“That’s it?” Owen asked.
“You’ve never taken one?”
“Never had to. Now what?”
“Now we wait a bit, give it a chance to go wherever it goes in the body. Then we run the test.”
Owen returned Minerva to her cage while Hideki put the vial away. He came back with a little metal ring that looked almost identical to the one hanging around his neck. Owen rose to inspect it more closely.
“Is that another location scrambler?” Owen said.
“Not exactly,” he said with a wink.
Dek slid the cover off the box. The metal sheeting it was made from came off a junked service bot. He’d wrapped it completely in copper wire stripped from every little electric motor he could scrounge. Hopefully it would provide enough shielding. There was no plan B.
Dek set the ring inside and walked Owen through the plan.
“Okay. The device emits the signal I isolated, so if it works, Minerva should be fine when we close the box.”
“I feel bad,” Owen said.
“If you have a better idea, now’s the time.”
Owen shrugged and shook his head. Hideki nodded to him to proceed. He set the mouse inside the tiny box and held his hand over it while he set the lid in place. The tip of the mouse’s nose poked out the small gap.
“Press hard,” Hideki said. “It’s a tight fit.”
“All right. Here goes.” Minerva pulled back into the box as he pressed all around the edges of the lid to seal it. “How long do we wait?”
“Let’s give it a minute.”
They counted out a minute, then Hideki withdrew a flathead screwdriver from his father’s old kit.
“Moment of truth.”
He pried the edge of the lid up and lifted it. Minerva instantly tried to run but Hideki grabbed her before she could. Owen sighed with relief and picked up the lid.
“Okay,” Hideki said. “We know the device might work. Now for part two. You can leave if you want.”
“It’s okay,” Owen asserted.
“Then take out the device. Sorry, Minerva. It’s all in the name of science.”
Owen removed the small ring from the box and tucked it in his pocket.
“No, someplace safer,” he said. “Your shoe, maybe. Although I guess if you wanted to be really…”
Owen said, “I’m not sticking in my ass, Dek.” He stuffed the ring down in his shoe. “There.”
“Suit yourself.”
Hideki placed the mouse back inside, covered it, then replaced the lid. The mouse scratched around inside as before but only for a few seconds. They silently counted another minute and removed the lid.
Minerva was stone dead.
Owen prodded her with his finger but there was no reaction. “Holy shit.”
Hideki fell back against the couch, chewing on his lip. He really did feel bad about the mouse, but the implications were massive. The red Macros weren’t activated by a signal — they were activated by blocking it. It would have to be very powerful, with repeaters or signal boosters all over the city. Some kind of subsystem he wasn’t aware of.
Did the Authority even know?
“Shit,” Hideki muttered. “Shit shit shit shit.”
“I don’t understand,” Owen said, clearly upset by the mouse’s demise. “How could one Macro kill her that fast?”
“I don’t know. An electric charge, maybe? Something with the brain stem? Gimme your water bottle,” Hideki said.
“Why?”
Hideki shook his hand impatiently and Owen handed him the bottle. He rose and rummaged through a small drawer for a clean Macro vial, then poured some of Owen’s water inside.
“When Cytocorp first perfected synthetic organisms, they realized that the day might come when you couldn’t tell the difference between them and real organisms, so they added a fluorescent tag.”
Dek retrieved a pen-sized device from his father’s things and flicked off the last of the lights.
“It glows bright green when exposed to UV light,” he said, and turned on the device. A deep purple glow illuminated the vial of water.
Owen rose to get a closer look. Tiny green dots, no bigger than grains of salt, were suspended in the water. “My guess they’re some sort of dissolving nanoshell, almost like an egg,” Hideki said. “Ever notice we have no clear containers for drinking? I’ll guarantee you this is why.”
Owen squinted to see the microscopic glowing dots, tiny green stars floating in a handheld galaxy. “I’ll bet the Macro starts clear then absorbs hemoglobin once the shell dissolves, turning it red inside the body. It’s really quite ingenious.”
“How many of these do we have inside us?” Owen asked, horrified.
“Oh, thousands at least. Maybe millions.”
“All so we can die in the Box? That doesn’t make sense.”
“The Box is just a convenient way to get rid of people, Owen. This is way bigger than that.”
The realization he’d been leading Owen toward finally washed over him and he turned to Dek, horrified. “If the signal stops, so do we.”
Hideki switched the overhead light back on and set the vial down, shaking his head. “I’m not so sure this is their doing. Authority people drink from the same ration stations as everyone else.”
“Come on, Dek. There’s no way those assholes don’t know about this.”
“I’m not so sure. What if there are bigger forces at play here than even the Authority knows about?”
“You don’t mean Cytocorp,” Owen said.
Hideki nodded. “Think about it. If you lived your whole life believing there was a monster behind the door waiting to kill you, would you open it just to find out if it was real?”
At that very moment, the door of Hideki’s unit exploded inward and a retinue of Authority guards burst through.
“Don’t move!” they shouted.
Hideki and Owen were so shocked that moving never crossed their minds. One guard leveled his pistol at Owen, while two others grabbed Hideki roughly and pinned him to the floor, wrenching his arms behind him. The last one inside was Downing.
“Hideki Yamamura, you are being arrested under suspicion of sabotage and theft.”
“What about him?” asked the guard covering Owen.
Downing said, “He’s just a greenie who fell in with the wrong people. We got what we came for.”
The guards hoisted Hideki’s slight frame off the floor and shoved him along. He smiled and winked at Owen just before they dragged him out into the hall.
37
Dee probed listlessly at her multimeal, noting the way it coated her spoon. It had never tasted worse, which was saying something. She and Vi had been like this ever since the Epoch announcement.
Tosh wasn’t going to insult them by talking about the bright side. Every generation believed it would avoid its parents’ fate, even in the Dome. Once they realized they wouldn’t, they looked like Dee and Vi.
“I know what you’re going through,” Tosh offered. “I wish I could tell you it goes away, but it doesn’t.”
“Why do other adults lie to us?” Vi asked.
“What do you mean?” said Tosh.
“My parents said there’s always the next Epoch, but it’ll be the same, won’t it?”
Dee must’ve wondered the same thing because she raised her eyes up from the spoon and looked expectantly at her.
She shook her head. “They’re trying to protect your happiness.”
She felt a tap on her shoulder. Randy, the odious school principal.