I look down, surprised. ‘My arm? It’s fine. How are you? You’re the one who got shot. You took a bullet for me, remember?’
A smile tugs at his lips. ‘It sounds pretty heroic when you say it like that.’
‘Yeah, well, let’s try to keep the heroics to a minimum from now on. You nearly died on me. You probably shouldn’t be moving around.’
‘I’m fine.’
I raise an eyebrow. ‘Sure you are, soldier.’
He shrugs, pulling at the bandage taped over his stomach. ‘See for yourself.’
‘Cole, don’t …’ I start as he peels back the tape, but I trail off as the gauze folds down, falling away from his wound.
It’s silver.
The skin around the gunshot has healed over seamlessly, but an inch-wide patch on his stomach now looks like it’s made of metal. Iridescent silver streaks that branch like veins stretch across his abdomen, fading as they spread away from the wound. At their centre, a glistening patch of pure, reflective silver lies where hours ago all I could see was pulped and bloodied flesh.
It’s nanomesh. A myth. An app whispered about in Skies forums, rumoured to exist in just a handful of prototypes. A nanoscale mesh capable of being built throughout a person’s body, then warped and grown with a single command. The patch on Cole’s stomach isn’t flesh – it’s a lattice that’s grown overnight that his own cells will migrate through and fill. The silver will shrink down to a speck, until the patch is made completely of living, breathing tissue.
It’ll heal Cole’s wound perfectly, but nanomesh isn’t just for healing. It could be used for regrowing limbs or adding entirely new ones. With this tech Cole could grow an exoskeleton, or eyes in the back of his head. With the right code, he could grow himself wings.
‘You have nanomesh?’ I breathe. ‘What the hell are you, Cole?’
He looks down at the wound. ‘I’m a very expensive weapon.’
Something in his voice makes me pause. A note of pain – but it has nothing to do with the gleaming wound on his stomach. It’s the way he says the word ‘weapon’, like he’s a thing. A mindless tool instead of a person with his own thoughts and dreams. When we were at the cabin, he said Cartaxus turned him into this, but now I’m not so sure.
I can’t help but remember the words my father chose in the message he left for me: He is a weapon of considerable power.
What if it was my father who turned him into one?
I lean back against the side of the jeep, running one hand through my hair, teasing out the knots with my fingers. The photograph from Cole’s file flits through my mind. It’s one thing to turn yourself into a black-out agent, but it’s another to have it forced on you as a child.
‘The nanomesh,’ I say. ‘My father gave that to you, didn’t he?’
Cole meets my eyes. He doesn’t nod, but I already know the answer. It’s not even really a question. There’s only one geneticist in modern history with the skills to pull off something like this. Maybe another team could have developed it with decades of testing, but Cole’s seamless, perfect version is certainly my father’s work. It’s not that my father was a genius – he was, but there were countless geniuses working on gentech code before the outbreak. His strength lay in the way he thought about DNA, as though it were a language he’d been raised to speak, and everyone else had learned it at school. He knew the subtleties, the hidden rules that even the most sophisticated coding algorithms tended to miss.
That’s why my head is spinning, staring at the silver patch on Cole’s stomach and the network of scars slashed across his chest. I can’t understand what my father could have gained by carrying out painful, intrusive research on a five-year-old boy.
My eyes stray to my backpack, where I’ve stashed the files I found in the mines. I start to reach for it, but Cole lets out a growl of frustration.
I pause. ‘Are you OK?’
He covers his face with his hands. ‘No, I’m not OK. I’m hungry and tired, and I’m still in a lot of pain, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t punch me.’
‘Why would I punch you?’
He drops his hands, a look of guilt flashing across his face. ‘Because I think Cartaxus might know we’re here.’
A long beat passes. ‘What?’
He slumps. ‘I’ve been blocking my panel from them, but when I was crashing last night, my tech might have sent out a beacon. I told you – I’m an expensive weapon, and Cartaxus protects its investments. I think they’ve sent someone out to find us.’
I stiffen, looking out the window. If Cartaxus finds us now, they’ll drag us into a bunker and seize my father’s files. They’ll figure out how to decrypt the vaccine, but they’ll have complete control over it, which means they won’t give it to people on the surface. Millions of people, left to die. Families like Marcus’s. My father’s plan for us will be ruined.
‘How much time do we have?’ I pull my hair back into a ponytail, looking along the curve of the highway. We’re low on fuel, and we have no solars. We’re still a day’s drive from the lab my father wanted us to go to, but there might be hope yet. I scan the back of the jeep. Maybe we can make it to a town and find another vehicle, but it might not have room to carry the boxes of my father’s notes. I haven’t even opened them to see if they have any hints for unlocking the vaccine, and we don’t have time to sort through them now.
But maybe I don’t need them.
I glance at Cole. My father left a note in his arm, then I found a file from when Cole was a little boy. It can’t be a coincidence. Those musty files I found behind the kayak are the ones my father wanted me to use – somehow I’m sure of it.
‘How much time, Cole?’ I haul my backpack up from the floor and peer in at the folders. Five mould-spotted sheaths of paper, tucked beside my genkit. ‘Cole, how long? Are you even listening?’
But he isn’t. His eyes are glazed over, his head tilted, one hand pressed to the side of the jeep. He’s listening to something I can’t hear, not without my implants.
My stomach tightens. ‘They’re here, aren’t they?’
He nods slowly, blinking out of his session. ‘A Comox flew past about half an hour ago. Their scan went right over us, so I didn’t think they’d noticed the jeep, but now they’re circling back. I can’t tell who it’s carrying, but it could be a whole platoon.’
I chew my thumbnail, staring out the window. We can’t run. We can’t hide.
‘Wait, did you say half an hour ago?’
A hint of colour bleeds into Cole’s cheeks. ‘Yeah.’
I blink. That was when I was still asleep, still curled into his chest. I thought we were both asleep. He had his hand on the back of my neck …
‘You were awake?’
The colour on his cheeks grows deeper, then he freezes, tilting his head again. This time I hear it too. The low, thumping sound of a Comox, racing towards us.
Cartaxus is here.
‘Stay inside,’ Cole says, rolling to his knees.