Part II: Momentum

Chapter 8

When I was small, I once heard a lab assistant rapturously proclaim that human anatomy was a symphony. He was wrong. Anatomy, when working correctly, was silence. The lucky ones never heard it at all.

My throat spasmed, but the only sound I could make was a squeaky rasp. My screams were spent. I watched my paw change back into a hand, joint by joint, with an eternity between each shift. As more awareness returned to me, I realized why everything was taking so long: I was fighting the transformation.

I strove to unbunch my muscles and my mind. The pain redoubled, but the transformation didn’t hasten. What was I doing? I never fought it coming back. I wanted to be me! Yet no matter how hard I tried, a powerful will deep within my body struggled against me.

In the end, my broken biology won out. It took hours, but eventually I became a person again. Heedless of the silver, I frantically patted myself down, making sure the borders of my body were in their proper place. I could have sobbed aloud with relief, but I still had no voice. It didn’t happen again, it will never happen again, I told myself, but it was a long time before my terror subsided enough for me to remember anything else about the transformation.

When I did, I threw up.

I lay on my side, my stomach contracting with such force that I felt like I’d been kicked. I looked around. The camera stood before me, lights blinking knowingly. Otherwise, I was alone. The floor outside my cage was clean.

Without meaning to, I reached out and flipped the switch. My body needed release from the scalding silver. I wasn’t sure whether to expect someone to actually come for me, but a minute later, Brenna was at my door.

“You all back, sweetheart?” she said.

Not looking at her, I nodded.

Brenna didn’t comment on the puddle of vomit beside me, even though I hadn’t thrown up after a transformation in a long time. She could not, however, suppress a gasp when she slipped the cage dress over my head. Where normally there was just irritation, patches of angry blisters now dotted my stomach and ribs. Gray skin cracked and leaked clear fluid. Though I couldn’t see them, I could feel that there were more blisters along my spine.

Too much Ag. My eyes rolled back in my head.

“Millie, stay with me!” Brenna’s voice sounded very far away.

She dragged my dead weight through the opening of the big cage. I was clear of the silver, but I wasn’t far enough. I could smell the poisonous metal in the corner. I could taste it in my mouth.

Or maybe that was just blood.

Brenna carried me to the bathroom and sponged me off. I barely paid attention to her ministrations until she said, “Leela was worried. She’ll be glad to see you when you’re up for it.”

“No!” I tried to say. My voice still couldn’t produce anything above a rough whisper.

“You don’t want to see her?” Brenna said, her mottled eyes concerned. “That’s not like you.”

I shook my head so hard that it swam.

“It really was a bad one, wasn’t it? Don’t worry. I’ll let Leela know you’re gonna be okay.”

I sagged against the wall and closed my eyes. Apparently, no one had told Brenna what I’d done. They probably figured she wouldn’t take care of me if she knew.

“Why don’t you get dressed and I’ll tell Mr. Patter you’d like to see him now?” Brenna said. “Then you can rest up away from those nasty cages.”

That forced my eyes open. Did Brenna think there was too much silver, too? Was she worried that I was “barely” safe? How many of them —

But then I saw the way her dappled lips pinched as she dabbed ointment on my blisters. She cared because she was a nurse and a nonstandard. That was all.

Brenna left me to get ready for Mr. Patter. I had to sit for my shower. I tried three times to stand when the water shut off, then gave up and crawled over to my bag. When I touched it, strips of soft canvas fluttered between my fingers like ribbons.

Something solid collided with my face. I slashed at it with my claws …

Swallowing bile, I peeled the ripped fabric apart and reached inside. My hand hit wood and I pulled out my drum.

A long gash tore through the center of the membrane. It would never play again.

I didn’t know it when I was little, but I’d later learned that every culture in the world had drums. Today, historians believed that the ancients had been inspired by their own internal rhythm: the heartbeat. My drum had given me, an orphan synthetic, a history. I took that away from myself.

Carefully, I tucked the drum inside the ripped bag. My clothes were unharmed. The drum must have protected them. I dressed myself just in time for Brenna to knock on the door again.

“You ready?” she said.

I lurched upright, bunching my bag so Brenna couldn’t see it was torn. She had to pull me to my feet, and she held my arm as we made our slow way down the hall. The doors were closed. It was nighttime. The smallest of small mercies.

