Not Even Bones Read online

  Nita wandered a while before taking a seat under a floripondio tree and watching the ocean. A couple nearby curled up together on the grass, whispering secrets to each other, and an old woman walked a tiny brown dog along the path.

  Nita closed her eyes and savored the smell of crushed grass. Her pocket buzzed, and she pulled out her phone.

  Her father had texted her. You okay? I haven’t heard from you lately.

  Nita let out a breath and leaned back until she was lying on the grass, staring at the sky. Her father was perfectly human, but some days she wondered if he didn’t have some sort of extrasensory perception that knew whenever Nita was unhappy.

  I’m fine, Dad. Nita hesitated, mind at war. She wanted so badly to talk about Fabricio with someone, but she knew they had to be careful with their personal phones. These phones were supposed to be safe, serving as a believable cover if ever they were caught by INHUP. No work stuff allowed. That was for their other email accounts on the dark web.

  But she wasn’t allowed to access those on her phone either. They had a computer for that kind of thing. One that her mother had been hogging lately.

  Nita bit her lip and caved. She needed to talk about this. It would be even better to hear her dad’s voice. But her phone plan didn’t allow international calling. It didn’t even have data. Mom was cheap that way.

  If Nita didn’t know better, she’d think her mother was trying to prevent her from talking with her father.

  Did Mom tell you what she brought home yesterday? Nita asked.

  There was a long pause before her father responded. Yes, I heard. You have a new pet.

  Yes. It’s very messy. Nita swallowed. How did she even begin to explain all the terrible, complicated feelings that were going on in her head? I don’t really like it.

  Understatement of the year.

  Well, we’re only taking care of it for a while. Don’t worry, it’ll have a new home soon. You won’t have to deal with it again after that.

  Yeah. Nita’s fingers swiped across the screen. I guess I just feel like it deserves better than we can give it.

  There was an even longer pause this time. Then, A pet like that can’t survive in the wild. Don’t do anything stupid, Nita.

  Don’t do anything stupid.

  Nita took a deep breath, trying to blink away the angry tears pricking her eyes. She wasn’t sure what she wanted her father to say. That her mother had gone too far? That there was a mix-up? That she could go home, and when she got back, all evidence of Fabricio’s existence would be wiped away, so she never had to think about it again?

  God, she was awful.

  It took a special type of monster to dissect dead people and sell them without guilt. Nita was aware that morally speaking, she wasn’t on the good side of the scale. In fact, she was probably closer to the serial killer side of the scale. Sometimes thinking that bothered her a little. But then she stopped thinking about it and the uneasy feeling went away.

  Don’t think about it was always a great solution. It had solved so many moral issues in her life.

  It wasn’t working this time.

  How was Fabricio any different from Nita? Nita was sure her body parts would make a pretty penny on the black market too. She could just imagine the things her father could write to market her unique characteristics.

  Nita, are you still there?

  Angry, she wiped the tears away and replied, I’ve got to go. Don’t worry, I won’t do anything stupid. I’ll talk to you later.

  She pocketed her phone without waiting for his response.

  Then she rolled over on the grass, pressed her hands into her face, and wondered what the hell was wrong with her.

  Six

  NITA DID SOME errands on the way home before picking up fried chicken for her mother. Her mother was picky about food, which was a waste, because Peru had some of the best food in the world. Whenever Nita needed a distraction, she bought herself comfort food.

  She picked up some causa (similar to shepherd’s pie, but served cold, with tuna or chicken instead of beef ), a rocoto relleno (a spicy pepper stuffed with meat), and some picarones for dessert.

  She ate her dessert on the way home. The picarones had been served on a paper plate, and they were drizzled in a sticky sweet sauce. She ate the first one because she thought it would fall off, and then before she knew it, she’d eaten them all.

  Best food in the world.

  She entered the apartment, and her mother took the chicken out of her hands with a frown. Nita held on to her own food. “You got an awful lot.”

