And finally, the boy who helped take Dyl at New Horizons sits on an ottoman. Even now, he’s popping the black jelly beans. His hair is oily and carroty, and he nods at me with recognition. He smiles only briefly, showing teeth smeared with black gunk. Disgusting.
“Wot’s that? In the bag?” A woman’s voice with a decidedly English accent sounds from somewhere in the room, but I can’t find the source. Maybe it’s like Ana, someone who can talk in my head. I can’t decide if I like the voice or not. It sounds eager, like a child’s, but has the tone of an older lady.
“Hush, Aj. In time, in time.” The man has a similar accent, but his tone is far less energetic. In the armchair, he rubs his grandfatherly silver hair and adjusts his plaid flannel shirt. In a room like this, I’d expect a crimson velvet robe and a silk cravat. Nothing quite fits together. “So, Zelia. I’ve heard so much about you.” He licks his finger and turns the page, but still won’t look me in the eye.
“Who are you?”
“Of course. I didn’t introduce myself. I am Sun.”
“How egocentric of you.”
“Perhaps. You may blame my dead mother for the name. Keep in mind, young Zelia, that insolence is not tolerated here, and arrogance is earned. And you haven’t earned a cent thus far, despite what your father has done for us.”
“My father.” The words escape my lips before I can stop them.
“Yes. We owe him a great deal, even though he kept his biggest contribution to society a secret for too long.”
“I already know.”
“You do? I am surprised.”
“He helped people. The illegal kids.”
Sun leans back in his chair. “Well. You are more enlightened than I thought, if that’s what you think he did.”
Now I’m thoroughly confused. Holo-Dad already told me he cared for the illegal kids. What’s going on? Sun opens his mouth to continue when that English woman’s voice interrupts him.
“She doesn’t know, darling. Her own father didn’t tell her. It’s quite a shame.”
“Aj, not now.” Sun talks over to his right, but still I see no one. The people in the room are totally unperturbed with the comments from this bodiless voice. The voice echoes again, more insistent. Hurt.
“Stop silencing me, Sun. You promised you would be better. Let me speak.”
Sun blinks several times, then shuts his book. He shifts within the armchair and turns his shoulders to face me.
“Oh!” I blurt out, covering my mouth with my hand. I should be used to this after being in Carus, but still I’m not prepared.
On Sun’s head, protruding out of his temple and cheek are a small face, legs, and arms, as if a geriatric fetus had been pressed into his head and stuck fast, like putty. The wrinkled face is palm-sized, with a mouth larger than the other features. The eyes are garishly painted, with sparkling blue eye shadow and too much mascara, the color disturbing and unexpected. The tiny blunted limbs writhe with gentle excitement.
“Don’t look at me like that. You’re no better than I am. We’re equals here.” She curls her mouth, and her pale blue eyes glisten as she studies me. “You don’t look like your father. You look honest.”
“My dad was just a doctor.” I squeeze my blistered palms into fists that hurt no one but me.
“You underestimated him, as we did. Yes, he was a doctor, but more than that. All the gifted children you see here”—she wiggles her pathetic stumpy arm around the room—“are his doing. He visited so many women in the last decades, switching out their vitamins for carefully crafted gene-modifying agents to improve their offspring.”
“No.” That’s not what he said. That’s not what he told me.
“Yes. We didn’t know that he experimented with your own mother. Not until the test from New Horizons came back positive.”
I feel sick. So much sicker than Caliga could ever make me. Is that why my mother left us? Because she was part of an experiment too? The story behind her departure always made it easy to hate her. I’d been told that she selfishly wanted her own life, and that Dad’s traveling job, along with the baggage of children, was too inconvenient. But maybe she wanted to leave for an entirely different reason. Because we—and our father—were monsters.
Aj continues. “What a stupid mistake we made. We started noticing a few years ago. He was reporting fewer successful births. Fewer traited children. So we grew suspicious and began watching the orphanages, finding traited children being abandoned by their parents—children that we should have had in our houses from birth. He pretended he knew nothing about how they got there. We were angry—after all, we paid him well. Nearly ran off with you both before we stopped him.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Of course you wouldn’t. Didn’t you notice a pattern in how often you moved? Every ten months? He’d follow the women for nine months, examine the babies, and send them to us when they were found to have illnesses ‘incompatible with life.’” Sun air-quotes his words, then knots his fingers together in his lap. “And then he moved on. But this time, he wouldn’t do what we asked. For reasons I cannot fathom, he took control over the creation and futures of traited children. And so he had to go.”
It can’t be. How could it be?
My father.
For a minute or a century, I can’t see anything. I can’t hear anything, only a buzzing in my head as the world rewires itself. Small things fill my mind—the scuffed gold ring on his finger, the wiry gray hairs on his head that wouldn’t obey a comb. And his distracted presence, so large that you could feel his away-ness—even when I was close enough to touch him. I’d always tried to please him, to play by his rules, to be the child he wanted me to be. To pin down his presence with my obedience. But it didn’t work. He was always somewhere else.
Because he was someone else.
I curl my fists so tightly that the nails dig into my bloodied palms. But this pain is nothing to what boils inside me.
So. This is what rage feels like.
God, I thought we were normal. Odd, yes, but normal; a family simply torn apart by a simple accident. That crazy, bobbling magpod in the street . . .
“The magpod accident?” My mouth is hardly able to make the words. “You did that?”
“Yes, well.” Aj sighs. “That was a hasty decision. Little did we know he had with him someone with a longevity gene. A financial holy grail, so to speak. Only second best to . . .” She kicks her thumb-sized foot with irritation.
“Aj, get on with it!” Sun growls with impatience.
“Well, you’re here at last.” She smiles. Her pink lipstick stains her teeth with cherry-colored blotches. “Our family is complete.”
“You’re not my family,” I say, unable to keep my voice from shaking.
“Oh, not according to your definition. But whether you like it or not, we are tied together by your father. And we seek to better our existence, not merely exist to waste our gifts—so selfish! Our valuable traits are made available to the masses, one by one. And when they become dependent on our very existence, we can regain our freedom.”
“Seems like you’re doing just fine now.”
“It’s an illusion. None of us may walk in the light of the sun without fearing for our lives. Not even the unmarred, like Micah. We have our protected playgrounds, but it is not the same. We are worse than second-class citizens. We aren’t even allowed to be.” SunAj stands up and comes to crouch over me. Aj’s face is so close, I can see the lipstick bleeding into the cracks around her lips. “We only want freedom. What do you want, Zelia?”