I stand on the couch and pile on a few cushions, scrambling up to reach one of the windows. It’s about fourteen inches square. Too small for normal people to fit through.
Then again, I’m not normal.
I wriggle half my body through, like a worm escaping a bad apple. Straight down, I peer over the curve of the glass and see the ground, hundreds and hundreds of feet away. Specks on the ground—no, people—walk around, oblivious to the half girl sticking out of one of the many bubble rooms on the façade of the building.
I look up. The agriplane is only a few floors above me. The decoration of the building includes white metal ledges, jutting out a few inches every foot or so. Under the agriplane, there’s scaffolding that runs in every direction, spiraling down each of the spidery legs of synthetic supports for the plane.
My ass is still in the room and my torso outside when my holo buzzes. I click it on, breathless from balancing my stomach on the three-inch-thick glass of the window.
“Who is it?” I ask breathlessly. The reception is about as bad as when I’m on the agriplane.
“Please don’t turn me off.”
It’s Micah.
“I want my sister back, you son of a bitch!” It’s a good thing I’m outside, because I’m yelling at the top of my lungs.
“It’s not that easy.”
“Make it easy!” I snarl. “You goddamned liar!”
“Zelia, please. It’s out of my hands. I’m not even allowed to see her anymore.”
“Or screw with her mind, like you did mine? Or drug her senseless?”
“Listen, please.” He’s said please at least three times. It’s not working. “Aureus is willing to do a trade. You for your sister.”
“It’s impossible. I’m locked in here.”
The fuzzy holo screen suddenly divides into two squares. The square on the right bleeps at me, pulsating an obnoxious yellow color. There’s a simultaneous transmission coming in.
“Mute left,” I order, and Micah’s screen goes silent. The right screen is pretty fuzzy too, but slightly less so. It’s Cy.
“Zel? Where are you? You haven’t answered my wall-com. I had to resort to a crappy holo stud to find you.”
“I’m—I’m just . . .” Halfway out the building? I can’t think of a single excuse.
“I know you’re still upset. I’m coming by.”
Crap. The screen shuts off on the right, and the blurrier side fills the void. Before I un-mute it, I do my best to yell over my shoulder, through the tiny space between my waist and the window’s edge.
“LOCK DOOR!” I holler. Distantly, I hear the lock click.
“Micah,” I call.
“I’m here. Zelia, you have to come. Figure out a way. They won’t accept anything less than you.”
“I have a proposition. I’ll give Aureus what they want—”
“So you’ll come?” Micah’s voice sounds hungry.
“No. I’ll do better than that. I’ll give them me, in a marketable form.”
“Your longevity trait?”
“Yes.” Of course they already know about it. “A usable form, in a bottle. And Dylia will come home with me to Carus.” It was unconscious, but now that it’s out there, I realize my words are true. Home. Carus. They are one and the same, even if my family is locking me up like a misbehaving toddler.
“You can do that?” Micah can’t hide his surprise.
“I know I can. And I’ll prove it. I need a week, maybe—”
“We’ll consider it.” Micah pauses, and I hear a muffled conversation going on in the pause. “They’ll give you three days.”
“What?” I yelp.
“Your sister is so sick, she won’t last a week.”
“Then stop making her sick!” Tears of fury are beading on my lashes.
“It’s not me. She’s the one refusing to eat, to sleep . . .”
“But Marka said she’d bring it herself. I’m telling you they won’t let me out of here.”
“No. It has to be you. If you have something better, you have to bring it yourself,” he explains. “You have till midnight, three days from now. Get out of that place, and call me on your holo. We’ll be waiting nearby to pick you up.”
From outside, Cy’s fist pounds on the door. “Zelia? Open up!”
“One second! I’m changing!” I holler.
“Changing what?” Micah asks.
“Nothing. Listen, I can’t do three days, I need more time.”
“That’s all you have. I’m sorry. Sorry about so many things. Zelia, you have to believe me, I never meant to hurt you.”
I snap the holo off. Take that for an apology not accepted, you piece of dog shit.
The pounding on the door escalates. I push my hips down and squelch my shoulders together, wriggling out of the window. On the way down to the bed, my chin bangs on the lower edge of glass.
“Ouch!”
“What is going on in there?” Cy yells.
“Close windows,” I command. The three glass squares resume their place and the bubble wall is once more a continuous curve of glass. The breeze disappears, leaving behind the dead, still air inside. My head is dizzy, so I force several, huge breaths before commanding the door to unlock. It whisks open and Cy steps in.
“What were you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“Why does your hair look like that?”
I gingerly touch my hair. It’s at least three times its usual volume, frizzed out and kinked from the damp wind outside.
“Oh my god.” I cover my head and run into the bathroom. I may be stressed out and pissed, but I have no intention of looking like a crazed victim of bad hair grooming in front of anybody, especially Cy. After a few taps of Dyl’s styling wand and a twist into a hair clip, I reenter the room.
“Why did you lock the door?”
“A girl needs privacy sometimes.”
He studies my room, as if my furniture could somehow divulge my secrets. “Were you talking to Micah again?” he asks quietly.
I don’t answer right away. Because I know that depending on how I answer, I’ll be walking toward a solution that includes Cy, or doesn’t. Because the only way this will work is if I lie to him, and defy my new family. One mouthful of words. I don’t know what they’re going to be until I say them.
“Of course not. You know I don’t get any holo reception in my room,” I say, as evenly as possible. “I could barely hear you when you called me.”
There.
And just like that, the road splits from the lie that’s planted into the floor between us.
Cy and I are no longer walking in the same world anymore.
CHAPTER 23
I HAVE THREE DAYS. THREE INSANE DAYS to do the impossible.
“How many links are you making?” Cy asks. He studies the electronic tablet I’ve been scribbling on with manic abandon since last night. Two cups of coffee, a plate of parsmint squares (from Vera), and a plate of mini bacon burgers (from Hex) remain untouched on the lab desk.
Before I can answer, a squeal breaks through the usual noise of the lab.
“Hoinch!”
Wilbert walks in with Callie struggling in his hands.
“Callie, calm down!” Wilbert is flushed red in both heads and trying not to drop the pig. “I have a medical problem. Are you busy?”
“We’re making sticky ends,” I explain.
“Is that like sticky buns? I love those.”
“No. DNA sticky ends.”
“I don’t get it,” Wilbert says. “I do electronics, not genes.”
I don’t have time to explain, so Cy talks while I start up the first batch of chromosome clasps, setting instructions on the rusty DNA fragmenter.