Chapter 18

Before I moved to Supplicants Grove, I had relied on the apathetic dining services workers from the compound and examples from Leela’s soaps to learn how to cook and clean. Something told me that Gret had learned to take care of herself and others in a very different way. I watched as she prepared dinner, delegating some tasks to the rest of the pack but keeping most of them for herself. The rigid set of her shoulders relaxed bit by bit until she appeared almost at ease.

I couldn’t say the same for myself. I stood against the wall, willing the rain to stop. The need to call Leela gnawed at my heart, but I obviously couldn’t do it here. I didn’t understand why my panic had propelled me to Gret instead — not that it was the first time. But this was different. This wasn’t about being a werewolf. It was about being a synthetic.

Yet I still wanted to tell her. I wanted her to know that I’d come from somewhere other than a lab.

After Leela, I told myself. I would call as soon as I got home. Or would it be better to talk face to face on my next visit?

I sucked in a breath. My visit! It was coming up in a week; with everything going on, I’d completely forgotten until Leela had brought it up earlier. I usually lived for social trips to see her, but now there was a giant, glaring problem: Mr. Bicks drove me.

I swallowed hard. Maybe this wasn’t as bad as it seemed. The first gens came on these trips, too, for their medical checkups. They lived farther away from the compound than I did, so Mr. Bicks picked me up last and dropped me off first. I would never be alone with him.

Unless he switched up the order. The first gens wouldn’t notice or care. But I couldn’t skip my visit. If I did, everyone would know something was wrong.

Gret wasn’t going to like this at all. I decided to tell her when the storm stopped and she walked me home from the squat. That way I wouldn’t have to talk about Mr. Bicks in front of an empath.

As soon as my thoughts landed on Luc, I tore my eyes away from Gret’s back. I had been staring at her for at least five minutes. Something like horror rose up in me as I tried to remember everything I had thought about Gret in Luc’s presence. It would be entirely unfair if he understood my feelings before I did.

Rosie walked around the small table, noisily setting out cutlery. Five places: the pack and me. I’d never eaten at another person’s home before. Rosie threw down the last fork and flopped into a chair. As she opened her laptop next to her empty plate, and I saw the columns of my wristband chart, perfectly and illegally duplicated. I had provided her with my calendar so she knew which dates to mark in red. Before long, another row would appear on that spreadsheet. Rosie was in a race with my biology. Her fingers flew across the keyboard as she tried to win.

She looked so much like her mother.

Luc wheeled up to Rosie and looked over her shoulder at the screen. Rosie sat up straight and worked even faster. Luc whistled.

“You’ll have to teach me some of this when you’re done,” he said.

“I’m only doing what I learned from the Subconscious,” Rosie said with modesty so false that it couldn’t possibly fool anyone, much less the empath at her side.

Luc stifled a smile. “You were obviously an apt pupil.”

Rosie’s teeth flashed in a grin. Luc leaned in closer. How was it that a synthetic like Luc didn’t mind resting his overtaxed brain so near to hers? Then again, he was an adaptationist’s child, too.

I dropped my eyes. If I forced myself to think about it, as I resolutely did now, blaming Rosie for the crimes of her father seemed like the kind of grudge characters in Leela’s soaps held. Leela always mocked them for it.

“Thanks,” I said.

I hadn’t spoken loudly, but the room went silent. I waited until Rosie looked at me, and then I held up my wrist.

“Thank you. For working on this,” I said.

Rosie’s eyebrows arched upwards. Deep dimples bracketed her pursed lips. After a long moment, she said, “Yes, well. Moral imperatives and all that.” She closed her laptop and tucked it under her chair. “Sit, Millie. Don’t lurk in the corner.”

I perched on the edge of a seat, only to realize belatedly that there were just three chairs at the table: one for each non-wheelchair-user in the pack. Before I could get up again, Gret retrieved a step ladder that had been leaning against the wall and unfolded it in front of her plate. I half-rose, but Gret glared at me in warning. I sank back down again.

Rosie looked up at me. “I’m making progress on my end. How are things going with you? Any closer to getting Bicks to give up your adaptationist?” she said, not bothering to keep the skepticism out of her voice.

“Not yet.” I hadn’t been trying to make him, but I still added, “The police never would have raided the labs if people hadn’t betrayed the adaptationists.”

Luc asked, “And you believe Mr. Bicks will be the traitor you need?”

