The Initiative: Book One of the Jannah Cycle

by D. Brumbley

  “Well, what I’m deciding right now is that I need a shower. That’s about as far into my future as I can see.” He gave her a weak smile, and stepped closer, reaching out to tug at the front of her shirt where she’d gotten it dirty by being around him. “I don’t know if Larissa’s in her room or not, but even if she’s not, I’m sure she won’t care if you go use her shower. We can run these through the machine and have them good as new by tomorrow.”

  “Thanks.” Anna replied without looking at him, but she put her hand on top of his as he tugged at her shirt. Only when she was actually touching him did she look up, but she was holding her breath, thinking about a thousand scenarios at once that would never happen. Eventually she let go of the breath to respond. “I’ll go find something to wear and use the shower for a quick rinse.”

  “Sounds good.” He actually tightened his grip on her shirt for a moment rather than letting her go, but he forced himself to uncurl his fingers slowly. Would it be so disastrous to say what he was thinking? Ask her if she would rather share his shower than go find her own? Ask her whether she ever got tired of putting on clothes and would rather just walk around naked all the time instead? Would it be…

  Yes, it would be, the voice of reason in his head replied. It would be disastrous. It would eventually mean the end of Anna, as his best friend or anything else. He didn’t deserve to have that with her. Didn’t even deserve to have her as his friend after everything that had happened, but they had been friends long before either of them had ever been mature enough to question what they did or didn’t deserve in the world. Even entertaining the possibility of it wasn’t worth the risk. Not if Anna was the risk. “I’ll see you in a bit, then. Um, if you see Larissa, tell her I promised Lenny and Karen lunch. I’m sure she’s already got something going, but just so she knows.”

  Anna’s chest tightened in pain as he let her shirt go and all she could do was nod as she backed away from him. She didn’t know what to think anymore about Jannah. She wouldn’t be leaving everything behind if Logan went.

  She did know one thing. She couldn’t watch him with someone else, and eventually he would find someone. He was gorgeous and caring. He would find someone again. Anna turned away sharply so he wouldn’t see her eyes burning with tears as she started to walk away. “I’ll meet you downstairs in a bit.”

  He couldn’t stop himself from watching her before he turned to go to his own shower. It felt good to be out of his clothes, mostly because it allowed him to be free of the confines of his pants. Being around Anna too long and having her so close had made that freedom an urgent need that wasn’t going away anytime soon. Being under the hot water felt even better, and he stood there a long time just letting it heat and soak away all the grime and grease of the preceding week.

  Thoughts of Anna never left his mind. She was somewhere else in the house, possibly naked already herself, standing under her own stream of hot water…

  He groaned at that thought, half in pleasure, half in frustration at himself. He couldn’t and wouldn’t stop himself from imagining what she would feel like in that shower, pressed between him and the wall, but he hated himself for it, having her so close but still unwilling to do anything about it. Still, his self-hatred didn’t stop him from getting lost in the thought. It never had when it came to Anna.

  Standing outside the shower afterward, Logan let himself air-dry in front of the open window of his bathroom. It was every bit as oversized and opulent as the rest of the house, letting in sunlight and an afternoon breeze that whipped around him and set the towels fluttering on their racks. If Anna went along to the Jannah Initiative, would he still go? Would he want to go even more? That was a stupid question, of course he would want to go, even if it was just to be around Anna. He’d gladly go to the other end of the universe for that, even if he wouldn’t go down the hall and tell her what was really on his mind.

  He looked up at the sky just in time to see one of the massive orbital Stations coming into view, crossing his window along the longest arc of the sky overhead. It was low enough in orbit that he could make out the arms that gave the place its distinctive shape. He could even count how many there were.

  Eight arms. That meant it had to be one of the lower-numbered Stations. The most massive of them, the earliest developed and the longest spinning. That much he knew from his history classes. Who was up there, looking down at him? Anyone? Did people in orbit even look down at the world they had come from? The world their grandparents and great-grandparents had come from? How much did they think about Earth? About people like him or Anna?

  He had no way of knowing.

  Would he be able to make a difference on Jannah? Would his life have more meaning there? Or would his presence alone be enough to drive more people around him to end their lives?

  He was toxic. Everything he touched, everything he tried to do, ended up hurting people. Jannah had to be different. It…it had to be.

  3

  There was never a day when the halls of her hospital were quiet, and Mercury preferred it that way. Modern medicine or not, people still got sick. People still died and people were still born, every single day. Mercury had just stepped out of an intense labor that ended with the birth of twin boys, both huge and healthy. She washed up and paused to fix her hair, since a few strands had pulled free of her efficient tie. She pulled it all back again into a long, brilliantly red ponytail before she hurried toward a nearby nurse’s station.

  Before she asked the question she wanted to ask, she updated the file on her most recent patients, then looked over at one of her fellow doctors and friends. Greg worked in the neonatal intensive care unit, but by the look of the coffee in his hand, she figured he must be between patients.

