Awakening (31 page)

Kayla handed back the datapod and she and Junjie started back to the meeting room. Along the way, a naggingly familiar buzzing started up in Kayla’s ears. When she recognized the sound, new panic shot through her. She drew Junjie out of the press of bodies and whispered, “I can’t possibly be back on the Grid, can I?”

“Uh uh. No way.” Junjie shook his head. “I guarantee you, that would be the last thing they’d want.”

“Because what I’m hearing is the same as what I heard right before I was taken off the Grid that first time. A buzz I wasn’t even aware of until it suddenly got quiet.”

Junjie lowered his voice so he could barely be heard over the safe house noise. “It might be all those programs competing for processor time. That can cause some static.”

She crammed her hands over her ears, but the noise was internal. Then from one heartbeat to the next, the static coalesced to one word.

Kayla!

She jumped, heart racing as she looked around her. “Who was that?”

Junjie gaped. “Who was what?”

“You heard it, didn’t you? Someone called my name.”

Junjie looked uneasy. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“I’m not crazy.” Now she squeezed her eyes shut, listening hard. The buzz was back in her ears. But she was sure she’d heard—

“Kayla!”

She jumped again, this time knocking Junjie into the wall. Then she saw the elderly high-status trueborn heading toward them.

It was one of Zul’s old friends, the medic, Jemali. “Kayla, I’m glad I caught you. We need you at Ret sector safe house.”

“Junjie and I aren’t finished.” Kayla speared the minor-status boy with a hard look. “He’s been telling me all about—”

Junjie waved his hands at her, just about turning himself inside out to stop her from speaking. She turned her back on him. “He’s telling me about—”

Her throat seemed to close.
FHE
dangled at the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t speak the letters out loud.

She rounded on Junjie, but he seemed as alarmed as she was. He whispered in a sort of terrified awe, “They’ve blocked you.”

“Can your conversation wait?” Jemali asked, oblivious to their byplay. “There was another warren explosion in Nafi sector. A sixth-year GEN girl was killed.”

“No,” Junjie moaned.

The last piece fell into place, the truth that had been staring her in the face, that she’d tried to ignore. She kept her gaze steady on Junjie, and saw the confirmation.
FHE has been blowing up warrens and warehouses. And Junjie is neck deep in FHE.

But did FHE have some connection to Ved Manel? Or was this Neta the key player? Maybe Neta and Ved were working together. Or did Ved Manel truly have nothing to do with the bombings?

She wanted to grill Junjie about FHE and the bombings, but she couldn’t get the words out. After a few frustrating moments of trying, she instead asked Jemali, “Why do you need me in Ret and not Nafi?”

“Ret is where we evacuated Gemma and some of the others from Nafi,” Jemali said. “But Gemma died along the way.”

That was a jolt. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“She resurrected, Kayla,” Jemali told her. “Shortly after she arrived in Ret.”

The stories from Esa sector about Raashida came back to her. “Or she wasn’t truly dead, and she revived.”

“That may be. In any case, after she revived, a few of the sick who she touched were healed completely of their Scratch. It terrified her. She’s begging for you and Risa to come back for her and take her away. She said she felt safe with you.”

I hardly know her,
Kayla wanted to say. But then she felt ashamed of herself. Gemma was a GEN, her double identity
likely the cause of some trueborn mischief. If Kayla could help her, she ought to.

“Will you come?” Jemali asked. “At the least, I think it would comfort the girl to see you.”

“Yes,” Kayla said, then grabbed Junjie’s arm. “You’re coming too.” She pulled the trueborn boy along as she followed Jemali.

They rode to Ret sector in Jemali’s WindSpear in near silence. Silence, that is, except for the unrelenting buzz in her head. Several times she tried to thwart the block FHE had installed, but she could never get out more than a few stuttering words. She finally gave up.

As she stepped clear of the access tunnel into the common room of the Ret safe house, she could see nothing but a wall of bodies between her and where she guessed the sick room lay. “What’s going on?” she asked over the roar of voices. “Where’s Gemma?” Jemali, a head and a half taller than Kayla, straightened to see over those packing the space.

“Lord Creator!” Jemali exclaimed. “They’re attacking her.”

He started pushing through the crowd, Kayla following in the old trueborn’s wake, Junjie behind her. She could see nothing but Jemali’s back until they finally broke through into the sick room.

