Looking at him now, she felt compelled to protect him, which struck her as odd, as he was the one who seemed to be in control. He knew far too much for one without the implant. It just didn't make sense. She should hate him. His kind had killed her family. They made those like her into exiles. She should have shot him with no hesitation, and yet, she couldn't do it. Not even with his hand pulling the trigger. They had fought on the wrong side of the war and lost, hadn't they? They were savages. At least, that's what her implant was telling her. Yet this boy before her wasn't adding up.
Turning her face away from him, she whispered, "Did your people kill my family? My mom and dad . . . my baby sister . . . my dog, my dog Blanche? I need to know."
He stepped back from her then, giving her a little room to breathe, away from his warm, gentle touch. He lowered his eyes and hesitated for just a few seconds before blurting out, "I think so. It was before I was born, all of it, but yes, my people may have killed yours, Amelia. I'm sorry." He walked away to the sink, slowly, straight-backed, his hands fisted at his sides, and stood there motionless for a while. She couldn't see his face in the darkened mirror.
She waited. Finally, he turned and walked back toward her, but now he held her stun gun in his right hand. She didn't remember him taking it from her. She froze, too surprised and scared to scream.
He closed the remaining distance, not quite looking in her eyes.
She let go of the breath she didn't realize she was holding when he handed her the gun, handle first. The gun buzzed softly, telling her that he had flicked the safety off.
Still not looking at her face, he laced his fingers behind his head and nodded. "I'm ready." He turned his back to the barrel of the gun and walked toward the stairs.
2
The Pill
Doctor Sandra Groning, February 4, 2107 (129 years ago) Manchester, UK
The orderlies no longer broke for lunch. The clinic had been frightfully understaffed for too long now to keep track of who clocked in and who didn't, so Sandra Groning took all the help she could get from whoever felt like helping these days. She looked ragged herself. She had lost weight; her eyes seemed to have sunk in deeper than when she was fighting cancer. Even as a doctor, she was surprised at the physical manifestations of exhaustion.
She walked over to the fountain and put her face directly over the stream of clean, cold water, one of the few luxuries that were still available to everyone. The cold was just bearable, but at least now she was awake enough to go to her lab. Over twelve hundred tests and no closer to finding that magic bullet. Something had to give. She couldn't take it for too much longer, especially with all the newly homeless replicating themselves. Something had to just work so that she never had to pull a newborn’s frozen corpse from the snowbank on her way home. That was too much to ask of anyone.
She almost ran into Jason—lost in thought as she was—who seemed out of breath but had an uncommon smile on his face. He didn't seem to have aged much over the years they’d worked together. Somehow he retained his youthful, almost childish face, and the few lines drawn symmetrically across his forehead didn't make him look ragged or aged in the least. He was gesturing wildly toward the lab, not saying anything, just pointing. So they sprinted, he casually, she gagging on spit, lungs unable to quite keep up like they used to. God, she felt so, so old now. Ancient, even. Chronology be damned, she'd seen far too much death for her 26 years to ever feel young again. And far too many of those deaths were babies, so the mere thought of being with a guy in that way was a turn-off.
The doors to the lab were wide open, and her staff moved timidly against the wall while Jason caught his breath enough to explain.
"The extra dose of AlterX in the bonobos seems to have worked when combined with half the Ovix pill. Twenty-three of the bonobo females have been thoroughly taken care of by the males for weeks now, and yet, not one has the CRH in their system. It's like it just didn't take. Basically, not one of them is pregnant...." He slumped into his swivel chair and stared at the techs, then at her. Nobody said anything. It was as if this news itself was too fragile to acknowledge fully, to speak of in anything but a whisper.
She grabbed her notes, stuffed them unseen into her briefcase, and bolted out of the lab, not bothering to close the door behind her. She needed a drink. Someplace quiet. And a bit of time. A tall gin and tonic, single in a double, a bit of time to process what she—what they—may have just accomplished by accidentally mixing related meds in a single sample.
