Toxic

By Lydia Kang

Hana isn't supposed to exist. She's grown up hidden by her mother in a secret room of the bioship Cyclo until the day her mother is simply gone—along with the entire crew. Cyclo tells her she was abandoned, but she's certain her mother wouldn't leave her there to die. And Hana isn't ready to die yet. She's never really had a chance to live.

Fenn is supposed to die. He and a crew of hired mercenaries are there to monitor Cyclo as she expires, and the payment for the suicide mission will mean Fenn's sister is able to live. But when he meets Hana, he's not sure how to save them both.

As Cyclo grows sicker by the day, they unearth more secrets about the ship and the crew. But the more time they spend together, the more Hana and Fenn realize that falling for each other is what could ultimately kill them both.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Nov 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9781640634237

Lydia Kang

Lydia Kang is a physician and author of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. She was born in Baltimore, Maryland and graduated from Columbia University and New York University School of Medicine. She completed her residency and chief residency at Bellevue Hospital in New York City and currently lives in the midwest, where she continues to practice internal medicine.

Book preview

For Ben

Chapter One

HANA

Where is Mother?

Where is she?

Inside my room, my tiny bubble of a room, I pace like the tigers in their tiny iron enclosures from Earth’s old menageries—what did they call them in the vids? Zoological parks? Mother is never missing at breakfast. Never. And she is always here when I wake up. I have never begun my day without her warm presence, her crinkling, smiling eyes.

Where is Mother?

To make things even more worrying, I’ve been asleep for too long.

It had been one entire week that I was embedded in Cyclo’s matrix of the ship’s walls, held down by her soothing chemicals while I slept. But normally, I sleep only for forty-eight or seventy-two hours at a time. One week is far too long.

Usually, there is breakfast on the table, perhaps some rice. Usually, there is Mother, waiting for me after a long shift in her incubation labs.

But there was no breakfast waiting for me.

No Mother, for that matter.

My stomach growls, and I press my hand against my belly, willing it to be quiet, but what I want to do is quiet my mind. My thoughts are spinning, crashing, shattering with everything that is wrong. My eyes are trained on the door, hoping that it will open and she will be here and this will all be a mistake.

Please, please be a mistake. Maybe an embryo in the lab needed desperate attention for days, and she had to leave me alone for longer than usual. My stomach grumbles again, and I wring my hands, hissing at myself.

Silence!

It’s a familiar saying in our room. Not that anyone could hear me—the gel walls and the bony endoskeleton make it sound proof, but Mother was not born on Cyclo. She was born on Earth, where walls are made of things like trees—no, wood—and pigment—no, paint—and could readily hear conversations right through them. But maybe if I say the word again—a word that always seems to simultaneously cut and suffocate me—maybe it will bring normal back, like a prayer of wishes.

Silence.

In my thin robe, I continue to pace, my bare feet pressing against the blue gel-like matrix of the floor. It’s already been over an hour since I’ve awoken.

Where is she? I demand.

No answer.

Cyclo has been taught never to answer questions not directly asked of her. Otherwise, she would answer everything. When she was a young creature, before she grew into the enormity of this three-kilometer-wide diatom in space, she would answer all the questions in her color language, and it was chaos. Crew members got headaches from the nonstop, vibrant displays. So, for their benefit, each room on the ship has a color translator to help the crew.

I don’t need a translator. I understand her color language far better than the crew, and with more subtlety than the translators. I can see beyond the color spectrum that others can, thanks to Mother’s genetic tinkering with my retinal cells. So Cyclo’s nuances are only seen by me, not her. Other humans are like pigs trying to communicate with jellyfish; their interpretations are so primitive.

But, as a favor, Cyclo has learned to phonate air bubbles and actually speak to me, particularly when I’m lonely. I try again.

Cyclo, where is Mother? Where is she? My hands are now grabbing at my ponytail, clawing in agitation.