  “So? Any news?” She’d been on pins and needles all night long during her shift, but she’d had no updates from her communicator. Eventually she had given up even checking.

  Greg gave her an amused smile as he shook his head. “Not for you or the other twenty people who’ve asked me in the past half hour. Why am I the repository of all information on this subject, exactly?” He glanced down at his coffee, but was also surreptitiously checking the communicator he was holding in his other hand.

  “You’re the senior doctor on call at the moment. I just assumed that if anyone would get information first, it would be you.” It almost seemed silly to attach the word ‘senior’ to someone like Greg, since he was only a little older than she was, and she was twenty-three. Just in the last year, she had finished her residency and became a practicing obstetrician and gynecologist. Half her days were spent in an office examining and the other half were running around the hospital for various purposes. Mostly delivering babies. “Am I wrong to assume that you would know first?”

  “Nope, not wrong.” He said without even looking back at her, still refreshing something on his communicator. “A little birdie may have told me that they’re sending out the letters tonight. May have. I’ll deny it under interrogation.”

  “Tonight?” Mercury deflated. She would just have to be patient a little longer. “At least I will get to find out while my parents are still here.” Mercury moved toward a snack dispenser in the wall behind the nurse’s station. When it scanned her hand, it selected a healthy snack within her remaining calorie allotment for the day. Out popped a sliced apple and a bottle of water. “I’m supposed to meet a potential match tomorrow. If I don’t cancel it tonight.”

  “Oh, wow, I didn’t realize you had one lined up already.” He finished the rest of his coffee slowly. He didn’t bother to try and hide the slight look of disappointment on his face, but he had known she had submitted her name to be matched. It wasn’t like it was out of nowhere. “How does his profile look?”

  “He matches almost all my requirements, and even several areas where I didn’t think I would find a match. He’s significantly taller than I am, which isn’t always easy to find.” For a woman, Mercury was tall, and she had a full figure to go with it while stil
l maintaining a healthy weight to height ratio. She knew she had qualities that made her physically attractive, curves in pleasing proportions, or so she’d been told, but she wasn’t particular about an attractive match. She wanted someone who matched her intellectually and someone who was loyal and resourceful. Someone who would challenge her mind more than anything. “He’s a high ranked pilot, top of his class. I just don’t know if I want to go through with this whole matching process. I don’t really have much time, and if I get accepted to Jannah, I would only be able to pursue this man if he is accepted also.” Almost everyone she knew had applied. It had never once occurred to her that her match might not have. Everyone wanted to go to Jannah. “My parents are sickeningly cute together and they were matched, but I don’t know if I’m ready for it.”

  Greg himself was just barely Mercury’s height, so long as she wasn’t wearing heels of any kind, so he understood just how difficult it would be for her to find a man taller than she was. Especially one significantly taller, as she’d described. “Your parents are pretty cute. Even if the whole secretary thing takes a little getting used to.” He chuckled against the rim of his water bottle. “I’m sure the system took Jannah acceptance into account when making its decision on him for you. I doubt it would set up a match just to have to completely recalculate the thing later.”

  “That’s true. That would be illogical and a waste of everyone’s time.” She nodded as she munched on a piece of apple. Mercury looked over at Greg, staying quiet a moment as she considered what to say. “Do you think I should meet him?” She valued Greg’s opinion and friendship, even though she was somewhat aware he liked her more than she liked him. She was more about practicality and sensibility, and he liked her for more than that. The only time they had engaged in sexual behavior had been to satisfy a curiosity of Mercury’s, though she knew that hadn’t been the reason for him. In the end, though, he was still her friend and she wanted to know what he thought.

  “I…am skeptical.” He said with a laugh. He motioned down the hall to where he was going to be heading for surgery soon, so that she could walk with him. “I’ve never trusted the match programs, but like you said, your parents are happy and I know plenty of other couples who are too. I’m too much of a romantic for my opinion on the subject to be entirely clinical.” He bumped into her shoulder as they walked, but he doubted it would get much of a reaction from her. Nothing else he’d ever tried ever achieved a desired reaction. The woman’s focus was a thing of legend. “But, I will say he sounds like a dream come true for you. Especially with the height. I know maybe two men taller than you. Total. And one of those…would not be interested.” He shook his head and tossed the empty water bottle into a nearby chute for reclamation and processing. “I do think, no matter what, that you should make the time for it. Whether it’s the guy you’re matched with or anyone else, you need to make the time for somebody. You deserve that. So if you trust the system, yeah, sure, give the guy a shot. Nothing to lose, as they say.”

