Lotus and Thorn (28 page)

“You mean someone
made
Red Death?”

“I’m sure of it . . . two different diseases spliced together. And when I understood that, I knew how to create the vaccine. For the first time in my life, I felt like the genius Jenner had created me to be! Godlike! My destiny wasn’t to save the Dome, but to save all of Gabriel. To bring an end to suffering.

“I couldn’t wait to see Jenner’s face when he understood what his prodigy had accomplished. So the very next day I doctored a vat of chiken with the antigens and sent Grimm out into Pleiades to witness the miracle.” Nik’s face went stony.

I had lived the next part of the story. I knew what happened. “But they died instead.” A numb horror crept over my body. “Hundreds of us died. My father . . .”

“Yes.” The fear had left Nik’s eyes now. He had stopped hiding. “And your mother. I watched your mother die.”

And a memory emerged—one I’d kept locked away—of that nightmare of a day. People had been getting sick all morning, but no one would tell me and my sisters anything. Sarika ordered us to stay inside the apartment, but I was determined to find out what was going on. I snuck out to the courtyard and waited for my mother to come home from the Reclamation Fields.

I screamed when I saw her. She came staggering in through the gates, her eyes red. Face rashy and impossibly swollen. And I ran away from her, like a coward, leaving her to collapse in the dirt. And as I ran, Grimm was there. His shadow hovering over me. I remembered thinking he was protecting me. That
he
was the one that’d kept me from dying too.

“No.”

“It turned out there was a protein in the vaccine that was
so similar
to one inside the human body that it confused the immune system . . . it couldn’t figure out what it was supposed to be attacking. Like a massive allergic reaction, the vaccine turned the body against itself . . .
and
left its systems defenseless to Red Death as well. The response was immediate and lethal.” There was such sorrow in Nik’s face as he spoke, but he was unflinching as he faced me. “I killed your mother. I killed all of them.

“That was the day I walked into the forest and stayed. I hid away in here working on my plants. Trying to forget. Trying in some small way to make up for what I’d done. But I can never atone for that.”

Grief was a tangible weight sitting on my chest and I reminded myself to breathe. It was like watching my parents die all over again. And in some ways Nik’s betrayal was worse than Edison’s. Because it was not complete. Because I could not hate him.

“I stayed. I listened. Is that everything?” I asked.

Nik nodded.

Without a word, I turned my back on him and walked away.

EARLY THE NEXT MORNING,
the Sanctum was filled with the rhythm of cracking sticks and shouting Kisaengs, but I wasn’t registering any of it.

“What’s wrong with you?” Oksun asked after she knocked me off my feet for the second time.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, brushing dirt off my tunic. “Let’s take a break. I don’t know where my mind is today.”

In fact, I knew exactly where it was. It was frozen in that moment by the waterfall—Nik telling me he killed my parents. The blade of it still cut into me. Not just because he was responsible for so much of my hurt. But because I’d convinced myself that somehow Nik was a refuge from all of this.

“Good. I wanna talk to you about the explosives anyway.”

“Explosives?” I tossed my fighting sticks onto the grass. Oksun had my full attention.

“Right. I talked to the other blasters and we don’t think it’ll be hard to get our hands on the right ingredients. The reprocessors synthesize all kinds of chemicals for the labs and none of them are tracked very closely.”

My mind was whirling to catch up. “You talked to the other Kisaengs? Do you think you can trust them?”

“I thought we agreed.” Oksun seemed taken aback by my questions. “Yesterday, we said we’d plan the attack for Dia de los Muertos. I haven’t told anyone about the LOTUS wards yet . . . I was just feeling people out. And, of course, I only spoke to girls I trust.”

“Infiltration and rescue,” I corrected. “Not
attack
.”

“Leica, the Curadores have been infecting, kidnapping, and experimenting on our fellow Citizens. On our families. On your sister. They aren’t just gonna to let us grab our people and walk out of here. Either we do whatever it takes to get back what is ours, or we stay silent and do nothing. There is no in-between. If we do this, people are going to get hurt and no amount of semantics is going to change that.”

While the Kisaengs punched and shouted and practiced maneuvers around us, my mind spun. “This is going to change everything, isn’t it? All I’ve been thinking about is the details. How do we distract the Curadores? How do we get Tasch and everyone out of the wards? I hadn’t thought at all about what happens after. It’s going to turn this place upside down.”

Oksun nodded. “Not just inside the Dome. If we bring these Citizens back, if we fight the Curadores, the whole Pleiades system of reclamation and trading will fall apart.”

“Can we really do that to our own people?”

“Let me ask you something . . . the Abuelos called you Corrupted, they forced you to spend your life scouting in the Reclamation Fields; then they exiled you. What exactly about our way of life do you want to save?”

I blinked hard. I had no answer for her.

Oksun put her hand on my shoulder. “Let’s put it back together better this time.”

