That statement drew a laugh from the few who’d partied at Maverick’s before and knew him to be nothing of the sort, but when they realized she was serious, they drew back into the cups, silent.
“Go on. Your dates must be fabulous. He has all the connections.”
“He flew me on his plane.” Amira shrugged. She didn’t know if this was enough detail for her congregants and she seemed apologetic about her lack of information. She grimaced, aware that she was failing.
“Where’d he fly you to?” Thea asked. She tried to sound so casual—a practiced tone of disinterest. But she’d made eye contact with her mother and they’d had the same thought.
“Oh, um,” Amira stammered. She realized maybe her dates were private and she made up a lie on the spot. It was so obvious a lie that Thea resisted the urge to spray her sake out in a glorious spit-take of disbelief. “He flies me to Tabut,” she tried. Not as exciting as anyone hoped. “Just day trips and stuff up and down the Islands.”
Nope. Nope, Thea thought. Liar, liar.
“How fun for a Kymberlin girl to get so much time down south,” Blair oozed, and when Amira figured out the double-entendre, way later than she should have, everyone laughed at her expense.
“Oh, he doesn’t. I mean, we haven’t,” she objected until Thea couldn’t take the aw-shucks-ing and fake-innocence any longer. Amira and Thea grew up together side-by-side, and they’d sneaked alcohol from the ballrooms and stalked the suites of boys they liked until Thea lost interest in the chase—and boys in general—and they drifted into their separate social circles.
But it was awkward to watch Amira fumble through the party and not know that the crowd was quite aware of her dalliances with the bulk of the soccer team from New Cochran, primarily because Thea told them all, and her virginal act was shameful. She decided to save her.
“Well, then what is the scoop, Amira? We all want to know,” Thea smiled with a warm shrug. “You think you’ll keep him?”
Amira looked wide-eyed at the girls and sat forward. “It’s like you don’t already know I’m disappointed,” she replied and threw her hands in the air. “It’s not that I’m ungrateful for the party and everything, but,” she exhaled, “even as a Truman, how did it help me? My dad went and tried to speak to the tech team.”
Thea perked up at that and sat closer, nodding. So, it was Gordy who yelled at Lesedi and her coworkers and wanted to know how the algorithm paired his beauty with Maverick James. Gordy didn’t know, Thea thought, nodding along. She noticed her mother was looking at a magazine but still paying attention, and the more Amira shared the more her foot tapped in agitation. Blair put it all together, too. If Gordy didn’t know about the match then it was Huck’s bidding and who was speaking for him?
“And?” Thea prompted. “What did they say?”
“Nothing. How could they?” Amira confirmed. “I don’t know. Just that it’s a machine…stupid code. Doesn’t matter…I don’t have to choose him.” She threw it out there and then her face crumbled and her cousin began to cry. She sobbed and sobbed, her hands still in her lap, her lip curled down while fat tears rolled on to her spa robe. “I had it all figured out. My life. Here, look.” She stuck her hand into her robe and pulled out her bot.
“No bots,” Blair said and tsked her finger, but Amira brushed it off.
“I never leave it behind. Here…I made an album of my dreams.” She opened the small projector and the photos popped up in the middle of them all. It was Amira with a tall, dark, and blurred-out stranger, superimposed into wedding scenes. Thea couldn’t help but smile at the childish ridiculousness of her dream album. It was a beach wedding. “My grandfather told me I could get married on the beach,” she said. “I got it in writing you know. Before his brain went…” she trailed off, not finishing her sentence. “I got it in writing that I could have a beach wedding. But…”
Thea attempted to look sympathetic but she was anything but. Amira, the dull dreamer, was being groomed for leadership while lacking a single smart bone in her body. She’d be ornamental in a society that needed a continuation of her grandfather’s power, and she wanted a chance to argue her position, present herself as worthy. She was thinking about scheduling a meeting with her grandfather the moment they were back on Kymberlin.
