24. SCAR
Lawson—
The softness of the bed gives it away; D-town is gone. Like a dream of too-thin fingers on my fly and Aidan’s voice. They’re trying to kill us with kindness. My confession so ready on my lips, Aidan must taste it in that last desperate kiss outside the Boundary. I belong out here; you could belong here with me. Waking up falling into no-man’s land between the fences. The instant between error and impact leaving room for only one thought: this is good-bye, a voiceless plunge with too many things left unsaid.
Not a dream after all. A nightmare.
I’m awake now. D-town was harsh and wild and in my face, but never kind like bamboo sheets sliding against my skin as I roll over, or try to. The pressure of a hand between my shoulder blades holds me pinned facedown to the bed.
The only softness in D-town was Aidan. Nothing has ever been clearer as GG tenderness envelops me again. I may have gone in gentle, but I came back hardened. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since I crossed the tracks. It seems that if I move, the world of my childhood will catch on my jagged edges and tear wide open.
That won’t be a risk for long. A headset already provides my very own continuous stream of calm and happy. The fact that I’m thinking like this means I’m seriously injured, and my body is directing all available joy hormones toward pain reduction. For now.
I slowly turn my head, nearly dislodging one of the earphones against the fluffy pillow.
“No, don’t. Your spine is healing.” She’s there, standing over my hospital bed, in her usual black fatigues and thermal shirt with the bulletproof vest over top. She still wears her hair like I used to wear mine. Too neat, no personality. In the last couple years the worry lines around her mouth have deepened enough to hold shadows. Under-eye circles dark as shiners say I’m not the only one who hasn’t been sleeping.
Captain Mom hasn’t been getting much rest either, but then she sleeps in a room insulated from the pulses. All the military commanders do. The Soldier’s Sacrifice, they call it.
There’s a red mark over her cheekbone. Not quite a bruise, not yet, but it will be. I did that, when she brought me in and the healers tried to put the earphones on me. I fought; that hardly makes sense now.
The lead healer murmured about the parasympathetic nervous system and gene activation and lowering inflammation, while Mama shouted about vertebra until her voice grew shrill. She finally wrenched my arm behind my back—“You may not value your spine, Lawson, but I do.”—and sat on my legs while the healers got the big, pillowy headphones over my ears. Then everything went blank.
After that there must have been medical tests, but blessedly I slept through those. Too bad I can’t sleep through the reunion with my mother. I let my eyes fall closed anyway.
“Thanks, Captain,” I croak.
“Don’t—don’t you ever—”
The pressure on my back lifts away and hot breath puffs against my cheek. She’s obviously not going to let me rest until I face her, so I open my eyes in a squint. She’s leaning close. I could be staring into my own hazel eyes, narrowed against me.
My gaze jumps to my mother’s hands. Her grip on the bedrail mottles her thick knuckles white and red. My right arm trails IV lines as I wriggle my hand up to the side of my face. No doubt I’m being pumped full of amino acids and anti-inflammatory enzymes.
“You seem a little tense.” I lift the headset away from one ear. “Want to share my earphones?”
Mama’s hand closes around my wrist, pushing it back down. The pads of her fingers are at least as callused as mine. “Don’t.”
I let my arm sink back to the pillow, our fingers brushing as my hand falls. She folds her arms over the bedrail and collapses forward for a minute.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I wish I’d never sent you in. But you’re done, Law. You did your job. We’re bringing them in.”
I blink up at her square-jawed face. She doesn’t look sorry; she looks like my mother. Mama used to be the hardest thing in my world, but that was before D-town.
Through the gap between bedrail and green sheets, there’s a view of cork floor and even greener wall, curving inward. The headset cord spans the gap between bed and wall to plug into a rubberized box. Mama’s hand is edging that way.
I push up onto my elbows. “Wait—”
But she’s already twisting the dial on the box. My abdominal muscles go slack, and my hips drop to the bed. Pain lances through my spine. My face hits the pillow. I groan, eyes squeezing shut as sweat breaks over my skin.
“No, don’t. Please.”
Her fingers pause on the dial. “You’re asking me to sit here and watch my only son suffer?”
I inhale and exhale through my nose. “Yes.” Then stronger, “Yes, that’s what I’m asking, and I actually know what that’s like.”
She hesitates, then twists the dial hard.
“Well I’m sorry, but I can’t do that.” She sinks back down to the chair by the bed. A moment later her fingers stroke down my spine. “I know you’re hiding something, and I need to know what it is. Tell me, Lawson.”
The scent of lavender mixes with the thrum from the headset. My eyes close. Skin and muscle and bone melt away until I am mist floating on a cloud. I must have a mouth though, because words fall out of it.
“I’m having doubts,” I say.
She sucks in a breath. “Tell me.”
“I think we should leave them alone.” I pause to breathe. Air whispers in and out of my nose. “And I think—I feel like you can’t win them over.”
“There are a lot of things you would be feeling, if not for those earphones,” she mutters, and when I shift against the bed, “Shh. You’re okay. Go on.”
