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  “Are you okay?” Dr. Salcedo touches my back. My mother touches my back.

  “I, um . . .” I need to pull myself together, but I feel as if I’m trying to stack bricks in an earthquake. My whole body trembles. I want to laugh. What were we talking about? Does it even matter anymore?

  Get it together, Tempest. I draw myself up, try to look confident, even if I’m still in a hospital robe. “I want to help. I’m a trained perimeter guard. I have the security background.”

  “I know you do,” she says gently. “But you’ve been through so much. You’ll need time to recover and reacclimatize, get used to your old life again.”

  “I can handle it,” I say. “You need everyone you can to help stop the blight, right?”

  She strokes my arm. “You’ve done your part, bringing us those seeds. Everyone on my staff is working on the problem. Now we simply have to wait.” She stands. “Why don’t we find some real clothes for you? I thought you might like to see our family quarters.”

  I hesitate. “What about Alder?”

  “Who?”

  That moment of warm euphoria fades. “Alder. The boy I came in with.”

  “Oh, yes.” My mother waves her hand as if she’s swatting away a fly. “He’s critical, but stable. He’ll recover, but he’s not ready for visitors yet. That Red Hand cell you informed us about has been dealt with.”

  The way she says “dealt with” makes me think of something more final than arrest. Fire on the horizon. The sky darkened by smoke. Good, I think, until I remember the children on the Red Hand base. Have they been “dealt with,” too? And what about the men out chasing us? Are they still out there? I look at the woman next to me, and a cold feeling creeps up my spine. She isn’t just my mother. She’s a senior AgraStar official. She’s powerful. Dangerous. I wouldn’t want to be her enemy.

  “I have a surprise for you.” My mother smiles and taps her com cuff. “Have them send it in now.”

  Another orderly backs through the door, pulling a rolling rack stuffed with an entire wardrobe’s worth of clothes.

  “Choose anything you like.” My mother grins. She’s clearly been looking forward to this.

  I sift through the rack. Every item is some shade of pastel—lilac, butter, lime, rose. I choose a simple, cream-colored shirt and moss-green pants. It’s the closest I can find to my old uniform.

  “We can do better than that.” Dr. Salcedo laughs. “You’re in the city now. You don’t have to dress like a drone anymore.”

  A drone? I bristle, but she doesn’t seem to notice. She picks out a baby-blue skirt with a band of navy around the hem and a pair of low, sparkly heels that change color as the light hits them from different angles.

  “Come on. Give these a try.”

  Keep her happy, I remind myself. Despite all the emotions flooding me, my mother and I are strangers to each other. It doesn’t change the fact that she needs to like me. She needs to think I’m pleasant and compliant. The model employee, the perfect daughter. I can still feel the ghost of the zip ties around my wrists.

  I put on the new clothes. They fit well. The skirt, lined with cool satin, floats around my knees, and even the plain V-neck shirt has a subtle sheen worked into its thread, like white morning light refracting through mist. Another fragment of memory—spinning around and around under the sunshine so my dress will catch the air and billow out around me. My favorite dress, with a print of blue chickens and yellow cornstalks. Was that me? A carefree little girl in a dress? “Fancy-ass princess shit,” Seth would say. But Seth’s dead. There’s no one to judge me but myself.

  “Better?” I ask my mother.

  “Better.” She beams.

  The wall I’ve begun to rebuild cracks again. Maybe she feels as uncertain and awkward around me as I do around her. And maybe it’s weakness, but I want to be liked—no, loved. To be comforted. To know, after all these years on the margins, that I fully belong. Whoever that little girl was, whoever that woman was before her daughter was taken from her, I want us to be that again.

  “One more thing.” My mother picks up the gold box and opens it. Inside rests a com cuff, exactly like hers, on a bed of blue velvet. She clips it around my wrist. It activates with a soft glow. The hinges seal themselves.

  WELCOME, ADELA SALCEDO. The message scrolls across the device’s surface. PLEASE ENTER USER PREFERENCES.

  I frown at the cuff. “Was that . . . is that my real name?”

