The Compound (13 page)

“Your mother and I can only, well, work so fast, so to speak.”

My stomach lurched. “What am I supposed to do?”

He cleared his throat. “There are other ways to … enhance our food supply.”

I didn’t know where his reasoning was headed. Or maybe I didn’t want to admit it. My mind was so clouded that I missed his next few words.

Dad kept on. “It would be a true experiment, since no one has done it before. But think, if I could pull it off …” He grinned. “I could patent the process and it could be used for generations. It would revolutionize medicine. People in need of organ transplants wouldn’t have to wait. And—”

“I missed what you said. What would revolutionize medicine?”

We reached his office and he unlocked it, ushering me in. Then he walked over to the padlocked door and pulled a key out of his pocket. With a twist, he had the padlock off and his hand was on the knob. “Are you ready?”

As the door swung open, my first impression was a glare of white light. When I stepped inside, I realized it was the whiteness of the room enhanced by the fluorescent bulbs running everywhere overhead. The room was a laboratory, so full of equipment and so big, that it made the other lab look like a low-budget high school classroom.

My jaw dropped as I took a few steps farther in. After all this time, a part of our world that I had no idea existed.

Long white counters ran hundreds of yards in front of me, each lined with test tubes and beakers and enormous, intimidating microscopes. Along the walls sat machines I’d never seen before. A lump formed in my throat. “Dad? What do you do in here? What would revolutionize medicine?”

His tone was matter of fact. “Cloning a human being.”

I backed away from him. The words almost didn’t make it out of my mouth. “What in the world are you proposing?”

Dad picked up a test tube and peered at the substance inside. He jotted something on a nearby clipboard. “We’ve been doing it the old-fashioned way. We need to step it up and make more Supplements the new-fangled way.”

I retched, barely making it to a sink before I puked up all the jerky. As the faucet went full blast, I lifted up the bottom of my T-shirt and wiped my face. My back was to him. “You can’t mean that.”

He grunted, annoyed, “Come on, Eli.”

I whirled to face him again. “It goes against nature! You know that. Besides, none of those animal clones lived more than a short time.”

Dad tilted his head a bit, looking at me. “Eli, Eli, Eli. When are you going to realize you’re just like me? Eddy isn’t … wasn’t, not by a long shot. But you? You are. You’ll do whatever it takes, anything, to make sure you come out on top.”

“That’s not true!” His analysis was akin to that clown’s telling me I was the evil twin. My head hurt behind my left eye and my vision started to blur.

He nodded. “Yeah, it is. You can’t deny what you are.”

My head moved from side to side. “I won’t do it. You can’t make me help you.”

He sighed. “No, I can’t. You’re right.” He drummed his fingers on the counter.

Dad seemed like he’d actually listened to me.

So I offered up an olive branch. “It’s just weird, you know?” I gestured at the scene around me. “Cloning people. And besides, don’t you need a human host at some point? And Mom’s already got a tenant, so to speak.”

Dad shrugged a bit. “There’s Lexie.”

Was he insane? “I know Lexie. She won’t do it.”

He chuckled a bit. “Do you? Do you really know your sister?”

Oh God. No. I probably didn’t.

He set the test tube down and picked up another. “I’ve already spoken to Lexie. She’s waiting for you to get on board.”

I turned, heading out the door and through his office, making it to the corridor mere seconds before I broke down.

Harsh sobs racked my body as I leaned on a wall. Was this what our life had become?

I hadn’t ever loved life in here. Tolerated it, maybe. But hearing my father’s plan for our continued survival caused a major shift inside of me. Any lingering tolerance, any sliver of ambivalence had fled. Gone for good. The space they left in me abruptly filled with hate for everything about the Compound.

I refused to live that way. There wasn’t anything I could do about it by myself. Maybe it
was
time to take sides.

I hoped I could find someone to be on mine.

I
CALMED MYSELF DOWN, CLEANED MYSELF UP, AND HOLED
up in my room. I stayed there the rest of the day. Even skipped dinner. I didn’t want to see anyone. But I wanted to pick up my book from the library.

As I left my room, I almost tripped over Mom, who was sitting on the floor, her back against the hard wall. I got the feeling she’d been waiting for me. I wondered how much she had heard of my earlier argument with Dad. Or how much she perhaps already knew.

She looked up at me with gentle, wet eyes. “Eli, come see the babies with me.”

My face must have given away my reaction.

She held out a hand for me to help her up, then pulled back when I did. “I have stood by and watched your father do a lot of things,” she said, inching up the wall. “But this—I won’t give in.”

Her tone told me what I had to do. I went to meet the rest of the family.

How could I possibly have gone that long without seeing them? We were, after all, stuck in the Compound together. But it was a big place. Big enough to be able to avoid what I needed to avoid. But maybe I’d avoided enough: facing life without Eddy and Gram, surviving the worst disaster to hit the civilized world. Hell, I’d become a master at denial.

Then Mom led me into the room with the yellow door.

My first look around made me realize the depth of my father’s preparation for any contingency. Goose bumps covered my arms. I resisted the urge to let my hair down and hide from the truth.

The walls were sunflower yellow, dotted here and there with painted handprints of pleasing greens and blues and oranges. The tone of the lighting was artificial sunlight. Did I imagine my skin becoming warmer? I felt like I was outside on a warm April afternoon. The scent of lilacs lingered, increasing the sensation of spring.

There was a crib and two toddler beds, all oak, with fluffy down bedding in whimsical, primary-colored prints. On the floor beside them lay a mattress, topped with a twisted mess of sheets and blankets. Past the beds, into the second room of the suite, we entered the playroom. Castles of blocks were stacked against one wall, and another held shelves brimming with picture books, puzzles, and games.

