Cy walks me to a desk in the middle of the room with seven holoscreens. DNA sequences race by on three of them; another one displays a chemical structure resembling a flying bat. Three more screens are blank.
“Here is where you’ll work.”
“Okay.” I take off Dyl’s purse and gently put it on the desk. Cy punches something into the computer. The three blank screens come to life in vivid yellow with black letters. Introduction to Basic Genetics. The second one, Cell Culture and Vector Mechanism, Level One. And finally, Plasmid Fusion Techniques for the Beginner.
He’s got to be kidding. I raise up a finger in protest. “But I don’t want—”
“It’s the rules here.” Cy’s patience is twirling down a virtual drain already. “You learn it. Then you do it. Nobody’s going to be your lab slave here.”
“I don’t have time for this.”
“You’ve got nothing but time in this place.”
He’s so wrong, because I don’t have enough time at all. I move toward the desk.
“I didn’t say I want you to do my work for me.” With a few touches, I shut the three learning modules off. I cross my arms and face him. “What I need to know is do I have to purify DNA the old-fashioned way, or do you have a B-SyndiK extractor so I don’t have to waste my time?”
There it is. The tiniest hint of a smile. It warms his slate eyes just a touch, like cold butter that softens after landing on warm toast. And for the first time, I realize, holy smokes, he’s fantastically cute when he doesn’t look like he’s sucking on lemons.
“All right then. Get to work.”
“About time,” I say, smiling.
Cy settles onto a hoverstool and it adjusts to set him perfectly at the desk. Now I need to orient myself to machines that need a lot more TLC than I’m used to giving.
“Where did you get this junk?” I say, peering at a machine that looks like an electronic ice cream maker, but is probably a centrifuge.
“Where else? The junkyards.”
I’m waiting for him to laugh, but he doesn’t. “This stuff is . . . was trash?”
“Yeah. We go whenever we run out of parts.”
“I thought we’re not allowed to leave Carus House. For safety and stuff.”
Cy’s desk chair hovers and bounces as he spins to face me. “I don’t. But sometimes Vera or Wilbert will go on a run. The junkyard guards get paid to look the other way. We can’t purchase legit molecular bio equipment or it would get traced to Carus.”
“Why don’t you ever go there?” I say, pulling out one of Dyl’s precious strands of hair. It goes into a small, autoclaved glass vial. Nothing in the lab is disposable either, it’s all glassware. Super-old-school.
I realize Cy is pointedly not answering my question. Okay. Maybe his chatty engine just ran out of fuel. I turn to the hood and reach for some solutions to extract her DNA, but stop.
I’m not used to being my own boss like this. Usually I was assigned a protocol in the labs I’ve worked in. I was never there to solve problems, but to work on projects that had been previously planned out. For the first time, I have to write the map in my head. By myself. It’s so strange. But instead of being lost, I know exactly what I have to do.
It feels amazing.
I toss some of that energy toward Cy, hollering, “Hey, can I run her sample against the free DNA database at the NIH? Do you have access?”
Cy shakes his head. “Off limits.” He tips his head toward a massive chrome refrigerator behind me. “Gotta do it by hand. We have a bunch of wild-type control samples. As ordinary as they come. Pure vanilla.”
“Ah. And my sister is bilberry-saffron-macadamia-fudge brittle.”
“You may not be tall, but you’ve got a way with metaphors.”
“Thanks,” I say dryly. Cy passes behind me, leaving a waft of his scent in his wake. He heads for the door.
“Where are you going?” I ask. Cy doesn’t respond. I raise my voice. “Hey!”
The door closes behind him. One thing is for sure: Cy’s clear as plastiglass about what’s off limits for discussion. I head to the refrigerator and peruse the rack of samples there, but I hesitate, feeling weird about using some stranger’s DNA.
I close the fridge door and reach for Dyl’s holo stud in my earlobe. Her image speaks to me, still reciting Dad’s poem.
Remember to be beautiful.
The flesh is a sad reflection.
Do not be tempted by
Worth in symmetry, in shades of clay,
In carmine lips.
Look, without looking, for beauty.
Beauty. Dyl’s worth is no longer in her looks, it’s in this strand of hair. And I’ll use my own, plain, unspectacular self to help her. I’ll be the control DNA, to compare to hers. Of course. Whose DNA could be more ordinary than mine? I find a sterile swab and scrape some cells from the inside of my mouth, put it in another test tube, and start the protocol to isolate both samples of DNA. Let Dyl’s special trait shine.
For once, I’ll be proud to be in the shadows.
I WORK NONSTOP, LOSING TRACK OF the hours. Dyl’s holo stays on constantly as I work. It’s comforting hearing her chatter, seeing her face. She talks about boys she likes, new poetry, her classes, me. There is a lot of “Zelia says this” and “Zelia says that.” I tend to fast-forward through the parts where she complains about how much I nag her.
In spite of my hard work, I botch the first sample. I cuss so loudly that Vera applauds from a distant room. The machines have cranky personalities and I make mistakes in the process of getting to know them. I could turn to Cy for help, but a new stubborn streak seems to be sprouting in my neurons, and I don’t ask.
Marka wall-coms me while I’m reading an ancient electrophoresis manual on Cy’s computer.
“Zelia, it’s time for dinner.”
“Thanks, but I’ll skip it.”
“I knew you were going to say that, so if you don’t come to the kitchen in ten minutes, I’m having Hex pick you up. Physically, if necessary.”
“Okay, okay!” I concede. I head back to my room to wash up first, hiding Dyl’s purse under my pillow. After a thorough face-splashing, I come back out to find the purse strap trailing out from behind the pillow. I swear I tucked it away from view.
I run my hand through the contents, but everything seems to be there. Some round things knock against my fingers, and I dig deeply to pull them out.
More tiny baby doll heads. What the hell? I put them on the table next to my bed. There are four of them now, all with their eyes scratched out. I must be losing my mind. No one was in this room when I came in, and I shut the door. Dyl’s purse has been with me all day.
Maybe I’m just hypoglycemic. Hypoglycemic and imagining things.
“Zelia?” Marka intones from the walls.
“I’m coming,” I say, picking up Dyl’s bag and running out.
I find Marka in the hallway. Once again, I’m startled by her appearance. She’s so tall and elegant, wearing a snug white tunic that flutters below her hips. Pale wheat-colored pants swish against her legs. She doesn’t have a single awkward angle on her body.
I follow Marka, partly because I don’t know where I’m going, and partly because she’s got Amazonian legs.