  “I got some for—” Nita caught herself before she said his name. Her mother would not appreciate that. “The boy.”

  Her mother slowly looked at Nita. Dark, thick eyelashes did nothing to soften the coldness of her eyes.

  Nita swallowed and felt herself getting defensive. “Well, what did you expect him to eat? Dog food?”

  Her mother raised her eyebrows. “Someone’s not happy.”

  Nita sighed and deflected. “I heard some guy on the news talking about killing unnaturals.”

  “Ah.” Her mother nodded. “UEA?”

  The Unnatural Extermination Agenda was the biggest unnatural hate group in the world. And the most popular. Obviously there were other groups, but the power and influence of the UEA was a force to be reckoned with.

  Nita’s mother was a UEA member—not that the UEA knew she was an unnatural, obviously. She got updates on unnaturals found in her area that way, and then responded to them. Sometimes she got there before the UEA and took out the target. Sometimes she waited for the UEA to kill them, then stole the body, leaving the UEA members to be charged with murder. Nita had the UEA to thank for a lot of the bodies on her table.

  “Not the UEA, just some ass who thinks we should eliminate unnaturals before they’re born with genetic manipulation.”

  Her mother took a bite of chicken. “Interesting. I never thought of using genetic manipulation for anything like that.” She tapped her finger against the table, her brow furrowing. Nita had a bad feeling she’d given her mother an idea for something, but she wasn’t sure what.

  “I’m going to feed Fa—the boy.”

  Her mother shrugged, eyes staring off into space, a small smile curving her lips. Just great. Nita didn’t want to know what her mother was planning.

  Fabricio was curled up in his cage, but turned to Nita when she entered. She put a piece of chicken on a napkin on the floor, and then realized it was too big to get through the mesh of his cage. She wasn’t really sure how she was going to feed him.

  “She’s going to take one of my eyes tomorrow.” Fabricio’s voice was soft, almost a whisper, but too croaky. All that screaming probably chafed his throat.

  Nita flinched. “You don’t know that.”

  “She told me so.” He paused. “I think she likes to see me scared.”

  He was probably right.

  “Then how do you know she’s not baiting you?”

  Fabricio met her eyes. “I don’t. But you would. Is she?”

  Nita looked at the floor. Her hands clenched into fists, and she could feel her scab tearing, little rivulets of blood leaking down her hand. She didn’t fix it.

  “No,” she admitted. Fabricio was right. Her mother probably meant exactly what she said. “She’s not baiting you.”

  Fabricio’s jaw tightened. “How long? How long before every part of me is sold and you start in on the organs?”

  Nita swallowed and did some math. The requests would start coming in faster as buyers learned what was on the market.

  “A week. Tops.” Nita nodded to herself. That sounded about right. Any longer than that, and her mother would probably kill him out of sheer frustration. An old friend of her father’s visited once when Nita was a kid, and within four days, her mother was close to murdering him. Not because he was particularly annoying or did anything wrong. Just because he existed in the same space as her mother.

  “A week.�
� He kept his eyes fixed on Nita. “And before then, how many pieces of me will be hacked off and sold?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He was silent, watching her.

  Nita looked down at the chicken on the floor. Did it even matter if he ate?

  “Nita,” he pleaded.

  “Stop it.”

  “Please, Nita, I don’t want to die. Help me.”

  Nita got up and walked away, leaving the chicken on the floor.

  She stood outside the door for a long time, shoulders shaking, eyes squeezed shut. She considered just shutting her amygdala off, but she despised the feeling of dullness that accompanied it, like she was lobotomized. So she tried to stem the flood of stress hormones on her system instead. Then she began increasing levels of serotonin and dopamine. She pulled the tension out of her muscles and focused on slowing her heartbeat.

  Relax, Nita. You don’t need to stress about this. Let it all go.

  Nita let out a breath, swimming in a gentle high. Fear, stress, all of that was gone. Just peace.

