“Really?”
River’s brow draws down. “Yeah. I was a pretty good source of Violence-rich blood, but then I attacked Leanne one night and she barely stopped me, so…if you’ve ever wondered what Frankenstein’s monster felt like, I can tell you. Anyway, now we have to take volunteers before we vaccinate them. If you’d like to watch a video of how it goes, I have one.”
Ella nods, and River pulls out their phone and flicks through it before turning it around to show Ella a YouTube video from a few weeks ago. A college-aged guy in a Star Wars shirt and skinny jeans sits at this very table, and River goes through the exact series of actions they’ve just described. The guy doesn’t look scared or worried, though. The whole time, he’s staring at River like they’re a movie star, babbling incoherently as the “NeverEnding Story” duet from Stranger Things plays. In the end, Leanne holds up a petri dish with the blood smeared over it, and River gives the guy a cookie.
“See? No big deal.”
“Do I get a cookie?”
Finally, River laughs, a big, friendly laugh. “You can have two cookies.”
Ella holds out her arm, still freaking out a little but aware that…well, shit. Why not do this? If they wanted to, they could hurt her, bind her, overpower her, bleed her dry. Just like with her dad, she’s stuck in their power in this tiny space, but unlike her dad, they care about her feelings and consent and are worried about her emotions. They would be sad to let her walk away, but they would do it because they’re both good people.
“I’m ready.”
The process is swift and professional. The scent of the alcohol takes her back to childhood trips to the pediatrician, but it’s gone quickly, and River cleverly blocks her from watching as the cut happens. She feels it, a sudden hot line, but then there are two swipes and River is cleaning up the wound and putting on a bandage covered in palm trees.
“See? Not so bad,” River says.
“My cookies?”
Ella hates to admit it, but she’s feeling a little woozy. At least she can’t smell the blood. After what happened with Uncle Chad, she’s pretty sure that hot, coppery, drenching reek is going to be a problem the next time she encounters it.
Leanne, already dressed in her clean suit, whistles as she backs into her plastic room with two petri dishes, and Ella sees bright lights go on and hears machinery whir to life. River places two Oreos on a napkin in front of her like she’s back in kindergarten, and she chews happily, glad to feel her stomach settle back down.
“So what’s she doing back there?”
River glances back to the plastic room. “That used to be the bedroom, you know? Big, comfortable bed. But now it’s her lab, and we sleep on the single bunk beds.” They refocus with a sigh. “As to what she’s doing, it’s a little over my head. Growing a pure culture, settling it with a centrifuge she nicked from her old lab’s trash closet, washing it, inactivating it using my old sous vide machine—RIP, perfect steaks!—performing literal magic, and when all that’s done, she checks it a dozen times with her microscope, rubs a clean needle in it, and gives you a tattoo.”
River rolls up their sleeve to show a raised scar about the size of a thumbprint on their upper arm. It does look like Nana’s smallpox scar, but it’s got a little bit of color, tiny dots of blue. “We add the pigment like a signature. We can’t give you a fancy numbered card, but we can make your scar special.”
“And then I won’t have the Violence anymore?”
River shakes their head. “Nope. You might feel a little weird for a few days as your body learns to fight it off. Lots of people get a little fever and just want to hang in bed, which is totally normal. But then you can never get it again. Leanne says it’s unlikely to mutate. It’s not like Covid or the flu, changing all the time. If we can spread it far enough, it’ll just…go away. That’s what’s so frustrating. It’s a relatively easy cure, but because of capitalism and bureaucracy and outright theft, what should be free for everyone is suddenly the main weapon in class warfare.”
“What do you mean?”
River looks deadly serious and like they’ve given this a lot of thought. “Let’s say you’re super rich and you don’t like brown people or poor people. And then let’s say a pandemic strikes Florida, the South, Central America, Africa. And you can suddenly put a lot of those people you don’t like in jail for no reason—in jail, and therefore into for-profit prisons. Or you can let them kill each other in the privacy of their own homes. You can deport people you don’t like, forcibly sterilize people you don’t like.”
“Wait, what?”
River shakes their head. “You probably haven’t done a deep dive on the prison system, but it’s not pretty. It’s a tool of oppression. Anyway, they could’ve solved this already. The cure costs almost nothing. Every lab in the country has the necessary equipment. AP kids could make this shit in high school. But instead, they sell it to the highest bidder and wipe all mention of it from the web and the news.” They look directly into Ella’s eyes. “All on purpose, because it serves their interests.”
“Shit.”
It’s all Ella knows to say. She barely feels like a person right now, after all she’s been through, but her mind is reeling. It’s like a puzzle slowly coming together, pieces falling into place to make a familiar picture that she’d rather not see.
What they’re going through? Her mom, her, her sister—much like with Covid, it didn’t have to be this way.
In a different country, in different hands, Olaf would be alive, and they would all be at home…
Well.
Home wasn’t that great, anyway.
If she could just be with her mom and Brooklyn somewhere safe, with everyone healthy, maybe that would be a better place to be. Or at least a better place to start from.
In a year, she’ll be in college—or that was the plan. Probably University of Florida, since it’s close and she can get a scholarship. She’s been dreaming of the dorms in the way most people dream of winning the lottery, something beautiful and far away and impossible. Just the thought of a quiet night with air-conditioning is like aloe from the fridge, poured on a sunburn. She’s been so busy running, so busy staying alive that she hasn’t thought about that dream in weeks.