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  I force a laugh. “No, it’s not that. It’s just . . .” I stare up at the R&D building and the lights on its top floors.

  “What?” he says. “Your mom doesn’t want you fraternizing with lowly security forces now that you’re one of the elite?”

  “No,” I snap, more sharply than I mean to. Although . . . does she? She didn’t want me going out tonight, but that could have been for a million other reasons. “I’m sorry.” I run a hand through my hair. “You look like someone I knew back home. Someone who died.”

  “Oh.”

  The lights and sounds of the plaza swirl around us, but we stand in silence.

  “Did you . . .” He shifts from one foot to the other. “Were you two, you know . . .”

  “No,” I say. “But we might have been. I liked him. I think he liked me.”

  He nods. “That’s why you were asking if I had a brother or a cousin.”

  “Yeah,” I agree.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I had a teammate die on clearing duty last year. I know how it is.”

  I wave it away. “Not your fault.”

  “Okay, then.” He draws himself up and shakes off the heaviness that’s fallen between us. “We have a Ferris wheel to ride.”

  We climb into one of the seats, and the operator lowers a bar over our laps. My stomach tightens in anticipation as our car glides backward to let more riders on, and then lifts up into the air.

  “What happened to the big one?” I nod up at the towering frame.

  Eli shrugs. “Some relic from back in the tourist days, before AgraStar took over. My dad says it’d be a fuel hog if they got it running again.”

  “And this one isn’t?” I say. We’ve reached the apex of the wheel, but its larger sister still towers four or five stories above us, the city’s lights shining through its beams.

  “This one’s sweat powered,” Alder says.

  “Sweat powered?”

  “Yeah.” He points down. “Didn’t you see the guys turning the cranks?”

  “What? No.” I grip the lap bar and lean forward. Far below, I catch sight of two bare-chested men turning a pair of cranks built into some kind of machine. A generator? I lean out farther to get a better view. The car pitches under me.

  “Whoa!” Eli throws out an arm to catch me.

  A half laugh, half shriek pipes out of me. “Shit!” I scramble back into the seat, giggling nervously.

  “Not enough excitement for you, Salcedo?” Eli teases. He leans forward and then back, making the whole car swing on its pivot bars. I laugh and join him.

  “Hey, you two! Cut it out!” the operator shouts. “We’re starting.”

  Eli stops rocking, and I go still beside him. The ride finishes loading and starts to move, slowly at first, circling down and then lifting us up and up above the streetlights, into the night. Our car reaches the top of the Ferris wheel, and our legs swing out over the empty space above the plaza. I yelp with delight. Adrenaline rushes through me as we swoop down toward the pavement, then circle back to begin the climb again. It’s delicious. Like a runner’s high, but without the effort.

  I’m out of breath and grinning ear to ear when the ride finally stops.

  Eli stares at me.

  “What?”

  He shakes his head. “Who’d have thought the director’s daughter was a danger junkie?”

  I elbow him. “Am not.”

  We step off the ride and wander out into the plaza.

  “You hungry?” Eli says. “I’m hungry.”

  I’m not, but it’s still early. I have plenty of time. And maybe I’m not in a big hurry to get away from him. Being with Eli is nice. Normal. The most like myself I’ve felt since I woke up in that hospital bed.

  “Sure,” I say.

  “Scorpion cheese bombs?” Eli says.

  I grin. “That sounds . . . terrifying?”

  “I think you mean amazing,” Eli says, taking my hand. “Come on.”

  He starts for the freestanding archway above what looks like a hole in the ground. As we get closer, I see it’s an escalator ferrying a line of people down below the street.

  I pull back. “What, down?”

  “What’s wrong with down?” Eli says.

  “Nothing.” I tilt my head back to look at the perfectly cylindrical skyscraper beside us. “I guess I’m just used to up now.”

  “There’s more to the city than what’s up there.” Eli steps backward onto the escalator, and it starts to carry him down, away from me. “Don’t make me eat those cheese bombs all by myself.”

