Origin (33 page)

I need a plan. And I need an ally.

Finally, I sit on the floor in front of the window and face the jungle, doing all I can to keep the darkness at bay. It looms at the edges of my mind, threatening to swallow me whole if I fail to be diligent for even one moment.

My hands slowly tear the elysia flower into tiny bits as I wait for morning.

A
s soon as I see sunlight overhead, I go looking for Uncle Antonio. I’m ready to sit with him and talk about what I heard. We need to lay everything out, view it from every angle. Find the cracks and the flaws in the formula. Heat it like water and see what hidden truths rise to the surface.

But it’s Aunt Harriet, not Uncle Antonio, whom I find first. She has Alai on a leash outside the menagerie.

“Pia, good heavens, what’s happened? You look like death!”

Her unwitting turn of phrase sends a chill down my spine.

I remember that Aunt Harriet is still in the dark.
She deserves the truth. I owe her that much.
I draw a deep, shaky breath. “I…I’ve learned a lot in the past few hours—things you really should know, Aunt Harriet.” I look around, and though we’re alone, I take her by the elbow and lead her behind the building so we’re hidden from anyone who might
walk by. “You know how we’ve been wondering about the catalyst and what it could be?” I whisper.

She nods, her hand tightening slightly on Alai’s leash.

“Well…” I close my eyes and force the words from my lips. “I’ve discovered what it is.” Then the words rush out like the waterfall where Eio and Ami swim. I hold nothing back. I tell her about our argument in the jungle, Eio’s confessed feelings, my intention—and failure—to put down Sneeze, the trip to Falk’s Glen, and the legend of the Kaluakoa, which isn’t a legend at all. I end by telling her of the elysia grown from my tears.

When I finish, she presses her hands to her mouth and stares at the ground. She stands this way for two, three, four minutes. I count the seconds in my head. Finally she looks up again with pupils constricted to pinpoints. “Are you—are you sure?
Killing
people, Pia?”

“I don’t know!” I run my hand through my hair and start pacing to and fro in front of her. “All I know about elysia—besides the fact that I can grow it with my tears—is the Kaluakoa’s experience with it. Maybe it isn’t necessary to
kill
people to make Immortis. Maybe you can just draw a little blood, mix it with elysia.…We’re scientists. We have technology and medicine and rats to experiment on. Surely Falk found a way around the killing.”
Except for my grandparents.
I stop walking and look at her in desperation. “Right?”

She bites her lip and squints at the ground for a moment before answering. “Well, where would the scientists get people to inject with elysia, anyway? They couldn’t be bringing in subjects all the time; someone on the outside would
notice. It’s impractical. You’re right. There must be a different way.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “Surely there must be. If it’s true…then it’s worse than I imagined. I knew they were keeping secrets, but I never thought it would be like this.”

“Uncle Antonio tried to warn me. He wanted me to run, but I didn’t believe him—well, I
did
, I just didn’t want to.”

“There, now, Pia. Like you said, we don’t
know
anything yet.” She holds me at arm’s length and gives me a stern look. “You go find Antonio and get the rest of the story. Don’t jump to conclusions.”

“Do you think it’s true?” I ask. “Do you think they’ve been killing people with elysia?”

She shrugs slowly, but I see the fear in her eyes, and I know she does. “Go,” she says. “Find Antonio.”

I nod and kneel beside Alai, hand out to rub his ears. But he hisses and raises his hackles, eyes wild. Stunned, I pull my hand back and stare at him with dismay. “Alai?”

He shakes his head roughly and stalks away, tail as straight as one of Eio’s arrows.

“He’s just skittish,” Aunt Harriet says hurriedly, and she stares up at the sky. “It’s this weather. There’s a storm coming, and it’ll be a big one. I’ll take care of him. Find me later, Pia, and tell me what Antonio says. If the worst is true after all, well”—she inhales deeply—“you won’t be the only one running.”

“Okay.” I watch Alai sadly, then, at Aunt Harriet’s insistence, leave them there. Try as I might, I can’t wash the image of Alai’s hostile glare from my eyes.

I’m searching the gardens when I’m stopped by Uncle
Jakob. When I see him, my mind goes blank. I force myself to breathe and remember that things can’t possibly be what they seem. I don’t
know
Uncle Jakob is a murderer. Not yet.
There is still hope.

