That was before Hydra. In the pre-outbreak days it seemed like almost everyone had at least one amateur app on their panel. An aesthetic tweak, a stimulant. But Cartaxus wiped that code from the panels of everyone who entered their bunkers, so if Marcus and his family showed up at Homestake, they’d have to delete the hacked code keeping Eloise alive. It’s a ridiculous requirement. What use are airlocks and protection from the virus when your ten-year-old daughter is dead?
I look up as my audio tech picks up Amy stirring in her bedroom down the hall. Footsteps pad across her room, and something heavy scrapes the floor. Her door creaks open, and her figure appears in the hallway, hunched and trembling.
‘Hello?’ she calls out, her voice low and rasping.
‘Amy?’ I ask. ‘It’s Catarina Agatta. Chelsea said you weren’t feeling well.’
She shuffles closer, her face hidden in shadow. A thick grey blanket is slung over her shoulders. She’s shivering, her breath coming in painful gasps.
‘Amy?’ I shift Eloise off my lap. ‘Amy, are you OK?’
‘Voices,’ she says. ‘I heard voices.’
‘That’s Marcus and Chelsea. They’re doing a surgery …’ I trail off, stunned into silence as she steps into the light.
Her eyes are sunken, her mouth twisted down horribly on one side, her skin dotted with open, weeping sores. Her scalp is almost bare, a few stringy white strands falling from a scabbed, bleeding skull that sports rudimentary horns.
She looks like a monster.
‘Amy?’ I choke out. The mutated wraith in the hallway is nothing like the laughing, pretty woman I remember. Her spine is twisted, her hands stretched and curved horribly by some butchered chimpanzee gene shoved in the wrong place. My eyes race across her body, spotting the signs of at least a dozen rogue genes. Python, rat, bovine – all hacked and shoved together without any understanding of what they’d do to her.
In all my life, all my time with the Skies, I’ve never seen anyone so mutated.
Eloise scrambles up. ‘Mommy, you’re not supposed to be up. You’re sick.’
‘I heard voices,’ she says. She steps forward, and the blanket slips from her shoulders. Iron manacles gleam around her wrists, chained to a ring around her waist.
‘Amy,’ I whisper. ‘What happened to you?’
Her eyes snap to mine, and I step back instinctively. She looks wild suddenly. She stalks closer, her mouth curling up in a sneer.
‘Amy?’
She lunges for me, snarling, revealing a mouth of yellowed fangs.
I skitter back into the couch, scrambling over it to the wall. The chain around her waist snags tight, jerking her body back. She growls, twisting in the restraints like an animal caught in a trap. Her eyes are flat and inhuman, locked on my neck.
‘Stop it, Mommy!’ Eloise shouts.
‘She’s a Lurker,’ I gasp, grabbing Eloise’s shoulders. ‘You can’t keep her here. It’s not safe, sweetheart. This is the Wrath.’
‘No, Mommy’s just sick,’ Eloise says. ‘She’s getting better, but she needs to rest.’
‘Stay away from her, Eloise.’ My eyes dart to the heavy chain slung between Amy’s hands. ‘Who did this to her?’
Marcus swings open the kitchen door. His face gleams with sweat, his plastic apron splattered with blood. ‘Your friend has stabilized,’ he says, wiping his forehead with the back of his wrist. ‘I removed the bullet and cauterized the wound.’ His eyes cut to his snarling wife. He stiffens. ‘Chelsea, Eloise,’ he barks. ‘Get your mother back into her room and lock the door.’
The girls guide their mother back down the hallway. Somehow Amy doesn’t seem to want to attack her daughters like she did me. She’s still talking, so she hasn’t lost herself completely to the madness yet, but the slide is inevitable. It won’t be safe to keep her here for long, even chained up and locked away.
Marcus wipes his bloodied hands on his apron. I just stare at him, my heart pounding. ‘Did you do that to her, Marcus? Mutate her like that?’
‘No,’ he says, his face falling. ‘No, child, I didn’t do that. She downloaded the code herself when she realized she was slipping. It worked, but the cost to her body was too high, and the Wrath started coming through anyway, so I turned the damned cure off and chained her up to keep us safe. Now I’m just trying to heal her, waiting for safer code.’
My head spins. ‘What code? There’s no cure for the Wrath.’
‘There are several,’ Marcus says, ‘but none are guaranteed, and as you can see, they have their side effects. People are working on this all over the world, Catarina. We’re not the only family that’s seen a loved one slip.’
‘But that’s crazy.’ I rub my forehead, wincing through the migraine. ‘The Wrath is a neurological condition – you can’t cure it with code. Gentech doesn’t change people’s brains.’
‘Not yet,’ Marcus says, ‘but it will one day. You of all people should know that. People said it was impossible to code robust antivirals until your father did it. It just takes time and research. We’re getting closer every day. The code Amy downloaded was written by thousands of families, all trying to save their loved ones from the Wrath.’
I slump back down on the couch, letting my head drop into my hands. This kind of coding is the essence of the Skies – no rules, no trials, no safeguards – but I haven’t seen it mutate anyone as badly as this before. Science has a long history of self-experimentation, and I’m sure Amy knew the risks she was taking, but the sight of her scabbed horns sets my teeth on edge.
It’s butchery. It’s inhumane. But Cartaxus is no better. The photograph of a five-year-old Cole with scars on his chest is proof of that. Did my father really do that to him? My skull pounds with pain. I just want to wake up and start this day over again.
‘You have a migraine, don’t you? Are you still getting them?’
‘Yeah,’ I say, rubbing the back of my head. I visited Marcus a while back when I ran out of painkillers. He didn’t have any pills, only gentech code I couldn’t use. ‘It’s probably just stress, but it’s the worst I’ve had in ages.’
‘Seeing someone get shot tends to be stressful, yes,’ Marcus says, swinging open a cupboard beside the couch. ‘Chelsea and I did a supply run recently, and … Ah, here we go.’ He pulls out a tray of syringes, lifting one up triumphantly. ‘Analgesic, basic dose. I only have the injectable kind, because it’s formulated for arthritis, but it should take the edge off your migraine.’
I eye the syringes warily, but pull my sleeve up over my shoulder. With painkillers, I’ll be able to drive. The jeep can do most of the work, and Cole can sleep in the back. We might not make it far, but we can get on the road tonight.
‘Thank you, Marcus. You don’t know how much this is going to help.’
He slides the needle into my shoulder. It kicks in instantly – a bucket of water tossed over a fire, extinguishing the blaze in my skull. I close my eyes, tilting my head back, lost in the sudden joyous weightlessness that comes with the absence of pain.
‘That’s great …’ I murmur, sinking into the couch. All over my body, my nerves are flickering off, falling silent, like a blackout spreading through a city. My lips tingle, my eyelids strangely heavy as I try to open them, to push myself up from the couch …
But I can’t move.