  I laugh and step on after him. We come out at the bottom in a crowded concourse of glass-fronted shops. Handbags, shoes, and com cuffs in all colors rest on frosted-glass pedestals inside. Shop assistants stand by the entrances, pushing perfume, cooling gel packs, and color-changing fingernail tape at us as we pass.

  “New com skins?” A woman steps into my path, completely ignoring Eli. “We have fresh releases this month, Raspberry Fade and a Bubblebop theme!”

  “Um . . . no thanks.” I step around her and frown at Eli. “What was that?”

  “You’re civilian. And fancy.” Eli looks my outfit up and down. “You look like you have points to spare.”

  I want to shrink down in my skin. This isn’t me. I’m used to fading into a crowd, being no one.

  Bright lights shine overhead, and the chatter of voices and shouts of delight echo all around. Eli threads us through the press of people and over into an area full of tables and chairs. The smell of frying meat and corn oil swirls around me, and my stomach grumbles. Maybe I am hungry after all.

  Eli gestures to one of the cafeteria-style food shops. “I’ll be right back. Find us a seat?”

  “I can get it.” I hold up my cuff. Eli shouldn’t have to use his hard-earned security detail allowance when my mother is drowning in company points.

  Eli shakes his head. “No way.”

  I cock an eyebrow. “Because I’m a girl?”

  “Because I’m the one who asked you out.” He shrugs and grins. “Besides, it’s only cheese bombs. I promise you can pay when we’re dining on steak and buttered parsnips or whatever.”

  I wrinkle my nose. “What the hell is a parsnip?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” Eli lifts his eyebrows mysteriously.

  I grab a table for us and check my data cuff . . . 9:40. Still enough time.

  I stare across the cafeteria at a wall screen playing footage of the AgraStar board of directors and their spouses arriving at the security forces appreciation gala. One of the guests of honor climbs out of a shiny black Humvee, a clean-shaven young man with fair skin and a stiff limp. As he smiles and waves to the crowd, data points about AgraStar’s latest achievements in prosthetics and cloned blood transfusions pop up beside him. Kurich steps out after him. Medals wink on the front of his uniform, and he smiles that awful, sharp smile. I stiffen. My mother is there somewhere. Will the camera pan to her? When I left, she was sponging makeup onto her cheeks, a silk dress the purple-red of blackberry stains laid out on her bed.

  The footage cuts to a rotating ad—the same company slogans and pictures of happy people at work that used to hang on my old compound’s walls. AGRASTAR CONGLOMERATE—COME GROW WITH US. I look away.

  Kids’ drones whiz overhead, beeping and flashing. A pair of children giggle and shriek as one of them pilots the drone and the other aims a plastic laser gun at its underside. The drone lights up red when the laser hits it.

  “Got you!” the little girl yells. “You’re crashed!”

  Eli returns with a cardboard tub in one arm. “Nice shot,” he calls to her, then takes a seat across from me. “We’ve got some future drone pilots on our hands here.”

  My stomach churns. The lights flashing on the toys above us are too bright. I close my eyes, and I’m in the dirt yard behind the children’s barracks, playing guards and shirks with Seth and a bunch of the other kids. Seth goes down hard on one knee. I run at him and point
a broken rake handle at his head. “Pow, pow. You’re dead, shirk.”

  “Hey.” Eli jostles my hand gently. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” I shake my head. You can get used to anything if you grow up with it.

  “You ready to try these?” Eli tips the tub toward me. A collection of neon-orange corn puffs flecked with green tumble to the edge.

  I take one and raise an eyebrow at Eli, hesitating.

  “What, are you chicken now?” His grin turns devilish. “Bok bok bok.”

  I roll my eyes and crunch down on the cheese bomb. A chemical burn immediately fills my mouth and shoots up my sinuses. “Holy—” I pound the table with my fist and wipe tears from my eyes.

  Eli doubles over laughing and takes one for himself. “We used to bet each other how many of these we could eat in a row without going for water.” He pops it in his mouth and shudders.

  “Ugh.” I wipe my hands on my pants. “I’m glad you didn’t let me pay for those.”

  “They kind of grow on you.” Eli eats another. “You’ve got to lean in to the burn.”

  “You’re sick.” I laugh. “They’re all yours.”

