TWENTY-TWO MONTHS BEFORE THE TRIAL
The mountain is tall, but still we rise, heels dangling as we scale the lifts to the heights of Sugar Summit, Winter Land’s famed indoor alpine peak, where thrill seekers of every level can enjoy family-friendly bunny slopes, powdered-sugar snowboard terrain, and treacherous triple black diamonds—a pristine winter wonderland most people outside the Kingdom have never, and will never, experience.
They say it has become too hot out there, beyond the Green Light, for snow.
“How much higher does it go?” Kaia whispers, though she can see the summit just as well as I can. In the lavender glow of twilight, she looks like an angel, her strapless sweetheart neckline sparkling with tiny, pale pink crystals.
“Almost there,” I say, wishing Nia had come with us. But she has never been as interested in the newborn hybrids as I am.
I breathe in the icy wind, the air deliciously cozy with the scent of hot cocoa. Hundreds of feet below us, guests gallop through the snow on the backs of dappled Icelandic ponies and sip hot chocolate in mountainside chalets. They soak in hot biosphere springs, skate across crystal ponds, and relax in the Crystal Château, a luxury spa made entirely of ice. Even the night sky here is like magic, a solar-spectrum simulation of electric blues and plasma greens that dance and swirl overhead to the soothing sounds of Winter Land’s Snowy Dreamscape playlist.
I glance down once more and feel a spike of warning in my system.
It’s hard to believe that so far below, hidden in all that snow, there’s a wild animal lurking—a creature who is not welcome here. A small, mangy wolf, I overheard one of the guards say earlier, when he didn’t know I was listening in. Or maybe a fox. Rabid. Delirious. Dangerous.
Must’ve dug a hole somewhere along the gateway. It’s put the whole damn Saber Enclosure on edge.
I zoom my lenses as far as they will go, carefully scanning the mountainside, though for what, I cannot be sure. When I spot several small but distinct animal carcasses—rabbits, by the look of them—and a trail of red leading into the snowy wood, I gasp loudly and scoot closer to Kaia. I am built to withstand temperatures colder than anywhere on earth—colder, even, than the coldest night in Antarctica, before the ice caps melted—but tonight, it is not the frigid air that makes me shiver. Instead, it is the thought of yellow, glowing, wild eyes stalking us through the trees.
I take several deep breaths, reminding myself that it will all be worth it, once we’ve reached our destination.
Once we see … him.
Ursus maritimus.
A polar bear.
The first of its kind in more than forty years.
Renowned for our advanced scientific research, cutting-edge interactive technology, and deep commitment to biological conservation, the Kingdom is not only responsible for the biggest and the best rides and attractions anywhere, but it has also dedicated itself to reviving earth’s most vulnerable species and subspecies, many of which can no longer be found in the natural world. In the years since my own arrival, back in the June of the Spotted Owl, our world-class team of scientists has welcomed one FES, or Formerly Extinct Species, per month into our Kingdom family.
Birds. Fish. Amphibians. Mammals. Marsupials. Reptiles.
We even have a dinosaur, albeit a small one, roughly the size of a chicken.
“Are you sure Mr. Casey will let us in?” I ask Kaia, as the stars blink overhead, and the end-of-day bells begin to ring out across the park. “It’s almost closing time.”
Kaia’s dark eyes are squeezed shut. She doesn’t like heights. “He told me to come late,” she says. “He told me to bring a friend.”
I can’t say what it is about the bear that has me so exhilarated—I appreciate all the animals equally—but something about this arrival feels special, even more so than usual. Maybe it’s the fairy tale Mother read to us years ago, about the princess who dreams of a golden wreath and the white bear who brings it to her. Or maybe it’s that Winter Land’s last FES, a narwhal, died before it could reach full maturity, and this cub feels like a new beginning.
When the lift releases us, we crunch across the artificial snow to the Arctic Enclosure, now empty of guests. As soon as the glass doors slide open, the exhibit dark but for the tranquil blue of the pool, I am sure that the polar bear cub is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen.
He is there, dozing on a rocky ledge just behind the glass, his hybrid coat so brilliantly white he could be made of snow.
It takes me all of three seconds to memorize every part of him, from his tiny square paws, to his heart-shaped nose, to his fat little belly, gently swelling when he breathes. “Hello, little one,” I whisper, pressing my palms to the icy glass. “Will you be my friend?”
