CHAPTER 4
Unhappiness is a disease, and I discovered the cure.
GREGORY SAVILE, INVENTOR OF BLISS
The sun of my adulthood rises painfully. I toss in my sheets, only vaguely aware I’m dreaming as I relive the four hellish minutes when a Blue almost killed me.
I didn’t know Charles Blackwell personally, but locker-room gossip painted a clear picture.
He was born into a high-ranking military family, took up fencing as a kid, and quickly rose to become a top-ranked junior Blue fencer.
I also learned that his dad was a nasty bastard, an old, leathery bull who demanded perfection from his only son.
In hindsight, maybe that’s why Charles snapped, why his anger burned so fiercely when I beat him in the semifinal duel by a narrow one-point margin.
I’ll never forget his eyes—steel blue and blazing, filled with something darker than defeat—as they fixed on the scoreboard in the Hall of Arms fencing arena.
But I never expected Charles would try to kill me.
I was alone in the women’s locker room, dressing for a family dinner to celebrate my victory, when he walked in.
His brown curls stuck flatly to his scalp, still sweaty from our duel, and his square-jawed face was calm.
But the way he balanced on the balls of his feet, hands twitching at his sides, made me realize why he’d come.
I bolted toward my sports bag, where the hilt of my saber stuck out of the side pocket like a fang.
Just before grabbing it, I hesitated. Was I allowed to fight back?
By law, low-citizens could only fight high-citizens in supervised settings with rules and witnesses.
But this situation? I wasn’t sure it counted.
While I hesitated, Charles acted. He charged through the locker room like a battering ram, using the full force of his body, and slammed into me.
I’d taken plenty of hits during boxing drills with my defense instructor, but never like this.
My head banged against the lockers as we hit the floor, and for a moment, the ceiling lights spun hazily around me.
Warm, sticky blood pooled from my scalp before I felt a red, slamming pain in my skull.
Charles forced me down, his knees pinning my arms. The more I struggled, the more the pain kept me in place. Burning. Numbing. My bones felt like they might snap under the weight of his body. I couldn’t break free, no matter how wildly I thrashed; each push was like hitting a wall of steel.
The worst realization of my life hit me then.
I could win in an arena with rules and referees.
I could win when I had time to plan and could focus my strength on the most strategic attack.
I’d already beaten Charles in a fencing duel, less than twenty minutes earlier.
But here, in hand-to-hand combat, when it was kill or be killed, I was no match for him.
His fingers wrapped around my neck and squeezed with such force I was sure he intended to strangle me. My vision blurred, my eyes straining as my lungs expelled a ragged hiss. Charles leaned in, his lips curling into a cruel smile, as if he’d known I was the weaker one and was relishing the proof.
My body started losing all sensation, and I noticed the strangest things: a toilet running in one of the stalls, a silk robe hanging on the locker above me, and Charles’s canines.
One tooth was longer and sharper than the other.
A small detail. Insignificant. But enough to hold my focus and keep me awake.
Fight back. Fight back or die.
Adrenaline surged, unleashing a brutal burst of strength I didn’t know I had.
I drove my head forward like a hammer. It was pure coincidence that, just as I did, Charles relaxed his grip and lowered his head to speak, possibly to gloat over his win.
I’d never know. The force of our heads colliding was enough to break his nose.
I heard the satisfying crack before a bolt of pain shot through my forehead.
His weight shifted as he cupped his broken nose.
It was all I needed to free one hand. I swung at his throat, a move my defense instructor had coached me on countless times.
I felt Charles’s windpipe crunch under my knuckles before he collapsed off me.
I wasn’t sure if he was down for good. A throat hit could be deadly, but I didn’t waste time checking his condition.
I shoved away from his writhing body, twisted onto my belly, and reached for my saber. My fingers closed around the hilt, and I activated it with a snap. The blade shot out in a gleaming flash of graphene, slicing through the flesh of his forearm.
Charles recoiled ferociously, like an animal. Then he was on his feet, his breath coming in hoarse, broken gasps.
I staggered to my feet, dizziness rushing in.
