Green Death, page 20
“I failed miserably my first several times.” I forced out a chuckle. “But I’ll learn eventually, or I’ll starve.”
“That’s the way of things. Though I doubt we’d let you get too hungry.” Van went back to the stove and ladled food into her own bowl.
My stomach growled, instantly reminding me how hungry I’d gotten during testing. I stayed silent.
“Have you thought at all about having a meeting with Arris?” Levee stuck a spoon of food into his mouth and studied me as I pushed the mess in my bowl around. “He said he has a gift for you.”
I snorted as cynicism surged inside me. A gift? Something from the lab? The offer for a fast fuck against the wall? No, he wouldn’t be looking for that. I was tainted now. Besides, I wouldn’t want it, even if he offered.
Maybe he had a knife to slide into my gut, if he was a double-agent and on the Oligarchy’s side. I shook my head and tried not to think about all the things said during the tests. How was I to know what was truth?
“It scares me,” I said. “He scares me. But I think I’ll have to meet with him. First, I want to see what kind of equipment he’s already brought. I’m sure I’ll need more stuff from the old lab. Things it’d be too hard to get elsewhere. Samples of poisons, notes, stuff like that. Is he how you got the information about my family?” I leaned back in the chair, trying not to look as tense as I felt.
“Yes. And the recording of your brother. Apparently, the Oligarch doesn’t know there were monitoring systems in the building where he tortured you.”
I sighed. “Of course, Arris gives me away. Maybe he really is trying to get me killed.”
“I don’t think that’s the case. Arris knew what kind of reaction we might have toward you, and he told us not to hassle you too much about it. I will say that a little of our anger at you was real during testing since you didn’t tell us yourself.” Levee narrowed his eyes. “But we’ve also seen the depths of you now, so we know you’re not a part of some crazy conspiracy to infiltrate us. Those marks on your face mean you’re ours not the Oligarchy’s. Even the Wild Ones know that much. Word already spread that you passed. I made sure of it. They know you’re part of the Disciplined, and they can’t touch you without very serious repercussions now.”
I held my tongue. I understood, on a political level, why they hadn’t been able to promise me protection before I could prove I wasn’t going to let my rage control me. But if Levee and Riot and Humid hadn’t taught and protected me themselves, I would have been destroyed in a heartbeat. How many others before me got torn apart before even hearing about the trials?
I’d been lucky my entry into the Exclusion Zone had been pre-announced. Otherwise, I’d bet everything in my new apartment that my drop-in would have resulted in my immediate death, just like my brother had expected.
Arris had done that for me. Arris had put the masters on high alert for a drop-in and had given me a chance with the plasma pistol.
“Yeah,” I said, softly. “I’ll meet with Arris whenever he wants.”
“When I communicated with him last, I told him to come back a few weeks after you were set to come out of the trials, and if you agreed to meet, I’d give him time with you. Face-to-face. So you have thirteen more days to be sure.”
“And that gives me time to figure out what else I might need him to retrieve from the old lab,” I said, my gaze drifting toward the door of the bedroom. I’d placed my notes from the trial on top of the thin mattress—was it only an hour ago? It felt like ages since they’d let me off the tattoo chair. “I can’t wait to go back to work.”
Levee smiled. “The things Arris already brought, as well as another shipment of machines from Professor Marita, are on the lab’s counters. I didn’t dare try to put anything away. You can start in several days, once you’ve rested up and recovered.”
His directive not to start immediately sounded so final. I didn’t like that at all. So I finished my food in silence.
“It’s time to let you settle in,” Levee said, after we’d both emptied our bowls and Van had downed her own helping. Humid had only picked at hers, eyes bleary. Apparently, she’d been managing a volatile class of children all day, starting incredibly early in the morning. But she’d wanted to be here for my post-marking dinner.
I appreciated it. Even if Riot hadn’t taken the time, Humid had shown up to at least try to celebrate with me.