She imagined storming into his office/bedroom and listing out her qualities and Amira’s faults—or explain that she knew everything and he couldn’t hide his intentions from her. But like everything, she weighed it all out in her mind beforehand: what was the risk and what was the reward?
“Thea. Thea!”
“Yes?” She saw her cousin snapping and drawing her attention back to the group. “Sorry. I asked you a question.”
“Sure. Oh. What?” Thea asked and smiled. “I was drifting off here in this chair. Thinking about the tea…I’m sorry…it’s still a fresh wound, in my brain.”
“Of course. Apologies,” Amira said and someone else leaned out to rub her gracefully on the arm. “I can’t imagine…” she drifted off, and Thea wondered if the end of the sentence could be ‘ever being that hated.’ But instead, Amira said, “How you’d ever want to come back here. Thank you for doing it. For me.” There was a specific bite in her tone that Thea couldn’t place—what could she mean by that? Back to Arukah or the spa?
It wasn’t worth pushing.
“Well, we all make sacrifices for the people we adore,” she said and blew her cousin a kiss.
Blair, when Amira looked away, rolled her head to look at her daughter and hung her mouth with played-up shock. Thea ignored her and slipped back against the seat and concentrated on the water on her feet and the smell in the air. It was something citrus and sweet, and almost on command Arjana walked into the room and greeted the partiers with a warm laugh and cheer.
“I’ve heard we’re celebrating a new courtship!” Arjana said and walked over to Amira. A flowered lei dangled from her arm and she took it off and put it around Amira’s neck. It floated on top of the robe, bright red, and Thea thought it looked like a necklace of seeping blood. She looked away. “Well, as a special treat today, we’ve got you all your own massages, so, please find your room numbers tucked into the slippers beneath your names in the hallway. And please remember, no talking once we exit the soaking room and enter the hall. I’ll be right outside and my sweet, Amira,” the woman stopped and clapped her hands, “Maverick James, what a treat.”
“Do you know him?” Amira asked, somewhat hopeful. Maybe they’d have the spa in common.
“No, only what I read. Take your time in the soaking room, please, no rush. When you’re done, meet me outside.” Arjana disappeared.
“Oh goodness,” Amira was the first to slip her feet out of the pool and make her way to the hallway door. “I thought she was going to tell me all his girlfriends came here. That would be fresh.” She waved goodbye and disappeared off to her massage, their other friends following in her wake. Thea pulled a foot out of the pool, but Blair put her hand out.
“Let’s wait one minute together,” she said with a knowing blink.
Before the minute was over, the door opened and Arjana reappeared. The bubbly show from before was gone and she’d gone serious. When the spa owner closed the door behind her, she opened her hand and a bot beamed a video between them. No one spoke and Thea watched intently.
The video was ten seconds long. It was about a child’s struggle with an ice-cream cone outside a store. But Thea wasn’t watching the kid and their balancing difficulties, her eyes were trained to search the wall and window behind the action and locate the paper with the red X. There were several papers behind the boy on a bulletin board. And as the camera zoomed in to the inevitable moment when the chocolate rolled to the ground to the child’s terror, she saw her symbol.
She scanned the address, committing it to memory like her mother taught her. The video ended and without speaking, Arjana stood up, put the bot back in her pocket, and left the room. Her role in the network was done. That�
��s how Blair’s operations worked—she stole her tactics from the Old World mafia.
“Here? Now?” Thea asked her mother, annoyed by the intrusion to their day of pampering. “Does this mean we aren’t getting massages?” she whispered, her whole body slumped in a pout.
Blair stood and dried off her feet with a nearby towel. She looked at her daughter and didn’t move, waiting until the silence was awkward before saying, “The plan stays the same.”
“I don’t see how it can…”
“We’ll move up the date of the attack.”
“But you already reasoned out that if we strike sooner it looks like we found out about New York. Do we leak it to the people? Let them see that their mighty leader is fleeing…that he doesn’t think this creation is good enough…”
“No,” Blair answered and she shook the thought away. “We are not ready for that. Controlled. Deliberate.”
