This Cruel Design Read online

  But there’s no wound.

  Leoben throws his head back, laughing. “You should have seen your face!”

  I look up, shaking. “What the hell, Lee?”

  “There’s no way I was going to shoot you, squid.”

  I lunge forward to punch him in the arm, but a crack echoes in the distance, and the air rushes from my lungs.

  Leoben doesn’t react, but I stand frozen, listening to the sound as it echoes off the hills. Someone else might mistake it for a gunshot, but I’ve heard that sound so many times that it’s burned into my memory.

  It was faint and muffled, mixed with the cries of the pigeons, but it sounded a lot like a Hydra cloud.

  “What’s wrong?” Leoben asks.

  “I thought I heard something. Didn’t you?”

  “These birds are messing with my audio filters. What did you hear?”

  “An explosion.”

  Leoben’s smile fades. His eyes glaze, scanning the trees, and another crack sounds in the distance.

  “I heard that one,” he breathes, and I turn and bolt into the trees.

  My vision flashes as I race through the woods and up a muddy hill, my tech spinning up emergency filters automatically, trying to brighten the trail ahead of me. Leoben follows close behind, catching up as I reach a switchback, both of us heading for a lookout on the crest of the hill. I’ve run up this trail a dozen times searching the sky for Cartaxus copters, worried they’d found us, but never to look for a blower.

  The vaccine is out. The virus is dead.

  Nobody should be detonating anymore.

  We burst together through a line of trees at the top of the hill and stumble out onto the edge of a cliff. The last rays of sunlight are disappearing over the horizon. From up here I can see the sawtooth silhouette of the three-peaked mountains in the distance, the infinite stretch of spruce forest to the south. I shove the loose hair back from my face, searching for a plume. The flock of pigeons forms a writhing, swirling blanket of light through the tufted canopy, but there’s no sign of a cloud.

  My vision flickers, and I rub my eyes, willing my tech to switch back to standby, but it doesn’t respond. My panel is only listening to my adrenaline levels, not my thoughts. It still thinks I’m in danger.

  And maybe I am.

  If those explosions were blowers, the victims probably had the vaccine. I gave Cartaxus code to force it into every panel on the planet. There are a few survivors on the surface without panels in their arms, but the likelihood of two of them blowing near our camp is low. If those explosions were blowers, it could mean the vaccine isn’t working anymore.

  But I don’t even want to think about that possibility.

  “I can’t see anything,” I say, rubbing my eyes again. “I don’t know if it’s my tech or not. It still isn’t responding to me.”

  Leoben steps to the edge of the cliff, scanning the horizon. He’ll be checking for heat signatures, anomalous air patterns. If there’s a cloud, his tech will find it. “Nothing,” he says. “That was a detonation, though. Seemed smaller than a blower. Could have been a bomb.”

  “Why would two be going off right now?”

  We turn to each other at the same time.

  “Shit,” I breathe. “Cole.”

  Leoben turns so fast, he’s barely more than a blur, bolting back through the trees and down the trail. I race after him, my heart kicking, fresh adrenaline alerts blinking in my vision. I couldn’t tell from the sound where those explosions were coming from—they could have been in a nearby camp, or they could have been at the lab. Cole could be hurt. The thought wrenches at something inside me, as real and painful as a wound.

  I try to summon my comm-link to call Cole, but all I get is a burst of static. “Can you reach him?” I yell to Leoben.

  “He’s gone dark,” he shouts back, racing into camp. “You drive to the meeting point!” He wrenches the tarpaulin away from his jeep, slamming the rear doors shut. “I’ll run the trail in case he’s there.”

  “No,” I gasp, skidding down the last stretch of the hill. “I’ll run. My panel’s still freaking out. I won’t be able to control the jeep. You take it.”

  Leoben’s brow furrows, but he nods, climbing into the driver’s seat. “He’ll be okay, squid. Be safe.”

  “You too,” I say. He pulls the jeep across the clearing and down the muddy tire tracks that lead to the road that loops around the lab. There’s a meeting point we set up there.

