Defective (Fractured Era Book 1)

by Autumn Kalquist

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Copyright © 2016 by Autumn Kalquist

  Cover design by Damonza

  Editing by Erynn Newman, A Little Red Ink

  All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner without the written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Diapason Publishing

  http://www.AutumnKalquist.com

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Defective / Autumn Kalquist—1st ed.

  I see you.

  square peg, round hole

  dancing to the rhythm of a different drum

  forced to listen to a chorus of “too much” and “wrong”

  but you craft the lyrics to your own song.

  I didn’t write this story for everyone.

  I wrote this story for you.

  Let’s play a game. It’s called “What If?” and it’s the best game ever.

  What if… I ran away?

  A small smile budded on Selene’s lips as she looked up through the canopy of green leaves and Spanish moss. Cloudless sky, the afternoon heat fading fast. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, relishing the feel of the warmth on her face and the cool soil against her back.

  What if I ran away tomorrow? What if I opened the gate, and Nan didn’t notice? What if I walked away and never looked back?

  What if she escaped Telmont, Georgia forever and managed to forget how irresponsible and impossible this daydream was?

  Wood smoke. Selene cracked an eye, sniffing the air, then blew an errant black curl off her face. The scent had vanished, and she had zero desire to get up and investigate.

  A brown blur sped by and landed with a chirp on the branch directly above her face.

  Hmm. Dangerous gamble, lounging under a resting sparrow.

  “I dare you, bird,” she said. “Just try.”

  It let loose. She yelped and rolled, but the warm shit hit her square in the cheek.

  “Oh, God.” She furiously scrubbed it away, trying not to gag. The sparrow chirped again and flew to freedom on the other side of the padlocked gate.

  As Selene transferred all the bird crap from her hand to the grass, the button on her leather cuff popped open and exposed her wrist. Her stomach turned again.

  Freedom. Right. Only one thing awaited Selene outside the homestead where she’d been hiding for eight years: a one-way trip to a Protected segregation camp.

  As she fixed her cuff, she touched her wrist where her Protected ID tag was embedded. The slim silicone disc shifted back and forth beneath her light brown skin, a dead giveaway that she was genetically modified. The tag was encoded with her real name and birth details and had been inserted when she was an infant. Infinitek liked to track their experiments, so the only way to safely remove the thing was with one of their machines. Selene had been tagged before they started adding GPS chips, at least, but it didn’t matter. The oblong lump gave her away. She was a walking monetary reward for some enterprising snitch. As long as the disc remained, she’d never be free.

  She sighed and walked toward the house, muscles aching from a day of too many chores. Hot pain slashed through her foot, and she hopped sideways with a yelp, slapping fire ants off her toes.

  Insects from hell. Vindictive birds. She barely remembered her old life in Seattle, but she was pretty sure the city hadn’t been plagued by the Devil’s own wildlife.

  “Selene!” Nan yelled from the kitchen.

  Selene limped toward the house, giving a wide berth to the chickens pecking in the dirt. Squished chicken shit between her toes would be the final straw.

  Sunlight glinted off the solar panel array, which looked as incongruous as ever next to their little clapboard home. Most of the green paint had peeled off the small building’s sagging walls ages ago. Selene glanced at the horizon again, thankful for the breeze and clear skies. One point in today’s favor. The holes in their roof outnumbered their buckets.

  “Suh-lene!” The screen door creaked open, and Nan stamped out, squinting against the sunlight, adding more wrinkles to her pale white skin. She had a laundry basket of wet clothes in her arms, and she set it down. When she caught sight of Selene limping toward her, she put her hands on her hips. A breeze lifted her kerchief, and a wisp of short, white hair broke free. The house seemed to sink in toward her, like every board strained under the weight of her commanding presence.

  Nan’s blue eyes narrowed, and Selene swallowed. She’d been taller than Nan for years now, but that look never failed to make her feel small.

  “Where were you?” Nan snapped. “And did you put the gun away and lock it up this morning? I don’t want your brother finding it.”

  Selene kicked at the dirt. “Uh… I didn’t go shooting.”

  Nan tsked. “Child, you have to maintain your skills. I want you practicing every morning before dawn from now on. We can’t risk someone driving by and hearing shots. I don’t trust that suppressor.”

  Selene let out a laugh, a little bit of the crazy she’d been feeling escaping with it.

  “There’s nothing funny here. You need to be able to defend yourself—”

  “From what?” She avoided meeting Nan’s eyes and gestured toward the forest on the other side of their sagging fence. “Fire ants? Snakes? Well-aimed bird droppings?”

  “What? Don’t give me sass.” Nan rubbed her clean hands down her apron, as if Selene’s attitude had soiled them. “Come inside now. There’s a cast I want you to watch. It’s about that quarantine zone.”

  “Who was it? Scraggle?” Of all the local crackpot “news” casts, Nan watched Scraggle’s the most. “Did he see another UFO? Have the aliens caught an illness?”

