Awakening (22 page)

Behind Kayla and Risa, on the other side of the sticker bushes, a row of warehouses and factories shielded the sector’s central ward from the ramshackle lowborn village. Kayla caught the stink of molten plassfiber wafting on the air, which meant one of those factories processed raw plass. The mixed sector warehouses stored food and dry goods, much higher quality than anything found in a GEN sector. GENs would be the main workforce, helping to produce and package what they’d never consume themselves.

“This okay?” Abran asked, sliding down from the cab to stand between Kayla and Risa.

Kayla couldn’t help herself—she scanned him from head to foot. The boy certainly cleaned up nicely.

His broad shoulders looked even wider in the deep-green tunic, his legs longer and leaner in the matching chera pants. Gold piping, the stylized initials of Councilor Mohapatra, decorated his long sleeves and the cuffs of his cheras. Despite that
declaration of ownership, Abran carried himself with an almost trueborn-like pride and arrogance. You would have thought he wore uttama silk instead of cheap woven plass threads.

The defiance sparking in his eyes alarmed Kayla. She leaned close to whisper in his ear, “Don’t forget who you are, GEN.”

He turned his fierce expression on her. “Who are you to tell me who I am?”

Risa heard, because she sucked in a breath, about to reprimand him. But then his gaze dulled, and the sharp lines of his face softened.

Risa snapped, “Let’s go, GEN boy.” Abran fell in behind her without argument.

But he gave Kayla one last look over his shoulder. The enigmatic message in his eyes teased her to decipher it. Apology? Resentment? Before she could figure out which it was, he followed Risa around the lorry and disappeared from view.

Earlier, she’d thought he’d straightened out his attitude. But it was almost as if when he went in to change his clothes, he’d transformed himself back into the insolent boy he’d been last night. Was this how he usually acted around his trueborn patron? Abran must realize his arrogance gave Baadkar an excuse to beat him. He was lucky not to have been reset.

Kayla’s stomach tightened with sudden anxiety. Maybe he still had a stock of jaf buzz hidden somewhere. They only knew about what had been inside his carrysak. What if he had more, secreted away amongst the cargo? He could have taken another hit when he went to change, and that was what made him edgy and rude again.

Her blood ran cold. She climbed back into the cab, switched on the bay illuminators, then slipped through the hatch.

The niche they’d created for Nishi was ill-lit, but she could see well enough to know there was nothing concealed in the corners. But as a GEN, she knew enough about hiding things to believe the vac-seals of jaf could be right under her nose and she might not see them.

Or maybe she wasn’t seeing anything because there was nothing there to see. Maybe she’d made too much of Abran’s brief moment of rebellion. How often had she wanted to lash out at the tight controls trueborns kept GENs under? More times than she could count. And it had had nothing to do with a jaf buzz.

Jumping to conclusions about Abran wasn’t productive. It would be more worthwhile to keep her mind open, see if he showed any more signs of having taken a hit. And she’d look sharp as they finally unloaded the kel-grain to make sure none of the seals were broken, and scrutinize all the tight corners of the bay for anything illicit.

Putting aside her unease about Abran, Kayla slipped back into the sleeper and closed the hatch and curtain. She took a breath to settle her thoughts, then dug out the wristlink and tapped in the code for Zul.

He answered quickly enough, but she could tell from the way his words were muted that he wasn’t talking to her. There were other voices in the background, voices raised just short of shouting, a contentious back and forth between them and Zul. She made out a few words
—Scratch
and
GENs
and
explosions
— and guessed that he was at a Kinship meeting. From the voices drowning his out in the background, it didn’t sound as if he was winning the argument.

The image in the wristlink display, dark and indistinct as if Zul’s hand was resting in his lap, blanked out completely as he shut off the vid-screen. Then he must have raised his wristlink to his mouth before murmuring, “In a meeting.”

By deactivating the video, he no doubt wanted to keep her from identifying whoever was in the room with him. The cultured tones of high-status trueborns boomed through the receiver of Risa’s wristlink as the argument raged on.

“Can we deal with this later?” Zul asked over the noise.

“It took some doing to get time alone,” Kayla said. “I can’t use the wristlink while Abran’s around.”

“Junjie’s here. Can he handle it?” Zul said, his exasperation clear.