Even then, she could scarcely believe what she was seeing. A mob of forty or fifty Scratch-afflicted GENs, their Scratch wounds suppurating and seeping, were out of their beds and surging toward one end of the sick room. Twenty or so lowborns and healthy GENs faced the sick and formed a barricade against them, arms locked, their bodies in two rows. And behind them, Gemma cowered, squeezed into a corner
of the sick room, her back to the carved-out wall. She had her hands up to ward off anyone coming close to her.

“Don’t touch me,” she moaned. “Don’t anyone touch me.”

With sick GENs trying to spill around the human barricade, Kayla forced her way in to help. As she reached for the first person in the line to join the chain, she half-stumbled when she realized whose hand she took—Devak’s.

Devak spared her only a brief glance before a roughly shoving GEN recaptured his attention. Jemali went for the far end, Junjie with him. Just as he took his place, Junjie got slammed into the wall by an eager GEN, but he recovered quickly. Now they pushed the seething bodies back, trying to give Gemma more space. What they would do next, Kayla had no idea.

Kayla craned her neck around at Gemma. She looked better than she had when Kayla and Risa had last seen her—much better. Her short dark hair was thick and lustrous, she had some color in her pale face, and the few Scratch scars that had been visible on her arms had vanished. In fact, Gemma all but glowed, as if the Infinite had shaped her body with His hands, making her beautiful and vibrant.

It was impossible to believe she had
died.
She must have fallen into a brief coma, then awakened. Yet how could she look so healthy, so radiant, if she’d been ill enough in the last few hours to fall into unconsciousness?

When the crowd shifted enough for Kayla to see past them, she spotted a few Scratch victims, near death, who remained in their beds. A few more knelt nearby, prayer mirrors out, calling out praise to the Infinite. The kneeling GENs were healing from their Scratch just as Gemma had, the marks starting to scab over.

The crowd shifted again and now Kayla could see a brownskinned GEN man on hands and knees all but crushed between the packed bodies. As people jockeyed for position in the crowd, more than one GEN stepped on him. She wondered why he didn’t stand, then it registered—he had no feet. They’d been eaten away by Scratch.

He squirmed along the floor between the legs of the crowd, then through the chain of people holding back the sick. Looking behind her, Kayla saw him reach toward Gemma with hands missing half their fingers. Gemma pressed herself even farther back against the sick room wall in horror, but the man touched her. He cried out in ecstasy and moved back from Gemma again, looking at his wounded hands as if expecting a miracle.

Kayla spied a mixed group of lowborns and GENs in the common room gaping at the scene. “Someone come take that man back to his bed. The rest of you take our places so we can get Gemma out of here.”

At first they didn’t budge, making Kayla angry enough to wrench a few arms. Then a tall, stout lowborn woman, the safe house manager from her demeanor, barreled down on the awestruck audience.

“Get in there and do what she says,” the lowborn woman thundered, “or I’ll be knocking heads together!”

The gawking GENs and lowborns finally seethed into the sick room. Two GENs gently picked up the brown-skinned man and carried him to a bed. Six burly lowborns replaced Devak, Junjie, and Jemali in the barricade. The safe house manager took Kayla’s place.

Kayla moved to Gemma’s side, Devak, Junjie, and Jemali
backing her up. Kayla would have taken the girl’s hand, but Gemma waved her off.

“I can’t let you touch me, Kayla.”

“But we have to get you out of here.” Kayla looked over at Jemali and Devak. “Is there somewhere else we can take her?”

“No door on the meeting room here,” Devak said, “so it would have to be one of the access tunnels. The openings are narrow enough we can keep this chutting lot out.”

Kayla would have called him on his insult against her fellow GENs, but she was sickened by them herself. It was frightening the way they’d trampled the brown-skinned man and were scaring Gemma. The crowd had shown no respect for elderly Jemali, nearly knocking the old trueborn off his feet.

“Can the boys help you up?” Kayla asked Gemma.

The girl nodded and Devak and Junjie moved in to take her hands. The lowborns holding back the crowd pushed harder against the sick to make a path. Jemali led the way, then Gemma and the boys, then Kayla as close as she could behind Gemma to shield her from the crowd. Just as they’d escorted Gemma from the sick room to the common room, a GEN man lunged toward them, his Scratch marks oozing and ugly. “I just want to touch her!”

