Criminal Destiny (10 page)

Okay, I admit it. It hurts a lot more than I expected it to.

Not only that, but the nurse in the ER looks at the others like they did it to me. The last thing we need is for someone to call the cops on us.

“It's my own fault,” I say sheepishly. “We were putting up posters and my neck got itchy. I guess I forgot I was holding the staple gun.”

“It must have gone in pretty deep,” she observes, taking note of the blood trickling down to my collar.

Tell me about it. It feels like two spears have been plunged into the side of my head. Worse, I'm beginning to feel a little dizzy, although I don't mention that to the nurse. I want medical attention, but only to a certain degree. Passing out and being admitted to the hospital is definitely
not
on my to-do list for the day.

Then she starts asking a lot of nosy questions about my parents, and their jobs, and what health insurance they have. And when I point out that
I'm
the one who's injured, not my mom or dad, she confesses that all this is so the hospital can get
paid
for treating me.

“You mean,” I challenge, “I'm sitting here, bleeding through staple holes in my neck, not seeing a doctor, because of
money
?”

This seems to fluster her. “It's just that, well, you have no insurance card, so we'll need to speak to a parent or guardian in order to get an ID number.”

Even with Project Osiris, there are still times when Serenity makes a whole lot more sense than the world around it.

“I don't know about any of that! I just want to get the staple out!”

My frustration bubbles over but that might actually work in my favor, because she assumes I'm delirious with pain.

“Well, I suppose your parents can take care of the paperwork when they come to pick you up.” She hesitates. “Your parents
will
be coming to pick you up, won't they?”

“What do you think?” I sigh.

She says she'll call me when it's my turn to see the doctor.

I get no relief in the waiting room. Tori and Eli resume their lecture on the subject of “Why would you do such a crazy thing?”

“Don't you think we should know what we've been carrying around in our bodies all these years?” I demand.

Tori is angry at me. “Doctors make appointments, Amber. You didn't have to maim yourself!”

“It's called the emergency room for a reason,” I counter. “This is an emergency. And while the doctor's digging out the staple, he'll be like, ‘Oh, hey, what's this other thing under your skin?'”

Only Malik seems to approve. “Good idea. It'll seem less suspicious if the guy thinks he's finding it on his own.”

It's the first compliment I've gotten from Malik since . . . well, it might be the only compliment I've gotten from Malik. Or maybe he just enjoys watching me suffer.

As we wait, the bleeding stops.

“The spot on your neck is turning black-and-blue, though,” Tori observes worriedly.

I have a giddy vision—another to-do list:

THINGS TO DO TODAY (UNPRIORITIZED)

        
•
  
Fire industrial staple into neck (0.1 seconds)

I chuckle out loud at my own imagined joke.

Tori stares at me. “What could you possibly have to laugh about?”

Before I can answer, the nurse reappears. “You're up, honey.”

The doctor is young and super-busy, so he doesn't question my itchy-neck story. He numbs me with some local anesthetic and removes the staple through a small incision. Then he pauses, puzzled, and says the words I've been waiting for:

“What's this . . . ?”

He reaches in with tweezers and pulls out something the size of a tiny, flat pill. “Curious.” He examines it under a microscope and I lean in to share the view.

It's a miniature computer chip encased in clear plastic coating.

“What is it?” I ask.

He dabs some antibiotic ointment onto the wound and covers it with a square bandage. “I've never seen anything like this before,” he says, frowning. “Maybe your mother
should come in for this conversation.”

“She's not here,” I reply. “My friends and I were putting up posters when I had the, uh, accident. They brought me straight here.”

“It looks like some kind of electronic tag,” he muses.

“Tag?”

“My fiancée works for the Forest Service. They track animal migration with chips like this. But no one would use it on a child.”

Clearly, the doctor has never been to Serenity, New Mexico. Animals; clones; what's the difference?

“The location is also strange,” he goes on. “At the base of the skull, any implant would be close enough to interact with the body's nerve and pain centers.”

