by Joshua Guess
The mystery only endured long enough for the group to step through the door. Inside the lab itself, which was actually a large central space with doors leading off to smaller rooms, eight people sat around a well-worn set of folding tables. The place certainly had the look of a working laboratory; stacks of printouts on desks, the tables littered with the expected detritus of a break room down to packets of sugar and creamer, even the requisite nerds in rumpled clothing. The people sitting at the tables resonated with Kell immediately. He knew scientists when he saw them. These were his people.
And they were the only ones in the room. Logic dictated a simple answer.
They were the ones in charge. These people whose body language varied from haggard to clearly repressed anxiety were calling the shots. His mind recoiled from the concept. Not because they wouldn’t have the intelligence or ability to do so, far from it. He just didn’t immediately grasp how a bunch of lab geeks had gained power. Even before the Fall, people in lab coats rarely ruled anything outside their domain. Running a lab or a university, maybe a research division at a private company, sure. These were within their wheelhouse. Kell himself had done it.
The gap between managing a handful or two of other scientists and running a tiny empire of hardened survivors was almost too large to conceive. He needed more information to hope to understand it.
All of this came to him in a single intuitive flash, the work of perhaps two seconds. Then he was being led to the table, Emily at his side. Or he at hers. It was progressively harder to tell.
“It’s going to be easier if just one of us talks to you,” said a man near the middle of the pack of scientists. He was relatively young, somewhere shy of forty, though his curly black hair was salted with threads of gray. He spoke with the barest accent, and combined with the features on his thin face, Kell thought he must have emigrated from the Middle East. “I will be speaking for the group, though some might pipe up if there is anything to add.”
Kell doubted it. As uncomfortable as he was being trapped in this room at the furthest depths of an enemy stronghold, the men and women in front of him appeared close to losing their composure. Not just fear, but nerves. He’d been that way just before his first defense of a doctoral thesis. Wrecked, that was how his friends had put it. So much time spent fretting and worrying that there was no such thing as a good day or decent sleep until the thesis defense was behind him.
But for these people, the end of the world would never be a thing of the past. If that was what drove them to such obvious levels of anxiety and stress, then New America was one bad day away from meltdown. Through Emily, Kell understood the power structures of this place well enough to know that outside Rebound, things would topple more slowly. But they would topple. Without leadership, guidance, and most importantly resources from Rebound, the rest of New America would devolve. The people in it would adapt or die.
These twitchy, agitated people were the leadership. However they’d managed that, it was the logical conclusion. The calculus for how Kell moved forward had changed. Using a fist when a gentle hand would do meant potentially avoiding catastrophe. The idea galled him. These people had done terrible things, ordered lives to be ruined. He certainly felt no guilt at the thought of killing each and every one of them.
He’d be damned if he let his anger cause a series of consequences that would hurt the innocent people living under their rule, however.
With an effort to remain as calm and neutral as possible, Kell began in the most civilized place he could.
“I guess we can start with names. I’m Kell McDonald. Who are you?”
Emily
The totality of a person’s experiences shapes them. This is understood on a level so fundamental that any exploration of the idea sounds like common sense. Much like saying that gravity makes things fall, the concept is familiar enough that diving deeper into it incites near instant boredom but for a few who are perversely into that kind of thing. Scientists are universally in that category.
Emily was not a scientist in the way Kell was, but her experience made her better at reading a room than most people she’d met. Unlike the average person, Emily had always lived her life knowing that it wasn’t just the big ones that changed you. Sure, deaths, marriages, and having children would carve your personality into vastly new topographies, but the little things you experienced every day added up.
She had a habit of telling white lies when it came to her background, mostly because Emily was a little embarrassed. A string of weird, unrelated jobs and fields of study before The Fall, from gas station attendant to (failed) student of anthropology gave her many of those little experiences to draw on. Every one of them opened her up to a new facet of how people work and react, but that didn’t mean explaining to people who thought she had some mysterious past that she was as plain as they came was a fun time.
Seeing the difference between Kell and their hosts brought the divide between Rebound and the rest of the world truly to the fore. Even the war a few years back with the bunker dwellers who had founded the UAS—United American Survivors—had eventually lost steam once the people at the head of their group started seeing what life was like out here. The parallels were interesting, especially for the deviations.
Rebound was almost fanatically driven not to bend as the leadership of the UAS had done once they integrated many survivors. The war cost them enough to inspire the realization that in a world where humanity was the most limited resource, wasting them in war was a tragedy beyond words. Rebound, however, seemed to have a mission of such driving importance that it overrode all other rational consideration.
That last part was a guess, but an educated one. The fact that she and Kell were meeting with scientists said all she needed to know. No survivor would look to a bunch of lab nerds for leadership unless they had a compelling reason.
These men and women were untouched by the world above. No, that was wrong. They were universally pale and drawn, clearly victims of nerves set constantly on edge over time. The deeper scars, the sort survivors accumulated like experience points in an RPG, were conspicuous in their absence. Their smooth skin and average, soft bodies made them look almost alien to her eyes. She knew they looked like people as people had been, on an intellectual level. That didn’t change the feeling that she was gazing on a group of people utterly divorced from her world.
