Inhuman (25 page)

“Who’s Omar?” Everson asked.

“The head handler.”

“And this Omar made you leave Chicago just for licking a spoon?” The thought made my insides churn.

Cosmo shook his head. “Omar said I was a dirty animal. He put me in the … zoo.” He choked out the word as if it were the ninth ring of hell. “With the scary people.”

Everson leaned forward in his seat. “What scary people?”

“Ferals,” Rafe said, and Cosmo nodded.

“How did you get out?” I asked.

“Mom stole the master key from Omar. She snuck me outside the fence and told me to run away as far as I could.”

“Heck of a plan.” Rafe tipped back in his chair. “Come on, was it really so bad in the zoo? You had a roof over your head. They fed you….”

“Shut up,” I said, and seriously considered kicking his chair over.

“What, I can’t ask an honest question? He can handle it.”

Cosmo bobbed his head. “I’m okay.”

“You’ve got food and a fire. That’s better than okay,” Rafe told him, making a circle with his index finger and thumb. “You’re A-okay.”

“Cosmo,” Everson said, a crease in his brow. “How old are you?”

“Eight,” he said into his scrap of a security blanket.

I wished I had heard him wrong. “Eight years old?”

Even Rafe looked shocked. He thunked his chair legs down. “Why didn’t your mom leave with you?”

“She said the queen would send the handlers after her, but nobody would look for me.”

Rafe frowned as if he didn’t quite believe that answer. Did he think Cosmo’s mother didn’t go with him because he was infected? What kind of mother would do that? Then again, what kind of people would put an eight-year-old in a zoo?

“Who’s the king?” Everson asked.

Cosmo lowered his brow, obviously confused by the question. “The king.”

Rafe shot Everson an irritated look. “What do you care?”

“I want to know how Chicago ended up with a king,” Everson snapped back.

“I can tell you,” Rafe said. “The guy was military — the person left in charge of the compound when everyone headed west. He had the guns, the men, and total authority. After ten or fifteen years went by and no word from the West, he gave himself a promotion.”

“Is that a fact or a guess?” I asked.

“A guess based on the dozen other compounds I’ve visited, which is more than most people in the zone. Some places set up fair-square governments. Like Moline, where people have a say in how things get done. But plenty of other compounds let the person with the most guns take over. The guy in Chicago just gave himself a fancy title to go with the job.”

Everson turned to Cosmo. “Is he right?”

The little manimal shrugged.

“Of course I’m right.” Rafe got to his feet. “I can figure stuff out without checking my compass. Like the fact the fire is going out.” He headed upstairs with the ax.

Somewhere in the night, a beast lifted its voice to greet the moon — too guttural to be a wolf. I got to my feet. “Guess we can leave the pans and dirty plates in the sink.” We could leave it all on the table for that matter. We’d be gone in the morning and there was no one else around. Still, Everson and I stacked the plates and took them into the kitchen. Old habits died hard. Cosmo stuffed his dish towel down the front of his overalls and followed with the glasses.

Everson watched the little guy concentrating as he placed them on the counter. “How long have you been like this, Cosmo?”

“Always.” Cosmo headed back into the dining room.

“One of his parents must have been infected,” Everson mused.

That made me think of something that Rafe had said earlier. I pushed through the swinging kitchen door. Rafe came down the front stairs with an armload of wood — pieces of a chair maybe.

“Were you born with animal DNA?” I asked Cosmo as he carefully lifted the last two glasses.

He looked up with his big blue eyes. “I was supposed to have white fur.”

“What?”

“It was supposed to be like my mom’s, but I came out wrong.”

“Did your mom say that?” I asked, trying to keep my anger from showing.

“No, the queen.”

Rafe dropped the wood on the floor. “What did she expect? You’re an ape-boy. Why would you have white fur?”

I glared at him as he tossed a chair leg onto the fire and sent up a shower of sparks.

“My mom isn’t an ape,” Cosmo said, looking cross. “She’s part arctic fox.”

