Blight Page 26

  My mother steps up beside me. “Sometimes I forget how pretty it is.” She wraps an arm around me and squeezes me against her side. “You don’t know how lucky I am to have you back. There’s so much I want to show you, Tempest.”

  I want to step out from under her arm. She’s too close, too much. But guilt keeps me still. This woman has been missing her daughter for so long, and now what she has is me. Rough-edged, shell-shocked, traitorous. If I go through with Alder’s plan, I’m going to break her heart all over again, exactly like my father did. Can I live with that?

  I look at her. Betray my mother and AgraStar. Betray Alder and everyone living free. Suddenly I see the terrible choice my father had to make. There’s no escaping it. No matter what I choose, someone is going to suffer.

  I try to sleep, but I can’t. Images of Ellison and Eli circle through my head. Ellison smiling at me as he steers the jeep down a dirt road. Mischief in Eli’s grin as he rocks the Ferris wheel car. Ellison crumpling to the dirt. His ghost in Eli’s eyes. The blight crawling over both of them. I get up and make my way into the living room. The cockatoo stirs and squawks lowly when I grab the tablet my mother left for me on the coffee table, then settles back down with its head under its wing.

  I perch on the couch and tap the screen to life. A blue glow surrounds me, an eerie bubble in the darkness. I wasn’t ready to look at my files before, but now I need answers. I need context. Why did my father do what he did? What made him decide?

  I skim through my health and performance records from the SCP compound. Notations on height and weight, merits for sharpshooting, records of my volunteering for clearing and eradication missions and completing basic wilderness training. The last entry on the page catches my eye:

  Request for trial period of inclusion on special operations team by Long, Ellison.

  I trace his name. Eli is never going to be Ellison, no matter how their smiles match, no matter how their voices lilt and drop, no matter how easy Eli makes me feel. I can’t simply substitute one for the other and go on like everything is normal. Normal.

  I press my hands over my eyes and lean back against the couch. Maybe I should tell my mother about my waking nightmares, why I can’t see Eli tomorrow, or any other night. I should never have gone out with him last night. I should have found another excuse to get into the MA building.

  I shake my head. Focus. I know everything I’ve read already, my life at SCP, or at least the broad strokes of it. I open an older file. A birth certificate for Adela Beatriz Salcedo and a DNA chart. I run my finger down to the parents section of the certificate.

  Mother: Orelia Isbet Salcedo Pallares

  Age: 28

  Location of Birth: Port Miami Compound, South FL Coastal Territory

  Current Residence: administrative apartments, green zone, Atlanta headquarters

  Father: Daniel Omar Duarte Lacayo

  Age: 31

  Location of Birth: Matagalpa, Nicaragua*

  Current Residence: administrative apartments, green zone, Atlanta headquarters

  *Contract transfer 08-02-44

  My father wasn’t born here? I scratch back through my patchy knowledge of life outside AgraStar’s borders. Nicaragua isn’t a company-state, it’s one of the old-fashioned countries. Most of those are across the ocean, but I think Nicaragua is south of us, somewhere. Is that why he was willing to break his contract and flee? Did he want to go home? But if that was the case, how did we end up north of Atlanta, not south, closer to his country?

  I open another file, and a series of pictures rotates in and out of view. My mother, younger and with dark hair like mine, smiling at the camera as she holds up my hands to help me walk in little sock feet. My mother and a man with a neat beard and slightly scruffy black hair, holding me between them. My father? It must be. He has my nose, or I have his. I stare at his face, hoping for some spark of recognition, some new memory, but nothing comes. Next, a picture of me playing in a bathtub, surrounded by mountains of bubbles, my hair wet, and my mouth open in a snaggle-toothed grin. Like my memory. Why did my mind hold on to such a small, stupid detail and forget anything that might answer some of my million questions?