Because they were, in most of the ways that counted.
Her eyes darted to Kell, and the contrast became so much more obvious. Even missing half a leg didn’t change him much. He was carved wood, like most people she knew. Flat working muscle draped with skin marked with callouses and scars. His expression was alive, thoughtful, and observant as only those who have to constantly reexamine their world for potential threats can be. The scar on his face highlighted that raking, hawkish stare. He was vital in a way the people sitting across from him were not.
When he gave his name, a clear note of discomfort rippled through their hosts. Which was odd considering they knew perfectly well who Kell was. Her curiosity was short-lived.
“You can call me...let’s see, how about Ian? I’ve always liked the name Ian,” said the spokesman. “If names are needed for anyone else, we’ll come up with something.”
Emily was painfully aware of the guards standing at the back of the room. Not close enough to overhear unless they raised voices, but perfectly able to see. The last thing she wanted to do was display aggressive body language, or worse make the people sitting across from her appear afraid. She wasn’t like Kell. They didn’t need her.
She spoke carefully, respectfully. “Is there a particular reason you don’t want us to know your names?”
Ian glanced at her, eyes calculating. “Yes, there is. And no, I won’t be sharing that reason. For now let’s say we like our privacy and leave it at that.”
Kell raised an eyebrow at her, then gave a fractional nod. The plan had always been to let her do as much of the talking as possible, since she was the one
trying—and trained—to gather information.
“I suppose the next question is the most obvious one, Ian,” she said, leaning onto the table with hands clasped. “Why do you want Kell here so badly? And let’s forgo the bullshit excuse about him being some kind of criminal. If you really wanted to punish him for the plague, you wouldn’t have tried so hard to capture him alive and steal his research. Until the last week or so, we assumed you wanted the cure.”
Ian’s eyebrows rose. “But we do. We want it very much.”
Emily waved a hand. “Sure, but if that were all you would have just worked out a treaty. You know, like you gave your word you’d do.”
Ian’s response to this was a stone face, but the same couldn’t be said for his fellow council members. There were furtive looks and dirty glances, a few uncomfortable people who refused to meet anyone’s eyes. Emily took it all in and cataloged it, hoping Kell was using this free time to make his own observations.
“The point is,” Emily said when no one spoke up, “there’s something bigger going on here. Something you need Kell for but didn’t want to ask for over the radio. Why you wouldn’t just approach us about it once we got her for negotiations, I can only imagine. However we got to this point, we’re here now. So why don’t you lay it out for us, and maybe we can avoid anything unpleasant.”
Ian briefly chewed on the tip of his finger in what Emily assumed was a nervous habit. “That easy? We just tell you what we want and you’ll do it?”
Emily laughed. “God, no. I’m talking about a start. A conversation. You could build a little good faith by letting Mason out, though if you do I strongly recommend letting us be the ones to open his cell door. Otherwise you’re gonna end up with a mess on the floor that will be a bitch to clean up.”
Ian chuckled scornfully. “You want us to give up our leverage? I don’t think so.”
Beside her, Kell tensed. His breath came out loud and labored, a sure sign he was pushing down a moment of intense rage. He was better at it than she was; when Emily got angry enough for it to show, people were usually about to die. She put a hand on his, giving it a little squeeze.
Her eyes never left Ian. “Couple points. First one is that we’re not doing shit for you while our guy is sitting in a cell. We don’t respond well to extortion. Second? If you don’t let him go, you get nothing. You can kill him, yeah, but then you’ll have to kill us. I assure you of that. It’s really your only choice.”
She saw that calculating look on Ian’s face again and Emily smiled. “Now you’re thinking you can use me as leverage, as it’s obvious Kell and I are a couple. I’d kill myself before I let that happen.”
However serious the words, her tone was casual. That part was important. Never deliver a threat or a promise in anything but a calm, believable voice. Only cartoon villains or overacted heroes relied on theatricality to make their point. Though a deliberate effort went into making herself come across as even-keeled, it was still a statement of genuine intent. Emily meant every word.
“Fatalistic bunch, aren’t you?” Ian said. “No one has to die so long as we get your help.”
Kell shifted in his seat. “Except you told your people I caused the plague, and promised them my blood. Planning on backing out of that?”
“We promised them a trial,” Ian said. “And any trial would be organized by us, which means the details can be managed.”
Emily bit back her commentary on how well these people managed anything. Instead she counted to three internally and tried to force her blood pressure to something close to normal by sheer will. “We’ll table that for now. Before we go any further, do we have an agreement that Mason will be set free?”
Ian tapped his fingers against the table, his expression cloudy for a few seconds as the thought about it. “Free, no. But let’s say we’ll parole him into your custody. If he hurts anyone, breaks any rules, it will be on all of you. Here at Rebound, we have severe punishments for enemy infiltrators. After all, it’s not as if you need all your fingers to help us in our work.”
