Unchanged (23 page)

“Well, you're wrong. It's a fortress. Even
I
don't know how to get in.”

She smiles. “We'll see about that. I imagine Alixter will be pretty anxious to get his precious science experiment back.”

“So that's your big plan?” I mock. “To use me to gain access to the compound? Then what? A few shotguns aren't going to stand up against Raze's security force.”

She chooses not to respond to this. Instead, she says, “So, Lyzender tells me that you two used to be something of an item. Is that true?”

I turn my gaze to the ceiling. If she won't answer my question, there's no reason for me to answer hers.

“It's why he persuaded me not to lock you up.” She nods toward my restraints. “I hope you'll forgive my change of heart.”

When I don't speak, she goes on. “He also seems to think that given enough time here with us, you might actually come around. Join our side.”

“I'll never join your side,” I spit, breaking my vow of silence.

She sighs. “That's exactly what I told him. But he has this crazy notion that somewhere deep inside of you, there's a
real
person. With morals and a conscience and all that fancy stuff.”

If she's hoping to get a reaction from me, she's going to be disappointed.

“I warned him though,” she continues, “that you're a product of Diotech. That evil and corruption run in your blood. Quite literally. He refuses to believe me. He still thinks there's something redeemable about you.”

Without my permission, my eyes drift to the entrance of the tent.

“I have to say,” Paddok goes on, “I admire his faith. Even if I don't agree with it. I guess we all need to believe in something, right? It gives us a reason to get up in the morning. Something to fight for.”

When I don't say anything, she stands and returns the chair to the table. Then she sticks her head out the flap and beckons Lyzender back inside. “Return her to the medical tent, will you? Our strategy meeting starts in an hour.”

 

37

OFF-LINE

The last time my hands were bound was in the year 1609, when the townspeople of London believed I was a witch and arrested me. I had shown my special abilities in public. I had moved faster than their eyes could keep up with.

I had done it to save Lyzender.

And it landed me in prison. On trial for my life, and eventually, on a stake being burned alive.

That should have been my first clue right there. That should have alerted me to the fact that being with him is not safe. That it is not my true purpose.

But it didn't.

I was too far over the edge to recognize the dangers of loving him.

I won't make that mistake twice.

He doesn't hold on to my shackles as he guides me through the camp. He must know I'm not going to try to run away again. Not when the truth has been revealed to me and this debilitating poison is coursing through my blood, keeping me weak.

The bottom line is, I need another plan.

“So,” I say to him, jogging slightly to walk by his side. The minimal effort leaves me winded. “Are you going to tell me how you got here?”

He flashes me a sideways look. “Whatever do you mean?” There's a playfulness mixed in with his acidic tone.

“Last time I saw you was in the year 2032. You were dying in a bed in Cody's town house.”

He lets out a biting laugh. “I bet that pleased you, huh?”

“What? Of course not.” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. Before I can analyze where they're coming from.

But it's evident to me now that they're coming from the past. From the girl who stood by his bedside weeping over his frail body, wondering if she would ever see him alive again.

Not the girl I am now.

He kicks a rock with the tip of his shoe. “Right.” His sarcasm hangs in the air, swirling into the dust that's being roused by our footsteps.

I open my mouth to protest but to be honest, I don't know how to handle this brooding, rancorous boy I've never met before. The hopeless romantic spouting devotion and poetry? I had prepared myself for that. I had spent the last year building up a tolerance to it.

But this?

I just don't know what to say.

So I settle for the truth.

“I certainly didn't feel that way then,” I admit softly.

He stops and faces me. “And now?”

I try to turn away but he grabs my chin and forces me to look at him. “No,” he asserts, “you don't get to do that. You don't get to avoid me. Not anymore.”

I tremble at his touch. It warms my glacial skin. For a moment, the shivers stop and I feel my blood heat again. Then his hand falls away and the cold front returns.

“And now what?” he asks. “You'd step over my dead body and keep on walking?”

I shake my head. Hoping it's enough. Knowing that it's not.

“What?” he demands.

“I…”

He bends to meet my downcast eyes. “You?”

“I … don't want you dead.”

He tips his head back and laughs. “You don't want me dead? Really? How sweet. That's touching.”

I shut my eyes tight, berating myself.

What kind of an answer is that?

It's a truthful one, sure. But it's not a complete one. I don't want to see him die. I don't want to see
anyone
die. I just don't want him
here
. With me. Touching me with those hands. Challenging me with those eyes.

I want him in the past where he belongs.

He keeps walking. I assume I'm expected to follow him so I do. The day is almost over. The sun is starting to set. As we pass through the camp, people stop what they're doing to watch us. To watch
me.

I'm the anomaly. The one who doesn't fit in. The high-value prisoner whose face has been on every streamwork. On the cover of every DigiMag.

No one speaks to me. I wonder if they've been ordered not to.

I silently count them as we walk by. Twenty-two that I can see.

The conversation between Dr. A and Director Raze filters back through my mind.

“Child's play,”
was Dr. A's reaction to the size of Jenza's nonexistent army.

I wonder what he'd think of her now that she's managed to take me prisoner.

We've reached the tent on the far side of the camp. The one I woke up in. I now see the small white cross on the front, labeling it as a medical facility. Although the word
facility
is a stretch. The only things inside are a bed, a table, and a few outdated medical supplies that I somehow failed to notice when I was here before. I have a vague recollection of these supplies from my short stay in the hospital in the year 2013. My brain stretches to access the correct names for each instrument: stethoscope, blood pressure cuff, thermometer. Devices that have become obsolete since the invention of nanosensors.

