“Do you remember the first time we spoke?” he says. “Back in the Heper Institute, in the restroom?” His hands move to the bag of blood on the side of my bed. He expertly seals the bag, careful not to spill a drop, and hands the bloated bag to one of the men. “It was the eve of the Heper Hunt. I was, if you recall, giving you invaluable advice. To let the Heper Hunt take its course, then use the FLUNS on the other hunters. But you were too smart for your own good, weren’t you?” He titters. “That would have made things so much easier.”
He moves over to Sissy’s bed, checks her bag. “And yet, despite it all, here you are. Both of you. Both halves of the Origin, safely tucked away in the Palace. That’s just one example of your father’s genius. Even when things fall apart, it all somehow seems to work out in the end.”
At the mention of my father, everything in the room seems to still. Everything except my heart, beating fasting now, harder.
“He was the mastermind behind it all, you know. Our leader.” The man glances at me, scratches his wrist. “I can see by your obscenely readable face that you don’t believe me. Well, doesn’t surprise me. You thought your father only a janitor. But he was so much more. Obviously, he had to keep you in the dark out of concern for your safety.”
I turn my eyes to the floor. I suspected, but never fully knew, the passions hidden in the maze of my father's heart. Not for the first time in the last few weeks, I wonder if I ever really knew him at all. “Tell me about him,” I whisper. “Tell me everything you know.”
The man studies me with unnerving concentration. He sees the urgency in my eyes, senses my need to know, and draws out the silence. Clearly, he is enjoying this. “There’s a lot to know. And we have a lot of time. Later—”
“No,” I say. “Now.”
The man stares back, rakes deep scratches into his wrist. “Very well. To show that we truly are on the same side, that we are comrades in arms, I’ll tell you what you want to know. In bite-size portions for now.” He places his hand on the bed railing. “Your father and I grew up together. Up there in the mountains. The Mission was our home, the only home we’d ever known.”
His eyes roam across my face. “You look so much like him when he was younger. Your studied gaze, your thoughtful eyes. But I doubt you’re nearly as smart. The kid was a genius. While the rest of us were romping around the mountains, he preferred his textbooks. He was constantly studying into the wee hours of the night. By the time he was—why, probably your age—he’d come to believe that a cure for the duskers was possible.”
“The Origin,” I say.
He nods, examines his fingernails. “Fast-forward a couple of major setbacks and not a few frustrating years and your father was ready to lead a team into the metropolis. To collect samples of dusker fluid, gallons of it, and bring it back to the Mission. It was crucial for his research and experiments. But it was a dangerous operation. Didn’t think he’d get even a single volunteer. As it turned out, he had to turn away dozens. He had that way with people.”
I nod. So far everything is consistent with what Krugman had told us.
“How large was the team?” Sissy asks.
“About thirty of us. Made up of mostly young men hardy—or foolhardy—enough for the dangerous mission. Women wanted to go, of course, but it was too risky for most of them. The operation was supposed to take anywhere between a fortnight and a month, and menstrual bleeding was going to be an issue. Imagine having your period in the middle of the metropolis populated by millions of them.”
“But my mother went,” I say.
He nods. “Along with five other women. They were all in the early stages of pregnancy—two, maybe three months along. That was the one condition. You had to be pregnant, but not too pregnant, if you know what I mean.”
“My mother,” I whisper. “She was pregnant with me then.”
For the first time his eyes soften. “She was. They’d recently married, your father and her, and he didn’t want her to go. But she insisted and . . . well, she got her way.”
“And my mother, too,” Sissy says. “She was part of this group?”
He nods.
“What happened next?” Sissy asks.“The operation was a total catastrophe. We were so naive and idealistic! We had no idea of the dangers. Everything fell apart, and quickly. Many of us perished that first awful night. Those who survived—we hunkered down, afraid to come out even in the daytime. That first week, we were just trying to find a way to escape the metropolis and return to the Mission.”
His voice quivers slightly, the first time his monotone voice has shown a hint of emotion. He grabs the railing tighter. When he speaks again, he’s regained control.
“And perhaps we may have escaped. But it was your father who galvanized us. He warned us that fleeing back to the mountains would lead the duskers straight to the Mission. That history would judge us for such a cowardly and selfish act.”
