Catalyst (14 page)

“Here’s your room,” Micah says, and motions to Tabitha.

Tabitha waves her red bracelet near the ebony square and the door slides open. Cold air swooshes out of the room, hitting the warmer air outside and making a big cloud of icy fog. Hoarfrost quickly grows over the door’s edges.

“You have a cold room ready for me?” Tabitha says warily.

“Yep. All the electronics and bots work at this temperature.”

“Did you know I was coming? I mean, you can’t get this stuff ready in a day.” She steps into the room, running her fingers over the e-console and furniture. The fur on her arms and shoulder fluffs out on contact with the low temperature. She looks like she gained fifty pounds in a second.

“Julian ordered it a while ago. I had no idea anyone like you existed. You can ask him later. You’ve got all you need, but no food efferent. Renata and Julian arrange your meals on a schedule. They like us to eat together as a family when possible.”

“Pfff!” I let the sound escape before I catch myself. Family, my ass. This isn’t a family. It’s Aureus, wearing a wig.

Tabitha shuts the door on us. I’m envying her solitude when Micah turns to me. “Whether you like it or not, this is your new home. You chose to be here.”

I bite my lip. The only thing that matters is reuniting with my family. I will not lose everything I adore. I’ve got to get out of Avida with Cy, somehow. But “somehow” probably means playing nice with Micah. Honey versus vinegar and all that. So I fake a smile, but the effort is akin to stuffing a live chicken back into an eggshell. It’s weird and unnatural and impossible.

“I’m so tired, Micah,” I say softly. “I’m not on my best behavior.”

“Of course. I understand.” Micah points out my room to me. As I scan my bracelet, I carefully sniff the air between us. It smells clean, almost scrubbed with soap. “Get a little rest. I’ll see you later.”

My room is between Caliga’s and Blink’s. Blink opens her door and she sighs in relief to see it’s pitch-black inside. Caliga enters hers without a good-bye. I start to enter mine, when Micah hooks my arm.

“Hey!” The electric tingle of his touch buzzes my skin, and I yank my arm away.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he says, holding his hands up. “I’m just . . . It’s good to see you. I got kind of excited.”

“Don’t you have an off switch for that?”

“Yes, but it usually involves somebody raining fire-retardant foam all over me.”

I smile, hoping he can’t read what I’m really thinking. Wish I could dump a bucketful on him, right now.

“Look, I know what you think of me. And I get it, you have every right. But this is a new place, and Aureus doesn’t exist anymore. We can start over here.”

“Start over,” I repeat. What does he mean
we
? There is no
we
.

“I regret a lot of things, Zelia. But SunAj would have had me killed if I refused his orders.” He takes a deep breath and puts his hands on my shoulders. My skin crawls underneath his hands. “I played the part, because I had no choice.”

“There’s always a choice, Micah,” I say, forcing myself to keep my tone controlled.

“Of course. But some of us are too afraid to make the right ones.” His amber-brown eyes are so sincere. I hesitate, but then harden my heart.
He’s playing you, Zel. Don’t trust him.
He finally lets go of my shoulders and I turn to enter my room. I can’t get away from him fast enough.

“Only . . . one more thing. I just need to know. Dyl—is she okay?”

My heart fires up at a million beats per minute. I use every single breath and every neuron in my brain to keep myself from strangling him. How dare he even speak her name? I unclench my jaw to speak.

“Dyl is . . . fine. I think. I don’t know where she is, actually.”

“Listen, I need to say something.”

“Look, Micah. I’m really tired. Get my necklace back, would you? I can’t sleep without it.”

“But I have to tell you—”

I reach for the button to shut the door. “I’ll see you at dinner.” I retreat into the room, taking a glad breath. Just before the door shuts, Micah spits out some hasty words.

“Zelia. I . . . I never slept with Ana. And I never slept with Dyl either.”

I whirl around, startled, only to see the door kill the space between us.

• • •

T
HE DOOR STAYS CLOSED.

