Toxic Read online

  He pauses and looks at us all one by one, so we hear his next words clearly. “The Selkirk is going to dock soon. It will have no fuel left, and once our data is uploaded, it will be set to drift until it is retrieved at a later date. Meaning, no one is leaving Cyclo. Not even your dead bodies. Let me be clear about that, in case any of you are having some very late second thoughts.”

  He looks hard at me, which is unnerving. Can he tell that my skin is prickling in goose bumps? That I’m sweating under my clothes? I tap the table with my fingertips.

  .. -.. --- -. ·----· - .-- .- -. - - --- -... . .... . .-. .

  I don’t want to be here.

  Portia shuts her holofeed off with a glance of her red eyes, and sighs. “How long do we have? That is, how much longer will the Calathus survive? The last update said eight weeks.”

  Doran pauses for a moment. “It’s now about three weeks.”

  We all freeze. Three weeks.

  Three weeks left to live.

  It’s a strange thing, to see the rest of your life set before you in small, measurable numbers, like three.

  “Now, remember that each you have objectives that need to be met before your contract is fulfilled. When you open up your holofeeds, you’ll find a progress bar for achieving your goals.” I pop open my holo, and there is a huge bar now visible on the right side of my screen. It’s fully red, showing 0 percent completion. Doran continues. “And if the ship’s death accelerates, well, then, that means less sleep for you and more work.”

  Three weeks, twenty-one days, seemed like far too little. Now, at the thought that if things go wrong, there will be even less time, three weeks seems like an eternity.

  And to make us feel even worse, Doran’s holograph arm gestures to the table. A compartment in the center slides open, and within it, a small dais rises. Perched upon it are four small, soft packets. They each have names on them, and I grab mine and unwrap it. A square medallion hangs from a chain necklace. My name and my universal ID are on the front.

  “The medallion, when pressed, has a parting hologram message from the person to whom you bequeathed your death benefit, as a reminder of why you are here, and a reminder to complete your mission,” Doran says. “If you open the medallion—do not do this right now, please—you’ll find a disc of cikkina poison. It is highly effective and toxic for all humanoid species. Touching it will result in a quick and painless death within a few seconds. It is there for only one purpose. On the last day of our mission, Cyclo will be completely nonfunctioning, and you will have become biohazard material yourself. You will be surviving only on the environmental systems, which will inevitably fail.”

  He doesn’t have to say anything else. Suffocation is a hell of a way to go.

  I hold my medallion, as the other crew members slowly leave the cabin and get ready to board the Calathus. The metal is cold and quite heavy. A platinum alloy, expensive. I don’t push the button. I’m not ready to listen to what my sister has to say to me. Last I heard, she had a lot of difficulty speaking. I haven’t spoken to her since before her accident.

  I have this one chance to redeem myself and do something right in my life. God knows I’ve done all the wrong things since I can remember, including being born. This is my chance to be a hero, but I don’t feel like one. I want to live, but I can’t. I can’t.

  Like I said before, this trip is all about firsts.

  For the first time in my life, I’m terrified.

  But one thing is for damned sure. I’ll die before I ever let anyone know the truth.

  Chapter Three

  HANA

  She left me behind.

  She abandoned me.

  I have been kneeling on the floor of my mother’s laboratory between empty incubators, crying, choking through hyperventilations. Through the fog of despair, my mind races around disparate things. Why? Why did everyone leave? Why did I have to be such a terrible burden that I was left behind?

  Mother—wasn’t I worth bringing with you?

  Always, there was the idea that someday Mother would tell me that the rules by which we lived had changed. She would present me to her world with pride instead of this brand of concealment and shame that I’ve been woven into. Mother had even thought of pretending I was a stowaway on one of the rare supply ships. She was ready for the time that this might happen. Excited, even, to think that I could be formally accepted and adopted. Me, a girl of no nation, no people, no past.

  Then, I could begin to live. Truly live.

  “She told me,” I hiccupped through tears. “She told me that very soon, she would tell them about me. She promised.”

