Hungry (44 page)

“Crops?” I ask.

“Some food can be grown in a lab, you know,” he says with a wink.

“This isn’t Synthamil,” I say, feeling for the bottle in my pocket.

“No, no, this is the next step.” When he turns to look at me fully, his face shifts into a confused stare. “I know you,” he says. “You look a bit different, but I always recognize my former patients. Remind me of your name.”

“I … I … I…” I can’t think quickly enough, but before I can run, he grabs my arm.

“Thalia?” he asks. “Thalia Apple?” I recoil, trying to get away, but he pulls me closer. “I should have known you’d make your way here!” I realize then that he’s hugging me. “Of course! Of course! Had I known that you were in the resistance, I would have brought you here myself.” He releases me and beams. “I tried to drop hints when we were talking at my facility to see how far along you’d come in your thinking, but I wasn’t quite sure you were ready. I’ve watched with great interest what you’ve accomplished in the Loops. And now I find you here! Does Gaia know who you are? She hasn’t mentioned a thing.”

I don’t know what to do. I stand, staring at him, completely befuddled by what he’s saying to me.

“Well, this is excellent!” he cries. “You can be our spokesperson! If Lily Nguyen’s daughter, the One World–resistance leader tells the world that Synthamil didn’t work for her, but my food supply did, we’ll be able to reach a far bigger market more quickly!”

“Food supply?” I ask, still trying to make my brain understand. From the corner of my eye, I see one of the girls in scrubs step into the lab with a tray of petri dishes. When she sees us, she steps out quickly again.

Now Dr. Demeter becomes so excited that he paces in front of the tables. “Yes, you see, as I told you at my rehab center, I believe humans need to eat. It’s hardwired into us. People like your mother have been able to overcome that, but not for long. The human instinct for survival is strong. The DNA is responding. You, like nearly everyone here, are one of the chosen ones.”

“Chosen for what?” I ask, horrified.

“The mutation on chromosome sixteen,” he says.

“Mutation? Chosen?” I clutch at my throat. “Who did this to me?”

He cocks his head to the side as if trying to understand my question, then he says, “Mother Nature. It’s natural selection at play. First, we saw it mostly in second borns, but then it spread. I’m sure we’ll see more and more people unable to cope with synthetic nutrition as the mutation takes root. I thought it would be years before things would shift, but now with the revolution under way and One World ready to crumble, we will be poised to offer the masses food. Real food, again. Real plants, real milk, real meat!” He motions to the table. “We will dominate the market and become the sole supplier of nutrition in the new world order.”

There’s so much to wrap my head around that I don’t know where to begin. So I ask, “What do you mean milk and meat. There are no animals.”

“Ah,” he says with a smile. “There’s still one.”

My stomach rolls over as the pieces come together. “Human milk?” I whisper, and he nods. I remember the topless women in the pump house. The buckets of strange whitish water. The sweet tea. The talk of cheese. “And this?” I ask. “This is the meat?” I point to the dishes on the table.

“Don’t you see? No one is harmed. I grow the embryonic stem cell lines from what we harvest here and create sheets of muscle fiber, which we can stack into a hearty protein source. I think your mother will be very interested in this.”

“My mother?”

“And now that One World has severed ties with her, you can help me bring her on board.”

“Darius?” Gaia’s voice comes from the hall.

“Coming!” he calls. “Just had a bit of an equipment malfunction.” He turns to me again. “After the harvest, let’s sit down and have a good long talk,” he tells me cheerily. “I’ll explain everything more thoroughly.”

As he walks to the door where Gaia’s tying her belt around her jumpsuit, he points over his shoulder and says, “Did you know—”

But Gaia cuts him off. “Hurry up,” she tells him testily. “The men are done. They’re heading out to the fields, and I’m hungry.”

“Yes, yes,” he says impatiently. “Give me twenty minutes to finish up, and I’ll meet you at your house for lunch.”

*   *   *

As soon as Dr. Demeter and Gaia are gone, I bolt for the door and come face-to-face with Ella, who grabs me and whispers fiercely, “What are you doing here? Why did you come back?”

“For Basil,” I say and latch onto her arm. “And for you. Come with me and Mr. Clemens. We’ll all leave together.”

Ella shrinks from me. “I can’t,” she says. “My son. And Noam.”

“Noam?”

She nods. “I won’t leave them behind.”