He delivered the threat in the same casual tone Emily had, and she found herself impressed. Disturbed, certainly, but impressed all the same. “Here I was thinking returning your spy to you would buy us a little goodwill.”
Ian rolled his eyes. “You know better than that. Or you should, considering how important this trip was supposed to be for your people. Now, can we move on to the important part?”
Ignoring the breathtakingly casual disregard for the lives and well-being of Emily and her crew, she nodded. “By all means. Dazzle us.”
Ian turned to one of his peers and nodded. She was a woman of middling years, possibly Hispanic. She produced a thin binder from a bag on the floor, sliding it across the table to Kell. He opened it and began perusing the pages while Emily returned her focus to the party.
“What happens if he helps? Afterward, I mean? What assurance can you give me that we’ll walk away from here?”
Ian’s expression was a mixture of puzzled and disbelieving. “If he can help us solve this, he’ll have our gratitude to a degree I can’t even put into words. This is something we’ve been working on for a long time now.”
Emily frowned. “Not the cure, though. Because we already have that.”
Ian scoffed. “From what you’ve sent us, calling your solution a cure is...generous. Oh, it will do a lot of good, I have no doubt about that in the least. But it’s not airborne past a few yards unless it’s in a vessel designed to aerosolize it, and it doesn’t propagate naturally. It’s a huge step forward, but not a game-changer.” Ian pointed toward Kell. “What’s in that binder? It is.”
Emily turned to ask Kell what he thought about the game-changingness of the binder’s contents and found him deeply enthralled. His eyes scanned the text—the painfully small text—with a hungry fervor. It was hard to tell if the tension in his frame was excitement or anger, but he was clearly fascinated either way. She left him to it.
“Can we take a break, then?” Emily asked. “We’ve been on the road a while. I’d like to settle in, get something to eat, and see Mason. Kell can keep looking at this while I handle other things. Is there more we’ll need him to look over, or is it all in the binder?”
This time, several people on the other side of the table laughed, and in a way Emily detested. It was the familiar way more than one superior asshole had laughed at her in college, as if knowing something she didn’t made them morally superior to her. Again, she bit back a response. This time it would be saying something insulting out of anger, a reaction no one in the room could afford.
“No, that’s hardly all of it,” Ian said. “We’ve been at this for years. That’s just a small piece, a sample. It would take five or six pages with several columns of print just to list out the file boxes our research is kept in. At last count, I believe we were at something close to a quarter million pages. Though much of that is recorded data, some duplicates. This won’t be an easy fix.” He stood, motioning for everyone else to join him. The guards ambled over, apparently totally at ease. “Please show them to their quarters. After they’ve dropped off their supplies, let them take the prisoner from his cell. He’s their parolee now. Make sure everyone knows.”
Emily kept the disgust she felt off her face. She put a hand out to Ian, who stared at it as if it were a complete unknown for a long second. “Thank you.”
He shook, the grip more firm than she expected. “You’re welcome.”
They went their separate ways, and Emily wondered how long she’d be able to keep up the facade. This place felt wrong on a deep, instinctive level. She hated it and Ian made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
She’d deal with it for as long as it took. Once her agents were in position, things would swing her way.
Mason
Rebound had a surprise ready for him—and, he supposed, Emily—when she came to let him out of his cell. It wasn’t a good one. There were no strippers emerging from cakes.
> She stood outside the door to his cell, so close her clothing brushed the bars. Emily was frozen in place and Mason himself wasn’t doing much better. Eight men in chains were slowly marched past them, each bloodied and beaten. It took an effort of will to stay impassive, though Emily had him beat. She somehow managed to look bored, as if the sight meant nothing more to her than a passing car.
He was not a man inclined to panic, and there was none at that moment. But for the first time in years, Mason felt the emotion trying to well up in him. He knew every one of those men. They were his. Fighters all, they were supposed to be the first line of defense.
How had they been found out? The thought turned his stomach into a frozen cannonball.
To their credit, none of the men looked at Mason or Emily with anything more than a passing glance. There were no furtive pleas for help. No obvious recognition. Al appeared at the end of the train, taking a place well away from Mason’s cell door.
“I came to see you out,” Al said by way of explanation. “Hoping you’re not going to kill me as soon as that door opens.”
Emily turned to face him, giving Mason a searching look. “You’re going to behave, right?”
Mason nodded. Of course he would. They all knew him better than that. There were few circumstances capable of pushing him past the limits of his self-control. The deep urge to protect his people warred with the rational understanding that none of them had volunteered for this job blindly. No one infiltrating an enemy nation went a day without imagining how badly it could end for them.
“Sure,” Mason answered honestly. “I’ll play nice if they do.”
Mason exited the cell and followed Emily. Al was close on their heels.
“What did those guys do?” Mason asked.
Al glanced back the way they’d come. “Oh, them? Insurrectionists, or so I’m told. Made a play for control of one of our smaller farming enclaves. Didn’t work out well for them.”