“Don’t tell them about the Bermuda Project at all…”
“It was an army for him,” Blair said. She looked at her daughter. “Maybe it should be an army for us.”
“Land Team enrollment is way down,” Thea whispered.
“Was that your doing? The whisper campaign about bad benefits and a high death rate?”
Thea nodded with self-importance and her mom went quiet, beaming with pride.
They walked to the door to the hallway.
“What’s your appointment here?” Thea asked. “Are you sure I have to come and I can stay and—”
“Cut it out,” Blair spat, tired of the impending argument. “Don’t act entitled,” she said the word like it hurt. “You will earn everything. Everything. But you’ll earn it. You’ll learn the business the way I didn’t. You understand? A glimpse into what I do…what you’ll do…”
“In your business?” Thea asked, genuinely confused.
“How do you think the Bermuda Project operates, my child,” Blair cooed and she ran her fingers across the top of Thea’s blonde hair. “You need to know so you can do it if I can’t…”
“Fine. Do what?” Thea asked.
But Blair didn’t answer her daughter. Instead, she just opened the door and walked straight out of the spa and into the hallways of Arukah. Everyone on the Island was focused on Whole Health and wore the robes throughout their stay. At first, Thea was hesitant, but Arjana motioned for her to hurry and so she followed her mother, bare feet and all.
Blair and Thea in robes, hair disheveled, the flush on their faces, blended in more than they would anywhere.
Affirmations floated down in increments along the brightly lit corridors.
“Your body has all the power you need,” a soothing woman’s voice called out to everyone.
A few minutes later, a man with the old British dialect said, “I am in charge of how I feel today and I will choose peace and joy.”
Thea thought that one was pretty stupid. She wasn’t in charge of other people’s idiocy.
She skipped up closer to her mom and smiled. “If you believe this horse shit, then you think smiles cure cancer.”
Blair didn’t pick up on the hyperbole. “Gene modifications cure cancer. Smiles just make everyone forget what this place cost them.” She plastered her own face with a smile and walked faster to one of the nearest towers.
It was a daunting journey deep into the corridors of the Arukah vault. Guards stood sentry at the checkpoints and waved Blair and Thea through with nods and locked and loaded eyes. They rode a magnetic elevator down to the sea level and into a small and empty room whose walls were thick red velvet. Nothing else remained in the room and Thea watched as the last guard shut them inside and Blair walked over to a curtain and tugged it away from the wall.
Behind it was a door. Blair leaned down and a retina scan unlocked the bolt and together they slipped through the hidden corridor with stairs dipping down another ten feet.
Thea could hear the ocean just beyond the wall. When they opened the door at the bottom, she wasn’t surprised to see the spray of water as they stepped on to a floating dock inside a large open space. Already docked along the edge was an Island Land Crew Yacht. Bright blue and easily identified, the boat stayed hidden underneath the enclave. The crew placed a metal bridge from the dock to their ship and Blair hoisted herself up and walked over it without assistance. Thea let a guard lift her up and hold her hand as she balanced on the beam across the water.
Inside the boat, Thea knew her mother had slipped into business mode.
“Where are they?” Blair asked a uniformed man.
“Down,” someone answered.
“How many?” she asked.
“Six.”
“Ages?”
“Couldn’t determine.”
“Young though?” Blair pushed and the men in uniform nodded. She decided she didn’t want to wait for an answer and she proceeded down into the lower deck of the boat. Thea knew what was going to happen next although she’d never been there for a shipment check as those were the types of details she didn’t care to know.
Blair wanted her to know, though. That was what this was about—this was her legacy.
When her mother took her to Bermuda for the first time, she was shown demonstration after demonstration of the army’s effectiveness long before she saw the barracks, and so she was able to disconnect quickly—they were no longer children, but perfect little killers.
“Stand,” Blair commanded and the six children kept captive in the lower deck stumbled to their feet. An older boy hesitated, his white skin flecked with dirt and blood. He’d fought people off, it appeared, or pounded on the metal of the boat because his knuckles were bloody and torn. That boy particularly stared at Thea, and she wished her mother had let her off the hook for this lesson.