Right—strange. Unless the goal is to trigger an attack of agony and nausea so intense that your escaping clones are too sick to go on. There's no place like home.

The doctor is starting to look impatient. His beeper is going off about every eight seconds, and the nurse has been peering in through the curtain, making hurry-up gestures. “You need to see your regular physician tomorrow to have the dressing changed.”

“Thanks.” I pluck the chip from his tweezers. “A souvenir,” I explain.

He's too harried to care. He's already signaled the nurse to bring in the next victim.

While she's otherwise occupied, I sprint past Admitting, grab the others, and get out of there. It isn't Serenity-style honesty. But if they expect me to wait around for my parents to fill out paperwork, it's going to be a long night for all of us.

The minute I step out of Walgreens, Malik snatches the bag from my arms, pokes through the contents, and comes up with a box cutter. “Oh, no, you don't. You're not using that on me!”

“It has a razorblade,” I tell him. “The sharper it is, the less it's going to hurt.”

“How come you get to see a real doctor and the rest of us have to have meatball surgery?” he demands.

Eli is patient. “Because if four kids in a row troop into emergency with the same chip in their necks—all from out of town, no parents, no ID—people are going to start asking questions. And we don't have any answers—none that we can give them, anyway.”

I show them the rest of my purchases: rubbing alcohol, Neosporin, a towel, tweezers, Band-Aids, and—

“Hemorrhoid cream?” Tori queries. “For our necks?”

“It's a numbing agent,” I explain.

“Yeah, for people's butts!” Malik points out.

“Just trust me, okay? The pharmacist says it's the strongest you can get without a prescription. I didn't want to go into too much detail.”

We decide to do the deed in a secluded park at the edge of downtown. I say this is for privacy, but I'm secretly thinking it will be good to be near the creek just in case there's a lot of blood to wash off. We're cloned from criminals, not surgeons.

As we dump our backpacks and establish our “operating room” at a picnic table by the water, another to-do list appears before me:

THINGS TO DO TODAY (UNPRIORITIZED)

        
•
  
Carve up friends (unknown duration)

“I'll go last,” Malik volunteers.

A tower of courage.

Eli puts on a brave face, but he's sweating like a horse as I rub hemorrhoid cream over the scar on his neck. Trust me, he can't be more scared than I am. My hands tremble as I pour alcohol on the box cutter.

This needs to be done,
I tell myself.
So just do it.

Numbing agent or not, Eli winces when the razorblade pierces his skin, but he doesn't cry out. I make a tiny U-shaped cut right below the faded scar. I wasn't expecting the rush of blood. I try not to panic. The towel sops all that up.

“You okay?” I ask Eli.

“Peachy,” he replies in a strained voice. “Just get it over with.”

Next I dip the tweezers in the alcohol and start digging around inside the hole I made. I don't know if it's the tweezers or me, but it's hard to get a grip on such a little thing.

I'm sweating worse than Eli now, and even Tori looks gray in the face knowing she's next. Malik is on the bench, studying his sneakers. He doesn't even glance in our direction.

All at once, I feel something solid between the tweezers' tips. I get a good hold and draw out the chip. It's covered in pink ooze, but otherwise a perfect match for mine.

I sop up the blood again, clean the wound with alcohol, and slather it with Neosporin. Then I slap the bandage on, sealing it as tight as I can. “Done,” I tell him in a shaky voice.

He slides away from me down the bench, making room for Tori. Apparently, standing up is not an option.
But within a few minutes, he's back to normal. “You're the worst doctor in the world,” he tells me.

I manage a watery grin. “You're welcome.”

Tori's “surgery” goes about the same as Eli's—a little less blood, although I have a harder time finding the chip to pull it out. She hangs tough through the whole thing, silent, her jaw clenched. I'm proud of her. She's the youngest, and artsy, but she's as strong as any of us. It makes perfect sense if you think about what we come from.