A heavy pause.
“And then he asked us to believe in him, in the cause. Put your eyes on me, he’d said. Listen to me. How his eyes had burned! How his words pierced into us. He told us there was no higher purpose than to heal the sick, to purify the impure. That there was no nobler calling than to save the duskers. And with the same kind of charisma and passion that convinced us to leave the Mission in the first place, he persuaded us to stay in the metropolis. And so we did. And so we did. We merged into dusker society and over the years became masters of blending in. And every day that passed, every month, every year, every decade, we got closer and closer to finding a cure.”
“What about the women?” I ask, thinking of my mother. “You said they were pregnant when they left the Mission.”
“They survived the first wave of attack. And the births were six, seven months away, distant enough to prepare in advance, to build a triage out in the desert. Afterward, the women nursed their babies for as many years as they could, as much to feed their babies as to ward off their own menstrual bleeding. And when their breasts ran dry, a year, two, even three years later, and bleeding again became a problem, they made sure to get pregnant again, and quickly. Later, we were able to develop a medical procedure—”
“That’s why we had siblings,” I say in horror. “That’s why the women kept bringing babies into this fallen, forsaken place. It was only to protect themselves.”
“It was to protect you!” he retorts. “Because if a mother had been discovered, it would have led quickly to not only her death, but her whole family’s.”
Another silence, weightier this time.
The man blinks rapidly, as surprised by his outburst as we are. He touches his throat with his fingertips.
“We were discussing your father,” he finally says after a moment, his voice recaptured, keen to get back on topic. “As I was saying, he was our leader. Getting his position as janitor at the Domain Building was instrumental to the cause. It gave your father access to the labs, the computer mainframe, the highly classified files. Even placed him close to the top-secret fifty-ninth floor, although he was never able to break in. Later, he rigged the system and had some of us transferred here to the Palace. To have eyes on the Ruler, and, eventually, to have his ear.” He puffs his chest out, the insignia on the breast of his frock coat jutting out. “That would be my role. Chief advisor, in case you were wondering.”
He pauses expectantly, waiting for Sissy or me to say something. He clears his throat. “And then, of course, the miraculous day. Your father found some archaic data embedded in forgotten files in the computer mainframe. He wasn’t sure what he was looking at, but from those cryptic equations he was able to patch together a formula. For the Origin. Eventually, he converted the Origin formula into an actual serum. The process wasn’t perfect—it was extremely complicated, in fact. The Origin had to be separated into two halves, injected into two different carriers, and only after the gestation period—over a decade, mind you—was completed could they be later conjoined by mixing the blood of the two carriers.”
“Sissy and me,” I whisper. “We’re the carriers.”
He nods.
“But something happened,” Sissy says, “before the gestation period was complete. What went wrong?”
He exhales silently through his nose, the waft of air grazing my face. “One of us got careless. Whole families were captured, imprisoned in the dome at the Heper Institute. Including you,” he says to Sissy. “Right from our midst.”
A flash of anger crosses his body, barely contained. “Together the two of you were a weapon. Apart, useless. You were a gun without a bullet; she was a bullet without a gun. And there was nothing we could do about it. We couldn’t simply steal her away without her absence being noted. The dome was under video surveillance twenty-four/seven. If she vanished, they would simply play back the videotapes, and see everything! Questions would be asked, suspicions raised, investigations launched. And the trail would lead right to us, the Originators. And from there, the trail might have led them right to the Mission itself. No, stealing her away wouldn’t have been worth the risk.”
The room spins. It’s all the blood being drained from me. It’s making me light-headed, woozy. “You’ve taken too much blood from me.”
But he only continues speaking, his words coming out faster, with less precision.
“So we did what we had to. Which was simply to keep you both alive until you were both past the gestation period. Your father protected you, Gene, trained you. Indoctrinated into you the need to stay in the metropolis, that escape into the Vast was never an option. And you, Sissy, were with other adults in the dome, so you were fine.”
He rested his aqueous brown eyes on her. “But then, of course . . . the Heper Hunt ten years ago. It caught us by surprise. As you well know, all the adults in the dome were hunted down, killed. Leaving you alone in the dome. With a bunch of useless babies. You needed help. And that’s why your father left you, Gene. He went to her, to the Heper Institute.”