Mr. Patter opened his door more quickly than usual. I collapsed into a chair. “Let me know if you need anything,” Brenna said, and then she was gone. I wondered if I’d see her again.

Mr. Patter’s face glowed eerily in the screen lights all around him. I braced myself for impact.

“We haven’t seen such frequent events since the year you came to us,” Mr. Patter said. “Do you have any idea why that might have happened?”

I hadn’t expected him to lead with that, but it was a valid question. I shook my head.

“The changes themselves were rapid, too,” he said. “I’m sure you understand why something must be done. Let me see your wristband.”

He took my arm without waiting for me to respond. With one hand, he held me in place while he tapped on a keyboard with the other. A spreadsheet appeared. The dates of the transformations I’d had since moving to Supplicants Grove were written in red. Between them, there were rows of green timestamps — feedback from the wristband, I realized. Mr. Patter opened a second screen, which contained a solid block of letters and numbers. He edited a row, and the wristband jabbed me. When the green light appeared, a new green timestamp appeared on the spreadsheet.

“Blood samples will now be collected every three hours,” Mr. Patter declared. “I’m sure you can see why this added precaution is necessary, for your safety and the safety of Supplicants Grove.”

There was a knock on the door. Mr. Patter reached past me to open it. I didn’t turn around, but I could smell the hair oil, the leather shoes, the blood.

“You really need me to take her back now?” Mr. Bicks said.

“Brenna indicated that this event took a lot out of her,” Mr. Patter said. “It would be kind to let her sleep in her own bed, don’t you think?”

My throat and fists closed tight.

“How is your elbow, Mr. Bicks?” Mr. Patter said. “Have you gotten one of the nurses to look at it?”

Mr. Bicks chuckled. “I’ve been living here long enough to know how to patch up my own cuts.”

“If you say so.” Mr. Patter didn’t sound like he cared much. “Get a good night’s rest, Millie. I trust you’ll be in a better state when we see you next.”

Mr. Patter didn’t know. I had to tell him. I couldn’t get back in the car, not when I didn’t know where Mr. Bicks would take me.

But if I told Mr. Patter what I’d learned, I’d also have to tell him what I did.

I followed Mr. Bicks out of the office.

The night sky blazed with stars. I wondered how many of them were already dead, how much of the light I saw didn’t actually exist anymore. I slid into the backseat, clutching the remains of my drum to my chest.

I deserved to go with Mr. Bicks. Yet as soon as he started the car and pulled through the gate, I felt that other will wake up inside of me again. I looked at my palms, but they were smooth.

Mr. Bicks found my eyes in the rearview mirror.

“You bit me, you little bitch,” he said.

I twisted in my seat. The compound grew smaller behind us. If I jumped out of the car, he’d catch me in a second.

“Got nothing to say? Not even a sorry?”

I almost did it. I almost begged for forgiveness. The words burned away in my throat.

“I saved your ass. Told Patter I fell while I was setting up the camera. Said I was startled because I didn’t realize you were already changing. He wasn’t happy that I didn’t book it then. Guess he doesn’t care if the researchers get their videos. He’s making me drive you back at this forsaken hour as a punishment.”

My fingers dug into the scars on my thigh.

“You don’t even remember, do you? You have no idea you took a chunk out of my arm. What, did you think I was your cub?”

I pushed my fist against my mouth and sank my now-blunt teeth into the knuckle of my thumb until I tasted blood.

“If EP knew what you did, you’d never see the sun again. I won’t let that happen. Not after watching you grow up all these years. You better be grateful. If I ever need a favor, you’re sure not in any position to tell me no.”

Now I understood. He would take me home, at least for tonight. But someday …

“Well, Millie? We have a deal?”

Through my blood, I said, “Yes.”

We reached the edge of town, the mountains looming black over the road. It didn’t seem right that they should still be standing. After everything that had happened, everything that had changed, they should have crumbled to dust.

Mr. Bicks never waited for me to get into my apartment before peeling away. Tonight was no exception. I watched him speed down the road, and then I turned into the darkness.

