“I want to talk to Marka. Now.” I practically spit out the words.
Cy regards me like I’m a new brand of irritation, worse than a splinter and slightly more entertaining than fire ants. He plays with the ebony metal ring in his lower lip and raises his other hand.
“If she passes out, it’s not my fault,” he says to the walls.
“I hear you, Zelia.” Marka’s voice enters the room, sounding patient but tired. “I’ll tell you everything I know, but I insist you be treated first.”
I let my arms slap down on the examining table, splattering candy-red drops of blood against the pristine surface. A wave of dizziness hits me, and my fingers start to tremble and tingle. Darkness nips at my peripheral vision as I push extra breaths in and out, but it doesn’t help. So this is what exsanguination feels like. Great.
“You.” Cy points at the long examination table. “Lie down. And stay down.”
I flop onto the table, attempting to keep the light-headedness at bay. Cy leans over, holding a silver instrument that can only be described as an elephant’s tweezers, but fancier. They drip purplish fluid from the glistening points. I clench my fists, expecting pain, but none comes. After a light tug, I hear the first glass shard hit a metal collection tray.
I start to relax. Lying on my back, there’s nothing to look at except Cy. I notice again that behind all the tattooed skin is a good cheekbone. He works steadily, never looking up. My heart hardens a little more. The distance he’s put between us feels like an insult.
Plink, plink, plink. The shards are leaving me faster and faster. As his fingertips touch the sensitive inner part of my arm, I squirm.
“Stop moving,” he hisses. He pushes my shirt up and moves onto the few shards stuck into my abdomen. My belly involuntarily quivers when he touches me. He hovers so close, I can smell him. Unlike the boys at school, there is no rancid boy/sock odor. It’s something else. Smoky, but not awful like illegal cigarettes. It’s earthier, better. I wonder if Dyl has ever downloaded a scent like this—
“Let’s go.”
Cy goes to the door. We’re already done? I look down at my arms, and they’re red, but the skin is already knitted together. That fast?
“Any time this century would be nice.”
“Okay, okay!” I jump off the table, testing myself for dizziness, but it doesn’t come. I’m impressed. I follow him out the door, trotting to keep up with him because he’s almost a foot taller than me. God, are there any short people in this place? The gap between us widens, and Cy never checks to see if I’m keeping up as we head down several sets of stairs. It’s clear he prefers I didn’t exist. If it weren’t for his cheekbones and eau de handsome scent, I’d prefer he didn’t exist either. Trust no one, I scold myself. Even if they smell good.
I keep trailing behind as a half-dozen rooms pass by with no chance to see inside.
“What are those rooms for?”
“I’m not your cruise director,” he says dryly. Something about his tart attitude peels away my normal politeness.
“So, what’s your affliction?”
“Don’t call it that.”
“Why not? If it were such a great thing, you wouldn’t be hiding in Carus House, would you?”
“God, you’re so naïve.”
Cy’s snippy retorts only provide a target for the anger I didn’t realize I was feeling so strongly. I decide to embrace this newfound smart-assed-ness. “So, you aren’t an odd color, and you don’t have any extra appendages. Rudeness isn’t really a special trait.”
“Sorry to interrupt your analysis, but I’m done babysitting.” Cy steps aside to reveal a door at the end of a corridor, turns, and leaves me there.
“Jerk,” I say under my breath. As I step forward, the door opens.
It’s a room unlike any I’ve ever seen. The enormous walls on either side are floor-to-ceiling glass cases backlit with a golden light. Inside them, hundreds of identical tiny glass-stoppered bottles are lined up precisely. They remind me of costly perfumes from a century ago, before downloaded scents became available.
I read the labels on the bottles right by the door. Bipolar Disorder, Viral Schizophrenia, and Classic Depression sit side by side.
Marka sits at a single table in the center of the room. An ancient spectrophotometer in remarkably good shape rests beside a few labeled bottles and a rack of test tubes. I point to the glass case.
“What is this stuff?”
“They’re scents. For me to learn from.”
“You can smell viral schizophrenia?” I ask, incredulous. I don’t even know what that is.
“I can now, though it’s taken me a lot of practice.” Marka lifts her face a touch, sniffing the air that preceded me when I walked in. In a flash of déjà vu from our magpod ride here, I realize she’d been reading me like a hospital chart. That’s why she knew I had a headache. “So this is your trait?”
“Since birth.”
I shake my head. It’s all so overwhelming, but I need focus like never before. I take a huge breath, as if it’s got to last me an hour. It’s time.
“Please. Can you tell me now? What happened to Dylia?”
Marka pushes the test tube aside so she can clasp her hands together in front of her. “She’s in a place called Aureus House.”
There isn’t even time for me to exhale. That was way too easy.
“Aureus House? Where is that?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s in Neia. Cy’s been trying to track them down, but unlike us, they move every few months.”
“Let me guess. They’re off the grid,” I say, and Marka nods reluctantly. “Why?”
“Carus and Aureus members are all off, due to the nature of their inhabitants. You being the exception, of course. Do you remember that law on human genetic manipulation, the HGM bill from 2098?”
“Sure. We’re not allowed to fuse humans with frogs and stuff. The docs in my labs always complained about how limiting the laws are.”
“Exactly, but that’s for direct manipulation of the human genome. There is a corollary to the law that few people know. Any genomes with significant mutations that could potentially alter the evolution of ‘normal’ humans are also outlawed.” She waits for the understanding to show on my face.
“Any genomes with . . . Wait, you mean people? Even if it happens naturally, from birth? They’re illegal?”
“Yes. Illegal, and if not fixable by a simple surgical procedure and sterilization, then they are removed from society.”
“You mean, stuck in this place.”
Marka’s face grows impossibly sad. “Or killed.”
I swallow. “Who? Who kills them?”
“It’s very strict. If you show up anywhere outside of our home, your life is forfeit. It starts with an arrest. After that, you disappear. There are no second chances.” She picks up a bottle and turns it in her hand. “You’re either on the grid, or you don’t exist.”
“Why doesn’t everyone know about this?”
“People don’t question what they don’t see. It’s been going on for decades now.”
The warping of my world order is disorienting. I pull my necklace out of my pocket so I can hold the tiny, cool, black box, letting the familiar mass sink into my palm. I run my thumb along the edge, letting the atoms rub off on my skin. Maybe they’ll strengthen me for the next few questions I have.
“How many Aureus and Carus houses are there out there?”
“There’s only one Aureus, but I believe it controls several underground houses. There are only a few unassociated places, like Carus. I know of one in Chicago; possibly another on the West Coast.”