  Cole will have heard the blasts, and he’ll be waiting for us. He has to be.

  I race across the crumpled tarpaulin, heading for a gap in the trees that marks the trail to our lookout. Leoben and Cole have been taking turns to hike to it every day and watch the lab in case Lachlan shows up. The trail drops sharply once it leaves camp, zigzagging down a rocky, tree-covered slope. I take the switchbacks fast, bolting through the trees, spotting a figure at the bottom of the hill.

  A person, kneeling on the ground. Dark hair, black jacket.

  “Cole!” I scream, racing for him. He’s on the ground. I should have brought a medkit. “Cole, are you okay?”

  I skid to a stop as the figure stands and turns to me.

  It isn’t Cole. It’s Jun Bei.

  CHAPTER 2

  THE FOREST SEEMS TO FALL silent, time slowing to a crawl. Jun Bei’s eyes lock on mine, and suddenly I can’t breathe. It’s her. Green eyes, black hair, her shoulders slender and hunched in a man’s black jacket that hangs halfway to her knees. She takes a step closer, and I stumble back, stunned by the intensity of her gaze. Her eyes are as keen and sharp as a razor’s gleaming edge. She looks past me, her brow creasing as she scans the trees. . . .

  And suddenly she’s gone.

  The spot in the clearing where she was standing is empty. I spin around, staring, but there’s no sign of her. No footsteps pressed into the grass, no tracks in the mud. Nothing but trees, grass, and mossy rocks stretching into the rain-drenched darkness of the forest.

  “Holy shit,” I gasp, doubling over, bracing my hands on my knees. I feel more shaken than I did when I hit the ground during my training session with Leoben. That must have been a VR glitch. My ocular tech has been screwing up all week, but that was different. That wasn’t just a misfiring loop of night vision code or a broken filter. It was a three-dimensional person standing right in front of me. Every detail was perfect. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, her skin pale, a flush coloring her cheeks.

  She looked so real.

  I press the heels of my hands into my eyes until neon spots burn across my vision. A rush of broken memories is rolling back to me—the lab, the forest, the other children. Wires and scalpels, restraints and itchy gray blankets. I force the memories away, driving the fingernails of my left hand into my palm. I don’t care if it’s a trick that Lachlan taught me—all I care about is the pain that slices through the storm inside me, dragging back my self-control. Footsteps sound in the forest behind me, and I spin around, reaching for my gun as a figure pushes through the trees.

  Black jacket, a backpack with a rifle strapped to its side. Sparkling ice-blue eyes meet mine, and the adrenaline coursing through me fades into relief.

  “Cole,” I gasp, running to him. He opens his arms, confused as I launch myself at him, wrapping my arms around his neck.

  “Hey,” he murmurs, swaying with my weight. “Are you okay?”

  I just nod, tightening my grip on him. He’s spent the day on lookout duty in the woods, and he smells like earth and rain, but the hint I catch of his own unique scent is like a lighthouse in a storm. Home. We’ve barely talked for days, let alone touched. I’ve slept in Leoben’s jeep most nights to avoid disturbing Cole during his healing cycles, but now that feels like a mistake. Just holding him like this makes my racing thoughts slow.

  He pulls away, looking down at me. “What are you doing here?”

  “We heard the blasts. I thought you were hurt.”

  “Oh, of course,” he says, his voice
softening. “They were south of here, near that survivor camp. I thought they were fireworks from the celebrations.”

  Fireworks. I let out a choked laugh. “I can’t believe we didn’t think of that. We were coming to save you.”

  “Well,” he says, stepping back to look me up and down, taking in my bruised arms, the space at my side where my holster should be, “it sure looks like you’re prepared.”

  I roll my eyes, swatting his arm. He grins, driving a hand back through his dark, tousled hair. It’s long enough to fall into his eyes, its rapid growth propelled by the tech that’s been regenerating his cells. He’s spent most of the week in a series of tech comas recovering from the injuries he took in the explosion in the lab, and he’s only just starting to regain the weight he’s lost, but his eyes look exactly the same. The color of the sky on a clear midsummer day. Just looking at them now, I feel a tug in my chest.

