THE VTV CLANGS ONTO the self-made platform. I grab Husniya and fling the door open. The bright light of day is caustic, and a cold, high-altitude wind whips by. I’m not wearing my hazmat suit, and Husniya doesn’t have one. A slap of the lever and the door quickly shunts closed.

“I need to change. And how are we going to get you up there?”

She just smiles and shrugs.

“Maybe I don’t have to.” I just need her DNA. “Can I have some of your hair?”

“My hair?”

“Yes, I want you to stay here. You’ll be safe. I’ll go to the med lab and run the tests. Then I’ll come back with food and water and some warm clothing for you. And maybe something to sleep on.”

“Like a fort.”

I crouch down to her height and move the straggle of hair from her face. With a quick jerk, I pull out a few strands—enough for a good sample. The child winces, but a quick kiss on the forehead makes her giggle. “Absolutely. We’ll build you a fort. But for now, don’t touch anything, okay? Just stay warm in here. I’ll be a couple of hours, but I’ll be back.”

“Okay, Margarida will keep me company.”

“Good girl.”

Minutes later, I’m back in slacks and a polo-necked pullover, enveloped in the hazmat suit. It’s claustrophobic. Old Norilsk felt free. No time for this, Demitri. I climb the rope ladder to the top of the platform. The same frigid wind lashes out, but nothing is going to stop me. Won’t be Ax’d if I’m cured. And the Leader won’t initiate any plan if he doesn’t have the ability to use me to figure out multiple dimensions. Evgeniy was right. I can fix everything.

* * *

IT’S THE MIDDLE OF the day, and thankfully everyone who will commute has done so. I scurry from lillipad to lillipad, hopping on and off the cable cars unseen. Our isolation works to my advantage here. No one bothers me.

Lillipad Two. Almost home. I quicken my step and pound across the tarmac to the apartment Pistil. A quick read of my retina using the internal scanner embedded in the hazmat helmet, and I’m inside airlock one. A quick pressurization cycle, then the light flicks to green and the inner door pops open.

It doesn’t take long to make it to the apartment. More scanning, more identification. More locks and rules and barriers. But finally, I’m home—though it’s just a collection of rooms, like any other apartment here in New Etyom. No individuality. No personality. No ... life. Would I rather be down there in the dirt, living hand to mouth? Fighting for my life every day? No, of course not. And yet, as I run my fingers along the vacuum-formed plastic chair in the open-space apartment, it feels decidedly cold and inhuman. Enough of this. What am I here for? Food. Food and clothes and blankets for Husniya.

I sweep through the kitchen and pull as much as possible from the refrigeration unit—a few pieces of fruit, some rice and barley, and some protein and carbohydrate packs for food printing. It’s not tasty, but it’ll do. I stuff these, along with some bed sheets and a random assortment of clothes, into the duffel bag at the foot of my bed. I sling it over my shoulder and spin on my heel to march out the door. But then, my beloved books catch my eye. Bound in old leather, hues of red, brown, and blue, they offer the only warmth in the room.

Gold lettering, broken and peeling, spells out my favorite titles: The War of the Worlds, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Children of the Fifth Sun, Into the Dark of the Day, Looking Backward—and then, this one. I slide it out and rub the cover. Forgot I had this one. A smile spreads across my lips, and I slip it into the bag.

Vedmak’s consciousness scratches at my brain again. Shouldn’t you be running, stupid kozel? You’re going to get us both Ax’d.

He’s right. Need to get out of here. I grab the last few items, cram them into the bag, and run to the door, pulling on my helmet. Two pressure doors later, and once again I’m storming across the lillipad toward the cable car. Got to get to the med lab on Eight.

The cable car swings in the wind, which has now picked up a bit. The steel groans and squeals as the car sways. The inside of my helmet feels more claustrophobic than ever, the air thick and the inner lining too close to my skin. I yearn to yank it off and just suck in the crisp air up here, but there is little to breathe, and I’d die pretty quickly—and for once in my life, I don’t want to die. For once, there is hope I can be free.

Vedmak cackles. Free like your new dirty Robust friend?

“Mila?”

Yes, that ugly little goblin who almost got us killed.

Mila. Is she okay? Did she escape? Where would she have gone? She said something about another enclave. Logos? Was that it? Maybe that’s where she’s from? I left her. Abandoned her, after she saved me from the Creed.

Because you’re a coward.

“Oh, now you want me to have gone with her? You contradict yourself, Vedmak. You just like insulting me. But you’ll soon be gone. I’ll soon know how I’m talking to you. And then, I can shut you up.”

