Awakening (15 page)

With Risa secure in the cab and Abran at the far end of the bay, Kayla was certain she and Devak wouldn’t be overheard. Even so, she kept her voice down.

“What is it?” she asked.

He looked away once more. Kayla would have given anything to have a holo-enhancer on the small wristlink screen that would enlarge the image. But that was one extra the Kinship hadn’t seen necessary for Risa’s use.

Finally Devak looked back at her. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said at the safe house. I want to apologize for letting things go so long without me talking to you.”

His impassive tone, the bland neutrality of Devak’s expression pushed the air from Kayla’s lungs. She caught herself about to send a foolish prayer up to the Infinite, and squelched the impulse. Not even the Infinite could change a human heart.

“When we were together,” Devak went on, “I let myself forget. Who I was. Who you were. How big a gap there is between us.”

She couldn’t breathe. Too much pain. Too little will.

“But now I’m back in my world again, without you. And I realized we shouldn’t really expect anything between us,” he said.

“Not even friendship?” Kayla forced herself to say. At least that would be some connection between them.

“Do you really think GENs and high-status trueborns can be friends?” Devak asked.

She wondered if she was bleeding, the way it felt as if her heart had been wrenched from her chest. “I thought I had your respect at least.”

Another glance away. “You do. I’m still Kinship. I still want for you . . .” A flicker of misery crossed his face, then vanished. “I know we’ll still see each other. Talk to each other. I just didn’t want you to think that there was any chance.”

“Of course not,” she said. “Risa’s calling. I have to go.”

She shut down the connection, then the wristlink slipped from her nerveless fingers. Dimly she was aware of Nishi pouncing on the device and batting at it like prey. She ought to take it away, but she couldn’t move.

She dropped her head in her hands, a knife cutting her throat. Tears pushed themselves free and she sobbed silently, the tears wetting her hands, her face, the plass of the crates.

When she felt Nishi butt against her, she let the creature crawl into her lap. She cried all the harder as she cradled the seycat’s purring warmth.

D
evak stared down at the wristlink in his hand for a long, long time, wishing in spite of himself that Kayla’s face would reappear on the screen. He only needed to tap in Risa’s number to get her back. But that would defeat the purpose of what he’d just done.

And what purpose is that?

His heart aching, he scanned the close confines of Pitamah’s sleeproom, but there were no answers written on the plain white walls, or in his great-grandfather’s usual clutter. The room was claustrophobic to Devak, the wind chimes, glass ornaments, stacks of old paper books crammed into an even smaller space than Pitamah’s previous room in the Foresthill house.

He couldn’t stay there a moment longer. Devak arrowed out the sleeproom door, his hip banging against Pitamah’s lev-chair crammed in the corner. Two strides brought him to his own tiny sleeproom where his bed and bedside table took up all the space on one end, and two chairs for the computer took up the other.

Thankfully, the computer’s display and keyboard were holographic, the guts of the machine installed within the wall. Otherwise, he really wouldn’t be able to turn around. But the room had the same blank walls as Pitamah’s, since Devak’s mother had taken the valuable woven hangings from their old rooms. The one window was so high, he had to stand on the bed to get a fragment of a view of the Chadi River a quarter-kilometer away.

He flopped back on his bed, still tortured by his conversation with Kayla. It had seemed clear two days ago when he’d dropped off Junjie at the lab. He couldn’t stop thinking of Kayla that day, but he couldn’t figure out a way to be with her, either. He kept imagining how trueborn society would treat her—with disgust like his mother had, or contempt the way his father had. Or violently like the Brigade would, enforcers dragging her away to be reset.

And it wouldn’t be much different once she got restored and became a lowborn. Even marriage between a high-status and a demi-status horrified trueborn society, let alone the unthinkable match of trueborn with lowborn.

So he’d decided he had to let her go. Release her to be with someone more suitable than him. Even if it felt like someone had carved out his heart, it was better this way. Because now she could forget him.

