Toxic Read online

  I’m the screw-up. It had started when I was ten. I’d stolen my first nano drone and had flown it into the left ear of my astrophysics teacher. I thought it was funny; it wasn’t so funny when she lost hearing in that ear from the high-resonance damage I’d caused. That was when I was kicked out of Nystrade Academy, a free school, which meant my family had to pay to educate me, and that meant less money for Callandra.

  Somewhere around the fifth school and third stint in juvenile detention on various planets, my parents were drained of resources. Callandra had a future thanks to scholarships, but scholarships don’t take you to the most elite academies. I’d basically throttled all her hopes of being the brightest and the best. But I just couldn’t say no when a new scheme popped up, each seemingly more lucrative and more of a sure thing than the last. Stealing was too alluring. And I was good at it. In school, I failed. In thievery, I was an incandescent, if intermittent, success, flickering farther and farther away from Callandra.

  When Callandra was fifteen, my parents had found a great mining job for me on Ipineq, one that would ignore my police record and give me a chance. I could earn money for the family, legitimate money. I was all set to fly back for this job, loathing the idea, when I remembered my promise to Callandra to bring her back something from my travels. So I took one quick side job—stealing silver-gold electrum alloy pellets from a passing ship. One of those pellets would make a great little gift for her, and the money might help pay for her next year of school. And then our getaway ship was caught.

  I didn’t show up on the first day.

  So Callandra did, lying about her age and promising my parents she’d study at night to finish her schooling. She was two weeks in when her mining drover fell into a magnesium crevasse.

  When I heard, I was already back in prison. And all I could think of was her when she was eight years old, the first time I’d been sent away to detention. This helpless look. Her huge brown eyes said it all.

  What have you done?

  Why do you keep leaving? Why can’t you help me?

  Vaguely, it reminds me of the girl, just as I’d left her in that room by herself. I can’t help you, I’d said. Pretty typical Fenn words. I can’t help being who I am. And I’m still so angry for being me.

  I stop walking and see the dazzling stars pass lazily across the windows, though I’m the one who’s really spinning. Perspective is a bitch.

  I sigh and turn around. It only takes me a few minutes to reach the room where I’d left her. She’s still sitting there on that hard bench, looking at her feet. Well, her feet encased in blue matrix. The ship looks like it’s eating her feet.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  Her head whips up. “You came back.”

  I smirk. “It’s not like I can leave the ship.”

  “I can’t, either.” Her face is strained with pain.

  “Let me get you unstuck. You need to eat something.”

  “I’m not stuck,” she says. “It’s okay, Cyclo. I’ll be all right.”

  The blue material slowly slithers away from her calves and ankles, until it evens out as the floor beneath her, nearly solid.

  “What was it doing?”

  “Comforting me,” she says.

  I raise my left eyebrow. “By eating you?”

  “Cyclo was infusing me with some dopamine. She knew I was sad. I needed a boost.”

  “So she dopes you up with neurotransmitters through your toes whenever you’re off? You must be pretty fragile.”

  Something about how my words bite makes her frown. “I’m fine.” She stands, still wearing that robe of hers. She needs some real clothes. “Where is the rest of the crew?”

  “You probably know better than I do. They’re in the south mess hall. But first, you should get dressed.”

  She looks down at her robe, which is stained a little from me tackling her, being the dirty space rat that I am. “All right.”

  She walks out the door and heads down the opposite hall. As I follow her, I notice how weirdly she walks. Her stride is short, like something is tethering her knees together. It’s stiff, too. I can see the boniness of her shoulders through the thin fabric of her robe. After about five minutes, she stops walking. I’m about to ask her why we’ve stopped, when I realize she’s panting.

  “Hey. What’s wrong?”

  She leans against the wall, eyes closed. “I’m not…used to this much…walking,” she says between deep breaths. “I need Cyclo. I need to sleep again.”

  “You need a steak and more exercise,” I mutter.

  She gives me a nasty look and pushes her white forelock back. Her voice is deeper now than before, calmer. “You’re rude.”