“I’d like that.” And I imagined the grove in the Indigno camp, thick with trees. Fruit heavy on the branches. But the only way to make that happen was to get to work. I focused on the explosives. “The way I see it, we need to limit movement in three key locations. The party will be the main distraction, but we’ll need a way to trap people
inside
the Sanctum once we get them there.”

“Small detonations along the outer arm of the spiral should do the trick.”

“Good. Next, we’ll need a way to shut down movement through the streets of the Dome so the Curadores have difficulty sending reinforcements.”

Oksun grinned. “Easy. We’ll hit the magfly lines.”

“And third, we’ll need to collapse the underground tunnels once the wards have been infiltrated and we’ve rescued the Citizens. We don’t want anyone trying to follow them out,” I said.

“If
we
are going to be the ones distracting the Curadores at Dia de los Muertos, who’s doing the infiltrating?” Oksun asked.

And I smiled. “Now,
that
would be my other sister.”

If only I could get out of the Dome again to let her know about it.

• • •

It would’ve been naive to think Edison wasn’t keeping an eye on me—after all, he had flys, Kisaengs, and Curadores at his disposal. So even though the idea of sneaking out to Pleiades seemed like a huge risk, I could see no other option. For this plan to work, I needed to get to Sarika.

But when I got back to my room that night, there was a note waiting for me.

I don’t blame you. But please let me help. Ada is expecting you at the Complex at ten.

• • •

Riya and I walked arm in arm, chatting, trying to look casual. The Mothers’ Complex was impressive and a little ominous. There were at least ten buildings inside the walled compound and all of them were dark.

“Tell me why
I’m
here again?” Riya asked. She’d started picking up habits from Oksun and now she gave me a wry eyebrow raise.

“Moral support.”

Suddenly, the gate leading into the Complex swung open. In spite of the lights that lined the sidewalk, I couldn’t see anyone inside.

“Come in if you’re coming,” Ada’s voice hissed, “before someone sees you.”

We hurried through the gate and it swung shut behind us. But there was still no one. Then I heard the voice again and spotted a speaker on the wall. “Walk straight up the path. Third building on your left.”

I tried to peek inside the windows as we passed the other buildings, but I only saw my and Riya’s reflections in the dark glass. Were there children sleeping inside? Classrooms?

We knocked at the door to the third building and it was answered by a pregnant woman in a cream dress. Despite the late hour, a few children were playing a dice game on the floor behind her and a little girl glanced up at me as I came in. She had no hair, like Aaliyah. Another boy stared at me with serious, mismatched eyes—one bright blue, one green. If Curadores didn’t want Kisaengs to pollute the DNA, then why these Corruptions?

Then a cold, treacherous idea crept into my heart. When I’d learned about my scar, about what the unfertilized ova were used for, I’d taken comfort in one thought alone. That they wouldn’t be turned into more Leicas. That my DNA wouldn’t be used for some terrible purpose.

But how did I know that for certain? After all, hadn’t Edison told me that Gabriel had made me better? More evolved?

“Come with me,” the woman said. Feeling sick, I watched the children for another second before I forced myself to turn away—the rattle of dice following me down the dim flight of stairs into a brightly lit basement.
First, let’s just make sure they all live through this. Let’s make sure we all do.

“Who’s that?” Ada looked up from a panel of blinking lights and pointed at Riya. It was the first time Ada and I had actually met, and she was even more intimidating up close. “I was only expecting one of you.”

“We come in pairs.” Riya’s voice was hard. The training had done more than teach her moves.

“You can trust Riya,” I added.

“I don’t even trust you, why would I trust her?”

“Because you don’t have a choice,” I said. “We’re already here.”

Ada looked at us both. Then she shook her head—as if it was against her better judgment—and said, “Suit yourself.”

“I will. Thanks.” And I gave her my most dazzling smile.

Riya gazed around the room. “What is all this?”

It looked a bit like the main computer room in the Genetics Lab. Except there were no flys here and everything was cobbled together with bare wires. Ancient monitors covered the walls,
showing fuzzy snapshots of the Dome: The gate outside the Complex. The Promenade. The Villages.

“This is where we keep track of what happens in the Dome,” Ada said.

“Why?” I asked. There were about ten other Mothers down in the basement, cream dresses swishing efficiently as they checked monitors or dismantled old computers or soldered circuit boards.

“Because
it’s
keeping track of us,” Ada said matter-of-factly. “The women of Ad Astra are practically prisoners of the Dome. We serve only one purpose, to carry and bear children. For centuries, we’ve had no choice in the matter. The Curadores have always made sure there were enough of us to sustain the population, but not enough to fight back.”

It sounded eerily familiar to the Indigno theories about controlling the Citizen populations.

“But things have changed.” Ada gestured at the screens around us. “The Dome is breaking down. There are gaps and holes in the system now and we plan to take advantage of them. To take control of them . . . first the flys, then the reprocessors, then the whole damn computer.”