“Okay, fine,” I whisper. “We’ll take them all. We’ll figure it out. Just come with us.”

“How?” she asks with a shred of hope sparkling in her eyes.

“I don’t know,” I admit.

“What about your family? In the Loops. Would they help us?”

“Yes but…”

“I know how you can contact them.” She pulls me down the hall toward the rear door as she explains, “Gaia has a screen. If we hurry, you can call them before she gets home.”

We run silently through the tangled vines. What’s happening between us is so huge that neither of us dares to speak until we reach Gaia’s back door.

“She’s checking on the harvest out in the fields while the doctor finishes,” Ella says as she leads me through a dark hallway. “You have less than twenty minutes before they’ll return to have lunch here.” She pulls a set of keys from the folds of her dress. My mouth falls open when she opens the door to a room as sleek and modern as any back home in the Loops. A huge screen takes up an entire wall. “Can you do it?” Ella asks. “Can you reach your family?”

“If you can get me on the system.”

Ella shrinks back and shakes her head. “I don’t know how,” she says. “I just slip in and pretend to clean whenever Gaia’s in here. That’s how I figured out who you are.”

“But then, she must know…”

Ella rolls her eyes. “You’d think she would have put it all together by now, but she seems clueless. Honestly, I think she just searches for news about herself and ignores everything else. So? Will it work?” she asks me hopefully.

I swallow hard, wondering the same thing myself, but then I take a breath. “Yes,” I tell her. “I can do it.”

She nods and without a word, she leaves, closing the door behind her.

I assume the main screen Eye won’t let me blink on, and if Gaia uses voice recognition, I’ll trigger a lockdown if I speak commands, so I have to find a way to hack into the system manually. I jiggle the touch pad on the desk to wake the screen and see that she’s smart enough to have encrypted her password, but I know lots of back-door tricks, including the fancy command line work AnonyGal taught me during a Dynasaur chat. I key in codes to get the system to cough up its most common keystrokes and work to decode the password, which is surprisingly simple. Username: Gaia. Password: TheFarm. Sheesh, I could’ve guessed it without breaking a sweat.

When Gaia’s personal feed comes up, I almost fall off my chair because the first thing I see is Yaz standing in front of an EA where the portico has become a tent city. I turn the volume as low as it will go and lean close to the speaker. “Workers and privies alike have overtaken this EA demanding talks with the government and One World about the legality of the so-called Universal Nutrition Protection Act,” Yaz explains as she directs her HoverCam around the area.

Below the feed, I see links to more vids by Yaz where she’s visited malls that have been looted by protesters, marches that have shut down the highways, and many feeds from PlugIn 42, which has become a command center for the Dynasaurs who are orchestrating everything online. As much as I want to know everything that’s happening, I must connect with my parents soon because there may not be another chance, so I leave Yaz’s PRC and open Gaia’s video feed.

I see myself in the small subscreen. The pink in my hair is fading, and my eyes are nearly back to hazel so my former self peeks through. I ping our house, hoping like hell that someone in my family is near a screen. “Mom, Dad, Grandma! It’s Thalia. Please pick up. Hurry!” I whisper.

When my mother’s face fills the screen, I nearly cry, but I hold myself together. “Thalia, is that you? Is that really you?” I nod and fight tears. “Oh thank god.” She looks gaunt and tired with deep lines across her forehead. “We were so worried when we lost contact with your Gizmo.”

“I don’t have much time to talk,” I tell her. “But I’m in a terrifying place and I need your help.”

My dad jostles into the picture. His skin is ashen and his jaw is tight. “We’ll come right now. Tell us where you are.”

“I don’t know exactly. On some crazy farm in the Hinterlands. Can you pick up a locator signal from this network?’

“I’m already trying,” Dad says as he jabs at his tablet.

“Oh, Mom!” I cry. “Dr. Demeter is here, and you will never believe what he’s doing!”

Mom’s face grows even more pallid. “I am so sorry I ever took you to him. I’ve been researching day and night to understand what happened to you. I discovered that many people like you have a reaction to something in the inocs or the Synthamil that mutates chromosome sixteen on your FTO gene.”

“You’re sure the inocs and Synthamil cause it?” I ask. “Dr. Demeter thinks the mutation is caused by natural selection.”

“My research is showing a direct link to the synthetics.” Her voice breaks. “It’s my fault. My fault you were ever hungry.”