  Nan narrowed her eyes again in warning, and Selene looked at the ground, rubbing one foot over the other in a pointless attempt to soothe her itchy bites.

  “Sorry. It’s just—I still have more chores to do.”

  “Another conspiracy is brewing.” Nan’s lips pursed with worry as she turned and opened the screen door. “I’ll set up the television.”

  Another conspiracy. More broadcasts from Scraggle or some other masked off-gridder over the abandoned white space frequencies. Selene gritted her teeth. She might live off-grid, but she had nothing else in common with real off-gridders. Why would anyone choose to live in the past, cut off from the world? Selene wo
uld give anything just to have that choice.

  Selene let out a quiet sigh and trudged up the porch steps to follow Nan inside.

  Nan seemed to admire the “Independents.” They were the preppers, the survivalists, the freedom fighters of the America that existed before. And they chose their own destiny, she said. When the Dark Decades ended and the United North American government formed in 2037, they won the right to keep their land and privacy. As long as they obeyed the new laws. Then the government made it illegal for Independents to use the new bit currency, which effectively cut them off from modern life and all of its technology and conveniences.

  Selene didn’t see how a life like that was choosing your destiny. The government had chosen isolation for them.

  While Nan readied the TV in her bedroom, Selene went to the sink to scrub away any remaining bird crap from her hands and face, then dabbed some apple cider vinegar on the fire ant bites to take the sting out.

  Her brother, Eli, sat at their ancient trestle table with his tattered math book open. But he was focused on another book in his lap: the Norse mythology stories he’d read a million times before. He swung his feet in shoes that had more holes than the roof.

  Eight years old already. The older he got, the more he looked like Selene… and the more he resembled their parents. They both had their mother’s high cheekbones and light brown skin with their father’s green eyes. Not that Eli knew that. He’d never seen so much as a picture of them. Poor kid had spent his whole life hiding.

  Selene’s gaze drifted to Eli’s bare wrist, and her mood lifted. At least he might get a chance at a normal life someday. Nan got them out of Seattle before Infinitek could stick a tag in his arm and make it obvious to anyone who saw him what he was.

  Selene padded across the peeled linoleum and kissed the top of Eli’s close-shaved head. “How’s your work goin’?”

  Eli frowned. There was no math happening on his whiteboard. Just scribbles—drawings of trees and people.

  “Nan’ll be mad if you don’t get that done.”

  Eli didn’t look up. “I don’t feel like doing math. Besides, I already know this stuff.”

  “Do not. Nan just started teaching you from this book. The other kids your age will be learning this at school.” Selene felt for him, she did, but Nan would force him to do the work, no matter how boring it was. This book was for fifth graders, but Eli wouldn’t know what the other kids his age were learning. And just like Selene, Eli had blown through the lower level textbooks they’d bought at the thrift store, so they made do with what they had.

  Eli flipped open the heavy book to a random page in the middle and pointed to a fraction problem. “If you cut a pie into three pieces and give two away, you’ll have one-third left, because three-thirds minus two-thirds is one-third.” He scanned ahead. “One minus six-eighths is one-fourth…” He looked up at Selene with a mischievous glimmer in his eye, “Or twenty-five percent, if you want that answer instead.”

  Selene suppressed a smile and stole a glance down the hallway. Nan had reappeared and was listening intently, her arms crossed over her chest.

  Eli flipped to another page near the end and rattled off answers to several pre-algebra problems. Then he picked up his marker without looking at either of them and began drawing another stick figure.

  “Tell me how you knew that,” Nan said.

  Eli shrugged and bit his lip, focusing hard on his drawing.

  “I don’t care how smart you think you are, Eli,” Nan continued. “I better see some equations on that whiteboard before dinner.” She pointed at Selene. “And you. Quit dawdlin’.”

  Selene raised a brow and pushed past, heading down the narrow hallway to Nan’s bedroom, old floorboards creaking beneath her feet. She tried to imagine Nan in her old life, teaching entire classrooms of high school kids with hologear and real school supplies. As a child, she’d seen Nan as a kind old lady who spoiled her with new toys each time she visited. But Nan commanding a room full of kids? Pity the students. Nan’d be the first one to admit patience wasn’t in her DNA.

  As Selene sank down on the lumpy mattress, Nan entered, and Eli peeked around the doorframe.

  Nan wagged a finger at him. “Get back to your math.”

  Eli made a face, and Selene tried not to show her amusement. He was probably listening on the other side, ’cause that’s what Selene would do. They wouldn’t be able to keep the truth from him forever.

  Nan had wheeled her heavy archaic television set out of the closet and plugged it in so the blue, two-dimensional screen appeared. Her hand hovered over the recorder.

  “There’s something strange about that quarantine down South,” Nan said grimly. “Something they’re not reporting on the public casts. I picked this one up last night, while we slept.”