  Her muscles began to relax, knots in her shoulders and neck loosening. She hadn’t realized how wound up she was about it all.

  She’s going to take one of my eyes tomorrow.

  Her muscles tightened right back up.

  She could imagine it in perfect detail. Her mother was probably still unhappy about Nita’s behavior with the ear, so she’d make Nita do the cutting. Fabricio would be sedated, then strapped to a table. Her mother would make sure there was no way he could move. Then she’d wait for him to wake up to have Nita scoop out the eye.

  Usually, Nita liked eyes, how they would pop right out and then you just snipped the optic nerve, like a strange umbilical cord. Her mother knew that. Nita would have bet the eighty-three dollars in her secret college fund that her mother would make her cut the eye out herself.

  Fuck.

  She couldn’t do this.

  She looked down at her sweaty palms and amended the thought: She wouldn’t do this.

  Hands trembling at her sides, shoulders tighter than ever, she resumed flooding her system with calming hormones. She would need to remain levelheaded tonight. There was a lot to be done.

  * * *

  Five hours later, in the middle of the night, Nita’s high had worn off, and she was more terrified than ever before. One did not piss off her mother lightly.

  She’d scoured the kitchen and living room for the keys to the padlock and handcuffs that held Fabricio, but her mother was probably wearing them around her neck like a badge of honor.

  Nita ended up with a pair of crappy bolt cutters from the toolbox her mother had bought to set up the apartment’s soundproofing, and a pair of bobby pins. She’d never picked handcuff locks before, but she figured if it didn’t work, she could just dislocate his thumbs and get them off that way. As long as she could make sure he didn’t scream.

  She closed the door to the dissection room behind her before she flicked on the light. Fabricio stirred, lifting his head from where it was curled by his knees. He blinked, eyes bleary from sleep. He sat up quickly when he saw the bolt cutters, causing his handcuffs to clink and the cage to rattle.

  Nita put a finger to her lips and he settled down. His eyes were wide and hopeful, and a faint smile was trying to form on his lips. It caused the dried blood on the side of his face to crack and flake off.

  Hefting the bolt cutters, she began making a hole in the cage.

  Nita sometimes worried—well, not worried precisely, because it didn’t actually bother her, but thought about in a concerned way—that she was a bit of a sociopath. She was socially inept, she hated people, and the only thing that made her feel calm and at peace was cutting up dead bodies. There was normal, there was abnormal, and then there was Nita.

  But it was days like today, her heart pounding a frenetic, terrified rhythm as the bolt cutters snip-snip-snipped through the cage that Nita felt like things might not be as drastic as she feared. She did have morals. Not many, but she had some.

  And she wouldn’t let her mother cross them in front of her.

  Her mother really should have killed Fabricio before coming home from Argentina.

  Nita sat back and admired her work. There was a large, human-size hole in the cage. Fabricio crawled through it stiffly. His handcuffs caught on the bolt they’d been chained around, and Nita cut it with a final snap. Putting the bolt cutters down, she then took out the bobby pins.

  “Do you know how to pick locks?” Fabricio asked.

  Nita shrugged. “I read about it in a book once.”

  She tried shoving the pin in, but the weird little plastic globby thing on the end wouldn’t fit. She cut it off with the bolt cutters and then inserted it into the handcuff lock, jiggling it around. The faint click of metal on metal was the only sound in the room. The handcuffs didn’t unlock.

  “Will the bolt cutters work on the handcuffs? Or at least, the chain between the cuffs?” Fabricio stretched his legs out as she worked, clearly glad to be able to extend them after being trapped in a cage since yesterday.

  “I dunno. Maybe?” She put down the bobby pins and picked up the bolt cutters. The links between the two cuffs were large and thick, but it looked like the bolt cutters might work.

  “Hold still,” Nita said, using the bolt cutters to grip one of the links. Then she rose, and shoved down with all her might, trying to get the handles to close and the link to break.

  Something did break—the bolt cutters.

