III

Elodie had never been so relieved to leave for work. As long as she could keep from thinking about her mother and about that disturbing lesson fifteen during her ride on the commuter train, she’d be fine. Once she got to work, she’d be swallowed by her job, and the little girl’s screams would be scrubbed from her memory to make way for more pertinent information.

Focused on the day ahead, Elodie jogged down the wide front stairs of the renovated Craftsman she shared with her parents. She paused at street level and pressed the small, purple button on her Key Corp–issued cuff. A comforting sound hissed, like a match being lit, as a translucent violet bubble expanded from the cuff and encased Elodie. The Violet Shield Personal Protection Pods weren’t mandatory while walking around in Zone Two, but judging from the number of hazy purple spheres bobbing along the pedestrian walkways like grapes, they made everyone, Elodie included, feel a little bit safer.

Clutching her nursing textbook inside the bubble, Elodie turned to the right and walked briskly along the wide sidewalk to the MAX transit center hub that would take her downtown to Zone One, and Westfall’s central MediCenter.

It was late April and the prettiest season in Westfall, the only city in the West Coast sector of New America. The heavy gray clouds that had loomed over the city, promising rain every day from late fall to spring, had finally lost their battle against the sun. Now the glorious yellow orb dried the streets and added color back to the streets. Elodie breathed deeply as she passed a bush heavy with purple flowers, thankful that the latest updates to Personal Pods allowed scents to pass through the Violet Shield.

As always, she’d timed it perfectly. The train’s arrival bell chimed exactly as she rounded the corner to the MAX’s platform. Keeping her distance from those around her, Elodie hung back and allowed the other Zone Two residents to enter before she slipped between the slowly closing doors and into the slick, pristine interior of the MAX car, spotless from its daily sterilization.

The scent of bleach tickled her nose. It was the way life would always smell, a fact Elodie found reassuring. Actually, she found it more than reassuring. Bleach was sterile. Bleach was safe. And, therefore, life was safe.

Elodie bathed in the sharp scent as she settled into one of the few aluminum seats. She’d read somewhere once that prepandemic, the seats on the MAX were all squished up right next to each other. With a grimace, she glanced at the empty space on either side of her.

It’s no wonder Cerberus claimed ninety percent of the population. They were entirely too close to each other—all the time.

She sat back and relaxed. Her attention automatically flicked to the digital clock in the wall of the train. It was exactly 0900. It would take twenty minutes to get to the MediCenter, which meant she would arrive at work ten minutes before her morning shift began.

More importantly, she had a whole twenty minutes all to herself.

She eyed the other passengers before cracking open her textbook just enough so only she could see the pages. An icy wave of adrenaline tickled her spine as she took another glance around the car. None of the other passengers were even looking at a book, much less one as special as hers.

Elodie was breaking rules. In public.

She ran her fingers over the forbidden sheets she’d so carefully pasted to the pages of her textbook, and she could hardly keep still as she began to read.

“And that, my friend, is why life is worth living. Or, in your case, worth dying . . .” With a grimace, Vi shook her head. The blunt ends of her blond wig barely moved with the gesture. “Forgive me, Johnny.”

Johnny Diamoto jerked away as Vi leaned in from behind and rested her pointed chin on his shoulder. He was slick with sweat and stank of fear, ripe for the plucking.

Vi sighed. “That was a shitty line. I’m trying to come up with a catchphrase, but can I be honest?” Vi didn’t wait for a response. Instead, she stood and tightened the garrote around his fat, hairy log of a neck. Slowly. Not wanting to shed light on the shadow of hope hanging dark in the stuffy room.

She’d turned the heat up before he’d arrived at the swanky downtown hotel. The Honeymoon Suite, tonight 7p. That’s all his text had said. Honeymoon suite. Typical. Men like him loved dressing up their double life, making it seem like there would be a fairytale ending if the woman could just hold on long enough. Admittedly, Vi had hung on too long to this one. She’d lavished in the gifts, the trips, but now he wanted more. He’d “bought” and “paid for” enough. It was time to “see some returns.”