“Mr. Bicks cares about himself more than anything,” I hedged. Gret unexpectedly came to my rescue, nodding at my flimsy logic.

“The rest of the world wouldn’t’ve been able to pressure the U.S. without proof,” she said. “People close to the adaptationists — like Bicks — told the other governments what was going on. We only stopped pretending we didn’t know about the experiments when we couldn’t deny the evidence anymore. I mean, the state was careful about not funding them directly, but they weren’t going to shut down a chance to run the world again until they had to. So cheers to the informants, I guess.”

Gret glanced at me, then busied herself by passing glasses of water around the table. I knew I was gaping, but I couldn’t help it. The EP tutors had always been carefully loyal to the government. I’d never heard my own history spoken so plainly before.

“There were adaptationists’ associates who felt bad enough to turn them in?” Rosie asked, a tight note in her voice.

Luc said gently, “Mostly they were looking for a reward. Money at first, then clemency.”

“Oh.” Rosie sounded disappointed.

Luckily, dinner was ready then, so that conversation ended. Sandra came over from the window and helped Gret set out the food. Gret sat on the step stool, slightly higher than the rest of us, with one heel propped on the lowest rung. She surveyed the meal she had prepared with obvious satisfaction.

The food was, for the most part, the same basic fare that everyone ate in the desert: noodles with frozen vegetables shipped in from the saline farms. However, in the center of the table was a bowl overflowing with deep red berries.

Rosie clapped her hands when she saw them. “About time!”

Gret touched the bowl reverently, as though it were filled with precious jewels instead of fruit. She plucked one of the berries from the top of the pile and popped it into her mouth.

“Eat them while they’re fresh,” she said.

The pack ignored the noodles and reached for the berries. I kept my hands in my lap. I didn’t know what kind of fruit they were. I had never seen anything like them.

Gret said, “They’re from the Life Gardens – Dr. Joyan’s greenhouses. You can try them if you want.”

I looked from the berries to the tiny bruise on the inside of Gret’s elbow and suppressed a shudder. Synthetics were uniformly phobic of needles, but Gret had welcomed the sting of metal in her veins to create, if not this particular bounty, then at least something like it.

Hadn’t humans learned to stop trying to be more than what they were?

But when I looked at the bruise on Gret’s arm, the blood-bright berries drew my hand with a force as inexorable as gravity. I nibbled the end of the unknown fruit and nearly dropped it. It was more flavorful than a prickly pear, though not nearly as sweet.

“Tart, huh?” Sandra said, grinning at my surprise.

“It’s good,” I said uncertainly.

Pink blotches bloomed on Gret’s cheeks at my verdict. Again I found myself staring at her until I felt Luc’s eyes on me. I wanted to tell him to strike whatever he’d felt from his mental record, but he just smiled slightly and turned to talk to Rosie.

The pack carried on their own conversation, which was so laden with inside jokes about their shared past that I could barely follow it. I wondered if any of them would mention parents or family, but no one did. After the berries were gone, the noodles tasted bland and chalky, but we ate them anyway. Harder to swallow was my guilt at eating someone else’s food. I tried to eat as little as possible, but Gret kept spooning more onto my plate. The third time she did this, Luc caught my eye as I squirmed in my seat.

He said, “You know what’s a strange thing? Luck.”

I frowned, caught off guard by the non sequitur. Sandra grinned.

“Lecture time,” she said in a stage whisper.

“I don’t lecture,” Luc said.

Sandra and Rosie burst out laughing. Luc crossed his arms.

“I have historically had a lot of time to think,” he said starchily. “Anyway, luck. I used to believe that I was born with the worst luck in the world. Most of my caretakers didn’t know what I was, but my father still made sure that none of them got too close to me. He only hired bitter people who thought they were entitled to better positions than babysitting a rich man’s mysteriously sick son. After a while, their emotions were the only ones I felt. Those and my father’s, on the rare occasions he strayed into my range.”

Luc paused. Forgotten, my food cooled beneath my slack jaw.

“I knew I needed to escape. When I was young, I had a caretaker who had hidden his adaptation. From my father, I had learned to recognize the fear of secrets discovered.”

Luc released me from our eye contact. My palms began to sweat.