  I smile. I have no idea why, but her comment is so on point, it’s funny. I am rude.

  “Stop laughing at me,” she adds.

  I put my hands up. “Who’s laughing?”

  She keeps walking. We pass by the docking bays, the northwest mess halls, and a bunch of empty laboratories. Soon, she takes a right turn into a windowless corridor that’s pretty bare—a few doors, and fewer of the technical rooms I’d seen in the other quadrant.

  “Where are we?”

  “Northeast quadrant alpha,” she gasps. “Here. My room.” She touches the membrane door, and it shrinks away rapidly. I don’t go in.

  Already, I can see the ship’s matrix snaking up over her ankles, and the girl is getting a fuzzy look in her eyes. “Hey. Tell it to stop that.”

  “But she’ll help me breathe,” she says.

  “There’s plenty of oxygen in the ship’s air.” I point to the readouts whizzing by on my holofeed. “We’re at twenty-one percent oxygen here. Totally normal for a human. What is it with you and this ship?”

  She shrugs. “All of the crew did this. We rely on Cyclo for our recalibration.”

  “Look. I’m really hungry.” I want to say “I don’t have time for this,” but I’m starting to sound like a broken audio clip, so I keep my lips shut.

  Hana looks at her feet, and the goo recedes again. The door membrane starts to constrict closed, and I wait. Vaguely, from behind the thin membrane, I can see her shedding the robe, her pale-skinned body walking here and there, bending and putting on clothing. It’s fuzzy enough that I can’t see details but clear enough to see that she’s got curves on a straight figure, like one of those zero-g aerialists. My face flushes.

  “Oh, shut up and shut it down,” I tell my body.

  The last thing I need on this trip is a distraction. And it looks like the distraction is, unfortunately, very pretty and very weird, in a way that makes me want to spend more time with her. Except that the time left I have to live is already slipping swiftly away.

  Just my luck.

  Chapter Seven

  HANA

  I can see him on the other side of the door, pacing. Once in a while, his head tilts up and attempts to see through our membrane of separation. I cannot imagine what he thinks of me.

  I’ve always wondered what the crew thought—simple, everyday thoughts of banality. Those would be exciting for me. Do they worry about keeping their toenails trimmed? What does hunger feel like for them—it is also a knotted gnawing? Have they been to Paris in their Cyclo-supported dreams?

  And now there is this boy who holds disdain for my very existence. He’s so irritated by my weakness, which infuriates me. It’s not my fault that I’ve been safely tucked in my room for my protection. My muscles are weaker from the lack of gravity equivalencies that perhaps he’s had. Somehow, it makes me angry when I’m around him. It makes my pulse a little faster and my blood a little warmer.

  It makes me feel a little more alive.

  I’ve put on a pair of slim leggings and a loose tunic, and my hair is captured into a knot on the top of my head. My stomach rumbles, and I ache to go back into the walls for Cycl
o’s nourishment, or at least a good steaming, milky, hot bowl of seolleongtang—mother’s recipe of synthetic bone broth soup. But they want me to go eat in front of the rest of this pirate crew. Like a pig at a trough, it would seem.

  I look at the trunk full of all of our precious things. Mother never would have left these behind. Not on purpose. That is, unless she left them for me as a gift. Or a message. But these thoughts only confuse me more.

  Cyclo flashes a few colors for my benefit. Grassy green, mixed with iridescent yellow. She wants me to know she is concerned, and that she is here to be my place of safety.

  I should be more brave. Cyclo is everywhere, no matter where I go on this ship. She is here for me. I can literally sink into her at a moment’s notice if I feel unsafe. This makes me braver.

  I touch the membrane of the door, and it shrinks away. The boy, Fenn, stands at attention when he sees me.

  “Your hair looks like ice cream,” he blurts. As soon as he says it, he hastily adds, “Never mind.”

  I touch the knot of hair on my head. He probably sees my white forelock is twisted against black.

