Anders swallowed and looked out the windshield, letting his mind race. Jay wasn’t looking for an answer as simple as ‘always choose Haven.’ So what did he want to hear? His uncle’s whole speech just now had been about the people of Haven. He cared more about them than the idea of a rebellion… He cared about protecting the thousands of people dedicated to Haven and the promise of a return to true freedom.
“I’ll know when to make a sacrifice because…” He met his uncle’s eyes, watching his expression carefully as he replied. “I’ll weigh the value of what I have to sacrifice… against all the lives that could be lost if I fail to protect Haven’s Path.”
Jay’s mouth lifted a little, and his blue eyes brightened. “Go on.”
Anders voice came out more confident, deeper. “I’ll choose to make the sacrifice if it will protect Haven’s people.”
“Yes. Good, Anders.” Uncle Jay squeezed his shoulder. “But you have to keep your promise—be patient—and listen to what I tell you. Once I let you in on this… your promise will matter more than ever.”
“I promise.” Anders could hear his pulse in his ears, and his mouth was so dry, he grabbed the water bottle from the cup holder where Jay had set it down and took another long drink.
His uncle settled back in his seat. “Each Haven safe house maintains one waypoint—a “Pathpoint”—a location on the Path where supplies and people stop along the way—it’s where we meet the other off-gridders who manage the safe houses. We don’t know the location of the other safe houses—and with few exceptions—you will usually never reveal your homestead’s exact location or your identity.”
His uncle was talking about the secret place where he got all his illicit supplies.
“I know the location of only three Pathpoints,” his uncle continued. “The one we’re in charge of, one to the southeast, and one to the west.”
“Have you met the other off-grid families who run them?”
“Yes. But I’ve never seen their faces.” His uncle popped up the center console, revealing two black ski masks. And two guns. “And they’ve never seen mine.”
Jay’s expression got heavy again, and he averted his eyes and shut the console. “I got a message from the safe house to the southeast. It was vague… They requested a meeting but didn’t include a date or a time. I’m… I suspected their safe house was behind the current quarantine line. But Pandemic Control’s doing their best to block every frequency, so apparently I was wrong. They must be just outside it.”
“What do you think they want?” Anders asked, feeling more alert and alive than he had all day.
“We’re about to find out.” Jay said.
Anders took another quick drink and set the water bottle down. “Thank you… for trusting me.”
“Thank me by remembering that promise.”
“I will. I’ll be patient. And I’ll do what you say.”
“Then get on your bike. And follow me.”
Anders followed Uncle Jay along the winding country roads, late afternoon sun dappling the pavement, his excitement growing with every turn.
Where was Selene right now? Where would Lydia take them? If only she’d trusted him… He really could have helped them.
Anders tried to banish thoughts of Selene and focus on the promise of the waypoint ahead.
The Goog pulled off on a narrow, overgrown trail and disappeared into the forest. Anders guided his bike into the woods after it, weaving through the underbrush, excitement rushing through him.
When they’d gone in about a half mile, the barely visible trail abruptly came to an end, and they both stopped their vehicles.
Uncle Jay emerged from the car with a black ski mask on and a gun holstered to his jeans.
Anders took a deep breath, willing himself to stay calm as he removed his helmet and took the ski mask his uncle offered him. He pulled it over his face and attached the holster to his jeans. He left his backpack beside his bike.
“You remember how to use that?” Uncle Jay asked, his voice muffled.
It had been a few months since he’d practiced shooting, but he’d known how to use a gun since he was thirteen. He took another deep gulp of air, sucking it through the hot ski mask. “Yes.”
“You only draw it if your life is in danger, understand?”
Anders nodded, and his uncle headed straight into the woods.
It felt like they walked for forever, but it might have only been ten minutes as they followed a narrow trail that hadn’t been visible from where they’d parked. Sweat soaked through Anders’ mask in the heat, but he barely felt it as energy buzzed through him and intensified with every step toward the mysterious waypoint.
Did Uncle Jay have any idea what Anders had planned? Did he know Anders was thinking about following the path to Haven to join the freedom fighters? If his uncle was teaching him about Haven with the intention of allowing Anders to take over the Nelson family land someday, then Anders had a lot to think about. It was rare for the Coalition to issue new off-gridder exemptions these days, but Anders could attempt to claim the right his mother had given up.
It was a good thing that plans, like rules, were meant to be broken.
When they reached a creek, they came to a halt. Anders listened to the sounds of the water bubbling over the rocks, a bird chirping from the canopy overhead. He mentally rotated a map of Telmont in his head, gauging where they were now. This was the same creek that widened further along—down where kids like Charlotte, Scott, and Dion went to camp and drink on the weekends. Anders knew exactly where he was.
“Watch me,” Uncle Jay said softly. “Don’t talk. No names. Don’t take off that mask.” He stared at Anders expectantly.
“Got it.”
They splashed through the low creek and stepped onto the other bank. His uncle pushed through a thick patch of brush, and Anders followed. A small clearing lay ahead in the shade, a thick canopy shielding it from the beating sun. The thickest tree at the center had a faint five-pointed star scratched into the trunk.
Anders swallowed as they cautiously approached the tree… and the figure beneath it.
The person was curled up on the ground against a large, stuffed, gray pack.
Asleep.
All this cloak and dagger, and the person they were meeting was taking a nap.
Anders almost laughed at loud, but he managed to stifle it. He exchanged a glance with his uncle, who shrugged.
The small person’s chest rose and fell with even breaths, but Anders couldn’t tell anything else. They were wearing a hooded sweatshirt, which had to be unbearable in this heat.
His uncle glanced around at the woods, his hand on his gun. Then he cleared his throat.
The person let out a little sound and shifted on the pack.
Anders couldn’t stop himself from laughing that time, and his uncle elbowed him. Hard.
The person jolted awake and stared up at them, eyes wide with shock as her hood fell down.
The girl had a handkerchief tied across the lower half of her face, and her black hair stuck to her sweat-soaked temple. She scrambled to her feet and nearly tripped on her bag as she leaned back against the tree. “I didn’t think you’d ever show up.”
“Who are you?” Uncle Jay barked. He drew his gun, and Anders rested his hand on his own gun as he noticed the bulge beneath the girl’s sweatshirt. She licked her lips and raised her arms.
“I’m… I’ve never been here before…” The girl didn’t have the slightest trace of a Georgia accent, definitely not from around here. “My mom always does the trades.”
“Don’t see any similarity.” Jay was biting off his T’s sharply, affecting a much harsher southern accent than most of the locals here had. Anders darted another glance at him, amused. Anders had finally seen his uncle’s off-gridder “news” casts last night, and he was using the same accent now that he pretended to have on those.
The girl seemed to be staring a
t Anders from beneath her low hood, and he stared back at her, trying to look serious.
“You better identify yourself,” Jay said.
The girl blew out a breath, making her handkerchief flutter. “Collective, Mid-range, Disciple. My mom’s words.”
Jay slightly lowered the gun. “You’re missing a word.”
She flipped back her hood the rest of the way. Then she untied the handkerchief.
“Stop that,” Jay snapped. “What are you—?”
“Whew. It’s too hot.” The girl casually let the bandana drop to the ground and looked at them both with a calm expression. “Much better. Let’s try this trust thing again, shall we? My family runs the safe house southeast of here. My name is Ivy.”
Anders raised his brows as the girl, Ivy, wiped the sweat from her face and sucked in a deep breath. She had Asian features and dark brown eyes. And Anders couldn’t tell how old she was… maybe late teens, early twenties.
“The fourth word is…” She wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “Something with… Petri dishes…”
“Didn’t yer ma teach you nothin’?” Uncle Jay asked her, his voice rising. “You keep your mask on.”