“I’d learned many things from this nonstandard before my father realized what he was and fired him. He told me about the Subconscious, where I discovered there were pockets of nonstandards all across the country. People who took care of each other. To get to these people, all I had to do was choose the right person to blackmail. Threatening to reveal my own existence was an excellent bargaining chip. I got two of my father’s employees to drive all the way down to Supplicants Grove Hospital and leave me there in the dead of night. I didn’t tell the doctors my name, so I had no way of paying for any treatment, but I was sick enough that they let me stay there while I waited.”

“Waited?” I said, my throat dry.

“For the nonstandard I’d contacted on the Subconscious,” Luc said.

His eyes shifted to Gret.

“I hadn’t told Gret what my adaptation was or how I’d come by it. I’d planned on lying, but … I couldn’t. Not once Gret and Sandra showed up. And, as luck would have it, I didn’t have to.”

Luc smiled, beauty blooming on his pinched face. “So if this is a lecture, and fine, I admit that it is, its point is that there’s no reason to feel guilty for finally getting some good luck after a lifetime of bad. In other words: eat your food, Millie, and stop making us both feel weird about it.”

Rosie laughed. Sandra did, too, but in a nicer way. I considered Luc’s words. If all went according to plan, bad would repay bad, and everything would be canceled out. Was there really anything wrong with accepting some good in the interim? Couldn’t I live for just a little while?

Aloud, I said, “Can I at least help with the dishes?”

Sandra laughed again and Gret inclined her head. But when I looked at Luc, he wasn’t smiling anymore.

Chapter 19

After dinner, the storm still raged. Gret went into her room and returned with sheets and a thin, rolled up mattress. Sandra laughed.

“You still have that thing?” she asked.

“What, did you get rid of yours?” Gret said. “Or can you just not find it on your side of the room?”

“Just because I don’t make my bed every morning like someone’s gonna come and inspect it —”

“I just don’t get how your laundry always ends up under my bed.”

“I could always sleep in another room,” Sandra huffed.

“No,” Luc and Rosie said in unison.

I listened to the bickering with interest. I hadn’t slept in a room with someone else since Leela and I had stayed together in the hotel during the court hearings. When we’d arrived at the compound, I’d tried sneaking into her room, but Mr. Patter always sent me back.

The wristband interrupted the argument. The room went silent until the light turned green, but I did not relax when the pack did.

“The tracker!” I cried. “They’ll know that I’m not in my apartment.”

Rosie cleared her throat daintily. “I’ve jammed all tracker signals within a 100-yard radius of the squat — which, incidentally, you can blame on the storm if anyone looks. I doubt they will. You seem like a good girl, Millie. No one will expect you to run away.”

“You’re a genius, Rosie,” Gret said, tucking sheets around the little mattress. She folded the last one to make a pillow.

Sandra rubbed a hand over her bristly head. “Need a trim,” she remarked to no one.

“Why don’t you grow it out again?” Rosie asked.

“This suits me better.”

“But you had such nice hair,” Rosie argued.

“Now I have a nice head.”

Sandra got up and returned to the window by the sink. She pressed her glasses against the gap in the boards and shrieked with joy at the next flash of lightning.

“I saw it!” she cried. “The actual lightning bolt!”

She turned around, blinking. The rest of the pack smiled indulgently. Sandra caught my eye and flicked at her glasses. Luc’s breath hitched.

“I have terrible eyesight,” Sandra said. “Like, really bad. Getting these glasses was a nightmare. That crap’s expensive, and I had to find an eye doctor who wouldn’t ask questions. Super hard! Doctors ask the most questions. A ridiculous amount of intel was required. We needed someone who wouldn’t think too hard about why someone with such bad eyes was only getting glasses now. When we finally found one, I went bald for the occasion. I used to have more hair than you. Sold it for the lenses.” She ran her hand over her head again. “You have good eyesight, Mils?”

I nodded. Suddenly uncertain, Sandra looked at Gret. Gret shrugged, as if to say it’s up to you. Sandra sat up a little straighter.

“You synthetics think you have the market cornered on side effects, but there’s a reason all the oracles in the old legends are blind,” she said.

Understanding struck harder than the lightning. Luc closed his eyes.

“Their predictions came true when they sang, not because they saw the future, but because they created it, for all who heard them did their bidding,” Sandra chanted, reciting from some old memory. “They were seirens, in possession of the most powerful psychoid adaptation the world has ever seen.” She resumed her normal tone. “Stop looking like you’re gonna puke. I never used it on you.”

