True North

Chapter Seven

I let myself into the lab. Row upon row of stainless-steel lab benches with raised shelves. The watchful eye of a giant clock glares down at me from above the door. I now recognize a few of Doc Raines's tools of the trade. The large boxy machine, for instance, that allows her to separate genetic strands, then project them on a large flat-screen while she manipulates them. I imagine they have similar tech in the Splicer Clinics, where people go to have their blown genes ripped out of them and have fresh ones sewn in.

Unlike at the Splicer Clinics, here, amid the hand scanners for reading genetic strands and nano-manipulation gear for experimenting with DNA variants, I'm not overwhelmed by a terrible sense of wrongness.

In the Splicer Clinics, you're always at the mercy of a test result. Just one genetic switch, one protein expressed a bit more than another, and you'd never be the same. Eventually you'd grow ill. Be Spliced, if you were lucky. Be looked down upon in our little world devoted to the pretense that the Upper Circle does not fall to the Plague.

Here in Storm's lab, at least, I have a say. No one asks me about my body or how well it's functioning. Here, I am not illness waiting to happen. I'm still put through Protocols—but to get to the bottom of what I am, not what I will become.

Until the day Margot disappeared, it hadn't occurred to me to question our lives. It was only when I found her, stretched and clamped on a bed in our Splicer Clinic, a long and bloody pipette snaking from her body where they had been harvesting parts of her, that I realized things were not as they seemed.

I close my eyes and fight to lock up the image of my sister that day: white as a winding sheet, shaking, sunken into herself. I can't bear to think of what they might be doing to her now. Or what they've done with the tiny parts of her they managed to squire away.

A familiar voice breaks through my train of thought. "I get that you're mad at Storm. But are you going to speak to me again this century?"

Startled, I turn. Jared leans against the steel bench closest to the door, arms crossed. I note the lines of strain around his mouth, his eyes. The tired and bruised look, as though he hasn't slept well.

Good, I think. In my head I know it's not up to Jared what Storm does or doesn't do. But he didn't speak up. Didn't argue with Storm. Didn't offer to help me. And that's what my heart remembers.

Stay with me, Lu. Stay with me.

He'd asked me to stay. And with every day that passes I become more convinced that he didn't mean it.

Instead of answering, I let my hands fall on a pair of hyper-loops, for examining microscopic DNA samples. Doc Raines had shown me how to use them. They're the kind of gear even private schools like Grayguard can't afford. I pull them over my head and begin fiddling with the fit adjustments.

"Lucy." Jared sighs.

"I don't know yet," I finally answer. When I turn, he's too close. Always too close. His skin heats me from a foot away, and I tingle with awareness from head to foot. I inhale his dark-and-spice scent that somehow comforts me even when it's been dipped in someone else's blood. His eyes are blue now, like a deep sky you'd see in those OldenTimes films. Yet so intense it feels like he's pulling all the oxygen from the room.

"Why?"

"What do you mean, why?" I snap, earning a slight smile.

"This isn't my call."

"I know that," I say, looking down at my hands.

"So why are you freezing me out?"

But what else can I say that he doesn't already know? When I think of leaving my sister to her fate, I feel sick. I can't stay here if Storm won't help me. If Jared won't. I can't answer Jared. The words won't form. Ever so slowly, I turn my back to him. Feel his heat seep and comfort me there, though I want none. He doesn't touch me, though I can feel his hot breath on the top of my head, tickling my hair.