by Talis Jones
Win snatches my snack and gives it a whiff. “Aw you get Mango Madness??”
Grabbing it back I give him a smug grin. “Mine.” Tipping it up to my lips I squeeze and suck down a gritty, slimy texture that almost has me spitting it right back out. Seeing Win’s hope, I force myself to eat every drop.”
“Such a jerk,” he mutters teasingly. “You didn’t even like it!”
Remi’s laugh slips out around the packet at his lips.
Van shakes his head. “Children,” he says to himself as if in disbelief. “I have a car full of children.”
The ride is uneventful and soon my eyes are begging for sleep, but I fight to keep them open. Win waggles his eyebrows and gestures theatrically to his waiting shoulder in invitation. Remi reaches over to smack the back of his head.
Leaning in close so Van won’t overhear, Remi whispers, “It’s okay to sleep. We’ll keep an eye on things.”
Giving in with a sigh I nod. “Wake me up so you guys can have a turn.” Allowing my head to collapse against his shoulder I drift off surprisingly quick.
Barked words and the halt of the vehicle wake me up and I rub my eyes blearily. I notice that my hair has been braided over my shoulder and I stare at it with a frown trying to figure out how that happened. Glancing at Win he points swiftly to Remi and I roll my eyes.
“Are we there?” I ask, taking in our surroundings. I don’t see much beyond an empty field.
“We just passed through a guarded gate,” Remi answers. “We’ll be there in a minute.”
Just as his words leave his mouth I see a large, clean-cut building rising before us and a part of me swallows thickly at its similarity to ZoiTech.
“Welcome to Python,” Van grins.
“Whoa,” Win breathes, his eyes wide as he takes it all in. “This is the home base, huh?”
My eyes slide to his awed expression. “I thought you said you knew how to get here.”
He shrugs. “We knew of it. Only ever been to a clinic though.”
Van catches my next question, a bit of pride in his voice. “Python has established several clinics across the Coalition and we continue to expand further. One of our main goals is to provide access to medical care for everyone here.”
“At what cost?” I wonder quietly.
“We do our best to keep services affordable,” he assures me, not understanding my actual question. “We even accept alternative currency since not all towns depend on cash anymore.”
“Not everyone wants to depend on the government anymore either,” Remi rumbles.
“You’re funded by the government?” I ask swiftly.
Van frowns at Remi before answering. “We have a collaboration established with the current leadership of the S.C., but I’d hardly say we’re funded by them. There’s hardly anything worth being called a government here and most of our funding comes from a non-profit called Sanctuary.”
Remi’s body goes rigid and I try not to give him away to Van, wondering at his reaction. I thought Sanctuary was supposed to be a secret affiliation or something, but I guess we have clearance considering we’re about to step foot inside of Python’s headquarters. Win and Remi remain silent and Van fills in the space with instructions and general introductions about Python that I try to pay attention to. The tension in the backseat, however, makes it difficult to do so.
The moment the vehicle rolls to a stop, Van is ready to go. “Alright, first we need to stop in the security post to have I.D. badges made for each of you. You are to keep your I.D. on you at all times. Do you understand?” Van levels each of us with a stern look until we nod. “As Ms. Travers’ bodyguards, your I.D.’s will allow you access everywhere she can go including the security wing, guard’s barracks, and breakroom. Ms. Travers, I’m afraid yours limits your access to your designated lab and office, general staff recreation rooms, the cafeteria, and your dorm. If any of you are found out of bounds or without your I.D., there will be consequences.”
We climb out of the car, stretching our stiff limbs briefly, and follow Van’s confident stride to the large glass doors that swing open once he scans his I.D. badge. I feel a strange wave of déjà vu wash over me, tugging me towards memories of my first day at ZoiTech. A day that filled my bones with possibility and pride. As if on instinct, Remi and Win flank my sides and it grounds me back to the here and now. This isn’t ZoiTech, Dr. Xi is not here, the past has passed and the future awaits.