The matrix on the wall warps, involutes on itself, and a face appears. It’s a woman’s face, like Mother’s but different. Like an ajumma, or auntie. An ajumma made of shimmering blue glass.

Your mother is not here, Cyclo says in her vibrating, watery voice.

I stand there, not knowing what to do. Somewhere inside of me, a seed of doubt and fear grows steadily into a tree, strong as stone. Where could she be? I can’t call her or communicate to her—it’s strictly forbidden. After all, no one knows of my existence on the ship except for Cyclo and Mother.

Mother is the ship’s reproductive engineer, in charge of making sure the crew’s population on Cyclo stays steady and functional. New embryos are decided upon by the leaders of the ship, not the needs of a human who wishes to have their own child. Mother carefully tends these new crops of fetal crew members with a calm expectancy. And yet, I was not needed for the census, or for stability. I would be considered expendable. But she made me anyway, in secret. Kept me in secret. And when she couldn’t be here, Cyclo cared for me.

Mother was the only person required to report census data, so she could hide me. And Cyclo, who is programmed to care for all of us, had no issue with taking care of me, too. My caloric and nutrient needs were accounted for via Mother’s personal lab records, and easily hidden. There was never a reason for a random crew member to ask, Cyclo, is there an unsanctioned, extra human aboard this ship? So Cyclo never had to answer the question.

I stare at the membrane door. She must be busy tending to something in the labs. That has to be the reason. To search her out would be to put my very existence, and my mother, in danger. After several moments, while Cyclo pulsates a gentle, light lavender on the walls (patience, waiting), I decide.

I shall wait.

So I wait another hour. It feels like a very long time. I knit some more of a little afghan I started last week. I read some Shakespeare, The Tempest. I’ll reread the story of Cyclo’s genetic creation and birth, down to the details of which percentages of her genes have been synthesized, which were knocked out, which were enriched via cisgenesis or transgenesis. I’ll read Mother’s diary, filled with stories of when I was smaller and her delight over every milestone of my childhood. I eat a precooked, synthetic yam porridge that I find in our food cupboard. My mind is whirling so fast with thoughts I don’t want to consider. The panic is there, simmering under my skin, but I cannot unravel over what I don’t know yet. So I wait.

Mother doesn’t come.

My heart is beating so fast I can barely stay standing. I have clawed my robe until it has holes in the edges.

It has been six hours now. I am absolutely forbidden to leave my room, a room that does not exist in the consciousness of any crew member except my mother, hidden as it is in the most unused part of Cyclo’s body, the northeast quadrant, alpha ring.

For the last two hours, I’ve raised my hand countless times, poised a few inches from the door, before dropping it. Even touching the door is strictly forbidden. But I can’t wait here for much longer. Where is Mother? Where could she be? I’d even read the last entry in her diary, looking to see if anything was off, but there was nothing but our last discussion on why hedgehogs are not related to sea urchins. My eyes are full of tears, and I’ve already cried several times out of sheer panic.

I keep my voice steady and say, Cyclo. Please open the door.

Cyclo, not bothering to speak because the message is too urgent, blanches with white that moves in waves over the door.

Forbidden.

Cyclo. Please open the door, I say again, this time my voice cracking. I’ll only just peep my head outside, just a little look. I won’t step a foot out there. I know people will be walking the hallways. But if no one is there…maybe I can make my way to her lab and see why she’s delayed. I know exactly where it is. I’ve spent much of my life studying Cyclo’s every detail—the story of her birth, the way she harvests starlight energy, the layout of the ship down to every single storage vacuole and crew member unit.

But of course, I’ve never seen any of it. Only my room. A day would come when Mother introduced me to the crew. The day was coming soon. We’d talked about it. And then I could say that I’m not just a parasite hidden on the ship, like a worm or a barnacle. I could tell them how much I know of Cyclo—I could be useful in any position they needed me. I would be worth keeping. Wouldn’t I?