And I go a little crazy. What a liar! Why would he say that, when it’s so obviously untrue? I pace around, wishing I could walk in the garden and get some fake fresh air. When I’ve waited long enough to think that Micah’s definitely gone, I wave my bracelet on the door scanner. Nothing happens.

“You are scheduled to rest, bathe, and prepare for dinner,” the voice in the room states. How on earth am I going to get out of here with these kinds of restrictions?

“When can I walk around Avida freely?” I ask my room.

“You will be assigned duties tomorrow. Free play time is allowed if your behavior is satisfactory.”

Play time?
Good god. I’m in daycare.

I pace inside the small room, wishing I could throw or hit something, but everything is pretty much attached to the floor or upholstered in soft fabric, as if Avida expects its inhabitants to be suicidal on a regular basis. I couldn’t get a hangnail in this room if I tried.

Finally, I sit down on the bed. I close my eyes and fall backward, letting my body sag into the silky ivory coverlet that catches the roughness of my fingertips. It’s ridiculously comfortable, but I can’t let myself fall asleep. I’ve got no necklace.

My whole life, I’ve never been without it. I still remember the conversation with my dad when I was twelve. Dad was determined to get me an extra implant. Not the one I already had that triggered when I wore my necklace, but one that would completely control everything. It would automatically switch on when I fell asleep, or kick in when my natural breaths weren’t deep enough, but I’d refused.

“I don’t want it in me. I want to be as normal as possible,” I’d told him.

“Honey, it’s not about normal, or not normal. It’s about being safe.”

“I can take care of myself,” I’d argued. “I’ve never forgotten once to put it on. And Dyl reminds me all the time too.”

“But—”

“I’m already weird enough.”

“You’re not weird. You’re beyond perfect,” he’d said, wrapping me in his arms.

Everything makes so much sense in hindsight.
Beyond perfect,
he’d said. My trait supposedly gives me a long life—longer than anyone, since my DNA won’t degrade over time. But it also gifted me with my Ondine’s curse. Dad wasn’t a flawless architect.

A chime sounds from hidden speakers in the walls.

“Dinner will be served in one hour.”

I push off the bed and head for the bathroom.

CHAPTER 13

T
HE GROOMING BOTS ARE GOING TO BE
the death of me.

There’s two of them. Squat and low to the ground, they scuttle out from the bathroom on spindly jointed legs. Their cantaloupe-sized bodies are black and shiny, just like an insect shell. I’d just stepped out of the shower and wrapped myself in a towel when one of them went straight for my face and the other, the crown of my head.

“Get
off
!” I yell, trying to fight them away. Their arms are thin but strong, gripping my body with gel-like suckers. One hovers over my face, extruding instruments from its belly tipped with sponges, sprays, and brushes. They’re like giant bug mandibles about to eat my face off. The one on my head yanks painfully on my wet, unbrushed curls. I reach for the legs of the cosmetic bot. They feel like bendy chopsticks.

“Please do not damage the bots. They are only doing their job,” the voice from the wall chides me.

“This isn’t a job, this is assault!” I say, detaching the one on my face and tossing it to the floor. It performs a perfect ten-point landing. After only seconds, it crawls right back up my body with a little square patch extended on a mechanical arm. It tries to stick it on my leg, and I kick it away.

“What is that?”

The room voice chimes, “A sedative, to make your prep time a most enjoyable experience!”

“No, no, wait.” I let go of the hairdressing bot and hold my hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’ll be nice. Please. No drugs.” I can’t risk having a fuzzy mind; I need to know what I’m up against during dinner. And I can’t be falling asleep, especially without my necklace. The bot withdraws the white patch into its body, and proceeds to head for my face. I sit calmly on the edge of the bed.

“Don’t make me look like a circus freak,” I beg. The bot bounces slightly and begins to hum contentedly as my face gets dabbed and sprayed to its little nanochip heart’s content. The hair bot goes back to tackling my hair, but stutters a string of
tsks
, like it’s highly irritated. I understand this language. I feel this way about my hair too.

