Toxic Read online

  Hana. Everything that Cyclo and I do for you, we do for your benefit. We both put ourselves in danger to keep you well, alive, and hidden. It is all for you. In the real world, people often do things with the hope of a future payment. Money, often. Or they hope that the person will pay them back someday—even with just a thank you, or a smile. Everything in the universe has a price, Hana, but you.

  Everything has a price.

  But I want to help, only to help. Not to make myself more acceptable to a wealth of strange crew members, which has been my only goal for so long.

  Help him, I tell Cyclo. Do it.

  I feel the buzzing tingle as she changes the chemical content around us. My own consciousness perks up with the burst of oxygen. She’s pushing oxygen into his lungs, diffusing it through his alveoli, into his skin. I let go and move behind him. Fenn is searching for my hands again, and as I reach around his torso with my arms, he clasps them, winding my arms around him. His hands won’t let go, still clawing to keep me close, still frantic. My right hand is flat against his rib cage, over his heart. Vaguely, I think: I have never touched another human like this. His heartbeats are erratic and weak, his skin almost feverish. I make sure not to touch his injured shoulder and arm, letting Cyclo’s gel rub its healing chemicals into him.

  As I cradle him, waiting for him to calm down, and reading the beats of his heart like a poem, I have a moment to think, again: I have my arms around a boy. A person. My mother’s own words invade my mind, bringing with them the customs and mores that I’m always forgetting.

  He is naked. I am naked. And my hands are clasping his body close to me, and his hands are holding on to mine. Though weak and shaking, he doesn’t let go. If hands could speak plainly, they would say this: please don’t leave me. And yet, in a single second, a flurry of strange longings and warm sensations flood my mind and body.

  I have my arms around a boy.

  Fenn suddenly starts to writhe in panic. Don’t panic, I think, but he can’t understand me. His legs buck and kick, and he spins around, snatching my wrists in his hands. Within the blue, he looks at me. Wonderingly. His chest convulses as he tries to breathe, but it’s impossible—there is no air to push in and out. Only Cyclo, inside, outside, everywhere. My hair is in a waved, tangly mess around my eyes, and I ask, without asking, for Cyclo to control it. Cyclo pulls my locks cleanly away from my face. His mouth is an open scream. I take my hand and touch his face and try to tell him.

  It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.

  I motion to my face, to the fact that I’m not breathing and I’m all right. I make a rolling gesture with my palm to relax. And in that everlasting moment of panic, he finally registers that his breathlessness is gone. It’s only the claustrophobia of having Cyclo encasing him, and of being suspended.

  And then, face-to-face, now that the danger is behind us, it comes back to me in a crashing wave that I am naked in front of this boy, and those fleeting sensations of warmth within my body begin to return. My face goes hot, and my hands jerk away from his. Fenn, too, looks down and realizes that we are unclothed. His eyes go wide, and he blinks with sheer embarrassment.

  Cyclo! I say. Can you…oh my God…can you increase the opacity around us?

  But that is not necessary for his oxygenation—

  Oh, Cyclo, just do it!

  In seconds, the matrix around me dulls to a solid blue, so that we look as if we’re floating in two opaque, navy-blue bags. I relax and blink slowly. Fenn, too, looks as if he could exhale in relief except that he can’t exhale. He smiles a little, though, and blinks sleepily.

  He will live. As he drifts off, his hand reaches out to me. I let my fingers entwine with his, and just as he pulls me a little closer, and the two blue bags of thick gel hiding our bodies bumping against each other, he mouths:

  I’m sorry.

  Thank you.

  Fenn drifts off to unconsciousness, his hand still holding mine.

  He’s asleep.

  Oh.

  I’ve saved his life, haven’t I?

  The enormity of what I’ve done stays with me, buoys my bravery. I stay awake for as long as I can, thinking and thinking some more. I wonder over the warmth of his hand in mine. It hurts my temples to try to imagine how to save myself. I want to cry at the thought of dying too soon. But it won’t be long before I’ll make some demands. If I’m to find Mother and find out why she left me, and how to save Cyclo and myself, I shall have to act in ways I’ve never dreamed. I shall try to save the both of us.