Van holds open a door for us at the left of the wide lobby and we step inside an underlit room full of security monitors.
“This is it?” I ask.
“No,” he laughs. “This post only monitors the lobby and immediate perimeter. Our real security is away from prying eyes.”
One by one we have our photo taken, Van spews out shorthand commands, and a machine spits out a shiny plastic I.D. badge that clips to our clothes.
Win stares at his with a shake of his head. “This can’t be right. Must be the crap lighting.”
I reach for his badge and give it a look before shrugging. “Spitting image, I’d say.”
Snatching it back with a surly ha ha I repress a laugh at his glare glad that life crossed our paths and brought them here with me. They make everything feel a touch less daunting.
“Gentlemen,” Van calls out crisply, “please follow Jenkins. He will show you to your bunks and get you official uniforms. Ms. Travers has a private meeting and will reunite with you afterwards.”
They follow his outstretched arm and nerves slide along my spine as I watch them go.
“Cuz, it’s like we got real jobs,” Win mutters. “We’re going to have a daily grind now. Why’d we agree to this again?”
Remi glances over his shoulder and gives me a reassuring nod before disappearing around the corner.
“Ms. Travers…” Van nudges politely.
“Morgan,” I tell him. “You might as well call me Morgan. The Coalition is a bit too wild for formalities, don’t you think?”
He offers a reserved smile. “Another thing we hope to weave back into society, I suspect.”
Van scans his badge at the elevator and I step inside after the tiniest hesitation. As soon as the doors close we shoot up and I’m amazed at how little I feel it. When we arrive at the sixth floor, I swallow at the bustle that overwhelms me. So familiar, so foreign, my head aches at it all. Lab coats, guards, plain clothes, laughter, complaints, shuffling papers, purposeful strides, relaxed footsteps…it’s everywhere.
“This way,” Van leads.
One might think I’d be twisting my neck and bending over backwards to soak it all in, but I don’t. I don’t want to, or maybe I simply can’t. Not yet. My gaze remains firmly forward focused as I follow Van this way and that until we arrive at an open door. An office. A woman looks up from some blueprints unfurled across a desk and my joints lock in place. Fear clogs my throat as memories seize my brain and my feet refuse to take that step across the threshold.
Time has passed, but the face is the same. Dr. Convici smiles at me and my heart screams a desperate howl.
Van gives me a concerned frown at my reaction. “Morgan Travers, this is Victoria Convici, a leader in the Sanctuary refugee program.”
Victoria? My eyes rake over the woman more closely and I notice a messiness about her that Dr. Elizabeth Convici would have never allowed. Her mocha skin has an uneven tan as if from time working in the sun, there’s dirt beneath her fingernails, there are wisps of hair falling out of her dark braid threaded with gray, and her face holds an openness, a friendliness in her hazel eyes that lures in trust.
“Tori,” she corrects, her eyes crinkling in amusement. “I see my sister spoke of me often,” she jokes.
“Twins?” I ask, needing it confirmed.
Tori nods. “She always avoided personal questions in interviews, and in her circles who cares about those things anyway? Work, work, work,” she sighs. Reaching out a hand she greets, “Nice to meet you. My sister told me a lot about you.”
“Well, her arch rival thought you had potential so she made sure to take note of you; bookmark that info to steal you away someday,” Tori grins easily. Despite the unsettling resemblance, I feel no threat coming from this woman and I feel my shoulders loosen.
“Guess it worked,” I reply flatly. It worked because she was a competitive psychopath who let me take the fall. I know this and I have not forgotten it yet I find it’s harder to hold onto the anger now. Tori’s smile falters against the old anger trying to flare within me. “Where is Dr. Convici anyway?”
“Not on campus at the moment,” Tori answers, clearing her throat uncomfortably.
“Can I get you some water?” Van offers kindly, once again looking puzzled at the tension in the room.