The timing had actually been perfect. Home Office was crawling up her ass about finishing the job. And finish, Vi would.

Diamoto’s sausage-roll arms strained against the silk ties she’d used to secure him to the chair. What was it with men and wanting to be tied up?

“Well, this whole catchphrase thing is not really working out for me,” Vi said. “I definitely thought it’d be a lot easier. I’ll have to get back to you.”

Wet, strangled grunts burbled through Diamoto’s swollen lips as she pulled on the ends of the wire.

“Did you have a thought, Johnny?” she purred. “Something to add?”

The chair creaked in response.

“What do you think my catchphrase should be?” Vi liked to leave them with a question. A small thread of connection she could twirl between her fingers after the job was done and she was back to being alone.

A final fighting burst surged through Diamoto, and his right arm freed itself from its binding.

That was the last time she would use silk.

Keeping her gloved hands securely wrapped around the wire, Vi dodged his arm as it flailed back, reaching for her. His waist was still tied in place, but Diamoto’s stumpy fingers found her wrist. His thick paws wildly clawed at her, pulling at and crashing against her leather-clad forearms.

“Bad . . . boy . . . Johnny,” Vi grunted as she tore away from him and crossed the wire behind his neck.

She leaned into him and pulled.

Johnny Diamoto shuddered and his hand slapped against hers like a wet, dying fish.

Vi breathed in a lungful of air as his ran out, and the world, no doubt, darkened around him.

Vi knew what that was like. Once upon a time, gloved hands had kept her from breathing. Left her for dead.

But Vi was better than that man. Vi always finished what she started.

The train clunked to a stop and the doors slid open with a hiss. Elodie glanced up as one person boarded. One person without his Violet Shield up. It wasn’t technically illegal to use public transport without a pod—as long as you followed the Hands-Off Protocol and kept distance between you and other passengers.

The man scanned for an empty seat, his gaze pausing, lingering on her. He ran his hand through his swirl of blond hair, his lips quirking up in a charming half smile. Elodie’s cheeks heated and she flicked her eyes down to her clean white sneakers. She felt his eyes still on her, heavy yet inviting, as he found an empty seat at the back of the train car.

Astrid would’ve chided her, saying something like, “You can still talk to people even though you have a fiancé. If he’s telling you that you can’t, you have a real problem.” But this was something Elodie’s cheery, talk-to-anyone best friend would never understand. It wasn’t that Elodie wasn’t allowed to talk to other guys. She was her own person and could do what she wanted (within reason, of course). Plus, Rhett would never even know. No, it wasn’t an issue of allowance, it was an issue of her actual human capabilities. She just . . . couldn’t. Most real-life interactions were so rushed and uncomfortable. Words wouldn’t even come out of her mouth and she ended up stuck.

The sterile white lights of the MAX flashed purple, and Holly materialized in the center of the small commuter train, her hands gently cupping The Key’s flowering red logo hovering just in front of her chest. “Please do not be alarmed.” Her smile was broad and white and calm and perfect. “The Violet Shield has been activated for your protection. You may continue with your activities. And remember, no touching today for a healthy tomorrow.” She paused for a few moments, blinking rapidly as she tested the MAX’s system, before repeating the message in the same steady, almost lullaby tone. Elodie recognized it from earlier. It was the same timbre Holly had used when Elodie had come out of lesson fifteen, when the weight of an awkward glance would have broken her into a million pieces.

The train fell eerily quiet. The young man who’d gotten on without his pod activated was now encased in his own purple haze. Apparently, all it took was one routine test to make sure everyone was doing what, in Elodie’s opinion, they should have done the moment they had left the house. Elodie shifted in her seat as thick ribbons of tension snaked around her. Why was everyone being so quiet? This happened every Tuesday. Transit Test Tuesday. That’s how she remembered to anticipate Holly’s appearance, so she wouldn’t freak out and think something bad—

Incoming call from Astrid Fujimoto.

