“I picked it because I thought you might want to set the plants up in here when you got home,” said Nathan, almost babbling in his nervousness. “I guess it was lucky, since now we have someone who needs the space.”
It was clear he didn’t want Juniper sleeping with us. Part of me wanted to balk at that—she was my child, she belonged where I was—but the majority of me agreed with him. She wasn’t a baby. She didn’t need me beside her to get through the night, not here in our safe, well-locked apartment.
Most of all, I needed Nathan. I needed to sleep with his arms around me, knowing that he was never going to let me go again. I needed to know that I was home.
“All our clothes and things are in the SUV,” I said, stepping into the children’s room and flicking on the light. The ubiquitous blackout curtains covered the window, but whoever had hung them hadn’t bothered to change anything else. Turning the light on activated a night-light shaped like a pink turtle, and cast a spray of bright stars across the ceiling. They were pink and blue and purple, and visible even with the overhead light turned on.
“That’s a Terra Turtle,” said Nathan, sounding impressed. “I had one of those when I was a kid. It’ll keep making light for about an hour after bedtime, if you leave it connected to the main circuit long enough for it to charge all the way.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do,” I said. Juniper was staring in wonder at the lights dancing along the walls and ceiling. I took advantage of her amazement to walk across the room to the nearer bed and set her gently down.
“Sal?” She looked back to me, blinking quizzically, and reached her arms up to be held.
“You figured that one out fast, huh, kiddo?” I pushed her hand gently down. “This is going to be your room. We’re going to live here.”
“Sal.” She pouted. It wasn’t a very practiced expression—not yet—but I could tell from the easy way her face fell into it that I was going to be seeing it a lot. Probably more often than I wanted to.
“Yes, Sal. And this is Nathan.” I pointed to Nathan. “Nathan. Can you say his name, too? You can’t have a whole language that’s just my name. It won’t work.”
Beverly and Minnie squeezed through the door and sat down at either side of my feet, leaning up against my legs like they were never going to move again. Nathan was still behind me. The tension in my back and shoulders was continuing to untangle, letting go one microscopic inch at a time. It might never fully release again—I might walk through the rest of my days waiting for the other shoe to fall—but for right now, it was safe for me to relax. Just a little.
“Sal,” said Juniper dubiously, looking at the dogs.
“This is Beverly.” I put my hand on the Lab’s head. She shuddered ecstatically at my touch. Stooping down farther, I set my other hand on Minnie’s shoulder. The bulldog was more restrained in her reaction, but looked adoringly up at me, her big pink tongue lolling. “This is Minnie. Beverly and Minnie. They live here with us. They’re our friends. Can you say hello, Juniper? Can you say hello to our friends?”
Juniper looked at me, and didn’t say anything. I sighed.
“I sure hope she likes your mom,” I said, looking back to Nathan. “I don’t think I can teach her to be a person all by myself.”
“Luckily, you’re not going to have to.” He stepped forward to put his arms around my waist, pulling me back so that I was resting against him. “We’re a family. We take care of our own.”
I closed my eyes. Finally, finally, I was home.
Juniper seemed to like her new room well enough, but that didn’t mean she was willing to stay there alone: as soon as I went to leave, she was reaching out her arms again, demanding to be taken with me. Nathan and I had exchanged a look, and then I’d picked her up and carried her back out to the living room, where we sat together on the couch while Nathan went out to get our things. Beverly and Minnie stayed with me, the bulldog settling at my feet while the Lab leapt up onto the couch and curled up against my hip. Juniper viewed this with wary acceptance, clearly still trying to make up her mind about the dogs.
“They’re our friends,” I told her. “They’ll take care of us, and we’ll take care of them. Just like Nathan and I are going to take care of you. That’s what families do. We take care of each other.”
“Sal,” said Juniper, and I took it for acceptance, for understanding, even as I knew that it was probably nothing of the sort. I smiled at her.
“We’re going to be happy here,” I said, and closed my eyes.