  “You sure you’re okay?” he asks.

  I glance back at the spot where I saw the VR glitch of Jun Bei. I want to be honest with Cole, but I’m still reeling. I don’t even know what I saw, let alone how I feel about it.

  “I’m fine,” I force myself to say. “Lee’s probably worried. He drove to the meeting point.”

  Cole nods, his eyes glazing. “I’ll comm him. I picked up a new signal coming from the lab tonight, but I don’t know what it was. Lee’s better with that stuff. I’ll tell him to check it out.”

  From what we’ve been able to tell, the Cartaxus troops at the lab have been clearing out its equipment to study it. They sent off the broken pieces of the genkit I blew up, as well as the body of the puppet I thought was Lachlan. We’ve been hiding from them, but they’re not really our enemy. We all want to stop Lachlan, and there’s a chance we’ll need to work together to do it. Lee and I even talked about turning ourselves in one night when Cole’s tech was struggling, but we don’t know how they’ll respond if they find out who I am, or that Lachlan needs me for his plan. They might lock me up and never let me go.

  Or maybe they’ll just kill me. It would be the most logical way to stop Lachlan.

  “Lee says he’ll check it out,” Cole says.

  “Should we go too?” I ask. “If there’s a new signal at the lab—”

  “It’s fine,” he says, blinking out of his session. “I think it was just the AC.”

  I frown. “Then why did you tell Lee to check it out?”

  Cole grins, pushing the hair back from my face. “I figured we could have some time alone.”

  Heat prickles at my cheeks. “Cole, we have so much to do.”

  He leans in, pressing a kiss to the side of my neck. “Like what?”

  I push him away, smiling. “Like reading through Lachlan’s files, making a checklist of supplies we need to go after him. You know, saving the world.”

  His eyes travel down to my lips. “The world can wait.”

  I open my mouth to argue but pull him to me instead.

  It isn’t a perfect kiss. We’re just two people in tired bodies with a million things we should be thinking about instead of this. I have so much to do, and so much confusion hovering in the back of my mind, but the feeling of Cole’s lips on mine washes it all away. My shoulders drop, my breathing hitching as his hand slides to my waist. He tilts me backward, deepening the kiss, and I clutch a fistful of his dark, curled locks to pull him closer, dragging a growl from low in his throat. He drops his backpack to the ground and walks me up against a tree until my shoulder blades hit the bark.

  “I’ve been going crazy being so close to you,” he whispers, his mouth moving to my neck. He drops his hands to my thighs, lifting me in one smooth motion, pushing me against the tree. Heat coils through me, my legs wrapping instinctively around him as he presses his weight into me. “I want to take you away when this is over. I don’t want to be disturbed for about a month.”

  “Oh yeah?” I ask, grinning as his lips move down my throat. “Where are you going to take me?”

  “A beach,” he says without hesitating. His lips pause on the hollow in my throat. “Somewhere far away and warm. I’ve been thinking about Australia.”

  I shy away as his mouth moves back up the other side of my neck, his stubble tickling my skin. “You seem to have given this some thought.”

  “I have,” he breathes, kissing the corner of my jaw. “I can already see it. A little place, just the two of us. We can disappear. There’ll be plenty of people doing it once they open the bunkers. It won’t be hard to blend in with them.”

  I look down at him. “Is that what you want to do after this? Disappear?”

  He leans back to look up at me. “Of course. I don’t want to work for Cartaxus anymore, not now that I’ve found you.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I say, unwrapping my legs from his waist. He lowers me to the ground, his cheeks flushed. “But that doesn’t mean we have to hide.”

  A crease forms between his brows. “They’ll want us, Cat. We’re valuable whether or not there’s a virus to fight. I’m not going to let them turn me into an experiment again.”

