She pinched the flat of the blade between her fingers and held the handle out to him. “Want to cut?” she asked. He took it and looked away, uncomfortable. That was fine. Shan Ellison made up the third of their group. When all the rest had formed up, Elvi Okoye opened a volumetric display with an image of two idealized frogs to match the ones on their trays.
“Okay,” Elvi said. “So one of the things that we see in both Laconia and Earth biomes is water. And there are animals that have found an advantage to living part of their lives in the water and part out. We call them amphibians. Both of your frogs are amphibians. And because water is chemically identical in both worlds, and the adult forms that we have here need to breathe air, there are some problems they both faced as they evolved. Some solutions look very similar, and some of their strategies could not have been more different. So let’s start with looking at the Earth frog’s lungs. Each team should make the first incision right here—”
Slowly, step by step, they began unmaking the frogs. Despite herself, Teresa found the process interesting. The way the Laconian frog cycled water in and out of its chest cavity to do the work that the Earth frog did with a diaphragm. The way the feeding mechanisms—mouth and esophagus for the Earth frog, chambered mouth and gut for the Laconian—served the same functions in different ways. She felt like it was all telling her something deeper than just biology. Something about herself and the people around her. Something about whether she could ever belong.
She realized she had been drifting off when Connor spoke to her again. His voice was quiet and tentative. “My mom.”
Teresa glanced up at Elvi. She was across the room, talking to one of the other groups.
“What about her,” Teresa asked.
“I was just saying that my mom, she’s . . . You know. She watches the newsfeeds. With everything that’s going on.”
He glanced at her, and then away like he was shy. Like he was saying something shameful. Shan Ellison didn’t speak, but watched with the intensity of someone expecting violence. It felt illicit and strange, like he’d said the first part of some password, and she didn’t know the rest.
Then, a heartbeat later, she did. He was asking her to tell him something reassuring. His parents were scared. He was scared. And because they were in peer class together, and she was her father’s daughter, he wanted her to tell him that everything was going to be all right. That she, knowing what she knew, wasn’t afraid and that he shouldn’t be either.
She licked her lips and waited to see what would come out of them.
“She shouldn’t spend too much time on them,” Teresa said. “I know everything looks really scary, but it’s not that big a problem. Dad has the best minds in the empire working for him, and they’re learning more every day. Everyone always knew there’d be setbacks.”
“Yeah,” Connor said. “Everyone knew.”
So she’d lied. That was interesting. She’d told him what he wanted to hear, and it wasn’t even because she wanted to protect him or keep him safe. It was just easier. She understood now why adults lied to children. It wasn’t love. It was exhaustion. And she was like them now. They’d eaten her.
“Are you okay?” Shan asked, and it seemed like her voice was closer than she was. Like the girl wasn’t talking from across the table, but whispering into Teresa’s ear. It sounded soft and weirdly intimate. I’m fine, Teresa said. Only the words didn’t come out.
She had the sense that she needed to leave now. That if she could get a drink of water and lie down for a minute, her breath wouldn’t seem so loud in her ears. She felt herself walking. At the door, someone’s arm appeared beside her, startling her. It was her own. She moved the hand, fascinated by her control of it married with the absolute emotional certainty that it wasn’t her arm.
Elvi Okoye was there too, like something from a dream. She said something, asked something, but before Teresa could answer, she’d forgotten what it was.
I wonder if I’m dying, Teresa thought, and the idea wasn’t unpleasant.
For a while, Teresa lost herself. A flurry of sensory impressions—voices, movement. Someone was touching her hands and her neck. A bright light shone in her eyes. When she came back, she was lying down. The room was familiar, but until she heard voices she knew, she couldn’t quite place it.
“I’m not drawing any conclusions,” the doctor said. It wasn’t Dr. Cortázar. It was her old pediatrician, Dr. Klein. And he was talking to Elvi Okoye. “What I’m saying is she’s dehydrated and malnourished. Maybe she got that way because there’s some kind of uptake problem. Maybe she’s had an allergic reaction to something. Or her stress levels are so high, she’s somaticizing. Or—and I’m just saying maybe here—she’s been starving herself.”