I recall my nurse, Kiyana, fitting the stethoscope into her ears, pressing the cold plate against my chest. Waiting. Listening.

The memory of her causes me to ache a little. She was the first person to treat me like a human being. Not a miracle. Not a freak.

It suddenly hits me that these are all manual tools. Nothing that requires power or a SkyServer sync.

“She's gone completely off-line. Shut down all devices. There's no way to track her unless she turns something on.”

She's staying off Diotech's radar.

A strategy I remember all too well.

I sit down on the bed and Lyzender comes over to fasten one end of my cuffs to the metal bed frame. Now if I want to go anywhere, I'll have to take this whole rusty contraption with me.

Once he's finished, he moves away quickly. As though being that close to me is dangerous.

I'm unsure what I'm supposed to do now. Wait? For what? For them to use me as bait?

Lyzender stands awkwardly in the center of the tent, equally unsure what comes next. Our eyes meet for a tense moment before he turns away and heads outside.

It's exactly what I want. I want him to go.

I used to pray for real silence. I used to savor any piece of it I could find.

But this is a new kind of silence. The kind that comes from being imperfect. And suddenly the thought of being left alone in it terrifies me.

“Cody,” he says softly.

It takes me a moment to realize he's speaking to me. He hasn't left. He's standing in front of the flap, looking back at me.

“What?”

“Cody is the reason I'm here. He figured out how to reverse engineer the transession gene from the blood he took when I was sick. Before the gene was deactivated by your boyfriend.” The disdain he places on the word
boyfriend
is palpable, but it's not the part I'm focused on.

“Cody rebuilt the gene?” I'm still having a hard time believing it.

“It took him three years.”

Three years.

The number bounces around in my brain like a floating MagBall caught between two goalposts.

It's only been one year for me, but for Lyzender, it's been three. Which means he's now twenty-one years old.

He waited that long to come back here? Just so he could stop the Objective? Just so he could see Diotech destroyed?

Why?

As soon as I ask myself the question, I realize I don't know the answer. It's the first time I've ever wondered about Lyzender's motives.

Dr. A told me that Lyzender's mother, Dr. Maxxer, wanted to destroy Diotech because she was angry. Because Dr. A exiled her from the compound.

Does Lyzender share those same motivations?

Is he trying to avenge her death?

But he never liked his mother. He always spoke about her with such contempt. Was that all an act, too?

It suddenly seems so incredulous that he would hold someone else's grudge for that long.

Is it possible he came back for another reason?

“What did you do during those three years while Cody worked on the gene?”

“I waited.” He looks down at his dirt-caked shoes. “For you.”

“For me to do what?” I ask, even though I already know what he's going to say.

“For you to come back. For you to send me a sign that you were okay. When you didn't, I knew they had gotten to you again.”

Somewhere inside of me I'm screaming.

Don't listen. Don't believe. Don't fall.

He scoffs, “But those are all just lies, right? I never
really
loved you.”

“Right,” I whisper. Whether or not he heard me is irrelevant.

I heard.

The conviction is logged in my memories.

He doesn't speak again for a long time. It feels like every possible combination of words flits through my mind at once. None of them are the right one.

“Well,” he says after a while, clearing his throat. “Good night.”

The flap swishes closed behind him, and just as I suspected, the silence is deafening.

 

38

PARTS

Night settles in. One by one, I watch lanterns illuminate, casting misshapen shadows on the cloth walls. Every once in a while, a figure will tromp past but no one bothers to enter. I count how long it takes for them to disappear and the silence to return.

The inhibitor in my blood keeps me chilled in the evening desert heat. I find a blanket under the bed and struggle with my free hand to spread it over me. It's thin and made from a scratchy material. It does nothing to stop the shivering.

After almost an hour, a girl ducks through the flap. She's pretty and petite with dark skin and silky black curls that frame her slender face. She looks to be about my age and I wonder how someone so young could be involved in something like this.

She stands by the door with her back to me. I hear the striking of a match and then the lantern on the table is illuminated. The warm light is a welcome addition to this dreary place.

I used to be able to see in the dark. Now that my abilities have been blocked, I understand what it means to be afraid of it.

She sets a plate of food down on the floor near my bed, just barely within reach. I squint at the murky brown lumps but fail to identify them.

“Thank you,” I say, my teeth chattering.

She turns to me and I see a face devoid of sympathy. “Paddok told me to do it.”

The message is clear. She's not doing this for me and therefore she won't accept my gratitude.

She pauses, glancing up and down my covered body. I can't help but notice the repulsion that distorts her features. Then she leaves. And I'm alone again.

I count three minutes of absolute stillness after her footsteps fade.

It's enough for me to deduce that no one else is coming this way. Stretching my bound arm as far as it will go, I hook the bottom of the plate with the toe of my shoe and drag it toward me. One sniff informs me that it's meat. And not the synthetic kind. The scent of cooked flesh rolls my stomach and I push it away again, even though I'm pretty much famished. I haven't eaten since the meal at the hotel before we left for the Feed station.

It feels like a century ago when it was really only this morning.

I wonder what Kaelen is doing right now. I wonder how long it took them to notice I was gone. They must be going out of their minds trying to locate my signals. Running their satellite search for my genetic implant.

Did they return to the compound? Did they cancel the remainder of the tour? I can't imagine they'd proceed without me. How would they possibly explain that to the public? No doubt whatever story Dane concocted to cover what really happened earlier today is all over the Feed right now.

If only I could figure out how to get a message to them.

Just as the thought enters my mind, I'm struck with an idea.