† Sage †

“She’s not pure.”

“What did you say?” My tongue was dry and I swallowed hard, wishing I hadn’t turned down the vitamin infused water the nurse offered in the waiting room. Dr. Bradley’s office was too clean. The walls were bare and lacking any sort of personal touch. Despite the minimalist design intended, it was suffocating.

Breathe.

I needed air.

“I’m sorry, Sage.” Dr. Bradley lowered his voice respectfully. Not out of respect for me though. His loyalty lay with my father and probably died with him too. “The tests aren’t wrong. I rechecked them myself. Her bloodwork came back with an anomaly and I’m required by law to report this.”

No, you aren’t. This wasn’t possible. It should have been me. Not her.

I twisted my hands in my lap, still trying to process what was happening. “That’s not always true.”

“Your situation is different.” Dr. Bradley steepled his fingers under his chin and sighed. “A slight variation of optimal brain function can be swept under the rug as long as the patient continues to take medication and is willing to conform. She won’t be able to hide this.”

Sub-optimal brain function. A dysfunctional member of society.

These were the terms that I’d carried secretly my whole life. But not Coral. My sister was perfect. If she wasn’t, why was I even doing this?

Dr. Bradley read too much into my silence. “And how are you, Sage? Are you taking your medications? Any blackouts recently?”

“I’m fine,” I lied through my teeth, staring at the charts spread

across his desk. “But there has to be some kind of mistake. She’s almost eighteen. If there was a genetic anomaly, you would have caught it by now. So that means she can hide it. She can fight this system too.”

The great city of Ethica and it’s perfect bloodlines. I was seriously going to throw up.

“I’m afraid not.” He scooped up the charts and tapped the folders against the desk to straighten them. Paper trails. He was still old school, but they’d be entered in the database soon and after that, there was no escape.

“What is it?” My mind was still spinning and I focused on not ripping the papers from his hand to burn them. Think of ice water. I was disassociating, going to the place that had kept Coral and me safe for all these years, but I would figure this out.

I’d take care of her.

There wasn’t another option.

“A mutant variation of the lycanthrope sequence. It’s a miracle she’s avoided detection for this long, but from what we understand, a human parent breeding with a…” the derogatory term died on his lips and he coughed to clear his throat, “an other can cause the offspring to have latent abilities.”

This has to be a joke. I looked Dr. Bradley straight in the eyes, wondering if the dry old man was screwing with me. “Even if the abilities were latent, you would have seen something like this in her DNA at birth or any other time she’s come in for care.”

“She hasn’t come in for medical treatment that required bloodwork until now.” He shrugged like I should have seen this coming. “And your father was the attending physician for Coral’s delivery and Melinda’s subsequent death so he would have been able to falsify her documents.”

Like he did for you. Dr. Bradley didn’t say that part, but the accusation hung in the air as he put the charts in his briefcase.

Except this wasn’t anything like what my father did for me.

“How long do we have?” My vision was starting to blur and I pushed back my chair, needing to get out of there fast before I caused a scene. Later, there’d be time to process this all.

Right now, I had to get to Coral and make sure she would be safe. “I’ll give you until tomorrow morning to get your affairs in order.”

He wouldn’t meet my eyes. Now you have the decency to be ashamed? I

knew what my father’s final request had been of the man and this definitely wasn’t it.

“Thank you.” The real miracle was how I was able to keep the anger out of my voice at that moment.

“Sage, wait,” he called me back as I turned to rush from the room. “I’m going to put a word in with the council and have her relocated to one of the nicer research facilities. She’ll be able to continue her education and contribute to the advancement of science. It’s really the best option for

someone in her situation.”

“No need.” I smiled sweetly, still trying not to break. There was no way in hell anyone was putting my sister in one of those buildings where she’d be tested and prodded, treated like some sort of freak, and I’d never see her again. “I’ll take care of this myself like I’ve always done.”

The words were a slap across his face and I took a bitter sense of delight in watching his pale skin blanch further. Normally, I wasn’t this cold.

But normal had gone out the window a whole ten minutes ago.

“I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this.” He dug out a keyring from his pocket and unlocked the top drawer in his desk, pulling out a worn manilla envelope. “Your father asked me to hang onto this for you in case anything should ever happen.”

Whatever words were in that package were about ten years too late, but I took it anyway. “Tomorrow morning, correct?”

“I’ll wait until the clinic opens for the day.” Dr. Bradley nodded as I turned on my heel to leave. “Good luck out there.”

The office door slammed behind me as I ran from the waiting room, pretending not to hear the relief in his parting words.

*

Ethica’s streets stretched out to either side as the whoosh of the sliding glass doors closed to the hospital. With the advancement of science, there is no need for illness. The words on the neon eco-friendly bus station sign were a stark reminder that Dr. Bradley was another fading ghost in an outdated profession.