  “Mother gave me these colors. She said it would make me different from everyone she’s ever known.” I always thought that Mother wanted me to make an impression on the crew the day I was revealed. See, she might say. See how lovely her hair is. See how special I made her.

  “That seems unnecessary. Everyone is already different from everyone else.”

  “They are?” I ask.

  Fenn rolls his eyes. I believe that means that I have a lot to learn. Not much time to learn it, either, apparently—which breaks me a little. Sadness rises up like a cold hand around my throat. I would root right here and fall into the blue of the ship if I could, but this will not bring Mother back. This won’t save me right now. Fenn looks at me with an inscrutable expression. He seems somewhat sickened by my sadness, and I have no idea how to process that. But then, his eyes fall to my feet.

  “Where are your shoes?”

  “I don’t wear shoes. I cannot fathom always having something between me and Cyclo.”

  “Don’t you sit in chairs?”

  “My feet still touch the ground.”

  “Don’t you sleep on a bed?”

  “No. I sleep inside Cyclo.”

  Again, that look. He tries to find the words to respond to this, then shakes his head. “Let’s go,” he says.

  We walk a full semicircle around the alpha ring, not speaking, not looking out the windows, until I notice the scent of a wheaten product, cooked plainly.

  “The mess hall must be close.”

  “I believe so,” I say.

  “Don’t you know?” he says, stopping his walk to stare at me again.

  “Well, I have the layout of Cyclo memorized. It’s about thirty feet away. But…” I pause. “I’ve never seen this room. I’ve always been confined to my own.”

  “Always?” His left eyebrow rises again.

  “Always.”

  He takes a step back. “Is the first time you’ve even been in this hallway?” he asks, incredulous.

  I look down. It’s the same blue as the rest of the ship. But everything is new, and yet not new. I know there are crew rooms here, and a small engineering room ten feet back. But…

  “I have never been here before.”

  I say the words with shame. I am a stranger in my home, the only home I’ve known. What must it be like, to be a bee that has only ever lived within one prismatic hexagonal cell? Not seen the rest of the hive, nor touched the blue sky, or anything green or pink-petaled?

  “Didn’t you ever try to leave?”

  “No,” I say. The look on Fenn’s face is shocking. It is flooded with pity and incredulousness. Also, disgust.

  “Oh,” I say slowly. “You think I’m foolish. You think I’m…” What’s the word? “Ignorant. Unintelligent.”

  “Well…”

  “Gullible. Witless. Naive—”

  “That’s enough,” he cuts me off. “It’s not my job to figure out your life story, or how you got here.”

  “Then why do you keep asking me questions?”

  He goes silent. Down the hallway, Miki peeks her blue head out from a door.

  “There you are. Come get some dinner. We were going to send Gammand after you, it’s been so long.”

  We both walk forward. “It’s only been about thirty-five minutes,” I remark.

  “Thirty-five less minutes of my life,” Fenn says under his breath.

  This is meant as some sort of smear on me, somehow, but I don’t know how to unravel his meaning before we enter the mess hall. In the room, the three crew members sit around a vast oval table. Bowls and plates of food are scattered here and there. The Prinniad girl, Portia, sits before a bowlful of something that looks like grape diamonds and earthworms. Miki sits before a bowl of shapeless food that is very dark gray. She eats her food daintily, with a spoon that is far too small for her fist.

  “You’ve met Miki and Portia. This is Gammand Sadozai.”

  He motions to the tall young man with the creamy brown skin and dark hair. He looks human, for sure, except for a set of dark, shiny spots that run down either side of his neck. Oh, he’s Gragorian, a humanoid that has a lot of similarities to Earth humans. There has been a lot of human and Gragorian mixing in the last century, so it’s hard to tell these days who is whom. He would be handsome, but there is something about his eyes that’s unsettling. He doesn’t look at me.

  “You’re the one who shot me,” I say.

  Gammand raises an eyebrow to confirm this, with eyes still on his food. “Following orders.”