  “Yes,” Cyclo said, speaking again through the walls now that she has composed herself as well. “I remember when you spoke of it. Several times. I sensed your mother’s…hesitancy…to bring up the subject.”

  Hesitancy.

  I am so naive. If I had studied human behavior instead of Cyclo’s microtubules and cell biology, maybe Mother would have thought I was ready to be introduced to the crew earlier. If I had read more on how to be an integrated social being, instead of about cheese making and the cookery of my favorite kinds of Korean namul and guk, maybe I could have read Mother’s face. I studied, like a student terrified to fail, about how to do human things—concrete things. I studied Cyclo, the only home I’ve ever known, thinking I could convince the crew that I truly could be the one thousand and first person on board, instead of their carefully curated one thousand. But I should have studied my mother, instead. Maybe I would have understood her words better. I had become more anxious in the last few months, pushing her for a fixed day when I could finally leave my blue cage.

  Oh.

  It wasn’t hesitancy that she had been showing. It was something else altogether.

  “She was tiring of me. She was putting the answer off because this was her answer. She wanted to leave. And now she’s gone,” I say, voice hollow and scratchy. I sound older already. Different. “But what of the crew? Cyclo, why did they have to leave?”

  Cyclo knows something else. She’s been flashing patterns of magenta and ultraviolet purples in a range that only I can see. Even mother was impressed with how much I could understand because of my ability to see beyond the spectrum of light most humans detect. Cyclo is telling me more now.

  They have evacuated the Calathus because conditions are no longer ideal.

  I get to my feet and look around. Really look. The lights embedded in lines along the floors are still working, but Cyclo’s own luminescence is slightly dull. The incubation pods where the embryos gestate are empty, of course. If they had any incubates, they are now flying away in hyperspace within new electronic and plastrix wombs, to a new home. But I stare carefully at what I haven’t yet seen. I’ve been too busy running, panicked, through the hallways and rooms of Cyclo to notice. Her walls are always a complacent blue at rest. Usually. I squint, focusing.

  There is one tiny speck of brown fixed upon the wall. It’s not an emotion because it has no depth or movement like Cyclo’s usual brown waves of pensiveness. I walk to the wall to examine the brown dot, the size of my pinkie fingernail, thinking it’s like a freckle, like the smattering of light brown spots sprayed across the bridge of my own nose.

  I touch it.

  “Ahhh!” I yank my finger back. It’s burning, like when I’ve touched the hot pot on the stove of my kitchenette. I grasp my finger, which has gone white at the tip and is throbbing.

  The brown dot has enlarged from my probing, and it’s glistening with wetness that drips down the membrane of Cyclo’s wall, staining it brown as well. As it slips down, the brown stains turn into little ulcers and craters.

  “It’s acid. You burned me! What is this? What’s happened?” I ask.

  A small reaction. My ability to channel away my chloride metabolites has been malfunctioning.

  I think. Chlo
ride metabolites are usually coupled into harmless salts. I know Cyclo’s metabolic wastes are generally stored or recycled. This is really strange. I sniff Cyclo’s normal blue wall nearby. A faint sour odor.

  “You’re making a hydrochloric acid byproduct.”

  Yes.

  I back away from Cyclo’s wall. I know how she works. I knew she was having some metabolic issues—Mother would let me look over her shoulder at the biometric readouts of the ship every morning. She’d say I knew almost as much as the bioengineers on the crew, and I fed off her compliments by learning all I could about Cyclo. And yet, I never sensed that she was having this problem. I need to know exactly what’s going on with her. Cyclo is good at taking care of me, but she can’t always explain well what her processes are. Technical jargon doesn’t translate well with Cyclo’s methods of communication. I need to find more.

  And I need answers from Mother. Which means, somehow, I have to contact her.

  And if I do, I will have to ask the question.

  Why did you abandon me?

