Ultra Super Revised Ch1 -- of the publishable variety!
Chapter 1
Surano: Human
The corridor between wings was mostly windows, and morning light filtered through like disease, turning my skin the color of concrete. A mechanical voice shouted my name through the speakers above, warning me not to run indoors.
"Doctor Swibb?" The double doors to the north wing almost closed on me as I dashed through them in pursuit of the white-haired man. He paused outside his office door and reached into his lab coat pocket for the key.
"Surano, how are you getting along?"
I peeled the tissue from my forearm, black with blood.
"How did that happen?"
"There's a loose bolt on the vaulting horse. The legs shifted when I tried to get on and I fell."
"Did you want something for pain? Surely it isn't bothering you that much."
"Why is it so dark?" I asked.
My physician looked up, made a comprehending sound, and unlocked his office door. "Come inside, Surano."
This office was the only one in Zayto's Center that I felt comfortable in. It was not like the others, which were pale and organized and smelled like bleach; Doctor Swibb used a number of small desk lamps instead of the overhead light, and they, along with the many papers he refused to file away, helped add to the clutter. He posted drawings the triplets had done on his walls and stored a box of large data charts in the corner. Bags and dishes of candy were scattered on every surface but the floor.
He opened a drawer and set a plastic puzzle box before me, a bright green cube with sliding panels and lots of tiny switches. It was his favorite form of stress therapy, but never did more than frustrate me. All the same, I picked it up and began sliding the parts around.
"Are you afraid?" he asked.
I shook my head, then knowing he wanted more than that, answered, "I'm confused. Everyone else's blood is lighter than mine, but when I was cut no one seemed to notice the difference. Miss Ann told me not to mind it, so I knew it was another variable. But what does it mean? I don't understand the reason for it."
"There is no reason, really." Doctor Swibb picked through a bowl of candy, inspected a lollipop, and chose a heart-shaped chocolate instead. "Due to the limited availability of blood, we used Doctor Zayto's synthetic brand, tempered with some normal type Y. The mix turns darker than normal blood when oxygenated."
The last piece of the puzzle box able to move snagged from the inside, and rather than reset it I placed the toy back on the doctor's desk. The stained tissue fell off my arm as I did so. The scratch was small and didn't hurt as much as some other pains I had experienced, but I couldn't help staring at it.
"I think I have a bandage here," Doctor Swibb said, pulling open a drawer. "Surano, I must take responsibility. It was my intention to warn you at your awakening, but I let myself get distracted. I promise, this should be the last of your nasty surprises."
"I was just wondering when something would happen to prove I'm human."
"Surano..." He didn't seem able to continue the thought.
"I'm not upset." I stood, accepted the chocolate and bandage Doctor Swibb dropped into my palm. "If I don't return to the gym, Doctor Zayto might fail me before I can even start the test."
"Well, tell Miss Ann I said to take your practices easy today. And don't forget, you can talk to me whenever you need to."
In the three months I'd been alive, I realized, Doctor Swibb had insisted I was human; but I continued to notice differences, however small, between myself and the mansion's non-experimental inhabitants.
"Did you learn what you wanted to, Lavender Eyes?"
I studied Miss Ann, who had my same body type: slender, not athletic at all. I was a little taller than she was, and much paler. No one would see any physical promise in either of us.
"That vault is out of commission for the day. Let's move you right to the uneven bars instead." She took the bandage out of my hand and unwrapped it, then pulled my arm toward her, making me lean in. "Doctor Zayto is coming early today," she said, smoothing the bandage over my cut. "Something might be bothering him, so if he's snappy, just let it go over your head."
"He's always snappy."
"Go start your warm-ups."
I positioned myself near the asymmetric bars and started my stretches for the second time that morning. The starchy fabric of my outfit gathered in the joints of my arms and legs. It was an uncomfortable distraction, but I tried to ignore it. I wondered why the younger children were not bothered by it during their own gym lessons; perhaps, as the doctors of the mansion suggested, I really was more sensitive than others -- another difference on a growing list. On the other side of the gym, my personal trainer was clearing all his belongings from the folding table that sufficed as his office. Unlike my previous trainers, he owned little and kept his tools organized, habits learned from time in the military.
"Surano, focus."
I looked away from him and dropped all my weight onto my hands. My feet wobbled in the air before throwing all balance awry. I hit the floor.
Miss Ann touched her fingers to her lips and giggled. "What do they plan to do with you, child?"
I sat up. "Miss Ann, they won't replace you, too, will they?"
"They have no reason to replace me. I'm someone you can never outgrow."
The trainer scowled at the supervisor dismissing him, gave a military salute, and swung his pack onto his shoulders. A single glance came my way, a scowl little less terrible than the first, and the man was striding toward the doors.
Miss Ann was watching now, too. She sat on the broken vault, smoothing her white skirt. "Oh, Doctor Zayto. It's so dangerous to just send them away like that."
