Eve and Adam by Michael Grant, Katherine Applegate Page A

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: Make yourself an Eggo, Evening, and don’t forget your science project. Hey, speaking of science projects, Daddy and I had you genetically modified when you were two. Please put your dishes in the sink.
    Solo knows I don’t want to know. He laughs, a hard, flat sound. He opens the bathroom door and crosses my room. “I gotta go. I’m beat. If your mom asks, Aislin found her own way here.” He pulls a key card out of his back pocket. “This is for Suite Fourteen. That’s supposed to be her room.”
    I take the key. I have to say thanks, don’t I? He risked a lot, bringing Aislin to me.
    But somehow the word doesn’t come from my mouth. All I can say is, “Good night,” and he’s gone.
    Aislin snores.
    *   *   *
    Despite everything, I sleep. Despite Aislin’s hand thrown across my face. Despite the strangely detailed memories of dropping my pajamas to the floor while Solo is at eye level with my unsexy panties.
    The sense memory, the shiver that comes with it, of Solo running careful fingers down my inner thigh.
    Despite all of that, I sleep. I dream of a hospital. But not the one here at Spiker. Or the emergency room.
    It’s a hospital room far back in my past.
    I see my mother. I see my dad.
    I dream of my father sometimes, never of my mother.
    But in this dream, they’re together, whispering. My mother is holding a syringe. My father nods his approval. They are both crying.
    I wake up to a blast of very bad breath from Aislin. She smells of puke. I hope she made it to the bathroom. I stagger up and find the toilet bowl full. Well, better than the bed.
    My bandage is flapping loosely. I either have to cut it all the way off, or try to conceal my guilty knowledge until my next scheduled bandage-change.
    It hits me then, what should have hit me earlier: They’re all in on it. The doctors, the nurses. They know the injury’s gone.
    They’re all in on it. All playing a game, hiding the truth from me.
    It’s why my mother was in such a hurry to get me out of the hospital and safely to Spiker. My secret would have been out within a day. And what would have happened to my mother if it had come out that she’d broken the law? Many laws?
    It’s dark in the room but the clock shows 8:42 A.M. I would normally be up by now. I’m buzzy from lack of sleep, and my head is full of pictures and words. Aislin’s bloody face. The dream memory of a long-ago hospital room. Solo’s words: You’re a mod. You’re genetically modified. The unreal sensation of my fingertips on the place where terrible damage should be.
    Despite this, what I remember most is Solo kneeling on the bathroom floor.
    I head for the bathroom. Aislin snores softly.
    I grab the scissors Solo used to cut off my leg bandage. Awkwardly, I slit the bandages on my