But they were not her.
They were not Seraphina.
"How old are you?" I asked her, picking at a blade of grass so I would have something to do with my hands.
"Sixteen," she answered immediately. Her voice was so mechanical. So stiff. For a moment, I worried that she was actually just another droid. A very advanced droid. But I ruled it out solely based on the way she made me feel. The way she created a thunderstorm in my chest just by being near me.
The way I felt like nothing in my life mattered anymore.
There was no way a Diotech-built robot could do that.
She had to be human.
Whether or not she was real was another story.
I had already convinced myself that I was dreaming. That any minute I would wake up in my lonely apartment, faced with another boring monotonous day of life in this prison.
"How come you're not in school?" I asked her. If she was sixteen, she should have been in our classroom. The Diotech school was divided into three groups: primary, secondary, and tertiary. The primary school was for the youngest kids: three to seven, after they graduated from the compound day care. The secondary school taught the kids aged eight to twelve and the tertiary school was home to us crazy teenagers. After you turned eighteen, you were "encouraged" to leave the compound (which was code for "kicked out"). Unless, of course, you showed significant promise as a scientist, in which case, you'd probably be recruited into one of the advanced training programs. I had no intention of showing significant promise.
She tilted her head in curiosity at me. "School?" she repeated like she'd never heard the word before. And then she did the oddest thing. Her eyes blinked rapidly as if she were a high-speed DigiCam snapping a thousand photos a second.
"School," she recited. "An institution for educating children. A large group of fish or sea mammals."
I burst out laughing. But the laughter was quickly choked down when I saw the mirthless expression on her face. She was not making a joke. She was being completely serious. A massive lump started to form in my throat.
Who was this girl? I was beginning to think the answer was more complicated than I could ever handle.
"Yes," I replied warily. "That's what a school is. Why aren't you in it?"
Her eyes got sort of glassy and she shook her head. "I don't understand the question."
"Never mind." I decided to try another tactic. "What are you doing way out here?"
Once again, her answer came without hesitation, making me feel as though I were asking my slate for a location on a map. "I live here. It is safe here. It's not safe out there."
She pointed to the concrete wall I had scaled. And as she did, I caught sight of a strange mark on the inside of her left wrist. I reached out and caught her hand, pulling it toward me.
She flinched in surprise, but didn't pull away. Her skin was warm. Velvety. Perfect. Touching it shot tiny prickles of fire up my arm. It was a heat that felt familiar and foreign at the same time. And I instantly knew I would crave it long after I let go.
Gently, I turned her palm over, revealing a thin black line etched into her skin, running below the crease of her wrist. It looked a lot like a tattoo. The kind people used to get with ink before they invented flash implants.
When I glanced up, I saw that Seraphina wasn't looking at her wrist, she was looking at me. She was studying me, like a scientist studies a pod of data.
I brushed my fingertip slowly across the length of the mark, marveling at how amazing it felt to touch her. How forbidden it felt. Even though I didn't know why.
"What is this?" I asked, looking into her brilliant purple eyes. Something mesmerizing coursed between us. Words without letters. Music without sound.
"It's a scar," she told me, gently easing her hand out of my grasp. Once again, she spoke in that confident, measured tone. "I've had it since I was a baby."
I knew it was a lie. No scar looked like that. But I didn't care.
She could lie to me or tell me the truth or tell me nothing at all and it wouldn't matter. It wouldn't change how hopelessly I wanted to touch her again.
"What is your name?"
"Lyzender," I told her.
"Lyzender," she repeated and the sound on her lips rendered me useless. "I like Lyzender."
I wanted so desperately to ask what she meant by that. Was she referring to the name itself or to me? But I couldn't bring myself to utter the words in fear that her answer might crush me like a bug on the desert floor.
So I simply replied with a similarly vague statement. "I like Seraphina."
Her lips twitched in what I swore was the hint of a smile, but it vanished quickly. "I did not choose this name."
My smile was big enough for the both of us. "I did not choose mine, either."
Something caught her eye then, and she was on her feet faster than I could process her movement. Her speed startled me. I was convinced I had imagined the blur around the edges of her frame.
No one moves that fast.
I pushed myself up and followed after her. She was standing by the edge of the small yard, crouching down to examine something along the base of the wall.
I knelt down next to her, half afraid and half fascinated. My heart was pounding as I tried to track her line of sight. What was she staring at so intently? What was making her stand so perfectly still?
"What is it?" I asked.
"Shhh."
"What is it?" I asked again, this time in a whisper.