“I’ve got to go sleep,” she said, as she pushed her bowl away. “I’m sorry, Tryg. I was hoping to be less of a bore.”
“It’s fine,” I said, as she reached over and squeezed my arm. “You had a long day. Go home.”
“Levee?” Humid pushed up from the table. “I think I was supposed to give Tryg the future expectations talk. Can you—”
“Of course.” Levee shooed her away.
She smiled, a wavering thing, and nodded at everyone. “Good to see you again, Van. Tryg? I’m beyond glad you made it. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
We all called our goodbyes as she slipped through the door. It closed behind her with a solid click.
Levee focused his gaze on me and cleared his throat.
“Right. Future expectations. Let’s discuss how your life will be structured, since we aren’t going to be training you anymore. Now that you’re part of our community, we expect you to work for a certain amount of time every week. Since you’re the only one in this new laboratory, you’re the one to decide when those hours are. Just check in with me on occasion so I know that you’re actually doing things and not just playing around. I also wanted to know if you could use a helper in your research. Since you have the knowledge, I want people to learn from you, but I can’t justify placing them in your lab if there won’t be enough for them to do.”
I smiled. “I’ve never had an assistant, and I don’t know if I could provide full-time hours, but I won’t say no to one a few days a week. Especially if they’d be willing to donate blood and skin and hair samples. I’ll have plenty of boring jobs for them to aid me with.”
“What do you think, Van?” Levee looked at the young woman. “Would you like to split your time between the clinic and Tryg’s lab?”
Van grinned. “I don’t mind spilling a little blood for the sake of knowledge. I want to learn.”
“Good.” Levee turned to me. “Van has always been interested in how the world around her works. She’ll pick things up very quickly.”
I believed it. But I’d also been taught things, growing up in the Sant family mansion. We never had assistants, aside from our protégés. Secrets wouldn’t stay secret otherwise.
Was Levee that kind of person? Was he offering Van to me in order to keep an eye on me? If Vodayn had given me an assistant, I’d have known immediately to be suspicious. But Levee?
I tamped down my cynicism. Here, I shouldn’t need to keep secrets.
Van was the kind of person I could work with. She seemed to have a very sharp, curious mind. She also—as demonstrated by her immediate offer to make dinner when the rest of us were exhausted—had a keen sense for doing things without someone asking it of her. If that personality trait carried over to lab work, she’d make my life so much easier.
So I wouldn’t turn Van down. It was time to learn to trust people.
Besides, an extra pair of hands would be fantastic.
“When would you like me there?” Van tilted her head, her straight black hair brushing her left shoulder.
“I plan on being in the lab from nine or so in the morning to late afternoon, and I’m sure I’ll also find my way there during strange hours if I’ve got ideas running through my brain or tests that take monitoring. You can take your pick of the day hours, and I’ll let you know if I need you specifically for a project.”
Van bit her lip a little and then nodded. “I’m working the early morning shift at the clinic, so I can come help you at nine.”
“Starting next week,” Levee said. “Tryg, you need some time to rest first, and she’s still getting used to waking up at two in the morning. She might fall asleep on you a few times. But I’m sure you can work around that.” Levee gave a good-natured chuckle.
“I’ll do my best,” Van said, scowling at Levee. She turned to me. “And I’ll learn fast. I promise. Can you tell me specifically what you’re planning to do?”
“My ultimate goal—the one everyone’s on board with, I think—is to reverse all of the effects of the Green Death,” I said.
“Well yeah, I know that much.” She smirked. “Levee had to talk about something to keep my mind from shaking itself apart during the trials.”
Teenagers. Had I been that annoying only a handful of years ago? “Right. So I’ve got to study the poison and what it’s done to us, and then see if I can figure out what went into the creation. If I can find some way to just partially mitigate the violent tendencies, I’ll be more than happy. There’s going to be a lot of trial and error, and it could be impossible. My second goal is to find a way to clear the Green Death from the Exclusion Zone so nobody else gets tainted.”
