Vania made a sour face. “For good reason. They’re disgusting and decadent . . . and dangerous.”
Though the combination of nanotechnology and gengineering was all the rage in Albion and was starting to catch on even among aristos in Galatea before the revolution, Citizen Aldred had held the practice up as an example of the needless, wasteful indulgences that characterized the upper class, then outlawed the technology before it became popular among regs. Vania remembered how Justen had helped her father prepare tracts that railed against the unknown ravages palmports might be doing to the body’s systems as it drained resources to power itself.
Vania had only ever seen them, dead and useless, on the palms of Reduced prisoners, but she’d watched videos of palmports in action—marvelous, spun-sugar flutternotes that carried encoded messages and applications that would generate small items, toys, or even chemicals if you’d taken the proper supplements.
Sometimes, when she ran out of neurotoxin prickers in her weapons bracelet, she wondered if some enterprising gengineer might write a palmport application for them. You know, if it wasn’t illegal. Imagine not having to carry poisons around. Imagine just
“Vania!” Remy waved her hand before Vania’s eyes. “Are you even listening to me?”
She looked up at her little foster sister. Up—when had Remy gotten so tall? She was no longer the child who’d always tagged along behind Vania and Justen, begging to be part—any part—of their activities.
“Sorry, squirt,” she said. “I’ve just had my hands so full with the Ford siege, and now Gawnt’s got me trying to track down the Wild Poppy . . .”
“Really?” Remy said, her eyes alight with interest. “What have you found so far?”
Vania bit back a sigh. She really didn’t have time to explain this to a little girl. “Not much, but more than I’ll be reporting to General Gawnt, that’s for sure. If anyone is going to catch the Poppy, it’ll be me.”
“Can I help?”
“Maybe in a few years.”
Remy blinked, hurt, and now Vania did sigh. Justen was much better at putting his little sister off than she’d ever been. That was probably why he was working his bedside manner in a sanitarium and she was interrogating royalists as part of the military police.
“All right, squirt,” she conceded. “Here’s a way you can help. There’s this story coming out of the Lacan estate about a missing soldier—some young recruit who apparently ran off with the Poppy. But no one seems to know where she came from. I’ve got tons of military recruit records to go through. Maybe you can help track this girl down.” She handed Remy the oblet.
“Trina Delmar,” Remy read on the display. “Yes, I think this is something I can handle.”
Good. That would keep her busy, and it was doubtful Remy could cause much trouble combing through some static records. It was odd that Remy and Justen hadn’t been in contact—though sometimes Justen and Vania spent weeks without talking, Remy and her brother were much closer. At least, Vania thought they were.
Maybe she’d missed a message from him explaining his extended absence? She checked again. Nothing from Justen, but in her queue was a message from a former classmate. She clicked on it and her oblet sparked up a video from a popular gossip source.
Jaw hanging like a fish, Vania played the video over and over in disbelief. The gossip sweeping Halahou was that Justen Helo was over in Albion romancing one of the most ridiculous aristocrats around.
The girl’s name was Persis Blake, and according to the story, she was one of the richest, prettiest, and stupidest girls on the whole island. Her father, who probably also had pumice for brains, had defied Albian tradition to name her his heir, which made her one of the most eligible bachelorettes in New Pacifica.
Vania didn’t understand. This had to be some sort of misunderstanding. Or maybe a vicious lie perpetrated by Galatean royalists. Justen wouldn’t run off to Albion without telling them first. And he certainly, certainly wouldn’t fall in love with someone as shallow as this Blake girl was.
Justen had always been uninterested in romance. Too much work to do. Hadn’t they had the conversation a hundred times, while their silly classmates got tied up in unproductive and melodramatic relationships that burned quickly and left nothing but anger and hurt feelings in their wakes? Vania had used these hurt feelings in her missions—one old classmate had been more than ready to reveal to Vania that an ex-lover was attending royalist meetings. Poor boy had been two months in his work camp, thanks in part to the bitterness born of a failed romance. Those sorts of feelings were beneath people like Justen and Vania. At least, that’s what Vania had always thought.
But even if Justen decided at last to take notice of something other than his precious research, he would never have taken up with an aristo, even if she was obviously named for his famous grandmother. Not an aristo. Not her Justen. No matter how beautiful or charming or rich this girl was. Justen didn’t care about that stuff.
If he had been sighted in Albion—well, Vania was sure there was an explanation. Sometimes Justen got so caught up with his research that he grew absentminded. Maybe he was collecting data at a sanitarium in Albion, thinking he’d only be gone on a day trip. That would explain the lack of messages. Justen would go to the moon if he thought it might help him in his research. And maybe he’d found the trip so fruitful, he’d extended it and neglected to message them. And maybe this aristo was . . .
Well, Vania couldn’t quite imagine what an aristo would have to do with a sanitarium. None of the aristos in Galatea ever got their hands dirty with the reg disease.
And she couldn’t imagine where someone might have gotten the idea that Justen would ever fall for an aristo, no matter how pretty she was. He’d have to be Reduced to be that stupid.
Or maybe Vania was the one acting Reduced. After all, aristos lived to be charming and flattering and seductive. Maybe Justen wasn’t too smart to fall for their ways at all. Maybe, because he’d always been too busy to get involved with anyone before, he was completely blindsided by this Albian aristo’s seduction techniques.
And of course the Albian aristos would want him on their side, if they could get him. He was far too valuable to the revolution to leave in their hands. Even Vania’s father would agree with that. Hadn’t he often said that Justen was one of their best assets?
This took precedence over any silly record combing. Vania needed to find out where Justen was and what he was doing. She’d message him, and if there was no reasonable response to these ridiculous rumors, if he didn’t have a good answer for why he needed to stay on that aristo-infested island of Albion a moment longer than absolutely necessary, well then, she’d just go and bring him home herself.
And she could look for the Wild Poppy on the way.
Fourteen
AS SO OFTEN HAPPENED to him in the labs at home, it was a persistent rumbling in his stomach that finally distracted Justen from his work. He looked up from the latest data stream to find rays of sunlight penetrating the skylights of Noemi’s subterranean office. He exited into the residence room of the facility to discover the patients all gone to lunch and Persis nowhere to be found.
He stretched his back and blinked his dry, itchy eyes, momentarily disoriented. How many hours had he spent working? The patients’ test results had come back by sundown, and it had taken him at least six hours to analyze the first lot of brain scans. Noemi had already started the victims on the current recommended therapeutics for DAR patients, and Justen figured that, to overcome suspicion, he would have to put together a reasonable body of research showing why it wouldn’t help before he could suggest an alternate form of treatment. And he needed to do so quickly, as the longer these poor people remained in this state, the more damage would be done.
His jaw tightened. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. It was never, ever supposed to be this way. Justen rested his head against his hands, massaging the tension out of his forehead. He’d never actually seen the Reduced in person before, and when he met refugees like the Seris, fully recovered and as loathsome as ever, it was easy to pretend that things weren’t quite as awful as he imagined.
There was no escaping it now.