So if Cyclo could only let me out of this room, I could find Mother. Her gestational labs are located due north, in the alpha ring, only about fifteen hundred feet away, counterclockwise. Cyclo, being relatively flat and circular, was assigned the familiar Earth directional vectors of north, west, south, and east since its creators were Earth-born. And as it doesn’t look like other spaceships, with an obvious way to use the traditional nautical designations—bow, stern, starboard, port side—Cyclo was mapped to feel like a huge compass within the hand of the Pleiades star cluster.

North. I need to go north.

I put my hand on the membrane. It is warm like my own skin. Cyclo acquiesces, changing her shade to a yellow with matching iridescence that shows she is worried for me, and displeased with my rule-breaking. A hole appears in the membrane, widening outward as the organic, bony edges of the door appear.

My heart is thudding so hard, I hear it in my eardrums. Cyclo can probably sense it, too—her color hasn’t normalized. She can see, taste, touch all my emotions. She is worried for me. I poke my head out of the doorway quickly, looking left and right before withdrawing. I’m hyperventilating from my brashness. The hallway—which I have never seen before in my entire life—is smooth-walled and is a wavering color of blue mixed with Cyclo’s worried yellow. The floor is very gently curved, with one door at each end. It is empty.

So I slow my breathing, and take a step into the hallway, feet bare, still in my thin robe. Surely, Mother is nearby. But what if I encounter a crew member? What will I say that won’t get us both in serious trouble? What in the stars will I do?

Hello. I’m Hana. Have you seen Dr. Um? I need to speak with her.

Let me explain myself. I know so much about the ship. About Cyclo. I can be useful, just let me explain.

I walk quickly, maybe twenty paces. Already, my legs feel wobbly taking long strides. I am only used to walking within a room ten feet in diameter. There are rounded plastrix dots every ten feet or so. They must be the translating comms. I touch the door at the far end of the hallway, open it, pop my head through again. No one. There is another corridor. And another. Every time, I expect to introduce myself to a stranger, a real human that is not my mother. My heart rate trills with anticipation at every door, slows with disappointment and dread after each one opens.

They are all empty.

A bright purple line appears on the wall, pulsating in the direction of a leftward corridor, though I know exactly where to go. Despite my anxiousness, each new step brings a tiny thrill that makes my fingertips tingle. Here are the walls I’ve only studied on my vids! And the corridors on the beautiful maps of Cyclo that look like a spinning flower with smoky, ephemeral tendrils at the edges! I’m finally outside my room. I’m finally seeing Cyclo the way she’s meant to be explored.

The purple flashes again for me. Strangely, the translating comm says nothing. Isn’t it supposed to verbalize what Cyclo is saying? I’ll have to look into why it’s not. I don’t remember that malfunction happening before I’d gone to sleep. I start running, feet padding along the squishy matrix, my robe flapping softly against my legs as an excruciating anguish begins to set in. The ship is vast, after all. It’s a quiet quadrant, but Mother always said that it wasn’t completely empty. Maybe Mother is where everyone else is.

After several more empty corridors, I enter the north quadrant alpha. I find a room full of plastrix terminals and chairs and walls of 3D computation boards, and another curved room with a long table that’s the mess hall, but devoid of food or plates. A purple line flashes to a door, and it opens into an enormous laboratory, complete with long tables, fluid-filled incubation chambers with no embryos, walls of nutrient pods, biomonitors. Everything is off, empty, blank.

Oh no. No, no. And now I’m crying.

Mother is not here.

On the right, there is a long window made of a clear, indestructible plastrix material embedded into Cyclo’s endoskeleton.

Oh!

I have never seen outside of Cyclo before, and it is so breathtaking it nearly buckles my knees. Black and enormous and glittering with stars. I run to it, letting my hand smack against the plastrix, eyes wide and searching, tears still dripping off my chin because I am so alone, and I can’t find her, and despite this breaking within me, the universe has just opened her oyster shell to me. I recognize the starshine of nearby Taygeta and Sterope, bright fists of blue light with interstellar clouds wisping around them. It’s so beautiful, and Mother isn’t here to share this with me. Every first of my life has been in her presence.

