control by Kang Lydia

Author:Kang, Lydia [Kang, Lydia]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-12-26T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

IN THE LAB THE NEXT DAY, I turn Dyl’s holo on to keep me company, but switch it to voice only. I can’t look at her face anymore. I know what she really looks like now. It’s the same reason I’ve always hated cut flowers. They’re impending death in a pretty vase, and it hurts too much to think that way about Dyl’s sweet image.

I hold my breath at the table, where two microID sheets have finished developing. Dyl’s sheet is marked with a large D in the corner; mine is C, for control. Both are covered in thousands of choppy lines, and I squint at them, trying to find differences.

Cy enters the lab. We haven’t spoken since the fight, but this morning I found yet another mug of coffee at my workstation. A peace offering. It’s the fifth one he’s left for me in the last two days. He’s either being nice, or trying to kill me with caffeine.

“Do you have a fragment reader here?” I ask, testing the waters.

“No,” he says. There’s peace in his tone. “But we have a comparator. It’s makeshift, but it’ll work.”

My stiffness around him melts, and Cy seems calmer too. I guess talking shop is easier than everything else we’ve been avoiding.

At another table, we feed the microID sheets into a steel box. The machine digitally subtracts one image from the other, leaving behind the fuzzy lines found only on Dyl’s sheet.

Cy leans in to stare at them, his neck and arms inked with maroon skeletons today. His face is close to mine, a hair closer than the boundaries of friendliness allow. I’m afraid I might bump into him, so I finally step away to really concentrate.

I adjust the contrast, and a bunch of black lines comes into focus. There are at least a hundred.

“Those lines are from Dyl’s sheet. She has extra genes buried in those sequences,” I say, trying hard to suppress my excitement, but failing. I’m grinning like an idiot. Finally! Something to show for my work. Here is the answer. Dyl’s entire worth, according to Aureus, is in those scattered lines that she’s got and I don’t.

“Good job,” Cy says. His tone isn’t entirely congratulatory; he’s holding something back, but I go on.

“Those sequences code for her trait. I’ll run it through one of those old gene libraries in the public archives.”

“Well, that’s a start.” His optimism is as overwhelming as soggy bread.

“What are you not telling me?”

“Nothing.”

“Bull.”

Cy falls into his chair and rubs his eyes with his fists. When his eyes open again to engage me, they’re tired. It’s not the kind of tired from lack of sleep; it’s an existential exhaustion, from lack of hope.

“You think this is going to be easy, just figuring this out and saving Dylia?”

“Well, maybe not so easy, but yes, that’s the plan.”

“Have you considered the possibility that the plan isn’t going to work?”

“I see. You’re one of those ‘glass half empty’ kinds of guys.” I’m prepared for this. Optimism is going to be my drug of choice.

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