Chapter 2 Kali
KALI
Iclung to the freezing porcelain, cold sweat coating my back and my insides overheating, but the opposing temperatures couldn’t calm the retching. The fourth wave came up with a vengeance and I vomited the leftovers of my dinner down the toilet.
Panting, I waited for the fifth rush. Two minutes full of dry heaving told me I’d been spared from further convulsions, and I thanked the universe for being nice to me for the first time this summer.
After washing the foul taste from my mouth in the sink, I slumped against the bathtub. But the trembling in my hands couldn’t curse away the disbelief.
Another nightmare, and a third time this week alone. It’d been years since I last saw her, yet her memory haunted me.
The clammy night shirt had twisted around my waist, and I jumped, ripping it over my head and tossing it on the cracked pale-blue tiles. So many large chunks of the grass-green, scuffed-up ceramic were missing that the pattern had become indiscernible.
I collapsed back down and shivered from the bathtub’s chilly surface. Breathing deeply to slow down my heartbeat, I wiped the sheen of sweat from my forehead. There wasn’t enough space to stretch out my legs, so I kept them close to me and rested my chin on top of my knees.
This freaking apartment. It was absurd that I counted as lucky, having this piece of shit place all to myself. It was falling apart.
Two pieces of furniture, a small, squeaky bed, and a half-broken closet filled the bedroom, with barely enough space to walk around them.
The kitchen, or as I pretended—my living room, was laughable, fitting a yellowed counter with a matching cabinet above and a round breakfast table under the square window overlooking one of the endless residential streets of Ilasall.
The city of hell. The place I belonged to.
I was as wicked as anyone here. Clawing my way to the top, where one day I’d take the final blow to that monster—our city head. My city head. I cringed at the thought.
I was going to burn this place to the ground and then sweep it clean of the ashes, so not a single speck of its taint would remain.
“Remember, one of us will have to lure the doctor out. We need to come up with something.” She frantically twisted her head around at any sound coming through the closed white door. “How are you so calm?” Her iridescent eyes settled on me.
Depending on the time of day, they sparkled in different hues, like the world couldn’t decide which ones would accentuate her beauty the most.
She truly was the most beautiful girl I’d ever met in my life. I’d known her for as long as I could remember and hadn’t doubted it for a second.
I tucked away a strand of her silky hair behind her ear. The color of the deepest black, smooth and glossy, it fell to her waist.
“What are you doing?” She grabbed my shoulders and roughly shook me. “Kali, come on, wake up! She’s coming, I can hear the footsteps.”
“It’s going to be fine.” I pulled her wrists down to her lap.
Her lips were so full, but now so pale. I wanted to kiss them, bring that rosiness back—that life back.
“I know what to do. We’ll be okay.” To ease her panting, I loudly inhaled and exhaled, watching her to make sure she followed my example.
“How are you so calm?” she repeated, unable to believe my lack of trepidation.
I shrugged but didn’t say it was because she was sitting beside me, her knee bumping my own, her warmth soothing my panic.
The door, an omen of our lives about to change, creaked open, and a woman flashed us a smile not quite reaching her eyes. Her lips were streaked in pink, not like Alora’s cheeks, drained of color from the fear digging her nails into the meat of her palms.
“So, girls, I’ve heard you bled for the first time a few months ago,” she said. A white lab coat flowed around her lipstick-pink blouse and loose ivory pants—all of it spotless. Everything in here was pristine enough to make you uncomfortable.
I tracked her as she walked over to the shining white table with a matching stool under it and picked up a couple of light brown folders, our names probably in them. Not just our names, but the rest of our lives.
“My name is Lamia. I’m the doctor here at your school and will take care of you girls today.” She flashed her teeth again. It was probably supposed to comfort us, but it resembled a warning of a hunt about to begin.
Neither of us said anything—we hadn’t been told what would await us.
Fingers curled around my wrist, their strength crushing my joint, and I found Alora’s knuckles utterly bleached, in stark contrast with the usual shade of red. Her limbs were always cold.
The doctor noticed that too. “There is nothing to be afraid of. I will ask you a few questions and do a couple of simple tests. That’s all.”
Dread rippled from Alora, so I gave her thigh a short squeeze, reassuring her I was there. I’d never leave her alone.
“How old are you?” Lamia asked, a blue pen hovering above the open folders she had spread on the table before her.
