Long stretches of time go by where we don't talk as we work. I listen to the birds in the garden, the chink of our trowels, the trickling of water from a nearby hose, and mostly to the voices in my own head. You're fitting in, Jenna. You're loved, Jenna. You're normal, Jenna. You are almost whole, Jenna. And mostly, I believe them.

"Do you know him?"

I glance to where Ethan is looking. At the top of the stairs that lead to the gardens, a squat man is watching us. Just as I look up, he clicks a picture and then walks away.

"No," I answer. "I've never seen him before." Or maybe I have and I just don't remember him?

"Probably a tourist," Ethan says. "Usually they just visit the mission — not way down here. Or maybe Father Rico sent someone to check up on us."

"Maybe," I say.

Trigger

Sliding into Ethan's truck, I remember.

It's the gray leather.

I had a car.

But no license. I didn't have a license.

Mother and Father wouldn't let me get one.

Why would they give me a car but not let me drive it?

I remember racing down the road in my car.

Hurry, Jenna.

I did.

And Kara and Locke were with me.

A Hundred Points

I slide across the seat of Ethan's truck to make room for Allys. We are picking her up from her community project before we head back to the village charter. We're outside the offices and labs adjacent to the Del Oro University Medical Center. Besides coming here for therapy, she also volunteers for the Del Oro Ethics Task Force. She gathers materials for review and helps process the numerous checks and balances that monitor their research activities.

"Grunt work," Ethan called it when he described it to me. How could it be any more grunt work than spooning dirt? And I remember the way Allys spoke of it a few days ago. It's important to her. She is passionate, and I think she would do it even if Rae did not require a community volunteer project. She has accepted the loss of her limbs but blames an out-of-control medical system for the outcome. She thinks if someone had regulated antibiotics long ago, when they first knew about the dangers of overuse, she and millions like her would have had a different fate, and now she seems determined that no new medical injustices will be unleashed on the world.

When he talks about Allys, Ethan's voice takes on an edge I hadn't heard before. Like he feels her injustices, too. Does he care about her? How much does he care? Or does he have injustices of his own? I know nothing about him, really. Why is he at the village charter? Ethan said they all had their reasons for being there. Allys talked about her physical limitations. Gabriel said he had an anxiety disorder and the small environment was more comfortable for him, but Ethan never revealed his reasons.

"Can you take these?" Allys hands me the braces that still steady her, and she slides in next to me. "Two more weeks, and these will be gone. At least that's what they tell me." Her eyes sparkle, and her words come out in a continuous excited stream. "They uploaded some new technology that will help the prosthetics anticipate my own balance system. It will supposedly read nerve signals from my brain and learn from them. They said to walk as much as possible to speed up the learning process. Imagine that — I've got smart legs." She shoots a warning look at Ethan. "Don't say a word."

"Me?" Ethan says sweetly.

"I thought you were here for your volunteer project," I say.

"That, too. But the therapy and the ethics offices are in the same complex, so I get it all done the same days. How'd your project go?"

"Shoveling dirt?"

"She's a horse," Ethan says, repeating his assessment of me.

"I liked it," I tell her. "It is not exactly a mental challenge — well, except maybe for Ethan— but Father Rico was very grateful."

Ethan jogs the steering wheel to register my point, and Allys laughs. "The mission's a good cause. They don't have funds, so without volunteers they'd never be able to keep it up. It has a lot of history that's important. It was my second choice right · after the ethics office."

"Who runs the ethics office? The hospital?" I ask.

"Are you kidding? The hospital hates the ethics office, but they'd never admit it. You've never heard of the FSEB?"

I try to scan my pathetic excuse of memory. It seems like I should know it. Like it is almost within my reach.

"It's not another bad word, if that's what you're thinking," Ethan says.

"It's the Federal Science Ethics Board," Allys says. "They run the office. They're the yea and nay of all research and a lot of medical procedures, too. If you don't file all the forms and report every procedure, they shut you down. Whole hospitals. They've actually done it. Not often, but enough times that it's put the fear into every medical and research facility in the country."

"Why do they do it?"

"They're the watchdog. There has to be some central control. Look at human cloning at the turn of the century. Even though it was illegal, some lab facilities were still doing it because the checks and balances were so weak. And then there's Bio Gel. That alone is probably responsible for Congress even establishing the FSEB."

Allys is still talking, but it is a garbled echo. Bio Gel. Father's work. I can hear Lily saying it again, He made a big splash. "Bio Gel?"

"It changed everything. It made almost anything possible."