SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

“How old are you?”

“Ten,” Nelson said.

“I’m twelve,” Virgil added, not wanting the girl to forget he was there too.

“Well, I’m thirteen and I’m hungry. Let’s get some chorizos, they look amazing.” Avi kept Nelson’s hand and led the boys toward the conveyer belt filled with delicacies they never ate in the dorms. No bland sandwiches or soupy oatmeal at this meal.

Avi spoke as they took trays and walked the line, picking treats to savor. “I met an upper 4our last week who said they’ve been growing the ingredients for baklava in the hydrofarms since last year. You know they can detect the nutritional value of anything they smell? And they can determine any mineral deficiencies just by touching the plants.”

“Sure, that’s what 4ours are for,” Virgil said, trying to sound older, like he knew all about the other series’ duties.

Avi frowned and turned toward him. “And that’s all they are?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never talked to one.”

“Don’t talk about them like they’re furniture.”

“I didn’t mean…I’m sorry.”

Avi walked away from the boys toward the crowded tables.

“What’d you do that for?” Nelson hissed.

They followed Avi to an open table and sat down. Virgil didn’t know what to say. Should he apologize? He’d probably look even stupider.

“Do you get to go out in the city much?” Nelson asked as he shoveled chocolate soy pudding into his mouth.

Avi’s eyes shot at Virgil. “Why? Curious about what the 5ives do in their free time?”

“No,” Nelson mumbled around his food.

“Why don’t you go sit with the other 9ines? You’re just like everyone else.” She gathered her utensils and started to stand, but Virgil reached out and grabbed her hand.

“I didn’t mean anything by what I said. I don’t know any 4ours. Until now I didn’t know any 5ives. No one wants to talk to us.”

“Because we’re freaks even in this madhouse,” Nelson added.

“All the other Teks are afraid of us. Will you please eat with us? It’s nice talking to you.”

Avi narrowed her eyes and sat back down with a huff. She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at Virgil.

He felt like he was being dissected, like she had tacked directly into his brain to evaluate his thoughts. Her gaze made his cheeks heat and he had to look away before he started babbling every musing that had ever crossed his mind. Something about her made him want to talk, and he had never been one to say much.

“Assuming Teks are nothing more than their series is such a simian cognition,” she finally said, accusation and blasphemy falling from her lips in tandem. “It’s the same thing as the others thinking you’re freaks. Are you just big gorillas or is there more to you under all that mass?”

Nelson stuffed another bite of sweets into his mouth and Virgil looked down at his hand. He opened it and laid it on the table, palm up. The metal fibers woven through his skin danced across the calluses already thickening from hard labor.

“I want to be more than this.” He whispered it, like a vow.

“You already are.” Avi reached out and wrapped both her tiny hands around his one large one. Her delicate fingers traced along the veins and wrinkles of his palms.

He may have had the body of an adult, but the twelve-year-old heart beating inside his chest leapt at her touch.

Avendui snuck down the dormitory halls. Her black tunic and loose pants made it easy to move quickly and hide in the shadows when the guards or nuns passed by. That and no one ever expected a Tek to be out past curfew.

Her sensitive blue eyes took in the shadowy movements through each door’s small window. 5ives all had enhanced vision thanks to genome sequencing and feline cells spliced with their own cells. Every now and then, one of the 5ives would come back from a med upgrade with a tinge of yellow in their otherwise uniform blue eyes, and it always gave her a sense of an oncoming storm. There was something not quite right about the Tek system. Something she couldn’t completely place her finger on.

She tiptoed around another corner, heading deeper into the building where the nuns slept. Where were the 9ines? Virgil had sent a message to her that morning to come see him as soon as she could get away. Waiting never had been her strong suit, but too many people had already seen them together and rumors were flying through the dorms. Even cyborg teenagers had nothing better to do than gossip about each other’s love lives. Plus, it wasn’t like that. There was something about Virgil she trusted.

When she found his note under the leg of the cafeteria table, a place she could easily check, but hard for him to get to, she knew it had to be something serious. Why else would he risk the evidence of a note? And one asking her to be out after curfew!

Avi’s mind spun as she approached a door at the end of a hall. She was exposed, standing there in the middle of the hallway leaning up to look through the window. Why was she risking so much to talk to someone everyone else feared? Why bother with Virgil or any of the 9ines? She honestly didn’t know, but she couldn’t seem to stop.

Beyond the window, the dark room glowed with the moonlight drifting in through the barred windows. She could make out rows of large beds along one wall. Two or three kids could easily sleep in one of them, but these all held only one of the oversized 9ines.

Virgil had moved to the Upper Tek dorm last month.

She wondered if he liked it better than being with the little kids. She missed the lower dorms.

In the back of the room, a large, dark figure shifted and looked right at her. His blue eyes caught the moonlight and sparkled. She imagined that’s what the oceans used to look like, before they’d turned brown and acidic.

Virgil gave her a half smile and moved through the room to the door. Despite his size, he had a gracefulness about him as he maneuvered around the furniture and clutter on the dorm floor.

Avi kicked herself for being surprised. Even she fell so easily into the assumptions about the other series Teks. She hated when someone called her a worm or dirt-dweller, but then she turned around and did the same thing to Virgil, someone she knew didn’t deserve the reputation of a 9ine. He wasn’t cruel or stupid or clumsy. He wasn’t just brute force, no matter what the priests had done to his body.

She ran a fingertip along the scar of her most recent surgery: mineral and nutrient sensors implanted in the palm of her left hand and tied into her internal neural weave through the conduits running throughout her body. The priests had done plenty to all of them.

“Avi,” Virgil whispered as he slipped through the door. In the hall, his bright white tunic and matching pants shone under the dim lights.

She giggled, pointing to his clothes. “You’re glowing.”

“I didn’t think of that.” He hurried back inside the dorm and returned with a thin gray blanket wrapped around his hulking shoulders. “Better?”

“Definitely.”

“Come on.” Virgil took her hand and the sensor in her palm automatically worked to break down the mineral content of his skin. Iron, magnesium, sodium, potassium, silicone…The names ran through her mind by concentration level. The steel fibers didn’t harden his grip though. She wondered for a moment if the iron levels in his skin could be poisonous.

In the distance, the heavy footsteps of Series 9ine guards headed in their direction.

“In here,” she said, ducking into a med-sensor closet where the data files for all the biodata the grid collected on the Teks was stored.

Virgil gripped her hand and held his breath.