Nita nodded, appreciating her mother’s efforts to quell her anxiety even as her nausea rose. “Yeah.”
Her mother gave her an appraising look. “You know, if you want, I can go cut his tongue out now. I have some pliers—I can pull it right out. Then you won’t have to worry about him talking.”
“That’s okay, Mom.” Nita forced a smile. “I’m fine.”
“If you’re sure . . .” Her mother gave her another searching look before sighing. “All right. Shall we start packing some of those zannie parts?”
Nita nodded, glad for the change in subject.
They spent the rest of the afternoon filling up crates. Her mother had arranged the bribes to get them back to the family warehouse in the States. Her father would handle them from there. He dealt with the online sales, storage, and shipping of the body parts, while her mother dealt with the retrieval. Her father was also their major cover, if INHUP ever came sniffing. Nita was sure her mother had a record a mile long—her stack of foreign passports, driver’s licenses, and credit cards was probably two feet high. That sort of thing usually came with a record, in Nita’s opinion.
Her father, though, was squeaky clean as far as Nita knew. By day, he worked as a legal consultant in Chicago, and by night, he sold body parts on the internet. Nita missed him, and their home, and their shitty Chicago suburb that was actually a two-hour drive from Chicago. She hadn’t been home since she was fourteen.
She wondered what her father would say about this situation. Would he be unhappy her mother had brought a live unnatural home? And moreover, a harmless one?
It was one thing when her mother dumped a zannie or a unicorn on Nita’s table. For one, they were monsters who couldn’t continue to live without killing other people. And the world agreed—that was why there was a Dangerous Unnaturals List. It wasn’t even a crime to kill them. You were saving lives.
But someone like the boy in the other room? How could she justify that?
Sighing, Nita wiped the sweat off her forehead as they closed another crate. No matter how she thought about it, she couldn’t find a way to justify murdering that boy.
Well, except money.
“It looks like we’re going to need a few more shipping crates.” Her mother ran a hand through her hair. Her manicure caught the light, black and red and yellow, like someone had tried to cover a fire with a blackout curtain.
Nita poured a glass of juice. “Probably.”
“I think we deserve pizza now. How about you?”
Nita heartily agreed.
After dinner, they realized they were low on bottled water. Tap water wasn’t drinkable unless boiled, and Nita’s mother didn’t like the taste. She’d been promising they were going to get a UV light for purifying water since they arrived a few weeks ago, but it hadn’t happened yet.
Her mother sighed and got up, dusting pizza crumbs off her lap. “I’ll go down to the store and get a seven-liter bottle. I’ll start on the boy when I come back.”
“Start what?”
Her mother grinned. “I sold his ear an hour ago.”
Nita stiffened. “You’re going to cut it off tonight?”
“Of course.”
Nita swallowed, looking away. “But you can’t mail it until tomorrow morning. It makes more sense to cut it off tomorrow. If freshness is important, like you said.”
Her mother’s eyes narrowed. Nita tried to resist the urge to shift in place, but failed.
Finally, in a small voice, Nita whispered, “I don’t want to hear him screaming all night. I won’t get any sleep.”
Her mother laughed, throwing her head back, then came over and clapped Nita on the back. It was just a little harder than it should have been, and Nita stumbled forward a step.
“You’re absolutely right, Anita.” Her mother grinned as she walked back to the door. “We’ll do it tomorrow morning.”
Nita stood there, trembling, as the door closed with a thud and a click. She remained in place for a few minutes, calming her breathing before picking up a slice of pizza and walking back to the dissection room.
When she opened the door, she found the boy sitting cross-legged in the cage, watching her. She approached with caution, and as she got closer, she was able to discern that yes, those stains on his clothes were definitely dried blood.
She put the pizza close enough to the bars that he could wiggle his fingers through and pull pieces off. She skittered back, afraid if she got too close he would leap at her. Not that he could do much, chained to the cage, which was chained to the wall. But she was careful anyway.
He looked down at the pizza and licked his lips. “Gracias.”
“De nada.” Nita was surprised at how hoarse her voice was.
She stood there for a long moment, awkward, not sure what to do next. Logically, she knew better than to talk to him. She didn’t want to know anything about him if—when—she had to dissect him. But she also felt weird just giving him food and leaving.
This was the part where she could really have used more social skills practice. Was there etiquette for this kind of situation?
Probably not.
He wormed his fingers through the bars and ripped off the tip of the pizza. His hands wouldn’t reach to his mouth because of the handcuffs, so he had to bend his head over to eat. He chewed slowly, and after one bite, just sat, looking at the pizza but not eating. She wondered if he didn’t like pepperoni.
“Cómo te llamas?” he asked, still not looking up. His accent was clearly Argentinian, his y sounds blurring into sh, so it sounded like “cómo te shamas?”
His accent wasn’t too hard to understand, unlike Nita’s. Her father was from Chile, and she’d lived in Madrid until she was six, so Nita’s Spanish was a hopeless tangle of the two accents. Sometimes the Peruvians in the grocery store couldn’t understand her at all.
“Nita.” She hesitated. “Y tú?”
“Fabricio.” His voice was soft. “Fabricio Tácunan.”
“Fabricio?” Nita couldn’t keep the incredulity out of her voice. “Is that from Shakespeare or something?”
He looked up at her then, and frowned. “Pardon?”
Nita repeated slowly, trying to make her accent less pronounced.
This time he understood. He raised his eyebrows, voice pitched slightly differently. More curious, less sad, his Spanish soft and barely audible. “Who is Shakespeare?”
“Umm.” Nita paused. Did they teach Shakespeare in Latin American schools? If the boy—don’t think of him by name, you’ll get too attached and then where will you be?—had been a captive of a collector, had he even gone to school? “He’s an English writer from the fifteen hundreds. One of his characters was named Fabrizio, I think. It’s . . . I guess I thought it was kinda an old name.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I think it’s fairly common where I’m from. One of my father’s employees has the same name. But he spells it with a z, Fabrizio. The Italian way.”
Fabricio looked down at his shirt, crusted with dried blood and swallowed. “He spelled it with a z.”
Oh.
Nope, too much information. Nita didn’t want to hear about this.
Why did you even talk to him, then? she scolded herself. This was going to make everything worse later.