Awakening (42 page)

He turned his back to her. Her fingers were still wrapped around the neck restraint. She tightened her grip, willed herself to pull.

Kayla!

The voice sounded different. Clearer. More imperative. What did that mean?

She shut her eyes, listening. Held her breath, waiting. Akhilesh’s footsteps returned to her side.

“You can close your eyes.” He stared down at her. “The paralytic should have lasted longer than that.” He reached for another vac-seal.

“No!” Kayla shouted. She tried to grab him, to stop him with her right hand. But she could only lift it a few centimeters. Then he applied the paralytic to her left arm and all strength faded.

He reached for another vac-seal, this one hexagonal and the contents deep red. “I think it’s best if I start the process with you. Your genetic makeup is not as ideal as Raashida’s and the others I’ve used. You won’t produce as much punarjanma. But it seems like a fitting ending for one of my creations.”

She watched, horrified, as he pressed the red vac-seal to the crook of her left arm, squeezed its contents into her system. Scratch was now running through her and her body’s healing process was helpless against it.

Anger and desperation warred inside her as Akhilesh
returned to Raashida’s tank. No one knew she was here. No telling how long before the Scratch took effect. Her body would produce the punarjanma, paradoxically the same thing that could heal her if administered properly.

Akhilesh was bent over Raashida’s tank, trying to lift her right leg for examination. The tongs slipped and her leg dropped, splashing the liquid from the tank. Some of it must have landed on him despite the gloves because he ripped them off and rushed to an emergency spigot on the wall. When he returned from rinsing his left hand, Kayla could see an ugly purple growth on the wrist where the liquid must have touched.

Kayla! Where are you?

The words went through her like a bolt of lightning. She scarcely dared hope that the message meant what she thought it did.

Someone outside her
was
communicating with her. Could she communicate back?

Her eyelids still wouldn’t work, so she stared up at the ceiling, doing her best to shut out the beginnings of a fever ache and Akhilesh’s busy preparations of the empty gen-tank next to Raashida’s. He held his left hand close to his body. She hoped the growth there burned him.

Inside her annexed brain, she traced the path the voice seemed to come from and focused a message.
Can you hear me?

The long, silent pause filled her with dread. Her skin started to throb, where the restraints cut her wrist and ankles, but also along her forearms, her lower legs.

I hear you
,
Kayla.

She could have wept. She didn’t even care who it was.
I need help.

Where are you?

GAMA. Send Devak. Send Junjie.

Are you safe?
the voice asked.

No! Paralyzed. Scratch-infected. Restrained.

You can fight the paralytic.

Code dumped into her, new programming. She hated that they were invading her annexed brain again, but this wasn’t the time to argue the point. She recognized it as an auxiliary to her healing, and she could sense the electrical signals it sent throughout her system to counteract the paralytic.

But she couldn’t lie still as the stimulation flooded her body. When Akhilesh turned back to her, she froze in place, hoping he wouldn’t notice she’d shifted. But then he took up his lase-knife from the float tray, and narrowed it down to needle focus. He touched it to her skin ever so lightly. She couldn’t help it, she jumped.

Akhilesh took another triangular vac-seal and squeezed a little more of the paralytic into her arm. Everything went numb again. Her system would have to start over.

But it might be too late. Akhilesh still had the lase-knife in his hand. He increased the blade size, to the width of her pinky. He studied her left arm, running a finger down its length as if considering where to begin.

“I need to open up this arm,” Akhilesh said absently. “Discover whether the circuitry has been dissolved or simply broken.”

He lowered the lase-knife. Kayla willed her healing system to work faster against the paralytic. She tried to move away, but her body lay inert and useless.

“It
will
hurt, I’m afraid.”

She shrieked at the first touch of searing heat in her upper arm, unable to hold back the cry of pain. Akhilesh set aside the lase-knife and she could feel him parting the wound.

Kayla! What’s happening?

“I’m seeing increased healing too,” he marveled. “The wound is already closing itself. Something’s been restructured here. I believe I’ll have to take the whole arm.”

Kayla let loose a formless sound of pain and terror. Inwardly, she screamed,
Help me! Help me, now!

Akhilesh had turned to his float tray and fidgeted with the tools arrayed across it. He lifted the larger lase-cutter, and Kayla knew it would have the power to cut her arm clean off.

Akhilesh fussed with the adjustment, widening, then narrowing the beam. Kayla squeezed her eyes shut.

Which meant her body was fighting off the paralytic. But did she have enough time to restore her strength and break her bonds?

Sloshing started up in Raashida’s gen-tank. She was awake, trying to get loose, struggling against the gen-fluid’s embrace. Raashida had no chance, had had her very essence pulled from her by Akhilesh, but she was fighting. Kayla had to find a way to fight too.

Akhilesh set down the lase-cutter and walked over to Raashida’s tank. It was almost as if the girl knew Kayla needed the distraction. Raashida’s arm flailed out of the tank, reaching for Akhilesh. He barely jumped clear of the dangerous splash of fluid.

Kayla let rage build up inside her. Rage at Akhilesh’s casual cruelty, at the hundreds of GENs he’d infected, had used for the benefit of trueborns.

Her anger seemed to burn along her circuitry. Electrical impulses stimulated her healing process, burned away the paralytic. At the same time, it fed the Scratch, and she knew using her improved healing would be a devil’s bargain. She would fight off the paralytic, but super-charge the Scratch.

Feeling came back to her, toes and fingers first, feet and hands, ankles and wrists, sensation accelerating through her body. Along with sensation came the heat of fever, the pain of Scratch.

Her right hand was still free. She grabbed the throat band and let her rage fuel her, tearing the restraint away from the table. Going up on her left elbow, she used the strength of both hands together to rip her left hand free. Then she tore loose her feet from the table.