The sound of brisk footsteps across the front porch snapped Devak out of his haze. The front door rattled as the electronic lock released, then he heard Pitamah’s familiar tread inside. The living room of the house they shared was barely bigger than the sleeprooms so it would take only seconds for his great-grandfather to reach the front sleeproom. He might
wonder where his wristlink was, the one Devak still held tight in his hand.

Denk it, why hadn’t he ignored the wristlink’s summons? Pretend he hadn’t heard?

Devak got slowly to his feet and retraced his steps to Pitamah’s room. As he walked in, the old man’s gaze strafed him, taking in the wristlink Devak held out. “A call?” Pitamah asked. “Risa, or . . .”

“Kayla,” Devak said.

He tried to hide his misery, but it must have been transparent in his face. Sympathy softened Pitamah’s eyes. “You finally talked to her.”

“For the last time. Unless it’s unavoidable Kinship business.” Devak slanted a look at his great-grandfather. “It’s what you told me I should do.”

“I never told you that,” Pitamah said. “I only said you should get things straight with her.”

“She’s a GEN, Pitamah,” Devak said, despair making his voice raw. “I don’t know what to do about that.”

Now his great-grandfather’s dark gaze narrowed on him. Devak wasn’t sure what that sharp look meant. He didn’t see anger or disappointment in Pitamah’s eyes, the two emotions Devak dreaded most from his great-grandfather. It wasn’t sympathy, either.

Then it hit Devak—Pitamah hadn’t left behind his wristlink by accident. He’d meant for Devak to answer it. He’d been prodding Devak to clear things up with Kayla for weeks now. Pitamah knew that Risa would call again about the GEN boy’s data and must have hoped that Devak would have asked to talk to Kayla, too.

Of course, his great-grandfather would never admit such a thing. Zul plucked the wristlink from Devak’s fingers. “Did you learn anything more?”

Devak wasn’t sure if he was relieved or irritated by Pitamah’s change of subject. “The boy told her he was abused. That’s why he ran.”

Pitamah fastened the wristlink to his wrist. The device was snugger than it used to be, back when his great-grandfather was nearly skin and bones. “Does she think Abran should go to a safe house?”

“Become Kinship, you mean?” Devak shook his head. “I don’t think she trusts him yet.”

Zul nodded. “Kayla has good instincts. The Kinship is lucky to have her.”

Those words seemed loaded, adding to the stew of guilt and misgivings inside Devak. Was Pitamah passing judgment on Devak for ending his friendship with Kayla?

As he was working up the courage to ask, Pitamah gestured Devak out of the room. “I need your computer skills.” Pitamah strode from his sleeproom toward Devak’s.

His great-grandfather’s robust gait was still a surprise. As long as Devak could remember, Pitamah had been a weak and unsteady man, bedridden more often than not. Drugs like crysophora would give him a temporary boost, but leave him weaker than ever.

But now Pitamah’s lev-chair gathered dust in the corner of his room, even though he’d celebrated his hundred-and-third birthday just last month. Where before he’d hobbled and struggled to walk—if he even had the strength to stand—now he marched. His great-grandfather’s new treatment these past
few weeks had given him not only strength, but seemed to have added years to his life.

“Are we hacking the Grid database?” Devak brushed his fingertips against one of the holo projection boxes jutting from the wall of his room. A display flickered to life.

“The GEN Assignment database. Councilor Mohapatra is going to steal Abran from his current patron.”

That brought Devak up short, his fingers hovering over the activation panel of the holographic keyboard. “Can he do that? Won’t he get censured by the Assignment specialists or Social Benevolence?”

“I know Abran’s patron. Cruel doesn’t begin to describe Ehimay Baadkar. He’s killed more than one GEN Assigned to him. Two GENs brave enough to report him ended up reset, realigned, and Assigned elsewhere. That’s discouraged any others from speaking up.”

“So if Councilor Mohapatra transfers Abran’s Assignment—”

“Baadkar won’t dare say a word,” Pitamah said. “He’s been under Judicial investigation for his cruelty not only to GENs, but even minor-status trueborns in his employ. We’d only need to show the Judicial Council Abran’s scars and Baadkar could have his other GENs confiscated.”