“Well, sir, it’s hot outside, and I’ve been here all day.” The girl said lightly. “In fact, I’ve been here almost every day for the past week… except yesterday. If you didn’t show up today… Well, I thought we might have to keep pushing north and beg help from an off-grid family somewhere up there.” She blew out another breath. “But I couldn’t give up on Haven.”
“Why are you—?”
“Agar. That’s the fourth word,” Ivy said firmly. She gestured, waving at Jay’s gun, which was still half-raised.
“Yes. That’s the word.” Jay grunted and holstered his gun. “Why are you here instead of your mother? That message I got… Nothin’ but a request to meet. No time. No instructions. Nothin’.”
She pressed her lips in a thin line and looked at Anders again, taking the measure of him, narrowing her eyes as she assessed his clothing. “Who’s he?” she asked, pointing at Anders.
“We’re not in the business of sharin’ names,” Jay said gruffly. “Again. Why are you here instead of your mother?”
She gave Anders another suspicious look and leaned against the tree, arms crossed over her chest, and met Jay’s eyes. “I didn’t know if my family would be able to get a message out… or realize what had happened. My homestead is inside the quarantine zone now. I got cut off out here… and the Coalition is after me. And the people I’m with.”
Uncle Jay was silent for a moment. “Elaborate.”
Anders raised a brow, and he had to force himself not to ask for more information on what was happening in the quarantine zone. Patience. That’s what Uncle Jay wanted.
“Two weeks ago, my mother was supposed to meet up with a guy… His parents were off-gridders, but they got arrested, so he’s a citizen now. My family needed some things, and this guy was good for trades usually. But…” Ivy’s controlled expression and tone faltered. “My mother wasn’t feeling well. So she sent me to make the trade.”
She swallowed and hesitated for a minute. Her voice was rough when she started talking again. “I got to the trading location and saw Pandemic Control hovers flying overhead. I should’ve gone home. But I didn’t. Next thing I know, this old guy shows up a half hour late, but he’s got his daughter and her whole family with him. He said a Pandemic Control officer showed up at their house and… there’d been an altercation.”
“Guns?” Uncle Jay said quietly.
Ivy nodded slowly. “I’m pretty sure a Pandemic Control officer got shot, but the family won’t say in front of me. There are three adults, three kids, and one infant. I tried to leave and get back in the zone, but they started setting up check-points. So… I came here.” Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat. “I didn’t know where else to go…” Her voice grew cold, steady. “This family doesn’t know a thing about Haven, but they know where my family lives, and my mom traded them those guns. I can’t let them get arrested.”
Jay cursed under his breath. “Where are they now?”
“A few miles from here. Well hidden. We’ve moved a few times now, but we lost power in the vehicles… so we had to ditch them.”
“Are any of you sick?”
“One of the kids…” Her face went completely blank, but her hands closed into fists. “No. No one is sick. But they’re not used to the heat like I am.”
“Are you sure?”
Ivy nodded. “Yes. No one is sick. I’ve been with them for a week.”
“What’s happening inside the zone? They’re saying it’s a treatable flu virus.”
She went pale and flared her nostrils. “It isn’t.”
“Tell us.” His uncle said.
She slid down onto her pack and folded her hands over her knees, staring at the ground. “First the crops started dying,” she said softly, as if she was reciting the words from memory—no emotion. “Then… everything started dying. The trees, the grass… all of it. It seemed like some kind of root rot… and one of our off-grid neighbors said they’d seen the big farms a few miles south full of dead quin. Then, three days after the first plants started dying, my mom came down with a fever… and I went to do the trade, and…” The girl broke off and swallowed again. “I didn’t think it was related, but the family I’m with told me the rumor they’d heard—the reason they ran…”
Anders wanted to shake this girl and make her talk faster.
Ivy looked up at Jay, and her dark eyes hardened. “They heard the ‘flu’ people are getting is fatal… and that it’s somehow related to whatever’s killing all the plants in the zone.”