“Oh, that’s why your hair is so light,” I said, stroking his silvery head. And now that I was looking for it, I could see a smidge of fox in his features.

“Is your father the ape?” Everson asked.

Cosmo shrugged self-consciously. I guess he didn’t know who or what his dad was. I turned to Rafe. “If the parents have Ferae, then the offspring are immune, right? They can’t be infected, and they can’t infect anyone.”

Rafe gave me a disgruntled look but he nodded.

“So Cosmo won’t go feral, right?” I pressed. “It’s fine if he sleeps inside the cottage with us.” I didn’t wait for Rafe to answer. I turned to Cosmo and smiled. “Why don’t you go pick out which bed you want?”

He eyed Rafe warily and pointed to the kitchen. “I sleep in there.”

“You don’t have to,” I said. “We’re here if a feral breaks in.”

“Have you ever slept in a bed, Cosmo?” Everson asked.

Cosmo dropped the glasses he’d been holding and ran back into the kitchen, shaking his head as he went.

“Nice going. You hurt his feelings,” Rafe said with a smirk.

I started for the kitchen but Everson strode past me and disappeared through the swinging door.

“What are you doing?” I asked as Rafe slung a couple of canteens over his shoulder.

“Going to the lake,” he said, as if it were obvious. “We need water.” He caught my look of horror. “I’ll boil it.”

“No, the weevlings! And the rogue feral?”

He gestured to the ax he’d tucked into his belt. “Not my first road trip.”

He shouldn’t be the one to go; I’d used up the water. “Can’t we get it in the morning?”

“It’ll take me ten minutes.” He shoved the couch aside enough to crack open the door. “Then I’ll check the garage for a jack.” He paused in the doorway. “Unless you want to go skinny-dipping. I’d risk being out at night for that.”

“Funny,” I said.

“What? You don’t know how to swim?” he teased.

“Not in an unchlorinated lake in the Feral Zone at night, I don’t.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing.” He slipped outside. “Come out if you change your mind,” he said and pulled the door closed behind him.

Without a second thought, I settled next to the fireplace and tossed on another chair leg. A surge of smoke warmed my face and I smothered a cough against my arm. Everson came in with the blanket around his shoulders. He shrugged it off and joined me on the floor, looking grouchy.

“How’s Cosmo?” I asked.

“Curled up in the pantry. He says only ‘people’ get to sleep in beds.”

“He’s a person,” I protested.

“Apparently not in Chicago.” Everson snagged his gray shirt from the back of the chair where it had been drying and pulled it on.

With him so close, I suddenly felt as dirty and drab as an old dish towel. I hadn’t washed my face since yesterday. I should have done it when we were by the — No. What a stupid thought — washing my face while Everson rinsed the blood out of his pants. My father was missing, I was camping in the Feral Zone, and suddenly I wanted to clean up in case this boy glanced over? Considering how intently he was watching the fire, that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. Anyway, being grubby was a good thing. I was officially a fetch now. A profession that required going unnoticed — especially by line guards. Even the ones with nice hands.

“You’re staring.” He looked over — not out-and-out smiling, but clearly in an improved mood.

My stomach dropped. “I was thinking …” I struggled to come up with an excuse. “That they’re probably worried about you back on Arsenal.”

He shrugged. “Let ’em worry.”

“So, no girlfriend then, waiting back at camp … worrying.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I wanted to throw myself into the fire. I
had
wondered, but what was the point of humiliating myself? I was here to do a fetch, not fall for some boy.

If Everson thought I was pathetic, he didn’t let on. “Nope.” He leaned back to prop himself up on his elbows, legs outstretched. “Guards don’t do it for me,” he said finally.

“Got something against camo?”

“No. It looks good on the right person.” He shot me a smile, which warmed me right down to my toes.