She was tempted to say yes, a knee-jerk reaction for her to back off when Zul was irritated. But even though she liked Devak’s lively, hyperactive best friend, it was Zul she needed to pass her news to.

“Someone has encoded me,” she told him. “Written in my bare brain. The letters
FHE.”

Without the video, Kayla didn’t know how to interpret his lack of response. The rowdy discussion rolled right on in the background.

Then she heard the scrape of a chair and Zul saying, “Excuse me,” then, “Junjie. With me.”

As they moved away from the shouts, she could hear their footsteps, Junjie’s light tread and Zul’s heavier one. The door rattled as it opened and closed; silence fell.

The video feed came back on and Zul’s serious face regarded her from the display. She could see Junjie over Zul’s shoulder.

“The discussion was going nowhere, anyway. Sometimes
it seems they’ve abandoned the mission.” Zul shook his head. “What’s this about your bare brain?”

She explained about her last datapod upload at the Peq sector warehouse. How something seemed off about it, how she’d managed to trace a path back to her bare brain.

“I want to know if someone from the Kinship put it there,” Kayla said. “Is there some splinter group you haven’t told me about called FHE?”

She heard Junjie suck in a breath. His eyes widened slightly.

“Absolutely not,” Zul said. “What the devil is FHE, anyway?”

She glanced away, guilt sharp within her that she’d kept this from Zul so long. But at the same time, annoyance bubbled up that she felt such obligation to tell him everything.

“It stands for Freedom, Humanity, Equality,” she said finally. “I’ve seen the words written in GENscrib on warehouse and warren walls in GEN sectors.” She hesitated, then decided she might as well tell him all of it. “It was written on both the warehouses that blew up, the one in Qaf sector and the one in Beqal. I also spotted it on some rubble of a warren in Fen sector. I think it’s a warning to the GENs who work or live there to clear out.”

“Then whoever they are,” Zul said, “they’re not trying to hide that they’re responsible.”

“If they’re not Kinship—” Kayla said.

“They’re not,” Zul said flatly.

“You’d tell me if they were?” Kayla asked.

“Yes, damn it, I would!” He looked away and she heard him drag in a long breath. “I do keep secrets from you, Kayla. I imagine you do the same with me. As do a few of those
damned idiots in there. In some cases it’s wrong-headed and over-cautious. But this is the first I’ve heard of FHE.”

For the first time in a long time, she felt as if he was telling her the truth. “If it isn’t the Kinship . . . it can’t be GENs. Where would they get bombs?”

“Lowborns blew a few things up during the riots fourteen years ago,” Zul said.

“And the chemicals they used to make the bombs are all under lock and key now,” Kayla pointed out.

She could see Zul wanted to argue against where they were inevitably headed. She cut off his objections. “It could be trueborns. I’ve been thinking it could be Ved’s doing.”

She could see from his troubled gaze that he’d already gotten there. “But why? It makes no sense. Why would he do something so openly when he’s in hiding?”

“Because he hates GENs,” Kayla said. “He wants to make life worse for us. Take away our food, our homes.”

“Then why would he put up a warning?” Zul asked. “Why not let the GENs die in the explosion?”

“Because we’re valuable?” Kayla guessed. “Because it’s getting harder and harder to make more of us? Or maybe whoever is working for him, the one setting the bombs, feels guilty enough not to want to kill GENs.”

“We’ll double the effort to find him, then,” Zul said. “We’ve been scouring the most likely adhikar parcels, the ones owned by cohorts of his. We’ll expand the search.”

His mention of searching reminded her of what she’d been looking for in the lorry. “That boy brought drugs with him. A carrysak full of jaf vac-seals.”

“Denking hell.” Anger blazed in Zul’s eyes, visible even
in the tiny wristlink screen. “He stole them from Baadkar.”

“How did you know?”

“Apologies for not telling you before now,” Zul said. “I didn’t think it was relevant. Baadkar’s been in the drugs business for years.”

“I destroyed the vac-seals. I’m sorry if you wanted them for evidence.” She held her breath, expecting Zul’s disapproval.

But he just shook his head. “He’s had GENs creating knock-offs for years, and the Council has looked the other way. Even when some batches have sickened dozens of people.”