The technician responsible for dosing this group of bonobo females left unexpectedly, and the new kid, and he really was a kid, didn't bother to read the notes before medicating the girls with AlterX. It was an accident. She was furious the day she found out and fired the kid. Jeremy, or something that sounded like Jeremy, just out of college, eager blue eyes through the specs, decent smile, too young to see bodies of dead babies.
The pub was warm and smoky. She beat the snow off her boots on the stoop at the door and walked to her favorite spot in the darker corner of the place, the farthest space away from the door where the bartender could still hand her a drink. She felt far too weary to walk to get the refill if she'd need one. Charlie, who'd been tending the bar here for as long as she could remember, could always tell if she needed to talk or be left alone. He sensed immediately that it was her alone night, made her a drink she didn't have to ask for, slid the payment token silently across the counter, and walked away, quiet as a ghost.
She had always admired Charlie for that bizarre ability to read people's moods. Or maybe it was just her moods he read so well. She never quite got the hang of paying attention to the people around her. Not Jeremy, Jerry... Jerry Stiles. Single-mom-raised, smart kid, scholarship to Cornell or some such, a quiet, decent sort. She pulled out her phone and dialed “2” for Jason. "I need you to call Jerry and hire him back with my apologies. I want him on my team. Tell him I was in a lousy mood. Estrogen deficiency, whatever. I want him back. … Thanks."
She doodled distractedly on a napkin with her immaculately un-chewed pencil. Jason chewed all of his to barely centimeter-sized nubs. She always razzed him about that lousy habit, telling him that it made it impossible for him to ever hide his DNA, constantly wearing gloves notwithstanding. She giggled to herself at the thought of Jason ever needing to hide anything from anyone. That man-child was an open book. A very thorough and efficient open book. And not altogether bad looking. But he was far too taken with her fame, such as it was, and her reputation as an anti-sexer to ever see her that way. Just as well, she thought. Just as well.
She looked up at the sound of ice clinking. Charlie refilled her drink without asking if she wanted one. She did. She had allowed Jason to look into him once, a few years ago, when it seemed everyone was trying their damndest to make her stop her research. They were all afraid for her then, and walking home alone, going to a pub—none of these seemed safe.
She needed her alone time then more than ever, so she conceded to Jason running a background check on Charlie, and her doorman, and the occasional flower delivery boy when she had to send flowers to the parents of the kids she couldn't save. That was when you could still send flowers. And when there were doormen, she thought wryly.
But Charlie was still here, and he checked out all right. A wife of twenty-three years who died in a car crash, two boys fighting in one god-awful place or another. Two lost boys he thinks about all the time but can't touch. Two boys whose faces are frozen in the only not-dusty frame behind the beer kegs. A smiling red-headed chap of about twenty and a somber-looking younger kid, standing on some beach next to a cold-looking sea or ocean, staring directly into the camera. She'd always wanted to ask Charlie who took the photo but never quite got the courage to. Somehow, she always knew that it wasn't Charlie; that even in that photograph they were already lost to him.
She looked down at her doodles. Symmetrical, yet sloppy. She crumpled the napkin and flicked it into the ashtray, watching a small spray of ashes or
dust rise quickly and fall back, slowly. She turned away. They needed to find a way of testing the compound on human subjects. They would need to sell it to the board, of course, but they still had plenty of money for the meds, and the research part of it seemed to be almost over. She'd be willing as a subject, but that would mean her actually having sex, and she had nobody to do it with. They would need a sample of at least a hundred healthy, appropriately aged females, preferably between twenty and thirty-four, of different races, in case there is immunity that's genetically based, all willing to go on record about every intimate experience, preferably with multiple partners, or they would have to test the health of every man in the sample as well, which wouldn’t be feasible.
