Catalyst (26 page)

“Get her to her room. C’mon.” Caliga’s voice enters my head, but it must be another hallucination.

Strong arms scoop me up and I laugh, swatting at the butterflies that are dancing around my head. But instead of wings, they are shiny and edged with razor blades. One of them hits my cheek, and I touch the wound and look wonderingly at the red on my fingers.

“Beautiful,” I say, and touch my tongue to the red smear. It tastes like death and metal.

“She’s covered in blood,” Micah’s voice says, close to my ear. “Look what she’s done to herself.” I can’t see him. I only see clouds of the flying razors.

Something touches my neck, and immediately my lungs expand, almost painfully so. My back arches as oxygen floods me. The butterflies shimmer away, but within the darkness of my mind, shadows and sharp, unseen things continue to fly. And I cannot make them go away.

“Sleep, Zelia. You’ll be safe now,” Micah murmurs.

“Yes, sleep,” Caliga says.

My old enemies are asking me to die. The two people I thought I’d never trust. But I can’t fight anymore. My eyelids close as I surrender to unconsciousness.

• • •

W
HEN
I
WAKE,
I
FEEL OLD.
A
S
if I’ve lost a life and gotten it back, only to find I’ve outgrown my own body. Completely disoriented.

“You’re up. I was just about to leave.”

Caliga’s sitting on the edge of my bed. She wears a simple beige dress, her white hair pulled into a practical ponytail. The only color is the bright pink of her bottom lip, where she’s just been biting it. My grooming bots try to fling themselves at me, but she shoos them away.

“God, they are so overprotective! I’ve been trying to convince them that I’m not going to secretly do your makeup.”

My eyelashes are crusty and stuck together, and my mouth tastes like a sewer. “How long have I been out? What day is it? What happened?”

“Julian let me and Micah get you. You were in there for almost three days. He gave me your necklace and we brought you back here.”

Three days. I mentally count the days since we left Carus. That means we only have three more full days to meet my family in Chicago.

“Where is Cy?” I sit up in bed, rubbing my face. My brain feels bruised, like there’s a loose sledgehammer swimming inside my skull. But my shaky hands and hallucinations are gone.

“You can’t see him anymore. There’s nothing I could do about that.”

Nothing
she
could do about Cy? Does that mean she had something to do with getting me out of my sleep-deprivation nightmare?

“Caliga,” I say slowly. “What did you do?”

Caliga stands and opens the door. “I should get going. I have to get ready.” Micah walks in with a tray of food. He dodges Caliga as she darts out of my room.

“Hey. You look so much better.” A warm smile softens his eyes.

I shake my head. “Wait. First tell me what happened.”

“Eat first, talk later.”

Micah leaves so I can wolf down my breakfast and shower. The bots apply a pain patch to my neck, and I start to feel more human. Even so, I keep my necklace on. It’s worth the inconvenience of talking between breaths. I meet Micah outside my room, but the transport door stays shut when I wave my bracelet in front of the scanner.

“My access is gone,” I say, stricken.

“That’s no surprise. Julian was furious that you destroyed Caliga’s vaccine. I honestly thought he wanted you dead. Sean would tell us, in moments he was let through, that Julian wouldn’t listen to him.”

“So Caliga’s okay?”

Micah doesn’t meet my eye. “She’s getting ready for Julian.”

“What? How is that possible? It’s got to take at least another few days to make a vaccine. Longer, if she puts up a fight about giving another blood sample. Maybe there’s time to mess with the vaccine—”

Micah grabs my arm so quickly, I stumble. “Wait. Zel, you don’t understand. Caliga
made
the new batch. She volunteered, to get you out of there. To get your necklace back.”

“What?” My recently swallowed breakfast threatens to rise up. “She can’t do that!”

“It’s done. She made her decision.” He pulls me closer and his voice drops to a barely audible whisper. “She’s doing this for us. We’re leaving tonight, Zelia. Caliga’s going to be with Julian tonight, and she’s going to sneak him the sedative. Cy finally got Sean’s help to finish it. As soon as Julian’s unconscious, Sean is going to set us free.”