  Nan hit play.

  The recorded cast appeared on the screen, and Selene choked back another sigh. It was Scraggle. Not the man’s real name, of course, just the one Selene had given him. It was dim in his shed, only thin lines of light slanting through his wooden box. A ski mask covered most of his face, leaving only his light eyes and scraggly blond eyebrows exposed.

  Scraggle abruptly moved closer to the cam. Selene jolted away, scooting further onto Nan’s bed.

  “We got new rumors, folks,” Scraggle said in a thick Southern accent. “Picked up a cast from a few counties over today. They was still talkin’ about that drought, forest fires poppin’ up worse than a weevil infestation.” Scraggle bit down so hard on his Ts that Selene thought she could see spit soaking through his mask. “And there’s been more chatter about that so-called flu quarantine. They say it’s spreading, but I don’t know how sick people are or if this is something like the last bird flu or what. But I have a theory.” Scraggle paused for effect. “I think it has something to do with those Franken foods. I think that new Infinitek pesticide is making folks sick. And we could be next. That poison’s on every corporate crop from here to the Rockies.”

  Scraggle paused to noisily unfold a large paper map, and Selene let a quiet groan escape. Not this again. Infinitek’s genetically modified crops and symbiotic biosolutions had helped end hunger in every area of the world that had welcomed Coalition oversight. Their most popular grain, quin, was nutritionally perfect, easy to grow, and Selene had wished, more than once, that Nan would plant it. Fat chance of that ever happening.

  Scraggle cleared his throat and held up his map. He pointed to several areas in South Georgia and North Florida. “All those counties have gone dark, part of the quarantine zone. And not a peep from off-gridders that far south… and no truth on the public casts. Coincidence or Coalition cover-up? I know what a cover-up smells like, and folks, this one stinks. Just like the chemical spill, just like the Seattle spaceport bribes, just like the Defective kids. I told you this was coming. You mess with nature, you face the consequences.”

  Defective kids. Selene went cold, balling her hands in fists as Scraggle pointed at the camera.

  “The Corporate Coalition may own the puppet governments and media almost everywhere in the world, but they do not own us. We can run ‘em out of here the way East Europe ran ‘em off their land. When I have more on this quarantine, I’ll broadcast again. Stay sustainable, off-gridders.” He made a peace sign gesture, and the screen went to snow.

  “Defective kids, huh,” Selene said lightly. “Like Eli and me.”

  Nan pressed a hand to her breastbone and blinked rapidly, seeming to be at a rare loss for words.

  Selene stared down at the quilt clutched in her fist. She’d forced Nan to admit the truth three years ago, after she’d heard an off-gridder say “defective” yet again.

  Selene and Eli were a result of gene therapy gone wrong. Thirty years ago, when epidemics were killing millions of children, Infinitek had launched the Protected Project—a new germline gene therapy that gave women healthier, disease-resistant babies. The “Protected” therapy didn’t affect the mother’
s immune system—it worked on her eggs, altering the DNA of her future children.

  And it worked—women who received the gene therapy had children with superimmunity.

  Then, eight years ago, when the oldest Protected kids reached their twenties and started having children of their own, the terrible truth came out. A large percentage of second generation Protected children were plagued with terrible birth defects. The Protecteds—both the women and the men—were all defective. The project was shut down after twenty-two years, and the Protecteds were segregated because of the fear and violence that had ensued. Locked away in camps to keep everyone safe and the human race “pure.”

  “Selene,” Nan said softly, laying a hand on her shoulder. “Please. Look at me. This quarantine situation—”

  “Doesn’t matter, since Eli and me are so Protected.”

  Nan shook her head and took a deep, slow breath. “I’ve told you, if it wasn’t for segregation, couples would still be lining up to take that gene therapy.” Her voice grew quiet. “No parent wants to lose a child in the next epidemic.”

  “Really?” Selene let out a laugh and twisted the quilt tighter in her grasp. “That’s funny. ‘Cause I sure wouldn’t choose to shoot up a drug that’s gonna mangle my kids. But I didn’t get a choice, did I? Mine will be screwed up no matter what. If I’m even allowed to have any.”

  “Keep your voice down.” Nan squeezed her shoulder hard and sank down on the bed next to her. “What is wrong with you today?”

  Selene’s eyes burned, her pulse picking up at Nan’s words, and suddenly every sensation intensified. The musty scent of the old floorboards, the soft nappy fabric twisted in her hands, the fire ant bites still stinging her foot, and the bitter taste of fear and grief on her tongue. The lid on the words she normally kept bottled up came unscrewed.

  “Why’d mom do it? Why’d it have to be us? It was experimental… why did she have to risk it?”

  Selene’s heart sped up as soon as she said it. Nan never wanted to talk about Eli and Selene’s parents. So why should it be any different now? She could see Nan shutting down already, the corners of her mouth drooping in a frown as she hesitated, not answering.