Miranda shook her head free of nostalgia. This was not the night of Hackner’s appointment. It was not night at all. It was the first of the month—the day Sage came to visit.
She ran her fingers along the desk’s mahogany edge. Her fingers never really touched the wood—seeing as they weren’t really there—but she liked to imagine they did. Her form was nothing more than a holographic projection of her own consciousness. But it was a damn good one.
A small hand rapped against the door to the chancellor’s chambers.
“Come in, Sage,” called Miranda.
The door cracked open and Sage slid in, pushing it shut behind her.
Miranda stepped toward her. “How are you, my darling?” she asked.
She was always careful around the girl. She needed to be close, but not too close. The girl wanted to hear her voice nearby—the general echo of the ConSynth disturbed her—but Miranda couldn’t get too close, lest the girl reach out and try to touch her. Then the game would be up. Because Sage would realize she wasn’t really there—that she was only a projection.
The ConSynth couldn’t reproduce a body. It could only sustain a person’s consciousness, their mind, their soul, and even this small task required the machine to use energy from a very particular source.
Miranda called them “batteries.”
It sounded nicer that way. A silly euphemism. Less sinister for everyone involved. Made them forget the screams of the victims as they were strapped down, as the ConSynth’s cord was jabbed into their veins, as their eyes went blank.
It was a real shame the batteries only lasted a month. A pity the human body contained such a small amount of usable energy.
“I’m all right,” Sage said finally. Her eyes were blind, glazed over, but they still bore directly into Miranda.
Miranda hated when the girl stared. Like she knew what had happened to her. What Miranda had ordered done to her—the blindness, her mother’s death, all of that silly stuff. The girl had no way of knowing, of course. And she was too dim to make her own accusations.
Miranda smiled. “I’m so happy to hear that, sweetie.” The last word stuck to her tongue like an expired cough drop. She faked a yawn. “I’m quite tired, darling—you know where the materials are. Today, I’d like you to start with the beaker farthest to the right.”
Sage nodded and moved behind the desk. A lab table there had been set up with nine beakers. Hackner needed his monthly antidote for the poison, and Miranda was the only one who could give it to him. But she couldn’t touch anything, of course, so she used Sage to mix it. And since the girl couldn’t even see what she was doing, the antidote would remain known to only Miranda. And subsequently, she would remain forever safe and in power.
Miranda had to stifle a laugh at the thought. She, the most powerful leader in the world, needed the help of a blind girl. It was almost too rich.
She’d tried using sighted girls in the past, but it had repeatedly ended in disaster. One girl had revealed the antidote’s mixing formula to the man who was chancellor at the time. He’d threatened to pull the ConSynth’s plug and free himself from Miranda’s curse. Fortunately, Miranda had been able to have them both killed. But the incident had made her all the more cautious—paranoid.
Yes, it was better for everyone if her assistant was blind. The current system worked like oiled clockwork.
First, Miranda would have the chancellor lay out nine different ingredients in nine different beakers and vials, in nine different sequences. Then, he would leave, and the mixing girl—Sage, currently—would come in. Miranda would tell the girl the precise vials to pour into the precise beakers in the precise order. The ingredients and the compounds used to create the antidote were highly unstable. Failure to follow her instructions exactly resulted in the girl creating poison, rather than antidote.
And without his monthly antidote, the chancellor would die a slow, horrible death. It would begin as a cramp in his toes, then move to his calves, his hamstrings, thighs, on and on…
Eventually the cramp would make its way all the way up to his brain, and then it would hit his heart, which would relax, sending him into cardiac arrest. Then the cramps would begin again. His muscles would cramp without end before, finally, he died—not from physical injury, but from insanity that brought him to a fit of seizures.
Miranda knew the poison well—she’d designed it to work this way. If any chancellor attempted to create a new antidote, his muscles would cramp almost instantly from the toxic compounds’ double dosage. Miranda had learned that people who craved power didn’t like to die. She used this fact to her advantage.
Through this method—the poison and the antidote—Miranda had assured her own existence for the rest of time. She was, for all intents and purposes, immortal. So long as the ConSynth had a battery, she had a life. The chancellors would die, one after another, every five years—but not Miranda. Miranda was forever. A ghost. Not living, but certainly not dead. Every bit herself, every bit as powerful.
This was enough for her. The power was always enough.
Sage held up a beaker; she was done. She’d followed Miranda’s instructions. The solution was complete.
“Show it here, sweetie.” Miranda peered into the beaker and frowned. “That’s wrong. I’m sorry, darling, but that’s not right at all. The mixture is still blue.” She turned to the lab station. A vial of gold liquid sat unused in the corner. It wasn’t like Sage to make mistakes. Miranda clenched her jaw. “You forgot the third vial to the right,” she said. “I told you to pour it in after the vial farthest left.”
Sage immediately grabbed the vial and poured it into the mixture, which changed to a dark blue.
Miranda flared her nostrils. “You can’t just add it at the last second! Have I taught you nothing? The solution must be mixed in the proper order. What’s gotten into your head?”
Sage tucked her arms in close and started shaking. Miranda reminded herself to make sure the next one was less easily frightened.
Miranda smoothed her pants. It was important she maintained control—she must always have control. “It’s all right, sweetie,” she said. “You can come back tomorrow and mix a new one. The chancellor will survive another day without his antidote.”
At least Miranda hoped.
Chapter 18
The wind thundered in my ears as I plummeted toward the ocean below. Behind me, strips of parachute fluttered, only slightly slowing my descent.
In ten seconds, I’d hit the surface. I pointed my toes, clenched my stomach, and plugged my nose. Years of cliff jumping in Moku Lani had prepared me well.
My body hit the water with a sharp sting. It felt like shards of glass buried themselves into the arches of my feet and dug deep into my veins. My legs burned as I plunged farther into the ocean’s depths, slowed only by the tattered remains of my parachute.
I cracked open my eyes, and the salt water offered its customary burn. In the distance, I made out a blurred figure.
Bertha?
I tore off my parachute and swam toward the shadow. It spun gracefully in the water like a sparrow in the sky. It froze as I approached, widening its mouth and showing the teeth embedded in its jaws. Small and rounded, they were unlike the shark teeth I knew so well.
They belonged to a dolphin. A dolphin. The creature before me was an actual, living dolphin. I opened my mouth in a silent scream. Bubbles flew from the corners of my lips.
In school, we were taught that dolphins were extinct, like most other large marine mammals. Killed by the nuclear fallout that settled in the ocean, and by the radioactive beasts that had emerged as a result.