So he really doesn’t know?
“No, I’m fine. You can go,” she waves him away. “Please take a seat, Morgan.”
My knees bend and I hate them for it even though I remind myself of why I’m here. Willingly. Then I remind myself that this isn’t Dr. Convici, this is a friend. The word strikes me, but I realize I truly feel it. We could be friends.
“I just want to thank you,” she begins. “Thank you for agreeing to help us. To have you on our team is a true blessing.”
I have nothing to say.
“I apologize for my sister’s absence,” she continues. “She felt it might be best if you met with me first considering the, ah, complicated situation.”
My eyebrows raise at her careful dance around the subject, but still I have nothing to say.
“I’m normally out west, running things from our first Sanctuary homestead. I prefer it to this sterile place,” she teases uncomfortably. “Still, I wanted to meet you so this all sort of…worked out…”
Tori seems like a tough woman, a survivor of the wilderness, a leader of people, and yet she feels guilt for her sister’s actions and in my presence, faced with it, her tongue blusters like a child in trouble.
Taking in a steadying breath she meets my eyes. “Is there anything I can do to help ease your transition here?”
Now I decide I do have something to say. A request. A condition. If we’re friends, then surely it won’t be much to ask.
“I want to know everything that has happened since I was sent to prison,” I demand softly. “The highlights are fine for now, but I want access to that information, that history I missed. I can’t afford to be ignorant. Not here. Not again.”
Tori nods, her hand slamming down approvingly on the desk. “A reasonable request. Vanguard did mention that unfortunate situation of your time away. I’ll run down the major events and you have your own office with your own computer and there should be a folder waiting on your desk with your login and key codes. I’ll make sure you have unrestricted access to the information you seek.”
“This place is strange,” I admit, sinking back into my chair. “Some of it seems from a different century with no electricity, no plumbing, no cars, no internet…and other moments are foreign in a different way, more advanced than the world I left behind.”
Tori looks out the window for a moment in thought. “It is strange, I suppose,” she agrees. “However, it’s the way these people prefer to be. Simpler times, simpler lives… Of course, simpler doesn’t mean easier. It’s wild and hellish out there, but it only makes the pockets of virtue that much more powerful to witness. Not everyone is a fan of my sister’s new medical venture, but if there’s one thing most are willing to compromise for, it’s medical care because even if death is natural, not many ever feel quite ready for it.”
I take her words in, mulling them over a bit before deciding I don’t much like feeling so comfortable around this person. And yet I do. “So what happened to Santé Medical?” I ask, getting us back on track.
“Rebranded,” she shrugs. “She decided to distance herself after the, uh, the trial. Python has a headquarters in the Rochester Alliance and more recently a headquarters in the Southern Coalition, which you are sitting in right now. Clinics have opened successfully in both the Alliance and the Coalition though out here we’re more focused on practical basic outreach while in the Alliance my sister attends tasks such as fundraisers and galas. We use the money from the Alliance to fund our expansion in the Coalition where they just don’t have the funding or the resources. We lost our facilities in the Pacific Confederation though we hope to reestablish there soon.”
I blink, trying to hide this news. I never knew Convici had any affiliation with the Confederation at all.
“So the borders have reopened?”
Tori gives a tight smile. “For some.”
She goes on talking about a revolution won in the P.C. not all that long ago aided by Sanctuary, their efforts to organize the Southern Coalition, and other updates that threaten to give me whiplash. She describes a world so different from the one I left, one still organized and familiar even if only holding onto that tradition by a thread, a world I barely witnessed on my journey here and suddenly it feels too real. The past few days have not been a dream, the Corral town was not a sick minority faction, everything Win and Remi and now Tori tell me is true and it finally settles in my gut like a knife. The world I knew is dead, this is my stage now and I hate it.
“When did the U.S. finally fall?” I ask, interrupting her proud spiel on agent recruitment. My voice is hollow and I can’t muster up the will power to hide how breathless I feel.