The cable car clangs into its dock, and the doors slide open. Standing on the platform is another person. Identical in height and build, he or she is concealed behind an ink-black visor, causing my fishbowl reflection to stare back at me. My heart stops, and my larynx grows tight. Nikolaj?

Push him off. Vedmak shrieks.

“Good day,” a male voice says over my headset. It’s not Nikolaj.

“Uh, good morning.”

“Getting off?”

“Yes.”

“Okay ...”

What’s he waiting for? Oh, sard, I need to get off. I shuffle off and even more awkwardly gesture for him to get on. He must be frowning inside his helmet.

Well done, idiot.

“You could have helped me.”

To teach a fool is the same as teaching a dead man. And unless you get us out of here, we will both be dead.

“I don’t have time to bother with your riddles. We need to get to the lab, and then back to Husniya.”

And what will you do with the rodent, hmm? You haven’t thought that far ahead, have you? Help her find her filthy family? You think you can be away that long and no one will notice? You think no one has noticed already? Kozel.

“I haven’t got time to think. I’ll explain everything to the Leader once I have proof. He’ll have to see sense. There has to be another way. If we’re coded after death anyway, he doesn’t need to create a black hole or wipe out the Robusts.”

I storm into the airlock to leave and head for Pistil Eight.

* * *

IT’S MUCH BUSIER IN here in Pistil Eight. People hustle and bustle, shuffling through the great expanse of the foyer, chattering away about who knows what. I step inside and cautiously make my way through the crowd, my bag over one shoulder and helmet wedged under one arm.

Everyone else is already out of their hazmat suits, the morning commute over for most people hours ago. I enter the elevator with two other Graciles, a man and a woman. They offer a brief acknowledgment.

“Floor?” the woman asks.

“Oh, um, med lab, please.”

“Med lab,” the elevator’s computer replies.

“Hydroponics,” the man says.

The elevator lifts smoothly upward and then slides effortlessly to a halt—my floor. I offer another fake smile and squeeze between the other passengers out into the corridor. They give me a quizzical stare as the doors close, and then they’re gone.

I shuffle through the darkened embryo library, fixing my eyes to the floor, watching my feet take long strides: left, right, left, right. Don’t look up. Don’t look at the fetuses. The pink haze of light reflecting their tiny little bodies colors the floor, lighting my way through to the lab at the opposite end. The EYE whirs above me, making another round. I quicken my step and duck into the archway. Another press of my thumb and I’m granted entry.

In contrast to the embryo room, the lab is stark white. With no need for staff most of the time, it’s small, less than fifteen square meters, with a cluster of four monitors and a deep DNA bioscanner at its center.

I grab a chair and slide up to a monitor. “Request biomedical comparison.”

“State nature of the comparison,” replies the computer voice in its usual female tone.

“Search for similar genes coding for protein structures in the brain, using two samples. Then compare against genetic database. Isolate proteins shared by both samples, but unique from ninety-five percent of subjects in database.”

“Confirmed. Insert samples into bioscanner tray.”

A small white plastic drawer slides out from under the monitor. I pull off my gloves to retrieve Husniya’s hair. The large Z carved into the back of my right hand catches me off guard. The gnarled skin is already pink; even without nanobots, my enhanced genetics repair the damage faster than a Robust’s. It still looks a mess. I fumble around in my outer pocket. The few strands of hair are still there. Delicately I place them in the tray, then pull a few eyelashes from my right eye and sprinkle them in with Husniya’s hair.

“Begin analysis.”

The tray whirs closed, and the computer silently begins its work. I tap on the table nervously. My foot won’t stop jiggling.

“Fourteen genes unique to samples have been identified,” the computer says.

“Display.”

Husniya’s and my DNA codes are laid out side by side, with specific genes highlighted as similar to each other and unique from the database. The little girl’s genome is imperceptibly different from my own. Despite all of our honing and tweaking at the molecular level, our DNA is almost indistinguishable.

How poetic. Not feeling so superior, pathetic whelp?

“I never felt superior in the first place.”

Using the touch screen, I zoom in on each group of bases—a gene coding for a unique protein. Most seem benign, identified as a co-transporter or enzyme of relative unimportance. But then there’s this one. A protein in the right parahippocampal gyrus. The computer doesn’t know what it does. Husniya and I both have it. The signature is homozygous recessive; two nondominant genes are required. I can understand Husniya, but how did I end up with this? Perhaps the fact it has no known function, detrimental or otherwise, means the EYE missed it. I lived because a single protein went unnoticed by a machine designed to notice it. Mila might call that a miracle.