I lowered my hands from my mouth. “But you sang. Outside my apartment and in the store …”

“Singing but not singing,” Sandra said. “You’d know if I was singing.”

“Or you wouldn’t,” Rosie chimed in. “If she didn’t want you to. But you remember her, so there you are.”

I shuddered. Sandra crossed to the door, her cheeks pink.

“Thought you should know,” she said, then fled.

Rosie stood, too. “It’s been a lovely evening of sharing and caring, darlings, but I hope you won’t mind if I don’t partake. I have work to do.”

That left me in the company of Gret and Luc, with Sandra’s revelation still hanging in the air. Two psychs in one town was wild enough, but one house?

Luc said, “Millie, do you want to borrow a book? I think we should all … decompress.”

I nodded gratefully and followed him to his room. When I returned alone to the kitchen with The Ecotech Revolution, Gret was gone. From the table, I could see Sandra emerge from her room and saunter towards the bathroom. Luc’s door cracked open.

“Sandra?” he called.

She veered off her path and leaned against the wall outside his room. I couldn’t resist straining my ears to hear them.

Luc said, “I know you’ve been trying not to be irritated with me since I broke up the fight with those boys, but you still are sometimes, and then you get worried about me feeling it. Can we just — clear the air?”

“They just — no one gets to look at me like that!” Sandra burst out. “And it sucks that you could make them stop just ’cause you’re a guy — and also an empath — whatever. You already know all of this ’cause you’re you. I’ll stop being annoyed at you soon.”

“And I’m not annoyed at you for being annoyed at me,” Luc said, sounding relieved.

“You’re a darling,” Sandra said, in a perfect imitation of Rosie. In her own voice, she added, “But now I really have to pee.”

They both retreated, and I wondered at the conversation I’d just heard. When I answered EP emails, I never really addressed the customers’ complaints head on. I just redirected them with shiny new products. I had come to believe that airing grievances was as useless as wishing, but after listening to Luc and Sandra, I wasn’t so sure.

With his father, Luc had used his adaptation for blackmail and manipulation, and Sandra had the power of mental coercion, one of the worst abilities our forsaken species had ever developed. Yet the fear I had first felt when I met the pack was dwindling. The temptation of fondness tugged at my heart.

“Don’t go soft now, Millie,” I whispered.

“What?”

I jumped. Gret was standing in the doorway.

“Just talking to myself,” I muttered.

Gret raised an eyebrow and dropped a folded t-shirt onto the table. “It’s Sandra’s. It’ll be like a dress on you. And I left a new toothbrush in the bathroom.” She paused, studying me. I squirmed. “Why’d you come here tonight? Did you see anything suspicious?”

“No, nothing like that,” I said.

Gret wasn’t going to let it go, and I wanted to tell you something but changed my mind wouldn’t cut it. She’d get it out of me, and then as soon as it stopped raining, she’d pack me into Rosie’s car and take me straight to West Sonoran Penitentiary to meet my mother. I didn’t want that.

Did I?

“The Life Gardens,” I said instead.

I watched, fascinated, as Gret’s entire posture transformed. She tugged at the hem of her shirt and looked at me furtively, both eager and nervous.

“It weirded Luc out, too,” she said. “And me in the beginning. But Dr. Joyan has never experimented on anything other than plants. All she wants to do is feed people, not figure out how they work.”

A scientist who didn’t want to know how people worked? I’d never heard of such a thing.

“Luc’s met her. He said she’s not lying. An adaptationist couldn’t hide their true obsession. His words,” Gret added.

After a moment, I admitted, “That sounds right. But what do you do for her?”

“Mostly just tend to the plants,” Gret said. “And sometimes provide some — some samples.”

“Which she uses? I mean, not just as ‘inspiration’?”

Gret hesitated, then nodded. “It’s not gross. I mean, genetically, it just makes the crops barely more related to us than they already are. All DNA has tons of stuff in common —”

“How the hell did she get it to work on plants when it didn’t work on people?”

I snapped my mouth shut, appalled by my own question. The problem with the adaptationists’ experiments was not that they hadn’t worked. Dr. Topher’s procedures would have been just as evil if I’d become a real werewolf — more so, in fact. I was glad she failed.

It was just that the transformations really hurt.

Carefully, Gret said, “All she’s doing is giving the plants the ability to adapt to their environment, and then letting them do the rest. That’s a lot different than forcing a specific full-blown adaptation on a human body. We’re kind of more complex than lettuce. It’s like how you can make pigs glow in the dark with jellyfish genes, but you can’t transplant one pig’s head onto another’s, even though they’re the same species.”