A line of block-lettered text scrolled along the bottom of Elodie’s field of vision, announcing the call from her best friend. With a thought, Elodie answered. A translucent gray rectangle filled the left section of Elodie’s vision, partially pasting over the scene in the train. Like the sunrise, Astrid’s image faded into view, dim at first and then bright and vibrant, the other MAX passengers only visible behind her when they moved.

Astrid’s melanite black hair hung from her slick high ponytail in a giant frazzled knot against her chest as she stared wide-eyed at Elodie. “The shield is on in the MAX, isn’t it?” She didn’t waste any time. “They’re on throughout Zone One. And they’re on here, too.”

Elodie shifted nervously, all too aware that her voice was one of only a handful of other passengers who whispered to each other. “That’s weird. They normally only test the MAX’s shield on Tuesdays.” She hiked her shoulders. “But I guess it does make sense to do the train and all the zones in the same day.”

Astrid’s round face scrunched. “Yeah, that’s great. What does it have to do with today? Thursday.”

Thursday? A strangled breath squeaked past Elodie’s lips. It was Thursday. “Wait, the shield is on where you are? In Zone Two? There shouldn’t be any reason for it to be on that far from city center. There’s nothing but houses out there.”

Astrid twisted the length of her ponytail, only adding more tangles to the nest. “It was a germ stack. The shield is on in case it’s airborne.”

The same hard lump Elodie had felt earlier that morning returned to the back of her throat. “Where—” She cleared her throat in an attempt to break through the fear tightening her airway. “Where is it?”

Astrid’s lips firmed into a thin line. “Tilikum Crossing.”

Elodie pressed her back against the cold seat. “That’s a major MAX stop. Everyone traveling across the river switches trains there.”

Astrid’s eyes were wide and frantic. “It went off right before the train doors closed. Whatever was in the stack . . . it’s trapped in there with all of those people.”

Elodie stiffened. These kinds of things didn’t happen in Westfall. These kinds of things happened in other cities. Far away cities. Cities that weren’t filled with kind, rule-abiding citizens.

She chewed her bottom lip. She didn’t need to ask who’d set it off. She already knew the answer.

Astrid’s dark gaze fell and she let out a shaky breath. “It was Eos.” Again, she mussed her hair. “Two seconds and I’ll have the feed to you.”

Silence stuffed Elodie’s ears as she stared through Astrid at Holly standing in the middle of the train with her perfect smile, blinking through a test that was not routine after all.

Do something! she wanted to scream at the holographic woman who was everywhere and nowhere—the face and voice of the company that had saved their species from extinction. The Key Corp had set up rules to keep its citizens safe, but Elodie began to feel that protective shell crack. She shuddered at the thought of what could come in.

The MAX slowed to a stop. When Holly instructed all passengers to disembark, Elodie leapt out of her seat and darted through the open doors, the image of Astrid projected ahead, as though she raced backward through the crowd. With their Violet Shields engaged, the other riders purposefully hurried to their destinations. Were they really supposed to just go on? Everyone acting like nothing was happening when just a few miles away, living, breathing human beings were already marked as dead? Those citizens would never see their families again. They’d never see anyone again. The Key would take them into quarantine where they’d be put into a medically induced coma while bots monitored them until they inevitably died of whatever disease was packed into the germ stack. If they were lucky, the Key would put them out of their misery. Either way, no one ever survived Eos.

“Just sent it your way. Pull it up. It’s wild.” Astrid leaned back, cradling her head, her fear quickly sliding away, lacing itself with the glassy-eyed amusement of a spectator.

Elodie paused, hesitated. She didn’t want to watch the feed. It wasn’t going to be wild. It was going to be heartbreaking, nauseating, sad. She exited the MAX stop and walked with purpose down Third Avenue.

Astrid waved her hands in front of her face, her image drifting through other pedestrians also learning about Tilikum Crossing on their own private screens and text messages. “El? Helllloooo? Where arrrrrre youuuuu?”

