The van didn’t pull away until I reached the top step. I watched its white rear bumper disappear into the evening traffic rush.
Instead of walking toward the ticket dispensers, I went to a soda machine and got a drink then headed back down the stairs to the street level, looking one way then the other.
I wasn’t sure where to go, but I had to get some answers about myself and the other kids at the base, find some clue as to why so many of them had changed recently.
Maybe the library would provide some answers? I could use the database there to anonymously look up information about the base, my parents, the Calamity, anything that might hold some clue for me.
I was a few steps from the sidewalk when the van reappeared, moving at a blistering pace. It whipped to a stop at the curb, and the door slid open.
Heath was standing in front of me before I could even think of how to respond.
My heart slammed in a hectic percussion of guilty beats. “Heath. What are you doing here?”
His eyes narrowed. “What are you doing? You’re going to miss the seven o’clock train. It’ll be leaving the station in four minutes.”
My chin lifted, and I looked him in the eye. “I’m… not taking that one.”
“Oh really? And which one did you buy a ticket for? Let me see it.” He turned over his hand, palm-up, waiting for proof.
Edging my chin even higher, trying to somehow even out our ridiculous height difference, I gripped the strap of my backpack more tightly.
“I’m perfectly fine. I don’t need any help. You can go ahead and go.”
“You didn’t buy one, did you?” He turned his head to the side and swore quietly under his breath. “I knew it. I should have driven you back to the base no matter what you said.”
“No you shouldn’t have. That would be…”
A variety of word choices filtered through my brain. Obnoxious. Bossy. Bully behavior. “…kidnapping” was the one I settled on.
He huffed a short laugh. “Kidnapping? You spent the whole afternoon with me. If I’d wanted to kidnap you, instead of taking you to the beach, I’d have taken you off to some dark, private… oh, never mind. Stop throwing around ridiculous accusations and get in the van.”
He stretched out one long arm and pointed at it, reminding me of Mrs. McComb on the frequent occasions she’d sent Lee to the headmaster’s office.
“No thank you,” I said, turning to walk down the sidewalk in the opposite direction of the van.
“Mireya.”
I kept walking, ignoring his insistent, exasperated tone.
“Reya.”
That one stopped me in my tracks. I spun around to face him. “What did you call me?”
“Mireya—that’s your name, right? Or were you lying about that, too?”
“No—you said ‘Reya.’ How did you know that was my nickname?”
He looked away from me, toward the blur of headlights and motion playing out beside us in the street. When his eyes came back to me, the set of his mouth was stiff.
“I didn’t. It was a slip of the tongue.”
Slowly I walked back to him and stopped just in front of him, my eyes holding his in a tight lock.
“We have met before, haven’t we? And not just yesterday when you hit me with the van. Before that.”
His jaw moved in a slow arc of denial.
“It was you in the picture. It looked like a combination of Daniel and the way you look now.”
“Why would I have been on the base when I was a kid?”
“You tell me.”
“I don’t know. But you need to go back there now. Maybe you don’t realize it, but Atlanta is not a safe place to be walking around at night, and it’s getting dark.”
Some of my irritation and suspicion dissipated at the look of genuine concern he wore. And he was probably right. Especially since I didn’t know where I was going. I decided to take a risk and be honest with him.
Letting out a long breath, I said, “I can’t go back.”
His eyelids flared, and then his gaze intensified. “Why not?”
“I didn’t have permission to leave today.”
“I knew it. You’re a runaway.”
“No, I’m not. Well, okay, yes, technically I am, but not forever. I’m going back. But not tonight.”
“Yes, you are. I’m taking you home. It’s not safe for you here.”
He took my arm and started pulling me toward the van waiting at the curb. The passenger side door slid open. I could just make out the outline of one of Daniel’s little feet in the darkened back seat where he was stretched out.
Digging my heels into the pavement and leaning back, I resisted. “It’s not safe for me there, either.”
Heath stopped tugging and twisted to look at me. His expression was incredulous. “Why would you say that?”
I paused, chewing the inside of my cheek as I tried to decide whether to trust him with more.
Now his face changed, his brows pulled together in genuine concern. “What happened? Did someone hurt you? Tell me, Reya.”
There it was again. He’d called me Reya, and the sound of my name spoken in his soft, raspy voice along with the worry in his eyes sent shivers up and down my spine.
It made me want to tell him anything and everything he wanted to know.
“Something’s not right. Something’s… happening to my friends. First it was a few kids at school, then my best friend Ketta. They went to the doctor. When they came back, they were different.”
“Different how?”
An electronic tone preceded an announcement about the imminent departure of the seven o’clock northbound train. I glanced at the top of the stairs, where its side panel lights glowed a cool neon blue.