Carefully her hand stretched out. Her movement was an exact contrast to the smear she had left across my vision only moments ago. Now she was slow and controlled. Like the robotic arms they used for surgeries.
I didn't even realize my breathing had stopped.
My eyes followed her fingertip until it landed gracefully atop the feathery white sphere of a dandelion seed stem. When her skin grazed the downy surface, she recoiled, like she'd been burned.
"It's..." she started to say, but it was as though the words failed her.
"White?" I guessed lamely.
"Beautiful."
"Beautiful?" I asked, looking between her and the weed.
If anything they were rare. Diotech had managed to eradicate most weeds thanks to the work done in the Agricultural Sector. And the grass planted around the compound was genetically engineered to repel weeds. But every once in a while, one slipped in.
Like this one.
"Beautiful," she said again.
"You've never seen a dandelion before?"
Her head spun to me so fast, I was afraid she would get whiplash. "Dandelion." She tried out the word, smiling at the way it felt on her lips.
"Yes. Dandelion. It's a weed."
"Weed," she repeated, and I almost had to laugh at what was beginning to feel like a game. "A wild plant growing where it is not wanted."
I considered her definition. "Yeah, that sounds about right."
"Why isn't it wanted?"
I shrugged. "I guess because they get in the way of other plants."
"But it's more beautiful than other plants."
Once again I looked from the small white globe to her. "It certainly is."
She reached out again, her fingertips grazing the top of the cottony head. This time, however, her touch was too strong. The sphere dissolved beneath her hand, half of the seeds fluttering to the ground like snow, the other half scattering into the wind.
She gasped and watched the airborne fibers fly away. For a minute I thought she would cry, and I wanted so desperately to reach out and catch them for her. Scoop them into my hands and reassemble them onto the stem like a hopelessly tiny puzzle.
But she didn't cry.
She didn't show any emotion at all beyond the initial gasp.
"It's gone," she said with a chilling detachment.
I nodded. "They're very fragile. I think people used to wish on them."
"Wish," she echoed, and when she didn't spout a definition ten seconds later, I knew she didn't understand the word. I was starting to see a pattern.
"Like this." I scooped up what was left of the dandelion seeds and held them in my palm. "Now, think of something that you really want."
She tilted her head, confused. "I don't want anything."
"Everyone wants something. There's always that one thing that will make your life better. When you lie in bed at night, what do you feel is missing?"
She still didn't follow me. "Nothing is missing."
"Then you're lucky," I mumbled, sounding more bitter than I intended.
"I don't understand."
"It's okay," I said, holding my palm up close to her perfect pink lips. "I'll make a wish. "You just blow."
She did.
I closed my eyes as the warm, sweet air from her mouth brushed against my lips. For one perfect second I could taste her and I caught the briefest glimpse of what it would be like to kiss her.
My hands trembled to reach for her. To touch skin. Run fingers through hair. Memorize the shape of her cheekbone.
But I held myself back.
It was too much. Too soon. For her. For me. For these concrete walls that seemed to hold her in.
I glanced up at them, questions piling up in my brain.
Who is this girl?
Why is she locked up out here?
How will I ever get enough of her?
"Does anyone else live here with you?" I asked, pointing to the house.
She stood up, turning to look at the house. I couldn't see her face when she answered. "My father."
This wasn't the response I expected. "Your father?"
"He will be back soon." Her gaze clicked toward the steel gate built into the concrete wall. "You should not be here when he does."
I started to panic. At the thought of being caught. At the thought of having to answer to someone who locked his daughter in a house in the middle of a maximum security research compound. But mostly at the thought of leaving. My heart constricted when I considered the possibility that I might never see her again. That this hypnotizing girl was destined to live in the back corners of my memory, fading more and more each day like the metallic sheen on a new hovercopter.
And then she said, "Will you come back?"
And my heart swelled back to full size, kept on swelling until it was inflated and ready to pop.
"Is that what you want?"
She thought for a moment. It felt like an eternity. "Yes. That is a thing that will make my life better."
I grinned like an idiot. "Then, yes," I promised her. "I will come back tomorrow."
And for the rest of the day, for the entire walk home and the long, empty night that spanned ahead of me, that promise glinted like a beacon. Illuminating my way in the dark. Making every other light source look dim in comparison.
6: Return.
"Tell me again what we're doing," Klo demanded for the fifth time. I'd been walking through an abandoned field in the Agricultural Sector for the past twenty minutes, my gaze cast downward, my mind lost in thought.
"We're not doing anything," I corrected. "I'm looking for dandelions. You insisted on coming along."
"Dandelions? Why dandelions?"