  My mother winces. “Your father told you your name was Tempest?”

  I nod.

  “We had a friend with that name who died on a transport mission.” She shakes her head. “We can still call you that, if you prefer.”

  I can tell by the tightness in her jaw that she hopes I’ll say no. But this, I can’t fake or grow accustomed to, like skirts or glittery shoes. A new last name is weird enough, but Tempest is mine. I can’t give it up, even if the man who gave it to me and the woman it belonged to are both dead.

  “I’m used to Tempest,” I say. And then, because she looks so sad, “I’m sorry.”

  My mother shakes her head. “It’s not your fault. Your father’s the only one to blame. The rest of us have to deal with the consequences as best we can.”

  I look down at my com cuff again. It’s already monitoring my heart rate and temperature, pinpointing my location and giving me the time and weather forecasts.

  “Come on,” my mother says. “I, for one, am sick of hospital rooms. Let me show you your new home.”

  We take a skywalk from the hospital to another building, and then a private elevator up to my mother’s apartment. The hall outside is a windowless beige tunnel, but then she keys us through a set of double doors, and we’re in a different world. An enormous room backed by a wall of windows looking out on the city stretches before us. There’s a sunken sitting area with a long white sofa and two chairs directly in front of me, and off to the left, blond wood floors lead to a dining table and a kitchen. A floor-to-ceiling birdcage takes up the right-hand corner of the open space. Inside sits a snow-white cockatoo. It ruffles its feathers and eyes me silently.

  “What do you think?” My mother sounds nervous, if such a thing is possible.

  It’s like something out of an AgraStar PSA, where they show a woman in an enormous, too-perfect kitchen, talking to the camera about the importance of updating your coms software or how the newest crops are so nutritious and high yield, you no longer have to worry about rationing. I always thought those were sets. I never thought anyone really lived in a place like that.

  But I don’t say so. “It’s like walking into a cloud,” I say instead.

  I step down into the sitting area and approach the smartwall facing the sofa. A series of photographs cycle in and out of view. They have an old look to them, the resolution not quite as crisp as modern shots. In one, a family of five stands posed in matching white shirts—a man and woman, and three young girls, all with perfectly styled hair, straight white teeth, and clear brown skin. In another, a young woman in a green-and-gold graduation robe holds out a contract certificate for genetic research, grinning shyly. My mother, I realize. In a third, an old woman sits with a little girl in her lap, a smile of delight on her face as the child leans forward to blow out five candles on a cake.

  “Who are these people?” I ask. “Are they your family?”

  “They’re our family.” My mother joins me, facing the wall. “Your grandmother and grandfather, your aunts Evelyn and Valeria, and that’s your great-grandmother Zamira holding me.”

  I squint at the last picture. There’s writing on the cake, but words I don’t recognize. ¡FELIZ CUMPLEAÑOS! “What’s that say?”

  “Oh, it’s only ‘happy birthday.’ Your great-grandmother was always trying to push us to use Spanish around the house.” My mother smiles and shakes her head. “She was already a young woman when AgraStar stepped in to bring order to things. She was so stubborn. She could never get used to the new ways.”

  I bite m
y lip and stare at the woman in the photo. Was that the language my father spoke? Was that what he sang to me in as we walked through the forest?

  I lean closer to the photo. The woman—my great-grandmother—wears a mischievous smile and a little silver necklace around her neck. A cross. A bolt of shock runs through me. That’s the same symbol Eden and some of the other scavengers wore. Why is my great-grandmother wearing it? Does that mean she believed what they do?

  “Where is she now?” I ask. “Does she live here?”

  My mother shakes her head. “She died when you were a year old. I doubt you remember her.”

  “Oh.” Grief stirs in me. Or maybe it’s not grief but some cousin to it. Longing. I know it doesn’t make sense to feel like I’ve lost something, when I never had it to begin with. It’s just for a few seconds; I wasn’t being careful and started imagining what it would be like. Not only having a mother, but a whole family history. And someone who might understand how mixed-up all of this is making me feel. Someone who knew who we were before AgraStar. It’s the same feeling I get when I try to remember the words to my father’s songs—as if I’m touching a hole in myself where they used to be. I can hear the melody, but it’s not the same.