  But for now, we shall sleep. And as I, too, surrender to the blur of slumber, I wonder: why do they never put this in the vids, how wonderful it is to be unconscious, hands entwined with such a boy?

  …

  Sleep within Cyclo is like no other kind—on a planet, for example, or even in hypersleep on the Eless ships that run ferries across the Alcyone nebula. They say that normal human sleep is quite an endeavor. Hormones must be regulated, neurons rested during sleep cycles and REM stages, fluids re-equilibrated. So much work. Cyclo takes care of my body for me, as she did with everyone on this bioship when it was time to hibernate.

  They say that normal sleep is a vacation from sensation. You don’t smell, you don’t taste, you don’t feel. You have no concept of the passage of time. Of course, you can dream all sorts of fantastical things, but they could be nightmares where monsters consume you alive or you’re stuck in prehistoric tar pits. Cyclo curates our dreams to maximize restorative sleep.

  And so, I dream of Earth. Of cool lagoons with jeweled fish, and my ancestors clothed in pale-pink hanbok dresses for a visit to the temple. Mother’s favorite time period was early- and mid-twentieth–century Korea, and it shows up in my dreams and habits as such. They feed me fruit-embedded yaksik, sticky and sweet. I can run through endless paths flanked by honey-scented meadows, while a glittering dragonfly diadem adorns me. Sometimes, I dream of knitting or crocheting for hours on end, creating soft sweaters with twisted cables that would fit a hippopotamus. But during this hibernation spell, the adventure has been different. Usually, I am alone in my dreams.

  This time, Fenn has been with me all along.

  My body stretches inside the matrix, set at an ambient temperature that is blood-warm, like my own. Though the matrix is gel-like, it doesn’t feel wet. Visitors to our ship are always surprised by this, Mother tells me. Water is only wet when you’re dry, but when you’re underwater, wet means nothing because it’s everything. But when I stretch, I feel long fingers knit into mine. I am still holding hands with Fenn. I like this; I like how he feels like an extension of myself. My thumb touches his wrist and notes his pulse—a quiet, insistent thrum of defiance.

  Waking up takes a little while. It is not as simple as opening your eyes and pushing off a futon or a bedstead. This is what they used to call those things you sleep on. Bedstead. Not steadbed. I read about it once, in a real book that wasn’t digital; it had a binding. Binding! As if books needed restraint because they might flee.

  I try to calm myself. Sometimes, claustrophobia sets in just as you become more aware of how encased you are. I hope that Fenn doesn’t panic. He is sleeping; he is calm. I reach for my pearl drop necklace and relax.

  All this time, Cyclo has been nourishing us through our skin, so we haven’t felt hungry or thirsty. She’s pulled out our toxins, so there is no need for elimination. She’s oxygenated us, so there’s been no breathing. Slowly, she changes the chemistry of the matrix around our skin so that our oxygen levels drop. This makes me slightly air-hungry and readies me for my first breath. Under my fingertips, Fenn stirs. The matrix cools around my skin. I shiver, and the gel shimmies around me. And then I open my eyes.

  Inside Cyclo’s matrix, I see a translucent watery blue color, dotted with flecks of iridescence. The matrix is thinning, meaning that she is pushing us to the surface. I see Fenn, so very close. His face is at pea
ce, his hair floating slightly within the gel. Stuck within the wall, I can see my room within the ship. Here is my black lacquered box of possessions, my table and chair, Mother’s shelves of books, and the cobbled-together kitchenette of real wood and iron.

  Our bodies are completely bare but still hidden in the opaque blue that Cyclo has fashioned for us. I am relieved, and this is a change for me. Nakedness never bothered me before. I did not always clothe myself as a child. Then, I often lived my waking hours “bare as a bear cub,” as Mother would say. Cyclo didn’t care, and I didn’t, but when my body began changing several years ago, Mother insisted that I try to be more civilized.

  “Why?” I had asked. “Cyclo doesn’t need clothes.”

  “Cyclo is a ship, and a different creature, with different rules.” At this, Cyclo had glowed bright blue in assent, or perhaps thankfulness that she didn’t need to don underwear. Mother had crossed her arms (this, I have learned, is a warning sign). I still remember her that day, clad in snow-white pants, shirt, and her long black hair in a knot on her head, flecked with exclamations of silver hair.