I stumbled on the sidewalk, tripping over my own feet, until I reached the grocery store. I’d forgotten that I didn’t know the way. I looked left and right, hoping for some kind of sign, but the street was empty. I picked an alley at random. I should have been afraid, but I wasn’t. Nothing that happened to me tonight could be worse than what I’d already done.

I kept moving, walking in circles, hopelessly lost. I wasn’t going to find it. I would collapse first.

“Millie?”

I leapt sideways, colliding with the side of a building. A figure emerged, holding her hands in front of her body. I could just make out Gret’s wary eyes in the darkness.

“Easy,” she said. “What are you doing here? Did something happen?”

I nodded, then swayed. Gret caught my arm.

“You didn’t just — shit, you did,” she breathed. “Okay, come on. We’re not far.”

Gret half-dragged, half-carried me to her boarded-up house. My vision started to gray at the edges. As soon as Gret got me in the front room, I let go of her and slid down the wall.

“Stay here,” Gret said. She ran into the hall.

I tilted and fell on my side, bringing my knees to my chest. I could only sleep curled like a fetus. Back before, she used to laugh about that, and I would laugh with her. That’s it. Wait to be reborn …

Gret knelt beside me. “Hey. Hey. I have water.”

I ignored her. Water splashed over my ear. I twitched and opened my eyes.

“Drink before you make me waste more,” Gret said, banging the cup down in front of my face.

She was mad again. I should leave. Why was I here?

Oh. Right.

I struggled to sit up, and Gret held the water to my lips. I swallowed until the cup was empty and I was able to focus my eyes.

“What happened?” Gret said.

When I spoke, my voice was still threadbare, but both of us could hear me.

“The videos are for Dr. Topher. She’s not done with me.”

Chapter 9

As soon as I said her name, I expected Dr. Topher to burst through the door to prove that my nightmare really had come true. Instead, I saw only Gret, her face carefully neutral, except for the crease between her eyebrows.

“How do you know?” she asked.

“The man who films me. He called me marvel,” I whispered. I could barely get the word out.

“Marvel?”

“She called me that.”

“It’s just a word,” Gret said.

It wasn’t.

Gret dropped her gaze. “Maybe he read it somewhere? Her whole team was arrested. He could have got it from the courtroom transcripts or something.”

Doubt pricked my heart, and its barb was sharper than the wristband. Like all adaptationists, Dr. Topher had had many apprentices. They were brilliant, though none of them were quite on her level. It seemed impossible, but I’d forgotten their faces and their names.

But not their hands. I remembered their hands.

In their own way, the apprentices were like me: Dr. Topher’s instruments, easily discarded. When Dr. Topher saw the end approaching, she disappeared, leaving her team to be gathered up by the authorities without a second thought. She wouldn’t let her assistants educate or socialize her subjects, either. Raising us was Dr. Topher’s job alone.

Dr. Topher’s lab was her kingdom, and I was the crown jewel. But to the apprentices, I was just science.

“It was — her special name for me,” I said. “They never would have called me that.”

“You can’t know that,” Gret said.

I would have thought that I was too exhausted to be angry anymore, but apparently not.

“Don’t tell me what I know about Dr. Topher!” I rasped.

“Millie —”

Gret shifted closer to me, and I jerked away and fell sideways. She tried to help me back up, but her hand landed on my knee, too close to my scars. I kicked her.

“Hey!”

“I shouldn’t have come here!” I cried. “You don’t know anything about synthetics!”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” said a voice from the hallway.

Even though he hadn’t screamed this time, I recognized that voice. I sat up, and Gret turned to sit beside me below the boarded window. A boy in a wheelchair rolled slowly towards us.

“Hi, Millie,” he said. “I’m Luc.”

Luc, like Gret, looked to be about my age. Even with only the hall light on, I could tell that his brown skin had a sickly gray sheen to it. Once I brought my gaze to his, I couldn’t look away. His dark, shadowed eyes were huge and fathomless.

After a long moment, Luc blinked and looked at Gret. “What’s wrong?”

“She thinks Topher’s watching the transformation videos,” Gret said.

I glared at Gret. I hadn’t agreed to trust this person!

“So you were right,” Luc said.

Gret nodded slowly, raking her hands through her hair. “Topher’s the only one who’s never been caught. It’s not like she’d just give up.”