She looked thoughtful for a moment. “But if the anger is a permanent change and not something triggered by our constantly breathing in poison, then we’ll all still rage.”
“Correct. So first, we have some research to do in figuring out how the Green Death really works on us.”
“I can’t imagine not having to worry about losing myself.” Van planted an elbow on the table top and rested her chin in her palm. Her gaze fixed on my blank wall.
“It frees up a lot of time to worry about other things,” I said. “And there’s a much lower chance that you’ll get beaten to a pulp on a daily basis.”
“And then there will be political ramifications,” Levee said. “Within the walls, our whole society is built on the idea of focusing our control. If we no longer have to concentrate on that, we’re going to have to find a better way to govern ourselves. And if Tryg finds a way to clear the poison from the air, everyone outside the walls will know it. The Oligarchy will know it. And they may try to do something about it. The resistance will have to move first and start the revolution. But dealing with those possible scenarios is my job. Not yours.”
I stared down at the table. “The resistance plans to initiate a revolution on the faint chance I succeed?”
Levee nodded. “We’re putting a lot of faith in you.”
I couldn’t stop the noise of disgust. “You’re grasping at straws. It could take me decades.”
“We’re taking what little hope we’ve been given and we’re going to run with it.” Levee leaned back and crossed his arms.
“Then I’ll do everything in my power to give you something to work with.” I sighed. “I’m egotistical enough to think I’ll at least partially succeed, as long as I can get some things from the old lab and find alternative sources for venom and poison. Once I figure out what needs to be done, a lot of the development depends on access to specific substances. I’ll let you worry about revolution and what’s best for your—our—people. I’ve got no experience or political knowledge to really have a hand in that conversation. Nor do I want to be involved. I’ll spend my time worrying about what I can do.”
“You don’t want to jump into politics?” Levee’s mouth twitched into a sarcastic smile. “Just think—you could easily overthrow your brother and take his Oligarch seat, if you became the savior of the Greenies.”
“I have no desire to jump into a pit of snakes simply because I’m knowledgeable about one of the breeds.” I shuddered. “I’m guessing that many of the other oligarchs are like my brother, and I’ve had enough of that kind of ego for a lifetime.”
“People in power will abuse that power. That’s the nature of humanity. A few won’t, because everybody’s morality is a little bit different, but most will. All of recorded history equates power with corruption. That’s why the resistance is fighting for a different way of ruling. One that won’t allow the corruption to take hold, or at least gives it a minimal time to do it.”
“A different way of ruling? What do you mean?”
“Once, when Eastrend was part of the United States, we elected most of our officials, and then had to re-elect them constantly. It was a good way, but even then, corruption grew through the cracks. The people made poor decisions. The people will always make a poor decision or two, but at least they’re the ones deciding, and it all tends to balance out unless they happen to make a lot in a row. That happens when misinformation and wide-scale emotional manipulation gets spread. A lot of that happened when the country split. That’s fairly well known.”
I nodded. I’d been tutored on the origins of Eastrend, my teacher extolling the virtues of the Oligarchy and how it had saved the country from a whole host of problems that our neighboring fragments of the old States dealt with.
“Well, now we’ve strayed back into excessive corruption. We did almost as soon as the Oligarch’s seats became hereditary, when our previous rulers and citizens decided that the long-term benefits of keeping one group of people in power outweighed the risk.”
“I can’t say you’re wrong.” I thought about all the creative ways to die my brother had asked me to produce and shuddered. I wondered how many good people my ancestors had killed off to procure their ruling seat and to keep it.
“So we’ve been developing a way to go back to the people choosing, with even more checks and balances than the first time we were a democracy. We’ve been smuggling in reports from other countries, finding records from how the old United States ran that haven’t been purged, seeing what works and what doesn’t, and making plans for a transitional period after we take the Oligarchy down. If you succeed, and our plans move forward, our country will have a fast and orderly revolution.” Levee took on an almost wistful expression. “We will be free.”