“What? I’m right here. Obviously. You can see me.” Elodie forced one foot in front of the other, forced herself to match everyone else’s pace.

“Physically, sure, but mentally.” Astrid tapped her temple. “Light years away.”

“Can’t I take a few seconds to think about things?” An escaped clump of damp hair slapped against Elodie’s cheek, and she tucked it back under her beanie. “Serious stuff is happening right now, and I need a minute.”

“You can take as long as you want, as long as you aren’t thinking about Vee again.”

“Vi,” Elodie corrected automatically.

“I knew it!” Astrid clapped. “I knew you were still reading those books. Getting lost and daydreaming about those ridiculous stories. All books like that do is cause problems. And they’re banned, Elodie. They’ll get you into so much trouble. You have to stop.” Her ponytail swished from side to side to punctuate her point. “I mean, next you’re going to tell me you believe in New Dawn.”

Elodie quickened her pace. Her gaze darted suspiciously at the passersby, monitoring every little reaction for fear they’d somehow heard Astrid’s side of their private conversation, though she knew it was only in her field of vision, pumped into her eardrum via implant. “I was not daydreaming. Plus, I don’t do that anymore. I turned all of those”—she checked her surroundings before whispering—
“illegal books over to the Key’s librarian myself.” It wasn’t exactly a lie since she planned on doing just that as soon as she finished the entire series. “So there’s no reason to talk about it again.” Her brow furrowed. “And I would never say that I believe in New Dawn.”

Astrid smoothed a finger over her perfectly plucked eyebrow. “Well, they’re both made-up stories.”

“But one is a book,” Elodie whispered. “It’s art, Astrid. And the other is a lie Eos created to drum up recruits. Not the same at all.” She shook her head and Astrid’s image moved in unison with the motion. “Play the feed,” Elodie commanded her vidlink before Astrid had a chance to comment.

A gray rectangle appeared above Astrid’s image. The shape bisected the translucent panel covering the left side of Elodie’s vision and created two separate panels—the lower was Astrid, and the upper was the live feed of Tilikum Crossing.

The first thing Elodie noticed was all the people lined up, each on their backs with their arms in an X across their chests. Hazmat-clad soldiers pointed guns at each person while trash can–sized bots sped around the bridge spraying every surface with liquid.

Her breath hitched in her chest and her legs ceased moving. This time, she couldn’t force herself forward. She couldn’t make her body blend in with the others who moved around her, swerving so as not to bump into her, not to touch her, everyone a little more cautious, a little more anxious, as the morning news spread. Maybe they could do all these things at once, their bodies continuing through the world on autopilot while their minds attended to more important matters, but Elodie couldn’t do it all. She felt too much.

The drone transmitting the live feed didn’t supply audio and was too high above the scene for Elodie to tell whether or not the eyes of the men and women lying on the bridge were closed out of fear, obedience, or death.

Elodie’s fingers tingled. “Are they dead?” she finally heard herself ask.

Astrid’s ponytail slid from her shoulder as she shrugged dismissively. “If they aren’t now, they will be soon.”

Elodie wanted to run until Westfall was nothing but a distant haze, but she would only be able to go so far. The Key had locked down the city at the threshold of Zone Seven. And for good reason.

Astrid cocked her head. “You think one of those soldiers is Rhett?”

Elodie squinted at the image, but it was no use. With their shiny Key Corp–red Hazmat suits and black weapons, the soldiers resembled a swarm of ladybugs. “I hope not. I don’t want him anywhere near that kind of stuff.”

“Even if he is, they have such intense sanitation procedures that there’s no way Rhett could get infected.” Astrid’s gaze slipped to something out of Elodie’s line of sight before she continued. “Key soldiers are always safe. No one fights against them and no germs can get to them. It’s pretty much a no-risk job.”

The scene on the bridge froze and dissolved into the gray hold screen before blinking white. Elodie opened her mouth to speak, but the Key’s red logo unfurled across the small box in her vision.