  “We don’t need clothes. Cyclo keeps the temperature comfortable,” I had countered. Naked, at age eleven, I was climbing Cyclo’s walls, where she had made firm handholds and footholds for me. My white forelock had fallen into my face, obscuring my vision. “There are no blizzards on the ship, or sandstorms, or—”

  “Hana.” My mother had cut me off. “It’s time you learned to be more…normal. Humans wear clothes. You’ve read books and seen the historical vids. The bare body is not meant to be seen when you’re around other people.”

  “But I’m never around other people, ever.” I was upside down on the ceiling by then. Cyclo was nervous for me and sucked my fists and feet into her matrix so I wouldn’t fall.

  “That’s enough, Hana. It’s the custom.”

  The custom. She says this often, as a way to end arguments.

  Hana, you should eat with a fork or chopsticks. Let me show you. It’s the custom.

  Hana, you must stop burping your words. I understand it’s fun, but no one does this. It’s the custom.

  When I was a child, I’d say a word over and over again, and it would lose all meaning. Custom. Custom. Custom. Cuss-tom. Tum Kuss. Backward, it was more entertaining. I’d brought this up to Mother, who simply said, “Hana.” And that was the end to it. I’d stopped exploring words in such ways for years. I’d stopped questioning the word “custom” because of her.

  But there is no Mother here.

  There is Fenn. There is no one to tell me that this boy before me, hand in mine, is an aberration I shouldn’t allow in my sphere. I know, in my marrow, that Mother would not approve. And yet, here he is.

  And he is waking.

  Chapter Ten

  FENN

  I have the oddest dream. Odd, because it’s so real I could truly taste and touch and smell everything, all at once.

  I dream of my home planet, Ipineq, where the grass is purple and fields of orchid-like chartreuse flowers stretch to the mountaintops of the Fifth Country. The sky is a golden-orange color from the iron rising from the dunes past the Dry Lakes. Callandra is still very little, long before the accident.

  She’s small. Really small. At four years old, she has the body of an Earth toddler, but with the large cranium and wide open, understanding eyes of a child much older. She wears a fluttering dress of gray over her light brown skin, and her little legs are bowed from the extra gravity here, her hip joints already stressed in a bad way. Though human, her body isn’t adapted to living on Ipineq. In my dream, she doesn’t yet know that I’ll leave soon and will grow an entire foot in one year after I flee to become a thief in training on the fastest pirate ship in the Pleiades.

  All she sees is perfection in her older brother.

  “Look,” she says, pointing. “The trixxa gulls are migrating.” Long, spindly creatures with four-foot wingspans cruise the thermals high above us.

  “Mom and Dad say you want to fly, too.”

  Callandra shrugs. She won’t look me in the eye. That’s so her—not wanting to hurt my feelings. She says, “Mom and Dad say there’s no money for the pilot’s academy.”

  “I’ll get you the money.”

  “No, Fenn.” She reaches for my hand. “Stay with me, on Ipineq.”

  But on Ipineq, I’m a failure. It’s why there was no money for Callandra—they’ve used it all getting me into home programs and out of a juvenile incarceration center. Home programs that, unfortunately, I’m failing out of because they are tedious and boring and I know everything already. Just not the way they want me to know it.

  You must memorize the algorithm in this manner, they say.

  I know a shortcut. There’s a bypass formula—

  You must memorize the algorithm this way, they repeat.

  But that’s so ridiculous, it’s a waste of time, why should I—

  And then my holofeed tells me, in spectacularly flashing 3D red, that I now have earned two demerits for “Belligerence and Noncompliance.”

  And I count the days until I can break another law and get the hell out of here. I’ll pay Callandra back. I know I will.

  Callandra tugs at my shirt. “Fenn. It’s time.”

  “Time for what?” I say, distracted. Annoyed. I was always annoyed at Callandra, though she wasn’t annoying. It was all me. Always me. I need to get out of here. God, I need to leave.

  “It’s time, Fenn. Time to wake up.”

  Wake up.

  Wake up.

