I glance at Dax, whose face has paled. My stomach drops. He was lying. There was no conversation, no Agatta stamp of approval, and now the two of us are dead. I’m fifteen. It’s reckless. I should have known better than to let us get so close, and now everything is going to be ruined.
Dax will be sent away. I’ll go back to boarding school. The brightest, happiest time of my life will be over before it’s begun.
‘Both of you in here, now!’ my father shouts.
‘We were just … I shot a pigeon,’ I say. ‘The poem …’
‘I know,’ my father says. ‘Forget about the damn bird and get inside.’
Dax and I exchange nervous glances as we hurry up to the cabin. My father only curses when he’s angry, but it doesn’t sound like he’s angry at us. Dax hops on one leg to pull his sneakers off while I unzip my wet sweater and drop it on the porch.
Inside, my father is standing in the centre of the living room, dressed immaculately in his lab coat, staring at the walls. Only he’s not really staring at the walls. He’s not even really staring. He’s back in a virtual reality session, watching something through his panel. A live feed of images, sent from his panel through fibre cabling inside his body, pulsed directly into his optic nerve. To his brain, there’s no difference. The feed from his panel and his eyes merge and intersect, creating a single, seamless image. When my father stares at the wall, he could see a screen with video footage, or a painting, or a scrolling stream of headlines.
Or he could see something else entirely. A beach. The stars. His panel could thrust him from the cabin into a fully rendered world. At least that’s what I’m told. I’ve never tried it myself. The only graphics card that works with my panel is too weak to render VR. All I have is an ancient chip that can run basic ocular filters and sketch a few lines of text in my vision. That’s enough to send messages through my comm, but not enough to watch movies, play games, or even code the way the rest of the world does.
One sleeve of my father’s lab coat is rolled to his elbow, and his crypto cuff is strapped around his forearm. It’s a sleek sheath of chrome that scrambles the transmissions from his panel’s wireless chip, and he only wears it for important calls, to stop Cartaxus from listening to his conversations.
I stare at the cuff, my stomach lurching. My father wasn’t angry at Dax and me. He’s been talking to someone about the outbreak. Whatever he heard, it’s left him practically shaking.
‘What’s going on?’ I touch his elbow to let him know I’m here. His eyes are glazed; his vision is probably 360 degrees of pure VR.
‘The virus has swept through Nicaragua,’ he says. ‘Now that it’s past the canal, there’s nothing left to stop it. They’re planning airstrikes.’
‘On civilians?’ I glance at Dax. ‘Who’s considering that?’
My father blinks out of his session. His eyes refocus, and he turns to me. ‘Everyone, darling. Every government in the world is considering it.’
I swallow, taking in my father’s bloodshot eyes, the strain in his face. Everything about this outbreak is terrifying, but none of it worries me as much as the lines etched into his brow. He’s the world’s greatest gentech coder. He wrote the cure for Influenza X, and I’ve never seen him like this.
We must be in serious danger.
‘Nicaragua,’ Dax repeats, his brow furrowed. ‘That’s close. It only broke out two days ago. If it keeps spreading that fast, it could be here within days.’
‘Hours,’ my father says. ‘It’s spreading exponentially. It’s going to be chaos when it hits the cities. There’ll be panic until a vaccine is released, and I fear that might take a very long time.’ He grips my hands. ‘There’s food in the basement, clean water in the lake, and new solars on the roof, and you can always hide in the old mine shafts in the mountains.’
‘What … what are you saying?’ My eyes drop to the crypto cuff. ‘Who have you been talking to?’
As if in response, a low thumping sound starts up in the distance, and the cries of the pigeons crescendo into a roar. But it’s not the pigeons I’m listening to. It’s the sound of helicopter blades growing louder with each passing second until the windows shake. Through the glass, I can make out two black Comox quadcopters swooping into the valley, their bellies slashed with a white logo.
I’d know that symbol anywhere. I’ve seen it in my nightmares.
Stylized white crossed antlers.
It’s Cartaxus.
Not the military, and not a corporation, but a massive international amalgam of technology and violence. A mix of public and private interests that has become the world’s biggest provider and controller of gentech. My father worked with Cartaxus for twenty years, until he couldn’t take it any more and finally wrenched himself free of their iron grip. He told me this day might come, that they might show up and drag him away even though he swore he’d never work for them again. Not after the horrors he saw. The horrors that keep him awake at night, that he still can’t bring himself to talk about.
Now they’ve come for him, just like he said they would. He turns to me, resignation traced into every line of his face.
‘No,’ I blurt out, my voice breaking. ‘They can’t just take you.’
‘They can, and they will. This isn’t influenza, darling. They’re rounding up everyone they think can help.’
‘But you can hide,’ I plead. ‘We can run.’
He shakes his head. ‘No, Catarina, they’ll find me wherever I go. They think Dax and I can write a vaccine for this virus. We have no choice but to go with them.’
Dax steps back. ‘They want me? I’m not going anywhere.’
‘You mustn’t fight them,’ my father urges. ‘I worked for Cartaxus, and I know what they’re capable of. They want your brain, but they don’t need your legs.’
Dax blanches. The copter rotors grow louder, the vibrations sending puffs of dust drifting down from the ceiling. They’re already landing on the grass outside, sending up frothy waves from the lake. The windows rattle as a storm of grass and dust hits the cabin, the front door slamming shut in the gale.
My father grips my hands in his. ‘Get in the panic room, Catarina. You have to stay here. I know you can do this.’
‘No!’ I yank my hands away. ‘I’m coming with you. I can help with the vaccine. Nobody knows your work better than me.’
‘I know that, but you can’t come, darling. It’s not safe. You don’t know what these people are like. They’ll torture you if they think it will make me work faster. They’ll kill you to break me if I try to resist them. You must stay away from them.’
‘But you can’t leave me.’
‘Oh, my darling. I wish I didn’t have to, but I have no choice. I know you can take care of yourself, but you must promise that you will never let them take you. No matter what happens, you have to stay away from Cartaxus. Promise me you’ll do that.’
‘No,’ I choke out, starting to cry. ‘No, I’m coming with you.’
The sound of shouting voices cuts through the roar of the copters. My father turns to Dax. ‘Hide her,’ he snaps. ‘Quickly, they’re coming.’