Halfskin (22 page)

So now she was on the second floor, staring at raised numbers on the door. The keycard on the floor. Nix sleeping.

She held on and bent over, prying the keycard off the dense carpet with a fingernail. The plastic was slick, the edge biting into her palm. She aimed it at the slot, stabbed the lock with a quick motion. A green light ignited. Gears turned.

She stared until the light went out.

Again, she keyed the door. This time she pushed the handle down before the light expired.

It was dark.

The smell of clean drifted from the room.

Cali backed inside, pulling the wheelchair with her. The light switch was around the corner. She locked the door and stood there. The heavy curtains were drawn. The beds made.

TV off.

“Avery?” she whispered.

Cali’s hands shook with renewed force, her fingers rattling over her lips as she covered her mouth to keep anymore sounds from squeaking out. She was a horrible mother. She sent her little girl out on her own to wait for them and they almost never made it. What would’ve happened to her if they were shutdown? Where would she have gone? She had no one, if Cali disappeared.

No one.

Cali looked on the other side of each queen-sized bed, the corners crisply made and tucked beneath. She pulled the curtain aside, looked down into the city. The street was empty and wet. Drizzle streamed down the glass like tears.

“Momma?”

The bathroom door opened. And her little girl, her treasure, stood there with a toothbrush, wearing her nightshirt, the one that said Little Princess. Cali fell on her knees with such force that, despite the carpet, pain shot up her legs. She held her arms out and her little princess jumped. Avery smelled like Colgate.

“I’m so sorry,” Cali whispered. “I’m such a bad mother. Such a bad, bad mother.”

“No, you’re not. You’re the best.”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, over and over.

“It’s okay, Momma. It’s okay. I just waited for you.”

“I know, I know… I just…”

And she squeezed her girl harder than a girl should be squeezed. And it felt good. A momma holding her cub to her bosom, never letting go.

Never letting go.

“Is that Uncle Nix?”

“Yes,” Cali said. She held her hand and knelt next to her brother.

His breathing was shallow. Drool hung from his lower lip. His complexion was still yellow but blotchy with patches of dry skin flaking off like scales. Like a new body pushing away the old.

A new breed.

“He smells funny,” Avery said. She leaned closer, wrinkled her nose. “What happened?”

“He’s been sick.” Cali pushed her brother’s hair off his forehead. Clammy and wet.

“He’s better?”

Cali nodded. “Yeah, he’s better.”

She smiled.

“He’s a lot better.”

Avery, despite the odor, wrapped her arms around Nix and pressed her head against his. Toothpaste dried on her lips like primer. The little princess smiled with her eyes closed, glad to see her uncle home and safe.

Home and safe.

48

There was no sense of time.

Like anesthesia. Like a portion of consciousness snipped from his life. If he had to recall his last moment of awareness, and it took great effort to do so, Nix remembered the silver doors of an elevator closing. Remembered his reflection looking back and his sister standing behind him. She said something—

Fire and furnace.

The images of hallucinatory dreams marched through his memories like pink elephants.

And now there was darkness. Blackness so perfect, unmarred by variations of smudging or the hint of shapes and depth. Just black.

Just night.

He wasn’t sure that time was passing, although it seemed to be since he was aware—on some level—of this absence of light. Of this night that went on forever, where there was no sensation. There just was.

Just is.

Until there was a pinpoint of light.

He wasn’t even sure when it appeared. As he became aware of it, he was thinking that perhaps it was there the whole time. That perhaps he just didn’t see it.

And then there was another. And another.

Like a black sheet draped across the sun and something poking through it. Some holes bigger than others, some brighter, but none bigger than the head of a needle. All there, filling his vision, filling the darkness like a can of sparkly paint flipped from a brush to spatter the night.

Stars. Those are stars.

Nix was grossly aware that he had a realization. That there was thought in this world. Before, the dark and the pinpoints of light were just knowledge, something that he just knew. But he felt a movement—something shifting—when he recognized the lights for what they were. That they were stars.

That he was lying on his back, looking into a pristine night sky.

And, like the lights had eased into his awareness, so did the sound of water beyond his feet, ebbing and flowing and shooshing and crashing. The heartbeat of the ocean was somewhere beyond his vision, but he could hear it. He could smell the salt, the sea life within it. Feel the sand beneath him.

And he lay there, motionless. Watching the stars glitter. Listening to the ocean call. He stayed that way for longer than he would remember, for a period of time that he could not measure, remaining in the present moment.

Just seeing.

Just hearing.

Smelling. Feeling.

Until smoke was in the air. Wood burned and crackled somewhere to his right. Nix turned his head, the sand grinding against his ear. He saw the fire glowing, flames licking the darkness somewhere between the hardpacked sand and the line of trees. Sparks danced like insects.

Perhaps he knew where he was and didn’t recognize it. Of course he wouldn’t. Because never before had he ever experienced the inner world with such clarity. Never could he smell its richness, breathe its wonder. Feel its beauty. Perhaps, he thought, he was somewhere in the outer world. That, holding that last memory of the elevator and sister closely, Cali had taken him far away from the hospital. Perhaps they were in paradise, after all. Just like she promised.

They escaped.

