Immortal Mistakes

my son

Chloe looked up. Octavia was still standing in front of her, watching her read. Chloe folded the letters and tucked them into her pocket where they would be safe. Safer, at least. "I want them. I want my family's DNA."

"And I want this baby."

"How do I know you're not making this up? So I do what you want."

Octavia sat down on the scanner bed beside Chloe. "Your grandmother was right. It is theoretically possible to remake your family, but only here in the compound and only for a day or so. I can't have Gabrielle or Morgan finding out about this. It would be chaos if word got out. Everyone would want to print old, dead family members."

"Then why risk it? Why tell me?"

"So you understand the importance of family."

"Why is this baby so important to you?" 

Octavia's mouth tightened. "Because Henry's dying and this is the only way to save him."

Panic flashed through Chloe. It couldn't be true. Henry's death was an accident. "Henry's fine. I re-printed him a couple of weeks ago. He was fine afterwards, just like normal."

Octavia picked at her nails as she spoke. "Henry hasn't been fine, not for a long time. Your memories aren't quite accurate."

Chloe was silent, searching through her brain for any inkling that Henry might be sick. Nothing. Only dancing and road trips and whispered conversations over wine in her pod. Hiding words. Hiding thoughts. Who was hiding what? What was real, what was not?

"Why do you care what happens to Henry?"

"Henry's my son."

That wasn's possible. Octavia had never treated Henry any differently to the rest of the children. Never hugged him. Never loved him. Not that Chloe saw. Henry had never said anything to her. Did he know? What was Octavia doing?

Chloe pushed herself off the scanner. The room was too small, too close, the smooth sand ceiling dripping, sliding, the walls crumbling, squeezing in on her, covering her in dust. She had to get out. 

Octavia grabbed her hand. "Chloe wait."

Chloe jerked her hand out of Octavia's. "Why should I believe anything you say?" 

"I'll take you to see Henry. But if you breathe a word of this to anyone, you will never see your family. I will take the letters. I will take your memories and destroy their DNA."

And she would. Chloe knew it. Octavia had never made idle threats. Chloe rubbed the bulge of paper in her pocket and willed it to become a part of her, something no one could take away.

"Okay," Chloe said. She missed all her friends but Henry most of all. She needed to see that he was okay. And she needed to get away from the suffocating aloneness of the compound.

Chloe followed Octavia as she threaded through the underground passages, making her way to her old office, now home to the port dock but still locked with a bioreader that wouldn't respond to Chloe's DNA fingerprint no matter how many times she tried. And she had tried over the past week. Many times. Octavia pressed her finger to the reader and the door clicked open. For a second Chloe saw the hologram of herself, silent and staring out from her childhood, but she disappeared as Chloe entered the room. 

Both women stood on the pad of the port dock and Octavia entered the co-ordinates for the Centre for Medical Anthropology.

"What are you doing?" Chloe yelled, knocking Octavia's hand away from the control panel. She should have known this was a trick. The CMA was the worst thing that could happen to an Immortal. She would be experimented on. She would be left to die.

It was too late.

The caves shrank away from Chloe overlaid with white sand and gumtrees and blue sky until that was all Chloe could see. The air smelled of sea and eucalyptus and betrayal.

Why did she trust Octavia? How could she have been so stupid?

"Come on," Octavia said, taking Chloe's arm and pulling her down a wide sandy path towards the ocean. Chloe pulled back and Octavia tightened her grip. "The port dock won't respond to you Chloe and you've still got your tracker so there's no point. We'll find you wherever you go."

A kookaburra sat in a branch hanging over their heads. He opened his mouth and cackled at Chloe but the sound didn't come from the bird. It came from Octavia.

Chloe wanted to punch her. To rip at her skin.

Maybe she did.

Maybe she didn't.

But she did follow Octavia down the hill and past a group of people gathered on the beach, some sitting on a picnic blanket, some holding wooden mallets and pushing balls through hoops. They looked like a scene from a mortal history class. Except their bodies were misshapen. Bloated faces, bulging growths, walking skeletons. Chloe had seen projections like this in medical history class, but she had forgotten the horror itching across her skin. This was different to the dead and mangled bodies at the Bank. These people were alive. Her eyes burned as she looked at their disintegrating bodies searching for Henry. 

He wasn't there. 

One of them waved at Chloe but she turned away and followed Octavia along the path to a pod with the number 28 on the door. Octavia pushed the door open. The room looked like Chloe's pod at home, with a poor attempt at a painting of a seagull covering one wall. Except Henry wasn't sitting on Chloe's couch-bed at home.

He stood when he saw them. "What are you doing here, Koala?"