I felt vaguely insulted by the explanation, but it made a certain sense. Plus, Dr. Joyan’s failed trials would not be nearly as catastrophic as the adaptationists’. She’d probably had more chances to get it right.

Gret clearly wanted to explain more, but I was starting to get the twitchy feeling that had always accompanied science lessons. Plus, I had other questions.

“Why should Dr. Joyan get to use your adaptation? Why do we have to –” I broke off, remembering what Luc had said about unstable cells. I may have been nonstandard, but not in a useful way. “Why is it the nonstandards’ job to help the standards?”

“It’s not our job,” Gret said. “It’s our choice. Dr. Joyan doesn’t take samples without informed consent.”

But why would you choose to? I thought. I kept that question to myself. I didn’t need Gret second-guessing her helpful urges before the wristband came off.

“Besides, we’re not just helping standards,” Gret went on. “The Life Gardens could one day provide fresh food in the harshest environments on earth. Where do you think nonstandards live?”

I looked away, shame-faced as I thought of the Supplicants Grove registry.

“Thanks for telling me,” I said curtly.

Gret nodded and left the kitchen. Thirty seconds later, she came back.

“Okay, but one other thing’s been bugging me,” she said.

“Really? Only one?”

Gret gave me a flat look that I’d seen her use with the other members of the pack as a form of teasing. Wise-ass, that look said.

“You used the mud the first night I gave it to you, but not since then. Don’t deny it – I can tell. Why’d you stop?”

I looked down at the table. “The burns were almost gone. I didn’t want to waste it.”

“I gave you a shit-ton. I’m not EP. I’m not going to ration your necessities.”

“I know that. You’re very, very different from EP.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Gret said. As she left again, I realized I had meant it as one.

So much for not going soft.

After everything that had happened that day, I expected to lie awake for hours, but as soon as I curled up in the kitchen on Gret’s rolled-up mattress, I thought of the four resting bodies down the hall and fell instantly asleep. At midnight, the needle woke me. I kept staring at it after the light turned green beneath my borrowed sheets. Even if Rosie solved the problem of the wristband, I’d have to transform sometime. I assumed Gret would drive me as far as she could into the desert. But she had only seen me transform while surrounded by silver; she had no idea what I would be like freed from all that. Neither did I.

As though summoned by my thoughts, footsteps padded down the hall and Gret slipped into the kitchen. I pulled the sheets up to my throat, hoping it was too dark to see my face, but real werewolves had excellent night vision.

Gret whispered, “Just wanted to make sure I was right and that cuff didn’t go off.”

“I’d’ve woken you up if it did,” I said.

Gret sat down on my — her — mattress. She wore a stretched-out tank top and a pair of boxer shorts. Her hair was wild with sleep.

“Help me out here, Millie,” she said. “It’s not just one thing bugging me. I don’t get you.”

I shifted as far away as I could without sliding off the mattress. “What’s to get?”

“When you thought Sandra was following you, you freaked. When you came here after your last transformation, you really freaked. I thought you’d be losing it by now, but instead you’re — I can’t even tell.”

The raised skin of my scars pressed against my other thigh.  “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“It’s not about what I want you to say. I just know I’d be terrified if Topher was after me. Especially after everything she did to you and … the others. The ones who didn’t make it.”

My breath froze.

The lawyers had tried to ask us about our lost labmates in the courtroom, but even the participants of the most sensational trial of the century could only watch so many seven-year-olds have panic attacks, so they’d switched their focus to the parade of distorted living children. Once we were in the compound, no one mentioned the dead ones at all. It was cruel, Mr. Patter said, to remind people of past pain.

But Gret wasn’t one to forget.

Gret would keep helping me until Dr. Topher was no longer a threat. I owed her something for that. After I did what I needed to do, I didn’t want to leave her wondering why.

“I barely remember them,” I said.

“The other kids? Did Topher keep you separate?”

I twisted the sheets in my fists and shook my head. “We lived in the same nursery. Dr. Topher needed us to be well socialized. The results would be skewed if our brains weren’t properly developed. The treatments didn’t require isolation until we were five. I don’t —”

“You’re shaking,” Gret said. She shifted closer to me.

