“What are you doing?” Eve asks.
I kneel in front of her. “Which is easier? Hike up or drop trou?”
She sees what I’m getting at. With a rather baleful expression on her face, Eve slides the pajama bottoms down. They puddle around her ankles.
“That’s what you wear for panties?” Aislin protests.
“They’re comfortable.”
I have no comment. I am content to swallow hard.
The thick bandages extend from her ankle to her upper thigh. Her upper, upper thigh. Very carefully, hands trembling, I pull the edge of the bandage away from her thigh and insert the scissors, point down.
Aislin runs her index finger along her bandaged nose. “You know, now that I think about it, it’s weird, the way they didn’t give you a cast for that leg.”
“Actually, it’s not so weird,” I say.
“What are you doing?” Eve asks. But not with any serious intent. Not like she’s actually going to stop me. There’s a quaver in her voice.
I cut.
Down the inside of her thigh.
I reach the place where the leg was severed. I roll the bandage down to expose it.
The three of us stare.
The bathroom light is unforgiving.
Where her leg had been crudely ripped apart—skin shredded, bone snapped, muscle meat torn like a turkey drumstick—there is smooth, unblemished white skin.
– 19 –
“There isn’t even a scar,” Aislin murmurs.
We all stare for a while. I extend shaking fingers toward my leg.
I need to touch to believe.
The skin isn’t even bumpy. It’s not just smooth. It’s absolutely identical to the way it was before the accident.
I push the bandages down farther. It’s like taking off a very tight legging. All the way to my knee, just in case, just in case memory is playing some weird trick on me.
“We’re awake, right?” I ask.
Solo stands up. He sets the scissors on the counter. “It’s been like this for days. By the second day everything was fine. By the third day the scars would have already been disappearing. Day four?” He lifts his shoulders. “There can be variations, it’s not an exact thing.”
Aislin seems to have forgotten her own injuries. “That’s not possible. Is it?”
“Solo,” I say. He has the answers. I can tell.
“Have you ever had a scrape or a skinned knee that lasted more than a day?” he asks.
“Um… I don’t know.” I scroll back over a lifetime of Band-Aids. “Who keeps track?”
“Cuts? Bruises?” Solo leans back against the sink, arms crossed over his chest. “Toothaches?”
“I’m an excellent flosser,” I say defensively.
“Colds? Flu?”
My heart is hammering. “I use Purell?” I say with a weak smile. “How many colds have you had in your life?”
Solo tenses. He starts to say something, then catches himself. “We’re talking about you.”
“She never gets sick,” Aislin says softly. “Like… never. She doesn’t even get cramps.”
I shoot her a look.
She holds up her hands in a placating gesture. “Well, it’s true.”
“So I’m the picture of health. I’m lucky,” I say. Gingerly I touch my thigh.
Solo shakes his head. “No one is that lucky.”
“Wait! I know!” I cry triumphantly. “When I was around two I had heart surgery.” I am weirdly relieved by this fact. “It was some valve thing. Congenital. They repaired it, though. With pig tissue, actually.”
Aislin frowns. “Like… bacon?”
“No,” Solo says to me. “They didn’t repair it surgically.”
“Obviously, they did. Because here I am, fine. Beyond fine.” I chew on a thumbnail, considering. “And how could you possibly know what happened when I was two, anyway?”
Solo looks at his feet. “You didn’t have long to live, Eve,” he says. “The odds of getting a heart transplant were pretty slim. At some level, you can see why they did it. They were desperate.”
I grab his arm. “What are you telling me?”
“You’re a mod.” Solo touches my hand and I loosen my grip on his arm. “You’re genetically modified. It happened when you were two. It’s in your file.”
He waits while I absorb this.
I leave him waiting.
I am not absorbing.
“Two days after your surgery, you were completely cured,” Solo says. “The doctors probably thought they were seeing things. What they were seeing was the Logan Serum. Either your mom or your dad must have injected you.”
“Logan Serum,” I repeat dully.
“Cool,” Aislin says, staring at her reflection in the mirror. “Can I get some?”
“No one can get any,” Solo replies. “It’s never been approved by the FDA, by the government.”
“Why not, if it’s so—” I start, but just then Aislin’s legs buckle just a little. She catches herself, but I can see the night has taken a big toll.
“I need a drink of water,” she says in a little girl voice.
I fill a glass from the tap. Solo catches Aislin as she suddenly folds up. He lifts her easily. She’s not unconscious, just in that strange zone between awake and asleep.
Solo places her on my bed. I put a pillow under her head, pull off her boots, and cover her with a blanket.
I motion Solo to follow me back into the bathroom. The Leg is surprisingly limber, but my hands won’t stop trembling.
I shut the bathroom door. “First of all, we’re in here because there aren’t any surveillance cameras, right?”
“Yes.”
“This thing.” I toy with the sink handle. I don’t want to look directly at Solo. “This healing thing. Why doesn’t everyone have it? I mean, why doesn’t my mother, why doesn’t Spiker…”
“Because it’s illegal. The way they made it was illegal. They took shortcuts with human testing. Now they have to re-create the whole thing from scratch, pretending to discover it and test it the right way. That takes years.”
I force myself to look at him.
There’s more. I can see it in his eyes. I can see that he’s challenging me to ask. I can see that he’s almost eager to tell me.
That’s what makes me hold off. I don’t want to hear any more. Not now. Not yet.
It’s one thing to know that your mother skirts the law from time to time. My mother’s always been in the gray zone when it comes to ethics.
It’s another thing altogether to know that your mother broke the law outright. And that she did it in order to save your life.
It seems like something she might have mentioned, oh, I don’t know, over breakfast one morning:
