Awakening (4 page)

A flare of light blinded her. Spots swam in front of her eyes as she squinted to try to make out who’d accosted her. She could see a tall, broad-shouldered silhouette standing slightly stooped under the tunnel’s low roof.

Then he held the illuminator between them, aimed up so they were both lit. And now she saw the straight dark hair, a little longer than she remembered, the high cheekbones, the perfect line of his jaw. He was everything a high-status trueborn should be, from his regal bearing to the perfect kelfa-brown of his skin.

“Devak,” she whispered.

K
ayla.” The soft way he spoke her name made her heart ache. She remembered staring into those deep, dark eyes when she’d been Assigned to his family, how she’d been riveted by their intensity. She remembered kissing that mouth.

She forced herself to look away, focusing just past his shoulder. She was too flustered to even berate him for touching her in the dark and frightening her so. “How have you been?”

His jaw worked a little, his mouth compressed, and she realized the cruelty of the question. His father’s arrest and his mother’s abandonment might have happened four months ago, but Devak’s life was still torn apart.

The way he was dressed told her everything. The fabric of his forest green korta was nearly as coarse as what the lowborns wore, the collar and sleeves unembroidered. Instead of the silver-infused spider-silk chains he used to favor, he wore a simple black cord around his neck, the Manel name written in trueborn script on an enameled pendant.

He’d never been one to flaunt the extravagant wealth the Manels had once possessed. But not only were his clothes plainer, the diamond set in his bali was a near invisible chip. His bali used to hold a much larger diamond, a traditional fifteenth-year gift from his parents. Were Zul and Devak living so close to the edge that they’d had to sell the more extravagant stone?

“I’m fine,” he said. “It’s good to see you.”

She heard nothing but rote courtesy in the words. “I thought I’d see you at the Two Rivers meetings sometimes. But you stopped going there.”

His gaze slid away. “Pitamah doesn’t want us all gathering in one place.”

The Kinship spread the meetings out, parceling information here and there. Kayla attended a secret gathering in Two Rivers sector with Zul—Pitamah to Devak. Risa and Devak went to another in Leisa. When necessary, Kayla shared what she’d learned with Risa and vice versa. Other times, they would keep what they knew from the other to limit what any one person would be able to reveal.

But sometimes the need for secrecy chafed.
It’s best this way,
Zul would say. But she’d get so twisted up inside worrying over what she was allowed to say to Risa and what she wasn’t. Why couldn’t she use her own judgment, reveal what she thought best to reveal rather than be constrained by Zul’s dictates? Despite the lip service the Kinship paid to GENs being on equal footing with trueborns, it seemed they didn’t give her much credit for thinking for herself without their constant guidance.

“But Zul said he would have switched with you,” Kayla said. “He’d go to the Leisa gathering with Risa, and you could come to Two Rivers with me. You chose Leisa.”

He didn’t speak, his silence beating at her ears in the dark tunnel. She wanted so much not to care. Wished she could be angry instead of feeling an ache in the pit of her stomach.

Much as she wanted to confront him, she had to think of Bala, pacing with anxiety, placing herself at risk while Kayla wasted time with Devak. “Why are you here?”

His dark gaze pierced her. She felt pinned in place and didn’t like it. “Same as you, I guess. To collect GEN IDs for new safe house candidates.”

Before taking a GEN to a safe house or bringing them into the Kinship, they had to be erased from the Monitoring Grid, and before a GEN could be erased, Devak or another hacker needed the GEN’s ID.

That was another reason Kayla was here: to pick up IDs of GENs waiting to be taken off the Grid and brought into a safe house. She and Risa would pass the datapod and packet on to the next lowborn or trueborn in the chain. It would eventually make its way to someone like Devak.

“All the trouble Risa and I go to, the care we take in passing on the datapods to keep trueborns like you safe, and you put yourself at risk by coming here to collect the IDs yourself.”

