Busted Flush

She ran through the corridors of the Biological Isolation and Containment Center, a facility carved into the caverns of an old salt mine deep under southeastern New Mexico. The corridors glowed with light from fiber-optic skylights connected to an array of heliostats on the surface. The skylights shone brightly; one could forget that the desert was half a kilometer overhead.

As both a voluntary committal and a trusty, Niobe had the run of the place. It was the nation’s foremost biological research center, where an army of doctors and scientists struggled to cure hundreds of patients of their afflictions. The facility resembled a wagon wheel tipped on its side: a central hub, with radial spokes connecting it to an outer ring. In places, the outer ring connected to the original warren of mine tunnels, some large enough to swallow a freight train. The pie sections of the wheel were color-coded, like a Trivial Pursuit piece.

Niobe ran around the rim of the wheel. This wing (minimum security, voluntary committals) was decorated in shades of green, complete with oil paintings of forests and verdant hillsides. The corridors turned orange and red as she approached one of the medical wings.

Her tail caught an orderly’s medicine cart as she skidded around the corner toward the infirmary. The cart flipped. Hundreds of pills skittered along the floor.

Over her shoulder, she yelled, “Sorry!”

“Damn it, Genetrix . . .”

Half the staff thought that was her real name. Genetrix. The Brood Mother.

The connection to Xerxes strengthened when she entered the infirmary. But still their telepathic link felt staticky, like a radio tuned slightly off-station.

Niobe weaved through a maze of EEGs, EKGs, respirators, dialysis machines, and still other devices constructed specifically for her children. Doctors and nurses surrounded the oversized infant incubator where Xerxes lay, working frantically to keep him alive.

A tangle of tubes and wires snaked from Xerxes’s body to the machines. His skin, smooth and rosy-pink just this morning, hung waxy and sallow from sunken cheeks. Rheumy cataracts leaked sour-milk tears down his face. Even the thick black head of hair he’d styled into a little Elvis pompadour to make her laugh was coming out in clumps.

She had promised to take him to Las Vegas.

Mom? I’m scared.

“I’m here now,” she said. “Don’t be scared, okay?”

“Mom . . .”

“Hush, kiddo.”

A single thought, through a blizzard of psychic static: I love you, Mom.

And then Xerxes was gone. The blanket sagged, empty but for a slurry of organic molecules. The ammonia-and-hay odor of dead homunculus wafted out of the incubator. Niobe sobbed. One nurse hugged her tightly, patting her on the back and murmuring encouragements, while another collected the dead child’s remains in a sample jar.

The chimes sounded again, louder this time. A low voice on the PA system. “Genetrix to therapy two. Genetrix to therapy two, please.”

She didn’t want to go. But Xerxes’s death had slipped a knife into her gut, and every secret, selfish thought gave it a vicious twist. Regularity was crucial. Generations yet unborn—but cherished no less—would drop like mayflies, if not for BICC’s rigid methodologies. And so she went, for the sake of her future family.

Therapy room two mimicked the layout of Niobe’s own quarters, except for the larger bed (a California king-size mattress) and the curtains along one wall.

Christian was seated on the edge of the bed. He looked up when she walked in. “Where were you? They’re going nuts in there.” He gestured at the curtains with the long, knobby fingers that always felt warm and strong on her hips.

“With Xerxes.” She wiped her eyes. “He passed. Just now.”

He grunted, pulling the shirt of his BICC uniform over his head. The soft blond hair on his body didn’t catch the lights, so his chest looked slick and bare.

“He was scared,” she said, walking behind a bamboo privacy screen in the corner. Niobe had insisted on the screen. As she draped her sweatshirt over the top of the screen, she added, “He would have liked it if you visited.”

“Who?”

“Xerxes.”

“Oh.”

The bristly hairs at the base of her tail snagged the waistband on her sweatpants. As she worked them free, she added, “You could come, next time.” Christian said nothing.

She scooted under the covers while Christian had his back turned. The linens made scratchy noises as she pulled the sheets around her. She wished she had shaved her legs, wished the wild card hadn’t given her pig hair.

The nightstand clunked as Christian dropped a prescription bottle into the drawer. He popped a pill in his mouth. She pretended not to see any of it. The pills made her feel ugly. Uglier.

She lifted the covers for him, but he paused to draw the curtains, revealing a long mirror along the far wall.

“Maybe we can leave the curtains closed, just once.”