  “No, of course not . . . ,” I murmur, trailing off. I hadn’t really thought about it like that. I hadn’t thought about anything beyond stopping Lachlan. But Cole is right—of course Cartaxus will want us. My natural DNA can change. My body, my cells, even my mind can be altered in a way that’s unique to me. Gentech code is like a mask—it can change the way your DNA works, but it can’t change who you really are underneath, and that means it’s limited. There’s only so much that a mask can do to change your appearance. The ability to change your underlying, natural DNA would revolutionize gentech completely.

  And that ability is hidden inside my cells. Of course Cartaxus will want to study me. I’ll have to spend every moment of my life hiding, running, and being afraid of them.

  But I never imagined a life like that.

  “I’m sorry,” Cole says. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  I scratch my neck. “No, you’re right. We’ll have to hide. We’ll never be free.”

  He reaches for my cheek. “We’ll build a life, I promise. Where do you want to go when this is over?”

  “I . . . I don’t even know. I guess I’d like a lab. I want to keep coding.”

  Even though the last three years of my life were based on a lie, they still hold some of my favorite memories—working together with Lachlan and Dax in the cabin. Collaborating, talking about code. I always thought I’d find that again one day after the outbreak.

  But if Cole and I are going to disappear, I won’t be looking for new coding partners. I might never have that kind of life again. The thought tugs at me, low and deep and surprisingly painful.

  “We’ll get you a lab,” Cole says.

  I nod, chewing my thumbnail, but my eyes drift past Cole’s shoulder to the clearing, and the air freezes.

  A metal structure is jutting from the trees. I don’t know how I could have missed it before. It looks like a pylon used to transport electricity. Twenty feet tall, constructed with steel and rivets. Something about its shape flickers in my memory, and it hits me.

  I didn’t see the pylon before because it wasn’t there.

  It’s another glitch from my VR chip.

  “What’s wrong?” Cole asks. His eyes glaze, following mine, and he stiffens as he looks toward the pylon.

  “Wait, you’re seeing this too?” I ask.

  He shoots me a cautious look. “It’s a public feed from your panel. What is this?”

  “I don’t know. I think my tech is glitching. It just did this a minute ago too.”

  I try to summon my panel’s menu, but my vision just flickers. The pylon is still standing, an electric hum rising in the air. I know it isn’t real, but that doesn’t stop the jolt of fear that runs through me when a pale figure appears at my side.

  I turn around, bracing myself, but I already know who I’ll see.

  Jun Bei is back, standing in the middle of the clearing, a gust of wind ruffl
ing her long black hair. She’s wearing the same oversize jacket over a white hospital gown, her feet in scuffed black boots. There’s a stray eyelash on her cheek, a fine dusting of dark hairs on her legs. The jacket’s sleeve slips back as she lifts her hand to push a lock of hair from her face, and the cobalt glow of her panel lights up the curve of her jaw.

  She looks so alive.

  Cole is frozen beside me, his eyes wide. Jun Bei is shivering, her hands clutching the jacket tight around her shoulders. Flecks of white drift across her face, settling on her glossy hair. Snow. It swirls through the air, spreading as I watch until it’s falling around us, too. A dusting stretches across the clearing, and Jun Bei shivers, dragging the back of her hand across her nose, then scrunches up her face and lets out a high-pitched sneeze.

  My heart clenches. She’s just a kid.

  She must be fourteen, maybe fifteen. Frightened and alone. She suddenly looks so fragile. There are red scars curling up from the neck of her gown, a bandage wrapped around her wrist.

  Lachlan did that to her. He hurt her. He cut her open.

  What kind of a monster could do that to a child?

  “Why are you showing me this?” Cole asks, his voice wavering. The expression on his face is like an open wound.

  “I . . . I’m not,” I say. “I don’t know what’s happening.”

  Jun Bei crosses her arms over her chest, huddling in the jacket. She lifts her head to scan the trees behind us, and I turn, following her eyes. Something is moving in the forest, back toward the trail. Shadows flicker in the branches, footsteps carrying on the wind. A gust of snow swirls through the trees, clearing to reveal a troop of guards marching through the forest, dressed in black Cartaxus uniforms. Cole reaches for my hand as a figure strides through the trees behind them.