She caught Charlie staring at her, asking without asking in that way he had. In an uncharacteristic and likely gin and tonic-fueled looseness of the tongue, she looked him dead in the face and blurted out, "I need to find about one hundred healthy, youngish females willing to have lots of sex on the record for my research." She broke down laughing. It was the most unlike-her thing she'd ever said in this place or most places outside of her lab, and it was strangely liberating.
She was already collecting her things when Charlie, rather gravely, responded, "Prostitutes?"
That's it. Prostitutes. They do the sex thing for money every day. For very little money, nowadays. And birth control is rarely an option, as it costs far too much for the girls and the men don't particularly care if they impregnate a prostitute … This could indeed be the most perfect drink she's ever had at this pub.
She ran back to the clinic and then to her lab, only to find it deserted and the lights off. She looked at her phone: 3:21 a.m. Everyone was asleep, at home, and would remain so until at least 8:00 in the morning, when Jason would come in bearing a thermos of coffee and a pair of Nutro-bars. He was always worried she'd forget to eat to the point of starving herself to death, so at the very least, she was guaranteed this bit of tasteless but highly nutritious breakfast, all 940 calories of it.
She pulled out her cot and folded her winter coat under her head for a pillow. She needed a blanket. She'd always needed a blanket, or anything really to pull over her body to be able to sleep, even in the summer. It wasn't a warmth thing, it was a comfort thing, this needing to feel the weight of something covering her. The pillow she could do without, so she unfurled her coat over herself and curled up, arms over her head, and flicked the light switch off. Tomorrow, she would task Jason with finding the human test subjects. Anything that happens after that she didn't yet want to think about.
For all these years, all she wanted was to find a way of making pregnancy be a choice that required a physician's intervention, not the other way around. Making it so that parents never had to bury their young because there was simply not enough food and warmth to keep them safe past breastfeeding, and at times, not even then. She was saving the dead babies from ever being born accidentally, thinking that if pregnancy did not almost automatically follow sex, she'd see fewer corpses of newborns on the streets; or starved, obviously abandoned toddlers breaking into old apartment buildings just to keep warm for one more night, subsisting on snow water and god knows what else.
This, what they may have just discovered, would cost almost nothing to make. It would fix this. They could make these pills available for nothing with the freely donated meds and still have enough research funds left over to use for distribution. They could put up automated dispensaries in all the cities where one could anonymously take one pill and have no chance of having babies from simply being intimate with someone. Or maybe they could work it into a routine vaccine protocol.
They would have to come up with a reversal procedure of course, for when someone genuinely wanted to have a child, but now that they knew what compounds work, it would be something as simple as putting together one shot or pill that negates the initial effect. This would take a little bit of the cash they have left, and maybe a few months to perfect the delivery method—a small price to pay for giving people this kind of control, a very small price to pay for not having to bury so many babies.
She closed her eyes, and for the millionth time, she remembered when she learned what she would end up doing with her years of med school and pathology training. She drifted much against her will to the one dream she wished she never had again and couldn't stop herself from dreaming, knowing the whole time it was a memory. It was all far too real, and after all these years, still far too close, too intimate, too detailed for her to not wake up screaming in the middle of. Yet, it was far too personal to ever share with Jason or Charlie or her thankfully now-dead mother … She drifted into it yet again.
The snow had just begun to melt— not enough to turn to slush, but enough to feel uncomfortably slidy underfoot. It was the tail end of the first week of April, and the trees and shrubs on her street seemed to eye the world with curiosity again. She could almost smell the promise of green steaming off the trunks and branches, and the rare plush buds appearing here and there drew her to them with their impossible new softness. She'd take her gloves off and timidly run her fingers over the sides of the buds, inhale their still stale, almost mildewy scent, and spend far too much time imagining what the next week or month or year would bring, and she'd have to run to not miss her train to school.