Because, if this was the lagoon, if this was his inner paradise, his dreamland, surely he would see—

She would be—

And a form stepped from behind the fire, the light flickering on her dark skin. Her bare feet pushing through the sand, hips swaying. Arms swinging at her sides. Her features faded as she stepped closer, the firelight now at her back, hiding the smile that touched her lips.

Nix went up to his elbows. He sat with arms crossed on drawn knees. He looked at the star-choked sky and cresting waves. Felt his long-time companion near him. Fully aware that the new breed biomites had fleshed dreamland, made it as vivid as skin and bone.

Or maybe this is real.

Raine’s hands were warm.

Her embrace soft.

49

Marcus rapped the counter with his fingernails, tapping a rapid succession of bullets with no particular rhythm, just something to cut through the barbiturate fog. His leg, stabilized in a blue wrap, still pulsed.

The doctor was late.

It was cold in the room with jars of tongue depressors and old magazines. Marcus tapped and stared straight at a poster—the only adornment in the room—framed in a thin black border beneath a layer of clear plastic: a picture of an old man and his wife, walking through Hyde Park. He was two feet in the air, clicking his heels like a goddamn fairy on Broadway.

BIOGEN. Stem cell biomite technology to have you on your feet and out the door. Ask your doctor if it’s right for you.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

A week had come and gone. Still in Chicago.

The pain, excruciating. When the adrenaline was exhausted, he smashed against the reality of a shattered knee. He attempted to fly home but was told to stay in Chicago. The investigation was ongoing and they needed him there, to mop up. And in the meantime, get that knee fixed.

They knew he wouldn’t take the biomites. They knew his stance. And he knew they kept him there, to let him stew in the raw scream of nerve endings that blared like never-ending fire alarms. Sometimes pain brought a man’s beliefs down, shattered the foundation on which he built his life. Pain, when there was enough, broke down all ideals.

But not Marcus Anderson.

He was certain, now more than ever, that biomite technology would be the end of humanity. Where once he held onto the thread of hope—bare and frayed at the ends—that people would see the folly of their tireless attempts to create happiness with technology was now all but dissolved.

They need me now more than ever
.

The public was unaware of Cali and Nix. Thank God, the media, either. So far, all they knew was that a mistake had been made. As far as authorities were aware, the brother and sister were wanted for questioning. But they hadn’t broken any laws. And, for the love of God, they certainly weren’t halfskins that M0ther couldn’t see.

And that should be impossible
.

The only way to escape M0ther was to develop a new brand of biomites. Geniuses had yet to crack that case, but if Cali did… if, in fact, she developed something that knocked them off the grid and this wasn’t a fluke… well, then, Marcus was fucked.

We all are.

Everyone would all figure out how to avert the all-watching eye of the government; they’d be out on their own, doing what they wanted, infecting humanity with a new brand of biomites that were, perhaps, stronger, faster and telepathic.

Marcus was sure that he’d live long enough to see the ugly end. He’d see humanity consumed by microscopic machines. And he would sit back with the other purists in the world and laugh.

Laugh as biomites ate them like flesh-eating bacteria.

Laugh and say it, say it loud.

I told you so.

The door opened. A doctor entered, extended his hand. Asked Marcus how he was feeling.

Marcus grunted. And tapped.

The doctor dropped a folder on the counter and leafed through several documents. He pursed his lips and whistled. His lips wet. The sound happy and piercing.

The doctor tapped the counter. It came to life like a computer tablet. Marcus removed his hand from the lighted surface. The doctor went back to whistling, moving objects around. He double-tapped a folder and the wall in front of Marcus transformed. The framed poster turned out to be a projection.

Lights danced.

An X-ray flipped into view.

“That’s your knee.” The doctor used his fingertip to draw a red circle on the wall. “Your patella is shattered and you tore the patellar tendon.”

Marcus didn’t need the X-ray and all the red arrows pointing to the black lines that spider webbed his kneecap. The knee was destroyed.

“There’s a procedure that utilizes cadaver tissue to rebuild—”

“No.” The thought of a dead man’s skin inside his body was revolting.

“When the swelling is down, we’ll replace the entire knee.”

The doctor explained, with more red lines, how they were going to enter Marcus’s knee, where they were making cuts and what materials they would use to substitute for bone and ligament. He would have an artificial knee that worked almost as good as the one he was born with. He could expect trouble as he got older, but it beat the hell out the alternative.

“There is another option.” The doctor swiped the desktop. The red lines vanished.

Marcus’s jaws flexed.

“You’re an ideal candidate for biomite regeneration. There have been some recent advancements in biomite knee reconstruction. The seeding is relatively painless and the results are complete within a month. We could start today, don’t even have to wait for the swelling to go down.”

Marcus took in a long breath. The doctor pretended to organize his folder.

“No,” Marcus managed to say, and that was it.

The doctor nodded. He turned the desktop off, pushed the folder to the side, and sat on a stool. Marcus let out a small sound when he unclipped the brace around his knee.

The pain lanced the fog like a spotlight.

50

The room smelled like a stale armpit.

A week of recovery, of sweating out waste, of dead skin peeling off them like burn victims, was about all Cali would take. It clung like cigarette smoke. She felt better stepping out of the shower and wrapping up in a robe. She leaned over the sink, piling a generous helping of toothpaste—compliments of Red Roof Inn—onto the bristles and scrubbed her whole mouth. The armpit was even on her tongue.