––––––––
IT BEGINS WITH A PRICK, the sharp sting of pierced flesh.
Amara gasps as her blood bubbles up, glossy and red on the tip of her finger, ready to fall like a piece of ripe fruit. A slight squeeze; the drop lands in the collection tray with the tiniest ping of a splash, the tray slips into the analyzer with a much louder hiss.
“Analyzation commencing.”
The words echo around her in that digi voice so pleasantly bland, it sounds ominous. The lab's aetherscreen hums to life, an iridescent swirl of symbol and text and soft rainbow light tainting her reflection a ghostly hue.
Amara eyes the glass wall in the back, scanning past the lush swathe of green that separates Tower from City, a twinkling mirage of domes and spires amid snow-covered peaks. She hunts out the spire that tops the Lyceum, the sterile school compound where most City kids live until confirmation. The school Amara would have grown up in as well, were she not a royal daughter confined to the Tower.
Sixteen years is simply too flooding long to be quarantined from the world with only her sisters and staff for company.
Not that it matters now, not with her prelim today. No more giddy-sick waiting for immunity to finally, finally be confirmed. Just this last prick of the finger, then she'll be authorized for her confirmation medscan.
“Analyzation complete.”
The digi voice fills the room with Amara's prelim results, all the proteins and minerals and other engineered things that make up her being.
Her heart thumps faster now. She'll be confirmed soon. And after that: freedom.
The attending doctor emerges as if peeled from the wall, a chiseled brown shadow in a stark white coat. Attached to the coat is a clear badge that reads: Bannerjee.
Dr. Bannerjee taps quickly at the psi-pad held in his palm, his long brown fingers a flurry of motion. He pulls up a holo and gives it a spin, watching a micro Amara twirl in his hand like fluttering ribbons of brown and black. Real Amara leans in, mesmerized by this small vision of her that wields so much control of her fate.
Before mini Amara can stop spinning and full-size Amara can parse what she sees, the doctor stops the holo abruptly, squashes it out of existence with his free hand. He stares hard at the quartz aetherscreen, a small crease forming between his two perfect brows. For one endless second, his mask of composure falls completely away, revealing a truth hidden there: Surprise. Confusion. But mostly alarm.
Amara's heart thumps faster still.
"Is everything okay?" she asks, her voice made small by the sudden heaviness of her tongue, the inexplicable lump in her throat.
She receives no response.
Her heart squeezes tight in her chest. Unwanted thoughts push up and out through her blood like a venomous flower in bloom.
What if I can't get confirmed?
What if I'm already infected?
What if I'm stuck here forever?
What if—
"You're all set," Dr. Bannerjee says with a brilliant white smile, his face such a picture of calm certainty, Amara must've only imagined the look. "Your confirmation medscan is tomorrow afternoon, giving us just enough time for this." He holds up a small, opaque envelope. "It will help us see what's going on inside you so we can map you from within."
Inside the pouch, Amara finds a tiny silver pill. She holds it on the tip of her finger, marveling at how it fits right in the center of her bio-mark, the unique identifier that looks just like a whirl of lines on her fingertips.
Amara gulps the pill down, dissolving her poisonous thoughts with it. She has only one thing in mind now: Confirmation. Tomorrow. As she leaves the medlab, she hums the word in her head, repeats it fervently like an old cherished psalm. To-mor-row! To-mor-row! Confirmation, to-mor-row!
It's all she can do to contain her excitement, requiring every bit of will she possesses to walk and not leap down the halls of the medlab sector. When she passes beneath the first of the lotus-shaped chandeliers, the urge to jump up and touch it is simply too much, so she does. Naturally, she must dance a small jig when she lands, exulting in the staccato tap tap of her bar-strap heels against the marble floor. Imagining all the dancing she'll do at the confirmation ball, and later, in her newly confirmed life in the city.
"Princess. Ahem." Dr. Bannerjee's voice floats up behind her, startling her back to the now. The lacy black mesh of her filtration veil hangs from his outstretched brown hand. "You've forgotten your filt."
"Oh. Thank you, doctor." She takes the veil, feigning the proper abashed look. She waits for Dr. Bannerjee to disappear from her view before placing the filt on her head, fastening it in a rush without so much as a glance in one of the shiny plaques that label the doors. For once, she doesn't care how she looks; that she's getting confirmed tomorrow is all that matters now.
She conjures the dream she has of herself post-confirmation. When she closes her eyes, she can see it all so clearly, like a holo dancing on the backs of her lids.
Instead of the medlab, she traipses down glittering sidewalks and confetti-filled streets. Instead of exam rooms, behind the frosted glass doors are the clubs she'll get into, the fancy balls she'll attend. For the briefest of moments, the access tube programmed to keep her confined to the top five of the Tower's twenty-five floors becomes the City's zip train, darting mid-sky through glass and steel buildings in whatever sector she'd like. And all the people she'll meet! People who aren't related to her—and aren't servants or scientists, either.
Yes, she can see it. Two years at Uni in her very own loft, an ace life in the City and not a care in the world, all her dreams come true at last.
The girls before her had similar dreams.
* * *
There were others, you see. Enid and Amrita, sweet little Zee. No one speaks of them now; no one remembers they ever existed. No one but the queen.
Queen Zoya never forgets.
How could she? The soul and blood of the others run through every inch of her. A mother never forgets.
* * *
Zoya sits in her office, ten painted ovals of nacreous pearl clack-clacking along the curved lacquered desk. Her high heels tap out a matching tune, despite Amir's presence. Her trusted confidante and advisor, there's nothing she needs to hide from Amir".