Irritation flashed across his face at her criticism. Better that annoyance than the longing that cut so deep.

Devak let the illuminator drop to his side, casting his face into near darkness, obscuring any other reaction. He edged a little closer, straightening in the vertical tunnel access.

“They told me someone was coming for the pickup. I came out to save them the trip. I didn’t know it would be you.”

The words came out before she could stop them. “Would you have come if you’d known?”

He looked away again, casting his face even more into shadow. “Why wouldn’t I?”

She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer to that. She lifted her shirt and fished in her hidden pocket for the small packet Teki had given her, then held it out to him. He lifted the illuminator again so he could see to take it.

The light brush of his fingertips across her palm made her shiver. To distract herself, she asked, “How many Scratch victims are in the safe house?”

His expression grew grim. “Nine or ten in the sick room.”

“Every week Risa and I are transporting more infected ones.” They might refuse transport to runaways, but GENs knew Risa would keep the Scratch-afflicted out of trueborn hands. “Six were brought to us in Mendin sector alone.”

Kayla hadn’t believed the reports when they first came in. GENs so sick they were bed-bound, GENs
dying
of the mysterious illness. The gene-splicers built tankborns to fight off disease, to resist infections. GENs could heal faster than non-tankborns. Yet Scratch was fatal, and the Kinship medics had no idea what caused it.

“You got them all to safe houses?” he asked.

“One died on the way. Another”—her stomach knotted at the memory—“the Brigade confiscated. Took some persuading for Risa to convince the enforcers she’d been on her way to turn the GEN over to them.”

“Most of the ones I saw were bad,” Devak said. “A few still able to walk and talk, but most bedridden. Two were in the last stages. Nothing but red welts from head to toe.”

Thank the Infinite the Kinship had figured out that Scratch wasn’t communicable from GEN to GEN. Nor had
any lowborn or trueborn been infected. But if GENs weren’t catching it from other GENs, what was causing it? The Kinship medics had a half-dozen theories, but no answers.

She realized Devak was looking down at her baggy, ill-fitting shirt. “Risa doesn’t dress you any better than Senia did.”

Mean-tempered Senia had been the Manels’ lowborn house manager. “The plainer I dress, the less attention I attract. Risa and I prefer it that way.”

“But you can’t hide that face.” He brushed her cheek again, then tucked a strand of unruly hair behind her ear.

She could barely breathe. “I should go. Bala’s waiting for me. Thank you for taking the packet.” She turned to the ladder and started up it.

“Kayla,” Devak said.

He reached up for her as she ascended, his palm grazing her from hip to calf. The contact seemed to burn her, even through the still damp leggings. She shivered at the slight pressure and paused her upward climb.

Hooking an arm around a rung, she turned to face him. His expression was still more mystery than meaning. “I don’t know what you want from me,” she said.

“I thought we were friends.”

Friends.
Her heart compressed, heavy as a stone. Once, she’d thought they could be more. When they stood together in Sheysa sector four months ago, she’d thought her chance at the restoration treatment would come soon. In that moment she would have turned her back on being a GEN without hesitation. Because she wanted a future for her and Devak, a happy ending like her friend, Mishalla, and her husband, Eoghan.

But after the restoration treatment, GENs like her and Mishalla would only be able to pass as lowborns. That was fine for Mishalla—the boy she loved was a lowborn too. But for her and Devak, the expanse between GENs and high-status trueborns was as wide as it had ever been. Even restored, becoming a lowborn, Kayla couldn’t, shouldn’t hope for anything but friendship with Devak. A trueborn-lowborn friendship wouldn’t get her reset, but she couldn’t flaunt it either.

“If we’re
friends
,” she said, “why have you ignored me all these months? Why have you refused to even talk to me?”

She waited for his defense, but he didn’t offer one up. Then a sudden, painful thought occurred to Kayla. In the time she and Devak had been separated, he might have found another girl. An appropriate girl. A lovely, high-status trueborn girl.

