Halfskin Read online

  “What were you doing seven years ago?”

  George’s eyes disappeared. “Hell, I don’t know.”

  “You weren’t doing anything, that’s why. Because you didn’t exist.”

  “The hell that supposed to mean?”

  Nix leaned forward, pretending to look at the board. “Did you know it takes seven years for all the cells in your body to be recycled? That means all the cells that composed your body seven years ago have all died and been replaced by new ones. So, for a pure skin like you, the answer is simple, George. By your definition, you didn’t exist because that wasn’t your body. That is, if who you are is your body.”

  “Don’t twist facts, kid. I ain’t changed, I’m still me. I’m still flesh and blood and you ain’t, no matter how you slice it.”

  Nix hummed, rubbing his chin. “You ever get cavities?”

  “Do you ever shut up?”

  “What do you do, let them rot?”

  “Course not. Go to the dentist, don’t seed a bunch of mites in my mouth to fix it.”

  “You get fillings, then?”

  “That’s right, kid. I go to the dentist and let her fix my cavities. Chimps don’t do that and neither do machines. Real people do.”

  Nix nodded. “Is your mouth fake?”

  “It’s fixed.”

  “Does it make it less real?”

  “Does this look like a mirage?” He snapped his coffee-stained choppers with a hollow bite.

  They stared.

  “You got me there, George. You got me there.”

  George smiled for a while, thinking about it. Nix got up and crossed the room. He folded his arms and tapped his elbows.

  “Queen to G-6,” he called over his shoulder.

  A piece slid across the board. George’s chin stubble rasped in his palm. He checked his phone a couple times, acting like there was a text.

  Nix turned on the water and splashed his face. The chess game was over.

  George just didn’t realize it, yet.

  9

  CALI FLASHED HER ID AT the gate. The guard hardly looked at it. He glanced in the backseat but didn’t bother talking to the ten-year-old picking her nose. He stepped back into his little station and the flimsy chain-link gates opened.

  He didn’t bother telling her where to go.

  Cali parked her car in the middle of the visitors’ lot with half a dozen other cars. The Center was only two stories tall but sprawled over seven acres with a courtyard for exercising. But there weren’t tattooed gangsters pumping iron in the yard, just everyday people that redlined too many biomites. Doctors, lawyers, farmers… no one was spared.

  Walking, talking machines, she remembered a politician once said when federal money was available to build these Centers and create jobs in his district. Biomites will turn us all into walking, talking machines. Unless we do something, this is the first step in the extinction of the human race.

  Cali checked her face in the rearview. Her face had a strange color, something closer to bruise-yellow than blush. She didn’t care, just didn’t want Nix to worry. She took a few minutes to doctor her complexion and ran a brush once or twice through her hair.

  She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Her heart rate was up. She counted her breaths to ten and felt her blood pressure settle down. She couldn’t look out of the ordinary. She always made herself look a little nervous when she arrived, so that when this day arrived, her emotional state wouldn’t look out of place.

  But not too nervous.

  Cali looked through her bag, flipped through files and made sure a bottle of water and an ink pen were at the bottom. Distractions. She reached into the backseat and pulled a drawing from Avery’s bag, a scene of the ocean with a dolphin leaping out of the water and a yellow sunset. It was quite good for a ten-year-old. Almost too good. She might have an artistic future.

  “You going to be all right out here?”

  “Yep.” Avery didn’t look up from her movie.

  “I’ll be in there for about an hour.”

  “I know.”

  “Of course you do.” She rustled her daughter’s hair. “You’re a big girl.”

  “Can you kiss Uncle Nix for me?” Her eyes were wide.

  “Not yet.”

  Avery stuck out her bottom lip.

  “Maybe soon, though.”

  “Okay.”

  Cali stretched over the seat and kissed her daughter’s forehead and whispered, “I love you.”

  “Love you, too, Mama.”

  ______

  Cali stood at the door until it buzzed.

  The floor was hard and shiny. The walls empty. At the end of the short hallway was a counter with a door to the left of it. Cali walked the thirty or so steps while the man behind the counter—wearing a blue uniform, hands folded on the countertop—watched her the whole way. He smiled in neutral.

  “Where’s Greg?” Cali dropped her bag on the counter.

  “Called in sick.”

  The man’s ID badge was clipped to his collar. One Mr. Franklin Moses, here to protect and serve. Franklin gestured to the right. Cali swiped her ID through the scanner.

  “Dr. Cali Richards.” Franklin looked to his left and pecked a keyboard behind the counter.

  “I’m not a doctor.”

  “It says here you have a Ph.D. in Nanobiometrics.”

  “Don’t call me doctor.”

  Franklin raised his eyebrows. He’d touched a nerve and, wisely, stepped off.

  Cali slid her bag to the right side of the counter onto a black scanning plate. Franklin watched the monitor to his left. The plate vibrated, then stopped.

  “Please empty your bag.”

  Cali let out an exasperated breath. She pushed her hand through her hair and began pulling out the items. She stacked the folders and placed Avery’s drawing on top. She put the bottle of water next to it. Franklin picked up the water and turned it around. He looked at her.

