Boy 2.0: Chapters 16–20

Coal wasn't used to deception. Lies only happen when people care what you think. No one ever bothered to lie to him. Not to spare his feelings, not to have him think kindly of them. But now someone had. The irony wasn’t lost on him. Finally, he was important enough to be lied to. But why was he important?

Coal wasn't used to deception. Lies only happen when people care what you think. No one ever bothered to lie to him. Not to spare his feelings, not to have him think kindly of them. But now someone had. The irony wasn’t lost on him. Finally, he was important enough to be lied to. But why was he important?

He was used to people omitting information that they’d decided he didn’t need. But this had to be his decision because the information was about him. He pivoted to the desk and touched the document called “The Snow White Project.” It opened on top of the digital pile.
“What’s this?” he asked.

Coal turned on her. “You be careful! I didn’t consent to any of this. You did it all against my will. Think that’s going to look good in court?”
Dr. Carroll blanched, but Dr. Achebe only sighed. “First of all, I didn’t do anything to Tom. Second, you’re not going to tell anyone about this.”

When Coal touched the fabric, it darkened to the color of his skin. The camera caught it all.
Coal’s skin began to tingle.
“That was pretty curious, wasn’t it?” Dr. Achebe said. “It certainly made me curious.”
“You’re going to blackmail me?” Coal asked.
“You’re jumping to conclusions without all the information,” Dr. Achebe said.

Another video began.
Coal recognized the spot instantly. It was the parking lot where he had camouflaged for the first time....In the grainy video, he was completely indistinguishable from the ground and wall he was pinned against.

“Why couldn’t you just tell me you knew all of this when you came to the school? Why lie?”
“I admit the way I got you here was a bit underhanded, but I didn’t want to risk you refusing. You’re important, Coal. This is important. You have to see that.”

“You’re right,” Dr. Achebe said. “Your cells are only part of the story of who you are. But we live in a society where people look at you and instantly think they know your story. We’ve built whole narratives about who a person is based on what they look like. Tall, thick, dark, able-bodied. There’s a story attached to every one of these descriptions. Based on cells. Something none of us can control.”

Coal considered this. What did controlling his skin cells mean? That maybe there was the possibility that everyone could control their bodies? Remake themselves? Into what? What would people choose to be? And what did Tom have to do with any of it? With Coal? Was that why no one ever came to visit? Was he part of an elaborate experiment?

The desk screen updated and the words RESULTS INCONCLUSIVE flashed in red.
“That’s unfortunate,” Dr. Achebe said.
Coal stepped back. “You’re not getting any more samples.”
“No, no,” Dr. Achebe said. “I don’t need anything more. I need to figure out what we’ve got.”

As he looked at New Jersey slipping past the car window, Coal tried to process everything. Memories from that afternoon hit him in waves, breaking against his body again and again in a barrage of information that he knew was just a small part of the story.

By the time he got home to the usual cacophony of the McKay house, Coal was exhausted in every possible way.

Coal squeezed the quilt in his hands. It was soft under his fingers. He knew every stitch, every threadbare patch by feel. After every move, after every change, after every adult who told him what was best for him and what was going to happen to him without bothering to ask his opinion, this blanket was the one thing he could be sure of. This one thing was his, no matter what. The one thing that never took from him. Only gave.

“Fight, flight, freeze, or fawn,” Mari said. When everyone looked at her, she explained. “When people find themselves in a dangerous situation, they often do one of those. It’s automatic. Your brain goes into self-preservation mode and you don’t make logical decisions.”

Coal shivered. An entire army of boys who looked just like him, bred specifically so they could camouflage and go behind enemy lines. Each one of them disposable, because they had the cells to make more indefinitely.

Coal was fixated on all the ways their plan could go wrong. They might not get into the building. If they did, the key card might not work. Even if the key card did work, it might not have access to every floor, or that inner lab where Dr. Achebe and Dr. Carroll had taken samples from him. They could trip a hidden alarm. Then there would be security. Or police.

About a block away from the building, Coal found a secluded corner and started stripping while the rest of them stood around him in a face-out semicircle. He breathed deep, calming breaths. Transparent, transparent, transparent, he thought. He focused on his skin. He could feel it begin to tingle, but by the time he was down to his boxers, nothing had happened. His skin wasn’t changing.

“I’m just asking questions, like, for science.”
“Did you legit say you’re asking for science?” Coal asked.
“I just want some clarity on the situation,” Door said.

The scientists looked around, confused for a few seconds before they started to grab their things and head out. Coal waited for the entire room to empty, slipping in as the last person left.
He made a beeline to the inner lab where Dr. Achebe and Dr. Carroll had done all his tests.

He swiped Isadora’s ID card and heard the door unlock. He let out a tense breath and went in.
Just like the day before, the door to the smaller lab clouded over, obscuring everything else from view. The puff of cold sanitizing air made Coal shiver, and his skin wavered into view, then became transparent again.

Coal kept on searching, opening files, reading and checking everything now that he knew she might be there, somewhere. In a report titled “Mimetic Collusion in Chromatophores” he found another photo of her. This time she was standing with Dr. Achebe and Tom. Their names and titles were listed under the photo as a genetics team working with the US government.

Failed at what, exactly? He looked down to where beads of sweat marred the perfect camouflage of his skin. He was pretty sure he knew exactly what those experiments were about. He was looking at the results right now.
It was him.
He was their experiment.

He moved to the next folder, labeled Zero. Inside was his data, the analysis from yesterday.

Something else occurred to him: patient zero. The start of something. Like a pandemic. He reminded himself that this is part of why he had come to destroy the files. Whatever had been done to him was something he wanted to prevent from happening to anyone else.

Beneath his fingers was everything he had ever wanted to know, all neatly packaged and labeled in sets of digital folders. He pulled the second memory stick out of the desk and initiated a dump of every file. Then he started for the door.