Awakening by Karen Sandler Read Free Book Online Page A

cocoon of the Kinship, at meetings or in Zul’s Two Rivers home. But wouldn’t that be worse, if he could only show his feelings for her in those closedmeetings, away from the outside world’s eyes? Wouldn’t that hurt her more?
    He’d closed her out of his life, thinking it was best for her. But based on what he saw today, she hadn’t seen it that way at all. He’d hurt her when he’d never meant to.
    He supposed his great-grandfather was right. Devak had had long conversations with Pitamah about Kayla. Devak would go on and on about all the reasons it wouldn’t work between a trueborn and GEN. Pitamah’s only response had been that Devak had to clear the air with Kayla. It wasn’t fair of him to change the rules between them without telling her.
    He brought his attention back to the pockmarked local road of Falt’s central ward. He had just transitioned to the properly maintained cross-sector road when a muted boom echoed across the Plator River.
    “What was that?” Devak asked, pulling over. He tried to see behind him past the row of warrens.
    “Don’t know,” Junjie said. “Hang on.”
    Junjie jumped from the lev-car and ran back to the nearest alley between the warrens. As he trotted back to the AirCloud, a cloud of dust or smoke drifted up above the roofs.
    “I bet it’s a demolition,” Junjie said as he swung back into the lev-car. “Explains why the Brigade was there. Likely rousting everyone from the building Social Benevolence ordered destroyed.”
    “It wasn’t the warren above the safe house?” Horror washed over Devak at the thought.
    “No, it looked like the warehouse opposite. We should get out of here. Don’t want to attract attention.”
    Devak pulled back onto the cross-sector road, picking upspeed on the smoother roadway. He gnawed over the strangeness of the Social Benevolence demolition. SB demolished warrens all the time, because they were falling down from shoddy construction or to build them bigger to house more GENs.
    But the warehouses were simpler construction and SB generally did a better job building them. And they rarely reached full capacity since the trueborn managers of GEN goods always shorted the deliveries, skimming off the top whenever they could. So why would SB destroy one warehouse to build a bigger one?
    A sudden realization stabbed him in the gut. Kayla would surely have been out on the street when the explosives took down the warehouse.
    “What about—” Devak stopped himself before revealing that he’d seen Kayla. “The Brigade would have made sure to get any GENs off the street too, right?”
    “Oh, yeah. The enforcers would have cleared everyone out before a demolition. Probably why they went into the warren, to warn them. That debris can fly pretty far.”
    Devak had to be satisfied with that. He’d find out next time Kayla or Risa called Pitamah. Or maybe after dropping Junjie off he’d call Risa on his wristlink.
    He turned from the north-south highway onto the east-west exchange that led to the mixed sector, Plator. Once they crossed over the border out of Falt, he merged onto the skyway. Below them, housing blocks and green spaces whipped by.
    “Are you and Guru Ling getting anywhere on curing Scratch?” Devak asked. “Or finding a vaccine?”
    Junjie made a face. “Since it’s only the two of us really focusing on it, we haven’t made much progress. There seemto always be much more important trueborn illnesses to be cured.” His voice took on a sarcastic edge. “Like nose warts and toe rashes.”
    “At least the Kinship medics and gene-splicers are working on it too,” Devak said.
    “Which means no one is making restoration serum anymore. Hundreds of Kinship GENs could be free by now if it wasn’t for the Scratch epidemic.”
    GENs like Kayla. Four months ago, she could have had the circuitry in her body dissolved by the restoration serum. But there had been only one dose left, and Kayla let her friend Mishalla have it. Devak