As I look out at the sparkling light in the velvety darkness, it’s obvious what I must do, but this is foreign territory—I’ve never even had to process this question in my mind.

I wipe my dripping nose and eyes with my sleeve, trying to catch my breath. Cyclo, I say.

Her voice comes from somewhere behind me on the wall. Yes, Hana.

Where…where is the crew of the ship?

The crew is not here, Cyclo answers.

Nausea fills me. I choke out words before I can possibly vomit my porridge. Cyclo, where did the crew go?

The crew has evacuated onto the seven major transports of the ship. They are currently in hyperspace, and are on their way to Atlas Station IPX-400.

My knees buckle for real, and I drop to the soft floor. That station is very far away. As in, years away by hyperspace travel. And they cannot communicate with anyone while in hyperspace.

Cyclo, I choke out. My mother. Where is she right now? When is she coming back?

Her colors flash in pinkish sympathy. She doesn’t form a humanoid face to speak, because her colors are so much more eloquent when words are not enough, and she knows this. Ellipsoids of pink, orange, and silver pulsate with truth, sadness, and sympathy.

I read the colors with a sob.

Oh, Hana. Your mother has left the ship, forever.

Chapter Two

FENN

This trip is all about firsts.

First time away from my home planet. First interstellar travel. First spaceship job.

First time dying.

Technically, this is a list of lasts, too, if I’m going to be really nitpicky.

God. How did I end up here?

I’m sitting on the bridge of the Selkirk and glancing over the readings of our voyage so far. We should be arriving at the Calathus within the next hour or two. It’s in sight now—a bluish-white disc in space with a wispy and irregular fringe at the edges, cut with a pattern of fenestrations. It sort of looks like a snowflake and a moon jellyfish had a wicked fight, followed by makeup sex, and then ended up birthing the Calathus.

Cyclo. There it is, Portia says. "I mean she. She’s really a beautiful crvat, isn’t she?" Portia’s the one actually driving the Selkirk right now. I don’t know what crvat means. Probably "interstellar biosynthetic human habitation complex. Possibly she means jellyfish." Learning Portia’s language is not high priority at this juncture in my life. Even though I’ve had nine months to learn on this trip so far, I’ve decided that it’s best to not always know what Portia is saying, particularly when we squabble over food. Which I’m always stealing because I like her Prinnia food better than the synthetics I usually eat.

What I’m damn good at, though, is driving nano-theft drones. Any drones, really. But anything ship-size is new territory. While Portia thinks I’m winding the mechanical watch in my hand (it currently doesn’t need winding, but she doesn’t know that), I’m secretly learning how to drive the ship. Honestly, it’s habit. I pick up skills wherever I can, however I can, and by stealing if necessary. And yet, it’s hard to undo that urge to survive, to make sure I come out on top, alive, ahead of the authorities nipping at my heels, a quadrant away. It’s boiling inside me right now, though it’s wasted energy at this point.

Portia’s hair is shaved to the skull, showing off her gold Prinnia-pride tattoo—a stylized sand serpent—from her home planet. Her boot-clad legs are curled up beneath her, which seems physically impossible for someone who’s seven feet tall. Those unnerving red irises flit around the readouts, checking to make sure we’re not all going to die before our time, which ought to be pretty soon.

Ah. Cyclo is magnificent, Portia murmurs.

"You mean the Calathus," I say. I tap my fingers on my thigh in Morse code, a soothing habit.

... -. --- --- - -.-- .--. .-. .. -. -. .. .- -..

Snooty Prinniad.

Sometimes the old ways are the best. Especially when silently insulting people. After nine months on the Selkirk, I’ve learned a lot about Portia, but she can still annoy me. I have fun teasing her. She hasn’t figured out what my finger tapping really means, so she just gives me a scarlet side-eye for a moment.

