Ash and Cinder

3| Day Ten Thousand

Weeks pass before Dieter reappears in GenPop, I broke his jaw and some ribs. I'm glad he's not dead. I don't know how I'd feel about killing someone who didn't try to kill me first. Experiments have left the dome in worse condition after fighting me, but they weren't defenseless like he was.

Pushing aside thoughts of Dieter, I distract myself by counting out finger taps on the infirmary front desk counter. Five taps left, five taps right. My knuckles hurt, dark red and purple bruises stretch over the bone and darken the spaces in between. Patches of skin are scraped away in places, and it stings, but that's nothing new. The painkillers the Whitecoats have me on go a long way, but they don't make me invincible.

I wish the Whitecoat running the infirm desk would hurry up, I want to see Elle today. It's been weeks since I saw her, too. Another part of the Whitecoats' punishment. The worst part.

The inside of the infirm is chilly and reeks of ethanol, though not as badly as it used to. Whether the scent leaks over from the lab or not is a mystery, but the floors in here are all white squares with no bloodstains so my bet is on the former.

A Whitecoat shuffles in from the hall to my right, a bottle clutched in her veiny hands. She eyes me while she fills out my Savella prescription. The usual pill-pusher is a guy with hair so red it hurts my eyes, and teeth lined with metal brackets. He's used to all the Experiments that need drugs to function, but this one isn't. I fix my glasses to peer at the bottle and make sure it's the same one my pills come in every month. I remember too well what it was like the last time a Whitecoat decided I only needed sugar pills. The Whitecoat behind the counter finishes and hands me the filled prescription bottle, waving me off with a flick of her bony hand.

They act like it's a show of trust to let me keep my own medication, but I know they know I'm too sick to pawn off the pills and too protective of Elle to kill myself and leave her here alone.

There's already an escort Redcoat waiting to take me to my sister. I know where to go but I'm not allowed to move freely in the infirm like I do in the yard. We make good time down the hall, with me walking dangerously far ahead of the Redcoat, forcing him to quicken his pace to keep me in reach. Grey walls blur into white doors, the scuffed tile barely registers in my mind's eye. I've seen this stretch of hall so many times. I could point out every nick in the paint without so much as glancing in its direction. I can't imagine how bored Elle must get living in here.

At the door marked '70' in black sharpie I halt. The Redcoat stomps past me, yanks out a ring of keycards, and flips through them until he finds the right one. The keycard swipes across the handle, and the lock clicks. With a grumble that sounds like rolling thunder, the Redcoat shoves open the door and motions me in.

I ease past him into the room. The soft beep of a heart monitor and the scent of bleach greets me. The room is small, with grey walls and white linoleum floors and no windows. One wall is dedicated to an array of metallic, whirring machinery. Wires snake out of some of the machines and converge with a mess of translucent plastic IV tubes around the lone hospital cot, where a small, fragile body nestles.

Elle's curly hair sits in a huge puff surrounding her face. Her dark brown eyes are glassy and tinted yellow from all the drugs. We have the same eyes, only hers are framed with long lashes that curl a touch at the ends. She smiles when she sees me, and I smile back, glad that she has the clarity of mind to recognize me.

"Buenos dias, ¿como te sientes?" I sit on the edge of her cot. Spanish is our native tongue. Unfortunately for us both, the only other Spanish-speaker in the Compound that I know of is Maverick, who's septlingual or something ridiculous like that.

Americans dominated the Compound when we first arrived, kids from the east coast who got sold by their parents. It's strange, buried in the back of my mind is a memory of other island kids with us on the trip over, but somewhere along the way we were all separated, and I don't remember those kids re-appearing in the Compound.

But I also don't remember my mom's name half the time.

There aren't many of the east coast kids left, but the English stuck around, passed from one newbie group to the next, remaining the common language. Elle and I stick to Spanglish with each other out of habit alone.

Well, habit and homesickness.

"Sick. Me estoy comiendo un cable." Elle sticks her tongue out. "Will you check my horns?"

"Yeah, kiddo, sit up."

She scoots up on her elbows and leans forward. I brush the hair away from her back, where a pair of scars cut valleys down either side of her spine. Sprouting from the scars, right above the loose back of her grey Compound tank top, are nubby keratin horns. I tweak them both.

"Yep, they look bigger today." I say. They might be, by a thin layer or two. They don't seem to stop growing, but it's a slow growth. Like toenails.

"Heard you won again," she says, settling back onto the thin pillow. She means the fight in the dome. She doesn't know what the fights are, or what winning means, except that when I win it gets her more medicine. And that's how I want it to stay.

"That's right. Who told you?"

She shrugs, the IV tubes sway. "Un guardia. Was it hard?"

I hesitate before answering, swinging my legs up onto the cot and propping my elbows on my knees. She spots the cracked skin along my right knuckles and reaches out to take my hand. Her hands are cold and dry, the skin feels papery, like if I rubbed it too hard it would flake away.

"Sí," I say at last, "it was extra hard."

After that, the conversation turns. We talk about Maverick and how he came to see her yesterday. We talk about a boy she saw the other day in radiology. His eyes glowed. I'm not sure if that's part of his power, or if she likes him. Either way, I hope they can see each other again, Elle needs a friend. Towards the end of our allotted time together she starts to drift off. Her head droops so her chin rests on her chest, her breathing slows, and her skin begins to take on the drab green of the blanket over her lower body.

Elle's enhancement allows her skin to take on the appearances of her environment, or lately whatever she wills it to take on. Color, texture, shadowing, it's all there on her skin as if she were made of the things she touches. When she sleeps, her skin shifts on its own, sometimes taking on the shades of her dream, but more often adhering to the nearest point of contact and leeching the color. When the edges of her skin blend with the blankets, she looks even smaller than she is.

I rest on the edge of the cot, lingering for the rest of my free time. Looking at Elle now, it's hard to remember there was ever a time that we didn't live here. We used to live in the world of humans and that world was huge. There were supercities the size of Spain. I don't remember much about them since Puerto Rico wasn't near one, but I do remember that when one of the American ones crashed, it took us down hard. Money became next to worthless, and half the country was bankrupt before the end of the week. That's where a lot of us older Experiments came from. Our parents couldn't afford us. It could be the same story for the newbies too, I've never bothered to ask.

It doesn't matter anyways. We're here, Elle is sick, and I have to keep fighting until her medicine works for good.

A sharp rap on the door is my cue, times up. Ituck Elle's hair behind her ear and give her a quick peck on the foreheadbefore I go. Day number ten thousand, we're both still alive. That's something,I guess.