  “You have a doctorate in nanobiometrics and you don’t know that liquid is not allowed in a Detainment and Observation Center?”

  “This is a prison. And if I wanted to contaminate you or anyone else with a new strain of biomites—a super strain of biomites that I could control—I wouldn’t have to bring it in a bottle of water, I’d just seed my salivary glands and spit in your eye, Franklin. All it would take is the most inconspicuous fleck of spittle to go airborne, one you’d never notice, and you’d be mine, just like that.” Cali grabbed the ink pens from the bottom of her bag. “Taking liquid from people isn’t going to make them safe. It’s too damn EASY!”

  Franklin’s eyebrows went higher. He slowly put the water down and began to turn around.

  “I’m sorry.” Cali reached for him. “I get a little… stressed out coming here. You know biomites can’t go airborne, I was just making that up. I’m sorry, I’m just… a little tight.”

  “You can’t joke about that, Dr. Richards. Not someone of your caliber. And biomites can go airborne, that’s why we confiscate any form of liquid. If it’s atomized, there’s a brief period that a person could be seeded with an unknown strain.”

  “Yes, yes, I know. I just… my brother… he’s just… I don’t agree with all this, you know. He doesn’t deserve to be locked up. He didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “He’s not a criminal, Dr. Richards.”

  “He’s being treated like one.”

  “No, he’s quarantined. It’s not illegal to be seeded, but it is illegal to contain too many. I don’t make the laws, Dr. Richards. That’s just how it is.”

  Cali locked her lips. She’d said enough. Anymore and he’d throw her out and she’d never come back. She needed to look concerned and worried, not unstable. Not a threat.

  “I’m sorry.” Cali took the drawing off the folders and pushed it across the countertop. “Look, this is all I want to bring to visitation. Could you send it up to Nix? It’s from his niece. She’d come, too, but she’s scared of this building.”

/>   Franklin paused. He put one finger on the piece of paper and slid it closer.

  “She used colored pencils,” Cali added. “It’s all solid medium, the paper and everything. There’s nothing there that can vector a viable biomite. It’s like all the other drawings in his room.”

  He picked it up while staring at her. He lifted it toward the overhead lights and looked through it.

  “You can run it through the sterilizer, if you like. Greg knows how much these drawings mean to Nix. And, look, I’m sorry about snapping. I just want to make sure my brother gets a little something every week. Imagine what it must be like in here.”

  Franklin looked at the dolphin and ocean and sun for a full minute. He placed it on the counter and nodded curtly. “Very well.”

  The door to the left clicked.

  ______

  Another guard.

  He motioned for her to come closer and put a cell-phone-sized box near her throat. She tasted metal.

  The humming died. “You’re 39.9%, Cali.”

  Cali nodded.

  “You’re one-tenth of a percent from redline.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  The guard looked at it while he snapped the reader back on his belt. There was a long silence.

  “Can I go?” Cali asked.

  “Sure,” the big guard said. “Get comfortable. You’re probably going to see this place from the inside, reeeal soon.”

  Cali tightened her lips. She wanted to explain that exponential growth of biomite cells was not an absolute and that her research in the last couple months was showing signs that it could be suppressed by injecting growth regulator code that limited biomite division. Even though she slowed it down, she doubted it could be reversed. Either way, she wasn’t about to tell anyone, not until Nix was out. And they weren’t going to just open the doors and set him free.

  She planned on doing that.

  10

  NIX USED THE WHITE WASHCLOTH to wipe his face, his head, rubbed the film off his teeth, and changed into a new white jumper. He did these things every time Cali came to visit. Ritual was key to remaining sane in solitary.

  And he didn’t want his sister to worry.

  Nix folded the old jumper and placed it at the foot of the door, where a guard could switch it out when he dropped off food. The small table was on its side in the hallway, the chess pieces scattered on the floor. Nix imagined George’s computer program suggested he offer a draw after a few more moves.

  Or kick over the table and leave.

  Nix returned to his desk and straightened the only stack of papers on it. Every week, Avery sent a drawing. Sometimes it was animals, sometimes people. Most of the time, it was scenery, like the mountains or a lake. Regardless, it always had the sun. The sun was bright yellow and shiny, just like he remembered. He could see the sun rise from his window, but it wasn’t the same from inside the Center. The sun didn’t rise the same when freedom was gone.

  He rubbed the waxy, yellow circle peeking over the lush hills. No liquid there. Just a sterilized piece of paper. Nix smelled it. It reminded him of home. Reminded him of when Cali and Thomas would be working at the lab late at night and Nix would put Avery to bed. He’d take a book from her nightstand and open it and the smell of the pages would fill his nose with memories. That’s what those old pages smelled like: memories. They were old books, books that Cali read to him when he was little.

  Remember the wild rumpus?

  He smelled the paper again. He knew they were watching him. There were cameras that captured his every move, little eyes in the corners. Nothing went without record.

  He was counting on it.

  Nix pulled the chair in front of the monitor. He placed the pictures on his lap and waited.

  Hours later, the monitor flickered.

  ______

  His image disappeared, replaced by another sitting in a similar chair in a white room, hands on her lap.

