here in the Children’s Home when she was maybe three? She’d been wearing a diaper and a dirty T-shirt that had a picture of a sunset and the word Calypso on it. I’d been taking care of her ever since. I gave her another apple and she ate it, expertly avoiding the bruise.
Moke always said that Calypso looked like a match, right before you light it. She had curly, bright red hair, really white skin, freckles, and green eyes. I’d taught her to read and write her letters, and Clete was still teaching her numbers. Moke let her tag along when he snuck into the abandoned gym between here and McCallum Incarceration. He said she could climb anything and lift almost as much weight as he could, and he was almost twice as tall and three times as heavy, at least.
“Want me to check your back?” I asked, and she nodded. I got closer and pulled out the neck of her shirt. Peering down, I saw her small black antennas, four of them, arranged in two neat rows against her white, white skin. I reached a few fingers down and stroked them lightly.
“Can you feel that?” I asked.
“Yeah. I can feel more and more,” she said, rummaging in my backpack for something else to eat.
“Okay, they’re about maybe fifteen centimeters long now?” I said. “Should we cut little holes in the back of your shirts, or do you want them more protected? Gotta say, you’re lookin’ a little insecty.”
Calypso grinned, liking the idea. “I want them to be more protected,” she decided.
“Good enough,” I said, and jumped off the table to throw our trash away.
Take that, I thought, pretending I was throwing away my parents. These lab rats are my family now.
CHAPTER 8
“Victory! We have victory!” McCallum shouted at us from at least four screens.
“Yay,” Moke said sarcastically.
“Stay still,” I said, holding the clippers away until he quit moving.
It was family haircut night—we all kept it pretty short. Why? Because we were on the edge of fashion? No. Because of lice. We lived next door to a prison, and the less hair you had, the better.
“My citizens,” McCallum said, “today we have achieved a goal I’ve been working toward for two years! In a brilliant sting operation devised by myself, our own CD Police Officers have apprehended the worst of the worst.”
“Oh, he was squawking about this earlier,” Clete said. Sometimes he talked out loud, but not aimed at anyone, you know? Not looking at anyone. We didn’t know how to respond sometimes. “They caught some huge criminal.”
I looked up. “One of the Six?”
“No,” said Clete, facing the wall, rocking slightly on his feet. “Someone else. He killed a bunch of kids and some other stuff.”
“Whoa,” I said, pushing Moke out of the chair.
“They’re bringing him here,” Calypso said suddenly, her eyes bright. She looked off in the distance and held up one finger.
Twenty seconds later we heard the whining sirens of cop cars. A minute after that their flashing green and yellow lights flashed across our faces.
“How bad is this guy?” I wondered out loud.
“This is the worst, biggest criminal we’ve ever caught!” McCallum shouted, almost like he was answering me specifically. “He’s going into our maximum-security lockdown at McCallum Incarceration. We do prison right!”
“Huh,” I said, mystified. “And he’s not one of the Six. Amazing.”
“They’re in the courtyard,” Moke said, and we all ran to the big windows overlooking what passed as our play yard.
A green police van, siren and lights still going, stopped and two cops got out. They unlocked the van and yanked out their prisoner.
“He’s gonna be a troll,” Rain said, watching from under her hood. “Guy like that… he just sounds nasty.”
Suddenly I gasped. “Ridley!” My hawk had just come down and landed on the creep’s shoulder! She’d never done that to anyone but me. “Oh, my god, she’s gonna take his eyes out!” I predicted with excitement.
“Go, Ridley, go!” I shouted, urging my bird on. I knew I sounded just like the crowd the other night, excited at the idea of blood. But this guy had killed kids. He deserved whatever he got.
But Ridley didn’t attack. She pushed her beak through his black hair, then took off into the night. My mouth open, I watched as the worst of the worst turned around. Of course he could see us—we were standing in front of big, brilliantly lit windows. Quickly I pushed my lab rats aside and flicked our lights off.
“Why’d you do that?”