OUR SHARP FORSAKEN TEETH: Chapters 37-39

Chapter 37

I walked a short distance away, taking Rosie’s phone with me. Wildflowers tickled my bare ankles as I began to type. Somehow the words came easily, like they’d just been waiting all this time to be shared. When everything was posted, I closed the app and then typed in the only phone number I knew by heart. I wrote it, after all, in the conclusion of every conciliatory email I sent. For more assistance from Equilibrium Pharmaceuticals, pleZase call …

“Customer service,” I chanted over the automated menu until someone picked up.

“Thank you so much for calling Equilibrium Pharmaceuticals,” a monotone deep voice said. “Your needs are important to –”

“Hi, yes, I just got cut off with a sales representative,” I interrupted. “She said her name was Leela?”

“One moment,” the voice said, sounding relieved that it didn’t have to take this one.

One moment translated to five excruciating minutes of hold time, while I frantically hoped that EP didn’t employ too many Leelas. Finally, I heard her voice.

“Good morning, this is Leela speaking. How may I help you today?” A pause, then, “Hello? Are you still there?”

I swallowed the lump in my throat and said, “Hi, um, it’s me.”

“Millie? What’s going on? Are you okay? Are you in trouble –”

“I’m coming to the compound,” I said. “I’ll explain everything. But first, could you do something for me?”

“Of course,” Leela said without hesitation – as I knew she would, because as much as we’d hurt each other, we still loved each other, too. I hadn’t known that was possible before; everything about my life had taught me that hurt erased love.

It was such a relief to be wrong.

I rattled off the instructions Rosie had given me and waited for Leela to confirm that they worked. When she had, she added, “Uh, how freaked out should I be?”

“Probably very,” I admitted, “but maybe a little hopeful, too?”

She whooshed out a sigh. “I think I can manage that.”

I returned to the camp and gave Rosie her phone back. She reopened the app I’d closed and raised her eyebrows.

“Popular already,” she said.

Gret looped her arms around my waist. I leaned back against her and watched Sandra make her way over to us from Rosie’s car. She no longer bounded about, arms swinging, but instead moved carefully, squinting at the treacherous ground. When she reached us, she handed me a box.

“It was delivered right after you left the squat,” she said.

I lifted the top off and gasped. There in the package was a frame drum. It was as plain as the old one, but so new that it practically shone.

“Do you like it?” Sandra asked, shifting from foot to foot. “I sent away for it when you said your old one was busted. That was, uh, before we were so hard up for cash —”

“Stop feeling guilty, Millie,” Luc interrupted.

Tears streamed down my face. I made no effort to stop them.

“I ripped the old one when I bit Mr. Bicks,” I said. “It was in my bag. I used it to lure him to me …”

“Good,” Rosie said pointedly.

Gret held me tighter.

“You’re allowed to love things, Millie,” Luc said.

I brushed my fingers over the supple membrane. It would play like a dream, but not here. Not yet.

“Keep it safe for me,” I said. “And — thank you.”

The pack hugged me and wished me luck. Rosie, Sandra, and Luc hung back while Gret took me to the car where Dr. Topher waited. Post-transformation fatigue finally began to cut through the hours of adrenaline, and I remembered how small I was, how unpromising and unlikely.

“I don’t want to fail again,” I whispered.

Gret cupped my face in her hands and kissed me. “I won’t let them keep you.”

“They might not give you a choice.”

“No. This time, they don’t get a choice.”

I saw in Gret’s face the faith she used to have in Dr. Joyan, and the faith I’d had in her to follow my blood. I fixed that image in my mind as I climbed into the car and left the Petrified Forest. Dr. Topher’s presence in the backseat was like fire. I scrunched up as close as I could to the steering wheel, but I couldn’t get away from her burning.

When I first decided to kill her, I had thought that would be enough. But now I yearned for a life after Dr. Topher. Whether I deserved it or not, I kept driving towards my only chance of making one.

When the compound came into sight, I heaved a sigh of relief. No cop cars. I stopped outside the fence just as Markie pushed open the stairwell door and ascended from the earth. He held a loose bundle in his arms. To any staff who saw him, he would look like he was taking a blanket and his laptop outside to enjoy the fresh air. But when he unfurled the blanket, he revealed the pieces of the camera from my room. He snapped them together and consulted his computer. I knew he was reading from the list of directions I had told Leela. When he was ready, he looked up at me. I got out of the car and nodded.

Markie pointed the camera at me and tapped on his keyboard. Two seconds later, the speaker in the gate crackled. Mr. Patter’s astonished voice said, “Millie?”

“Open the gates, please,” I said.

The gates sprang open so fast I had to leap out of the way. I got back in the car and inched it inside. Mr. Patter sprinted up the stairs, his thin pale hair flying out of place. Before getting out of the car again, I ripped Dr. Topher’s blindfold off and stared her straight in the eye.

“You will never be back in a lab, so you won’t gain anything by contradicting my story. I’ll just be locked up forever, and your experiment will be over. Besides, if people believe I took you down alone, they’ll think you made a very strong werewolf.”

After a long silence, Dr. Topher nodded. I got out of the car again, leaving the door open so she could hear what happened next.

Mr. Patter, who had just caught his breath, rounded on Markie.

