This Mortal Coil (This Mortal Coil #1)

I wake up next to Cole again, but this time there is no awkwardness, and I don’t force myself to sit up and turn away. He rolls to his back, I roll to mine, and just like that we’re awake, and it feels normal. It feels right.

I don’t know if what’s growing between us is romantic, or if this is just the kind of bond two people forge when they go through something like this together. It feels like gravity is shifting, swinging us infinitesimally closer. But in another way, it feels like we’ve always been this close.

‘So you don’t have hypergenesis?’ he asks.

‘No. Well, I think I must have had it, once. But not any more.’

‘How does that work?’

‘I don’t really know.’ I lift my arm, turning it slowly. I can feel the difference in weight now that my panel is gone. ‘It’s not a genetic condition, but my father must have created a treatment. It was probably after my mother died. He would have tried to save me from dying the same way.’

‘And he didn’t tell you?’

I let my arm drop. ‘No. He hid it, from me and Cartaxus. Dax thinks that’s why he told me to stay away from the bunkers.’

Cole scratches his chest, staring at the ceiling. ‘That’s messed up.’

‘Tell me about it. I could have had a real panel this whole time.’

He looks over. ‘But you can get budded with another one, and get real apps this time, right? Would that be safe for you?’

‘I think so. But I don’t need to get budded. It turns out I have a backup in my spine, and it’s growing me a new panel right now.’

Cole sits up, grabbing a T-shirt, and pulls it on. ‘If you’re growing a new panel, you’re going to need a lot of calories. How about I run to the cafeteria and get us some breakfast?’

I sit up beside him, pulling my sleep-tangled hair into a ponytail. ‘What are my choices?’

‘Scramble, beans, congee, toast, waffles, burritos –’

‘They have waffles here?’

Cole grins, pushing himself to his feet. ‘Two servings of waffles coming right up. I’ll be back soon.’

He steps into his boots and slips out the airlocked door, shooting me a smile I can’t help but return. I get up and walk into the bathroom, stopping short the moment I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

The healing tech’s nanites have been working overnight, and they haven’t just been sealing the cut in my arm. My skin is still scarred, but it looks bright. My lips are smooth instead of chapped, and the heavy shadows under my eyes are all but gone. In a few days, when my panel finishes growing, I could look as good as anybody else in this bunker. Fresh-faced, healthy, clean. Two years of misery and horror, wiped away. It would make me look like a new person.

But that isn’t going to happen.

I decided in the night that I would do the decryption. Some part of me knew that I would agree to it as soon as I read the code. It doesn’t mean I’m ready, and it doesn’t mean I’m willing, but the world can’t wait for Cartaxus to unlock the vaccine with brute force. People are dying. The virus is evolving. This is the only way to save humanity from this nightmare.

The apartment’s door whooshes open. I turn as Dax walks in, looking at Cole’s mattress with a furrow in his brow. His tech can probably read heat signatures. He’ll know I shared Cole’s bed. My stomach lurches into my throat.

‘Princess,’ he says. His face is unreadable. ‘How is your arm?’

I step out of the bathroom. ‘It’s … fine.’

‘Good.’ He glances around the room, his eyes lingering on the hardened mess of my panel in the sink. ‘I had time to read more of the procedure’s code. I’m not sure if I’m reading it right, but –’

‘It’s going to kill me.’

He swallows, meeting my eyes. His red hair is dishevelled, and his emerald eyes are bloodshot. He’s probably been up all night reading the code, trying to figure out what it would do to me. I understood since I first saw it, but I haven’t thought about it from Dax’s point of view. He’s the one who’s going to have to get the equipment ready, to jack me in and run the code.

This is the task my father left him: killing me.

‘There’ll be another way,’ he says, his voice tight. ‘Your father left this as a last resort, but that doesn’t mean we have to use it.’

‘Of course we do. We can’t wait any longer. The virus will evolve.’

He stares at the floor, his shoulders hunched. ‘There has to be another way. I don’t understand why he’s used you. Why not someone else? Millions of people would be happy to die for this.’

My eyes drop. The same question has been circling through my mind since I first read the code. How could my father leave this task to me? Why would he sentence me to death?

Did he even love me at all?

I don’t think I’ll ever know the answer. Even though we lived together, I never truly felt as though I was a central part of my father’s life. He was protective, and I knew he cared for me, but he would lose himself in his work, forgetting to eat, hacking his metabolism to keep himself awake for days at a time. I wouldn’t hear a word from him, or he’d stare right through me while he spoke, lost in a gentech puzzle more compelling than his daughter’s face. His work was the burning star of his life, and I existed as a minor planet, visible only in transit, a periodic dimming of light.

But sometimes I was not his daughter – sometimes I was his coding partner. We would sit side by side in the basement, working together as equals. I knew his code better than anyone. I knew what it meant to him.

That’s why I’m going to do the decryption.

‘The vaccine was my father’s life,’ I say, ‘and I am the only person he trusted its decryption with. This isn’t a punishment, Dax. It’s an honour. He chose me because he knew that I would understand what’s at stake. He knew I’d see the truth – that releasing this vaccine is worth more than my life.’

Dax runs one hand through his hair, bunching it into a fist. For a moment he looks younger, like the boy I knew before the plague. ‘Princess,’ he says, but his voice breaks. He covers his mouth with his hand.

I step across the floor and pull him into a hug.

His arms slide around me. His body is trembling like it was when he first stepped out of the Comox. He smells of soap and laboratory-grade disinfectant. The scent fills me with memories – coding in the basement, falling hard for the kid who showed up on our doorstep. I remember fighting over algorithms and swimming in the lake. Listening to my father read us poetry in the evenings.

Dax holds me tightly, his face pressed to my hair. ‘Are you sure?’ he whispers. ‘You don’t have to do this. I can wipe the code. We can say that the instructions were destroyed when we cut out your panel.’

I freeze. ‘No.’ I step back. ‘No, we can’t. The virus will evolve –’

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