Free? Would they really be able to pull it off? Make a better world through revolution?
I didn’t really believe it. Oh, of course I’d love to see my brother pay for what he’d done to me—and what my ancestors had done to the people here in the Exclusion Zone—but I’d grown up steeped in that political corruption.
Levee looked so fired up over fighting, but I couldn’t rally that kind of ferocity within myself. My tutor had covered the history of what we’d been, before the states had splintered, as well as some of the other great civilizations in the world.
There was no perfect ruling system, not as long as human nature was allowed to run rampant. But if Levee thought his system was better than the Oligarchy, I wouldn’t stand in his way. If I’d picked up on one thing in the political education I’d received, it was that every empire falls eventually. Perhaps this was Eastrend’s time.
I knew better than to voice my ambivalence openly though. Political opinions were dangerous, but not agreeing with other people’s opinions was even more so. That sort of thing got people killed. Even if the opinion was barely more than a noncommittal shrug.
So I smiled and stood, grabbing my empty bowl. I snagged Van’s and Levee’s too, and then the mostly-full one that had been Humid’s.
Levee rose from the table and patted me on the arm as I moved toward the kitchen. Then he flicked Van’s forehead. She batted him off.
“We should let you get settled in. You need a good night’s sleep to help make up for the last month of stress.”
“I slept for days,” Van said, practically jumping out of her chair. “I’m next door though, in G-6. So if you need anything, come knock. Or push your panic button, if you’re sparking. Or one of your neighbors will call it in—the walls are thin enough to hear snarls, so if you hear that from your neighbors and nobody comes up to stop it, go ahead and call down. The guys downstairs know how to handle pretty much every situation.” She flushed. “I know from experience.”
Levee nodded. “If you have nightmares and spark from them, just know that it’s normal for the first few months after testing. That’s why we house you here.”
I watched them go, door sliding closed behind them. Then I washed and dried the dishes. I stared around the tiny kitchen, and then moved through the dining area to the bathroom.
I peeled the bandage away from my tattoos and took a good long look in the mirror. I barely recognized myself, my face all reddened skin around fresh black lines. I looked older, now. Weary. Worn.
I stepped into the shower and doused my face with the hottest water I could stand, just like I’d been told. The marks burned bright, and I clenched my teeth and splashed each cheek again.
After I toweled dry, I ducked into the bedroom, turned off the lights, and sprawled out on the mattress.
The silence of the room crashed around me. Sure, I’d been alone plenty during my trials, but the quiet seemed more vicious now.
Empty. Everything felt empty. The horror of the tests had vanished, as had the relief that it was over, the curdling hurt of Riot’s brief visit—all of my big emotions had drained away.
I closed my eyes and breathed, Riot’s voice in my head counting out the slow, meditative pattern. In, two, three, four. Hold, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Out, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Repeat, two, three…
Sleep came nowhere near me, no matter how many times I ran through the meditation exercise. Instead, I kept getting phantom flashes of Cordon flying at me, eyes gleaming and hands outstretched, or Peal’s markless face in a snarl, or Riot’s gloriously naked backside, moving in time to someone else’s gasps. Even these strange images didn’t make me feel.
The silence suffocated me. I had to do something, despite Levee’s edict to rest. I rolled out of bed, slipped my clothes on, grabbed my notebook, and padded out of the sterile-feeling apartment.
Doors lined the wide hallway, and dim light bulbs illuminated the space just enough to see by. I heard quiet singing through Van’s door, and a darker rumble of conversation from farther down the hall.
I took the stairs to the first floor and stepped into the fairly large, Spartan lobby. A woman sat at a desk just inside the front door, an array of unlit bulbs on a grid in front of her. Beyond her was a reinforced door.
