“Mom took it the hardest. I’d come home from school, and she’d just be sitting there in her rocking chair, frantically gluing together the shards from Sarah’s broken glasses. She’d glue them together, and then pull them apart to try again. I think she thought if she glued the pieces perfectly, Sarah would come back to get them. Like Death itself would be reasonable and allow Sarah to go back for her glasses, and Mom could see her one more time. Grief makes people believe crazy things like that.”
My legs were shaking. I leaned against the kitchen counter to hold my weight. Why was Mila telling me this now? Why hadn’t she told me anything before?
“Once Mom lost it, Dad did too. You know he worked for the Ministry of Transportation & Commerce—the commissioner in Maui gave that away. Dad probably could have had his job if he hadn’t had Sarah and me. But he did, and you only have so much time—the clock’s always ticking off your fifty years.
“So one day, about a month after Sarah’s death, I came home from school, and they told me they were going for a drive. They were all dressed up. Mom wore her pearl earrings—the kind all moms wear on special occasions—and Dad had on a red tie. I asked if I could come with them, but they said no, they’d be back soon. And Mom took Sarah’s glasses with her. That’s when I knew something was wrong.”
I thought of Phoenix’s parents, of how he told me they were attacked at home. I’d thought he’d made the story up. But when I saw the tears in Mila’s eyes, I knew her story was true. She wasn’t the mushy sort. I wanted to give her a hug, and tell her it’d be okay. I guess I wanted someone to do the same for me.
“My parents never came back. They never came home. They drove themselves off a cliff.” I felt my knees buckle. I was going to be sick again. “The detectives guessed they died on impact, but they said we’d never know for sure. The sharks got to their bodies before anyone else could.” She stopped, and looked me right in the eyes.
I just shook my head. “I—I dunno what to say.”
She snorted. “Now you know how I’ve felt all day.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry about your mom, Kai.”
“Then why’d you do it?” I asked quietly. “Why’d you kill her?”
“WHAT?” She stepped back. “What the hell are you talking about? Who put that idea in your head?”
I stood silent, and she shook her head. A moment of realization flashed across her eyes.
“You talked to the chancellor. On the roof, after the raid… That’s why you took so long to fall. You were hanging there, talking to him.”
“I saw books lying around in the Caravan,” I said. “You were studying all her research—trying to figure out all the information you could squeeze from her—”
“Kai—”
“I saw the Caravites holding her down before she died. One of them fired the gun that killed her.” I stepped away from Mila, trying not to think about her sister, or what she’d been through, and just focus on what was at hand. “I know who and what you people are. I know what you’re trying to do here. I figured it out a long time ago—and it makes me sick. I’m sick of all these lies and all this bullshit.”
I pushed a tin of muffins to the floor. Mila grabbed my arm. “You don’t know anything,” she said. “You think you know, but you have no idea what’s really going on here. We didn’t kill your mom, Kai! We never had her. Neither did the Caravites, and I mean, really? Those idiots can barely keep their own damn boats together. I think hiding your own mother from you is a bit of a stretch.”
She squeezed my arm hard. “And what made you so certain they were Caravites? Because of their clothes? You think Feds always wear uniforms? That the bad guys always announce themselves with gunshots or explosions or—I don’t know—mariachi music? You think the Caravites would kill your mother right in front of you—for what? To deliberately turn you against them? Does that make ANY sense?
“Open your eyes, Kai—the Feds killed my sister. They ran some bullshit diagnostic tests, and then Gwendolyn Cherry—on behalf of the Federation—decided she was in the weakest thirty-three percent and pulled her name from the system.
“They poisoned her, Kai. They did. Not the ‘Carcinogens,’ but the Federal government. And then they pretended it was an accident. And you know how they do it? They manufacture viruses. Custom viruses, tailored to target only specific individuals’ DNA. They put them in our water supply, and the viruses find their way to their victims.
“There ARE no Carcinogens, Kai. There’s nothing in the air. The only thing killing kids around here is people. And our enemies aren’t Girl Scouts—they don’t have to wear stinking uniforms.”
The room was spinning. I remembered Mila’s conversation with Gwendolyn, and Gwendolyn saying something about seeing the names behind the statistics, the children behind the names. The initials S.V. The legacy of regret she was leaving behind.
I remembered what Dr. Howey had said after she died: that the Indigo Report went to her head.
What was in the report again? I tried hard to remember, but it was difficult when the room was spinning. Something about viruses and genetics… Everything was blurry now—it was too much. What was I doing? What had I done? What had really been in the Indigo Report? If the Carcinogens weren’t real, then what was Indigo?
“But Indigo,” I said, my whole body shaking. “There has to be something in the air—there’s gotta be something.” My lips were quivering. “Maybe—maybe it’s too complicated for them to tell us. There’s gotta be something… because we have Indigo. The vaccine’s a miracle.” The words felt stale in my mouth. “It’s saved millions of lives. It’s the reason we can even exist…”
Mila stared at the ground and fiddled with her fingers—she might have been crying. I thought I saw tears roll down her face. I felt my cheeks. They were wet. The tears were mine.
Phoenix stood in the doorway, shaking his head. “Indigo has never saved a single life. It’s never saved anything.”
God, now not only was the room spinning, the world was shaking. When would it stop? When would the world stop? The Feds would be here soon. Their helicopters would break the horizon, and everything would be over. Charlie would be here. Things would make sense for the first time in a long time. I could forget everything I’d learned. Forget the truth.
Who needed the truth?
“I’m afraid Indigo didn’t save humanity,” said Phoenix. “It destroyed it. It’s not a real vaccine at all—it’s a virus that delivers a slow acting poison, Kai.”
“But the euthanizations—”
“Are a way to cover up dosage discrepancy. Like any pathogen, people react differently to the Indigo virus. Some die immediately after the virus awakens from its thirty-five-year incubation period. Others hold on to life a little bit longer while their sanity dissolves, the unleashed poison wreaking havoc and driving them to erratic behavior. Before euthanizations, some people even committed murder as the neurotoxins dissolved their will to live and think rationally. The mandatory euthanizations returned order to the whole thing—stopped Indigo from being so messy. I know it’s hard to believe, Kai, and for that, I’m sorry.”
His words hit me like bullets—I had had it wrong all along.
He sucked in a breath and said it again: “Indigo is a virus.”
Chapter 37
Miranda Morier decided she’d wear a red dress tonight to celebrate the Lost Boys’ capture. She was thinking of a strapless one with ruffled chiffon fabric draped around its hem. She’d add a blue brooch, think her hair a foot longer (a perk of existing only as a hologram), and wrap her shoulders with her favorite mink shawl.