Even his receptionist had been excited to see a real live person enter the office. I hoped she wasn’t eavesdropping on the life altering conversation, ready to jump onto social media with the latest gossip.

Was patient confidentiality still a thing? I guess it didn’t matter now.

The cool artificial breeze lifted my hair from my shoulders as I walked, drying the anxious sweat on the back of my neck.

Ethica. Always the perfect temperature. Not too hot, not too cold. Everything just right for the perfect citizens that smiled my way while I passed them in a hurry. Once upon a time I’d worried that I would never measure up and it had bothered me then, but I’d long since grown past caring.

Coral was still young though. She didn’t deserve that kind of life. Maybe it was better this way. She wouldn’t have to hide her true identity. We’d leave before anyone ever found out.

I slid into my solar-powered KIA that was parked on the street. It wasn’t much to look at, but she’d never let me down. My hands shook as I fumbled in the center console for my oils. It took a few tries before I unplugged the stopper and breathed in the calming scents.

Don’t freak out.

While the smell of lavender settled my racing heart, I clicked off autopilot and guided the vehicle down the familiar streets, still in a numb state of shock that this was really happening.

The worst part was that I wanted to laugh at the irony of it all. This would have been my fate too if the Board of Civility had found out about my slightly altered neurological scores. Even with my father’s coaching and the medications he never made me take, it was still a daily struggle to rein in my emotions. I always knew the clock was ticking.

But not like this.

How could I have missed it? I racked my brain as the business district whizzed by, traffic moving efficiently on the busy roads.

By the time Melinda, my step-mother, had come along, I’d been through the worst of my training and could pretty much pass for normal. She was decent from what I could remember. A student at the university who wanted to learn about medicine. My father had loved her so I did too. His curse? Loving women that died.

Melinda’s curse? Well, as it turns out, she was hiding something really big.

The manilla envelope sat at the top of my purse which I’d flung onto the passenger seat in my haste to get away. Did he know? He must have.

But he should have told me instead of dying too and leaving me alone to take care of a sister that had mutant DNA.

Coral was going to lose her shit.

I inhaled another steadying breath and urged my little car to go faster. The city gardens on the opposite street called to me like they always did. The officials were the only ones with windows that overlooked the manicured beauty while the rest of our dwellings had to settle for holograph screens, but we were free to visit the gardens whenever we wanted.

My fingers itched, aching to touch the tiny rosebuds that would be forming now in early spring. I wanted to stop and say goodbye to the memorial trees grown from the ashes of our loved ones. I’d find peace if I could take a walk through the only place that was able to fake the sensation of the natural world we’d lost. There were a few things I’d miss about our city, but none so much as that.

Tears welled in my eyes as the reality hit. I was really leaving.

Except in all my wild nightmares about this day coming, never did I imagine having to drag my sister with me.

There had to have been signs I missed. She would have told me if she’d known. I mean, she knew everything about me and we didn’t normally lie to each other. She had a temper, but so did I. It wasn’t too far out of the ordinary. She fought against the regulations, but what teenager hasn’t? Sometimes she could be possessive and didn’t like to share…

I wiped my tears and chided myself, knowing I was stretching to find signs that I knew nothing about. The information we had on mutants was probably useless. Anything gleaned from the research facilities was on a need-to-know basis and the propaganda they fed us in school was as outdated as the Bio-Clense years.

I’d long ago learned to question everything they taught. That’s what happens when you don’t meet standard assessment scores and live with the fear that someone will find out you don’t belong here. There has to be a normal range of temperament to make a perfect society.

And Ethica was perfect. It was safe and clean and afforded its citizens a good way of life.

skin.

I punched in the code to the parking garage as fear pinpricked my

The Fringes weren’t that bad, right?

People survived out there.

My phone chimed with a notification as I drove my car into its spot

and an instant mini-heart attack had me reaching for my oils again. But Dr. Bradley wouldn’t lie…

Would he?

This was a hell of a day.

With the calming scents filling the car, I swiped the lock screen picture of Coral graduating Kindergarten with her cute buckteeth and

skipped over the missed notifications from Meg. Roy had sent a text from work, telling me to cover for the line chef tonight. Like normal, my free

time wasn’t valued because I didn’t have their fancy certificates.

I hovered over the response button, thinking of some excuse to give him that wouldn’t get me fired. I’d busted my ass trying to get this position in the Horston Millennial Kitchens, even though I worked with a bunch of pretentious jerks.

Another slap of reality.

It was all over. Everything I’d worked for. The life I’d created for Coral and me. There was a moment where I wanted to lash out and tell him we weren’t pure enough to set foot in his kitchens; tell him exactly where he and the rest of Ethica citizens could go, but that might set off a chain of events that cost us time.

And time was something we didn’t have anymore.