“Pia, there you are!” He smiles and tucks the pencil he’s holding behind his ear. “We’ve decided to move the operation up a day. The others are waiting in the lab. It’s time to teach you about Immortis.” His smile fades a little, and a grimness creeps into his eyes. “Come with me.”

I panic and nearly flee then and there—
I’m not ready for this. Not yet!
—then frantically reel my emotions into check. I need to talk to Uncle Antonio, need to explore the truth until there can’t possibly be any more secrets.

But there’s no time. They’re waiting for me.

Blindsided and completely unprepared, I follow Uncle Jakob through the courtyard and across the verandas to A Labs just as rain begins to pound the earth. The moment the door shuts behind us, thunder rattles the building.

Uncle Jakob shakes the water from his lab coat. “Gonna be a nasty one, sounds like.” He gives me a curious look. “You all right?”

“Who, me?” I ask, a bit too shrill.

“I thought you’d be more excited.”

Excited.
The thing is, a week ago he would have been right. “I’m just…” My voice betrays me again.

“I know.” He nods. “It’s too much for words.”

“Oh. Yeah.” I’m relieved when he starts down the hall, apparently satisfied that I’m about to burst with excitement. In truth, I am overwhelmed with apprehension. It’s growing in my stomach like bacteria in a petri dish.

I hold my breath as Uncle Jakob opens the door to my own lab.

Inside is the rest of the Immortis team. They are serious and drawn, and my heart falls a little. They don’t look like people excitedly anticipating the task at hand. They look as cold and expressionless as slabs of concrete.

I can’t help but notice the polished syringe lying on the table next to Uncle Paolo, who turns and greets me with a slow nod. Mother helps me put on my lab coat, with my name newly stitched onto the breast. She squeezes my shoulder and then pats it encouragingly.

Uncle Paolo’s earlier energy is muted now, but I can still see it tugging at his face. “Pia, it’s almost time.”

I nod slowly, then notice that the back corner of the room is curtained off.

“I’m going to let you prepare the Immortis,” says Uncle Paolo.

My heart, which has been sinking ever since I entered the room, suddenly climbs up into my throat like a panicked monkey searching for a way out. “What do I do?” I whisper.

He hands me the syringe, then tells me to sit down. Numbly I sit on the nearest stool, surrounded by a semicircle of the most elite—and stone-faced—biologists in the world. Lightning splits the sky outside and whips their faces with streaks of blue-white light.

“Pia,” Uncle Paolo begins, voice smooth and even. “You’ve been tested numerous times over the past few years in ways that perhaps confused and even angered you. Those tests were not random. They were for a particular purpose: to gauge whether or not you were even capable of doing the kind
of research necessary to attain our goal and fulfill the original mission of the Little Cambridge Research Facility.”

I say the words automatically. “To advance the human species through the grafting of positive eugenics and biomedical engineering in order to create an immortal
Homo sapiens
.”

“Precisely. All of that, all of the tests, come to a culmination today. Because of your excellent performance and flawless record, we know that you are entirely capable and suited to the task at hand.”

No. Please, no.…Surely there’s another way.…

Uncle Paolo draws a deep breath. “That is, the merging of the catalyst and elysia. A task that falls to you, as our greatest hope and most crowning achievement.”

The way he says
catalyst
sends a chill up the back of my neck.

“Come, Pia.”

I follow him to the curtain in the corner, with the other scientists behind me. Uncle Paolo takes the edge of the curtain in his hand. It’s checkered blue and white, like the blankets we use when picnicking in the courtyard on special occasions.

“The catalyst,” he says, and he pulls the curtain aside.

Stretched on my metal exam table, unconscious and dressed in a small white gown, is Ami.

A
re you all right?” Uncle Paolo asks.

The others murmur behind me: “Told you she wasn’t ready…” “Too much to ask of a mere girl…” “Damn it, Paolo, you should have listened to us.…”

He hisses for them to be silent. “Pia, you know what you have to do. This is the only way. The good of our species, Pia. That’s all that matters. The end justifies the means.”

He said those words before, about a kitten.