His computer ready, Devak seated himself in one of the room’s two chairs. Pitamah stayed standing, looming over Devak’s shoulder.

The system installed in Devak’s sleeproom wall wasn’t cutting edge, but the software it ran was. Using it, Devak could look up GEN data in the Assignment database or hack into the monitoring Grid to track tankborn locations. His access
limited him to the Central Western and Southwest territories, but that encompassed everything south of the Plator river clear to the southern coast of Svarga continent. Because he knew how to decrypt and re-encrypt the data, the Assignment and Grid computers accepted Devak’s input as if it had come from a legitimate tech.

Devak readied one of the computer’s data ports. “Where will the GEN boy go after his Assignment is transferred? To the councilor’s household?”

“He’ll stay with Risa. Work with her and Kayla on the lorry. We want to keep him under Kinship control, use him as a witness when we bring judgment against Baadkar.”

Devak’s stomach twisted at the thought of the boy staying with Kayla. “How long will that be?”

“A few weeks, perhaps as long as a month,” Pitamah said, pressing his wristlink against the computer’s data port. “We’re lucky the boy fell into our lap like this. Baadkar is one of the worst, and if we can get judgment against him, we think we can start really changing things from the inside. Change the whole trueborn culture of excusing abusive treatment of GENs.”

“But how can Risa and Kayla continue their mission with Abran underfoot? He’s not Kinship.”

Pitamah’s dark gaze felt like a spear in Devak’s gut. “And so he’s not worthy of being saved from abuse?”

Devak’s cheeks heated. “Of course he is. That’s not what I meant.”

Pitamah stared at him another long moment, then said, “They’ll have to be careful. Stay out of the safe houses. We’ll try to get the word out that Risa’s lorry is no longer a haven for
the Scratch-infected. For the time being, keeping Abran with them is their mission.”

As the wristlink finished uploading, the display flashed with what Risa had sent. Armed with Abran’s designator ID, passcode, nurture mother’s name, and home sector, Devak initiated a search for the GEN boy’s record.

Abran’s GEN record popped up on the holographic screen. He was a seventeenth-year, and his current Assignment was his first according to the record. In the looped animated image of the boy included in the record, Abran turned to his right to expose his left cheek, pausing there so someone with a sekai could scan his tattoo from the screen and learn basic information about him.

Abran was good-looking, never mind that his red-brown skin was the wrong shade. Devak gave himself a mental poke. What did skin color matter in a GEN? Then the poke became a kick. Why did skin color matter so much to him anyway?

“The councilor’s GEN account information should have uploaded with Risa’s data,” Pitamah said.

Devak scanned the display, using swipes of his fingers across the holo screen to transfer Abran’s GEN record from Baadkar’s account to the councilor’s. An acknowledgement message popped up declaring the transfer was complete.

Pitamah tapped a call code into his wristlink. “Vagish will want to know it’s been done.”

While Pitamah paced the hall, speaking to Councilor Mohapatra, Devak watched the image of Abran on the holo-screen. The GEN boy’s face turned slowly, over and over, showing the tattoo, then returning to stare directly from the
screen. There was a rebellious look to those dark eyes that reminded Devak of Kayla.

The full significance of this boy traveling with Kayla struck Devak. Abran was good-looking and a GEN. There was nothing like status blocking an alliance between him and Kayla. And why shouldn’t they become close, two young GENs thrown together like that? Wasn’t that what GENs did, crowded together in their warrens, uncomplicated couplings without concern for status or pregnancy?

The nastiness of that last thought burned in Devak’s gut. Shame warmed his face, and he turned away as Pitamah returned so his great-grandfather wouldn’t see the color likely staining his cheeks.

Pitamah didn’t seem to notice as he sagged into the second chair. For the first time in a long time, Devak realized his great-grandfather looked tired, a gray pallor bleaching his skin.