Chapter 11

I suggest we attempt the procedure on another young subject in their teens. While our first such attempt wasn’t a success, neither was it a total failure. Pre-adulthood neural plasticity may be the critical element.

—Message from Dr. Upashna Leslie to Councilor Marshall Hyde (6 January 2063)

Nineteen Years Ago

THEO HAD BEEN excited when her grandfather picked her up for a trip. She’d been doing so well in her coding and hacking lessons. The computronic instructor had given her top marks and progressed her to a level beyond her age group!

She’d believed the trip a reward for working so hard.

But she realized she’d been very, very wrong the instant she got into the back of the vehicle with Grandfather. Every tiny hair on her body had stood up, her mind telling her to run! But the driver had shut the door behind her, and she’d known that even if she did get out, it would only anger her grandfather. He’d have no trouble finding her.

People liked to tell Councilors things they wanted to know. Sometimes, she made up stories inside her head of running away to live in a changeling pack—but she knew the changelings wouldn’t want her. They didn’t like Psy. Her teachers tried to teach her that it was because the changelings were “savage beings with no intellectual curiosity,” but Theo wasn’t stupid.

Sometimes, people in her family had tried to make her believe she was stupid, but she wasn’t. Her test scores in mathematical and science subjects had always been better than Pax’s. Her brother had never minded; he’d been proud of her. As she’d been proud of him for always being the best at languages and pattern-based studies.

Because she wasn’t stupid, and because she had access to that datapad that was the one thing about her life that her grandfather didn’t know, she’d done her own research. She’d found her way onto forums with changelings and humans, and she’d learned two things:

First, that changelings were as smart as the Psy.

And second, that changelings hated the Psy because Psy had done bad things to changelings. She hadn’t been able to get into the forums that discussed the details of those bad things, but she knew enough to understand that Psy were bullies. And her grandfather was one of the most powerful bullies of them all. No changeling pack would want to hide Theo. They’d hate her for being his granddaughter.

No one would believe that he wished she was dead.

Grandfather turned to stare at her. “You failed another semester of Silence, Theodora.”

She twisted her hands together in her lap. “I’m sorry, Grandfather.” It wasn’t that she didn’t try. She did! But it was as if she had a hole inside her that kept on allowing emotions to drip through.

That hole, she’d come to realize this semester, was shaped like Pax. Her brother had shielded her from her inability to be Silent without her ever realizing it. He couldn’t have known, either. They’d always done things like that—just . . . balanced each other out so that they were better together than they were apart.

Only now did she understand that he must’ve done the bulk of the balancing. Grandfather was right. What could a Gradient 2.7 possibly do to help a Gradient 9? Nothing, that’s what. It hurt Theo to think that, but she had to be honest with herself. Because she was all she had now. Even if she imagined she could feel Pax inside her mind at times.

“Sorry isn’t enough,” her grandfather said, his voice flat with nothingness—as if Theo wasn’t worth any part of his attention. “I think it’s time you understood the consequences of failure.”

She sat in frozen silence until the car pulled up to the shiny silver building that was the family’s business HQ. She’d been shown it before she was sent to live with Colette. Grandfather had told Pax it would all be his one day. She’d been happy for her twin, hadn’t understood then what Grandfather’s words really meant.

Today, she kept her head down as she followed him into the building, then into the elevator. He took her directly to his office, where another person was waiting. A woman with skin as white as snow and eyes brown and empty who wore a gray suit with pants and black high heels.

Grandfather put his hand on Theo’s shoulder, digging in his fingers hard enough to hurt. “To the central location. We’ll drive from there.”

“Sir.” The woman put her fingers very lightly on Grandfather’s brown coat . . . and the world tumbled.

Theo cried out and fell to her knees . . . except she didn’t fall on the carpet of her grandfather’s office, but onto cold concrete that scratched up her hands and made her knees hurt a lot.

“Sir, I didn’t realize it was the child’s first teleport. I apologize.”

“There’s no need. Bring around the car.”

Her grandfather looked down at Theo as she got herself upright. Her hands were a little bloody and dirty; she pressed them against the black of her coat. The rough fabric felt better than the way he looked at her. As if she was a worm he wanted to crush.

“Pathetic,” he muttered. “Get in the car and fix your hair. You’re part of the Marshall family. Act like it.”

Knees hurting, she nonetheless climbed into the back seat and tucked herself right into the corner. Though her hands trembled and her palms stung, she used them to straighten up hair that had become messed up when she fell.

She hadn’t put it in a braid today, had wanted to look her best for her special trip. So she’d brushed it until it shone really bright, and then she’d added a black satin hairband that Colette had bought for her.

Theo hadn’t been able to believe Colette would get her something so pretty. She’d asked why.

“Physical perfection is to be valued not for its emotional value,” her foster parent had explained, “but because even Psy respond on a visceral level to beauty. While you’ll never be beautiful, neither are you ugly. And considering how few advantages you have in life, I feel compelled to at least teach you how to present yourself as best you can.”

Theo wasn’t interested in things like that, but she listened to Colette’s lessons, and she tried to follow them because she knew it mattered to her grandfather. He was always dressed neat and perfect, his hair cut and his short and pointed beard groomed. Back when she’d lived in the family house, he’d always told her and Pax off if they ran inside with dirty knees or untucked shirts.

She wished she had enough telekinetic power to ’port over her hairbrush, but wherever she was now, it was really far from her room. She couldn’t reach that place with her mind. Not wanting to look at her grandfather and see the nothingness for her on his face, she just looked out the window at the strange city through which they were passing.

The people looked like at home, but their clothes were a bit different and the buildings were a lot different. Some of them seemed really old and had the style of round domes she’d seen in a geosocial lesson about India. But she didn’t think this was India. The people didn’t dress the way she’d been taught many people in India dressed, and their skin was mostly pale like hers.