It would explain his reluctance to talk to her on the wristlink. His coolness when he
had
spoken, the way he discussed only Kinship business. How could she blame him? With Kinship medics and gene-splicers focusing on a Scratch cure, there was no way of knowing how long it would be until the restoration treatment would be available to her. Even before Scratch had decimated the GEN community, the treatment serum had been scarce. And she’d put it off more than once because she knew how valuable she was to the Kinship as a GEN.

She continued up the ladder, letting the dream die. A last scrap of hope persisted—that he was following her, taking the rungs at double speed to catch up, right into Bala’s flat. But if that impossible fantasy were true, it would be horribly risky for the Kinship, for Bala, if someone saw Devak. The fewer connections enforcers made between Kinship members,
the better, especially when one of them was a high-status trueborn.

Still, when Kayla reached the top, she looked down. Gave herself just an instant to imagine that Devak was still at the bottom looking up at her. But of course he wasn’t there. She saw only the dimmest illumination, and it faded as Devak continued back down the tunnel to the safe house. He would use a different exit.

She tapped at the bottom of the trap door, waiting for the all clear from Bala. The GEN woman lifted it away and gave Kayla a hand up. The instant Kayla was clear, Bala replaced the floor piece.

“I thought you would be gone longer,” Bala said, suspicion in her tone.

“I didn’t have to go the whole way,” Kayla said. “Someone met me in the tunnel.” Kayla didn’t say who and Bala didn’t ask.

Kayla had to get out, as far away from Devak as she could. She headed for the door, tossing “Thank you for your service,” over her shoulder as she went.

“Wait!” Bala said. “You have to take this.”

Kayla turned to see Bala holding out a small package bundled in plasswrap. Kayla stared at it stupidly for several seconds before remembering what it was. The sewer-toad venom.

It would have been a disaster if Kayla had emerged from the flat without it if the Brigade captain was still here. Kayla took the package, muttered another thanks, then hurried out.

Down the long hall, Kayla could see Risa waiting in the lobby, watching for her instead of at her post by the window. Alarm prickled up Kayla’s spine.

As soon as Kayla got close enough, Risa said, “There are more of them.”

Kayla didn’t have to ask. More enforcers.

Kayla edged toward the grimy window. “How many?”

“Four more. Two have gone around to the back door. The other two and the captain are out front, plotting something.”

“You think they know about the seycat den?” Kayla asked, using their code for
safe house
.

“Don’t know. I got off a warning.” Risa held up the wristlink on her arm.

“I saw Devak,” Kayla said.

Speculation glittered in Risa’s eyes, but she didn’t pry. “He’d be the first to leave after a warning.”

If he didn’t do something stupidly brave like stay to get everyone organized, or to help carry the sick.

Kayla risked getting closer to the window so she could see better outside. It had stopped raining, and the primary sun, Iyenku, was punching a hole in the clouds. The sunbeam lit a Brigade Jahaja parked in front of the warren, blocking Risa’s lorry from moving forward. There was no mistaking the familiar emblem emblazoned on the side in red and black. It was a larger, stylized version of the badge the enforcers wore on their uniforms, Loka’s meter-high bhimkay spider, its fangs dripping blood.

Kayla gulped, her throat dry. “A multi-lev that big could carry at least twenty people. More if they pack them in.”

“They wouldn’t know how many seycats were in the den. Wouldn’t they have brought a second Jahaja?”

“Maybe they figure some are too sick to escape,” Kayla said. “They could come back for them later.” Assuming they
were even here for the safe house. There was still hope it was something else.

“We can’t wait here forever,” Risa said. “They’ll start to wonder and sweep us up, too.”

That same helpless fear she’d felt before seemed to set Kayla’s skin on fire. She hated, hated, hated being afraid.

They stepped outside, and three pairs of eyes immediately fixed on her. Harg issued a sharp order to the other two and they marched into the front door of the seventeenth warren.