This was an every Spring occurrence, and as much as she wanted to tear herself away from this examining, from this prying into the secret world of newness, she couldn't pull away in time to not be late. So she ran, through the slippery snow, pulling her hat and scarf off in the process for suddenly feeling hotter than the weather report indicated she should, and still hoping to catch that very last car of the train, even if she had to hitch a ride on the outside ledge. Sometimes she made it. More often than not, she did not, and on those days, as there was no longer any point in trying to get to school, she'd wander the streets of Manchester, following whatever streets caught her attention phonetically.
On that particular day, the street that appealed to her was called Madeline. She always thought of that word as indicative of some mysterious female, certainly not something as commonplace as a type of pastry. It drew her, and she walked for what seemed an inordinately long time. The hat and the scarf went back on. She was chilled to the bone now, and nothing on this street promised solace of a well-heated hearth. The entire street seemed empty, abandoned. The apartment buildings, shops, pubs—everything was boarded up, closed, deserted. Not even stray cats or dogs roamed this street.
She felt the urge to turn around and run back to the main stretch, but as she looked back toward the road she came from, she suddenly saw it: smallish hills, inorganic, too similar in size and too evenly spread not to be man-made. They dotted the snowbanks in almost straight lines, the snow now melting, tiny crosses made from sticks in the top of each. So many of them, lining both sides of the street.
She stood there, frozen, as she watched the bits of white powder slide off the tiny bodies buried underneath. So, so tiny. She screamed then, but it didn't matter. She was alone with dozens of corpses of babies defrosting into the new Spring, one that should have been their first, by the looks of it. She ran, fast. As fast as her feet and lungs could take. Only this dream, this memory was always just behind her. Even now when she may have just solved this entire mess. After the twenty-hour days, and death threats, and no one to share her bed with, this street still followed her.
She sat up and pressed "2" for Jason. She was still his boss, and if she needed to wake him up, so be it. She needed a bloody hug, and for the first time in all these years of working with him, she was not ashamed to ask him for one.
3
The Fence
Riley, March 16, 2226 (Ten Years Ago) Waller, NY
Riley was fuming at Brody for getting him in trouble with Mr. Sanders again. By the time he got home, his parents would have been pacing the small yard out back for an hour, thinking of a suitable punishment. In that regard, Brody was lucky. His parents were gone, and his uncle
had no stomach for discipline. Maybe that's why he did it. Always talking back to Sanders, laughing at his stuttering, without even trying to hide it.
But Brody had no right to drag him into his stupid fights with the headmaster. None whatsoever. And yet, every single time he did something stupid, Riley stuck up for him, played along in whatever game Brody had concocted, so that he wouldn't be alone in it. Ever since he'd lost Ella, Brody was it; the only person he could talk to about stuff that mattered, things that were never assigned as homework, things his parents would never ask him about or talk about in his presence.
After his performance in school the last few months, he was pretty sure he'd be severely beaten and then grounded. Locked up in their shack of a house for a month maybe, unable to even coax them into letting him walk Samson. Curse you, Brody, and your stupid big mouth.
It would start to warm up soon. The air he was sucking into his lungs no longer pricked, and the metallic smell of coldness was almost gone. The snow would start to melt by the end of the week. His favorite time of year and he'd miss most of it. The newness of the buds, the first flies and bugs spreading their little translucent wings, shaking off the long sleep of winter. Or maybe they weren't alive in the winter at all and will just be born with the spring—he didn't know. Biology wasn’t something he'd be allowed to touch for a few years yet. But it didn't matter. The bugs mattered. He liked watching them. In some of them, you could see their insides if you were lucky enough to get that close without spooking them.
Brody stuck a dragonfly on a needle once and brought it to him. By the time he saw it, the dragonfly was not moving. It had just sat there, the dead wings extended out, the big black eyes still, not seeing anything anymore. He'd cried then, right in front of Brody, and Ella had comforted him, had gotten him to stop crying. He didn't talk to Brody for months after that.
Alliance: The Complete Series (A Dystopian YA Box Set Books 1-5): Dystopian Sci Fi Thriller Page 2