“Ages,” Blair said and snapped her fingers.
The children seemed terrified and enamored with someone like Blair. Still in her terry robe, her long tanned legs—a throwback of vanity from the Old World—hair brushed and lashes long. She defied the image of someone left to rot on land, festering with the corpses, growing sick in the brain because of the lack of education or fresh water.
The people on land were toxic—exposed to a lifetime of poisons and tragedies that made them unsuitable to live on the Islands. But they were still human, mostly, and that made them perfect for someone like Blair.
The youngest children didn’t know how old they were but they knew they lived a life of violence.
A child no older than three and several others in that age range were carted off by the guards. Two children remained—the boy and a girl, who appeared on the cusp between girlhood and womanhood, her round face thinning, her torn shirt tight. She was white and freckled by the sun and her hair was a nest of clumps and knots.
Blair walked over to a small safe in the corner of the boat and leaned down to open it where she produced two long needles. She handed them both to Thea and placed the instruments of death in her hand.
“Kill them,” Blair instructed.
Thea spun to her mom and tried to shake her head, but her entire body was frozen. “Them—”
Blair put her mouth close to Thea’s ear and whispered, “What do you think has to happen when they are too old…my success is not accidental. Come on. Decide what to do. Think it through. They die within ten seconds after you stab that needle into them…”
Thea pulled her ear away from her mom and shimmied away from her touch entirely. The terry robe felt itchy and heavy against her body and she wished she could shed it, have the freedom to move because she felt suffocated.
The boy, locked into place with metal handcuffs, never took his eyes off her and she was terrified of his brute strength and anger. His nostrils flared and he looked like he wanted to spit at her, but refrained.
She turned to her mother, facing away so the children couldn’t see her face. And she gained composure.
“Why do I have to do this?” Thea asked.
Blair raised her eyebrows.
Her
mother wasn’t giving her an option. Oh, she could walk away and set the needles on the ground to leave her mother to do the work herself, but that would prolong the inevitable. Thea wondered if Amira ever suffered at the hand of Gordy; if her cousin, reared for power, was brought into the underbellies of the towers and instructed to be the one to protect their way of life. Amira got the big glass house and the rich husband and the life on land, and she could float through without needing smarts or quickness. But they had the same blood—they were from the same family—so, why was she the only one asked to continually sacrifice for the larger good.
Unless Amira considered it a sacrifice to marry Maverick, which she did, Thea couldn’t see the comparison. She had to murder children. Amira had to give up the idea of true love.
“Think it through,” Blair said in a clipped sing-song.
The boy bared his teeth and kicked at the wooden floor and caused Thea to jump. She took the needle and went after him, aiming for the fleshy part of his thigh, but he moved and kneed her in the chest. Thea fell backward and both needles rolled out of her hand and toward her mother’s feet.
Blair, instead of reaching for them, stepped back and let them come to a stop on their own. Thea flung back to grab the needles without getting up, and then scrambled back across the floor out of reach of the thrashing boy. She knew if she reached in to jab him, there was a chance she’d lose the needle and stab herself. So, as he spun and kicked, Thea stood.
The girl was huddled into a ball, barely moving, not watching the scene unfold and her shoulders bounced with silent sobs.
Thea, out of breath and afraid, took the first needle and stuck it into the girl’s exposed side. The girl shrieked in pain and surprise and tore at the sharp metal in her flesh—she grabbed the needle at the injection site, pulled, and tossed it out, but even by that time her breath was ragged and the girl’s freckled face was losing color. She hit the floor like a ragdoll and when she did, the boy stopped moving.
Out of breath, tears streaked down his face, he stared at the girl, now not breathing, and he howled. Like a dog to the moon, he lifted his young chin and erupted into a terrifying cry, his whole body shook. The fight was gone and he didn’t kick or scratch, he instead looked at Thea and said, “Take me home.”
The Bedrock Page 23