"Why?" I asked.
"Well, who knows what they'll tell people about this place. The doctor is already facing trouble from the government."
I didn't ask more; the moment of curiosity had passed. Instead I remembered the five previous trainers, how each one was less likable than the last, and hoped whoever was arriving in the morning would break the pattern.
Miss Ann tapped me on the shoulder, signalling to move on.
The asymmetric bars were always set just too high for me to be comfortable, and just too far from each other to be safe. Today they were about three and two meters high and almost one and a half meters apart. I ran to the spring stage, intuiting just how far it would propel me on its own, and pushed downward with all the strength I had. My fingers almost slid from the lower bar, but I threw my weight and looped my legs around before they could. For a moment the world was upside-down. I used the new leverage to stabilize my grip. In the pause, I saw an inverted Zayto and Doctor Swibb standing in the corner.
With some difficulty I untangled myself and worked up the momentum for a couple flips. Zayto wouldn't have liked the clumsy start. Deciding the high bar would have to be used, even if I didn't want to, I took advantage of the momentum from a reverse flip to leap backward and grasped the taller bar, came around, and hovered for a count of three on top of it. Handstands seem to come easier when mistakes are potentially fatal.
I swung downward again and jumped, hooking my knees around the low bar, swung upward and leapt again to perform a mid-air split. This allowed me to grasp the bar in my hands once more. From there I dismounted with a flip to the floor. I stumbled.
Zayto grunted behind me. "Why did we hire a new trainer?" His voice was a dark rumble, and as always made me twitch. "She should be much further along by now."
"Her focus the past few months has been on ground training," Doctor Swibb said. "Martial arts, weaponry, agility..."
Miss Ann made a sympathetic noise.
"We simply caught her on a bad day, doctor."
Keeping my eyes low, I turned to find my towel. It was on the bench beside Doctor Zayto, almost not worth the shame of passing close to him, but I retrieved it anyway. When I glanced up, the thick lines of his face had formed a vicious glower at me.
"I can try again…"
He didn't even wait for me to finish. With a gesture to Doctor Swibb, he was already striding toward the door when my voice trailed away.
My cut had bled through the bandage by lunch time. In the absence of a real trainer, there was little I could do but review, and so I spent the next two hours practicing swordsmanship as far from the gymnastic corner as possible. The electric lighting was better on the south side and there were no windows, which allowed me to stay away from the headache-inducing sunlight and salmon-gray skies on the north side.
While Miss Ann was recording my workout for the day, I watched the triplets run their laps around the circumference. If I spun around in the opposite direction to which they ran, a medley of colors would flash by, emerald, gold, and ruby locks all attached to the same face. I pulled the rubber band from my own hair, adding streaks of dark burgundy to the rainbow.
Waking up the first time had felt something like this: all around me, invisible forces pushing, rushing, throbbing. I'd learned in an instant the discomfort of nausea and the taste of a parched tongue. I'd recognised how chaotic and lonely a room full of people could be. I had found myself able to talk without ever having heard speech.
"Lavender Eyes, did you practice any of these moves today? I know nothing about swordplay..."
I pulled out of the spin at just the right moment to face Miss Ann, my feet reliable as always and sturdy beneath me. The world took a few moments longer to slide back into place. "Just check off everything until 'nito no kamae.' That's what the general taught me yesterday."
"Can I take your word that you've practised everything until there?"
I rubbed a callous at the base of my thumb. "What does 'take my word' mean?"
Miss Ann shook her head and checked off the first half of the long list of techniques. I glanced at the top of the paper to find that the "date of desired completion" had been moved forward by another two weeks since yesterday.
"He'll probably move it back now," Miss Ann said. "Give you more time to learn it properly."
"But my swordsmanship has always been on schedule. And he's never moved back the completion date for gymnastics."
"He has... for the triplets."
On the far side of the gymnasium, the blond part of the pack stumbled across the balance beam while his brothers played Rock, Paper, Scissors. Each of them was only half my height, but had been alive for years longer than me. In many ways, they knew much more than I did -- but Doctor Zayto always expected me to be better.
"Lunch time, then." Miss Ann hung her clipboard on the wall near the south exit. "Do you want to eat with the others, or shall I get us lunchboxes again?"
"Whatever you want to do."
She sighed. "Decide for yourself every now and then."
"I really don't mind either way."
She stared at me a moment, tapped the toe of one white shoe against the heel of the other, and left to retrieve the lunchboxes from the dining room downstairs.
"You always say the same thing."
I twitched at the small voice behind me, but knew who it was without turning; the blond triplet had disappeared from the balance beam. Pulling my hair back into its ponytail, I turned to meet his chubby frown. "But there's really no benefit in choosing one or the other. A decision like that doesn't matter."
"You're just too lazy to choose," Kikei said. "They should replace you, too."