Finally, they’re done, even my nails. I’ve no ragged cuticles to chew on to assuage my nervousness. Darn. The hair bot spews a holo message.

A MaxInfuse hair conditioner will be added to your shower unit.

There’s an insult in that statement. I sigh a thanks.

As they scuttle back to their wall units, I peek in the closet. A single peony-pink scrap of clothing hangs in front, with matching shoes and undergarments laid out on a poofy ottoman.

“Your ensemble has been chosen for tonight’s meal,” the voice says sweetly. “According to your measurements, it should fit appropriately.”

So the house computer knows my bra size. Hooray.

I pick up the dress. It’s a silk hanky of a garment, held together with thin strings around the neck. The pink is rich and saturated and the dress is floor length, but somewhere around the upper thigh area, the pink color bleeds away and transforms into transparent, shimmering spider biosilk. It’s often used in costumes for shameless celebrities and performance artists.

And apparently, me.

After getting dressed and shoving my feet into the dainty silk heels, I sit stiffly on the bed. I contemplate wearing my bed coverlet to dinner. Sure, it would hide all the bumps and curves that this dress reveals and sure, I’d resemble a human soft taco. I start seriously considering it, when the room chirps at me.

“Please depart for dinner.”

The door to my room slips into the wall and the meadow grass beyond dances a welcome. A handful of doors around the meadow yawn open and a few girls walk out, all in sleek gowns and dresses. Caliga stands blinking in the yellow light, dressed in an ice-blue concoction that makes her look like a post-modern Cinderella. She’s got a cane and hobbles over to me. I immediately drop to my knees and inspect her leg. Surprisingly, she doesn’t swat me away.

Her wound is covered in a biogel bandage with an antibiotic infusaport delivering meds straight to the wound.

“It looks good,” I say. “How do you feel?”

“I’d feel better if we didn’t have to do this song-and-dance dinner thing.” She snickers. Her eyes scan me up and down. “Wow. You clean up nice.”

“I can’t stand it. I can’t wait to get rid of this.”

Caliga leans to the left so she can study my hair. “You’ll need a crowbar.”

My hand goes up to my head, where rock-hard loops of hair sprout from my crown. Caliga’s hair is plaited to look like swirls of vanilla icing.

“I think my hairdressing bot despises me,” I grumble.

“C’mon, let’s go,” she says, tugging my arm. After a day of sour attitude, she’s being downright friendly. For once, I don’t mind being close to her. In Avida, we’re allies. For now.

“Where’s Blink?” Caliga asks as we approach the transport. All the other girls have already left.

“I don’t know. Maybe she went ahead with the rest.”

I bite my lip. I have a feeling she was racing me to get to Cy first. But then I mentally smack myself.
Stop being so paranoid.

We take the transport and hold our bracelets to the black monitor. Immediately, it shoots up to the top floor and opens to a roof patio. In the center, a long table is set decadently for dinner. Some smaller, one-person café tables are spaced farther out, like satellites to the main table. Wisteria vines hang down from a trellis over the table and all sorts of exotic plants and flowers surround the edges of the roof. Two curving pools of water flank the entire eating area like giant blue parentheses. The water girl from the oasis is there with another teen boy, talking in hushed tones. But the sick one, Ryba, isn’t with them.

Overhead, the dome of our egg-shaped building encloses us. It’s translucent, but I can’t see the setting sun, or any celestial bodies. I long for the day when I can own the sky again.

Something soft brushes my arm. I reach over to rub whatever it is away, when a hand catches mine. It’s Micah. I use every ounce of energy to mask my disgust and not snatch my hand away. He wears a charcoal-gray suit complete with dark tie, and every hair is perfectly in place. Micah squeezes my hand for a millisecond, before he lets go.

“I want to talk to you after dinner,” he whispers.

“We don’t have anything to talk about,” I say. “I heard what you said.”