“We played together. Dr. Topher read to us. I remember their faces — some of them, anyway — but then it all started, and I …”

I had buried myself in pain until I became a speck of agony, no longer a person. People could think and remember. Pain couldn’t.

There was no room in that speck of agony for the other children.

“I didn’t ask about them when I was rescued. I didn’t even think to,” I whispered.

“You’d been alone for a long time,” Gret said, but she sounded uncertain.

“Dr. Topher never explained death to me. To us, I guess.” I wanted Gret to understand, even though I still wasn’t sure that I did. “I mean, when you get that close to it, you kind of know what it is, even if no one tells you. But it wasn’t until we got to the compound and kids started dying there that I really got it, and by then …”

By then, it was too late to mourn. Too late to feel anything but guilty. I had not cried for my labmates, which meant that no one had.

And what happened when people forgot suffering? They repeated it. That was why we could never forget the wars, could never forget the scars. The magnitude of my failure only revealed itself to me as I grew older and came to understand my place in history as one of those scars – as a would-be war. The dead children’s memory was my responsibility, but they were only empty spaces in my mind.

And if Dr. Topher had succeeded with me, even if she’d still failed with all the others? I knew I would have done anything she asked of me. But that I could not tell Gret.

My confessions, both spoken and unspoken, were living things in the dark room. I could feel them watching the closeness of Gret’s body to mine, the way I had tangled myself up in sheets that smelled of her.

Gret lifted the edge of the sheets and folded them around my shoulders. Her hand hovered over my trembling arm, but she drew it back.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

She got up and left. I curled back down onto the mattress, wondering what possible reason Gret could have for thanking me. Before I could come up with an answer, I fell back to sleep.

Chapter 20

I woke up certain of two things: the storm had passed and Gret was in the room. I opened my eyes.

“Morning,” Gret said.

I rolled over. She was sitting at the table, still in her tank top and boxers, eating a biscuit. Her expression betrayed nothing, but her posture was relaxed. Despite what I had told her in the night, she seemed in no hurry to cast me out. I drank from the glass of water she had put beside my mattress.

“Coffee?” Gret said, nodding at a pot on the counter.

I disentangled myself from the sheets, making sure the borrowed t-shirt hadn’t ridden up over my scars. I shuffled to the coffee pot and peered inside at the strong-smelling dark liquid.

“You look like you’ve never seen it before,” Gret said.

“I haven’t,” I said, my voice rough from sleep. “Synthetics aren’t allowed stimulants.”

“What do they think will happen if you have caffeine?” Gret said, grumpy as always at the mention of EP’s regulations.

“Oh, that we’ll kill them all,” I said, then bit the insides of my cheeks. That was a synthetic joke, and no longer a funny one, if it ever had been.

Gret rolled her eyes. “I’ll take my chances.”

To save myself the trouble of coming up with a response, I poured the coffee into an empty mug and took a sip. Before I could stop myself, I laughed.

“What?” Gret said.

“I just wondered if disgust counts as an emotion, and if so, if I just woke Luc up,” I said.

A great “Ha!” burst from Gret’s throat like a shout. I felt a warmth inside of me that didn’t come from the horrible coffee. Instinctively, I pushed it down. I hadn’t confessed my worst sins to her last night just so I could laugh with her now.

Without warning, that strange other will rose up in me. It was as strong as it had been when I’d succumbed to the healing mud.

(As strong as it had been in the cage.)

I want to laugh with her, I thought.

“Millie, I want you to know — Dr. Joyan doesn’t know what I am. I mean, she knows I’m nonstandard, obviously, but she’s never asked about any of our adaptations,” Gret said, looking into her coffee cup. “And I’m assuming she didn’t look us up or she’d know none of us are on any current lists. She lets her donors come to her. I found out about the Gardens when Sandra and I moved here, and I started hanging around the greenhouses. It was a while before Dr. Joyan told me what she really did, and I didn’t tell her I could help ’til a long time after that.”

“How did you decide to trust her?” I asked.

She looked up at me, then away. “She said that modification, genetic or otherwise, isn’t good or bad by itself. I mean, obviously screwing with plant genes hasn’t always worked out, any more than screwing with —”

Gret broke off, but I wasn’t offended. I was relieved to hear her admit that this kind of work could go wrong.

She tried again: “Adaptations and innovations — they’re only ever as good as the people making them. Dr. Joyan said that humans are capable of using our gifts to change things for the better, not just for the worse.” She looked me straight in the eye. “I needed to do that.”