“You might have to kill them all to bring them in. And if not…if not…” Words are slippery things. There’s a sense, so beautiful it will cut me if I take hold. I let it go. The edge melts away, leaving only a thought I can’t quite feel. “If they give up, something precious will be lost.”
“Precious.” She pauses for an eternity or an instant, while I drift, lost in the safety of soft sheets and closed eyes with no one to protect, until she asks, “Are you really thinking about going back in? After you disappeared like this? They’ll tear you to pieces, afraid we’ve put a bomb inside you or something. You’re a monster to them, or have you forgotten?”
A monster? Am I really?
“They won’t touch me,” I say, picturing the way Aidan cringed back against the blood-spattered concrete, the first time we spoke. “Too many of them owe me too much.”
“You don’t understand human nature very well.” Mama’s voice intrudes, dissolving the image of Aidan. I know the Captain well enough to imagine her shaking her head.
“I understand D-town,” I say.
“Fine, but do you understand yourself?” There’s an edge to her voice now.
My lips curve up, a private joke. “No, but I know there’s a reason D-town exists. It’s for those who don’t belong in our world. There has to be a place for the people who don’t belong, or else they’ll tear it down, the whole thing, the way we took out the old governments, the way you’re destroying their heartbeat.”
She lets that sit for a warm while, then asks. “Is that all that’s been bothering you?”
“Yes…no…I want to come home. I want to bring Tab, and—and—and Lin. But I’m afraid I won’t fit in here anymore.”
Mama has been stroking my back this whole time. Now her hand stills. Darkness shifts behind my eyelids.
“You’re thinking that way because you imagine D-town is an option. It’s not. We’re taking it down.”
“What if you could stop the plan?” The blackness deepens like the bottom of a hole falling farther and farther away. “What if you had the power?”
“I don’t.”
“Yeah,” I mumble. “Know that. But just pretend.”
“Well then I might consider it, for you,” she lies, soothingly. Her fingers stroke my s
pine again. “Now, what else do you need to tell me?”
I snuggle into the sheets, the last bit of tension bleeding away. “They’re already evolving beyond us. The Bees…you should see Aidan, so amazing. The Bees can resist pulses, you know. You’re not going to be able to co-opt them all.”
When she speaks again it jerks me half out of a dream of Aidan’s slender fingers on my back, no shirt in the way.
“Can you help me?” asks the Captain. “If I send you back in?”
“Yeah.” My lips barely move. “Yeah, I can.”
“Okay, I’ll send you back. Don’t make me regret it,” she says, and even darkness fades.
In the dream, I remember. Leaving for D-town the first time should be a major deal, but in the end it’s just the Captain and me tucked into an alley a few streets from the train tracks. I can’t allow myself to think of her as Mama anymore. As soon as I cross the Boundary she’s just a GG, like all the rest, and I’m something, someone different. My stomach swirls with…not butterflies. A more deadly kind of insect. Bees, maybe?
It’s like being on the way to meet a person I’ve heard a lot about—myself. Will we like each other?
The Captain checks me over and wipes extra mud on my shirt. Twice before we left the training center she made me change out of my jeans and into a fresh pair because the rips in the knees weren’t “authentic” enough. Now she fingers the tears again.
“This is ridiculous.” She’s been saying odd things like this all night. “Damn scientists.”
“Dad was a scientist,” I say, which is a mistake. She glares, until I mutter, “My dad was a scientist.”
She attacks my pre-scuffed boots with the piece of sandpaper in her hand and speaks so softly, even though no one’s around, that I have to stoop to hear.
“Some last minute orders. First, keep an eye on Laura. If the civil leadership gives side orders and try to leave me out of the loop, you can bet they’ll go through her. Both her parents are in the inner circle.”
I know. Everybody knows that. Everyone who knows about this project is amazed that Laura was allowed to come at all, even with her own personal bodyguard also joining the Love Childs.
“If anything happens to Laura, the government will pull the plug on this whole operation, and why do I even care?” The Captain scrubs a hand over her face, hopefully not the hand with the sandpaper. “We should end the threat one way or another, not study it. Bloody scientists.”
Never has my mother lost control of her tongue in front of me. She’s always parceled out information like, well, like a military commander. Now, in her agitation, buried doubts spill out, threatening to infect me. The unfair timing makes me want to cover my ears and shout, Too much information! But I’m caught by the desperation in her voice.
“Damn activists were never meant to lead. There might be a decision that has to be made in a second and they’ll gab about it for days. I’m counting on you to watch for any proof that D-town is a threat and tell me right away so I can move things along. Your handler, Hansen, reports directly to me. Do you understand?”
I nod.
“The civil leaders want to save these kids, and they want to make it look good. They want a full-fledged on camera conversion. The FOLM kids realize the error of their parents’s ways, blah, blah, blah. Nothing else will do. And the scientists! All they care about is anthropological research. A once in a lifetime opportunity to study an independent society of teenagers. Your dad would have been all over it. We would have argued all night…well maybe not all night.” She clears her throat.