“What are you doing with that camera?” he demanded. “Turn it off!”

“If I do, every synthetic who can walk will be out here in five seconds,” Markie said. “We want to hear what Millie has to say.”

Since Mr. Patter was able to commandeer the compound’s computers, I had correctly guessed that Rosie would know how to do the same. Rosie had assured me that my fellow synthetics would be able to close the video once it popped up. Those who didn’t want to watch wouldn’t have to.

Markie took a casual step forward, and Mr. Patter staggered back. I was so used to seeing Markie slumped over that it was easy to forget how huge he was. No synthetic liked reminding people of their ill-gotten adaptations, but now he used his titan body for my sake.

“Come inside, Millie,” Mr. Patter called to me.

“I’d rather speak out here, and that you stay where you are,” I said.

Mr. Patter snorted and started forward, until Markie cleared his throat behind him. He halted.

“I received a troubling call,” Mr. Patter said, his voice tight. “A man in Supplicants Grove believes he saw an indication that you were about to have an event. Yet we received no word of this, and when we sent someone to your apartment, you were gone. Your wristband said you were still in Supplicants Grove.”

“The wristband had been tampered with,” I said.

“Tampered with? By whom?”

“Dr. Topher.”

Mr. Patter glanced over his shoulder at the camera, then squinted past me into the car.

“Who’s in there?” he cried.

“Dr. Topher has been spying on me with Mr. Bicks’s help. Is he here?”

“He is not.”

“Someone should try to find him,” I said, my voice flat.

“How do you know he was involved?” Mr. Patter asked, still trying to see into the backseat.

“Mr. Bicks gave the videos of my transformations to Dr. Topher,” I said. “After I ran into thatmanin Supplicants Grove, Dr. Topher found me. She abducted me and took me to the Petrified Forest, where I transformed under her watch.”

Mr. Patter stared at me for a moment, then said, “Am I supposed to just take your word for this?”

I opened the back door of the car. “Get out.”

Dr. Topher carefully swung her shackled legs onto the ground and straightened up. I looked at Mr. Patter, but he just frowned.

“Who is that?”

Oh, right. I’d forgotten about the cosmetic surgery.

“It’s Dr. Topher,” I said. “DNA testing will prove it.”

Mr. Patter looked dubious, but this was not a claim to be taken lightly. “I’ve already called the police.”

Tremont must have really gotten to Mr. Patter if he was willing to involve the law. I didn’t know what else EP could do to their favorite scapegoat, but I was sure they could think of something.

“Then let’s get this sorted out before they get here,” I said.

Mr. Patter narrowed his eyes. “What is there to sort?”

I took as deep a breath as I could manage and said, “Dr. Topher successfully used an EP employee to get to me. After the transformation, I overpowered her, and —”

“You overpowered her?” Mr. Patter interrupted.

I gestured at the bruises on Dr. Topher’s face, irritated by his incredulity. “I was fighting for my life. She wanted to continue her experiments.”

“Did she inject you with anything?”

“No,” I said. EP could not find the new scars on my leg. “She needed to ensure proper safety protocols before she began.”

Dr. Topher twitched.

Mr. Patter visibly tried to compose himself. “Why don’t you turn this woman over to me, and —”

“There’s the issue of the reward,” I said. “America’s Most Wanted.”

“Millie, as your guardians, Equilibrium Pharmaceuticals —”

“Didn’t find Dr. Topher. I did.”

“Well, truth be told, she found you, didn’t she?”

I matched Mr. Patter’s condescending tone. “All the more reason I think I’ve earned some compensation. EP is supposed to be responsible for all the monsters you accidentally helped create.”

Mr. Patter’s expression curdled. “Are you behind the little uprising, then?”

I blinked, caught off-guard.

“As I’m sure you know, there has been a sudden epidemic of second-generation synthetics petitioning their lawyers,” Mr. Patter said. “They want to contact their mothers.”

“Whose idea was that?” I managed to ask.

“Leela Shaw’s.”

A deep, sweet ache took the place of some of the fear in my chest, but I couldn’t get distracted yet.

“Back to the reward,” I said.

“The government will never give a synthetic access to those kinds of assets,” Mr. Patter snapped.

Gret had anticipated that. She knew how things worked for nonstandards in America.

“Maybe not,” I said, “but everyone will expect EP to reward me somehow.”

I waited for that to sink in. The angry flush drained from Mr. Patter’s face until his skin was deathly white.

“Who is everyone?”

I brought out my emergency phone, which Gret had taken from my apartment. I messaged Mr. Patter, and his pocket beeped. His eyes widened as he read what I sent. The elites of the Preservations were abuzz with excitement. All across the country, rumors swirled about Dagny Topher’s capture. To distinguish this story from all the usual conspiracy theories, the pack had taken pictures of the silver handcuffs, the needles, and the cover of Dr. Topher’s lab notebook, then uploaded them on Dr. Topher’s own laptop. Several panicked State Department press releases denying any knowledge of the veracity of these photographs had already been issued, while the heads of state of several other countries – and, more importantly, a handful of high-profile CEOs – had begun making their denouncements of American adaptationists, with ominous undertones of distrust that this was simply a rogue agent and not a government-sanctioned war-mongering project. That record would need to be set straight, and fast.