“Oh.” The soft sound escaped me like a whimper after a fall.

Gret squared her shoulders, awaiting my judgment. I still didn’t know what to think about all of this, but I haltingly said, “I know you wouldn’t be involved with something you thought could hurt anyone.”

Gret nodded seriously. “That means a lot coming from you.”

Her face was too earnest to bear. I mumbled, “Gonna get washed up,” then ran to the bathroom.

I leaned against the closed door. I should have been ashamed to be in Gret’s presence after what I told her last night. I wasn’t supposed to feel closer to herafter talking about my past.

I washed and dressed in the tiny bathroom. Every fixture was cracked and shoddily installed, but they were spotlessly clean. Gret’s handiwork, I was sure. I did my best to leave no mark of my presence.

By the time I emerged from the bathroom, the rest of the pack was awake and in the kitchen. Once again, Sandra had pressed her face against the window boards.

“Park today?” she said.

Luc nodded and Rosie made a vague sound as she groped for the coffee pot. Gret glanced at me before turning to Sandra.

“We should try to keep a low profile,” she said.

“No way!” Sandra said. “I have my fans. They’ll notice if I’m not there.”

“What if we see Dr. Joyan’s donor?” Gret asked.

“You mean prospective donor?” Rosie muttered.

“He’s only ever there at night,” Sandra said. “He can’t handle the desert in the daytime.”

“It’s fall now,” Gret pointed out.

“He’s from the Preservations. Rich people are wimps,” Sandra said.

Gret’s eyes flicked toward me again, quickly enough that I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been staring.

“I was just leaving,” I said.

“No, don’t!” Sandra cried. “Come with us!”

That started a real argument. Gret was adamant that Dr. Topher could not suspect anything unusual, and public displays of a social life were not typical Millie behavior. Sandra countered that if Dr. Topher was really watching me that closely, she’d have already noticed all my trips to the squat. That in turn freaked Rosie out, who wanted to find a new place for me and Gret to meet, but Gret ignored her until I spoke up to agree with Rosie. Everyone looked shocked at that, but I didn’t want to cause any more trouble than I already had.

Luc held up his hands. The room fell silent.

“I think all of us — including Millie — should go to the park,” he said. “The donor won’t be there because it’s muddy from the storm. From what you’ve told me, he’s not the type to mess up his clothes. Also, Dr. Topher is less likely to make a move in a public place, and she has no reason to do so yet anyway. It hasn’t been long since the last transformation, and Dr. Topher is going to be extra careful if she thinks she’s close to her goal. A trip to the park isn’t going to force her hand. Besides, I think we all deserve to have some fun.”

Sandra and Rosie looked at Gret. After a long moment, Gret nodded. Sandra cheered. The three of them filed out of the kitchen to get ready for the day, leaving Luc and me alone.

“Do you want to stay with us for a while?” he asked quietly.

“Shouldn’t you already know?” I hedged.

“I don’t always interpret the desires in the emotions correctly. Even for myself.”

Did I wake you last night? I thought, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask.

“The park sounds fun,” I said.

Luc smiled and wheeled away. I rolled up Gret’s mattress, convincing myself that it was okay not to go straight home to call Leela. I was going to tell her about my mother, just not this second, that was all. Ina Peng would still be in prison and Leela would still be in the compound when I got back.

The pack left the squat, and I trailed behind them. Rosie was nursing a second cup of coffee. A massive handbag hung over her shoulder, and Sandra peeked inside of it.

“Why’re you bringing your laptop?” she asked.

“Because unlike all of you, I have a project to complete,” Rosie said.

I rubbed at my wrist. “You don’t have to worry about it now.”

“Sandra has her diversions and I have mine,” Rosie said. “Believe me, I’m happy to work — and by the time we get to the park, I’ll be caffeinated enough to do it.” The corners of her mouth stretched in a not-quite-smile as she raised her mug in salute.

I not-quite-smiled back and turned my attention to the ground. The floodwaters from the storm surrounded us in a haze of evaporation, but there were still many pools and puddles to avoid. A flash of movement caught my eye. The sidewalks of Supplicants Grove were in a state of ill repair, to put it mildly, and a large crater in one of them had filled with water. An unlucky tarantula was floundering in the puddle’s deepest point. I broke away from the pack and scooped the little creature out as gently as I could.

“Ugh!” Rosie said, speeding ahead.