Not that she could if she wanted. For there is Zoya in miniature scale, floating above the holo embed in her desk. Dark and sleek, from the smooth bob of her hair to the slim cut of her form, her sharp, severe features made softer in holographic mode. Clacking and tapping stop as she lifts a tapered brown finger to the red spot in her chest. The holo refocuses.
Now there is her heart, magnified. A lattice of veins in blue (normal) and silver (abnormal) run through the red, rhythmically beating like an ancient war drum.
"It would appear to be worsening," Amir says, hoping the matter-of-fact tone disguises the hitch in his voice. It doesn't.
Zoya types more commands, nails tap tapping away. The holo readjusts, revealing a new heart, perfect and pure, not a trace of silver marring its beauty. Zoya stares at this heart a long moment, her eyes burning with want. A forlorn sigh drifts on the air as if from the room itself.
"It's beautiful," she says. "Don't you agree?"
"It is lovely, this is true."
Amir watches the rotating heart, ticking off time with each measured beat. He wonders which one of his selves he'll be this time tomorrow: the trusted advisor, or beloved mentor? A man broken by an act of betrayal? He doesn't yet know. He loves them both too much to decide.
"And arrangements have been made?" Zoya asks. "It is happening soon, yes?"
Amir's own heart breaks at the tremor of fear in her voice, at the impossibility of the thing he must do, of the things he has done. Still, he manages to speak. "Tomorrow, my queen. It has been arranged, yes."
The holo refocuses once more, responding to the queen's unspoken command. The heart shrinks and recedes until it is but a speck in a translucent girl's body. Amara grins out at Amir, oblivious to the horrors that await her. Horrors Amir himself has arranged, despite loving her like a daughter.
He's been the queen's monster for so very long, it's all he really knows how to be.
* * *
Observant. Sharp. Obedient. Strong. Above all else: Loyal. Hunter's been the perfect Guardsman for so very long, it's all he knows how to be. He has been preparing for this duty most of his nineteen years.
But that catch in his breath when Amara exits the tube? That should not be; feelings for her are not part of the plan. And yet, there he is, filled with a flutter of joy and relief as soon as the tube door slides shut behind her.
And there he is, guiding her through the upper atrium, despite the sickly-sweet stench of foliage and flowers assaulting his nose—the buzz he gets watching her more than makes up for it. The way she inhales those same flowers like their scent is the elixir of life; the way she leans over the wrought-metal rail that encircles the floor, flinging her body with maybe too much abandon; the way she gazes down at the honeycomb of floors forbidden to her, not with anger or sadness, but gleeful determination... her every gesture gives him a small thrill, each thrill another chink in his armor.
He steers her around the giant tree that soars up to the Tower's glass dome, leading her to the blind spot in one corner where the physics of angles and light works with the tree's girth to shield them from the Tower's prying nan-eyes. He tells himself he takes these measures out of nothing but instinct, deeply ingrained from his long years of training. And yet.
(And yet, he's well trained enough to know there is no need for such measures if he's only following orders.)
"So," he begins when the buzz inside him finally settles. "How'd it go?"
Amara beams through the lacy mesh of her filt, revealing her answer before a word passes her lips. "My medscan is tomorrow!"
Hunter sucks in a sharp breath. "Tomorrow?" He tries to keep his voice steady. "That's... soon."
A pause, her enthusiasm suddenly tempered. "It is soon, but that's a good thing. Right?"
"Of course it's a good thing. It's just... I just didn't expect it to happen so... soon."
The uncertain look on her face nearly undoes him.
Amara picks at the beaded hem of her dress, a gauzy black confection that was chosen, he's sure, to match the veil she must wear outside of her quarters. And maybe, he's less sure, to match the black of his own uniform; it seems like a thing she would do. Worrying does not.
"Aw, princess. It's okay to be nervous. Everything's about to change. No more masks, no more hiding that pretty little face behind filts..." He gives her veil a playful tug, wholly improper in a public place, even a secure space such as this. And what is he even saying—it's okay to be nervous? That pretty little face? Why can't he control himself around her? Years of discipline, gone in a blink every time they're alone.
"Were you nervous?" she asks in her lilting voice.
"Me? Oh..." Hunter stares down at the Tower below, at the Engineered bodies coming and going like so many ants, full of unquestioning purpose. He should be like them; he has a purpose, a job to do too. Mooning over the princess isn't it. And yet, he can't seem to stop.
"You know," he laughs, "it's funny. I wanted to be in the Guard as long as I could remember. But when the time came, I was terrified. What if it wasn't what I thought? What if I couldn't do it? What if I failed? And leaving everything I knew behind—"
His lips clamp down tight; he's said too much. And now, there is that face, alive in his mind. Those glassy, blank eyes sunk in that shriveled up flesh...
He flashes his most disarming smile. "But everything turned out fine. And you'll be fine too. There's nothing to worry about, princess."
He hates himself for lying to her.
A tingling silence cocoons them, the electric quiet that fills up the air before a touch or a kiss. He finds himself leaning closer to her, right there in the atrium. She leans toward him too, her eyes half-lidded and filled with expectancy.
Before their lips meet, the sounds of the Tower wash over him, popping their bubble of intimate silence. Hunter jolts up—what the flood is he doing?
The perfect Guardsman does not feel a panicked thrum in his heart because things are going as planned. The perfect Guardsman does not clench in fear at the thought of what tomorrow will bring, of what he must do. The perfect Guardsman does not feel, or think, or know anything but what he's commanded to feel and think and know.
The perfect Guardsman follows only his orders, nothing more.
And yet. There he is, the perfect Guardsman no more.