(“Don’t worry,” Gret had told me when I’d fretted about international retaliation. “The government’s good at denials, and this time, they’ll even be telling the truth.”)

I had tantalizingly signed my name to these photos. The viewers would expect to hear more from Dr. Topher’s last surviving experiment. I had not written any explanations on the mainstream sites, though; I’d saved that for the Subconscious. I had taken a screenshot of the post I’d shared, including my promise to follow up once EP met my demands. I sent that to Mr. Patter next.

If the first message had shocked him, the second had him apoplectic. “Let me see if I understand: after being kidnapped by the madwoman who turned you into a wolf, you had the presence of mind to blackmail your guardians into giving you money?”

I smiled the smile I’d learned from Rosie. “Someone has to look out for our best interests.”

“Our?”

“EP is going to use the money to cancel the synthetics’ debts,” I said. “We no longer work for you. We can pursue our own interests and contact whoever we want.”

Mr. Patter started to laugh, but stopped abruptly. He glanced back at the camera.

“The reward’s big, but not that big,” he said. “You all will still wind up costing EP more money than you can pay back.”

“Well, nothing from when we were underage counts towards the debt, does it?” I said, not bothering to keep from snarling. “And EP will graciously forgive the remainder from the date we came of age. Otherwise a werewolf who suddenly has the public’s attention will have a lot to say about how an adaptationist spy was allowed to work in this compound for ten years.”

Dr. Topher gasped, then let out the breath as a satisfied sigh. My throat burned. I was using the man we had killed together for my own gain. I was as ruthless as she’d always wanted.

Maybe. Fine. But not how she wanted.

“Besides,” I added, waving at the camera, “the rest of the synthetics probably have opinions on the matter, too.”

I stared Mr. Patter down until he looked away.

“One more thing,” I said. “If I find a patron willing to house me during transformations, I do not have to return to the compound.”

“Yes, I saw that on your little confession. Where do you expect to find such generosity?”

“I’ll keep you posted.” That battle would not be won today, but even if Plan A didn’t work out, I would never return to those silver cages again.

A siren wailed. We all turned to look at the approaching police cars. In that split second of distraction, Dr. Topher made her move. Scrabbling with shackled hands, she tore open her big square belt buckle and produced a tiny, shining syringe. She lunged for me, but for once she was bound and I was free. I leapt out of the way and she fell hard to the earth.

We stared at each other. She held the needle out to me, but I was poised to run. Tires screamed towards us. Dr. Topher could not catch me again, and I saw in her eyes the moment when that realization slammed into her.

She cast one anguished look at the cars before punching the short needle through her own shirt and into her stomach. Opalescent liquid disappeared into her flesh.

At first nothing happened, but then my eyes saw a movement that my brain didn’t understand. Dr. Topher was motionless, but her shirt pulled against her body as though someone tugged it tight from behind. She almost smiled, but the expression morphed into a mask of horror.

Dr. Topher tore the needle from her stomach and clawed at the pinprick as though she could draw the solution back out again. She pitched forward, and I saw a horrible structure rising from her shoulders, soaking the back of her shirt with blood.

For the first time in my life, I heard Dr. Topher scream. She could not stop what she had started.

She couldn’t finish it, either.

All at once, Dr. Topher’s writhing form went still and silent. Dazed, I tore the blood-soaked fabric away from her back.

A web of gory bones extended from her shoulder blades, connected by torn ligaments and a few scraps of muscle. At the tip of one folded, fragile mass hung a patch of skin and three dark, quivering feathers.

I wiped the blood on my hands on Dr. Topher’s arms, the same arms that held me as a child.

“You were wrong,” I told her. “About everything.”

Chapter 38

The cars screeched to a halt and the police poured out. One grabbed me by the arms and dragged me away from the corpse. I let him, but I did not look away from the mutilated body until the cop forced me through the trapdoor. Markie and the camera had disappeared back inside the compound at some point. I hadn’t noticed when. The fact of Dr. Topher’s death crowded all other thoughts out of my mind. A part of me feared that, if I left the compound, the rest of the world wouldn’t be there anymore.

Bile rose in my throat, but I swallowed it back down. Dr. Topher wasn’t the universe’s maker; only mine. Worlds didn’t end when one person died, no matter who that person was.

Mr. Patter and I crowded into his tiny office with the police. I heard doors slamming all the way down the hall. Synthetics were supposed to be grateful to the cops who had “rescued” us, but none of them had been gentle during the raids.

“What happened here?” one of them demanded, glaring down at me.

Where were all my lies? I tried to find them, but all I could see was Dr. Topher’s body.

“She’s in shock, gentlemen,” Mr. Patter said, his voice shaking. “But she told me everything before the fugitive … did what she did. If you’ll allow me?”

The cop nodded. He looked relieved to be talking to a standard instead of a synthetic. I remembered my story as Mr. Patter recited it, with some edits. He didn’t mention that I had put pictures on the Subconscious, and he reframed my demand for the reward money as his own idea.

More and more police showed up. They kept asking how Mr. Patter could have let this happen. Mr. Patter whined, “Everyone knows how much of a genius Dagny Topher was. She’d have to be to disable that monitor band we had on Millie!”

Rosie would like that. A half-hysterical giggle lodged in my throat, and I had to fake a coughing fit to clear it.