Sleep had been gathering around me, waiting to pounce, and as soon as my guard was down, it took me. I slipped into unconsciousness with Juniper on my lap and the dogs surrounding me, and I didn’t wake up even when Nathan came back with the clothes and bottled water from the car. I didn’t wake up when he put the blanket over us, or when he sat down beside me, on the side Beverly had left open, and put his head on my shoulder. I was home. I was safe. I didn’t need to be afraid anymore. Those things were each of them more precious than anything I could ever have dreamed, and so I let my dreams have me for a while. It was only fair.
I was home, and everything else could wait.
Miracles are apparently still possible, even in this new and alien world that we have made. Sal showed up at the bowling alley last night, following a hunch that told her we might have gone to ground somewhere familiar. She was accompanied by a human who hoped that returning Sal to me would give her the opportunity to avenge her dead. The human is currently in our custody. I am admittedly unsure of the correct course of action. She poses a threat: That much is clear. She has done nothing wrong. If we kill her, we will finally become the monsters Dr. Banks has made us out to be.
The human was not Sal’s only companion. She also brought a young chimera, a little girl she’s dubbed “Juniper.” I have not yet had the opportunity to examine her, but Juniper appears to be fully integrated with her human host, a child of approximately four years of age. According to Sal, Juniper is a second-stage infectee, resulting from exposure to the tainted water.
This could change everything.
—FROM THE NOTES OF DR. SHANTI CALE, DECEMBER 2027
She made it back to me. Sal made it back.
She’s asleep in the living room of the apartment I took because Mom said I couldn’t live in the lab with the dogs, marking down the hours between losing the love of my life and finding a way to get her back again. She’s asleep, holding the strange little girl she brought back with her. She says the girl’s name is Juniper. She says the girl is a chimera. Mom nearly wouldn’t give her back.
I don’t know what they did to her while they had her. She’s been saying things about the quarantine zone and how Sally’s mother wouldn’t let her stay in military housing now that she knows Sal isn’t human. I almost hope she doesn’t tell me. I’d rather stay here with her than go and kill them all for hurting her.
I think I’d do it, too. I think this war is making monsters out of us all.
—FROM THE NOTES OF DR. NATHAN KIM, DECEMBER 2027
Chapter 10
DECEMBER 2027
Someone was knocking on the door.
I sat bolt upright, instantly awake, every nerve I had screaming that this was it: The patrol had found us, they were going to take me back to the quarantine zone, and they were going to take everything else with us. Beverly, her head dislodged from my knee by my sudden motion, looked at me and whined.
Inch by inch, I became aware of my surroundings. I was in a shabby, clean little apartment, with Juniper in my arms, and my dogs snuggled up to me, and Nathan sleeping, still fully clothed, on the couch beside me. His head was lolling, mouth open as he snored gently. The knock came again.
Now Juniper began to stir, lifting her head with a small noise of protest. I shushed her. From the smell, she had wet herself again while she was sleeping. Dr. Cale had the power on; I wondered whether she also had working washers and dryers, and whether it would be safe to wash clothes in potentially infect
ed water.
“Shhh, honey, shhh, I just need to see who’s at the door,” I said. I set Juniper aside, bracing her against Beverly, who began sniffing her curiously. Either Juniper was too sleepy to cling, or she was distracted by the dog, because she let me get up without reaching for me.
I made my way to the door, grateful for having fallen asleep with my clothes on, and peered out the peephole. If it was a team from USAMRIID, I didn’t know what I was going to do—although if it had been a team from USAMRIID, wouldn’t they have knocked the door down already? They didn’t have any reason to be polite. They weren’t banging, either. Their knocking was insistent, but it wasn’t so loud that it would have woken us if we’d been asleep in the back of the apartment.
The warped glass of the peephole distorted the scene enough that I had to blink several times before I could see who was outside. Then I gasped, and undid the locks so fast that I broke a nail on the deadbolt, leaving it hanging there like a scrap of paper as I wrenched the door open.