Several people rushed toward it, picking up their pace on the moving stairway to reach it in time.
“They didn’t act like themselves,” I said. “Especially Ketta. We’ve been best friends since we were preschoolers—I know her better than anyone. She’s this loud, funny, wild and crazy person, but today at school when she got back from her appointment, it was like that person was… gone. She acted like a robot.”
Heath nodded, drawing in his lower lip then letting it out again. “Okay. That’s pretty freaky. So what does that have to do with you?”
“You mean other than my best friend turning into a goody-goody zombie? Well, I was supposed to go to the doctor today, too. Only I decided to leave instead. And my mom and dad were acting weird. And I found something strange in my baby book, and there was something else about that birthday party picture, other than you being in it. In that picture… my eyes were green—not brown.”
His gaze didn’t meet mine. Instead it stayed trained on the sidewalk, studying it as if searching for something.
“You sure? Sounds like you’re pretty confused.”
“I’m not crazy. I know what I saw,” I protested
He held his hands out in front of him in the surrender pose. “No, no, I mean I believe you. I’m just saying you’re confused about what’s going on, about why these strange things are happening.”
“Exactly. And I need to find some answers.”
I straightened my spine, facing him in a defiant pose. “I’m not going home until I do, because I’m afraid that whatever’s happening to them is going to happen to me, too.”
“Yeah. Okay. I get it now. But how do you plan to do that?”
“I’m not sure yet. I was headed to the library to do some research.”
“And then what?” He gestured toward the departing seven o’clock. “The trains stop running up north in an hour. You do that and you’ll miss them. Where will you stay tonight?”
My shoulders lifted and fell. “I don’t know.” I looked from side to side, taking in the kaleidoscope of colors and moving images on the sides of the surrounding buildings.
The city seemed even more foreign at night, like a carnival or a funhouse I’d seen on a children’s vid once.
“Maybe I can find a cheap hotel, or like, a youth hostel or something.”
Heath shook his head. “You must have been watching old vids—those don’t exist anymore.”
“Which—cheap hotels or youth hostels?”
“Hostels. There are still plenty of hotels, although I’m not sure what your idea of cheap is. Do you have any money?”
I nodded. “Yes. I had some saved up. Don’t worry, I’ll find a place.”
He stared at me for a long moment. “I am worried. I don’t like the idea of you wandering around the city alone, crashing in some seedy motel. Plus, you need your medicine.”
My head jerked back, my heart skipping a beat. “How did you know about that?”
He shrugged. “I saw you take a pill today. That red one?”
I thought I’d been sneaky about it, slipping the pill into my mouth before applying lip balm. Obviously, my sleight of hand wasn’t as good as I’d hoped.
“Maybe it was a vitamin,” I countered.
He shook his head. “It wasn’t. That’s what I was delivering to the base yesterday—meds.”
“Our anti-virals come from Gideon Corp?”
“Anti-virals?” His face quirked in amusement. “Those are anti-rejection meds.”
“What? No. We take them to, you know, protect us in case there are still Zika-Two carriers around.”
“No, Mireya. Doctors tried all the anti-virals. Nothing worked. Every living creature on the planet has been exposed already. If you were going to die from Zika Two, it would have happened already. The red pills are anti-rejection meds.”
I brought my hands to my hips, tilting my head and glaring in annoyance.
“And you know this how? Because you drive a delivery truck?”
His brows lowered, and he frowned, clearly irritated. “I told you… my dad works at Gideon Corp, too. He’s not a delivery driver. He told me what they were.”
“But why would I need anti-rejection medication? I’ve never had surgery. Ketta either. I’ve never had a transplant or been in the hospital for anything—other than when I was two and the Calamity happened. I’ve been totally healthy since then. Not even a cold.”
He just kept looking at me, as if waiting for me to catch on to something.
“What?”
“You don’t know.”
“Know what?”
“Mireya, think about it. Doesn’t it seem strange to you that you’ve never been sick?”
It didn’t—before now. None of my classmates had ever been sick either, that I could remember.
“We’re isolated from the general population there on the base,” I said. “Maybe we’re not exposed to many germs.”
“Really? With all those troops coming and going? Deliveries being made… products from the outside coming in… there are germs, believe me.”
“What are you trying to say? I got an immune system transplant that I don’t remember?”
I laughed, but Heath’s face stayed serious. “Sort of. I can’t believe you don’t know.”
“Wait… what do you know about this?”
In answer to my question, he asked one. “Did you notice people staring at you today in the city?”
“Yeah, sort of. I mean, I figured it was because I should have been in school and they were wondering whether to report me to the truant officers.”