“Maybe you wanted to work with this genius,” a cop said, narrowing his eyes at Mr. Patter. “You can’t like being stuck out here, can you?”

“Don’t be absurd!” Mr. Patter spluttered. “You forget that I see the horrors of these creatures every day. Why would I want to make more of them?”

I clenched my fist, my nails digging into my palms. I was tempted to let the cop continue to falsely accuse my unwilling keeper, but Mr. Patter wasn’t done.

“It makes more sense to me, sir, if Topher was able to pull this off with more resources to evade – or be ignored by – law enforcement at her disposal. Perhaps state resources?”

Oh, for the love of the whole forsaken world. Is this how all our wars had started? With men looking for someone else to blame?

“She worked alone,” I said firmly, finding my voice again. “She didn’t trust anyone who wasn’t a lackey she could control. If you find Mr. Bicks, I’m sure he’ll say the same.”

The cop and Mr. Patter glared at each other a second longer, but I could see the moment when both of them realized my narrative, true or not, was better for both of them. Mr. Patter, I imagined, had also just remembered that EP had considerably more “resources” than the government, so his accusation to the cop could easily backfire. As bomb-struck as I still felt, it was all I could do to keep from rolling my eyes.

After two hours of talking in circles, the cops finally dismissed me. Mr. Patter and I locked eyes. We both had the power to destroy each other, and we knew it. He had already been ruined once. Surely he wouldn’t risk it again?

I supposed I’d find out soon enough.

Rubbing feeling back into my legs, I stumbled down the hallway. The doors were still closed, but I imagined I could hear the breathing behind them. Dozens of synthetics were waiting to find out if their unalterable lives had, in fact, been altered. What would they do? What did they want to do? I knew so little about most of the people I’d grown up with. Mr. Patter had controlled us well; we’d done exactly what he wanted by separating into generations and sticking only by our closest friends. Maybe it had been necessary to retreat for a while in order to heal. But we couldn’t block each other out anymore. If we synthetics were going to brave the real world, we’d have to be a pack.

One thing at a time, I told myself. I slipped into Leela’s room and ran into my best friend’s waiting arms.

Leela sobbed tearlessly into my hair. I dipped my hands into her tank and poured water over her arms and head as she clung fast to my neck.

When she could finally speak, she said, “She’s dead?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I’m glad,” Leela whispered.

She let go of me and slipped below the water. The glass of the tank distorted her face, but her eeriness didn’t shock me this time.

When she reemerged, I asked, “You didn’t see, did you?”

“Only a little,” she said, but I could tell from her voice that a little was enough. “Markie shut the camera off before it really started.”

“I’ll have to go thank him,” I said. “He was perfect. You were both perfect.”

Leela reached down and took my hand. Her rapid pulse fluttered beneath my fingers. “Tell me what happened. All of it.”

I took a deep breath and began: “I came home, and there was this girl on my doorstep …”

I told her about the video and the comments. I told her how my body knew I was in danger before my brain would admit it, and how it transformed to protect me.

I told her about the word marvel. I told her about the drum in the cage and the choice I had made.

But there was more to the story than that. I told what I could about Luc’s careful kindness and Sandra’s wild sweetness. As gently as I could, I told Leela that I knew the daughter of her adaptationist, but that she was nothing like her father. The pack all had secrets that weren’t mine to tell, but I hoped one day all these nonstandards who had become so dear to me would know and trust each other.

I explained the way Rosie had stolen control of my wristband, and how there was a whole digital community of people who loved us for no other reason than that the rest of the world did not. I described the Life Gardens, how the pack had chosen to spill their blood to make the desert bloom, and how badly Dr. Joyan had let them down. I spoke of Mr. Tremont’s callousness, the trees in the park, and the tarantula in the puddle. I admitted that I was coming around to the idea of second chances.

I stopped then. The time had come to talk about Gret. I looked at Leela. We were best friends, fellow synthetics. We weren’t supposed to be so different from each other.

But that difference no longer made me feel less real. In this moment, with no idea what would happen next, I was more real than I had ever been. Though my heartbeat was frantic at the idea of speaking, I was more afraid to hide this newfound realness for even a second longer.

“The werewolf. Gret. I — we — I think we’re in love.”

I told Leela a lot, but not everything. Some parts of my story were just for me. But I found I wanted to speak about real things, at least as much as language would allow.

Not all of the real things in my life were as wonderful as Gret. I told Leela about what Dr. Topher had made me and what I had made Mr. Bicks. That wasn’t even the hardest part, because next I told her about the time I had spent trapped between forms in the lab, and how I’d done everything I could to disappear into my pain. I told her how I had come to believe that it was my job to pull Dr. Topher into that pain too, to break her into pieces just like she’d broken me.

“But that’s not what happened,” I said, and then I told her the rest.

Finally, I had only one last thing to say. “After I bit Mr. Bicks, I thought that keeping everything a secret from you would keep you from getting hurt. But if anything had happened to me, that would have hurt you even more. My life is part of your life, and you deserved to know what was going on. I’m sorry.”

I looked at my bare hands and waited for her judgment.