They told us we should call it by its common name. Her voice is soothing, which puts me on edge. Soothing voices, in my life, mean someone is lying to me. You know. So we can cozy up to her, and she can feel comfortable around us.

"How comfortable can it be? It’s dying."

Shut up, Fenn. My God, you have the sensitivity of a laser grenade, you know that? She bares a grin at me, with that brand of toothless smile that unnerved me as a kid. For years, I wasn’t used to being around Prinniads, or non-humans on my home planet. But I got used to it once I got into the theft game. Because when you steal, everyone and everything is someone you might sell to, or steal from. I’m an equal opportunity thief.

Which answers the earlier question—why am I here?

I steal stuff. A lot of stuff. Instead of wasting time and talent in jail, I’m here. We all have our reasons, but I only know mine. My sister Callandra, through no fault of her own, has been in a medical facility for one year, since right about the time I went to jail. Most of her spinal cord was crushed when the mining dredger she was working in tumbled into a magnesium sinkhole on our home planet, Ipineq. She’ll need therapy and biologic and synthetic transfer treatments her whole life. She just needs the money. And so I will die paying for it.

The captain’s remote voice sounds on the wall coms. It’s Doran, who’s not really on the ship, but has been setting the Selkirk’s coordinates and remotely training us for these long nine months.

Fenn, Portia. It’s time for our meeting. You’re disembarking in one hour and we need to go over a few things.

Got it. Portia puts the ship on autopilot for the landing program. I watch her movements without staring.

Fennec, Doran barks through the intercom.

Yes, sir. I straighten up. An old habit from prison.

Stop trying to learn how to fly this ship. This is a one-way trip. Got it?

Yes, sir.

Portia stands up. She says casually, I knew you were watching me.

I wasn’t doing any such thing. I slip the watch into my pocket and turn to the door.

Portia thrusts out a long leg, kicking my feet out from under me. In one quick movement, she slams my torso down and grips my neck hard with only two fingers—one each on the arteries of my neck, which I desperately need to keep working if I don’t want to stroke out.

Ndzia fro atzm. Ndzia! she hisses at me with her toothless mouth. Her eyes are sparking with tiny golden flecks in the crimson. Her fingers are sharp, and her booted foot is pressed hard onto my rib cage, immobilizing me. I’m five foot ten, wiry and strong for seventeen, but Portia winded me without a problem.

Which means? I gasp.

Don’t cross me, or I’ll kill you. I signed a contract. You signed a contract. And there’s nothing in that contract that says I can’t strangle you in order to fulfill my duty. My family is counting on me to do my job. And no human boy is going to take that away.

You said all that in just four words? You guys must have the shortest books in the universe, I wheeze.

You had nine months to learn, she says, releasing my neck, but her heavy boot is still pressed hard on my rib cage. I learned English.

I try to push her boot off my chest, but it doesn’t budge. Isn’t this a sign of affection in Prinnia? Regular near-deadly physical fights? Portia’s attacked me nearly every day, after I’ve teased her about something. Nine months of it, and you’d think I’d learn how to dodge her by now.

It is, she says. But not always. One more thing. I’ve heard of your work. If you fly one of your drones up my nose to steal anything—one molecule, even—I’ll steal something right back. Like your liver.

Well, that sounds fair.

Portia stops standing on me, and I try to catch my breath. She kicks me just under my right ribs, exactly where my liver is—not by coincidence, I’m sure—and I decide it’s best not to say anything witty anymore.

Let’s go, she says.

We leave the cockpit and walk through the belly of the craft to the end. I rub my right side tenderly. I may not need my liver for much longer, but I sure as hell need it for now. As we wind our way from one corridor to the next, I can sense the architecture of the ship. The Selkirk looks a lot like a long, skinny boat, curved at the bottom like a smile and flat on top, except that it travels hull first. A Cheshire Cat grin, flying through the void.

I follow Portia at a distance. Her legs are long, and she could still land a roundhouse kick and knock my eye out. We pass through a few cargo bays only half full of supplies and reach an aft cabin with the rest of the crew awaiting us. Altogether, it’s four of us.