When he didn’t say anything more, I asked, “Is it because you’re not a guard on the inside?”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “Line guards have one job: Keep the virus out of the West. We’re trained to think of ourselves as the first line of defense. The wall is the second. And the ferals? They’re ‘the enemy who have the potential to infect and/or kill every man, woman, and child in America.’”

“Sick people aren’t the enemy,” I protested.

“The patrol doesn’t call them sick because then you might feel sorry for them. And when you spot one on a raft, trying to cross the river, you’d hesitate instead of shooting him in the head like you’re supposed to. There’s no gray area for line guards. Empathy just messes them up. Which is why the captain says: To protect the population, you have to stop seeing the people.” Everson sat up again, looking like he’d just swallowed vinegar. “I don’t ever want to stop seeing the people. But I can’t say that to another guard.”

Everything about this boy was so right — from his compassion to his soft lips. It was almost enough to make me forget that kissing spread germs. “What you’re doing — coming here, searching for the strains that Dr. Solis needs — it’s really noble.”

Everson frowned. “It’s not. It’s what the line patrol should be doing. The Titan Corporation started this. They should fix it, not just put up a wall.” His shoulders drew together, like he was keeping something vast trapped inside of him. “Know why Ilsa Prejean hired scientists to find a way to create chimeras in the first place? Because she wanted a Minotaur for her maze.” He practically spit the words.

His bile wasn’t unusual. Titan’s CEO had gone from being the most loved woman in America — universally admired for her incredible imagination — to the most hated. Even now, nineteen years later, people were still sending her death threats. “I read that she’s a total recluse now, terrified to leave her penthouse, and that she looks like Howard Hughes. Scary, unkempt.”

“She doesn’t look like Howard Hughes,” Everson said, his eyes on the fire.

“How do you know?”

He took a breath and turned to me. “Ilsa Prejean is my mother.”

I stared at Everson. He may as well have said that he was the crown prince of fairyland. Or demonland, according to my dad, who hated the Titan Corporation as much as he hated cancer.

“And there it is.” Everson nodded at my expression. “Man, do I love getting that look.”

He was the baby born during the construction of the wall. The baby whose birth had turned a lot of people into savages. They’d plotted — publically — to infect him with Ferae so that Ilsa Prejean would know what it was like to lose a child. No wonder she was paranoid about his health. I swallowed against the tightness in my throat. “Why is your last name Cruz?”

“It was my dad’s name.”

An itchy, rashy feeling erupted across my skin. Ilsa Prejean’s hubris had destroyed the world, and yet she was richer than ever — richer than 99 percent of the country. Her company, Titan, had single-handedly brought down America, but had gone on to become one of the most powerful corporations in history. And Everson would inherit it all.

“Why are you here?” I asked hoarsely. “On this side of the wall?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Not to me.” There had been so many clues. The captain refusing to risk Everson’s health when he’d wanted to take the bullet out of Bangor’s leg. Bearly and Fairfax being assigned to look out for him. Even Rafe had noticed that Everson was treated differently. I should have figured it out back in the supply closet. He’d certainly dropped enough hints. I managed to get my feet beneath me and stood.

“Wait, Lane.” He tried to take my hand but I stepped away.

“That’s why the others all do what you say.”

“No one does what I say,” he said irritably. “I’m a guard. Lowest of the low. I went through boot camp like everyone else. I sleep in the barracks and eat the same crap food. I don’t get special treatment.”

“You got flown over the wall in a two-seater plane,” I said.

His eyebrows lifted. “How do you know that?”

“Your mother owns the line patrol. You weren’t assigned to work with Dr. Solis because you’re good at science. She arranged it.”

“She arranged it because I didn’t give her a choice.” He got to his feet. “Everything I told you was true. I did finish the college courseware. That’s how I found out who she was and what she’d done — in an online biology lecture. Something my tutors failed to mention.”

“When you blackmailed the captain, all you did was threaten to tell your mother about him, didn’t you?”

“Yes, and it worked. I’m here, collecting information that’ll get us one step closer to a cure.”