Then the people disappeared and so did the buildings and they left the strange city behind, driving and driving until the teleporter who was the driver pulled up in front of a set of thick metal gates.

“This is why we didn’t teleport in, Theodora.” Her grandfather’s voice snapped her to attention. “I wanted you to see these gates, understand that if you ever give me cause to take you through them again, you won’t come back out.”

Theo stared at the cold metal . . . and sucked in a breath when she saw the electricity that arced a searing blue at the top, above what looked like spikes sharp enough to stab a person straight through from one side to the other.

She’d never seen electricity like that, out there in the open.

“It’s a warning,” her grandfather said at the same time. “No one should be out this way regardless, since we own a large chunk of the area, but the visual warning should halt anyone curious enough to make the attempt.”

Theo tried not to panic. He hadn’t read her mind. She’d been staring at the electricity, so he’d told her why it was like that. “I understand,” she managed to say in a calm voice.

Then the gates opened slow and smooth to show a long drive that disappeared around the corner. Once inside, their driver stopped and waited for the gate to close behind them before she started to drive again.

High security.

Theo knew those words and what they meant because their parents had made sure to tell her and Pax about security from when they were small. It was because Grandfather was so important and their family had so much money that they had to know about security. People might try to kidnap her or Pax.

Theo knew now that no one in the family would pay to get her back. She wasn’t the important twin. Pax wouldn’t say that. Pax always said she was his best friend. Or he used to. Back when they were together. It had been a long time since then, and maybe Grandfather was telling the truth and he’d even forgotten her.

Her chest hurt deep inside as they turned the corner and at last she saw the big white building with shiny windows out front. There were people outside. A lot of them wore pale green pants and shirts, while others wore pale blue ones with white coats. The ones in green looked sleepy, a little confused.

One almost stumbled and fell even though there was nothing to trip him up.

A white-coat person helped him up, and then they watched him try to walk again.

“Is this a hospital, Grandfather?”

“Of a kind.” Her grandfather got out. “Outside, Theodora.”

She scrambled out behind him because the door on her side was locked. It was only once she was outside that she saw the faces of the people in green. They were somehow . . . loose. And their eyes were all wrong. It was like they couldn’t see.

Stopping on the tiny stones that lined the area, she stared at the person closest to her. As she stood there, a single tear beaded on the corner of the man’s eye and rolled down his cheek. But his face didn’t move, and he didn’t make a sound.

“Why are all these failures still alive?” Her grandfather’s voice had her staring at him, her heart thudding.

She didn’t hear what the person in the white coat said, but whatever it was, her grandfather grunted and carried on. Feeling bad for the man who’d cried the tear, she looked at him once more. But he was no longer looking at her, was staring down at the ground with his empty eyes.

Theo ran after her grandfather over the tiny stones that crunched under her shoes, knowing he wouldn’t be pleased if he turned around and saw that she wasn’t following. She didn’t look at any of the other people who wore green.

Her heart was thumping too hard and she had a sick feeling in her stomach.

Inside, the building was shiny and clean like the care center her parents had visited that time she and Pax got in trouble, and there were lots of people with white coats who all looked at Grandfather the way people mostly did: with slightly lowered heads even when talking to him. Because her grandfather was important.

There was only one woman who looked her grandfather straight in the eye. She had hair as gray as the cat that Theo often saw on the balcony of the neighboring apartment building. The lady who lived there waved at her sometimes and since no one could see Theo doing it, she waved back. She hoped the cat would visit her one day.

This woman was much older than the neighbor lady and so thin that her bones stuck out hard against her wrinkled brown skin. But she was strong. Theo could tell that from the way she stood, and how she moved as she walked down the hall toward Grandfather. “Councilor Hyde,” she said when she reached them. “I’d like to reiterate my objection to the procedure. The risk is significant.”

“So noted,” her grandfather said, and the fact that he’d actually listened to everything the woman said without interrupting told Theo that this woman was important, too. Her grandfather didn’t listen to many people at all.

The woman looked down at Theo. “How old are you?”

“Eight years and nine months,” Theo answered after a glance at her grandfather to check if she should talk.

The woman looked back at her grandfather. “The brain is too plastic at that age. The procedure, even if successful, is unlikely to hold.”

“Regardless, we’ll do this. We need a child on whom to test the regimen and who better than my granddaughter? She’s been displaying some rebellious tendencies. There’s no need to look for an external subject.”

Theo got a very bad feeling in her stomach. She knew they were talking about her, but she didn’t understand why.

The woman went silent as they walked, but something told Theo that she was still talking to Grandfather, just telepathically. Since Theo couldn’t hope to listen in on that, she tried to figure out what was happening by forcing herself to look around. But all she saw were more people with the dead eyes and the faces that looked like they had melted.

One woman stood facing a wall. She fell against that wall the next second, banged her head and bounced back. Then she did it again and again.

“Truly, Upashna?” Grandfather muttered as they passed that woman. “Why are we wasting research funds keeping these subjects around?”

“Each one teaches us something different,” the woman named Upashna replied. “The female we just passed, for example, has retained all physical abilities. No hesitation when we can get her to walk. No shakiness. Full control over the body.”

“Interesting,” her grandfather said.

“Yes, I thought you’d see it that way.” A pause. “Marshall, you’re sure you won’t reconsider? I realize she’s only a 2.7, but she’s still part of your genetic line.”

But her grandfather shook his head. “Let’s get it done.”

Theo hesitated in front of the door through which her grandfather had gone. She wanted to turn, run outside and away. But even as the thoughts passed through her head, she realized the driver had come into the building behind them and stood watching her from only feet away. Theo couldn’t run without being caught.

Then her grandfather came, gripped her shoulder, and dragged her inside.