Adam didn’t wait for me to say hello or invite him inside. As soon as the door was open wide enough for him to wedge his body through, it he was inside, flinging his arms around me and holding me so tight that it felt like he was bending my ribs. My injured rib throbbed with pain. I ignored it as I put my arms around him and held him just as tightly.
He bent to press his head against my chest like a much younger child. I felt the warm wetness of his tears beginning to spread through my grubby, travel-stained shirt. In so many ways, he was the youngest of us. Maybe he always would be.
“You came back,” he whispered. “You came back to me, just like you said you would. I missed you. I missed you so much. Don’t do that again, Sal. You can’t do that. You went away.”
“I won’t,” I said, and kissed the top of his head. His hair tasted like salt water and sandalwood. I realized I was crying too. That didn’t seem to matter. “I’m here. I’m staying here. I don’t ever, ever want to go away again. It’s all right, Adam, I’m here.”
“I thought you were gone forever.” His voice was anguished, filled with the cruel truth of his words. He really had thought that they had lost me.
Nathan was my lover. Dr. Cale was my creator. But Adam was my brother, and somehow letting him down hurt me most of all. I held him tighter, and he did the same to me, the two of us crushing against each other until there might as well have been no oxygen between us. We had been two things that became single, hybrid creatures: Now we were trying the same trick again, but with two human bodies that wanted to fuse into one. Adam was the calm one, the sweet one, the rational one, who had never had to run or defend himself. I was… I was me. Together, we might make a whole person.
“Sal?”
There was a depth of confusion, curiosity, and wariness packed into the single syllable of my name that I would have thought impossible. Adam pulled away enough to let me turn around, and we both looked toward the couch. Juniper’s head had appeared over the back of it, her hands clutching the cushion for balance, her eyes filled with questions.
“Who…?” Adam paused, and then let me go so that he could take a step toward Juniper without dragging me along. “Hello. Who are you?”
“Sal,” said Juniper warily.
Adam looked at me, looking so confused that it was all I could do not to laugh. It wasn’t really funny. It was deadly serious, like everything in our lives seemed to be most of the time. But I still wanted to laugh, and that was nice. It was nice to want to be happy.
“Adam, meet Juniper. I found her while I was on my way home. She’s—”
“She’s a chimera, like us,” he said, sounding excited. “A natural chimera, like you. Hello, Juniper! I’m Adam. I’m your brother.”
“Sal?” said Juniper, looking past him, focusing on me.
“She doesn’t talk yet,” I said. I stepped past Adam and picked her up, letting her get her arms locked around my shoulders. “She’s still learning most things. Like how to use the bathroom. She doesn’t get that yet.” The smell of her was something else. “How do we manage bathing if the water isn’t safe?”
“Chemical showers mostly, but we filter water for the hydroponics. I bet Mom can figure out a way to fill a bathtub.” Adam held out his hand toward Juniper, not reaching for her, but putting himself in reach. It was similar to the way that I would approach a skittish or unfamiliar dog, and I realized that it had a similar intent: He was letting her get a feel for his pheromones, which would confirm him as a member of the family, and someone to be trusted.
“I don’t want to put her in a chemical shower until I’m sure she’ll be able to keep her eyes and mouth shut,” I said. “She’s still figuring out the things her body already knows. So she sits upright and doesn’t fall off things, but it took her a while to start reaching for me. If it weren’t for muscle memory, I think we’d be in trouble.”
Adam nodded. “Can I hold her?” The question was small, almost meek, and reminded me—not for the first time—that he had gone in quick succession from having two sisters to having none. Not with Tansy on life support and me missing, maybe never to return. It hadn’t been fair to him, any more than it had been fair to the rest of us.
“That’s up to her, but let’s see,” I said. I tilted my body, trying to pass Juniper over to Adam. It was amazing how quickly that particular motion had become familiar, almost second nature. Soon, I wouldn’t even have to think about it.