Astrid resumed twirling the ends of her glossy ponytail. “You getting this?”

Elodie nodded as a woman strode into view, but it wasn’t Holly. The woman’s hourglass hips swished hypnotically as she took her place. She clasped her slender, earth-brown hands in front of her hips and locked her hazel eyes on the camera.

“Good morning, citizens. By now, I am sure you have heard about the attack on our city.”

Elodie’s brow furrowed. “She sounds so familiar . . .”

“Like Holly?” Astrid let out a slight grunt of admiration. “That’s Blair Scott. The hottest thing since VR. Like, Icarus-too-close-to-the-sun hot. Blair developed Holly’s new coding, and as a signature, used her own vocal pathways in the new-and-improved Holly.”

Elodie adjusted her beanie, hiding her grimace behind her hand. She barely noticed the other pedestrians racing by in either direction. The thought of creating a weird voice-twin made her skin crawl.

Blair continued. “Eos is trying to shake us, but they will fail. Westfall and its citizen are stronger than their hate. While we do not yet know how the attack on Tilikum Crossing happened or why, this is what we know for certain—

“You. Are. Safe.” Her tender smile lifted her round cheeks but stopped short of her eyes. Those remained unchanged—smooth and fierce.

“Mere moments after the attack, the Key Corporation activated Westfall’s intense containment protocols, and we are pleased and thankful to be able to say that our city is one hundred percent free of any infective agents, and no one outside of the immediate attack zone was exposed to any pathogens.”

Elodie released a stored breath and scooted out of the way as a group of button-down-clad men approached.

“Another win for the Key!” one of the men cheered as they passed by.

Had Elodie really been standing in the middle of the sidewalk like a dolt? Mentally, she shook herself and continued her walk to her office building as she resumed listening to Blair Scott.

“We are safe, and we owe that safety to the Key, and the more than five decades of work they have put into protecting us. That is why we know for certain that the corporation is truly the key to health, the key to life, and the key to our future.”

Recognizing the end of a Key Corp message, Elodie focused on ending the feed. “Doesn’t it bother you how they’re always saying that? The key to our future. It’s creepy, right?” she said as Astrid’s image expanded to full size.

Astrid shrugged. “It might seem a little intense if it wasn’t true, but isn’t it just a fact? I mean, if it wasn’t for the Key, we wouldn’t even be here. Our species would have died out forever ago.”

“Fifty years ago,” Elodie corrected.

“Since you and I have only been here for seventeen, it might as well have been forever ago.” Astrid punctuated with a flick of her ponytail. “Either way, we’re alive because of the Key.”

“You’re totally right,” Elodie said, more to remind herself than in response to her best friend.

The gray stretch of pavement beneath Elodie’s feet abruptly changed to rust-red brick when she reached the front of the MediCenter. “I’m at work. I’ll call you after,” she said, suddenly remembering she could finally remove her hat. She yanked it off her head and stuffed it into her backpack before shaking out her dark curls. Instead of cascading around her shoulders in beautiful waves as she’d imagined, her wet hair splatted against her shoulders in two damp clumps.

Astrid’s eyes widened for the zillionth time that morning. “Is your hair wet?”

Elodie scooped her hair off her shoulders, leaving behind two wet shadows across her top. “I took a shower. It’s no big deal.” If she’d had more time, she would have taken another one after her nursing lesson. She needed a real shower after that nightmare; needed to feel the steaming torrent of water against her skin. She needed to feel clean.

“Hmm.” Astrid pursed her pale pink lips. “I don’t want to say it’s weird, but, you know,” another shrug. “It’s weird.”

“You’re weird.” Elodie batted down her insecurities with a forced chuckle.

“Thank you much.” Astrid grinned, straight and shiny. “Hey, even though everything is good now, don’t take the MAX home. Take a Pearl.”

