Forever.
Wilbert interrupts my thoughts. “Er, Vera’s already up there,” he warns. I exhale noisily. Vera’s the last person I want to see. “Don’t worry. She’s usually in a good mood when it’s sunny.”
The transport zooms upward a short distance and opens to the stairwell.
“Hey, Wilbert,” I say before I step out of the transport. “Can I . . . Do any of you guys ever leave Carus? You know, to go shopping or something.”
“I—” Wilbert stops himself, and the rest of the sentence gurgles, stuck in his throat. “Outside of our junkyard runs, no. We don’t. Marka goes every few weeks for food or supplies we can’t grow or make ourselves.”
“Oh. That’s what I thought.” There’s no way he’s telling me everything, but I don’t want to push it.
I take sixteen steps up to the illuminated dome above the stairwell. The window’s been fixed, though a few shards are still scattered on the floor. There are no remnants of my blood anywhere. On cue for my arrival, the glowing red dot by the door to the agriplane switches to green. I push the door open.
The brilliant light of the sun stuns me, and my head throbs. It’s the opposite of brain freeze. A solar headache. Ow. Finally, my eyes adjust to the brilliance, the blue above and the gold ocean of crops, and the blob of green before me.
Uh, not a blob of green. It’s Vera, lying on her back on an outdoor chaise. There is nothing but green skin, green breasts, and a white thong. I’m speechless. And envious. Geez, she looks like a lingerie model. From Mars. I must have made a noise of surprise, because she opens an eye.
“Oh.” She flips over onto her stomach. Her ass wiggles without even a hint of cellulite. How utterly depressing. She pats an empty chaise beside her. “Have a seat.”
“I’m not getting naked, thanks anyway.”
“Suit yourself. But chica, you need a tan . . .” she starts.
“. . . like I need skin cancer. Again, no thanks. Have you seen the color of my skin?”
“Yeah, it blinds me.” She chuckles.
On the other side of the dome, I see another huge field of green. This must be where Vera farms all her other plants and stuff. Though it looks inviting, it doesn’t call me the way the gold plane of crops do.
I push my sleeves up to feel the warmth of the sun on my arms. There are only faint, pink streaks where the cuts once were. How could that be?
“Hey Vera,” I say, hoping the sunshine will keep her non-hostile for a while. “When my dad used to visit, did he use special medicines on you?”
“Huh? No, not really.” She reaches over to a tall glass of brown liquid with a straw. It looks like dirt and water mixed together. “We all had little quirky problems he’d help us out with. My vitamin deficiencies, stuff like that.”
“Because when Cy fixed up my arms, he used this purple liquid—”
“Oh! You got the brew. Nice.”
“What brew?”
“An extract Cy’s making in the lab.”
“What’s it supposed to do?”
Vera cracks open an eye. “Can’t you tell?” She takes her long leg and deftly pokes my arm with her big toe. “Do you have any scars?”
I study my arm in the bright light. “Hardly.” Oh. The crazy healing. It was fast. Too fast. “How did he synthesize that stuff? That could be worth so much money. If every pharmacy bot had that at everyone’s house . . . wow.”
“Took a while. He had to figure out which cells made the stuff, and how to keep it from degrading outside of his body.”
“His body?” I ask.
“Yeah. Cy’s like, Mr. Fix-Himself. Or Fix-William. That’s what we used to call him when he first got here.”
“Fix-William?”
“William is his last name. Anyway, we couldn’t do anything to him. Hex even stabbed him once, on a dare. He just healed up in a few hours.”
The tattoos. No wonder they keep changing. His body must metabolize the ink so fast that he gets a clean slate every day. Though why someone would purposely torture himself daily with that gigantic sewing machine/tattoo contraption is beyond me. Sounds like a hobby from hell. I don’t even want to think about what he uses for the piercings.
“Wait. How long have you been in Carus?”
“Hex and I came here as infants, the same year. Gawd, I’m surprised Marka doesn’t have white hair, we drove her pretty crazy.”
I suspect they still do, but wisely, I don’t say anything. “What about Wilbert?”
“He came two years ago. He was in a safe house in southern Okks, on the verge of being taken by Aureus. He didn’t want to join and got beat up pretty bad. Your dad helped him escape before Aureus swallowed them up. Actually, that’s when we first met your dad. Not sure I forgive him for bringing that two-headed wiener here. Lucky us,” she groans. “Stupid anti-vegetarian. Cannibal, my ass.”
I start to ask about Cy when she holds up a hand. “No, no, no. Ain’t going there with a ten-foot bean pole. Ask him yourself, if you don’t value your belongings.”
“Why? What’s he going to do to me?”
Vera turns her head away from me. “Anger management issues. At Carus, it’s also colloquially known as HRPPD.”
“Excuse me?”
She yawns. “High Risk of Profanity and Property Damage.”
In a few seconds, Vera starts snoring lightly. She looks so lush and green, I wonder if I should find a watering can and give her a douse. I should go back to the lab, but the agriplane awaits. It’s so otherworldly, compared to the lumpy buildings in town and holo-everything I’m used to.
I walk toward the perfectly planted rows of crops and slip between the golden stalks. They’re several feet taller than I am and curl over my head, giving me some much-needed shade. Golden pea-sized berries hang heavily from their tops. Sunseeds.
“Perfect food, made perfectly for you!” I say, singsong-y, like the commercials. I touch the warm clusters and pick one sphere, popping it into my mouth.
“Grrrreeeeblecch!” I spit it out. I forgot: They may be nutritionally perfect, but they’re horribly bitter. All those flavors and textures have to be processed to turn them into perfect little iced cakes and pizza and stuff.
“Are you all right, Zelia?” a voice crackles beside me.
“What?” I whirl around, but there’s no one there. The dry, golden fronds of the sunseed plants crackle in the gentle wind. There’s another crackle, but it’s not coming from the plants.
My holo.
I pinch my ear stud, and the screen comes up, still blurry as ever.
“Zelia?” It’s a man again. Even though he’s whispering, the tone is deeply resonant.
“Yes! Yes, it’s me. Who is this?” I put my hand on my stomach to keep it from flopping up and out my throat.
“It’s Q. I’ve been trying and trying, but the transmission never goes through.”
“You know Dylia, don’t you?” Harsh static answers me for an eternity of thirty seconds.
“I’ve seen her recently. She’s hard to miss.” Of course, Dyl’s the gorgeous one. My stomach flip-flops when he adds, “But then again, you’re pretty memorable too.”
I’m as memorable as a clogged vaporizer sink. This is not what I expect from anyone, ever. I shake away the pleasant but intrusive thought.
“Do you know us from school? Who are you?”
“This channel isn’t safe. The less I say, the better.”
Ugh. Thwarted again. “But what about Dyl. Is she okay? Is she safe?”
“For now, but not for long.”
My heart. It hurts. Like every drop of blood is being squeezed out and it’s shriveling into something hard and small. I’m at the mercy of everything I don’t have control over. Everything.
“You have to tell me something. Anything. What can I do?” I beg.