  A hand clasps mine. Gently. Was it always there? It feels delicate but large, like a grown girl, but tugs insistently. Is it Callandra’s hand? Did she age in my dreams? But no, this is something far more real. And I begin to feel things I was unaware of.

  A liquid-solid, body-warm, surrounding me. Suspending me. I want to breathe, but when I expand my rib cage, it only fills more with the same stuff around me. It’s suffocating, though I’m not short of breath. And there is something else.

  A hand, soft and delicate, gently touching my shoulder. A shoulder that no longer hurts.

  I open my eyes, and I see black and white hair floating just beyond my field of vision. I look down and see Hana blinking before me. She’s encased up to her shoulders in a vague, gelatinous sack of solid navy blue. As am I.

  And then I remember it all—being attacked by the ship, the searing pain of burned skin, and then being sucked into the wall with Hana. Having my clothes tugged off me. The horrific feeling of oxygen starvation, squeezing my gut. Holding her arms around me—and I hadn’t let anyone embrace me in years. Her eyes, pleading for me to stop fighting. I’d finally calmed, and the feeling of asphyxiation disappeared. I must have fallen unconscious after that.

  And miraculously, I am not dead.

  I blink, which is such a weird sensation when encased in this gel. Blinking eyes and eyelashes aren’t meant to meet resistance. We’re deep within the matrix of the ship. I see the hard white bone-like endoskeleton about me. It’s a grid of holes that look like a dead sea coral or something. We’re suspended in a pocket of what feels like a hole of matrix-filled bone. Hana pulls slightly against my hand, only enough so that she can float to my side. It’s a slow dance, as we’re not in water. More like water in extreme slow motion. Her fingers stay threaded through mine. Somehow, I can see Hana perfectly well.

  Her hair is floating, trapped in the gel around us, and it softly sways in front of her face. I release a hand from hers and push it out of the way so I can see her face better, and my fingertips brush her cheek.

  She closes her eyes at my touch.

  Suddenly, I want to kiss her so very badly. I pull a tiny bit closer to her, and she opens her eyes, looks at mine, looks at my lips. She doesn’t push away.

  And just when we are only a fraction of an inch apart—a sudden and despera
te air-hunger invades my body.

  What’s happening? I’d only just gotten used to the idea that inside Cyclo’s matrix I don’t need to breathe air, when I’m hit with an urge to do exactly that, right now.

  I push away and flail my arms, but she reaches out to grasp my wrist. My wounded shoulder and upper back feel tight, but there’s no pain. Hana seems to understand what I’m feeling. Her body glides ahead of me, and I’m kind of wishing she wasn’t wearing that bag of navy blue so I could peek at the curve of her spine and elsewhere. The beautiful elsewhere. There’s a brightness where she’s leading me, between arches and inner corridors of the ship’s skeleton. I start to get a knot in my chest from the lack of oxygen, and it tightens quickly.

  Soon, I see her little kitchen coming into focus, and some garments that have been piled up near the wall. I recognize my work vest and pants, and my card of nanobots is lying neatly atop them. Good. Hopefully they’re still working. And hopefully the bot I launched inside myself has gotten some useful readouts, too. This was a psychedelic experience I’m sure Doran can’t wait to investigate.

  Hana lets go of my wrist, and I’m left hanging behind her as I see her touch the membrane of the matrix, pop one hand and then the other through, before stepping lightly down. She emerges perfectly naked but quickly puts on some clothes as I draw closer. I hope she doesn’t turn around and just spectate while I emerge fully bare. That would be even more embarrassment than I can handle.

  She turns abruptly to face away from me. Good.

  One by one, I push my hands through the membrane, and it breaks, pulling away completely from my skin. It doesn’t leave so much as a residue behind. I get one foot out, and I’m gently lowered so I make contact with the ground. My face breaks the membrane, and I can feel the matrix withdraw from my ears, my nostrils, my throat, every square centimeter of my lungs. I gag and bend over, coughing. But it feels so good to be breathing air, instead of blue goo. I inhale and exhale deeply, as if for the first time. Before long, I get another foot on the ground, and the blue matrix is completely behind me. I collapse to my knees, coughing and shaking.