  He dusts off his hands. “You still want to come have a few drinks with my unit?”

  I check the time again. It’s 10:06. I’m pushing it if I want to recon the MA building, then be back by midnight. But will it look suspicious if I don’t go? Eli seems like the type who might insist on walking me home. The MA building is right near the barracks. Maybe I should go and then beg off after half an hour. . . .

  “Okay,” I say.

  Eli leads the way back to the surface and over to the security forces barracks, a plain, five-story concrete building beside a fenced lot. Transport vehicles and tanker trucks sit darkened behind the chain link. He swipes us in at the front door, and we step into a lobby.

  At once, I feel as if I’m back in the substation at my old compound—the close, warm air, the yellow fluorescent lights, the low ceilings, and the smell of cleaning products competing with so many bodies packed into one place. Even the same motivational posters hang on the cinder-block walls, though someone has drawn a mustache on the young woman balancing a basket of corn against her hip. A screen displaying a rotating list of the next day’s duty rosters fills most of one wall.

  Two identical corridors branch off from the lobby. We take the left one, passing a series of scuffed gray doors along both sides. Some of them are open, revealing cramped rooms with steel bunks. Shouts and music ring up and down the halls, and a group of young men with identical black T-shirts and cropped hair jog by us, carrying rolls of toilet paper. I stare after them.

  “What?” Eli says.

  “It’s so loud here.” The barracks at my substation were just one long room, women of all ages and duty rotations bunked together. No one ever made much noise. We were all too tired.

  “Ground floor’s always crazy.” Eli hangs a right into a stairwell marked BASEMENT. “Full of new blood.”

  I follow him. “When did you sign on?”

  “Four years ago,” he says. “Fourteen.”

  “You studied some, then?” I trail him down the flight of stairs.

  “A little. My dad wanted me to go into the mechanics’ pool, like him, but, you know . . .” He shrugs and jumps the last few steps down to the floor. “No glory there.”

  Glory. My body goes cold, and suddenly, I feel tired. Is there glory in any of this?

  “I’m up for unit captain this quarter,” Eli says. “My own team.”

  I stop on the last step. I’m looking at him, but it’s like looking at a reflection in a poorly made mirror, as if his every movement has a shadow and a blur.

  He pauses with his hand on the door handle. “You okay?”

  “Fine.” I shake away Ellison’s ghost. “I just . . . I think I’m not all the way back in shape yet. I keep getting tired easy.”

  “I hate that.” Eli makes a show of slumping his shoulders. “I got the flu last winter, and it was such bullshit. I couldn’t do anything for two weeks.”

  “At least I’m not contagious,” I say.

  He laughs. “Come on. They’re waiting for us.”

  We push through the door and into a windowless basement room. A roar of laughter bursts out as it swings open. A dozen or so people our age sit at a trio of mismatched tables.

  “I told you!” A girl with short black hair points at one of the boys. “I told you he would!”

  The room smells sour, like dried sweat and old food. Like the Eye, I think. This is exactly how it was after shift change, when the pile of dirty uniforms hadn’t been collected and Crake hadn’t thrown away the protein bars and cheese corn bags he’d been snacking on all night. I can see him, his head backlit by the screens, blood on his teeth—

  The door slams behind us.

  One of the boys turns at the sound. “Byrd! Hey, you made it.” His eyes skip to me. “Who’s this?”

  “Tempest,” Eli says. “Salcedo.”

  “No way!” he says. “She looks like a civilian.”

  The girl elbows him. “She is a civilian now, dumbass.” She slides her chair back and walks to me, hand outstretched. “Hey, I’m Garin.”

  “Hey,” I say faintly. Half of me is still back in the Eye. I look past her to all the faces turned in our direction. One of the other boys glares at me from the far end of the table. I recognize him—he’s the one who accused me of being a shirk on the transport ride into the city.

  “So, you liking Atlanta?” Garin says. “Did Eli trick you into eating those scorpion things yet?”

  I try to focus on the girl. Behind her, another boy leans against the wall. For a brief moment, his face shifts, and he looks exactly like Marco Etowah. Marco, his body still warm, his eyes glassy, hanging against his restraint in the back of the flipped jeep.

