“So . . . do you know my sister?”
Ren ignores me, picking bits of black candy from his teeth. Maybe I should try a different tactic.
“How does your . . . trait work?”
Surprisingly, he actually makes eye contact. “Why do you care?”
“It’s pretty amazing, what you did. I guess SunAj thinks pretty highly of you.”
He shrugs.
I point at his hand. “What’s in the jelly beans?”
“My own formula. Psilocybin, LSD, DOB, Q’s leaf, among other things.”
“Why aren’t you affected?” I ask, as if were discussing the utterly normal, like the weather, or Sunday night holo programs.
“My lungs metabolize them out of my bloodstream directly. Wanna see?” He leans in closely and I get a whiff of his licorice breath before I can turn away. Around Ren’s head appear pink feathers that flash purple. It was just a little puff of his breath, but the vision is still shocking enough to make me stop breathing for several seconds. I take a step backward, and the illusion dissipates.
“Show’s over. We’re here.”
Ren stands in front of a blue corridor with several black circular doors. The walls are semi-transparent, icy and partly clouded. They suck away the surface warmth of my body as we walk past. Pink and gray things are embedded inches deep. I pause in front of one.
“What are these?” I wipe away the frosted condensation. Something’s suspended in ice, bright fuchsia on a stalk of gray. It’s a girl’s finger. Apparently, she cared enough to paint her fingernails before the finger left her body. Horrified, I wipe off another glass surface. This time, it’s a torso. No arms and no legs—or head, for that matter. Thick spines emerge from the skin, inches long, like daggers.
“He never complied with our rules, that one,” Ren says.
“That one?” I say, sickened by his casual words. “That was a person!”
“Don’t lecture me.” Ren smolders, staring at the torso. “He was my brother.” The expression on his face—something between disgust and raw fear—terrifies me. Ren touches the cold glass. “There are rules in life, and then there are rules in our life. He didn’t follow any of them.”
“And you just let that happen?”
“I didn’t let anything happen. He did.” Ren pauses, trying to master the battling emotions on his face. Finally, he sheds his discomfort with a twist of his neck and points to the finger with the pink nail. “That one, Micah burned so badly, that was the only part left. Anyway, a useless trait. Her touch made people relaxed and happy. Got plenty of neurodrugs for that. Not marketable at all.”
“So you’re saying that if I don’t behave, I get turned into an ice cube decoration?”
“More or less.”
“More or less what?”
“More or less body parts, depending on what we need.” He waves me toward a door down the hallway. “Consciousness and silly things like walking, talking, keeping your body in once piece—they’re not necessary. Those are earned freedoms. You’ve got a lot to learn.”
Ren punches a door pad, and a black circle opens. Inside, it’s rounded, not unlike my bubble room, but that’s where the similarity ends. There’s a thin bed, a sink, and a toilet. Nothing else. No windows. The ceiling is a six-foot glass circle that’s just a big lens, the aperture shut for now. Soon enough, I’ll be under a microscope, and there are no corners in which to hide. Not even blankets on the bed.
“This is your room,” Ren says, tossing another jelly bean down his trap.
“Are you going to listen to me too?” I say, pointing to the ceiling lens.
“We put it on mute. No one wants to listen to a bunch of screaming and wailing.”
My hope has hit a dead end.
“It took a while for me to learn too.” He pulls up his sleeves, and I see long swaths of mutilated skin. Micah’s handiwork, I’m sure. He stares at them with a frown, seeing things that I can’t. “But you get used to it. Once you stop fighting and come over to this side of things, life gets much better.” He crosses his arms. “Now, take off your clothes.”
“What?” I try to keep my voice calm, but it’s too late. My panic is obvious.
“No clothes while you’re under observation,” he says. “I’m here to confiscate all your belongings, down to the threads.”
“No way.”
“They’re not my rules.” There’s no lust behind his eyes, no lascivious grin. In fact, he looks almost sad having to say it. This is all business. My hands go protectively to my chest, where the tiny vials from Carus are still safely stowed. Ren rolls his head back, his face suffused with irritation.
“You’re messing with my job. Do it, or I’ll do it for you.”
I look down at the ink-colored sleeved tunic, elastic skirt, and leggings, knowing what lies underneath them—the green polka-dot highway, courtesy of Vera’s serum. Ren’s arms are crossed as he walks slowly to me. Just as I assume I’m getting a lecture at close quarters, his arm shoots out so fast, I have no time to brace myself.
Bam! The hit to my skull is so hard, my ear sings a buzzing noise and I fall to the floor, eyes watering from the blow.
“Knew you were going to be a pain in the ass,” he growls, standing over me. I don’t even have a chance to get my breath back when Ren plunks down, straddling me and tearing at my shirt.
“No!” Panicked, I hit and push him, my legs scrambling to get away. But Ren is probably close to two hundred pounds. All he has to do is sit on me and I’m immobilized. He smacks one of my hands down with his meaty fist and wrangles the other one above my head.
Ren’s face, with its licorice stink and stubbly, pimply red skin looms closer. His mouth is slack and his humid breath washes over me. I have to breathe. I can’t kill myself, not for this, not for him.
The stale breath invades my nostrils, and invisible chemicals assault my brain in seconds. Ren’s face stretches, melting into a warped clock’s face of numbers, a Daliesque monstrosity of red and black. The clock face floats away while my body sinks below it, softly bouncing against a sky of brilliant fuchsia, just like the girl’s fingernail.
In the recesses of my normal nervous system, I sense a tugging. My sleeve is being torn off me, the shirt shoved upward as Ren continues to undress me. A grunt of disgust and wonder floats toward me.
“What kind of messed-up rash is this?”
The cool air of the room hits my exposed skin with a jolt. The strangest sensation of relief enters through the skin of my arm and belly, as if my very skin cells yawn and suck the air hovering about me. Clarity enters my mind. In seconds, Ren’s timepiece of a face morphs into a human head. Ren is Ren once more.
And I am myself again.
Ren must recognize that sober look in my eyes, because he dips down and bestows another breathy dose of hallucinogen. A big one. I hold my breath for too long, knowing I’ll be starved for oxygen soon. I wait for the signs—the knotted pain my chest, the curls of darkness that invade the outer rim of my vision. But they don’t come.
Afraid my own body isn’t working, I inhale a tiny bit of Ren’s sickly sweet breath. Again, hallucinations burst into my vision, this time in the form of black tentacles coming out of his neck, but just as quickly, they’re gone. Ren’s drugs aren’t holding me at all.
Uncertainty cracks his brutish expression. His hands hold the torn fabric of my tunic in the air, unsure of what to do next. I squint at him.
“Hi.” I don’t know what else to say.
“Hi?” he responds, thoroughly confused.
I don’t wait for another response. In one swift movement, I swing my hands up and smack them on Ren’s ears. Ren jumps back to cover his head, howling in pain. I scramble back and grasp the first vial I touch in my bra. Which one is it?