“That’s impossible,” Anders said, then slammed his mouth shut.
“It’s not impossible if it started with the quin,” the girl replied.
Anders might have only graduated high school because his dad convinced the school to pass him, but he remembered enough biology to know plants and people shouldn’t be sharing the same disease.
“Thrive.” His uncle murmured. “You think it mutated?”
“Or caused something else to.” Ivy replied.
Uncle Jay wasn’t looking at either of them anymore. He was staring through Ivy, and his blue eyes had that faraway look in them they always got when he was thinking hard. He started to pace, and Anders rested his hand on his gun, watching Ivy to make sure she didn’t suddenly go for hers. But she was staring at the ground, her hair hanging in her face.
Quin. Thrive. Anders’ mind raced as he recalled the endless commercials Infinitek ran about quin and their other gen-modded biosolutions. His mind conjured an image of the tall quin stalks, the 3D simulation of the pink-colored Thrive bacteria wiggling through the soil, protecting the plant, working symbiotically with it. Breezes blowing through healthy fields, smiling people across the globe eating bowls of the stuff…
After the Dark Decades, when climate change had triggered droughts and natural disasters, famine and pandemics halved the world population, and economic collapse caused chaos… Infinitek had created a crop that was hardy enough to grow almost anywhere. They’d genetically modified quinoa to create their own patented version called ‘Quin.’ They’d also developed a genetically modified bacterium to release alongside it. Thrive.
Thrive was a modified version of a bacteria that was already ubiquitous in soil around the world, and it worked symbiotically with the quin to increase yields and reduce the plant’s need for perfect soil and water conditions. It was also aggressive, dominating its environment, helping to combat plant diseases that would normally affect quin.
“I thought Thrive prevented stuff like root rot…” Anders said, letting more words escape his mouth, unable to hold them back. His uncle didn’t even seem to notice he was talking.
“Everything in nature is opportunistic.” Ivy flared her nostrils again and gave him a look that made him feel slow. “Every
time you introduce change into a balanced system, you create imbalance. Thrive destroyed some organisms… but it left a hole. It provided opportunities to others. When Infinitek released Thrive, they opened a door. It was only a matter of time before some organism evolved enough to survive better and replace the ones Thrive is meant to control.”
Anders glanced at his uncle, who had stopped pacing. “They’re burning the infected land?” his uncle asked.
“That’s what we think, but I didn’t see it for sure.” Ivy stood up. “Please, will you help us get out of here? Can you send us to the next waypoint? Or take us in? The kids…”
“Are you certain you aren’t carrying this—whatever it is?” Uncle Jay asked.
“I told you—my mom got sick in three days—seventy-two hours after working in our garden. None of us are sick… We’re not carrying this thing.”
“I need to send messages,” Uncle Jay said, “and I’ll see what I can do… But I don’t usually take Haven travelers to my home. You understand.”
Ivy nodded and looked back at the ground.
“Do you need anything?” Jay asked. “Food? Supplies?”
Ivy shook her head, not looking at them. “No. We have enough.”
“Where’s the family?”
“Three miles down that access road that leads to the old power plant. Then about half a mile into the woods.”
“That’s a good hike from here.”
“Yep. Had ‘em closer, but we had to move so we wouldn’t be seen.”
“I’ll get messages out and meet you back here at midnight, but I can’t promise anything…”
“I’ll be here.” Ivy unzipped her pack and pulled out a water bottle and a peach. She settled on the ground, cross-legged, her face expressionless again. “Wait…” she said, as Anders and Uncle Jay started to walk away. “Can you send a message back to my family? Can you… ask if everyone is… okay? Please?”
“I doubt it will get through,” Jay said, his voice tight. His fake accent was starting to slip. “Don’t even know how they managed to get a message out in the first place with the Coalition jamming everything.”
Defective (Fractured Era Book 1) Page 23