He shook his head. “That’s not the reason. They stared at you because they haven’t seen anyone like you in a long time. About fifteen years to be exact.”
“Like me? You mean a teenager? There are no teenagers in Atlanta?”
“There are no teenagers anywhere—not outside the military bases.”
“But… everyone our age survived the Calamity. We were the last.”
“No, everyone my age survived the Calamity. Everyone your age died. I was four when it happened. All the kids three and under didn’t make it.”
“But…” My voice drifted in astonishment. “At school they said—”
“At school they told you what they had to tell you to keep you from feeling weird.”
Fat lot of good that had done me. Maybe if I’d known the truth, I actually would’ve believed it when I was constantly told how “special” I was.
“So then, how did the kids on the base survive?”
And why hadn’t my newborn baby sister?
“You said there’s no way viruses aren’t making it past the base walls. If what you’re saying is true, we should have died like all the rest.”
“You would have. But you got an experimental treatment… from Gideon Corp.”
My insides went cold. “What kind of experimental treatment?”
“Well, in a way, it was like a transplant. More of an implant, actually. My father said all the military base kids were injected with nanobots. The nanos repaired the cells that were being ravaged by Zika-Two. They saved your lives. The red pills keep your bodies from rejecting them.”
I rocked back on my heels, suddenly dizzy.
“Nanos? In my body?”
I felt as if my skin was crawling. The thought of microscopic robots creeping through my veins gave me the heebeejeebees.
He nodded and continued in a no-big-deal tone.
“Yes, and they’re still there, repairing damage, keeping you strong and healthy. They’re kind of a small miracle, really, pardon the pun. Not that they’re perfect—they need tweaking every so often. In fact, my dad said there was a recall on the last batch.”
“A recall?”
The term brought my woozy brain back to full alertness. Mom and Dad had been discussing a recall last night before dinner when they’d both been acting so strangely.
“What do you mean?”
“It happens. It’s nothing you’d notice,” he said. “As far as you’re concerned, you simply get an injection. The fix would happen on a sub-cellular level. Really, Reya, it’s not a big deal.”
“That’s easy for you to say—you’re not the one with a bunch of electronic spiders crawling around inside you.”
A thought occurred to me. “Or do you have them, too?”
“Me? No. One hundred percent organic here.”
He grinned as if he hadn’t just dropped a life-altering bombshell on me. As if he hadn’t informed me that I and all the kids I’d known all my life weren’t “lucky” to have survived the Calamity—we’d been chosen to survive.
We’d been experimented on. Were part of an ongoing experiment by the company he worked for.
“Reya? You okay?” Heath stepped toward me, reaching out to steady me with large hands gripping my waist.
“Get away from me,” I whispered, unable to find enough air to give the words sound.
“What?”
“Get away from me.” I found my voice, adding a two-handed shove to force him to release me. I turned my back to him and began walking.
Heath followed. “Hey, calm down. What’s going on? Why are you mad?”
I didn’t look at him but couldn’t avoid seeing his huge form in my peripheral vision.
“Because a virtual stranger knows more about me than I know about myself. Because I’m a freak.”
I’d always known I was weird. I just never knew how weird until today.
My parents had been planning to take me in for a recall. Like a car. Like… like spoiled food. I’d wanted answers, but now that I had some, the new knowledge felt like a slap in the face.
“Reya—stop. Please. Come on now, you’re not a freak.”
Spinning to face him, I responded in a near shout.
“I am a freak. When I told you Ketta was acting like a robot, I was being metaphorical, but it turns out that was the truth. You called yourself a hundred percent organic. What does that make me? I’m augmented by machines, and I never even knew it. What percentage machine do you think I am? If those things have been inside my body since I was two, what kind of changes have they been making all along, all my life? How could Gideon Corp do this to me?”
“You wouldn’t even be here without Gideon. You wouldn’t have a life without those ‘machines,’ as you call them.”
Beside us, a driver leaned on the horn as he tried to signal someone leaving the train station. A woman waved to him and hurried past us to his waiting car.
Suddenly conscious of potential listening ears, I lowered the volume of my voice.
“Yes, and now the recall is stealing the lives of my friends—or at least their personalities,” I said. “They’re not themselves anymore. I don’t know if it’s permanent or if they’re still in there somewhere, but at least now I know who to ask.”
“What do you mean?”
“Someone at Gideon Corp owes me some answers. I want to know exactly what’s going on with the recall. I want to know what’s happened to my friends, and I’m going to find out.”
I marched past Heath toward the open door of his van.
With an astonished gasp, he fell into step behind me. “You’ll let me take you home?”
I glanced back over my shoulder before climbing into the passenger seat.
“No. You’re going to take me to Gideon Corp, and you will get me inside.”