I was confused. “But Nik said that no one could fix the computer because no one knew how to reprogram it.”

“True. Even if we seize control from the Curadores, the Dome will still be doomed. That’s the only reason we’re talking to you.”

“And the Curadores have no clue?” Blue computer light reflected in Riya’s eyes as she gazed around the room.

“Well, thanks to Leica here, they know some of what we’re up to. She so kindly told her boyfriend that I was doing a little browsing down in the Salvage Hall.”

My face burned. “I had no idea—”

“Yes, yes, so Nik said. Luckily, we have decoy stashes set up. They found a few things, but nothing important.”

“It’s hard to believe that
no one
besides me has noticed,” I said.

“You have to understand,” Ada said. “The Curadores are conditioned to ignore us as much as possible. In their minds, Mothers are merely incubators. Why else do you think they have Kisaengs? If they really looked at us . . . if they remembered we were women with thoughts and desires and ambitions . . . they’d risk remembering they’re holding their own people hostage. And until we’re ready, we’re more than happy being ignored.”

“Let them underestimate you.” I repeated one of my core training lessons. Despite all our differences, Ada and I were the same kind of fighter. “These gaps and holes you mentioned . . . I’m hoping you can help me take advantage of them.”

“Of course you are. But first, I want something from you.” Ada flipped a switch and there was a squealing noise punctuated by scraps of distorted radio transmissions. It poured through every speaker, filling the room, until I covered my ears. I’d never heard the sound before, but it was exactly how Edison had described the scrambled transmission from Earth.

She shut it off and looked at me. “Well, what is it?”

“Why are you asking me?” I watched her carefully, trying to figure out how much Ada already knew about the radio—information was one of my few assets at the moment. I sympathized with the Mothers, but I had no idea what their ultimate agenda was. If they did have the ability to commandeer the computer system, that made them hugely powerful allies. But until I knew what they intended to
do
with that power, I wanted to hold on to whatever leverage I had.

“Because about four months ago, we picked up a transmission from you from out in Tierra Muerta. Your voice squawked across all the Curador frequencies, saying ‘Hello? This is Ad Astra. We’re alive!’ We’d never picked up an outside transmission before, but since then we’ve been monitoring all frequencies. So I ask you again. What is it?”

Ada was testing me—I could hear it in her voice. I couldn’t risk the Mothers deciding not to help me, so I told the truth.

“It’s a coded message. My crew picked it up in a shuttle we found buried beneath the sand dunes. If you had a descrambler, you’d know that it said, ‘Lotus Colony, this is Homebase. You are under temporary quarantine. Enter verification and transmit on priority frequency so emergency evacuations can be coordinated.’”

Riya stared at me. I hadn’t told her or Oksun about the message. In the last week, I’d been too busy with happenings inside the Dome to give much thought to the outside.

“Homebase?” Even Riya’s round mouth became pointed as she repeated the word.

“Then it
is
Earth,” Ada answered. “And that is what you and Edison have been doing in that lab of yours. Trying to make contact.”

I tried to hide my surprise. And this time, Ada couldn’t keep the smile from slipping onto her face.

“You
are
keeping tabs on the Dome.” I was impressed. “Edison heard my transmission too and followed it out to Tierra Muerta.” I told them about the voice that’d answered. “I thought he was after the shuttle and radio, but as it turned out, he was more interested in
me
. He knew the radio was important to me and he used it to lure me here. And to keep me distracted.”

“Thank you for not lying. Honestly, nothing would give me greater pleasure than to hitch my little rebellion up to yours. But I had to make sure I trusted you first.”

“And do you?”

“Enough for now.” And the smile became a wide grin that broke up her flawless face. It gave her a mischievous look that made me realize I liked her.

“Well then,” I said, my grin matching her own. “Where should we start?”

So Ada, Riya, and I came up with a plan for my journey the next night. It felt good to be taking action. And I could tell that it was satisfying for Ada too.

When it was time for us to leave, Ada walked us out to the gate. Then she pulled me aside.

“I’m sorry about what Edison did to you. And I’m sorry about Grimm too. Did you know I helped build him?” Ada’s face wore its haughty mask again, but her voice was softer. “I loved working on him; it was the only time in my life that I was really useful . . . that I felt challenged.”

Then she smoothed her hair, touching up her tight bun, and her voice got its bite back. “That was my mistake . . . letting Edison see how much I loved it, how
good
I was at it.”

And she wasn’t bragging or exaggerating—simply stating a fact.

“But then, he wasn’t always the way he is now. At least, I don’t think he was. I like to think that once, when we were all kids, that he was my friend.”

I wasn’t sure where she was going with this.

“Listen, Nik is a good man,” she said.

My voice came out hoarse. “This has
nothing
to do with you.”

“But it does. Nik is my friend. He was stupid and reckless and people paid the price.”