  Tears start coming again, and I can’t stop them. They dribble down my face, my nose runs, and I’m a faucet of stickiness and saltwater. The only person who has the answers is the one person who isn’t here. I find a sink in the laboratory, and the tap works. It runs clear water, and I sniff it. It seems okay, so I wash the acid off my fingertip. Normally, I would just stick my injured self right back into Cyclo, and she would remove debris, flush it, correct the pH, encourage healing. But I’m afraid to touch her again, and Cyclo is telling me in waves of golden yellow that she is sorry for hurting me.

  “I just want to go home,” I say. I want the solace of my room. My world, really. I miss the time when my Mother had all the answers. She was nearly ready for me to launch, as a working part of the ship. To be accepted. But I can’t fight this overwhelming need to go back to when things were safe and everything was understood. And then I think of how Cyclo has an injury, something I’ve never seen before. Maybe Cyclo needs to be taken care of for a change.

  Take care of someone or something else? I’ve never had to do this. I try on the concept like a new, heavy shirt I’ve never worn.

  It feels very, very odd.

  I’m not sure I like it.

  I exit the lab and walk slowly around the perimeter of Cyclo. The crew and I have always lived on the outermost circle of the ship, walking on its inner edge as Cyclo rotates once per minute. In the outermost alpha ring, the gravity is strongest. The walking alone tires me out utterly, and often I just collapse into a heap on the gel floor to catch my breath and rest. I keep a keen eye out for more brown spots, which show up here and there. There are more than I would like to see.

  The main bridge of the ship is on the entire other side from my room. It’s where the ship’s logs are. I pass by more empty mess halls—painfully clean. The crew did not leave in a hurry; they left in an orderly, organized fashion. Which means that Mother knew for some time that she would have to leave.

  I take a set of carved-out ladder steps upward into the beta ring. The gravity is slightly less here, and every step feels bouncy. Here are some empty crew cabins, a hundred in this quarter section. The doors are all open. I gingerly touch their personal objects, like discarded clothes, music cubes, holo letters, and wonder what they looked like. Were they of Korean descent, as Mother designed me because that was her heritage? Was their skin cream-colored, like faded paper? Or brown, like newborn Earthen acorns? Was their hair shorn short, or curled, or braided as I have seen in the vids? Mother didn’t let me memorize the personnel files; she said that was invasive.

  Little did they knew they had me as a parasite on this ship the whole time.

  “I missed them,” I say. And I missed the opportunity to be able to talk to anyone besides myself and Mother.

  Cyclo flashes a mild peach color, reminding me she is here. Of course, I have Cyclo. She flickers back to blue. She likes the idea of just her and me together. She’s right; this is safety, too.

  “Just us,” I say. “No one to be afraid of.” Or to disappoint. Because there was always that fear—that they would say to me and my mother, no. She can’t be here. We have rules.

  Hana is unacceptable.

  But within me, there is lingering dissatisfaction. There is loneliness which makes no sense because I have always been quite alone. But I have lost what I’ve never had, and that is even worse. Cyclo and me, it’s not quite enough this time. The next time I hibernate, Cyclo will know this. I am not looking forward to what is usually a respite, which is also a new feeling.

  “The docking bays,” I say aloud. “That’s where I’ll go.”

  “West alpha. One level down, twenty meters west,” Cyclo says, though I already knew that.

  I try to think like Mother. With logic and calmness, and without my tangential forays into Earth history and the nature of storm clouds over the Great Lakes. “Maybe the crew left some information there about how to communicate. Maybe Mother left me a note of some kind.” Doubtful, but still worth a try.

  Back down to the alpha ring, the docks are quite large, fifty times the size of my little room. Each seems like an enormous bite has been taken out of the edge of the ship. The six bays have ragged edges where they broke away from Cyclo on their exodus. Each is closed off to the cold reaches of space with a solid, scarred beige membrane—webbed from interconnecting adhesions, each with more tensile strength than steel.