Elodie snorted. “Yeah, maybe I’ll think about it in twenty years when I’m head of the nursing department. I get that you work with your genius dad, but us normal people don’t make thousands of bits each year to go spending on fancy Pearl rides.”

The rosy red of Astrid’s cheeks deepened. Bits. That was the one thing that would embarrass Astrid every time. Each coin her family made seemed to add to her shame. Elodie didn’t understand. If she had that much money, she’d be long gone. Across the ocean and deeply rooted in foreign lands. Westfall would become nothing more than the place she’d come from. The place that made her unique, different from everyone else. Her stomach clenched with the lie. As much as she wanted to believe she’d be anywhere else, her place was in Westfall, with Rhett, in the MediCenter, with her plain, safe life.

Astrid pulled a thick curtain of hair across her face like a mask. “Shut up,” she teased, releasing the dark strands. “We’re working on a new Pearl prototype and need people to test it out. I’ll send one to pick you up. For free.”

“A prototype? I’ll have to figure out if I would rather die in a fiery ball or test my luck in some horrible germ attack.” The men and women laying on the bridge, X’s on their chests, flashed behind Elodie’s eyes. “You know what,” she cleared her throat. “That was stupid. Don’t listen to me. I’ll take your free ride.”

Astrid plucked the air with a delicate wave. “Later, later.”

The image filling the side of Elodie’s vision went gray and disappeared as she ended the call and stared up at Westfall’s downtown MediCenter building. Bronze sconces framed the smooth concrete facade, their tines stretching toward the sky like points on a crown.

Elodie’s clear plastic cuff flashed green as she approached the spotless glass doors. They opened noiselessly, their shiny gold handles glinting in the dappled sunlight. How long had it been since anyone had actually touched them? The handles on all of the entrances in the remaining buildings in Zone One were now nothing more than metal jewelry for doors.

The scent of fresh pine, of the forest after a rainstorm, swirled through the air.

“Is this one of those experiments where someone stands in the middle of the walkway to see whether or not people are gullible enough to start a line behind them?”

Heat flooded Elodie’s cheeks and she flicked her gaze to the pavement behind her and the owner of the deep, silky voice and source of the piney scent. How had she missed those giant boots clomping up behind her? The boots moved, leaving a dusting of dirt across the red brick. Elodie grimaced. Who even knew where to find that much dirt?

“You are going in, right?” The owner of the boots spoke again.

Elodie jerked forward and absentmindedly shook her head at the dingy, mud-splattered yellow laces. “No. I mean yes.” She forced her attention to the ground beneath the nearly silent shuffling of her brilliantly white sneakers. Maybe she did get lost in her thoughts way too often. “Yes, I—” The glass door clanged surprisingly loud when Elodie smacked into it.

The heavy boots clomped up behind her, bringing with them more of the crisp evergreen scent. “Oh, shit. Are you okay?”

Elodie’s vision danced as she waited for the doors to reopen before attempting to walk through them again. “Yeah.” She rubbed the side of her head and stayed facing forward, refusing to look at whoever had just witnessed what had to be the most embarrassing moment of her life. The doors opened and Elodie concentrated on proceeding as calmly and incident-free as possible to the bay of elevators. “Eleven,” she squeaked after scanning her cuff beneath the elevator’s control panel.

The heavy, crunchy footsteps continued to shadow her. Elodie pressed her eyelids shut and held her cool palm against her flaming cheek as she waited to see which elevator would descend first.

Another beep of the control panel. “Twelve,” the boots’ owner said with a muffled groan.

Or maybe Elodie was the one groaning.

Her eyelids fluttered open and she cast a sideways glance at the dirty brown boots waiting by her side. There was no way she could board an elevator and ride all the way to the eleventh floor with that forest scent, with someone who had just watched her walk into a door. Not with the morning she’d been having. She smoothed her wet hair over the tender knot forming on the side of her head.

An elevator chimed its arrival, and Elodie darted away from the opening doors and the heavy boots.

Today seemed like a really good day to take the stairs.