Anxiety squirmed inside Kayla. “Abran took at least one hit. Will he be okay?”

“If he hasn’t shown effects yet, he should be fine. Keep an eye on him.”

“I have been. His behavior changes from day to day. I can’t be sure he doesn’t have more than what I destroyed.” She hesitated, then threw out the question, “Do we jettison him? Dump him in Skyloft or even here in Esa? Baadkar must know one of his carrysaks went missing. Doesn’t that increase the risk someone will come after Abran?”

Zul rubbed his face, as if trying to summon the right decision. “We’re so close with the judgment. The drugs business only strengthens our case. I think Baadkar would weigh one carrysak of jaf against the perils of disclosure of his illegal actions and let it pass.”

“And if the Brigade were to find more of it on board?” Kayla asked.

“We’ll do everything we can to save you, Kayla.”

Stop the Brigade from resetting her, he meant. Or from
attempting to download her and setting off the Kinship failsafe before it performed its own reset.

Zul’s eyes narrowed in the small screen. “I want to go back to you finding those initials in your bare brain. I’d be interested to hear how you learned that trick of tracing the datapath.”

“I meant to ask you the same thing,” Kayla said. “I don’t mind carrying your data around, but for the Kinship to reprogram me via uploads that change my basic abilities without my permission—”

“The Kinship had nothing to do with it,” Zul protested. “Our uploads are mostly just data. If there’s programming, it’s not meant to work on your neural system.”

“How do you explain the changes, Zul? This ability to see the data and follow strings of code.”

“I swear to you—”

“I’ve heard of other GENs who can do that,” Junjie blurted out, leaning in closer. “The brain sort of teaches itself. Kind of a protective thing when there have been a lot of uploads.”

She certainly got more uploads than the average GEN thanks to the Kinship, so that made sense. She still wasn’t completely convinced that the Kinship wasn’t directly involved, but Junjie’s assurance that other GENs could do the same made her feel a little better.

“I’ve also been healing faster,” Kayla said. “Maybe two or three times as fast as the average GEN.”

Junjie looked at her blankly a moment, then shrugged. “No idea. Could be all the uploads have your brain working at a higher rate, even in healing.”

“I’ve never heard anything like that,” Zul said, “in all my years of working with GENs.”

Junjie’s eyes lit as if he’d just figured something out. “I know a way to erase the FHE in your bare brain. Where are you and Risa now?”

“Esa sector, but only for half a day,” Kayla said. “We drive to Skyloft this afternoon to unload, then spend the night there.”

Junjie fidgeted behind Zul, his eagerness to try his idea coming out in excess energy. “I could meet you tomorrow at the Daki safe house. It’s not far across the Skyloft-Daki border.”

“How do I manage a trip to a safe house with Abran along?” Kayla asked.

Junjie only hesitated a moment. “Tell him the truth. Risa’s under orders to send you for some reprogramming. Abran doesn’t have to know where you’re going for that.”

Zul considered, then nodded. “Junjie could download whatever new data you’ve been carrying around. They can always use updates out in the hinterlands.”

Kayla couldn’t hold back her irritation. “No one is poking around in my brain, Junjie included, until I agree to it.”

Zul stared at her as if she’d grown a third arm. Junjie seemed to be holding his breath, maybe because he was shocked that Kayla would speak that way to Zul.

A faint smile curved the old man’s mouth. “Is that acceptable to you, Kayla? Having Junjie try to correct the problem?”

Of course it was. The idea that someone, maybe Ved, had put something into her bare brain disgusted her. “Yes. I’d like that.”

“I have to get back,” Zul said. “Have Risa contact Junjie to arrange a meeting time.”

Zul switched off. Kayla found she was shaking as she shoved the wristlink back under the bed.

She climbed from the sleeper and out of the lorry, locking the door behind her. It took a few deep breaths to calm her.

So she’d stood up to Zul. She’d done it before, back when she lived in the Manel household. He hadn’t bitten her head off then.

But it felt different now. As if something had changed inside her. As if she’d gained more control over herself, her destiny, even with GEN circuitry still running along her nervous system.

It must just be all this time with Risa, living a life far more independent than most GENs. And the way those frequent uploads had changed her brain’s function, like Junjie said. She was growing up a little.