“This is ridiculous. What if Julian doesn’t take it? And Caliga gets attacked anyway? No way.”

“This isn’t your choice.”

“What does Cy think of this? Blink? It’s crazy.”

“They agree with the plan.”

“I want to talk to Caliga!”

“I’m telling you. It’s too late. It’s done.” The helplessness in his expression tells me there’s no point. I can push and yell all I want, but there it is.

Caliga’s the bait, and we’ll all benefit from her sacrifice.

• • •

M
Y ACCESS IS NEAR TO NOTHING.
I’
M
stuck in my room and the meadow all day long, except for meals. I hope that I still get my one hour of freedom before curfew. I’ll need every minute of it.

I want to talk to Caliga, but I can’t. I’m desperate to see Cy, but I can’t. Does he still care? Is he still slicing himself open when he’s alone, when I can’t be with him?

I wonder if he’s been practicing his trait. Not once did he try to speak to me or touch me when I was being punished. He hasn’t tried since I’ve been recovering, either. I think of the “Luna” poem, and wish I could recite it back to him.

Do you remember me?

I am here, in the same sky.

I will wait for you, ready to catch

The quarters and halves and broken hearts.

Micah says we’re fleeing Avida forever after Caliga and Julian leave dinner. Sean told him that once Julian is incapacitated, he’ll be granted access to disengage our bracelets so we can leave Inky. It’s the price Sean is willing to pay for his own freedom. He’d never be able to silence Julian without our help. And then, when our bracelets shut down and fall off, we’ll know we’re free.

When.

If.

As I pace inside my room, everything here seems different. It already smells like a memory, like old things. The door swishes open and I jump up, eager for more information from Micah. A wide figure blocks the light and the door shuts.

It’s Renata.

“I didn’t think anyone had access to my room anymore,” I say.

“Well, in Julian’s eyes, I’m nobody. Being forgotten does have its privileges.”

I drop my head. “I’m sorry about Victoria. Really sorry.”

“I know,” she says, sitting on the edge of my bed.

“How are Andy and Bianca?”

“Hanging in there. Now that I know why they’re sick, it’s easier to figure out how to treat them. Victoria was the only one who got radioactive polonium. We never would have been able to reverse that. The others might have a chance.”

“How do you know Julian won’t do it to other kids?”

“I don’t.” She turns and spies Ana’s glass unicorn on a wall shelf. She picks it up, turning its prickly body this way and that. “He’ll be at it again, unless he’s stopped.” Her eyes flick to me as she says this, waiting for me to fill the silence that follows.

“Do you know?” I ask. I’m not willing to say more.

“I do. Micah told me.” She brings the unicorn over and I stretch out my palm, but she doesn’t give it to me. I immediately want to snatch it from her grasp, but try to control myself. “I think your plan is going to fail.”

“Why?”

Renata’s bracelet buzzes. “I have to go,” she says. “But I’m telling you. If you’re relying on Sean to save you, then your plan has more problems than I do.” She goes to leave but turns around quickly. “Oh. I almost took this.” She hands me the glass unicorn. “Funny that you should own something that’s not supposed to exist. Did you make it?”

“No.”

“Hmm. But you’ll take care of it anyway, won’t you?” She smiles at me and her crinkling eyes remind me so much of Marka, I can’t reply. When the door shuts behind her, I finally think of something to say. But I think Renata already knew my answer.

Maybe I started to know, that day that I forced the attention of the senators onto myself, instead of Xiulan. Or when Penelope with the super vision held my hand in the transport. Or when I saw Renata weeping over Victoria’s lifeless body.

This isn’t just about me, and escaping Avida to find my Carus family. Not anymore.

It’s much, much bigger.

