I roll my eyes. I’m dressed in a cotton bathrobe, but underneath I’m wearing the silver slip of fabric Novak sent me. It turned out to be a pressure suit, a swimsuit-shaped outfit made from a micron-thick layer of fabric designed to transfer nanosolutions into my skin. It feels like I’m wearing air, and it looks like it too, but it took some work to get into. The fabric is flexible and stretches almost infinitely, but I still needed Cole’s help to get it on.
At least, that’s what I said, loud enough for anyone spying on Cole’s room to hear before we retreated into the tiny bathroom. It was cramped and musty, but when Cole checked for cameras, his sweep came back clean. He helped me pull the silver fabric over my skin, and the embers of the fire between us sparked back into flames.
‘I’m just saying you look good.’ He gives me a low smile that makes my stomach prickle with heat. ‘I like what you did with your hair.’
‘It isn’t as neat as Agnes does it.’ I reach my free hand up, touching the fishtail braid I’ve knotted my hair into, just like Agnes used to do. I still haven’t heard from her. I sent her an email from a terminal when I was working on the trapdoor code, but it just sat in her inbox, unread. Part of me knows it’s naive to think she’s still OK. She’d never ignore me like this. Logically, I know something bad must have happened to her.
But just for now, I’m forgoing logic. It isn’t enough to get me through this. I’m sitting in a car that’s taking me to my death, about to submit my body to lethal code my father crafted for me. I have no guarantee that it will work, or that it’s even the right thing for us to do.
Instead of logic, I’m choosing the light I see in Cole’s eyes whenever he looks at me.
I’m choosing hope.
Every touch from Cole, every glance and smile, is a burst of warmth that chases the shadow of the decryption from my mind. When he looks at me, I can almost believe that I am the girl in his drawing, with her head held high and her eyes ablaze. He is like a drug, and a powerful one. The strength of my feelings frightens me – I don’t know how my heart entwined with his so quickly. Maybe it’s what we’ve been through, or maybe we really are broken in the same way, our jagged edges aligning perfectly. I wish we had more time together. I wish I could tell him the truth.
I hope he’ll understand, after I’m gone.
‘They’re making a bonfire,’ I say, looking out the window as we get closer to the lab. A pile of logs has been set up in the high school’s football field. A crowd has formed around it, coming out to witness history. I can feel their excitement, and I can sense it in Cole, too. The thrill of knowing that we’re just hours away from ending this nightmare, from defeating the virus and rebuilding the world.
For the price of one life, I can give these people a future again.
How many people get to say that?
The car pulls into a parking lot beside a three-storey building that was once a school but is now a research lab. Silver snakes of ductwork hang haphazardly from the windows, and the lawn is overgrown, littered with trash.
‘You sure these guys can handle this?’ Cole asks. ‘This place looks like a dump.’
I smile. ‘That’s what you said about my father’s lab, remember?’
He snorts. ‘I guess I did. Are you ready to do this?’
I nod, squeezing his hand. ‘Yeah, let’s go.’
Cole and I keep our hands locked together as a guard leads us through the school’s rubber-lined airtight doors and into a long, dimly lit hallway. The doors along it open into old classrooms that I peer into as we walk. There are chalkboards on the walls and chairs stacked haphazardly. I expect to be hit by nostalgia for my time at boarding school, but all I can think about is Cole.
His fingers are laced through mine. His scent clings to my skin, and I can’t stop glancing at him to see if he’s looking back at me. I should be terrified, but I feel brave as long as I’m beside him.
This isn’t just a crush. This is more.
It might be love.
I squeeze Cole’s hand as we turn a corner, and he squeezes it right back, bumping his shoulder into mine. A rush of heat prickles my cheeks.
I can’t believe I’m falling in love on the last day of my life.
The guard leads us through a pair of scuffed double doors and into the school’s gymnasium. Cluttered lab benches stand in rows across the floor. It smells like disinfectant – the same sharp vanilla scent that I’ve come to associate with Cartaxus. Dozens of white-coated scientists mill around the lab benches, tending to humming genkits, checking the equipment. The walls are covered with screens and charts, maps and genetic reference tables, and a snake-pit of power cords is duct-taped to the floor. It’s just like the cabin’s lab – haphazard, messy, organic. The thought is strangely comforting.
‘Novak sure likes cameras,’ Cole says, dropping his hand from mine.
I follow his eyes up to the ceiling and pull the bathrobe tighter around me. At least a thousand minicopter drones are swarming through the rafters, most no bigger than a fly. They swoop through the air like passenger pigeons, moving in a flock across the room. Each one carries a tiny, black-eyed camera. Now that I’ve seen them, the high-pitched whine of their propellers is all I can hear.
The doors click shut behind us. Novak’s voice cuts through the air. ‘Cameras, sound check. Clean language, people. Future generations will study today’s footage in school.’
I frown. That’s unsettling. I shuffle closer to Cole as the ceiling lights grow brighter and the swarm of drones falls like rain. They whizz past my face, looping in frantic circles around me, building a three-dimensional map of my body.
‘Welcome, Miss Agatta,’ Novak says, striding across the room to greet us, speaking in the warm, confident tone she always puts on for the cameras. The drones dart around her as she walks, but she doesn’t seem to notice. Her scarlet hair has been pulled back into a Mohawk-like braid, and she’s swapped her uniform for mirrored stilettos and a lab coat. Leoben and Dax are standing across the room with a team of scientists beside the clonebox. Dax is watching me through the whining cloud of drones, but I ignore him.
‘We have everything set up for you, Catarina,’ Novak says. ‘I’ve followed the decryption procedure’s code right down to the letter.’
‘Have you?’ I ask, raising an eyebrow. I know she’s lying. I doubt she’s even read the code. If she had, she wouldn’t be so excited about filming this. Once the vaccine hits my cells, my body is going to dissolve. That’s not exactly appropriate footage for humanity’s future schoolchildren.
‘We’ve made every preparation,’ she replies. ‘We’ll be using a chamber to keep you comfortable.’ She gestures to a shoulder-high vat made of thick curved glass. It’s filled with a blue liquid, the same colour as a cloudless sky, that casts an eerie, rippling light on everything around it. An immersion chamber. I’ve seen them in movies. The fluid is laced with nanites that will help my body accept the decryption procedure. It’ll have painkillers, beta-blockers and a hefty dose of healing tech, but it won’t be enough to keep me alive, not by a long shot.