“When I was little, I used to sit at the very bottom of my tank,” Leela said. “Dr. Guerrera and his team would get so mad that they couldn’t reach me, but they never tried to pull me up. They just waited until I was too hungry to stay down anymore. After they brought us to the compound, I told myself that I was just a stubborn kid, that I was just, I don’t know, taking whatever tiny bit of control I could. But they were smart not to reach down into the water. I wouldn’t need to be strong. I’d just have to hold on to their faces long enough.” I stared at her. She pressed her rapidly drying fingers against my hand. “I don’t like being mad, so I try not to be. But I didn’t mean to make you feel like you were the only one who was, or to feel like that made you bad.”

“Do you – do you think we all wanted …?”

“Millie. Yes.” Leela almost laughed. “How could we not?” Her smile dropped. “Did you really think I’d hate you because you bit Mr. Bicks?”

I shrugged helplessly. “Aren’t good people supposed to hate violence?”

Leela waved her hand like that was a rhetorical question, even though it wasn’t. “He was creepy and mean and he was working with an adaptationist. He wanted Dr. Topher to change him, so it’s his own fault he’s dead. I’m not sorry about it. Do you think that makes me a bad person?”

I shook my head.

Leela hesitated. In a quieter voice, she asked, “Do you think I’m a bad person because I lied about our parents?”

“No,” I said. “I wish you hadn’t, but … I get it. You didn’t want to think about it.” I hesitated, then blurted out, “I was so horrible to you! Not talking to you, and what I — what I called you …”

Leela blushed. In the light of her own glow, her face looked burned.

“I didn’t mean it,” I pleaded. “You’re brilliant, Leela, making Mr. Patter let us talk to our moms …”

She looked away. “I couldn’t tell if you thought that was a good idea.”

“It’s amazing. What changed your mind?”

“Well, it’s like … on my shows, you know, characters make mistakes, but you still root for them because you know they’re all right deep down. When I was little, I thought that, okay, the adaptationists are going to prison because they’ve done awful things, so our moms must be awful, too. Except now I think … maybe they’re more like the characters. At least some of them must be, right? And even if the lawthinks they should be locked up for life, I mean …” She spread her arms, indicating her cell-like room.

“If Dr. Topher hadn’t have — I wanted to make sure she didn’t wind up with my mother,” I said.

“I thought about that, too. They shouldn’t have to live with the adaptationists if it makes them too upset —”

“Or murderous,” I said.

“— yeah, that, too — to be around the people who hurt their kids.”

“Or killed them,” I said quietly.

Leela made a little gasping noise, then ducked under the water and stayed there, her back to me. As her best friend, I should have known what she was remembering, but I didn’t. Supplicants Grove hadn’t created this gap between us; our fear and grief had, and we’d only widened it by pretending it wasn’t there. I couldn’t bridge it alone. I held my breath, waiting.

Finally, Leela resurfaced. “Or killed them,” she agreed. The tremor in her voice betrayed how hard it was to speak of her own lost labmates. She blinked her red eyes hard, then fixed them on me. “You know, Dr. Topher could have killed you, too, and I – I wouldn’t even get to go to your memorial. I’d just be the last one in the tank again.”

Again? I’d always imagined Leela isolated as I was once the changes really got underway, but … had she shared her space with her fellow subjects? Had they died around her?

Leela’s eyes were wide, as though she’d just realized what she revealed. She shook her head slightly. She wasn’t ready. She didn’t have to be.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

She nodded, then said, “Do you think … do you think they know that Dr. Topher is dead? The ones who died? Do they know she can’t hurt anyone anymore?”

“I don’t know,” I said slowly. At memorials, Mr. Patter always talked about how there was peace in death. About this, at least, I hoped he was right.

Leela kissed the top of my head and dunked under again. When she came back up, she asked, “Do you really think we’ll get more freedom?”

With more confidence than I felt, I said, “Mr. Patter doesn’t want EP obliterated, and the government won’t, either – way too scandalous, plus then some foreign pharma company would start getting all the money. So I think the police will keep Mr. Bicks’s involvement quiet as long as they’re paid off. We should at least get the same courtesy. And blackmail is great leverage to get us the right to talk to our own moms.”

“Our moms are standard,” Leela said softly.

I didn’t have to answer that. We both knew we might not be wanted.

Leela bit her lip, then lifted her chin. “But even if only one of us has a good mom, they should still get the chance to talk to her.”

I could hear how scared she was that her mother would be cruel. Impossibility was safer, in a way. Possible dreams could turn into nightmares.

Still, Leela dreamed.

“I shouldn’t have said what I said, either,” she said. “About you not doing anything. It wasn’t true. Your adaptationist almost killed you again, and the first thing you did was save us.”

“We don’t know if it worked yet.”

Leela shrugged like that wasn’t important. “Well, before Mr. Patter decides, I still have my client access. I’ll have to take a page out of, um — Rosie’s book.” She spoke the name of her adaptationist’s daughter uncertainly, but without anger.

“What do you mean?”

“You said your friend Luc needs medicine. I have client payment information. Some of them are so rich that they won’t even notice a few extra charges, and I can ship the meds wherever I want. No hacking required.”

A fierce rush of love rose up in me. “You will get out of this room one day. I think we’re both going to outlive this compound.”

Leela’s face shone like the moon. “Y’know, I was super worried when you moved out. You hate being alone.” She looked at me sideways. “But now you have a — a girlfriend?”