  Swearing as one half of the cutter clanked to the ground, Nita listened closely. Had her mother heard? Was she coming, even now, to punish them both?

  Nita waited, breathing shallowly, head tilted to the side. Beside her, Fabricio watched her fear in silence, hands clenched into fists in front of him.

  Finally, Nita turned back to him with a sigh. “I don’t think I can break them. I’ll have to dislocate your thumbs to get them off.”

  Eyes widening, Fabricio leaned back, palms facing her. “That’s not necessary. I’ll leave like this. I’m sure I can find somewhere to get them off.”

  “Your choice.” Nita could have put his thumbs back in place when she was done, but she didn’t think he’d appreciate her mentioning that.

  Rising to his feet with much wincing, Fabricio headed for the exit. He paused, looking to Nita for guidance, and she quickly took the lead. They tiptoed across the kitchen together, toward the main entrance. Nita unbolted the door, and they slipped into the hallway.

  She led him outside, and they walked down the street at a brisk pace. Fabricio trotted behind her. “Where are we going?”

  “Bus station. There’s a bus to Quito leaving in an hour, and you’re going to be on it.”

  “Ecuador?” He hesitated. “Why am I going to Ecuador?”

  Nita sighed. “Because we can’t call INHUP here. Peru isn’t a member country, so INHUP has no power. I don’t know how the police here would react to your situation—or if my mother would just barge into the station to get you back. So. I’m putting you on a bus to Ecuador. If you can get there, INHUP will take you in and put you in the Unnatural Protection Program.”

  “Oh.” He paused. “Where are we now?”

  “Lima.”

  “Ah.” He gave her a half-confused smile. “I thought we were still somewhere in Argentina. I mean, I remember the plane, I think, but the drugs made everything so hazy I wasn’t sure it was real.”

  Nita spared him a glance, then turned her eyes forward and kept walking. “No. My mother only operates out of countries that aren’t signed into INHUP these days. She collects from everywhere, but her base of operations is almost always in a non-INHUP member country.”

  “I suppose that’s probably true for most of the black market.”

  “Depends. We operate through the internet, but there are actual physical markets where they sell unnatural parts. They’re usually on borders, so people can enter the country, buy their illegal goods, use them, and then slip back.”


  Nita had been to one of the American markets when she was a child, but she didn’t remember much about it except that her mother had held her hand the whole time and refused to let Nita go anywhere alone, including the bathroom. Sure, there might have been interesting things for sale there, but it didn’t seem worth it. From what she’d heard, they made her mother’s behavior sound saintly.

  They came to the bus station. There were several double-decker buses preparing to leave, and a crowd of bored and tired-looking people milling in front of them. Most long-haul trips from Lima left at night so people could sleep half the time. It was a long ride to Ecuador.

  Nita went into the bus station and picked up the ticket she’d ordered online an hour earlier, then came back out and handed it to Fabricio. His chains clinked as he took it. Nita frowned, took off her sweater and used it to cover his hands and hide the chains.

  “This is your ticket. And here’s some money.” She gave him some Peruvian soles and some US dollars.

  Fabricio stood there, shaking in the cool night air. There was still dried blood caked all over his face.

  Nita sighed. “You can’t ride the bus like that. We need to wash some of this blood off.”

  They went into the surprisingly clean bus terminal bathroom. Nita washed his face. He cried a bit when she approached where his ear had been, and she decided to leave it be. Sure, there was still dried blood, but his hair covered most of the wound. INHUP would have doctors look at it in eighteen hours or so. Nita didn’t want to tear the scab and make it bleed again before he got on the bus. She didn’t have any gauze or anything. And there was no time to get some, because the bus was already boarding.

  They walked back out, and Nita nearly smacked her head. “You need to call INHUP before you reach the border. I don’t have a passport for you. I booked your ticket to Piura, which is just south of the border, but the bus goes all the way to Quito. Just stay on. If you call INHUP in advance, they should wait for you at the border.”