  I tap on a file labeled SECURITY FOOTAGE RECONSTRUCTION. A video begins to play, soundless, with all but a hint of color washed out. A man with a knapsack and a little girl asleep in his arms steps onto an elevator. He looks around, then reaches up, and the picture goes black. It skips to another view—a parking deck, the same man hurrying across the frame, disappearing, then getting picked up by another camera out on the street. Skip again, and a shadowed figure ducks through a hole in a line of fence, then helps a smaller shadow through. I back up the footage. That’s my father, and me. That’s him abducting me, or escaping with me, depending on how you look at it.

  The lights snap on.

  “What are you doing?”

  I nearly drop the tablet. “Isabel.” I turn. “Nothing. I was just looking at these files your—our mother gave me.”

  She peers at me. “Mami says you don’t sleep enough. Is that why you’re having a breakdown?”

  A short bark of laughter escapes me. “I’m not having a breakdown.”

  “Then why were you at the clinic?”

  I set the tablet down. “You heard about that, huh?”

  She wanders closer and leans against the back of the couch. “I hear a lot of stuff. Mami doesn’t trust me enough to tell me. She thinks she can hide things from me, but I find out anyway.”

  “Don’t you have school in the morning?” I ask.

  “So?” She cocks her head.

  I shrug. Fair enough. “Do you want to look at this stuff with me?”

  She frowns and examines me through narrowed eyes. “Yeah. Okay,” she says, dropping down next to me and leaning over to look at the screen. “What’s that?”

  The blurred image of my father helping me through the fence is frozen midframe. “Security footage,” I say. “That’s my . . . our dad. And that’s me.”

  Isabel’s eyes widen. “That’s him kidnapping you?”

  “I think so.” I touch play, and we watch the entire thing again—the elevator ride, the grainy street views, and then the fence.

  “Creepy,” Isabel says.

  I nod. I understand my father wanting to leave AgraStar, but why’d he take me with him? He must have known what it would do to my mother, yet something made him do it anyway. All of a sudden, I’m angry. I could have grown up like Isabel—clean and well-fed, studying whatever I wanted.

  But then I never would have met Ellison or Alder. I never would have questioned what AgraStar does.

  “Do you remember him?” Isabel interrupts my thoughts. “Our dad?”

  I shake my head. “Not very much. I was really young when he died.”

  “Oh,” Isabel says. “I always thought you were lucky, getting to know him.”

  I stare at her. Lucky? Is that really what she thinks?

  “I remember his hands,” I say slowly. “He always had dirt under his fingernails. One time we found this whole bush of honeysuckle, and he showed me how to eat the flowers.” I close my eyes and see him pinching off the back end of a bud, drawing the pistil out with a single gleaming drop of nectar on its end.

  Isabel makes a gagging noise. “Gross.”

  I open my eyes. “It wasn’t. Haven’t you ever tried it?”

  Isabel shakes her head.

  “Sometime I’ll show you.” I say. “If we’re ever out of the city.”

  “Mami would never let me out of the city.” Isabel rolls her eyes. “Too dangerous.”

  “Don’t you want to see other parts of the territory?” My mouth is dry. Two weeks ago, I never even would have thought of this question, much less asked it aloud. “See how other people get by?”

  Isabel shrugs and cuts her eyes back to the tablet. “What else have you got on there?”

  “Pictures.” I open the gallery of photos. “Me when I was little.”

  Isabel w
atches them cycle through. “Wait.” She points at the picture of me with the bubbles. “That’s not you, it’s me!”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah.” Isabel grabs the tablet. “Mami’s always getting them mixed up. Look.”

  She spins the screen around. A whole new set of files have appeared. More pictures, but also CONTACTS, ALERTS, CALENDAR, INTRANET, SPREADSHEETS, CONTRACTS.

  “Isabel,” I say cautiously, taking the tablet from her. “Did you just hack into your mother’s profile?”

  “Yeah.” Isabel smiles. “I told you, she thinks I don’t know about stuff, but I do.”

  I stare at the screen. This is it. Her access codes will be somewhere in these files, or maybe even the genetic data itself.