For ten years, I thought Dr. Topher had done just that. I was a failure, so I made her run away. But after Gret showed me the video …

Back before, even with my eyes closed, I always knew the difference between an apprentice at the door and Dr. Topher. I wouldn’t look at her until I felt her hand on the back of my head, but I knew when she was watching me. After all these years, that hadn’t changed.

“If you knew, then why are you arguing with me?” I asked Gret, my throat raw.

“I don’t know, I just suspected. Iwant proof.” Gret got to her feet and crossed her arms. “If it is her, how do you see this playing out? How’s she gonna get her hands on you?”

I shuddered. “Mr. Bicks. The — the video guy. He drives me when I transform. And I owe him a favor.”

“You owe him a favor? Is it an I’m-gonna-let-you-kill-me favor?” Gret said.

She was scolding me again, but this was not a conversation we were going to have tonight. Or ever. She drew a deep, about-to-start-yelling breath, but Luc snapped, “Gret!”

Gret let the breath out. “Fine,” she growled. “Then here’s plan A: keep you from going back to that bunker to transform. How do we do that?”

That was plan A?

“You can’t,” I said.

“Why not?”

There were several thousand reasons why not, but I started by holding up the wristband and explaining how it worked. Some wordless exchange took place between Gret and Luc, and then Luc wheeled himself out of the room. Gret crouched back down next to me.

“You’re not gonna like what I’m about to say, but I don’t care,” she said. “You need someone good with computers to disable that cuff without your keepers noticing. We got someone who can maybe do that.”

“No,” I said.

“No’s not an option. Unless you’re willing to die or worse because you’re too busy blaming someone for being born to parents she didn’t choose.”

I heard raised voices in the hall. Apparently, Rosie wasn’t excited about this plan, either. At least we agreed on that much.

“You don’t understand,” I said again.

Gret stalked into the hall. Moments later, she pushed Luc back into the room and deposited his wheelchair in front of me before stomping away again.

Luc sighed heavily. “I don’t know why she thinks you’re going to like this part better than any of the rest of it. You definitely won’t. But it’s necessary. We do understand synthetics here. I am one.”

I was dimly aware that I should have seen that coming, but with my brain repeating marvel, marvel, marvel at me, I had no room left for critical thinking.

“I know all the synthetics. We grew up together,” I said.

“All but one,” Luc said.

“But that was the deal. That was the law.”

“The law doesn’t know that I exist,” Luc said. He spoke with a strange cadence that I couldn’t place. “My adaptationist is a rich man known for his work in business, not science. He had links to some of the adaptationists who were arrested, but he had hidden his involvement very well. If he’d been more of a scientist, he probably wouldn’t have. They tend to have a weakness for keeping records.”

That was true. When the raids finally came, the police gathered more evidence than they’d ever dreamed of finding at a crime scene. The trials hadn’t been to determine whether or not the adaptationists were guilty. They had been public displays of punishment, demonstrating to the world that the United States did not tolerate war mongers and monster-makers.

“So your adaptationist was never arrested?” I said, barely believing I hadn’t been the only one to suffer that fate.

“He was not,” Luc said.

I realized what was strange about Luc’s speech. He separated and enunciated each word with intense precision, as though every syllable were made of crystal that would shatter if dropped. Despite all his care, I could still hear the echo of his painful scream.

“There are two more things I have to tell you, Millie, and you’re not going to like either of them,” Luc said. “The first is that Rosie is not the only one here whose father was an adaptationist.”

“You’re his — he experimented on his son?”

“Yes.”

My horror at this revelation forced words that I should have swallowed out of my throat. “But – what about all the others?”

Luc pushed the wheels of his chair backward an inch before jerking his hands back into his lap.

“There were no others. I was my adaptationist’s only experiment.”

My ears rang as though Luc’s words were gunshots. His adaptationist – his father, a businessman, not a scientist – had a 100% survival rate? Unheard of. Impossible. Unfair …

Luc shrank against the back of his wheelchair. “I have to tell you the other thing.”

From the hall, a voice said, “No, you don’t.”

Sandra leaned against the doorway. It was so good to know that the whole gang was here to witness the worst night of my post-lab life.

Luc’s careful words sharpened. “Yes, I do, Sandra, and you’re not making it easier.” He didn’t turn to look at her.

