The Isle (4 page)

M
ama always said I should love my hair.

“I've got it too,” she'd croon. I'm no more than six, long and sprawled along her lap, and we're mushed together in a big rocking chair, watching the strait float by. “So blond it's silver, like an old person's but with more butter mixed in. When I touch your hair, I'm touching my mama's hair too. And her mama's hair, on and on, backward into infinity. We've all had it. Hair that's old before our time.”

Her voice tickles my ear, and then it's gone.

Whatever they gave me, it's wearing off. My skull aches. I'm waking up faster than I want, but it's unstoppable.
Why do I hurt so much?
I feel like I'm holding the sun in both my hands.

Pain forces my eyes open, but I don't want to see where it's
coming from. “What's going on . . . ?” I murmur, my voice toady and croaking. “I hurt. . . . Why? Why do I hurt?” My head rolls from side to side like my spine isn't strong enough. That must be the drugs too. They make the room spin, and I have to close my eyes again.

I try to remember Mama's face, but I can't. The drugs wore off and now I'll never see her again. I see someone else's face. She's fluffy-haired and muscled. She's black and red and yellow-cheeked, the colors of an apartment fire, and she smells like soot. She feels like my mother but she's not, and still I curl into her lap. That's also made of pain. I whimper.

“Aventine Colatura.”

An old man is saying my name. He sounds so excited to meet me. . . .

“Do you consider yourself to be a special girl?”

It's a strange question, isn't it?

“I don't know what you mean,” I mumble, opening my eyes—a bad idea. My head won't let me see anything straight. “Maybe? I haven't done anything very special.”

The man pats my leg twice excitedly. He has the same face as Governor Voss, but through the haze I don't quite believe it's him.

“Ah . . . but you have, my dear. You have! The entire scientific community will soon know about you.” He claps his hands together once. “And me,” he adds.

What does he mean?
I wonder, lifting myself up from the bed. It doesn't work; I collapse back onto the sheets, boneless.
Something's wrong. My arms feel wrong.

The room continues to whirl like a pinwheel, toppling
sideways, then straightening itself out. I swallow my heart and look down.

Bare feet, bare legs . . . I'm in hospital clothes. I blink when my eyes pass over a spot of red. I try to focus on it. At both hips, a bandaged white stub. They're just . . . just lying there. Where my hands should be, they're not. I start to breathe so fast my lungs can't keep up.
It can't be
. I try to wiggle a finger, any finger, but nothing moves.
I'm wrong, I must be wrong
. Shoulder, elbow, forearm, wrist . . .

. . . blood on gauze.

A wave of sick washes over me. On the floor, a metal pail is waiting.
I have hands
, I tell myself, and I force open my eyes because this can't be real. It can't.
This is a nightmare
. My eyes won't open. They already are.

“Mama,” I cry, reaching for her to come back—the real one.

There are so many tears now, each one slopping down my face faster and faster. “Why?” The word is blubber on my tongue, caught up with the crying. “Why would you do this? What did I do?”

The old man, thin as a shadow, hovers over me.

“Why do you think this is about you, child? You've done nothing wrong. This is not about you. Or, not just you, I should say. It is for
us
. Humanity. Science.” His words are slow and they stretch and stretch like rubber bands, but I listen with both my ears and my eyes. I try to keep up.

I hear him say I did something for science.

“You see, Aventine, the medicine you were given, it's more powerful than you can imagine. It fixed your tumor, you remember. But I believe that's just the tip of the iceberg.”

I'm not sure I'm listening anymore. A thing is growing inside of me. A feeling, like fire, is being born. This is how dragons must feel.
I want to burn him
. My insides are scorched for the first time. It's as though I've never known true anger in my life.

I'm shaking.

My hands. He's taken my hands from me . . . for science.

L
ucas can't be following us. Sipu knocked him out good, and tied him up even better. But every time a damned mouse squeaks, I turn my head to check.

I almost killed Derek's brother. If it hadn't been for Sipu, I would have.