  Isabel grabs the tablet. “You won’t tell her, will you?”

  “No,” I say. “Of course not. But . . . do you think you could show me how to do it?”

  “Sure,” she says. “It’s easy.”

  She walks me through signing out of my own profile, disabling filters, bypassing the biometric scans with security questions, and signing in as our mother.

  “I can almost do her voice for the biometric lock,” Isabel says. “I bet you could do it. Try saying her name.” She holds up the tablet.

  I hesitate and clear my throat. “Orelia Salcedo.”

  The screen flashes red. Denied.

  “Try again,” Isabel says. “But with your nose in the air. You know.”

  I laugh, and do my best impression of our mother, confident and imperious. “Orelia Salcedo.”

  A pause, and then the screen flashes green.

  “Yes!” Isabel laughs. “That’s the best. It only lets you do the biometrics bypass once a day, but if you can do the voice, you can get in anytime.”

  “See?” I say. “I have hidden talents.”

  “Copycat talents,” Isabel says, but without any bite. She stretches her arms over her head and yawns. “I’m gonna go back to bed.”

  I stop, my eyes frozen on a spot on her forearm. Isabel has a small mark an inch below her elbow, in exactly the same spot where I have a matching mole. My scalp prickles.

  “Isabel . . .”

  “What?”

  She faces me. Another mole to the left of her chin, along the jawline. The exact same spot as mine.

  “Nothing.” I look down at the tablet, thoughts and heart racing in tandem.

  “Oookay. Good night, weirdo.”

  “Good night,” I say absently.

  I’m already flipping through the pictures Isabel pulled up, comparing the images of the two of us as babies and toddlers. Same face, same hair. Same moles, same slightly bent pinkie toe on our left feet. The only way to tell us apart is the original time stamp on the files. Ellison and Eli . . . me and Isabel . . . it all starts swirling together in my head. It can’t be a coincidence. Something Dr. Mitra said bubbles up in the back of my mind. “Genetic duplication research.” Does that mean what I think it means?

  I enter a search for the words in my mother’s files. Several dozen files pop up. I choose the most recent one and click it open.

  Report on Health and Social Integration of Genetic Optimization and Duplication Pilot Project Subjects

  Author: Mitra, Yves, PhD

  Abstract: Genetic Optimization and Duplication Pilot Project (GODPP) subjects continue to perform admirably across all monitored health and social criteria, exceeding their random-born donors and peers in disease resistance and other physical measures. In subjects without neurological optimization, social integration proceeds largely concurrent with donors and peers. Neurologically optimized subjects show increased success in social integration, but without the magnitude of extraordinary success observed in the physical sphere, perhaps due to uncontrolled variables in the home environment. Continued neurological optimization and greater environmental regulation are suggested as avenues for future research.

  The words are a thicket, as impenetrable as the briars that forced Alder and me onto the road so many days ago. But there are a few I understand. Random-born donors. Disease resistance. Optimization. They’re experimenting on people. Copying and improving on their genetic codes. Making them better able to thrive in the world, exactly like the corn-seed variants. I skim through the rest of the document, unsure what I’m looking for. A name jumps out at me.

  Subject: Byrd, Eli Amari

  Age: 18

  Location: yellow zone, Atlanta headquarters

  Donor: unidentified infant, SCP-52

  I start to shake. I page faster, eyes out for a specific name this time. And then I find it.

  Subject: Salcedo, Isabel Adela

  Age: 11

  Location: green zone, Atlanta headquarters

  Donor: Salcedo, Adela Beatriz

  There are other names, too. Two dozen or so, spread throughout AgraStar’s territory, all of them under twenty years old. It’s not a coincidence. Eli isn’t some long-lost relative of Ellison’s. And Isabel isn’t just my sister.

  They’re clones.

  .24.

  OCONEE BELLS

  SHORTIA GALACIFOLIA

  I’m still awake when the first blue light of dawn touches the windows and my mother clicks into the living room, already dressed for the day.

  “Were you going to tell me?” I say from the shadows of the couch.