Sandra’s mouth twisted. She disappeared back down the hall. A door slammed.

Luc’s hands tightened on the arms of his wheelchair. He closed his eyes.

“My father was ambitious,” he said. “He chose to make me an empath.”

Run, I thought, but I’d barely pushed myself a foot up the wall before my head swam too violently to keep moving. I sat back down with a thump.

His eyes still closed, Luc said, “It’s important to understand that I can’t read your mind. When you experience emotions, my brain simply mimics the same response.”

I couldn’t see how that was any better than mind reading. Luc knew I was horrified, he knew I was panicking, he knew — he knew what I felt when I talked about Mr. Bicks …

Luc wheeled away from me. Quietly, he said, “I hope we’re able to work everything out.”

He left the room. I was almost relieved when he disappeared from view, but then I remembered that he had heard — or felt — us fighting from down the hall when he screamed. However big his adaptation’s radius was, I was still inside of it.

As if this night wasn’t bad enough, Gret returned with Rosie trailing sullenly behind her. Gret placed a peanut butter sandwich and another cup of water in front of me.

“Eat and show Rosie the cuff,” she ordered.

Coming here had clearly been a mistake, but obeying would get me home quicker. I tore a bite off the sandwich and thrust out my arm. Rosie flounced onto the floor, her faded floral nightgown fluttering around her. She inspected the wristband while I devoured the sandwich. I hadn’t noticed I was hungry.

“Simple enough,” Rosie said to Gret. “It’d be easier if I knew what program it fed its data into.”

I swallowed a mouthful of water. “I’ve seen the spreadsheet,” I said, also addressing Gret.

Gret left again and returned with a sheet of paper and a pen. I sketched what I could remember from what I’d seen on Mr. Patter’s computer. When I finished, Rosie snatched the paper away.

“That’s actually helpful,” she admitted begrudgingly. “The trick will be figuring out how not to set off an alarm when we remove it. I’ll have to fool the program into thinking it’s still working.”

“But you’ll try?” Gret prompted.

Rosie looked ready to spit. “I know she thinks I’d just let her die, but I don’t deserve it from you.”

“You could have just said yes,” Gret said, her jaw twitching.

“You could have just not asked!” Rosie said shrilly.

“Guys.” Sandra was in the hallway again. She looked exasperated, which even I thought was unfair, given that open threats were her preferred method of problem solving.

Gret curled and uncurled her fists, but when she spoke again, her voice was more even. “Have you made any progress with the file?”

“I’m working on it,” Rosie said shortly. “Hacking isn’t magic, Gret. These things take time.”

Gret visibly bit back whatever response she wanted to make. Rosie’s lip curled, and she left the room without another word, tugging Sandra along with her.

I squinted at Gret through my worsening headache. Her outline was stark against the darkness of the empty room.

“What file?” I asked.

“There’s an encrypted file embedded in the video site. We’ll let you know when Rosie cracks it.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but there was no point in arguing. I couldn’t exactly tell Gret to back off now, not after I’d come to her for help.

“I missed it yesterday,” Gret said abruptly. “I won’t miss it again.”

“Missed what?”

Gret didn’t answer for a long time. While I waited, my crowded brain fired random thoughts at me. I hadn’t expected Gret to try to take the wristband off, but I had expected something. I wouldn’t have come here otherwise. I’d run away from Leela, so what could Gret give me that she couldn’t?

Permission.

Gret sat down beside me. “The transformation. I knew something was — different with you, but I thought it was too soon, based on the videos.” She looked up at me. Her eyes were clear and sure. “I’ll recognize it next time. I’ll keep you safe.”

Chapter 10

Gret wanted me to stay the night, but I refused. Two arguments eventually swayed her. Rosie informed us that the wristband had a coordinates tracker, which worried Gret. Honestly, I doubted Mr. Patter checked it — where would I go? — but I didn’t mention that. Instead, I relayed a shortened version of my conversation with Mr. Bicks. He wanted to collect his “favor” sometime in the future, not tonight.

“Whatever Dr. Topher wants to do to me, she’s not ready yet,” I said.

So Gret walked me home in the middle of the night, her hand hovering behind my back in case she needed to support me. My body longed to let her, but I forced myself to put one foot in front of the other. I needed all my strength and focus to keep myself going for the fifteen minutes it took to get home, and I was grateful for it. It kept me from having to talk.