“Hey there, look who finally decided to show up,” a voice says suddenly from behind where Kaia and I are seated. I recognize the source quickly. Cameron Casey, an animal trainer from Texas with hair the color of Swiss chocolate, eyes the color of an emerald field, and a smile so bright, so symmetrical, it’s almost hard to believe he wasn’t intentionally designed to look that way. “You ladies are late,” he says, winking when our eyes meet. “I was about to give up on you.”
“Even miracles take time,” Kaia replies, batting her eyelashes.
It’s a standard line, but Mr. Casey laughs as if he’s never heard it before. “You are a character, Kaia,” he says before kissing her cheek. “I’ll give you that.”
She giggles. “You don’t need wings to fly.”
Kaia is a good girl, but as one of the older models, she is constantly cycling through the script instead of creating her own things to say, which makes her most popular with the park’s youngest guests—age seven and below.
Sometimes my sisters will say cruel things about Kaia behind her back.
That her hardware is defective. That her processors are slow.
Or worse.
“The Investors don’t seem to mind her babble during their seasonal retreats,” I once heard Eve say, as she slipped into an evening gown of illusion blue, named for its ability to change color in the moonlight. “Though perhaps they don’t do much talking there.” She laughed. “Not that Kaia would even remember.”
I am not sure what Kaia’s memory has to do with anything, just like I do not think she is slow. On the contrary, I think she is smarter than all of us and likes playing it safe. Anyway, Eve should be careful who she talks about. Out of the seven of us, her technology is the oldest and therefore the most likely to fail. If anyone is due for a full system replacement, it’s Eve—not Kaia.
Mr. Casey jerks his head in my direction. “Why didn’t you bring that sexy mermaid, Pania, with you, instead of her?” he asks Kaia in a low voice. But not so low that I don’t hear. My hearing is exceptional, better than any human or animal species.
It does not bother me that Mr. Casey prefers Nia—her sharkskin silver gown this season is particularly stunning—though I will never understand people’s fascination with mermaids. In mythology, mermaids aren’t sweet or warm or kind—they are monsters, luring sailors with their beauty and enchantment into the sea to torture them. Drown them. Eat them.
“He’s amazing,” I say loudly, forcing a smile, hoping to put Mr. Casey in a good mood. We are good at this: distracting and cajoling, reading people’s moods. “How old did you say he is?”
It works. Mr. Casey relaxes. Say what you want, but Mr. Casey loves his job. “Just about four months. Little devil’s got a bellyful of seal meat. That’s why he’s passed out like this. But don’t worry, he’ll be up soon enough, begging for more.” Suddenly, he raps hard on the glass. I follow his line of vision and notice a maintenance worker inside the enclosure, hunched over and shoveling dirty snow into a chute I know eventually feeds down into the incinerator, many hundreds of feet below the park. “Hey! Chen! Don’t forget to treat the water. It’s looking green, and news crews’ll be here at the crack of dawn.”
Right away, I notice the boy’s dark, angular eyes. A small scar above his upper lip. Black hair glinting in the light like a raven’s feathers. Something about him seems familiar, though I am sure he must be a new hire.
After all, I never forget a face.
“Are you deaf?” Mr. Casey throws up his hands when the kid just stares at him.
Finally, the boy nods. “I heard you,” he says. His voice is muffled by the glass. For a second, his eyes lock onto mine. My Facial Recognition Application doesn’t typically work from this great a distance, but to my satisfaction, when I scan his irises, his Kingdom ID comes right up.
KINGDOM CORPORATION
NAME: OWEN CHEN. ID: 9-01-3-7219
TEAM: MAINTENANCE
CLEARANCE LEVEL: 10
I blink.
Maintenance workers do not typically have clearance greater than five.
This is unexpected.
My mind quickly spins with questions, but then I am distracted: the bear stirs. Soon he yawns, stretches, and opens his eyes—a pale blue as pure as the ice around him.
“Great,” Mr. Casey says. “The little fur ball’s finally awake. Be right back.”
He disappears, heading into the enclosure, then reappears on the other side of the glass and scoops the cub up. A second later, he returns to the observation deck with the cub. “Eat your heart out, Princess,” he says, dropping him into my arms like a tiny, snowy bundle.
For a moment, all I can do is stare at the cub. At his perfect nose, his perfect mouth, his perfect paws, and his perfect face. He sniffs at me as if to say hello.
