Toys

Chapter 30

How strange it was-being among these humans, pretending to be one of them.

After I settled Shanna on the mattress, she began to tell her friends what had happened with the Betas, speaking haltingly in a human street dialect I could barely follow.

Their looks toward me became cautiously admiring. “How can we repay you?” Corliss finally asked.

“I just need to rest awhile. That’s thanks enough,” I said. “I’ll be on my way soon.”

“Stay here as long as you wish,” said Corliss. “You’re a friend now. And I can see you’ve been injured yourself.”

“I’ll be fine. Honestly.”

I walked farther back into the building-an abandoned warehouse with the doors and windows long since gone. There was no electricity, no running water, but at least it was shelter from the rain and wind that had started outside-not to mention any Elite satellites and drones that might be scanning the city for signs of me.

I stepped into a large room nearby and found ragged children huddled there-playing with, of all things, Jessica and Jacob dolls. It seemed ironic that these street urchins had been able to steal the most sought-after toys of the season-but that wasn’t what bothered me. When I really thought about it, there was something just wrong about dolls that acted out everything we did… but were only a foot or so tall. It was just weird to me. Also, dolls used to be about children exercising their imaginations, about real play. How were children going to exercise their minds if the dolls did the playing by themselves?

“Those things aren’t good for you,” I told the kids. “They’ll rot your brains.”

“If you’re so smart, what are you doing here?” one of them snapped back.

The others giggled and muttered in their coarse slang, insulting me. It was disturbing to see people so hard-edged at such a young age. No doubt some of them would go on to become Betas-if they survived that long.

But I was actually heartened by the kids’ smart-aleck reaction. There was surprising verve, an underlying vitality, in this human ghetto. The skunks were a little more clever, and more rational, than I’d formerly believed. I was also detecting kindness alongside the cruelty, passion within the desperation.

Strains of music drifted through the air-and I caught, in the shadows, the whispering, giggling sounds of lovemaking.

I finally found a quiet corner to settle in. I needed to rest and regenerate. A few minutes later, Corliss brought me a basket of food-a half loaf of fresh bread, along with scraps of cheese and vegetables. My stomach growled like an animal’s. I couldn’t remember ever being so hungry, and though part of me shuddered at the thought of eating nutritionally unbalanced, germy, possibly toxin-laden human food, my mouth watered at the sight and smell of it.

I took a couple of tentative chews and then began tearing into what was my breakfast, lunch, and dinner of the day.

But simply eating their food didn’t make me one of them. Every time the words he’s human resurfaced in my mind, I shuddered and shook my head in confusion. What had happened to me, and to my family? I couldn’t be human-I wasn’t.

And that’s when I heard Shanna’s bloodcurdling screams.