  Out a plastrix window, I can see the ragged mantle of Cyclo, like a dancer’s thin tulle skirt, reaching out into space. Mother said her photosynthetic mantle was red, to best absorb the UV light from Maia, but it’s not red—it’s blue. Which means she isn’t photosynthesizing well.

  This is not good.

  On my right are vid displays and control panels, but none are blinking with lights. All is quiet. Life has carved itself out and fled. Through a window, obscured by tendril growth, the stars are clear and bright against the inky backdrop of space. Three luminous ones clustered together sparkle with a particular tenacity. Somewhere in that cluster is Atlas, where Mother and the crew are headed.

  One of the twinkling lights becomes brighter, as if my attention has beckoned it closer.

  No, wait.

  The light is getting closer. I lean into the window, touching the cold, clear plastrix with my fingertips. That is not a star.

  I inhale sharply. “It’s a ship! Cyclo, it’s a ship coming to dock! Mother is coming back!”

  I knew it! I knew she wouldn’t leave me here; I knew it was all a mistake. Oh, and what’s more—she’ll introduce me to the crew. It’s all over. The nightmare, short as it was, is over.

  “They’re coming back! They’re—”

  Cyclo’s colors interrupt me to disagree. Flashes and colors pulse and twist in the blink of an eye because the information is coming so very fast.

  No. It is not one of our ships. They are still scheduled to be in hyperspace. This is another vessel, far smaller, and they are hailing in preparation to dock and board.

  My blood goes cold. “Who are they? Why have they come?”

  They have not volunteered that information. But I cannot deny them entry. They have a clearance passcode, which I am not allowed to refuse.

  I take several paces back. The light splits into three lights, and they shine brighter and brighter until I see the craft. Small, like a sideways parenthesis. There are windows on the bridge of the ship, but my window is too fuzzy to see what type of being resides within. It’s slowing down, orienting itself to fit the nearest bay.

  “Cyclo,” I whisper. “Should I go? Should I hide?”

  Yes, Hana. It would be safer until we know their purpose. They are still not communicating their intentions.

  I head for the door to the docking bay but pause. My fear wars with my curiosity. Maybe Mother is on the ship? Maybe she left the crew to come retrie
ve me? Maybe not, but there will be someone coming on board in minutes. What will they look like? What language will they speak? Should I offer gifts? Should I bow the way my ancestors did with strangers? I don’t know what to do. Nothing in my education prepared me for this. I am a hybrid of anticipation and worry.

  Hana. Go.

  I turn to exit but pause yet again. My feet are irresistibly fixed in place, and there is Cyclo flashing warning exclamations in all shades of white and yellow. There is a hard, jarring crash as the ship cracks the fine, lacy exoskeleton framework to fit itself into the dock. One of the downsides with a living bioship—damage, however reversible, is inevitable with entering and exiting ships. But that is not why I’m trembling, cowering behind the edge of the doorway, fingers gripping Cyclo so hard that I’m blanching her color away.

  I’ve only ever known one person in my life. Mother. And since I’ve known her forever, I haven’t really ever met anyone. Whoever walks off this ship will be the first real person I’ve ever laid eyes on. This is a moment I’ve been waiting for my entire life.

  The ship cracks a little farther into the dock, and steam from its contact with Cyclo’s tissues rises in puffs of rank-smelling clouds. Her matrix oozes forth, hardening and forming a seal around the docked ship, as she is programmed to do. Vaguely, I wonder if Cyclo is in pain, accepting this ship into her hull, but I’m too distracted to ask her. There is a knocking sound, more hissing, and metal scraping Cyclo’s own bones, burning her flesh. A narrow passageway opens into the front of the bay as the door lowers.

  Chunky boots appear, walking purposefully down the plank. They are attached to slim, long legs clad in regular but worn khaki work pants, with unfamiliar equipment holstered around the left thigh. Narrow hips and a baggy jacket full of pockets follow, and then I see the face.

  The face of a young man—dark irises, light brown skin, and almost-black hair in a wavy but short mess. He looks around. Disappointment darkens his eyes further, until he sees me.