  “Statistically there are definitely more than two men I could match with and who would also satisfy the height requirement.” She said first, since she wasn’t typically a romantic and she knew the match program was just a very fine-tuned algorithm that had enough data to produce more success than failure. “As for needing to make the time for someone, I don’t feel as though I need to. Biologically, I have plenty of time to start a family without any fertility concerns. Mostly it comes down to the fact that my parents harassed me enough for me to fill out the necessary information and to have my file uploaded into the program. Though it would be nice to have someone to talk to and spend time with when I go home after my shifts.”

  “It’s not just about having somebody else to take up space.” He knew better than to try and convince her of anything like the divinity of being in love or the greater metaphysics of the universal human need for it. “It’s about sharing your life with somebody. Sharing somebody else’s life with them. Being there for them when things go wrong, when they go right…office parties and promo celebrations can only go so far.”

  “I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I want that too. I want to be important to someone and I want someone to be important to me. I hope to be that person for someone else, but I’m not going to tie my thoughts and desires up with that. That might be difficult to find and maintain.” She looked over at Greg again. “Maybe my feelings will change if I meet the right match. That’s part of the point of the program, right? I would never meet a pilot otherwise.”

  He doubted she would see the flinch that crossed his face, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. It stung more than a little to hear her talk about just needing to meet the ‘right one’ when he had been trying for a long time to be the right one for her. “That’s true, I can’t think of any reason why you would, really. And I hope that’s what happens.”

  It wasn’t until after her entire explanation and his flinch that she realized she had hurt him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” She hesitantly reached out to touch his arm in a pathetic attempt at reassurance. “This is why my parents pushed for me to enter the matching program. I don’t know what to look for or do when it comes to a partner. It’s not something I understand easily.”

  “I know that.” He said as gently as he could, still giving her a quiet smile. “What I do hope you understand is that I want you happy. And it sounds like this is a good chance for that. That’s important to me.”

  “Thank you.” Mercury smiled and patted his arm gently, then stepped away from him slowly. “I saw you have a surgery. I hope it goes well.”

  “So do I.” He reached out to take her arm as well, then stepped in and gave her a kiss on the cheek. Yes, they were on shift at work, but there was no one else in the hallway, and even if there had been, he wouldn’t have cared. “Keep me posted about your match. I don’t think we’re on shift together again until Friday. Unless you end up taking the next two weeks off for Introduction, of course.” He did his best to make his smile playful when it came to that possibility, but it clearly wasn’t one he really wanted to imagine.

  “I don’t think that’s likely, I’ll be surprised if the first meeting goes without some kind of hitch.” Mercury gave him a small smile, but she didn’t kiss him back. She wasn’t interested in him that way, and she didn’t want to give him the idea that she might be. That would be unkind of her and she didn’t want to do that to a friend. She did promise to keep him updated, though. “Let me know what you hear tonight. I hope both of us are accepted.”

  It was several more hours before Mercury’s shift was over, leaving her exhausted, but she was glad to be able to go home and see her parents for one more night before they returned to their station. She enjoyed having them with her for a visit and she missed them often. She could already smell her mother’s cooking as the door to her unit opened.

  “Good evening, Doctor.” Her father said from the side of her living room. He had commandeered one corner of the room the week before when he arrived and turned it into a makeshift office for himself while he was away from Station Six. He still had a job to do, after all. “How’s the saving-lives business?”

  “You mean the life-making business?” She teased, since she spent more of her time with expectant mothers than patching people up. “It was a busy day. Lots of crying babies.” She went to get a glass of water (since she wasn’t allowed any other beverage according to her daily food log), then sat down at the table with her communicator. “Word is that the Jannah notices are going out tonight.”

  “You have good sources.” He said with a smirk that some had told Mercury all her life she had inherited. Marcus Finnegan was an intimidating man, government official as he was, standing just slightly taller than his one and only child. His hair had once been close to the same red as hers, but had faded over time, and had turned more blond than red, well on its way to white. A lifetime of public service tended to have that effect on people, he was fond of sayin
g. His Irish accent was thicker than her own, but he had also lived on Six nearly all the sixty-odd years of his life, whereas Mercury had left for Station Seven when she had been accepted into medical training at age fifteen. “Should be heading out any minute now, I’d expect. I tried to requisition some popcorn for the show, but my privileges don’t work here the way they do back home.”

  She pouted a little, since she would have enjoyed some popcorn, but she was used to her restrictive diet. Doctors were expected to maintain the best health possible and so her health was heavily monitored daily. “I wish I could at least order a piece of cake or something. If I get accepted. Or even if I don’t, I suppose. I haven’t had any sweets in months.” She checked her communicator again, but she still didn’t see any new messages from the Initiative. “I think I’m going to meet that match tomorrow.” She said to distract herself while she waited. “I’ll fly out in the morning.”

  Her father’s eyebrows went sky-high at that, and he shared a quick look with her mother before he gave a quick laugh. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a master of subject changes?” He was smiling as he shook his head at her, putting away some of the screens he was using to monitor business back on Six. “I thought you were on the fence about it. What changed your mind?”