I stumbled on the stairs to my apartment, and immediately Gret’s hands were on my body, one on my back and the other on my arm. I tried to shake her off, but she hissed, “Do you want to fall?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

Gret didn’t bother responding to that. By the time we got to the door, I was only upright because she had not let me go. She unlocked the door but didn’t follow me inside. I clung to the frame and waited.

“I get off work at five,” Gret said. “Meet me in the park at half past. If anything weird happens before then, call me, okay? Here’s my number.”

She thrust a scrap of paper at me. I took it.

“Get some sleep,” she said brusquely. “We’ll figure everything out.”

With that, she was gone. Everything went dull, then gray, and then I realized that I really was going to pass out this time. I barely made it to my bed before I did.

An hour and a half later, the wristband stung me awake. I awoke, gasping like I was about to drown. The taste of hot metal filled my mouth and throat. I started to cough, expecting blood to spray onto my sheets, but it was just a dream. No, not a dream: a memory. There really had been blood in my mouth — blood on my teeth.

Your transformation will be the world’s transformation, marvel. Stasis will end as long as you just keep trying!

Mr. Bicks would have told Dr. Topher what happened by now. She would be thrilled.

I leapt out of bed. Some of the silver blisters had burst open, and my shirt stuck to my skin. I peeled the fabric away, trying to ignore the faint tearing sound it made. I showered again, bandaged the burns, and changed into fresh pajamas. Then I took as deep a breath as I could manage and ground my knuckles into my left side, where the worst of the blisters were.

I cried out but pressed down harder, concentrating with all my might on the stabbing sensation. I poured all of my thoughts out of my head and into the outraged skin over my ribs. I focused on the pain until I felt my mind grow smaller. Slowly, I diminished until I could fit inside those wounds. My breathing leveled. On every inhale and exhale, I silently chanted, it hurts.

It had been a long time since I had done this, but it still worked. Folded up inside the burns, I wasn’t big enough to feel or think.

Calmer now, I sat down at my desk and opened my laptop, where I was unsurprised to find nearly a dozen messages waiting for me from Leela. I didn’t open them. Instead, I typed a message of my own:

Sorry I didn’t see you. This was a bad one. On the mend now. Please don’t worry.

I closed the laptop and clawed at my burns until I fell asleep again. Every three hours, the wristband woke me, but my body was too spent to stay awake. It was early evening before something other than the needle cut through my sleep. I stumbled towards the insistent knocking and looked out the peephole. Gret. I opened the door, and she pushed past me before I could say a word.

“You said you’d meet me,” she said, snatching a glass from my countertop and filling it with water.

“I was sleeping,” I said.

Gret held the water out to me. I stared at it, uncomprehending. My thoughts were still locked up in my burns.

“You shouldn’t let yourself get so dehydrated that other people can tell,” Gret said impatiently.

I took the water. Our fingertips brushed on the glass, and some of my thoughts slipped out of my wounds. I drank, watching Gret from the corner of my eye. There was a rip in the hem of her olive green tank top that had been carefully mended with thread that did not quite match. She kept running her thumb over the little row of stitches.

The cool water soothed my throat, but it also woke me from my self-induced stupor. Gret was looking nervously around the room.

“I can’t keep coming here,” she said. “EP can’t find out about us.”

“How would they know you’re here?”

Gret gestured vaguely. “Don’t they keep an eye on you guys?”

“There’s no ‘you guys,’” I said. “It’s just me. The other synthetics in external housing don’t live in Supplicants Grove.”

“So you have no support system at all here?” Gret said. She sounded mad again.

“They others are all first gens anyway,” I mumbled.

“Meaning?”

“Their adaptationists were still trying to make smaller adaptations stick. They’re practically standard.”

I was unable to keep the bitterness from creeping into my voice. Once the adaptationists had managed a couple minor adaptations without killing anyone, they didn’t bother perfecting the process before moving on to the big changes.

No first gens came from my lab. Dr. Topher had never bothered with the small stuff.

I changed the subject. “Anyway, no, my apartment doesn’t have hidden cameras.”

Gret’s eyebrows drew closer together. She didn’t argue, but I could tell she didn’t believe me.