Sandra scurried after her, pushing Luc along the bumpy road. I gave the tarantula a pat on the hairy back, then set it down on dry ground. It shuddered and took a few jerky, experimental steps before regaining its stride.

“Why don’t people like spiders?” I asked, catching up with the pack. Anything that managed to survive in this forsaken desert was lovely to me.

“They have a lot of legs,” Sandra said. She sounded apologetic, like maybe I hadn’t noticed how many legs they had and now she’d ruined spiders for me.

“Way too many,” Rosie agreed.

I looked at Luc. “Sorry. You’re outnumbered,” he said. “I don’t actually know how I feel about them, but at the moment — gross.”

That answered my question of whether disgust was an emotion. I turned to say as much to Gret, but she was watching the tarantula crawl away. When it had safely skirted around the edge of the puddle, Gret turned back, paused, and smiled. At me.

“I don’t mind spiders,” she said.

What a good tarantula, I thought. The humid air felt somehow lighter the rest of the way to the park.

When we got there, Sandra directed us under a supplicant tree. We tried to find relatively dry patches of weeds and roots to sit on, except for Luc, who smirked at us from his wheelchair. The post-storm fog made the trees look ghostly as they watched over the children who splashed in the puddles, taking advantage of the rare pleasure while it lasted. I tried to read their parents’ faces, but they were all looking down at the tops of their children’s heads. Were any of those splashing children nonstandard? If so, they didn’t seem worried about it now. If I had ever seen so many people smiling at one time, I had forgotten it long ago.

Sandra stood up, winked at me, and, without warning, burst into song. Her voice cascaded down a full octave. Goosebumps erupted over my skin. I had thought Sandra sounded amazing when she’d just been humming outside my window, but that had clearly been child’s play to her. At its full strength, Sandra’s voice was pure and clear, yet rich and soulful at the same time. It was perfect.

I felt a spike of alarm. The pack were all breathing like they could exhale every fear in their chests. Luc waved me over, and I scooted closer to his chair.

“This isn’t the adaptation,” he whispered. “She just sounds like this.”

All I could say was, “Wow.”

Sandra sang a few more scales, which drew a small crowd of park-goers. Gret dug a folded cloth hat from one of her pockets and slipped it in front of Sandra’s feet. When the crowd had grown to a dozen or so people, Sandra grinned at me.

“Any suggestions?” she asked.

Still distracted by the beauty of her voice, I said the first thing that popped into my mind: “Riverbed.”

As soon as the word was out of my mouth, I wanted to stuff it back in. “Riverbed” had always been my favorite song. It was about a pair of lovers, one in the desert, one in the bayou. They used to travel up and down what had once been the Arkansas River to see each other, but now the river was dry on one side and an overflowing, unnavigable swamp on the other. It was an old song, written during a time of war and storms. The writer’s life was shrouded in mystery. All she had revealed of herself was this song and its dedication:

For suffering women and their wives.

“Good choice,” Sandra said. “Gret?”

Gret stepped forward. My face was on fire, but she didn’t look at me. She just nodded at Sandra, who sang the first verse in her sparkling voice:

Here beside the riverbed,

Dry and cracked and dusty red,

I call and call to empty stones

And wail from deep within my bones:

Return my love to me.

For she was true and she was kind,

But now she’s only in my mind.

The river’s gone and does not care

To answer a poor lover’s prayer:

Return my love to me.

Sandra’s voice throbbed with passion. Each note trembled, and soon, so did I. I tried not to look at anyone, but my gaze kept landing on Gret. It was her turn now. She took a breath and began:

Here beside the riverbed,

Remembering the life we led . . .

Gret’s voice was nothing like Sandra’s. Though she sang on-key and well, to most of the crowd, she was probably a letdown after the seiren’s perfection. Not to me. Gret’s voice was deeper and rougher and it didn’t tremble at all.

The water’s wild and strands me here.

I scream to an unhearing ear:

Return my love to me.

Before this lonely earth was cursed,

She was mine and I was hers.

The water rises with each day,

But still along the shore I pray:

Return my love to me.

Sandra sang the melody again on an ooh, and Gret weaved below her in harmony. The crowd applauded when the song ended, and some threw a little money into the hat. Sandra began to take more requests.

Gret didn’t say anything. She just sat back down beneath the supplicant tree and watched me. Every time I stole a glance back at her, she still hadn’t looked away.