Akhilesh tried to get past her to the big lase-cutter. Her feet still bound together, she kicked out at him from the table, sending him stumbling back. He slammed against the empty gen-tank he’d been preparing for her. Gen-fluid splashed his hands and he cried out as the unprogrammed green muck randomly restructured the genetic material it had touched— his wrists and forearms.

Kayla slid from the table, swinging her joined hands at Akhilesh like a club. He tried to block her strikes, but she heard the crunch of bones. His right arm hung at an odd angle.

He staggered, tried to back away. He shouted into his wristlink, “Nafti! Salot!”

The two enforcers came running through the door, fumbling for their shockguns. Before they could get past the first row of gen-tanks, Kayla swept up the lase-cutter, slapped the control to its widest setting. She sent a blast at Salot, and the cannon-like
beam punched Salot’s chest, sending the enforcer flying. The peripheral hit smashed Nafti into the wall before he could even aim his shockgun. Both enforcers went down.

Akhilesh came for her. She swung the body of the lase-cutter at him, striking his head. He tried to break his fall and bounced against the unprogrammed gen-tank again.

She scuttled backward as the gen-fluid gushed out in a wave and soaked him from shoulder to waist. He screamed as the fluid reached his skin. As Kayla watched, his fingers shriveled, lumps popped on his forearm. He tried to scrape away the gen-fluid, but layers of skin went with it. He hit his knees, then fell face-first onto the floor.

With a twist of her hands, she broke apart the bonds on her feet. She would have to leave the shackles on her wrists and ankles.

She went to Raashida’s gen-tank. How would she get Raashida safely out of the gen-fluid? If Kayla just pulled her out, she could do more harm than good to both of them. She’d have to come back for her. She stumbled away from the tank.

Nafti was moaning, but Salot was dead silent. Akhilesh had stopped screaming, but he made little animal sounds, his ruined body curled up on the floor.

With the immediate fight over, Kayla’s fever pulsed over her in waves. Her joints ached, she felt light-headed. She feared she didn’t have much time left.

Kayla crouched between the enforcers and took their shockguns. When she pushed to her feet, she swayed and had to put a hand on the wall to catch her balance. Then she saw the Scratch marks striping her skin, from wrist to elbow. The fever burned even hotter.

She gripped one shockgun in her trembling right hand, shoved the other into her waistband. She staggered toward the door, praying for enough strength to find Risa and Kiyomi before the Scratch overtook her.

As she stepped through the lab door into the hall, she heard the thunder of footsteps coming up the stairs. Her heart squeezed tight—her victory over Akhilesh had meant nothing. More enforcers were here to take her.

Setting the shockgun on its highest setting, she aimed it for the stairwell. Her arms shook. Her knees gave way and hit the floor. The Scratch seemed to roar through her body, its course increased ten-fold by her enhanced healing process.

Her vision blurred, strength seeped out of her. She couldn’t make out the two figures who’d appeared at the end of the hall. Were those Brigade uniforms? She still had the shockgun, but couldn’t hold it up as she sagged sideways to the floor.

One of the figures ran toward her. She blinked and struggled to bring her eyes back into focus.

Finally, she saw his face. It was Devak.

He lifted her in his arms, and her world spun. That had to explain what she thought she heard him whisper in her ear.

“I love you, Kayla.”

The words melted away as relentless Scratch drove her into unconsciousness.

K
ayla woke with a start from a long dreamless sleep. She lay in a soft bed in a plain, white room, wearing a long sleep shirt that tangled around her ankles. Daylight spilled through the window above her head and she could hear quiet conversation through the walls. Her internal clock told her nearly three days had passed. She had only the dimmest memory of floating in and out of consciousness since Devak found her at GAMA.

She sucked in a breath as those moments came back. Scratch roaring through her body. Devak rescuing her, whispering in her ear.

I love you.

Was that part even real? She freed her arms from the bedclothes. She could see faint marks where the Scratch welts had been, the only signs that she’d been infected.

The door opened a crack and to her delight, Mishalla poked her head in. Kayla held out her arms to her friend and Mishalla ran to embrace her. Kayla’s lifelong friend sat beside her on the bed.

“Where are we?” Kayla asked.

“Zul’s house. That’s Devak’s bed.”

Kayla flushed at the thought, remembering those whispered words. Was it his sleep shirt she was wearing? “What about my Scratch? Is it healed? And Raashida—were they able to save her?”

“Yes, you’re healing. Raashida and Gemma too, although it’s taking them longer.” Mishalla said. “After Junjie gave Jemali the formula for Guru Ling’s Scratch treatment, Jemali has been working with some of the GAMA gene-splicers to create doses of the cure. You, Raashida, and Gemma got the first vac-seals.”

“GAMA
gene-splicers.” Kayla rubbed at her arms, uneasy that her cure had been developed by GAMA.

“They had the facilities, the staff,” Mishalla said. “The ones who helped didn’t work directly with Akhilesh, and what they knew of the man they didn’t like. Jemali has been supervising them. We know the cure is genuine. Your blood has been checked, along with all the other Scratch-infected who have been inoculated so far.”

“Is Akhilesh . . .?”

“Still alive.” Mishalla’s mouth twisted. “But he had to go in a gen-tank. It’ll take a while to fix him. If they even can.”

“Those two enforcers?” Kayla asked.

Mishalla squeezed her hand. “Nafti survived.”

Then she’d killed Salot. All the times she’d been so angry at trueborns, enforcers especially, had thought about using her strength to end their lives. And now she’d done it.

She felt sick at the thought, not triumphant as she’d sometimes thought she would. Had her actions lost her a place in the Infinite’s hands?

Mishalla stroked her arm. “So much of this is my fault. It was me telling Hala where Raashida was. He told Akhilesh and Akhilesh sent the Brigade.”