Contaminated 2: Mercy Mode (31 page)

“It was my dad. I know it.”

“Velvet …” He sighs, but says no more. He holds me instead, and I let him, because I love him and we have to stick together. We might be in the green, but we aren’t out of trouble. Not yet, not entirely.

We’re considered refugees, so we’ve been put into one of the tent cities springing up in mall parking lots. We’ve been given job assignments, new clothes, food rations. Opal is going to school again. We’ve been vaccinated, fumigated,
medicated, and indoctrinated. We’ve been tested for Contamination, but whatever makes me special doesn’t show up on their tests. Inconclusive.

I guess I’m lucky.

But it’s only a matter of time before they figure out what I am. What I think Opal must be, too, if Dr. Donna succeeded in Contaminating her. Every day, I look for signs of it, but Opal is who she’s always been. Funny, sarcastic, smart, kind of a brat. If she is Contaminated, she’s got it the same way I do, and I’m cynical enough to believe that there are people on this side of the barriers who’d want to use us in just the same way Dr. Donna did.

For now, though, I sink into the stiff, unyielding cot and listen to the sound of Dillon’s breathing go soft and slow. Opal was asleep when we came to bed—she’s still eating like a pig and outgrowing all her clothes, so I think she’s going through yet another growth spurt or something. I can’t sleep. There’s too much going on in my mind.

The people here are nice. They tell us that, soon enough, after a while, we’ll be allowed to leave the tent city and find real jobs and housing in the green zone. But I’m not sure I believe them. It’s the people in the green who are sending all their Connies into the black, after all.

I try to relax and let sleep find me, and at last, my eyelids start to drift closed. Tomorrow, as Scarlett O’Hara says, is another day, and while I don’t have to wear a dress made of curtains, I sure won’t be hungry, either. I might have to
wear hand-me-downs and eat bland, cafeteria-slop kind of food, but I’m warm and dry, with a roof of sorts over my head and people who I love near me. We are safe.

At least, we’re supposed to be.