Tori does not appreciate the interruption and her frown conveys it with the art of a mother. “What?”
“I know it changed to the Rochester Alliance.” I couldn’t help but see the redecorating and it was enough of a shakeup for everyone to whisper about it, even around me. “I want to know…how did it happen? Why?” Ever since hearing the name I wondered about Fitz and his father with the type of curiosity that kept me up at night. No one had seemed to know and then they remembered that even if they did, talking to me was grounds for a beating.
“I wasn’t in the room when it happened,” she says after a deep breath, “only those that were know the how and why, but I heard that Rochester interrupted an emergency meeting at the capital and when he left it was done. The Pacific Confederation was attacking, the Southern Coalition was nibbling away more and more land, certain foreign opportunists were closing in, but a deal was made and the last piece of the U.S. sacrificed its title to join the Eurasian Union and fall under its protection, participate in trade, and receive funding to rebuild. They’ve come full circle, practically a colony once again.” Tori sighs, “At least they’re recognized. The Pacific Confederation, or Aresia,” she sneers lightly, “is making political headway, but as far as the rest of the world is concerned, everything else is no man’s land.”
I understand that last profoundly. The moment we’d left the bus behind, delving into the woods and emerging across the border I felt it. A heightening of the senses, the standing of the hairs on the back of my neck, even the very air felt different, sharper…I’d left order behind and entered a land of controlled chaos, a place where wildness was worn like a pair of comfortable boots. Or maybe it just seemed like anarchy to those so used to the tight reins of a time before. There’s a confidence in these people so curious yet enviable. They know who they are, what they want, what they don’t, and they’re fine to keep on so long as you don’t get in their way. I wondered if Python, or Sanctuary rather, would one day get in the way or become the way.
“What I would give to know how he did it,” Tori shakes her head with admiration. “What was said, what was negotiated…a curiosity I’ve accepted I’ll die with.” Standing up she heads towards the door, “If you’ll come with me, I’ll show you where you’ll be staying–”
“Rochester Sr.?” I ask suddenly. That man had seemed the type to die before he surrendered. A patriot to his misguided core.
“Sorry?”
“The man who created the Alliance,” I clarify. “Was that Jonathan Rochester, the Secretary of State?”
I can see a question in her eyes, but she tucks it away. “No, his son, Fitzwilliam.”
Nineteen
Staring at myself in the mirror has become an odd obsession I loathe. Staring at the proof of time lost fascinates me, disturbs me. The rest of my body stood testament, but I never saw my face except for glimpses in the windows and now I can’t seem to stop. Anti-aging treatments had reached the masses in the Alliance, but were never wasted on prisoners except as a side-effect in the treatments each time we visited the medical wing. I aged, but not nearly as much as I should have and it made it easier to reconcile the body I saw with the image of myself in my head. I lean in towards the bathroom mirror and frown, they couldn’t remove the ghosts from my eyes and there I see it all, every year spent on this earth.
A sharp knock has me straightening sharply. Tori left me in my assigned room to shower and change before a security interview of some sort. There’s no lock on the door that can’t be overridden by someone with higher clearance so I don’t expect more than an unfortunate grunt to be waiting for me. Pressing the panel beside the door it slides open and I’m left blinking.
“So? Whaddya think?” Win asks eagerly. He strikes a serious pose in his black uniform while Remi rolls his eyes. They look clean and the epitome of order, which of course has me laughing on the inside because I know no matter what they wear they’re still the Wild Cousins.
“You look great,” I allow. “I suppose a decent shower really makes a difference.”
Win snorts in amusement and I notice my muscles lose a bit of their tension reunited with two people I trust.
“We’re supposed to take you to your security interview,” Remi breaks in. “Not sure why they’re bothering now. Seems a bit backwards to bust you out of prison before deciding if you can be trusted.”