I turned the word “girlfriend” over in my mind. It was a standard word, maybe not made for werewolves, but it would do for now. In fact, I sort of liked it. I nodded, and Leela beamed. Her smile banished all the fear from my heart, if only for a moment.

Leela said, “I didn’t know that —”

“I’m gay,” I said. I made sure not to say it like a question. “I know. I didn’t tell you. It didn’t seem —” I broke off. I was about to say it didn’t seem important, but that wasn’t true. “It didn’t seem relevant.”

“I’m really glad it’s relevant now,” Leela said.

There was a knock at the door, and we both jumped. The world outside Leela’s room was ready for me again, but I wasn’t sure if I was. Leela reached out and tugged me closer to her tank.

“You’re gonna save the desert, I know it,” she said. I heard her jealousy, but I mostly heard her pride.

I took her webbed hands and kissed them. “If I manage to save anything, it’s because you saved me first.”

She half-smiled but shook her head. “Other way around.”

“Well, then we both did,” I said. “Maybe that’s how saving works.”

Chapter 39

The compound let me go.

I was all the way back in Supplicants Grove before I really believed it. Mr. Patter personally chauffeured me in furious silence. I thought some police would accompany us, but they were too busy swarming around Dr. Topher’s body. To them, I was dangerous, sure, but not conniving like born nonstandards. Turned out all that disdainful pity came in handy. They assumed I was a powerless pawn in my adaptationist’s games.

Mr. Patter assumed no such thing. When we reached my apartment, he stood in the doorway as I informed the Subconscious that he had acquiesced to my demands.

“I’m going to give them regular updates, so don’t make a liar out of me,” I said.

“A woman just died in front of you,” Mr. Patter spat. “Aren’t you horrified?”

I looked Mr. Patter up and down and remembered Luc’s word: contemptible.

“I’m a synthetic,” I said. “I’m always horrified. I’ve learned to multitask.”

“Just don’t do anything else,” he said as he left.

Did he really believe I would simply wait for EP to find a way to cage me again? Not a chance.

The first test came the next day, when the official story broke. The articles were vague. All anybody knew was that the fugitive adaptationist’s creature had finally gained the upper hand, and that Dr. Topher – rogue agent to the last – had taken her own life rather than face the righteous justice of the United States.

Face justice. Such an odd term. I doubted Dr. Topher had ever considered what justice even meant. She never would have experimented on herself if I’d still been in her reach. But she couldn’t imagine a life without her work, a life without a chance for power. A life without me.

I assumed Dr. Topher’s body would be burned like every other synthetic’s. Neither the media nor I mentioned what she had tried to become.

Supplicants Grove still didn’t know who I was. I assumed Mr. Tremont had been trying to get a bigger buyout from EP before revealing me. He’d wasted his chance. Denouncing me today would not have the same effect as it would have yesterday. I had no doubt Mr. Tremont was packing up his things and getting ready to leave the desert for good.

In the news, the reporters described how the reward money was “earmarked for the continued care of the adaptationists’ victims.” All of us synthetics had privately received a memo relieving us from our work duties “until further notice.”

“You were right. Patter is trying to find a way out of it,” Gret said, reading over my shoulder.

Gret had been waiting outside my apartment until Mr. Patter brought me home, and she hadn’t left since. We had been on my computer all morning. The Subconscious was almost too overwhelming to read. It would take a while to sift through the anonymous messages of support to see if, going forward, there were people who could provide tangible help for me and my packs. For now, it was enough to know that there was an invisible nation who had not forgotten about the synthetics.

As for the rest of the country, some people seemed sympathetic to my plight, but not all. One commenter wrote, “That synthetic never should have been outside a protected facility in the first place.”

I didn’t know how many people in Supplicants Grove felt the same way. Liberating the synthetics hinged on assuming the worst of Mr. Patter, but my next plan was much riskier. This time, I had to bet on people’s best.

There was a knock on my door. Gret and I both tensed, and I felt the prickle of hair on her palms where they rested on my shoulders.

“It’s me,” Rosie called.

We both exhaled. Gret let her in, and Rosie dumped a bunch of whiteboards onto my lap.

“Any cops following you?” Gret asked.

“Not following. There’s one loitering across the street, presumably in case Bicks shows up,” Rosie said, her voice rough.

She settled her sunglasses on her head, revealing dark circles beneath her eyes. Her lips were swollen and raw.

“Where’d you get the whiteboards?” Gret asked.

“The high school,” Rosie said. “No one even asked why I was there. You’d think they’d notice a new kid.”

I picked up the whiteboards. “Give me a minute?”

Rosie and Gret left my apartment. I ran my hand over my thigh, trying to draw strength from the wounds. EP could never know the truth about what happened to me. I would have to run from them all my life. So I figured I should run towards something, too.

I began to write.

I erased and started over a dozen times, smudging my forearm black. I had been made with silver and needles, and I had remade myself with teeth. Now, I wrote it all in erasable ink, changing whatever I needed to. For too long, I had based my conclusion about myself on Dr. Topher’s hypothesis, but that was bad science. The conclusion didn’t come from the hypothesis; it came from the results.