Juniper looked at him suspiciously, her arms still locked around my neck. Then, to my surprise and relief, she let me go, and allowed herself to be transferred into the slightly taller man’s arms. She leaned back, her butt braced in his elbow, and looked at him gravely. Then, with no further fanfare, she slipped her arms around his neck, put her head against his collarbone, and closed her eyes.
“She’s amazing,” Adam whispered.
I smiled. “Yeah, she is. She’s a lucky little girl, too. If we hadn’t come along when we did…” The thought chilled me. How many children like Juniper were out there, chimera created when their second implant fought off the first, suddenly intelligent and aware, but unequipped to take care of themselves? Juniper had gotten lucky beyond belief when I had stumbled across her. A group of human survivors might have taken her confusion and apparent vacancy as a sign of trauma and taken her with them. Or they might have taken her for a sleepwalker, and killed her where she stood. It was impossible to say. Without me and Carrie escaping when we did, she would have starved to death.
The thought of food was a surprising one, and made my stomach, which had previously been silent, give an audible growl. I hadn’t eaten in too long. Juniper, leaving her head cradled against Adam’s collarbone, opened one eye and gave me a hopeful look.
“We need to eat,” I said. “Can you hold her while I go and change into something cleaner?” Getting Juniper herself changed would need to wait until she’d had a bath, or she would just dirty another set of clothes. I was sweaty from the road, but it was nothing I couldn’t remove with baby wipes and a dish towel.
Adam beamed like I had just asked him to be responsible for the most precious thing in the universe. “I can,” he said. “I’ll be right here.”
“Thank you. You’re the best brother.” I paused to kiss the top of Nathan’s head—he was still sleeping, the dogs now curled against him like none of them had been able to get any real rest while I’d been away—and then trotted down the short hallway to the bedrooms.
My clothing from the candy factory was in the larger of the master bedroom’s two dressers, and the items I’d taken from the Old Navy were piled on top of it. I shimmied out of my dirty things and put on a clean bra and panties, luxuriating in the feeling of having my own clothes next to my body, instead of shabby, boil-washed pieces of cotton handed out by a USAMRIID patrol truck. A shower would have been even better, but that could wait until we were more settled. Smelling like a human being wasn’t a problem for me, providing we could teach Juniper to wake people up when she n
eeded to go to the bathroom.
I put on jeans and a clean tank top before returning to the living room, where Nathan was sitting up and rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. He had placed his glasses on Beverly’s head, and the big Lab was practically vibrating with joy at the thought that she was being somehow useful to one of her people. She offered me a doggy grin when I stepped back into the room, her tongue lolling and her ears perked in a “look at me” position.
Adam was still holding Juniper, who seemed content to cling to her newly discovered big brother for as long as he let her. I smiled at the scene. It was everything I had ever wanted. A home: a family. People who would accept me for what I was, and not what they thought they could turn me into.
Now all I had to do was make sure that we could stay together and that things could be like this forever. “Good morning, Nathan,” I said. “Did you sleep well?”
“My back hurts, my knees hurt, my butt hurts, and I haven’t slept that well in weeks,” he said, reclaiming his glasses and putting them on his face. The look he gave me then wasn’t happy or sad or anything so simple: It was pure contentment, tempered with a layer of understanding that we weren’t done fighting. This was an anomaly, a moment of happiness before everything inevitably fell apart again. “I always sleep better when you come back to me.”
“I hope you never sleep that well again,” I said, and he blinked at me and laughed, and everything was wonderful.
It couldn’t last. Nathan looked to Adam, and asked, “Did you just come to see Sal?”
“Oh!” Adam’s eyes widened, filling with sudden realization. It made my stomach twist. This was it: Our moment of peace was over, and it was time to get back to the business of surviving in a world that wanted nothing more than to destroy us all. “Mom sent me. She said to tell you all that we have a lot of work to do, and that she needs to give Juniper a full physical.” His voice changed, becoming soft with wonder. “I thought Sal had brought home another dog or something. I didn’t realize she’d managed to find us a sister.”