CHAPTER 24

D
INNER IS REPLETE WITH POTENTIAL ENERGY LIKE
a huge ball teetering on the edge of a step. On the rooftop, I can barely sit still in my smothering gown. When Cy, Micah, and Élodie arrive, they’re surprised to see me sitting at the table. Cy almost runs to my side.

“I can’t believe you’re here. I thought Julian would keep you locked in your room for ages.”

“I did too,” I say. “I think he let me come to dinner for a reason.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Micah comments.

“Listen,” I whisper. “We need another plan to get out of here. Just in case things don’t work out with Sean.”

“You think Sean is going to turn on us?” Micah asks.

“I don’t know. But really, who’s spent enough time with him to know what he’s really like? Or even how he’ll act when Julian’s no longer around? I don’t want to find out the wrong way that we’ve risked our lives for nothing.”

“But there’s no other way out of here,” Cy says.

“There’s one way out, but we can’t do it without scuba gear.” I grimace. “The underground river. Only the water kids have used it. Tennie told me. He said that they go deep underground. But they can’t survive outside, so they’ve never left.”

Cy holds my hand tightly. “Maybe we can swim out of here.”

“How?”

He lifts his sleeve. His forearm is now covered in slick blobs. I touch one. It’s got that rubbery feel, like Ryba’s skin. The skin flakes!

“But how do we know they’ll work on our skin? How will we get enough to cover ourselves? All of us?” I ask, worried but excited.

“I can ask Cela if there are any more flakes from when Ryba first arrived,” Cy says.

We jump to attention when the transport doors open. A few more kids arrive for dinner, but no Julian yet. We only have a minute more to talk.

Micah leans in closer. “Are the water kids going to lead us out? What if they want to come with us?”

“They can’t survive on land without a dousing every few minutes,” I say.

Everyone has the same panicked look as I do. There are too many cracks in a plan that isn’t even whole yet.

The door to the transport opens and Julian enters with Renata trailing behind like a trained dog. We all scatter to our seats and concentrate on our food. No one talks about Victoria or the sick kids.

No one fights here anymore. No one is even brave enough to mourn Victoria.

For a few minutes, we all eat, or pretend to eat, pushing the soft dabs of purple potatoes around on our gilded plates. The transport doors open, and everyone turns to see who’s bold enough to be late to dinner.

Caliga enters. She wears no makeup, and her white hair is messily tied in a knot. A simple day dress of crumpled linen hangs from her delicate shoulders. No gown, no jewels. Julian stands up at her entrance, and everyone braces for something—an acid comment about tardiness and hygiene, perhaps. Instead, he meets her as she approaches the table and extends his hand.

I hold my breath. No; we all hold our breath. Caliga flushes bright red. She hesitates, then tentatively touches her fingertips to his palm. When Julian’s only reaction is to smile, then we all know. Caliga’s vaccine worked.

Julian walks her to the table and sits right next to her. The other kids stare shamelessly. As the dinner goes on, Caliga doesn’t eat a single bite. Renata is living misery in her orange silk muumuu, and Julian oozes contentment as he heartily shovels the synthetic filet mignon into his mouth. I haven’t spoken to Sean in so long that I wonder if he’s still inside that man.

Cy won’t look at me at all during dinner. In fact, he spends the whole time staring at Caliga, as if he’s angry with her for some reason. Finally, she stands up.

“I’m tired, Julian. I’d like to retire.”

He nods and excuses himself, following her. As Caliga walks by us, she drops her napkin and Cy quickly reaches for it at the same time she does. He hands it back to her, but she says, “Thanks. Don’t wait up.”

Ugh. Such a flippant thing to say, considering. Everyone watches as Julian and Caliga retreat to the transport. I can’t help myself.

I run to her, nearly knocking my chair over, only to see her frightened blue eyes swallowed by the closing doors.

Micah comes to me. “C’mon. Get back to your room and pack. Cy and I are going to stay here to try to work on plan B.” I nod and enter the transport with several other kids, including Xiulan.