The realization stings. I don't like to think about what I'm capable of. It seems the better a person I become, the worse I become at
exactly
the same time. Doesn't being good kinda mean you're not being bad?

“We're close. The ladder should be coming right up,” Derek says, shaking me from that depressing thought train. “What happens when we reach the top?” He's quizzing me, as if I might not remember. Normally I'd give lip, but not today, not now. Ain't the time for sore feelings.

“The ladder leads to an airlock. There, we'll change into our wet suits, you'll knock open the lock, and then it's swim practice all the way to the lab's basement. Since we're still a few stories below sea level, we'll need to hold our breath a ways. After we break surface, the old air ducts will be right there ready for us to crawl through. We follow those to . . . the shitter.” I end with a grin he can't see.

“Hopefully that's not a metaphor,” Derek answers. “And then?”

“Once we're inside, we'll set our comms and split up. Your distraction—”

“That's right,” he says. “Let me show you.” He reaches into the side pocket of his bag and pulls out an unlabeled vial of . . .

“Air?”
I squint into the empty glass.

“Air-
borne
,” Derek corrects. “It's a replica of the HBNC virus, minus the infectious genetic material. In case of a containment breach, the lab is equipped with viral sensors—they'll identify the protein makeup and go off. The switchboard operator will then order all staff to the lab's detainment area.”

I stare even harder into the vial, amazed. “Easy peasy,” I say, sarcastic. “How'd you guys get this? Or should I just assume it's another Tètai hat trick?”

Derek returns the vial to the side pocket and picks up the pace. “Kitaneh said she took it from a dead bird, guessing that's how the virus spread. Never really made sense, though. The protein shell supposedly dissolves after it releases the virus; she couldn't have pulled it from a dead
bird. Who knows.” He shrugs, and a few moments later, pulls off the tunnel's main drag. “It works, though. We used it once before.”

Metal claps against the wall. “Found our ladder,” Derek announces, testing its sturdiness with a shake. “And after we separate, what next?”

“I search Basement A, find Aven. We all meet back in the first-floor bathroom and get outta dodge the same way we came.”

“Perfect. And you're confident Callum will be waiting for us? Is there a chance he might not show?”

“No way. He's too reliable,” I say, but Derek looks unconvinced. “Callum's not just the brainy, intellectual type—he's made of stronger stuff than he looks.”

I don't mention his tiny, totally unrelated fear of water.

A twinge of something passes across Derek's face. Maybe he doesn't appreciate the glowing endorsement I just gave Callum. Which would mean he gets jealous, just like regular people. An interesting realization, but not one I've got time to dwell on.

Derek certainly ain't—he's halfway up the ladder by the time I've got my hands on the bottom rung.

I race to catch up, climbing at a straight vertical until we hit the steel airlock. Inside, a fluorescent light glows blue, buzzing as it flickers on and off. “Wet suits on,” Derek says. We drop our packs in tandem, yanking out the awkward black flippers first. Next come the wet suits, still sopping from earlier.

I turn away from him. “Don't look,” I mutter. Maybe I can
change during one of the dying lightbulb's off moments.

“How do you know I'm not already?” Derek jokes, and I can practially hear him grinning. Even so, I hop into the clammy wet suit like I'm on fire.

Last, I throw on goggles, resting them over my eyebrows. Without hair it's so much easier, but the realization comes with a pinch of regret—my crazy curls, lopped off on Callum's floor. It was worth it: my new look made it easier to break into Ward Hope so I could get the cure to the patients. But I still miss my curls.

Fully suited, I turn to face Derek. Already, I'm sweating up a storm under my neoprene. He hands me a mask with a rubber and mesh cup, and an attached elastic band. It makes me feel like we're entering nuclear bomb territory. I pass it back.

“It's a respirator mask, Ren. You should wear it once we're in the lab.”

“I'm immune, remember?” He knows this—I ran into him at Ward Hope just as Aven was waking, and we had to escape via the contagious ward.