I touched my scars again. There was a part of me now that belonged only to Gret. There was a part of her, too, that belonged to me. I did not write that down. It was werewolf stuff, too new for words. No one else had a right to us, no matter how many other secrets I exposed.

I filled four of the whiteboards. As I read them over, my laptop beeped. There was a message for me from Leela: Break it back.

I left my apartment. The pack was waiting for me at the base of the stairs. I glanced across the street at the suspicious cop. Rosie had her back to him, with her hair and sunglasses obscuring most of her face, but she smiled wryly when she saw me look from him to her.

“It’s not like anyone would expect you to want to hang out with me,” she whispered so quietly I almost didn’t hear her.

“Glad he’s wrong,” I whispered back.

Luc and Sandra looked just as tired as Rosie — especially Luc. The memory of Dr. Topher’s emotions couldn’t have left him yet, but the smile he gave me was his own.

I handed the boards to Gret. She passed the first one to Sandra as she finished reading it, but Sandra cleared her throat.

“Sorry, but do you think you could maybe read them to me?” she said. She flicked at her inadequate glasses.

“It’s that bad, then,” Gret said sadly.

“I just don’t wanna strain,” Sandra mumbled.

Luc bowed his head but rallied quickly. “Give them to me. Sandra may be the singer, but I have a great speaking voice.”

Sandra smiled a little. “You have, like, a computer-generated speaking voice.”

“I know. It’s very soothing,” Luc said.

He looked at me for permission, and I nodded. He spoke only loud enough for the pack to hear. The whole thing sounded so feeble. Small, sad story; small, sad request.

But it was more than I’d ever said. More than I’d ever asked.

When Luc was finished reading, Rosie spoke without a trace of her usual drawl. “It sounds great, Millie.”

“It just needs musical accompaniment,” Sandra said.

She reached into her bag and pressed the beautiful, unused frame drum into my hands.

“I thought you’d probably want something to do while everyone’s staring at you,” she said. “Just promise a repeat performance when you come back, okay?”

I did promise, hugging each member of the pack in turn. When I came to Gret, she shook her head.

“I’m coming with you,” she said.

“But everyone will look at you!” Rosie said, alarmed.

“No one knows me,” Gret said. “My last registration photo was taken when I was eleven, and I didn’t have such cool hair back then.”

“Gret, you shouldn’t,” I started, but Luc held up his hand.

“I should advise you that arguing with Gret would be extremely useless right now,” he said.

“It would,” Gret agreed.

What could I do but take her at her word?

Gret held the whiteboards under her arm while I cradled the drum. I hadn’t played in so long, but I already knew the rhythms I wanted to try. And now that I had a second chance at being a drummer, maybe I should expand my horizons. I would look into Chinese drumming, I decided, and I found myself truly excited by the idea. Of course, China was a huge country, and I was just as likely to pick a tradition from someplace my family had never lived.

Well, maybe my mother could help.

Gret spoke abruptly. “You know, Dr. Joyan could still — the pack’s always gonna be a liability to her.”

“I know,” I said. “But we could be more than that.”

“She might not see it that way,” Gret warned.

“Are you trying to talk me out of this?”

“No! I just — don’t know if I forgive her.”

“Me neither,” I said. “But I know a little about doing the wrong thing because you’re trying to do the right thing. Besides, this is still just Plan A.”

“And do you have a Plan B?”

“Not yet,” I admitted. “I’ve never really made plans for … well, anything.”

“I make a lot,” Gret said.

“Then we’ll figure something out.”

Gret narrowed her eyes. “I’m not used to you being so optimistic.”

“I kind of proved my own pessimism wrong a couple times lately,” I said, thinking I didn’t close the clamp. It had become something of a mantra.

“You’re not nervous?”

“I’m so nervous.”

Gret spun me around and kissed me hard and quick. She was walking again before my brain reengaged. I caught up with her.

“That helped,” I said.

I was rewarded with Gret’s rare, surprised laugh. “I’ll remember that.”

When we got to the park, I sat beneath the biggest supplicant tree. I felt its bark against the back of my head as I closed my eyes and prayed to all the gods that no one believed in. She said she made me a spirit of change, like you’re supposed to be. I have the power to alter things, and I can’t get rid of that. So help me change them for the better this time.

It was my first real prayer. I opened my eyes and nodded at Gret. She arranged the whiteboards in front of me.

“Where should I be?” she asked.

“Close,” I said.

She sat down against the tree to my right. The sharp clarity she brought to the world no longer disoriented me. Having another werewolf nearby was grounding. Natural, even, if such a word could ever apply to a synthetic.

I looked out over the park. The people here were ignorant to all the mutilated dead I carried with me: my lost labmates, the synthetics who’d died in the compound, Mr. Bicks, Dr. Topher. I felt the stillness of those hearts in my own chest. But I also felt the beating of the life that surrounded me.

I began to play.

I found the beat easily. Doum-taka-taka-doum-taka. It was like I had never stopped. The rhythm was just waiting for me to take it up again.

A child walked towards me. I wasn’t a good judge of children’s ages, but I thought she was maybe around ten or eleven. She listened to me play, shifting her shoulders back and forth to the beat. Then she lowered her eyes and read the whiteboards.

My name is Millie Peng. I am a resident of Supplicants Grove, and I am a synthetic werewolf. Dagny Topher experimented on me until I was seven years old. My custody was transferred to Equilibrium Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Topher tried to take me back, but she failed.