  “Um . . . yeah . . .” I look over at Eli. A raw red hole has opened in the center of his forehead. He smiles questioningly, but then tendrils of blighted kudzu begin to circle his legs, creeping up his body, rotting the skin everywhere they touch. The room tilts like the Ferris wheel car.

  “I . . . I’m sorry.” I step back. The vine is climbing the corners of the room, withering as fast as it grows. My head is filling up with ghosts. “I can’t . . .”

  “Salcedo?” Eli’s voice sounds far away. “What’s wrong? Are you—”

  I don’t stay to hear the end. I bolt out the door, up the stairs, and down the hall, and burst out into the humid city night.

  .22.

  RATTLESNAKE FERN

  BOTRYCHIUM VIRGINIANUM

  “Salcedo!” Eli’s voice rings out behind me.

  I keep walking. I don’t know where I’m going. I can’t tell the buildings apart, even lit up like they are. I can’t get Marco’s eyes out of my mind, the way his pupils were dilated, big black pools of nothing. I can’t stop seeing the kudzu engulfing Eli’s body, his skin sloughing away as the rot touches him. He’s dead. Him, Crake, Danica, Will, Ellison—

  “Salcedo.” Eli grabs my arm. “Tempest—”

  I whirl on him. “You can’t be here. You’re dead. They’re all dead!” How could I forget, even for a little while? How could I let myself try on pretty clothes, ride a Ferris wheel, flirt with a ghost?

  “Tempest, what are you talking about?” He stares at me, eyes wide. “It’s Eli. Remember?”

  I laugh. “Are you? Are you even here? Are you real?” I hit him in the chest.

  He winces. “Tempest, stop.”

  “Why?” I hit him again, harder. “You’re not real. You’re dead.”

  He tries to catch my hand, but I’m too fast.

  “You’re dead!” I shout, pummeling his chest. My eyes blur, and I don’t care if I’m on a city street, or if anyone is watching. “You’re dead! You’re dead! You’re dead!”

  “Hey.” Eli grabs my wrist, making me look at him. His scar is back. The vines are gone. “Hey, it’s okay.”

  I try to speak, but all that comes
out is a sob. He isn’t Ellison. My mind keeps tricking me, making me think he’s here in front of me, but he’s not.

  “Come on,” Eli says.

  He guides me down the street, one arm around my shoulders. I walk numbly beside him until we come to a pair of sliding doors awash in light. A woman in medical scrubs sits at the circular desk in the middle of the reception room, surrounded by several dozen people waiting in chairs.

  “Where are we?” I ask.

  “You don’t need to be ashamed,” he murmurs. “This kind of thing happened to my friend Jens when he had guard duty for a transport run to OBX compound.”

  The triage nurse looks up at us. “Who’s hurt?”

  Eli points to me.

  “Bleeding?” she says. “Pain? Shortness of breath?”

  I shake my head.

  “Scan your wrist and take a seat.” She points to a scanner on the counter, and then to the waiting room.

  I do as she says and take a seat beside Eli. “What happened to him?” I say quietly, the fight gone out of me. “Jens.”

  “They gave him some pills and he was on light duty for a few weeks,” Eli says. “That’s all.”

  I stare at my feet. “No, I mean, what happened to him on the road?”

  “One of the jacker gangs tried to steal their cargo. They drove them off, but the driver got shot.”

  Pills. Light duty. The waiting room starts to solidify around me. The flecks of mica in the tiles, the scratchy green fabric covering the seats, a wall screen cooing at low volume about AgraStar’s latest advancements in gene therapy and what guests wore to the appreciation gala. My heart slows to something approaching normal.

  “I’m sorry.” I look up from the floor. “I don’t know what happened to me. I shouldn’t have hit you.”

  “It’s okay.” Eli stretches his arm across the back of the chairs. “You didn’t hurt me any.”

  I smile. “Liar.”

  Eli studies me. “I really look like him, huh?”

  I nod. “Exactly like him.”

  He shifts in his chair and frowns. “But it was something else that set you off.”

  I pause. “Yes.”