“Thirteen.” Alora’s grip on me increased in strength, and she shifted closer to me.
“Alora, right?” the doctor asked, that same smile plastered on her face, like a sculpture, unable to change her expression.
“Y— Yes,” she whispered, dropping her gaze.
Hoping it would soothe her, I clutched her thigh.
“She is.” I straightened my back and said as blandly as I could, “I’m Kali. Also thirteen.” I was not waiting for her to question me. Why was she asking what she already knew?
She looked me up and down, that sickly smile not faltering. “Perfect. Why don’t you wait in the hallway while I check up on your friend here? I think you will feel more comfortable completing the tests on your own.”
Alora’s eyes widened in a plea not to leave her.
“It’s all going to be okay,” Rising from my seat, I whispered to her, “We’ll be okay.”
I could feel the doctor observing me as I walked out, measuring me up, determining my value, my future.
I slumped on the plastic with metal legs chair, the first in the row lining the wall, and scraped at the speck of red between my legs. Was it someone’s blood? Never mind. It flaked off without a trace, as if it’d never marred the white surface to begin with.
Which was why I was here. To finish what I’d decided on.
I’d be fine afterward. The test results didn’t matter.
A lie. That was a lie.
The results mattered. I knew they did.
With my forearms resting on my thighs, my head hanging, I willed my heart to cease its attempts to jump out of my chest and curled my pinkie in a count.
One. Alora had a guy interested in her who worked in a lab. In exchange for being with him, he’d said he’d mark her test sample as negative—not fertile—even if the results came back positive.
Two. He’d told her she needed to know her sample’s number. They didn’t put names on them for a reason, so no one in the lab would know who the samples belonged to.
Three. I’d promised Alora I’d find out her sample’s number if she wouldn’t be able to do it herself. I owed her. I’d owed her for the last year.
Four. As Alora went in first, she’d create a distraction later to get the doctor out of the room. It was my responsibility to find her sample and memorize the numbers.
Five. I was afraid for my life.
I stared at the thumb curling around my fist. This last part hadn’t been in our original plan.
The loud click warned of a door swinging open. Pale as a ghost, Alora floated out of the room while the doctor stretched her bright pink lips wide at me. My insides recoiled, and a gag tickled the back of my throat.
She held the door for me to pass. “Come on in, Kali.”
Unwillingly, I did.
“Why don’t you lie down? I’ll be with you shortly.”
Her command crawled up my arms in goosebumps, the tiny hairs bristling from the foreboding sense that my life was about to change.
I climbed onto what resembled a leather chair with its long legs straightened all the way, kind of like a bed. No, a table. A table where they prodded you, wanting to find out if you could have children or not.
The screeching of the door grated on my ears as the doctor returned.
When her gloved fingers landed on me and latex pinched my hair, I shut my eyes and prayed.
For the first time in my life, I prayed.
To anyone who would listen, human, demon, or god.
I didn’t care. I pleaded for my life, begged for my freedom, swore to do anything they wished for if they’d take me away from here.
I imagined a night sky, each star flickering with a color in response to my prayers. Red, a demon, its bared teeth dripping blood. Silver, a god with a crown, ignoring my pleas. Blue, a human drowning in the night’s ocean between the other two.
Please, please, please.
But the stars ceased their shimmering, and the harsh light overhead seared my eyelids. The gods had turned away from me. No one was coming to save me. The chill emanating from the leather seat under me slithered inside me, into my veins, and burrowed so deep it froze my bones into hard icicles.
Fine. If the gods wouldn’t do anything, I’d do it myself. I’d become one. A god. And I’d strike their ranks for ignoring me. I wasn’t the forgiving type.
“We’re all done.” A wrong pink smile framed Lamia’s statement.
That was what it was. Wrong.
A thump ricocheted from the walls, and our heads snapped toward the door. I abruptly sat up, ready to bolt. It sounded like a body had slumped to the ground.
But then it hit me.
Alora was probably completing her part of our plan.
“Wait right here,” she ordered, then hurried into the hallway.
I jumped down and grabbed the folders she’d left spread wide open on the pristine table. Flipping the pages, I perused the information—date of birth, location, heritage, genetics. Not a mention of the samples.
No, no, no.
A tablet device glinted in the sunlight, and I grabbed it, praying it would be unlocked. This time, the gods listened. Maybe my threat had worked.