  I frown. “Why didn’t you want to speak Spanish with her?”

  “AgraStar management speaks English. It’s easier if we all use the same language. We wouldn’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable, wouldn’t want people not being able to understand each other, would we?”

  Part of me believes what she says—the part that wanted to hit all my marks and prove myself to AgraStar. But another part of me—the part of me that hid in the woods with Alder and saw the people in his camp mourning Eden the way no one will ever mourn Ellison or any of the other people who died on SCP-52—that part throbs wrong, wrong, wrong.

  A memory rises up at me. I’m small, in the play yard at the compound, the sun hot on my head. I’m playing tag with the other kids, and one of them grabs me by the ponytail. She won’t let go. “¡Suéltame! ¡Suélltame!” I scream, until our minder comes running and separates us. The other girl gets her hands slapped, but the minder marches me into the washroom and sticks a bar of soap in my mouth. “You don’t talk like that, you hear? English only. You talk like a shirk, you get treated like a shirk.” I taste the soap mixing with my tears, and I nod.

  My mother touches my shoulder. “Tempest? Are you all right?”

  My voice won’t come out. My body feels feverish, as if it’s rejecting the memory, rejecting what my mother said. Why can’t people speak more than one language? Why should we be the ones who have to change to make everyone comfortable? Who decided all this? I feel the words on the tip of my tongue, dangerously close to coming out.

  Get control of yourself, I order. You don’t want to upset her. You don’t want her thinking you aren’t company-compliant anymore.

  “You call me m’ija.” The word sticks in my throat. “Isn’t that . . . that’s Spanish, right?”

  “It’s only a little family nickname.” My mother looks uncomfortable. “Just between us, at home, it won’t bother anyone. My mother and grandmother used to call me that. Do you mind?”

  A small part of me settles, pulls back from the brink. Maybe she isn’t all perfect AgraStar etiquette and regulations. Maybe there’s some part of my great-grandmother in her still.

  “No,” I say. “I like it.”

  She smiles. “Good. Would you like to see your room?”

  I start. “My room?” I know this is a thing people who have earned out their contract do, keep a separate, private space for themselves, but I’m several years away from even signing my own contract.

  “We can’t have the head of R and D’s daughter sleeping in the barracks,” my mother says. “Can you imagine?”

  “Oh.” Of course. I’m not Tempest Torres, still earning out her contract. I’m Adela Salcedo, born with parents who could buy out the contract.

  “Did I . . . did we live here before?” I ask. Nothing about this place is remotely familiar.

  “No. I couldn’t stay in our old apartment after your father . . . well . . .” My mother closes her eyes and smooths her skirt. “I wasn’t the head of R and D then. Promotion has its perks.”

  I wince. “Sorry.”

  “That’s all past now,” she says brightly. “Let’s finish our tour.”

  I follow her down a hallway. The only illumination comes from a long aquarium built into one wall. Brilliant purple jellyfish, each with a ridge of frills along its top, drift in the water, their tendrils glowing lavender and white in the underwater lights.

  “Portuguese man-of-war,” my mother says. “Beautiful, but toxic.”

  We arrive at a bedroom, smaller than the vast living room, but still much larger than any sleeping quarters I’ve seen. Almost the size of the women’s barracks at my compound.

  “Here it is. I know it’s a bit bare, but I didn’t know what kind of things you liked, and well . . . I thought you might like to decorate it yourself.”

  My feet sink into the carpet. The room is another PSA set, in green-and-rose tones. Gauzy pink fabric covers the windows and the top of the four-poster bed. A mint-green cover lies over the high mattress and fluffy pillows, and a shaded lamp casts a soft coral glow throughout the space. There’s a built-in bookshelf next to a set of closet doors on the left wall, but the only things on it are several decorative ceramic balls and a white picture frame playing the same set of photos as the smartwall in the living room. It looks like no one has ever walked in this room, much less slept in it.