Kayla planted a hand on the man’s chest and he sprawled backward onto the stone floor. “Anyone else?” Kayla shouted.

A GEN woman, her face marked with the angry red of an early Scratch infection, dug her fingers into Kayla’s arm. “Don’t you see?” the woman said, her pale eyes wide in her face, “she’s the Infinite’s daughter, come to save us.”

It was like what the allabain were saying about Raashida in Esa sector. Except the allabain had called her Iyenkas’s
daughter, not the Infinite’s. Other Scratch-infected GENs in the sick room tried to reach Gemma, but the lowborn and GEN volunteers blocked the way out. The crowd in the common room parted as Jemali pushed through and finally the way was clear to the tunnel they’d entered from.

Another ten meters, then they were able to duck into the tunnel. Jemali switched on a borrowed illuminator to give them more light. A phalanx of lowborns in the common room closed off the tunnel entrance.

Kayla backed up to the damp tunnel wall to give Gemma her space as best she could. “Why is it Devak and Junjie can touch you, but I can’t?”

Gemma’s voice shook as she spoke. “Because they don’t follow the Infinite.”

Junjie jolted, pulling his hand away from Gemma. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“They were all dying,” Gemma said. “Or would be dying soon enough when the Scratch got bad enough. They would be stepping into the Infinite’s hands. But the ones I touched . . . I healed them. I’ve stolen their chance to rejoin the Infinite.”

Junjie rubbed his hands together, worry in his dark brown eyes. “Your healing them just means they’ll live a little longer, then die of something else. They’ll get their chance to meet the Infinite.” His hand strayed to where he’d tucked away his prayer mirror.

Gemma stared at him, tears filling her eyes again. “I don’t think so. This was their chance. What if I cut them off from the Infinite forever?”

“But you’ve already healed me, Gemma, remember?” Kayla said as the pieces clicked together in her mind. “When we
first picked you up, I had a gash on my cheek that you healed.”

Now Gemma looked even more horrified. “No.”

Kayla softened her voice. “Your healing hasn’t cut me off from the Infinite. There’s nothing in the liturgy like that.”

She couldn’t seem to help herself—Kayla glanced over at Devak. They both knew that the liturgy of the Infinite was pure fiction created by trueborns. But most GENs didn’t know that. It had taken long hours of soul-searching for Kayla to abandon the beliefs she’d been raised with, clinging only to what her heart told her was true—the existence and omniscience of the Infinite.

“I think He would understand, Gemma,” Kayla said. “He’ll find their souls again.”

“I didn’t know what I was doing,” Gemma said. “When I woke, I was just going bed to bed, offering them water. Then the ones I touched rose from their beds, and they were calling me daughter of the Infinite. It’s sacrilege. The Infinite has no daughter.”

“They’ve been sick,” Kayla said. “They didn’t know what they were saying.”

But the same had not been true for the allabain. Even the ones who had never been healed by Raashida were worshipping her. Would these GENs do the same with Gemma now that they’d seen what she could do?

“They all wanted me to touch them,” Gemma said. “To heal them. Even Mephi.”

“The one we saw on his knees?” Kayla asked.

Gemma squeezed her eyes shut. “He was nearly dead. Feet gone. Nothing but sores and ooze and stink. I tried not to let him touch me because I knew the Infinite was waiting for
him. Then I realized He was waiting for all of them, but I had interfered.”

Kayla looked over at Jemali. “Can Mephi live like that? Healed of the Scratch but the rest of him . . .”

Jemali looked troubled. “He’s probably lost more tissue than we saw. He must have internal organ damage. Whatever it is Gemma’s doing, I can’t help but think there are limits, that Mephi will die soon anyway, Scratch or no Scratch.”

Kayla glanced from Jemali to Devak. “You were here before us. Did you see any of the Scratch-infected before she touched them? Is it possible the ones healing had already started to heal?”

“No one heals from Scratch,” Jemali said.

“I healed them,” Gemma said.

“Like Raashida—” Kayla cut herself off as three pairs of trueborn eyes turned her way.

Of course, Devak knew the GEN girl’s name. What he hadn’t learned on his own at the allabain camp in Esa sector, Mishalla would have told him. Jemali seemed in the dark, and she expected the same about Junjie, considering the way the Kinship compartmentalized information.