Nausea churns in my stomach, and my chest feels like it’s pressed in a vice. My mother’s hands clamp around my shoulders.

“Be strong for us, Pia. Be strong for me. For yourself,” she urges.

“Come on, Pia,” encourages Uncle Jakob. “You can do it. We have all done it. It’s necessary.”

“He’s right,” Uncle Paolo adds, and Uncle Sergei murmurs
assent. Uncle Haruto remains silent, and I can feel his dark eyes boring into my back.

My destiny of death. My legacy of blood.

A wire runs from a patch over Ami’s heart to a computer monitoring her heartbeat, which sounds in high, monotone beeps. They’ve inserted a clear plastic tube into the vein on the inside of her elbow, and a thin stream of blood trickles through it to a plastic bag hung on a rolling hook. Her wrist hangs over the side of the exam table. I can see three bright red drops of blood on the floor; they must have dripped when the tube was inserted in her arm.

Ami’s hand twitches. Do the others see it? Is she waking up? How did she get here? Did they kidnap her?

Then I see it, just as a powerful roll of thunder unfurls outside the window, making the glass rattle.

Lying on the Formica countertop by the sink, discarded and forgotten by the Immortis team, is a small stone bird on a woven necklace.

My
necklace.

My hand reaches automatically to my collarbone. Bare. It must have fallen off last night, probably while Kapukiri was telling the legend…and Ami found it.

And came to Little Cam to give it back.

My mind races, throwing all the pieces together: Eio told me about the Ai’oans who once left the village, who listened when the scientists promised to take them to cities and in airplanes. The Ai’oans who turned their backs on their people and never returned.
More lies, and these ones led to death.

So this morning, someone must have left Little Cam.
Who? Uncle Timothy? He would have circled the compound, started through the jungle…and would never have made it to Ai’oa. I shut my eyes and see the whole scene as it must have played out.
Ami walking quickly through the trees, her monkey trailing her, and in her hands is my necklace. Uncle Timothy or whomever it was stopping and realizing that their job has just become much, much easier, because here is an Ai’oan all alone in the jungle. A defenseless child, no less. Easy prey.

The horror of it overwhelms me in a cold, malignant wind that sweeps from my head to my feet. Unwitting Ami, on such a gentle, considerate mission, snapped up by monsters.

For me. All for me. All of it, from beginning to end, a list of names and deaths stretching back to 1902, countless lives destroyed—all for me.

I sway on my feet, and Uncle Haruto tenses, probably sensing I’m about to collapse. But I don’t. I stand, because the truth I face is so horrible, so devastating, that I won’t give myself the luxury of fainting.

I deserve to suffer the truth.

Aunt Harriet’s words, spoken only minutes ago, stampede through my brain.
They couldn’t be bringing in subjects all the time; someone on the outside would notice.

Unless the subjects weren’t brought from the outside at all…because the scientists had an entire village of unwitting prey right here in the Amazon: the Ai’oans.
My
Ai’oans. Deep inside my heart, a fire begins to burn.

How
dare
he reach his bloodstained hands into
my
Ai’oa.
How
dare
he harm my sweet, innocent Ami. And how
dare
he put the needle carrying her death in
my
hands, expecting me to execute his unspeakable crime.

Uncle Paolo is talking, describing the process. “The elysia will flow through the subject’s veins until it reaches her heart, which is where the catalysis takes place—and which is why we can’t draw a few cups of blood and simply mix it with elysia in a petri dish. The heart will absorb the lethal chemicals in elysia, and the blood that flows back out is pure Immortis. Then we draw it out and hurry with the transfusion. We need the blood hot and fresh. If the Immortis cools, it’s useless to us.”

He’s already rolling up his sleeve, baring his forearm, dabbing alcohol on the place where he’ll inject himself with Ami’s fresh blood, stolen from her veins as she dies.

They are all waiting. Watching. Wondering if I’m strong enough, ready enough.

I look at the needle and look at Ami. Her hand
is
twitching.

I want to say,
You’re all monsters, how dare you do this?
But instead what comes out is, “Do you even know her name?” It’s a whisper, barely audible.

Uncle Paolo cocks his head. “Name? Pia, you know better than that. This is Subject 334. Nothing more. No
one
more. Just…think of it as another kitten.”