Designed : A Young Adult Dystopian Romance

Heath slid into the front seat beside me. The door shushed closed behind him, enclosing us in the quiet cab of the van.

After a moment he said, “I can’t do that.”

“There’s got to be a way around the security,” I argued. “Maybe you could talk to your dad, and—”

Heath did not start driving but turned to me, pinning me with his hard gaze. “You don’t understand. I can’t take you there.”

He inhaled and let out a long, shaky breath. “I can’t even go back there myself.”

“What? Why? What do you mean?”

“Not after what you’ve told me—about the recall, about the weird changes in your friends.”

I blinked. “You’re so morally offended you’re going to quit your job?”

I was flattered, but it didn’t exactly make sense to me.

“No.” Heath paused and drew in a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “I wasn’t taking Daniel to Gideon for a take-your-brother to work day—or to visit my dad.”

Another long hesitation. “I was taking him in for the recall.”

My head jerked back. “He has nanos, too?”

Now that I thought about it, I should have realized it sooner. Daniel was only eight. There was no way he could have survived the lingering virus without major medical intervention.

But then… how had he even been born in the first place?

How was his mom not infertile like the rest of the population?

“Wait, I thought you said the virus was still out there—that every living person had been exposed. Was your mom immune to Zika-Two?”

Heath shook his head. “No. She wasn’t. No one’s immune.”

He glanced back over his shoulder to make sure his brother was still sleeping in the back seat.

“He’s a Genesapien, Reya. A Gebby. He was created by Gideon.”

Now my head whipped around to face the sleeping child I’d spent the day with, the boy I’d found so charming, so endearing. When I spoke, my breath was a hushed mix of awe and astonishment.

“I can’t believe it. He seems so real.”

I’d never hated the Genesapiens like the super-religious Pioutisticals did. They regarded them as soulless creatures who were wide open to demonic possession or some such nonsense.

But I’d always thought about Gebbies as sort of blanks, little more than organic robots suitable for dangerous manual labor or monotonous factory jobs—or the unsavory ones like the sex trade.

I hadn’t even known child Gebbies existed. Daniel seemed as human as any person I’d ever met, truly a flesh and blood boy.

“He is real. As real as you or me.”

Heath’s voice held a fierce note, but it softened when he added, “I love him. And I don’t want them changing him into some sort of obedient automaton. It makes me sick to think about it. Nanos are part of his makeup. I can’t take him in there, but if I don’t, I can’t show up back at work.”

He brought a hand to his forehead, massaging his temples as if trying to soothe a sudden flare of pain. My hand itched to reach out to him, caress the back of his neck or at least pat his shoulder.

Instead I laced my fingers together and planted my hands in my lap.

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. Quitting my job’s not going to fix it. Gideon knows about Daniel and exactly where to find him. Every Gebbie is registered. If Mom or I don’t take him in, Gideon will send someone for him.”

“Maybe you could talk to him, explain to him how special Daniel is?”

Heath barked a humorless laugh. “He’s not going to listen to me. His attitude toward the Gebbies is that they’re a product, no different from any other product he manufactures. Besides, he’s literally a genius, and he owns everything. His connections with the government are deep and go to the top. Gideon does whatever he wants. He thinks he’s above any law, whether manmade or natural.”

“What about your dad? Surely, he could help. You could talk to him, explain to him what’s happening with the kids on the base, tell him about your fears for Daniel.”

He shook his head. “No. He and Gideon are of the same mind. He’s the one who told me to bring Daniel in the first place. He’ll think I’m being silly and paranoid—he’s not exactly a great listener. I can’t risk it.”

“Wow.” I let out a long gust of air.

My insides were trembling as if it was the dead of winter.

“Now I’m not sure what to do, either. If I go marching in there, they’ll probably strap me down and force the upgrade on me, too. My nanos must be what set off the sensors at the guard house.”

We sat in silence, both staring out the windshield which had begun to spot with raindrops.

Finally, Heath spun in his seat to face me, a spark of wildness in his eyes.

“I’ve heard of a place. Supposedly there are others—like you—teenagers who left other military bases. I never understood before why they’d run. Maybe the same thing was happening on their bases. Maybe kids were being changed there, too. Anyway, I’ve heard rumors of some sort of sanctuary where they go. People call it the Haven.”

“Really? A sanctuary?”

I was astonished, not only by the thought of other runaways like me from other bases, but also by how much Heath seemed to know. Life on the outside apparently allowed for a much greater flow of information.

Why had we been kept in the dark about so much on the base?

A sinister sense of foreboding swirled around the edges of my consciousness. Suddenly a trip out of state seemed like a very good idea.

“How do you know all these things?”

“About the haven? People talk, you know, at the corporation.” He smiled. “Clearly you’ve never eaten in a factory lunchroom.”

No, but I had eaten in a school lunchroom every day for years. If the gossip in Gideon Corp’s lunchroom was anything similar, there wasn’t much you didn’t hear about.

“So where is it? Do you have any idea?” I asked.

“Supposedly the Haven is in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia, in or near Shenandoah National Park. By highway that’d be about a four-hour drive from here. But I’m not sure it even exists. It’s only a rumor.”

“Rumors usually have at least a kernel of truth to them. And it’s all we’ve got at this point. I’m willing to try for it if you are.”

Heath seemed to contemplate for a minute. “Well, we can’t take this van. The company will track it when Daniel and I don’t come home tonight. We’d have to travel another way.”

“Oh. How?”

He nodded overhead to the long trains silently zipping by in the night. “We could take the hyperloop to Charlottesville then ride a tram into the park from there. But you’d need I.D., and I’m betting you don’t have any.”

I nodded and sighed. “You’re right. So now what?”

“Now…” He gave me a tired-looking smile. “… we go see my friend Syd.”