“Listen up, soldier. This is why we’re really going in—to keep the whole world safe and happy. If we can, we’ll bring those kids home. Otherwise…”
When I wake, I’m better. Better than better. I feel delicious. I roll over, stretching. I’m on my back with my arms over my head when I remember the fall. I freeze, then experimentally draw my shoulder blades together and lift my hips off the bed. No pain.
I fell, so I must have landed—that must have hurt—but now I’m better, and I don’t want to think about it. Something else happened, though. Mama was here?
“Morning, grumpy face.” A man wearing green scrubs leans over me and taps my scrunched up forehead. He’s got Love Child eyes with laugh lines around them. “Just past morning,” he clarifies. “I bet you’re starving. I.V.s don’t satisfy the stomach.”
He ducks out of sight, the smell of fresh bread wafts over, and then he’s back with a triple-decker sandwich in one hand and a machine gun in the other. He holds the weapon by the strap as if it might go off by accident, even though the safety mechanism is quite clearly engaged, and props it against the base of the bed as soon as he possibly can. He shoves the sandwich into my hands at the same time I reach for it.
Stacked veggies with sprouts and sauce. Fresh tomato, cucumber, and salt. I close my eyes as my teeth shear through the layers.
“Hair’s–ama?” I ask around the food. I wipe my mouth on the back of my hand. “I mean, the Captain.”
“Back on duty, but she left strict instructions to get you back onto the field immediately. At your request, she said.” He sounds doubtful about the sanity of anyone who would make such a request. “Here, look at this.”
He reaches for my shirt. I’m still wearing my uptown outfit, now dirty and torn. I’ve probably been stripped and washed and dressed again, but the clothes haven’t changed. Only my handgun is missing. The healer’s civilized fingers look out of place against the torn blue fabric as he rolls the shirt up my stomach. My drawstring pants have slid down to show my hipbone. In the hollow next to it, there’s a scar as long as my thumb.
“But GG medicine doesn’t leave scars,” I say.
“Almost never,” he agrees. “It’s for your cover. Give him a scar, she said. And make it a good one. Let them assume we planted a bomb inside him.”
The healer’s brows pinch together, but I understand Mama’s motives. I asked her to send me back in. She assumes the D-towners will know I’ve been captured. She realizes at least some of them will get suspicious if I escape.
All it takes is one whisper that I’m GG. One hint and they’ll drag me to the Arena.
So we give them a reason why the GG would capture me and then let me go. We give them a scar because, to D-towners, a scar will automatically mean a bomb. They already believe GG medicine is too good to be true.
Undercover 101: Play to people’s fears.
Now, even if they guess the truth, they won’t dare hurt me. They’ll be too afraid I’ll explode. Typical Captain Mom, keeping me safe by turning me into a weapon.
“I packed clay into the cut to create that effect,” the healer says. “How do you like it?”
I must frown as I run my thumb over the raised purple line because he jumps to conclusions.
“You—don’t like it.” He stumbles over don’t like, as if he doesn’t understand the concept.
“No, it’s fine. I guess it’s just—” I shrug and roll down my shirt, but my hand lingers. The raised line is obvious even through the fabric. There’s something about it… I take another bite of the sandwich and groan. “This—do you have any idea—this is the best bloody sandwich I’ve ever tasted.”
He chuckles. “Well, I didn’t make it, but I’ll be sure to pass along the compliment. When hospital food’s the best, I have to say, your volunteer work must be pretty rough.” His gaze rests for a moment on my fingers.
I look down at my knuckles. Aside from a smear of sauce and juice from the tomato—oh, and the tattoos—they’re clean. But not for long, because I’m going back. I grin and swallow the last bit of sandwich. “You could say that.”
The healer glances around, then leans closer. “I heard some of what you said last night. You’re one of the heroes bringing in those gang kids, aren’t you?”
An uncomfortably large lump of bread creeps down my esophagus. What did I say last night?
“I’m not at liberty to discuss i
t.” I end the conversation by standing up, bracing myself for a jarring shock in my spine when my heels hit the floor, but my joints and muscles line right up. Blessings, but I’ve missed GG medicine. The cushioned floors are damn nice too. I wipe my sandwich-smeared hands on the sheets, then grab the machine gun.
The healer visibly draws back.
“Thanks for everything,” I say.
“Of course. There’s a vehicle outside waiting to return you to…your undercover location.”
There is indeed a car outside, a little green auto with the GG logo on the door and Sergeant Hansen at the wheel. He drops me off outside the Boundary, passes me his handgun without a word, and drives away like he’s got an appointment with a sonic earbud. As I stick the gun in the top of my pants, my fingers twitch with the need to claw at the new scar.
There are scars like this all over Aidan.
Give him a scar, and make it a good one. It’s a good thing I didn’t hear my mother say that. It’s obscene. And unnecessary in the worse way, because the only one who knows I’ve been taken is Aidan, who would never willingly endanger anyone. Not even a “spy” like me.
I sling the machine gun onto my back and take a running start at the fence. I’m going back in there, and this time I’m telling Aidan the truth.