"Replace me?"
He seemed to realize his own words, and the glare became more pout-like. He kicked at the floor. "Because he wasn't really crazy, he was just pretending. But at least he could think for himself."
I couldn't imagine my now former trainer as feigning any kind of crazy, but more than that Kikei's frustration at my indifference surprised me. Miss Ann had been the only one, until now, who had ever expressed a desire for me to make choices.
"I can think for myself," I said. "That doesn't always require me to want something specific."
"You're just made of fail, is all."
Ignoring the child would not make him leave. I slid my back down the wall until I was sitting cross-legged on the floor, the uncomfortable creases in my uniform worsening with the action. I tugged at my sleeves. "What should I choose, then, Kikei?"
"Uh... well, do you like eating alone?"
"I don't eat alone. Miss Ann always eats with me."
"Do you like eating with us?"
"It can be fun."
"But you also like eating without us."
"Well, yes. There are some days when... when I'd rather not see the doctors."
Kikei looked from me to the asymmetrical bars. "Is today one of those days?"
The nervous sliding of my insides spiked a little.
Kikei laughed. "I think you really did decide to eat in here today, and Miss Ann knew it." Then he called back to his brothers and their own personal assistant, "We're eating in here today! Jeez, Surano. Sometimes you don't even act like a human."
I rubbed dry black blood from my arm. "I don't?"
"You never say what you want or how you feel. You don't ask any questions. You're completely different from Kyo."
Miss Ann entered from the north corridor with lunch the same moment the remaining triplets launched themselves across the gym in a race. Their assistant stopped to speak with mine a moment, watching the battle with disinterest. I couldn't remember anyone named Kyo in the mansion, but Kikei had lived here ten years longer than me, so I wasn't surprised. The reference was probably to someone who had been moved Outside for some reason or another, a punishment Doctor Swibb had admitted was sometimes necessary -- Doctor Zayto and his sponsors weren't able to afford protection for people who became troublesome to his projects.
I did wonder, though in passing, whether this person had been an experiment, like me, or hired by Doctor Zayto's board.
Cepheus and Aiden's race came to an end in my lap, the emerald-haired one just ahead of his ruby-haired brother. Aiden clung to me and pouted over the loss.
"Surano, are you going to ask for another chance?"
"Hm?" I said.
Cepheus mocked my noise. "Are you gonna ask Zayto if he'll come see you again?"
"Don't," Aiden said. "What if you mess up the second time, too?"
I peeled his arms from my neck as Miss Ann finally made her way back to us. "I can't try again."
"Yes, you can," Kikei said. "I bet you just don't want to."
"Why not?" Cepheus asked me.
I couldn't think of an answer. It was true that not wanting to try made no sense -- the worst possible result would be another failure, and that would change nothing. But the best possible result was approval.
Kikei was making faces at me. "She's not going to," he said to his brothers. "She doesn't know anything."
I tilted my head at Miss Ann. "Should I want to?"
"Of course. Wanting a second chance is human."
I didn't ask what not wanting anything was. Instead I nodded, stood, and decided to take the long way to Doctor Zayto's office. Going through the south wing would take me across the two longer breezeways, which looked out over the protected courtyard of the mansion and toward the town, the gray mountains beyond. Miss Ann had once shown me photos she'd found of Del Valley before the Revolution. In them, the western mountains still had vibrant vegetation and the houses were unique and colorful, sometimes made of wood or brick. The people looked just like anyone in the mansion might, only darker-skinned and happier. There was no haze between the camera and the subjects of the photos; the details were clearer than anything I could see now. And yet they dated back only forty years.
There were still people who lived out there, I knew, but they were unhealthy; weak from the polluted air, pathogens in the water they drank, carcinogens in their food. And those who lived underground were in an only slightly better situation. I wondered if there was anything worthwhile in that world.
Even from my vantage, there didn't seem to be.
Doctor Zayto was on the line, but had forgotten to close his office door. I stood across from it, where he could see me as he paced the room. I didn't know yet what I was going to say.
"What is it?" he said, unclipping the device from his ear. "Did Swibb send you for something?"
I didn't move from where I was, back against the wall. "I... I'd like to be re-evaluated," I said, and hoped it was audible.
He paused in retrieving a leather-banded watch from his top desk drawer. "You mean Doctor Swibb requests a re-evaluation for you."
A deep breath. "I am requesting for myself."
The permanent scowl of the doctor's face seemed to ease into something more awkward. Maybe surprise. The watch in his hand started beeping, and he fumbled with it a moment before managing to turn it off. I stood still the whole while.
"After lunch," he said finally, wrapping the watch around his wrist. "I'll come after lunch. Just wait in the gym." Unable to fasten the band to his satisfaction, Doctor Zayto removed the watch, picked up the ear piece he'd been using earlier, and strode out the door, passing me, down the hall towards the conference rooms.