As blood streamed into my eyes and black spots spun at the edges of my vision, I watched him rip the door off one of the lockers.
Blood streaked his face like war paint, mixing with mine into a gruesome blue-and-green mask.
The heavy soles of his fencing boots thudded against the floor, each step like a war drum, and I knew then I had no choice.
Kill or be killed.
The sound that tore from my throat wasn’t a snarl or even a scream, but a wild, primal cry born from the pure terror of almost certain death.
I grasped the saber firmly, holding the blade in a high outside guard as Charles advanced, the locker door raised like a shield. I waited, knees bent and ready, before swinging in a whirling arc of shimmering graphene.
First, I knocked the locker door from his grip. Then I aimed to kill.
I wake with a ragged moan, curled in a defensive position, tangled in sweat-soaked sheets.
My heart pounds in my ears, drowning out the low rumble of the jet.
I roll over and draw back the curtains beside the bed.
It’s still dark. The storm rages on, lightning cracking across the sky, wind pounding the hull, but Harrison’s jet glides smoothly, without turbulence.
Crawling to the edge of the bed, I wipe sweat from my face with the hem of my nightgown. I breathe deeply, inhaling through my nose and exhaling through my mouth, trying to push away the images, but the dream still lingers. It isn’t something I wake from; it wakes with me.
At this point, I’ve relived the attack hundreds of times.
But tonight, for the first time, it occurs to me that Charles and I never spoke during our semifinal duel, or even in the locker room.
Maybe that’s why the memory sometimes feels surreal, as if I didn’t kill a man but a ghost. And maybe now that ghost is haunting me.
The bedside lamp switches on, casting a silvery glow across the room. I shuffle into the lavatory, grab a bottle from my toiletry bag, and pour nine white pills into my hand; they’re the vitamins I have to take twice daily without fail.
Blues have to take a lot more.
Nothing, it turns out, comes for free. Every genetic enhancement requires specialized supplements that keep us alive by compensating for what our engineered bodies can’t sustain.
Our accelerated metabolisms burn through nutrients quickly, and our hyperactive immune systems produce waste that demands constant antioxidant cleansing.
The irony is almost laughable. The traits that make us superior to past humans—denser muscles, sharper minds, longer lifespans—also make us vulnerable.
Without supplements, we weaken quickly, and our advantages become deadly liabilities.
The good news is we’ve never experienced a supplement shortage.
I chew the vitamins dry, the bitter chalkiness sticking to my tongue. Back in the bedroom, I pause, weighing whether to shower first or have breakfast, when a loud knock sounds at the door.
“Lore—open up,” Charlotte cries.
The tremor in her voice makes me fling open the door before asking a single question.
She’s standing in the hallway, dressed in a green silk-satin gown that seems to flow down her body like water.
Her makeup is dewy and bright, her hair swept up with an emerald comb.
But her breath comes out short, as if she just escaped a party that ended in a shootout.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“It’s better if Harry tells you.”
I rush down the hallway into the lounge, where Harrison sits cross-legged on one of the sofas. Like me, he’s still in his pajamas, his hair tousled from sleep, and his face is paler than the porcelain espresso cup in his hand.
“Lore, you should sit.”
“I don’t want to sit, Harry. Tell me what’s going on.”
The deep, tense ridges in his face reveal what he won’t say.
He turns on a large holographic screen in the lounge, opens the internet, and pulls up The Civilized Voice’s website.
The breaking news story features a grinning photo of Dad under the headline, BLISS BANNED: AN UNHAPPY ENDING FOR THE HAPPY DRUG?
Cold shock courses through my body, turning into chills as it reaches my arms. The switch—the one only high-citizens are allowed to flip—has just been flipped by a low-citizen. And it was Dad who did it.
“Play the video, Harry,” Charlotte urges.
Harrison clicks on the latest report from Benjamin Bogart.
The video shows Bogart seated behind a desk in a gold-and-chrome broadcasting studio in Charleston City, flanked by two statues of double-headed eagles.
The love-struck smile from the photos of him wrapped in Scarlet Du Pont’s arms has vanished, replaced by a solemn expression that’s as stiff as his purple pinstripe suit.