Then it's Malik's turn.

“You know, maybe I'll just leave mine in,” he muses casually. “It's not like we have to escape from Serenity anymore.”

He's trying to sound nonchalant, but he looks absolutely terrified.

“Come on, Malik,” Eli says gently.

“And the transmitter that was generating the field is gone too—”

“It has to come out,” I interrupt. “As long as it's still inside you, it'll always be a weakness our parents might be able to use against us one day.”

As a patient, he's as cooperative as a panther with a thorn in its paw. Eli and Tori have to hold his head steady or I might cut his throat by mistake.

Or maybe it wouldn't be by mistake.

We finally shove the towel in his mouth and make him bite down on it just to shut him up. And still he's jerking around so badly that splattered blood droplets are getting all over the three of us. When it's done, we have to go down to the water and take turns helping one another clean up as best as we can.

It's a big job and a messy one. The stains come off our skin easily enough, but our clothes look bad, especially up around the collar. As for the towel—it's a write-off. Good thing the weather's warm, or we'd all have pneumonia, because we're pretty wet.

I take the four tiny electronic chips out of my pocket. “How about a watery grave for this stuff?”

Tori has a point. “Maybe we should keep it for evidence.”

Eli shrugs. “Chips like that come out of every electronic toy. We'd never prove what they do or even that they came from us.”

Malik nods as vigorously as he can with a sore neck. “Pitch 'em.”

“Maybe we should say a few words,” Tori says. “After all, this is the last piece of Serenity that was a part of us.”

The pause that follows means we all know how wrong
that is. The portion of us that doesn't come from four horrible criminals will always be Serenity.

Malik breaks the silence by whacking the back of my hand. The four chips go flying and disappear into the water.

“Rest in pieces,” he growls.

Eli's first to turn back to the picnic table. He freezes. “Hey!”

Someone's there—a man in sunglasses. He's got the backpacks, and he's rifling through our stuff! My first notion is that he's probably one of those poor homeless people like we saw in Denver. But he's well dressed, with a dark suit and one of those blinking cell phone headpieces attached to his ear.

“Get away from there!” Malik roars.

He, Eli, and Tori are already charging up the embankment. I'm a half step behind them, my wet jeans slowing me down. The thief sees us coming and starts away. We're younger, but he's drier, and in good shape for an older guy.

As I run, I look down and am shocked to see the box cutter in my hand. I must have taken it out of my pocket without thinking. Do I actually plan to cut this guy if I can catch him? It's the most un-Serenity notion imaginable; it has to come from my DNA.

I drop the box cutter like it's burning my hand and
devote all my energy to speed. I come up behind Eli and Malik, but I can't pass them because the picnic table is in the way. The guy is almost to the paved path. If he gets that far, he's as good as on the street and gone. We can't very well take him down in the middle of town—not if we want to keep a low profile.

Mustering all my ballet training, I get one foot on the bench, the other on the table, and then I'm airborne. I even do a grand jeté on the way—old habits are tough to break. The ballet move vaults me right up to the thief. My front foot gets tangled with his two fleeing ones. We both go down—me rolling across the soft grass; him sprawling through the underbrush. There's a
thwack
as his head hits the base of a tree.

We scramble up to prevent him from running away, but that turns out to be unnecessary. He's not moving.

“Is he dead?” pants Tori.

I lean down close to the face. “He's still breathing.”

“Great,” says Malik. “He can testify at our trial. And when they bring out the evidence, everyone's going to know I had a princess backpack!”

“Who do you think he is?” Tori wonders.

Eli shrugs. “If he's a crook, he's a lot higher class than the ones they have in Denver.”

Malik is going through the man's suit coat. “If he's a crook, he's a pretty lousy one. He didn't steal anything.”

“We don't really have a whole lot to steal,” Eli reminds him.

“Wait—here's something.” Malik comes up with a set of car keys. The winged B logo of a Bentley gleams from the fob.