“Do you have a phone?” she asked.

“For emergencies. I can only call Mr. Patter with it.”

“Who?”

“He’s in charge of the compound. He doesn’t want me talking about synthetic stuff outside the apartment.”

“Figures,” Gret scoffed. “Get dressed.”

I tried to take a step but stopped, lightheaded.

“Whoa!” Gret said, suddenly right next to me. “Have you eaten anything since last night?”

I shrugged. I never had managed to go grocery shopping. Gret rifled through my fridge and cabinets.

“Don’t they feed you?” she demanded.

“I feed myself,” I muttered.

She scowled. “Put some clothes on. We’re going to the store. I’ll wait outside.”

She left before I could respond, like she couldn’t stand to spend another second in my home. Still, I knew she’d come back if I didn’t follow her. Plus, now that she’d called attention to it, I could hear my stomach’s plaintive growling. I threw on the first clothes I could find and trudged out into the dusk to meet Gret.

We didn’t speak again until we were on the main road. Then, keeping her voice low, Gret asked, “How long have you ever gone between transformations?”

“Two and a half months.” I had been twelve, and I’d stupidly allowed myself to think that maybe the horror had stopped for good.

“So if Rosie figures out the cuff, then no one’ll think anything of it until then,” Gret said. “By that time, I’ll be able to find somewhere else to go.”

“What do you mean?” The pounding of my heart reminded me of my drum. Or it would have, if my drum weren’t broken.

Gret gave me a don’t-be-stupid glare. “You can’t stay in Supplicants Grove. We have to run away.”

I stopped dead on the sidewalk. The thin air was suddenly hard to breathe.

“Run away?” I repeated.

“We’ll still be in the desert,” Gret said, like that was what I was worried about. “We work for this woman who — well, our boss has a couple sites. We’ll go to one of them. Once Rosie deals with the cuff tracker, no one’ll be able to find you.”

Leela always said that there was no excuse for swearing. She claimed that in every conversation, the speaker had the power to make the listener either happier or sadder, and that bad language would never make anyone happier. For her sake, I strove never to be vulgar.

“That’s a complete load of shit,” I said to Gret. “If you think Mr. Patter would ever stop looking for me, you know less about synthetics — EP synthetics — than I thought you did. And you obviously know nothing about — about her.” I started walking towards the grocery store again, unwilling to keep looking at Gret. “Ten years of being a fugitive didn’t stop her from finding me. Do you really think getting rid of a tracker will?”

“Excuse the hell out of me if this plan isn’t good enough for you!” Gret said, stomping after me. “You didn’t exactly help come up with it! Three days ago, you were still all, it’s just EP, leave me alone.”

Her impression of my voice was horribly accurate. My fists clenched so hard my fingernails cut into my palms. Are you going to attack, Millie? I sneered at myself. 

Gret and I split up in the grocery store, but I knew that she was mustering her arguments. At the front of the store, the cashier in the SAVELOTS shirt was engrossed in her phone. She took no notice of either of us. Over the tops of the low aisles, I watched Gret. Her hair was disheveled; the short bristles on the back and sides stuck up in all directions, and the longer wave on top hung limply over her forehead. Though I had slept the day away, it didn’t look like Gret had closed her eyes once.

Against my will, I imagined what it would be like to run away with Gret, to reach some corner of the world where Dr. Topher wouldn’t find me. Could such a thing be possible?

I already knew the answer to that.

Try for me, marvel, Dr. Topher said, but she was the one who never stopped trying. She would never give up on creating the world she wanted to command. Even if I died right now —

My fingers went numb around a can of peas. It clattered to the floor.

Even if I died right now, she would find a new weapon. A new war.

A new child to adapt.

I wasn’t a good person anymore, if I had ever been one to begin with. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t do the right thing.

Gret appeared at my side. “Millie, are you okay?”

I wasn’t going to get any permission from Gret, not if she wanted to run. That was fine. I picked up the can of peas and put it back on the dusty shelf.

Gret eased the shopping basket out of my hands. There was a small adhesive bandage on the inside of her arm, and she had soil beneath her nails.

“Two and a half months,” I said. “If we take the wristband off, that’s how long we have.”

“To do what?” “To catch Dr. Topher.”