “We’re allowed to use all our treatments on the ones . . .”

As Junjie’s voice trailed off, it took Devak a few moments to figure out what his friend meant. “The ones the Brigade brings to you.”

Junjie nodded. “All the Scratch victims the enforcers
confiscate
.”

Confiscate, experiment on, and then destroy. Rat-snakes writhed in Devak’s belly again. What if Kayla were Scratch-infected
and carried off by the Brigade before the Kinship could take her to a safe house?

The mere thought cut his heart to shreds.

Junjie climbed from the AirCloud and waved goodbye. Devak drove away, his thoughts in a tangle.

Admit it, to yourself at least. You still care for her.

But he couldn’t make the world change. Couldn’t take the burden of trueborn judgment off Kayla’s shoulders. Wouldn’t she be freer without him? Maybe giving her up was the better sacrifice to make.

D
odging falling debris, two enforcers pelted off in the direction of the warehouse. Another dropped to his knees in the mud to check Harg. The enforcer—Pena, according to his nametag—screamed into his wristlink for a medic, for Brigade backup.

The last enforcer lay crumpled in the mud. But while Harg still breathed, the other enforcer lay still, the side of his head bashed in.

Kayla brought a hand up to her left cheek, then stared numbly at the blood on her fingers. Her cheek stung with pain. She hadn’t even felt the gash until she’d seen the blood. Now she registered other aches—her left shoulder and hip, her left knee—where pieces of debris had struck her.

She scanned wildly for Risa and saw her slumped against the lorry. The lowborn woman shook dust from her hair as she hurried to Kayla.

“Blast threw me against the lorry,” Risa said. “Saved me from worse hurt.”

She rubbed at her forehead, where something had scratched her.

Kayla puffed out a sigh of relief that Risa was okay. Teki and the other GENs were long gone from the ruined warehouse. Their timely departure had to mean they knew in advance it would be destroyed. And they’d just delivered all that food.

The front wall had collapsed onto Abur Street. Flames shot into the air triple the height of the warehouse, fed by the oil-rich sacks of kel-grain stored inside. So much food gone to waste. Trueborns wouldn’t be in any hurry to replace it, which meant empty stomachs in Qaf.