While in Supplicants Grove, I learned about Dr. Joyan’s Life Gardens. Carl Tremont, a prospective donor, discovered that I am a synthetic. Because of what I am and my brief acquaintanceship with Dr. Joyan, Mr. Tremont decided not to fund the Life Garden project, even though Dr. Joyan never took samples from me.

I do not want to be the reason your community suffers. I did not harm Mr. Tremont or anyone in Supplicants Grove, and I never will. The gardens work. With your help, we can make Supplicants Grove healthier and stronger.

There are people who want to help you. Let us. Supplicants Grove deserves the relief.

The kid finished reading and stared at me. “This is you?”

I nodded.

“But how —”

Gret leaned forward. “It’s all written down.”

The kid’s eyes widened, and then she ran off.

“Mom!” she called. “Mom, come look!”

I closed my eyes and kept drumming, a little faster now. I heard the kid return with her family. There was a pause while they read, and then a woman’s voice said, “What’s all this about?”

“Exactly what it says, ma’am,” Gret said.

“But who are you?”

“I’m with Millie.”

I kept playing. I didn’t miss a beat. I started to add some flourishes.

“She’s good,” the kid’s voice said.

“Is she even allowed to be here?” the woman asked.

Gret said, “She’s a legal resident. You can check the town records.”

The kid piped up again. “What are Life Gardens?”

I heard footsteps approaching. Two more voices spoke out, then three, then four. Calmly, Gret explained the science behind the Life Gardens, leaving nothing out. I listened as a nonstandard explained the beauty and promise of her own cells, a promise that even the Age of Stasis could not break. We both knew it was the last time Gret would be able to speak publicly on behalf of the work she so believed in. She and the rest of the pack were still unregistered. Like Rosie said, they’d have to remain behind the scenes.

For now. Like Rosie also said, she was a hacker, and she wasn’t the only one. Nonstandards across the country knew my name now. If Dr. Joyan turned us away again, the Subconscious could help my pack write new lives. All we had to do was dream them up.

Gret finished her explanation of the Gardens. Everyone started speaking at once.

“That seriously works?”

“That’s disgusting!”

“But it works? We wouldn’t have to pay for shipping? The food actually grows here?”

“Yes,” Gret said. “It grows.”

The people were silent. My fingers flew a little faster, a little surer.

An angry voice spoke up.

“Forget all that! We can’t have armed freaks living here! She’s not safe!”

Another voice agreed. This was what Mr. Patter had always warned. If people knew what I was, then no one would want me to stay. Some of them might try to hurt me …

“Don’t be mean,” the kid snapped.

“My daughter’s right,” the mother said, though she sounded less sure. “Didn’t you see the news? This girl was just kidnapped again, but she’s trying to help us.”

Quietly, so that only a fellow werewolf could hear, Gret breathed, “Yes! Yes!”

I drummed and drummed. A few more people joined the argument, and it began to tilt in our favor. Supplicants Grove was poor and abandoned and sick of it. Surely some of them here were nonstandard, or at least they loved nonstandards. Before I met Gret, I had only noticed them enough to be afraid. As my life had been hidden from them, theirs had been hidden from me, too. I didn’t want that anymore. If my heart had to bleed for all who suffered, and I knew it always would, then I should at least allow myself the pleasure of knowing them – and loving them – too.

There were about a dozen people gathered around me now, just enough so that I didn’t notice when one left until they returned with someone else.

“What’s going on here?” Dr. Joyan’s voice said.

Questions exploded from the small group of onlookers. “Is it safe? Can we really survive on your food?” They also asked, “Why would you work with her? Are you using tainted samples?”

Dr. Joyan said, “I have not used any samples that have undergone prior genetic modification.”

Gret and I had agreed that Plan A should hinge on a second chance, but now that the moment had come, my heart was racing. Would Dr. Joyan denounce us? Would she deny the truth we’d told about her work?

Her voice tight with uncertainty, Dr. Joyan added, “But Millie is not tainted.”

Gret’s breath caught. Tears gathered beneath my closed eyelids as Dr. Joyan began to explain the nonstandards’ contributions in more depth. The people listened.

Would it matter in the future? Maybe. It mattered now.

Overwhelmed, I tuned the voices out and listened to my drum. I threw myself into the music, and the rhythm filled my heart to bursting. But I didn’t burst. I grew. How had I ever believed myself small? I was as bright and boundless as the Petrified Forest. I had a girl-body, a wolf-body, and a drum. I had Gret. And if the spirits of change had truly left us, it didn’t matter, because I had a spirit of my own. Once it had shattered, and parts of it would always hurt. But my scar tissue stitched me back together into something vast and uncaged. I was bigger than the compound, bigger than Supplicants Grove, bigger than the whole desert.

Is that what everyone was so afraid of? That our own human spirits were too big for the little shards of the broken world? Maybe they feared we’d have no space for ourselves unless we became small and silent.

I refused to believe that anymore. We forsaken creatures belonged here in this beautiful, forgotten corner of the planet. We would make room for one another.

My drum called out to the crowd. Join me, it said. Maybe we can’t save everyone, but oh, why miss the days when we feel like we can?Chapter 37