  She gasps. “Tempest! You startled me.” She takes a few hesitant steps closer. “Tell you what?”

  I glare at her. “About me and Isabel.”

  A brief look of horror crosses her face before she masks it with her usual stony professionalism. “I don’t know what you—”

  “Don’t lie to me!” It comes out louder than I meant, and I lower my voice. I don’t want Isabel waking up. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice? We’re exactly the same, just like Eli and my friend Ellison—perfect copies.”

  “You and Isabel are sisters.” My mother sinks gracefully onto the far end of the couch. “And your friend, I’m sure that’s only a coincidence.”

  I stare at her, boiling.

  “You’ve had a difficult night, Tempest,” she says. “You’re seeing things that aren’t there.”

  Not there. I clench my fists to keep from shaking. They took a baby and used him for an experiment. Ellison never had a say in what they did. He was alone in the world, so AgraStar decided they could do whatever they wanted, as if they owned him. The same with the rest of us—Eli, me, Isabel, and all the other people in that file. Do they even think of us as human? Or are we just pawns—assets, the way I used to think of myself?

  I bite my tongue. If I say any of that, she’ll know I read Dr. Mitra’s report. I need to get back into her files, and if she knows what I’ve seen, she’ll lock me out for good. Or worse, she might stop protecting me from Kurich.

  “Why don’t we discuss this with the counselor tomorrow?” she suggests. “He can help you work through whatever it is that’s making you think this way.”

  “You want me to feel at home here, right?” I say, twisting the knife. I need to know the truth. “You want me to get better, to be normal?”

  “Of course I do.” She reaches out to touch my shoulder, but I pull away.

  “Then why are you trying to make me think I’m crazy?”

  “I’m not,” she says. “I only want to protect you. I wasn’t able to when you were younger, but now—”

  “I’m a soldier.” I sit up straight. “You don’t need to protect me. I can take it.”

  “Of course you are.” She stands and walks to the window, gazing out at the city.

  There’s only one thing that might make her break. I have to try it.

  “I know you don’t know me,” I say to her back. “But you’ve read my files. You know I’ve given everything I have to AgraStar. Why can’t you trust me?”

  She turns. “It’s not that I can’t trust you.”

  “Then tell me what’s going on.” I try to ignore the sick feeling in my gut and put an extra burst
of confidence behind my voice. “Bring me in. Make me part of it.”

  She hesitates.

  I hold my breath and bite down on my tongue. Was it enough? How much will she give away to keep me happy?

  My mother raises a hand to her brow. “It isn’t the same. You and Isabel,” she says in a quiet voice.

  I sink down on the couch. “What is it, then?”

  She locks eyes with me. “This is confidential, Tempest. You understand?”

  My throat feels dry. “Yes.”

  “Good.” She takes a seat in the chair across from me. “I’m telling you this because you’re loyal. You understand how important AgraStar’s work is. There are a lot of variables when it comes to AgraStar’s human assets—health conditions, longevity, temperament. A little over twenty years ago, we started asking, what if we could control those variables? What if we could strengthen the company and increase production by introducing a standardizing element into our population?”

  Assets. I shake my head. “You mean cloning?”

  “Yes,” she says. “And it’s been very successful, especially when it comes to staffing security forces. Of course, you can’t control for accidents and variations in environment as the child is growing up, but physical build, disease resistance . . . and if conditions are right, the combination of intelligence and loyalty that makes a good soldier.”

  I lean away. “You mean . . . you can control how they think?”

  “No, no,” my mother says. “But we can give them an innate predisposition to certain characteristics that will come forward with the right training.”

  “Like compliance,” I say.

  My mother makes a face. “I would call it a desire to cooperate. These aren’t automatons we’re talking about, Tempest. They’re people like you and me.”

  “But more like me,” I say. “And Isabel.”

  My mother smooths her skirt. “As I said, you two are a different matter. Your father and I conceived you the natural way, Tempest. No genetic interventions.”