“Oh my goodness,” I whisper, nuzzling my face into the painfully soft, monochrome fluff under his chin. Kaia buzzes around me, but she shakes her head when I ask her if she would like a turn holding him.
“I’ll drop him,” she giggles, backing away.
“Okay,” Mr. Casey says a few minutes later, by which point the cub has drifted off again in my arms, ears flickering in his sleep. “Playtime’s up.” Before I have a chance to say goodbye, he has grabbed the cub by the scruff of his neck—jarring him awake—and hauls him back inside the enclosure.
“You shouldn’t be so rough with him,” I say, once he’s back. “He’s just a baby.”
In an instant, a shadow seems to pass over Mr. Casey’s face. “Is that right?” he asks, and I notice his drawl has morphed into a tone as chilly as the air itself. “You going to tell me how to do my job now, huh?”
“She didn’t mean it,” Kaia says quickly. “When it rains, look for rainbows!”
In the low arctic light, Mr. Casey’s eyes flash almost amber, and I am reminded of the Bengal tiger he once whipped for growling at him during a performance. The memory ignites a strange and uneasy feeling in my chest. A heaviness, a pressure, like I am slowly being squeezed.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Kaia is right. I didn’t mean it.” My breathing is growing shallow and my thoughts become strange, a jumbled assortment of images and sounds I can’t turn off.
Screaming guests, barreling down the first big drop of the roller coaster.
A storm pummeling our bedroom, branches scraping the roof like claws.
Nia’s prosthetic mermaid tail, sparkling, blinding, like diamonds in the sun.
Mr. Casey grabs my hand, twisting it so hard I cry out. Not because it hurts—Fantasists cannot feel pain, only pressure—but because his sudden movement has startled me. He isn’t supposed to touch us, not like this. And he knows it. “Please, Mr. Casey. Stop.” Seconds before I’m certain my wrist will snap, he releases me and I fall to the floor in a flurry of English tulle—pale yellow, to bring the sunshine wherever I go—cradling my arm like an injured wing.
“Oh, calm down, will you?” he says. “Jesus, I was just joking. Don’t blow a fuse or whatever the hell.”
I quickly scan for blow a fuse—idioms occasionally confuse me—but the Kingdom’s signal is spotty this far up the mountain and my search returns Incomplete.
Mr. Casey steps closer, towering over me. “You Fantasists are all so creepy, do you know that? Every single one of you.” The corners of his mouth curve up in a way that turns my stomach. “Good thing you’re so nice to look at, or I’d shoot you all myself.”
As if from somewhere far away, a soft warning bell sounds in my ear.
Order. Wonder. Beauty. Compliance. Safety.
I feel a tightness in my chest.
His words are not safe.
Right away, I switch into Safe Mode, a manual diagnostic setting meant to slow our fear-center reactors and power down all nonessential applications in times of stress so that we can more easily remain calm. As Mother has explained, the less calm we feel, the more prone we are to damage.
“Thank you for letting us see the cub,” I say serenely, rising to my feet. “We should be getting back to Magic Land now, before—”
“Hold on,” Mr. Casey interrupts. “There’s something I want to show you.” His smile deepens. “Downstairs. In the VIP booth.”
He reaches for my arm, but to my surprise, Kaia steps forward. “I’ll go with you, Mr. Casey.”
I frown. What is she doing? “Kaia,” I say gently, trying to meet her gaze. “It’s time to go. Mother will be worried.”
“In helping others”—she flashes a sweet smile—“we shall also help ourselves.”
Mr. Casey looks back and forth between us. “Whatever,” he finally mutters, grabbing Kaia by the arm. “It’s not like it makes any difference.”
I watch them disappear down the dim corridor, his hand against her back, and my stomach drops although I don’t quite know why. Perhaps he wants to show her the new beluga exhibit, I tell myself. Or some kind of penguin performance? Then I remember: The belugas usually receive supplements around this time. And the penguins are quiet, roosting among the rocks.
When I spot the maintenance worker—Chen, as Mr. Casey called him—watching me from the other side of the deep, clear pool, the warning bell in my ear only grows louder. This is wrong, his eyes tell me.
I press my hand to my chest and feel my motor skip out of rhythm. And like a light turned on in a darkened room, I suddenly realize why Mr. Casey invited us to Winter Land.
Welcome to the Kingdom …
Your wish is our command.