  “Little brother.”

  Nix smiled. He was always surprised how much the sight of his sister could warm him. Even if she was a faint shadow of what she used to be. A waif. A troubled soul. Her shoulders were pointy, her cheeks drawn. The room was well lit but, still, shadows darkened her eyes.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  She looked at her lap, picking at her fingers. “I’m well.”

  “You’re eating?”

  Nod.

  She’s too demure. She’s thinking about it too much.

  “How’s the little angel?”

  The shadows lightened. Her teeth showed pearly and white. She told him about making cookies. Avery came up with her own recipe: chocolate chip and potato chip cookies. Sounded gross because it was. They made jelly bean and peanut cookies, gummy worm cookies, and, finally, a batch of sugar and syrup cookies. They decided to take them to the volunteers at the animal shelter. They were going to form a group called Baking a Difference and would get the neighborhood kids involved.

  Cali loosened up. She always felt relaxed when she talked about Avery. They went on to talk about other things, like the new playground down the street and the neighbor’s new baby.

  Something slid under the door.

  Nix saw the drawing. The corners of the paper were folded up. He looked at Cali. She was speechless.

  He retrieved it and sat down. This one was an ocean with a dolphin. It was jumping out of the water with a big smile, free at last.

  Free at last.

  Nix touched the sun.

  “She misses you.” Cali sniffed. She didn’t have to pretend. “She wants to know when you’re coming home.”

  “What do you tell her?”

  “I tell her soon.”

  “Maybe you should tell her the truth.”

  “I’ve petitioned the government to open a new branch in our lab. Our research was showing strong signs of biomite remission when exposed to RNA injections before they cut funding. If we can just have a year or two, Nix, I know I can bring your biomite levels below 40%.”

  “A year or two.”

  She looked back at her fingers. She was making all this up. There was no remission evidence in laboratories, public or private. Maybe in the basement, but not at the lab.

  “You’ll get me out of the redline?” Nix muttered.

  “And out of here, if they just listen.”

  “That’s a lot of ifs.”

  “That’s all I got.” Cali wiped both eyes. “You’re all I got.”

  There was a lot of truth to that. Only Nix was aware of just how true it was. He stared at the picture, remembered going on vacation to Folly Beach outside Charleston, South Carolina, and seeing dolphins for the first time with Avery. Remembered sleeping on the beach towel in the afternoon while she built castles and Cali and Thomas went for a long walk. That was vacation. That was a long time ago.

  “She worked hard on that,” Cali said. “I got her a new set of pencils with special colors just for you. She must’ve spent months drawing that one.”

  “I like it.” He held it up. “Tell her thank you.”

  “Maybe one day you can tell her.”

  They talked about neighbors. Talked about his old friends. They filled the gaps with words, making it all seem normal. Finally, Cali stood up.

  The screen went blank.

  Nix sat for several minutes, looking at the colors. It was just like the other ones, pictures from a lovely girl to a loving uncle. He lifted it to his nose and breathed in the waxy aroma.

  His sinuses tingled. A tickling sensation penetrated the porous bone plate that separated his olfactory senses and entered his brain like a virus. Like living cocaine. He held the back of the chair and kept his eyes open even though the room was spinning.

  Special colors just for you.

  Nix made it to his bed and lay down without looking suspicious. Cali told him on the last visit that Avery was working on a special drawing. He knew something was coming. Intuition told him to smell it.

  Something embedded
in the colors.

  His sister was a genius. She spiked the drawing with something—probably a new breed of biomites, ones that eluded the ring’s effect. Nix could feel them spread out in his head like cold webbing. If the guards suspected something, they would already be in his cell.

  She’d discovered something new.

  Something undetectable.

  Nix lay back and closed his eyes. For the first time in a long time, since the day that ring went around his neck, he smelled the ocean.

  11

  CALI WIPED HER EYES WITH a tissue. It was the first time she’d teared up during a visitation. She’d cried when they took her little brother from the house, but not since. Not ever. She’d never allowed herself to feel those emotions, but the thought of her little brother coming home was just too real.

  It got to her.

  It probably didn’t hurt her performance. It would be completely expected, probably bored all the people watching.

  She walked out without a word from any of them. She stopped outside the final door. The sun was overhead. Nix didn’t see that very much, at least not on his own terms. That’s what he always requested of his niece to draw for him: suns. Draw me something yellow, he would say.

  Cali peeked through the back of the car. Avery was laid out on the seat, eyes closed. Cali closed the door behind her quietly so she wouldn’t wake the angel. She stopped herself from giving her daughter a hug, giving her the good news.

  Uncle Nix will be home soon.

  12

  The head of the table was empty. Marcus entered.

  The other chairs were filled with children. His wife, Janine, was seated at the other end. Her head was bowed. He could tell when she was thinking. Always thinking. Never here. Always somewhere in her head, combing through facts, through paperwork and scenarios. A lawyer’s work never rested. Not for good ones, she would say.

  The children had their hands on their laps, heads slightly bowed. They weren’t thinking of clients and affidavits. Only dinner.

  Marcus sat down. “Let us pray.”