  The Prinniad steps forth. “We haven’t formally met. I am Portia Ynnatryb, of Prinnia.” She sits down again and smiles at me with big, black toothless gums. Her eyes are a stunning red, and I long to look at them closer. I take a step and start to reach for her face, when Portia raises a fist in response. Everyone’s eyes widen a little.

  I am learning that is a sign that I’m doing something not quite right, so I lower my hands.

  Fenn looks relieved. Did he think there would be bloodshed of some sort, like elephant seal males having a battle? He waves at the table. “You should eat. Here, help yourself.”

  I sit down and regarding the mush of brown and khaki porridge before me. It smells like yeast and the telltale metallic note of vitamins and synthetic protein. I pick up a spoon and dip it in, sniffing. The metallic odor is awful. I put it down, and the spoon slops onto the porridge.

  After a chew and swallow, Miki says, “Everyone has slightly different nutrient needs, but my guess is that you’re Homo sapiens, so that should do.”

  “I am Homo sapiens novum,” I say.

  “Oh. You’re a non-wild type,” Gammand says, uninterested. He means any human or humanoid that was lab-created, or wasn’t conceived “in the wild,” so to speak. There are a lot of us, apparently, in the universe, and those that aren’t tinkered with are “playing with fire,” my mother once said. Too many mutations to leave up to chance.

  “Eat,” Miki says.

  Something in her tone reminds me of Mother, so I immediately pick up the spoon and shovel a portion into my mouth. It’s pasty and gooey and tastes cloyingly sweet. There’s tangy iron and chalky calcium supplements in here, plus fat-soluble vitamins that are mixed in with the lipid globules. I force it down. I relentlessly gulp spoonful after spoonful until I realize that everyone in the room is staring at me.

  “What?” I say, mouth full of porridge.

  “You’re very obedient,” Miki says. It’s not a compliment, as evidenced by the disgust on her face.

  “Don’t take it personally,” Fenn says, smiling. “We’re all lawbreakers here.” He elbows Miki, and Miki elbows him back, and he nearly falls off his chair, she’s so strong.

  “But
she said to eat,” I say, pointing at Miki.

  “Oh, good blurtzh,” Portia says. “What are we supposed to do with this?”

  “Eat it,” I say. How can she not understand that?

  “She means you,” Fenn whispers to me.

  Oh. What are they going to do with me. As in, I’m a problem. I’m in the way. Mother isn’t here to speak for me, to tell me what to do. And Cyclo cares for me, but she doesn’t make decisions for me. Not really. I know what I want. I want my family back, and Cyclo needs my help in a way I’ve never imagined. But I don’t know how to fix either problem. So I stay quiet. It doesn’t occur to me that they are waiting for me to speak.

  “Nothing. She’ll eat with us, and we’ll make sure she doesn’t get in the way. Beyond that, nothing,” Gammand says.

  Nothing. That’s the answer, as they all ignore me and dig into the terrible slop they call food.

  No one has told them to eat it, either. I can’t understand that.

  When I dreamed about the day that I could step outside my little room, I imaged vast amounts of information coming my way, tumbling in waves of faces, words, blinks, and smiles. New human interactions. New cultural customs to learn. Happy experiences to store in my memory. Learning from people, instead of a vid screen. Now that I’ve set myself free, I’m finding that it’s true—I’m learning a lot. But I’m learning that there’s a lot I don’t understand.

  “What research are you doing?” I ask, unable to pick up my spoon anymore. I’m already full, anyway, bowl half eaten.

  Portia, Gammand, Miki, and Fenn all look at each other. Fenn shrugs.

  “It’s not classified,” Fenn says. “We have certain requirements to achieve, or we won’t…succeed.” So he starts explaining, as do the rest. It’s dizzying—mapping out all the areas of Cyclo, measuring levels of thousands of compounds, culturing all the known symbiotic organisms, like bacteria, on the ship…and that’s only in one week. In the next two weeks, there are tests to perform, more measurements, more testing. It’s dizzying. Fenn stops there.

  “And then what?” I ask.

  “And then, it’s over,” he says, hollowly. All the other crew look elsewhere.