“I don’t care,” I say. “Just please get me out of here.”

“It’s not going to be easy,” Mom says. “Things have gone from bad to worse in the Loops.”

“I heard you were fired.”

Her face hardens. “We’ve had a falling out with Ahimsa. She doesn’t want to acknowledge what I’ve discovered.”

“One World is against you, too?”

She nods then turns to my father. “Have you located her?”

“The signal’s blocked, but I think we can hack it. Thalia, use RabbitHole to go into the system and reveal the IPN to me.”

“How do you know about RabbitHole?” I ask, confused because it’s a program AnonyGal wrote and released to the Dynasaurs years ago.

My dad looks up at me with a weak smile on his face. “I’ve always had your back, HP.”

“Are you…?” I start to ask but then I hear Gaia’s voice in the hall.

“Ella, we’re back!” she calls.

I freeze as a wave of nausea rolls over me. I hit the mute button on the screen and quickly IM my parents that I can no longer talk.

Dad types back,
Reveal the IPN then keep the connection open even if you have to go, kill the screen. We will find you!

Footsteps echo through the house. “Where is that lazy girl?” Gaia mutters almost directly outside the door. I hold my breath, not daring to even type until she passes by.

Once she’s gone, I quickly key in the RabbitHole code and search frantically for the IPN, then the screen begins to fade. “Dad,” I whisper and IM, WHERE R U? Blackness fills the wall. I wonder if I’ve lost the connection until a fuzzy image takes over. My stomach drops as Ahimsa’s face fills the screen. I see her mouth moving angrily but no sound comes out.

The door handle jiggles. “Stupid girl,” Gaia says as she slips the key into the lock. “I don’t know where she’s gone off to. She knows that we’re to have lunch here.”

“Maybe the excitement of the harvest got her confused,” Dr. Demeter says as the door swings open.

When she walks in and sees me backing away from the screen, Gaia’s face contorts. First she is surprised, then confused, and finally furious. “What the hell are you doing in here!” she screams and rushes at me.

I fling myself out of the chair and run for the corner. Dr. Demeter stands in the doorway shocked.

Gaia ignores me and goes for the screen. “Were you on my system?” She sees Ahimsa’s face glowering at her, so she hits the volume button and rips into her. “I know you’ve been after me for years! But this is too much. Sending in spies so you could learn our secrets!”

“What? Who are you?” Ahimsa shouts at her. “And why are you harboring Thalia Apple?”

“Who?” Gaia asks.

“Thalia Apple,” Dr. Demeter says, pointing to me. “Didn’t you know?”

Gaia whips around. “But you said your name was Natalie!”

I’m not about to argue with her about my name now. I run for the door as Ahimsa says, “Either you turn her over or you will feel the full wrath of One World Security.”

“Grab her!” Gaia shouts at Dr. Demeter, who snares me around the waist. “If you want her, you’ll have to come get her!” Gaia tells Ahimsa. “And when you do, I’ll be ready for you. I’ve been preparing for this day for years!”

I struggle against Dr. Demeter’s grip, trying to work my fingers into my pocket.

“I should have known that you’d come here to destroy us,” Gaia screeches at me. “I’ll kill you!”

“No Gaia,” Dr. Demeter shouts and holds out a hand to stop her. “She’s worth more alive.”

Just as she launches herself at us I withdraw the knife. The light hits the blade and sends them both reeling back. “Get away from me,” I tell them. They back away against the wall screen where Ahimsa’s face begins to fade, replaced by my father.

“Thalia! Thalia!” he cries but I turn and run.

*   *   *

I sprint down the path toward the fields, screaming Basil’s name. Before me rows and rows of golden stalks as high as my knees sway in the breeze. Small colorful critters, their wings flapping, flit from plant to plant. I scream Basil’s name again.

“Apple!” I hear from the distance. “Apple! Where are you?”

I run toward the voice, desperately searching for him among the stalks. Long green leaves scrape at the skin on my leg, but I don’t stop. “I’m over here!” I shout. “Where are you?”

Far off to my left, I see the workers, half bent over and half standing, craning their necks to see what the commotion is, but Basil is not among them because he is running toward me from the kudzu. When we meet, I throw myself onto him, gasping, “We have to get out of here. This place isn’t safe. Gaia is crazy. You have no idea what they’re capable of.”