Doran, in a hologram, stands up before the wide table before us. His hair is wiry and white, his skin the color of ashes and slightly blue. Argyrian, silver-blooded, with the muscular build to match. He looks to be in his nineties, and pretty fit for that. My grandma lived to 140, so Doran isn’t so lucky, really, to be his age.

The other two crew members, I’ve gotten to know pretty well. One is Miki, with that ashy-blue skin like Doran, youngish with blue-green braids over her broad shoulders and a hard look in her eyes. She’s a couple of years older than I am, but far larger due to her Argyrian genes. She’s shorter than me but clearly stronger. Portia once threw a roundhouse kick at Miki, who promptly caught her foot and used it to scratch her armpit.

The last crew member is mostly human, a guy, with medium brown skin and dark brown hair. About my age, with an unreadable expression. Gammand. Gammand is the quietest of all of us, and we’ve learned his habits over the course of the trip. He likes to read, he’s not very playful or jokey, and he spends a lot of time being introspective. And by that, I mean he talks to no one, ever. Outside of a few times he woke up from a nightmare screaming about the murder of his people, he’s pretty harmless.

We’ve all been on the Selkirk for nine months. They gathered us all for this mission back then, knowing it would take this long to train us and to finally get to the Calathus. At least we didn’t have to go into cryosleep. I hear the reanimation process is like being stabbed by a million needles in every part of your body. The day we boarded, we had brand new biomonitors implanted in our necks, which hurt like hell.

All right, Doran’s holograph begins. "We’ve less than an hour. It’s been nine months of prep, and ReCOR has asked me to brief you on the status of the Calathus before we board."

I grimace. ReCOR is a very rich, very powerful company that makes the ships like the Calathus. Everything is proprietary, down to the DNA codes. And they’re not happy that the Calathus is dying after only one hundred years. No one wants to move entire colonies; they want permanent ones, and there are only so many habitable planets in the knowable systems we all live in. If our data-gathering trip goes well, they’ll understand how to make future ships live longer (read: they can charge more to republics who wish to buy them). Doran sees my grimace, and I wipe it clean before he can comment. He goes on.

This field study requires that you hit data-gathering objectives, which are now updated here, as well as in your feeds. Doran points to a long list that’s now scrolling to the right of him. Ninety percent of the objectives must be met—

Wait. It was eighty percent when we signed our contract! Portia’s eyes flash with anger.

Miki shuts one eye. I think that’s an Argyrian curse.

Doran’s hand raises to silence us. For which you forfeit your future in exchange for a generous death benefit bequeathed to the person or persons of your choice.

At this, we all exchange glances. After all this time together, we’ve gotten to know each other, but no one’s spoken of their death benefit beneficiary. And no one’s asked, because it’s too painful. Doran better not make us tell who those people are. I’m not here to spew my life story to anyone.

Doran clears his throat. Good news is, your objectives are now set, and will no longer change.

Is that all ReCOR has to say? Gammand asks in his low, calm voice. We’re ten percent more likely to fail here?

Now, Gammand. Remember that this is a remarkable experience, and an opportunity to benefit many in the future, including your loved ones.

I want to laugh. That’s like saying, here, eat this cake! It’s delicious! But it’s chock full of cyanide! Be happy!

Doran goes on. I wish I was there myself. He clearly doesn’t mean this. He’s just trying to make us feel special, in the non-dying kind of way. "The Calathus is unlike any bioship I’ve ever been on."

You’ve been on one bioship, you’ve been on them all, Miki says, unimpressed.

"Not exactly. None were fully self-sustaining, or truly biocompatible with humanoids. And none were of this magnitude, and age. The biological entity that makes up the Calathus is unique. Amorfovita potentia, subspecies cyclonica, is the only one in existence. They engineered her well. Cyclo, as the organism itself is colloquially called, is the largest ever of its genus and is nearly a hundred years old. But it’s reaching its unique Hayflick