She was in the State Building’s medical wing, on a gurney. There was a line connecting an autodoc to a vein at the back of her hand. When she shifted, she could feel the needle under her skin and the coolness in her arm where it was feeding fluid into her.
“I skipped breakfast,” Teresa yelled, and her voice sounded normal again. “It’s my fault. It was stupid. I just lost track of time.”
They were at her side before she’d finished speaking. Dr. Klein was a youngish man with wavy brown hair and green eyes that reminded her of Trejo. She liked him because he’d given her sweets after her checkups when she was young and because he’d never condescended to her. Now he was looking at the system readout from the autodoc and trying not to meet her eyes. Elvi, leaning on her cane, was ashen. She looked directly into Teresa’s eyes, and Teresa stared back.
“It was the frogs,” Teresa lied. It came easily. “Between not eating first and cutting them up, I got light-headed.”
“Maybe,” Klein said. “But if there is an underlying gastrointestinal issue, we should get on it quickly. There’s some microbial life on Laconia that we’re seeing fungal-model infections with. It’s not something to take lightly.”
“It’s not what’s going on. I promise,” Teresa said. And then, “Could I talk to Dr. Okoye for a minute?”
There was a moment’s hesitation that she couldn’t quite read, like Klein might refuse. But then . . .
“Of course.” He nodded to Elvi. “Major,” he said, and walked away.
When he was out of earshot, Teresa whispered, her voice harsh, “What are you doing bringing him into this? We’re not supposed to be around other people. Dr. Cortázar is my doctor.”
“He’s not a physician,” Elvi said. “His doctorate’s in nanoinformatics. He shouldn’t be practicing medicine any more than I should.”
“But he knows what’s going on. Do you want Dr. Klein asking around about why I’m under so much stress? You want him to figure it out?”
There was a joy to throwing all the things they’d said to her back at them. A delight in seeing Elvi flinch. She watched the woman struggle with something, and then reach a decision. Elvi sat on the end of the gurney, sighing as she took the weight off her leg. She rubbed her hand across her forehead.
“Listen,” she said. “I’m not supposed to tell you this, but you cannot trust Dr. Cortázar. I’m almost positive he intends to hurt you. Maybe kill you.” Then, a moment later, “Probably kill you.”
She felt a wave of vertigo, and the autodoc threw up a warning. It was just that she was hungry. That she needed water, that was all. Teresa shook her head. “Why?”
Elvi took a deep breath and spoke softly. “I think to give a well-known subject to the repair drones and see what they do. He has two others, but he didn’t have the kind of scans and prep work that he has with you. That and . . . he wants what you and your father were going to have. He wants to live forever too.”
Like the frogs, Teresa thought, and fought back cruel, despairing laughter. He wants to treat me just like the frogs. Nature eats babies all the time.
Holden had known too. He’d tried to tell her. That was two different people who’d warned her. Two different people who’d discovered the same thing. Elvi was holding her hand. The one that didn’t have a needle in it.
“I’ve been trying to keep him away from you,” Elvi said. “But Cortázar’s very important. Without him . . . your father’s recovery gets a lot harder. Everything gets a lot harder.”
“We have to tell Trejo,” Teresa said.
“He knows,” Elvi said, her voice dark. “I told him. We’re doing what we can. But you should know too. You should protect yourself.”
“How?”
Elvi started to say something, stopped, started again. There were tears in her eyes, but her voice was steady. “I don’t know. I’m in over my head here.”
“Yeah,” Teresa said. “Me too.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Alex
You should rest,” Caspar said. “How many double shifts are you now?”
“I don’t know,” Alex said, leaning his back against the galley bulkhead. “But I can’t see that one more’s going to kill me.”
“Isn’t until it is,” Caspar said. “But that’s not even all of it. As hard as you’ve been working, you’re going to start making mistakes.”
Alex scowled at the boy. He knew Caspar hadn’t meant it as an insult. Knowing was what kept him from being angry. Or from showing it at least.