  “Do you like it?” My mother asks. “It used to be the guest room.”

  I turn in a slow circle, taking it all in. “It’s just me in this room? I’m not supposed to share with anybody?”

  This much space for one person seems a waste, but between the soft light and the fact that whatever painkillers they had me on are wearing off, part of me wants to lose myself in that oversized bed.

  “It’s just you.” My mother takes a hesitant step toward me. “I know maybe you aren’t ready—it’s a lot to take in—but . . . may I hug you?”

  I freeze. She looks at me expectantly. The last time anyone hugged me was . . . I think back over the back slaps from my trainers and casual half hugs from my teammates when we did well on an exercise. It was Rosalie, and I was nine. She would check in on me sometimes, bring me a little extra something, like an apple or a small bag of caramel corn. When I heard her in the hall outside the children’s quarters, I would race to her and throw my arms and legs around her like a monkey. Until that day when I was nine.

  That day, she caught me under the arms and stopped me. “You’re too big for that now.” She knelt down so that she was eye level with me. “I can’t be showing favoritism. You understand that word?”

  I nodded, even though I didn’t, not entirely. I knew it had something to do with favorites, and Rosalie didn’t want anyone to think I was hers.

  Later I understood, and I knew Rosalie was right. I wouldn’t have wanted anyone giving me something I hadn’t earned, especially if it was because they felt sorry for me. I wanted to prove I wasn’t some shirk like my father.

  Except that wasn’t who he was. He was something else entirely, something like Deacon Ward. A defector. A kidnapper.

  “Ade—I mean, Tempest?”

  “I . . .” I waver, caught in a swirl of memories. Rosalie’s hands gripping my arms. The clover ring. The white-tiled bath. The twirling dress.

  A chime sounds throughout the apartment. “Mami!” a girl’s voice calls from the living room. “I’m home.”

  My mother stiffens and purses her lips. “I thought we’d have a little more time to talk, but . . .”

  Footsteps tromp closer. “Mami, I think we’re out of—”

  The girl stops cold in the doorway, staring at me. I stare back.

  My mother clears her throat. “Tempest, this is Isabel, your sister.”

  .19.

  CHOKEB
ERRY

  ARONIA MELANOCARPA

  The girl facing us looks exactly like me, minus a handful of years. Same light brown skin, broad jaw, hair pulled back in a glossy dark ponytail. She wears a khaki skirt, white sneakers, and a green shirt with the AgraStar logo embroidered over her heart.

  “Isabel, this is your sister Adela . . . Tempest.” My mother corrects herself. “You remember we talked about her?”

  “Yeah.” Isabel goggles at me. “I thought you were supposed to be dead.”

  “Isabel!”

  “What?” She arches an eyebrow at her—our—mother. “That’s what you said.”

  My mother sighs.

  “It’s okay. This is pretty weird for me, too.” I smile awkwardly at them, even though my heart is stinging. A sister. What the hell? I know that shouldn’t bother me. People get on with their lives. It’s normal.

  “Isabel, why don’t you go fix yourself a snack?” my mother says. “Tempest and I will be along in a minute.”

  As soon as Isabel is out of sight, she sighs again. “Eleven years old and still putting her foot in her mouth.”

  “She looks like me.” I stare at the floor. “Like my father.”

  My mother nods. “He was her father, too.”

  “What?” My head snaps up. “How?”

  “Your father and I had our embryos frozen.” She looks at me, and then quickly looks away. “You’d been gone so long . . . I had given you up for dead, m’ija. And your father . . . I didn’t want to be alone anymore.”

  My mind tumbles back to the forest, to Alder dying in the wet pine needles. Of course. Of course she didn’t.

  I take a tentative step forward and put one arm around her.

  She lets out a little sob, drawing me closer and wrapping me up in both arms. “I missed you so much, m’ija.”

  I don’t expect it, but suddenly my eyes sting and blur, and my throat feels like someone is holding it in a fist. I squeeze her tighter. We stand together in the petal-soft light, crying quietly and hugging each other until I forget everything else.