My eyes widened at the amount of baby and toddler things my father had stockpiled.

Had Dad planned on Mom having babies here? Before the Compound, I never heard them discuss having more children. Everything in that room suggested otherwise. And when I saw the stacks of diapers, the changing table, and the rocking chair I realized this had all been foreseen by my father somehow.

Maybe foreseen wasn’t the right word. Maybe he’d always planned to create a new generation.

Someone took my hand.

I recoiled, yanking it away. A small, dark-haired boy dressed in navy blue sweats grinned up at me. I recognized the fabric was from the piles of bolts in the sewing room.

His face was also one I knew well. Eddy’s. My legs nearly buckled and I put a hand against the wall to steady myself.

He still looked up at me. “Want to play Chutes and Ladders?”

Terese stood behind him. “Eli, this is Lucas.”

“Do you want to play with me, Eli?” I wanted to shout no and run. But where? Mom said, “I’ll come by in a little while.” She backed out the door.

Part of me was so pissed at her, for going along with all this. But another part of me was too surprised at the new world I’d stepped into. I was jolted by how much the little boy resembled Eddy at that age. And me.

A brother. I had another brother.

The boy must have equated my silence with agreement, because he walked over to a table with small chairs where
a game was set up. He tapped one place. “You sit here,’ kay?”

I tried to sit where he directed, but could hardly get my legs under the tiny table. I moved the chair and sat on the floor.

He sat in a chair beside me, his eyes level with mine. “I go first, ’kay?” He counted the spaces and moved his piece.

Curious fascination overcame the knot in my stomach. “How high can you count?”

“I can count a lot. I’m almost five.”

I took my turn. “Figured you were.”

We kept playing. The boy, Lucas, chattered the whole time, telling me about what he liked to play. At one point he stopped and rested his chin on one hand. His big brown eyes contemplated my face. “You look like me.”

My laughter came before I could stop it. “I was here first, so that means
you
look like me.”

“And Eddy.”

I felt my smile collapse. “How do you know about Eddy?” I glanced around for Terese, but didn’t see her.

“Reesie told me. About Eddy and Eli, the twins. Eddy stayed outside to take care of Cocoa and Clementine. He’s going to come and get us out.”

Lucas knew no life besides the Compound. Yet even he felt the need to get out. If that didn’t signify the strangeness of our life, I don’t know what would.

Guess it was up to me to shatter his illusions. “Look, kid. Eddy isn’t out there. He’s gone.”

The statement didn’t seem to unsettle him at all. He simply looked at me. And he sounded very confident. “Reesie said you’d say that.”

I had no response.

“Why didn’t you come see me before?”

“Before what?”

“Now.” Lucas blinked. His dark lashes were a stark contrast to his pale, perfect skin. Such a beautiful child.

Again, I didn’t have anything to say.

Then he handed me a toy car. “It’s broken.”

“Huh?”

“It’s broken. Can you fick it?”

His face was so serious. I couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah, I can fick it.” The wheel had come off. I pried it back on.

As he leaned in to watch me, he was close, so close that I could feel his warm breath on my arm.

Too close.

My body tensed, waiting for my heart to speed up, my breath to become shallow. But it didn’t happen. I finished, handing back his toy.

Lucas smiled. “Thanks.” He dropped to the floor, running the car back and forth until he seemed satisfied it worked. He checked behind him, and then whispered, “Eli, can you keep a secret?”

“Yeah, of course.” Like there was anyone to tell.

Lucas led me over to a door. Inside, shelves upon shelves held toys, puzzles, and games. He went to the back, tugging out a wooden box. “I keep this back here so no one else can see it. It’s special.” He beckoned.

With one hand, he selected an item from the box. His grin showed a lot of teeth. “Look.” He held up a painted figure of an intricately carved clown.

Great. It had to be a clown.

He removed the top, which revealed another smaller figure inside the first.

“Oh, they’re nesting dolls.”

Lucas scrunched his nose up. “They’re not dolls. They were a special present. A secret.” He plucked one out of the other until there were six. He set them on a shelf in order, keeping the smallest in his hand. “This is the last one.” He held a finger to his lips. “It has a mystery inside.”

“The last one doesn’t open, that
is
the mystery.”

Lucas nodded. “It does so have a mystery.”

Was I actually arguing with a four-year-old? “Okay, whatever.”

He put them all back and hid them in the same spot again. “Do you hate us?”

I wasn’t sure how to respond. “Why would you ask me that?”

“You never came to see us.” His eyes blinked slowly, like he was waiting for me to come up with an explanation.

For a while, even before Terese had aroused my suspicions that day in the gym, I sometimes wondered if the staleness of our existence would slowly suffocate us. I finally understood why Mom and Terese and Lexie doted on the Supplements. Sitting with Lucas, my brother, I already felt different. More alive than I’d felt for a long time.

I explained it to him. “It was dumb of me to stay away. Let’s just leave it at that.”

He nodded. “I have to get my pie-jammas on now.” He skipped off to where Terese was helping a little girl with dark braids put on a nightgown.

In the rocking chair, Lexie held the youngest one, a boy about a year old. I heard her call him Quinn. I’d always considered my older sister to be completely self-absorbed, concerned only with herself and what she could gain from any situation. Her actions usually proved my assumptions to be true. But as I observed her, she was unaware of being watched.

Lexie held Quinn with a look on her face I’d never seen. If I had to describe it, I guess I could say she appeared happy. Not because she was getting her way or someone was doing something for her. She was just content in the role of observing Quinn, just waiting to see what he would do next. Mostly I was amazed to see her being so patient with someone.

Then Lexie saw me. “What are you doing down here?” Before I could answer, her surprised look turned to one of annoyance and she stood up, shoving Quinn into my arms. “Hold him, I have to pee.”