“You're immune to the Blight. But we're walking into an experimental laboratory. They could have a hundred disease strains floating around that we haven't even heard of.” He passes me the mask again. “It's waterproof,” he adds, “so just throw it around your neck for now.”

I do as I'm told, though I can't help but wonder how necessary it is. Back at Nale's, kids sometimes got the flu or the pox, but not me. Never so much as a cold. Never a broken bone neither.

How awful would it be to catch my own incurable disease
after saving Aven from hers?

I ain't positive, but I think that'd be called
irony
.

“You can't get sick neither, right?” I ask. “You took some water with you? I heard glass in your pack.”

Derek's eyebrows gnarl up. “You heard that corpse bit. I'd hoped, maybe, that you hadn't. Yes, I took water with me. Enough to last a while. I won't get sick.”

Leaning over a keypad, he asks, “Ready?” His fingers look ready to punch in the code and unlock the metal door.

I lower my goggles and press on the plastic lenses. Once I'm sure all the air is out, I answer, “Ready,” nodding and rubbing my palms together.

A wheel as large as I am rotates automatically. The metal door rises. A great green wave-tongue begins to swallow up the room. “We swim when it's full!” Derek calls out over the noisy roar. I couldn't swim now if I wanted—I'm cemented to the floor by a hundred tons of seawater crushing my flippered feet.

The dark, lime-green brackish water reaches my knees, then my hips. Too soon, it's past my collarbone, splashing under my lower lip. When it passes over my mouth and I have to start treading, I look to Derek.

He waves.

Nervy bastard.
The water barely touches his armpits.

Kicking my fins, I glare in return and wait for him to catch up with the drowning bit. He steps closer and grips my hips with both hands—I don't expect it. In one quick motion, he lifts me up and sits me in the bent crook of his thigh.

“Easier, huh?” he says, wiping his face.

My cheeks burn despite the cool water. “Mm-hmm,” I manage, looking away. My spine fits perfectly against the curve of his chest.

The room darkens as it fills with brack, and Derek flips on his cuffcomm's light. When the water's too high and he can no longer hold me, he drops his knee but doesn't let me go under. Still gripping my waist, mouths pressed to the ceiling, we take a deep breath, then push ourselves out of the airlock.

Derek shoots ahead, a long black fish nearly invisible in the water. The beam of light coming from his wrist ain't much, just enough to follow by. It casts itself against the remains of whatever this building was before the DI took over. Algae covers most everything—too much to tell what was here before.

As we swim higher, though, I spot a pattern in the architecture: vertical bars
.

We're in a prison. Might've even been police headquarters, from back when the United Metro Islets was part of the Mainland, with an army and a police force and everything. Seeing how before the Wash Out the DI
were
the police, it makes perfect sense.

Air—
the first ache hits like a hunger
.

My heart seizes, but I press my lips tightly together. The ache will go away; it always does—I just need to keep my mind calm. Override the body's instinct to freak out. Choking the sensation down into my belly, I force my throat and jaw to relax so I can clear my mind.

It don't work. I'm revved like an overwound toy. There's no
escape in my head. Fear is tucked behind every corner.
He took her
. As if she were a thing to be experimented on, or a game piece he can move to get what he wants.

What would I do if he's already killed her?

My heart drums so loud, it becomes a rhythm in my head. My vision blurs. I can't stop it. I'm not swimming anymore. I don't know how to.
If Aven's hurt, I'll—I'll . . .

Like a shadow that grows longer and longer, my fear begins to shapeshift until it's entirely unrecognizable. It becomes a dark, strange thing. An animal made only of teeth. There is one corner of stillness left in my mind, and I've found it. The dam I'd built between myself and the answer to that question comes undone, releasing a terrible truth by the tons.

I don't need to lie to myself. Don't need to pretend I'm better than I actually am. We can't all be as good as Aven—not when people like Voss exist.

I know what I would do
.

I am necessary.

I will do necessary things.