by K. Makansi
“Here,” I say. “My turn to carry your pack.” Firestone doesn’t argue this time, but instead of me taking the full load, Kenzie suggests we split up the weight. She empties Firestone’s stuff, divides it into three piles, and then jams the contents in our packs. “We can leave your pack here, hide it in the leaves.”
“This is as good a place as any to rest a bit,” our guide says. “Might as well finish off our rations.” Huddled together and shivering, we polish off what’s left of the possum. Then she takes Firestone’s empty pack and disappears into the darkness. It’s no time at all before she returns with a set of little lamps, five warming packs, and a packet of dried fruit and nuts that, for all I know, she could have teleported from an Outsider camp. She hands each of us a warming pack and we crack them, releasing the energy, and tuck them under our clothes.
“There’re only three lamps, so you’ll have to share,” she says. “But they’ll help guide us as we walk. We have emergency drop points for supplies in case one of our wayfarers ends up in a bad spot, like this one. I left the extra pack there. It’ll come in handy sometime.” She creases her brows at Firestone, who’s in so much pain at this point he’s stopped swearing. “There’re no good shelters in the area, or I’d say we could tuck in and get out of the weather. We could use your heating tents again, but if the temperature keeps dropping they won’t do much good, and if it snows like I think it’s going to, it will be harder going tomorrow anyway. So we have no choice but to go on.”
Firestone nods through bleary eyes and wipes his forehead with his good arm.
“I’m not dead yet.”
We trudge on.
6 - REMY
Winter 35, Sector Annum 106, 03h44
Gregorian Calendar: January 24
“Hello?” I whisper, for the hundredth time. And for the hundredth time, there is no response.
I twist the dial, searching through the airwaves for any hint of a signal. But there’s nothing. Just static.
Finally, I pull the earbuds out and toss them onto the table. Leaning back, I stare at the array of dials, switches, and wires comprising Normandy’s comm system. I’ve been sitting here for over an hour, trying to connect with anyone in Waterloo’s range, with someone who might be able to tell me what happened to Firestone, Kenzie, Jahnu, and—
“Remy?”
My heart in my throat, I jump out of my chair and whirl around. Eli stands in the doorway, his brows knitted in concern, watching me closely. How long has he been standing there?
“Eli, gods. You scared me.”
He steps into the room and leans against the controls. I plop back in the chair and face him.
“What are you doing?” he says. “It’s four in the morning.”
“You know perfectly well what I’m doing.” I wave my hand toward the radio dials, a vague gesture that I feel Eli should understand. He nods.
The last seventy-two hours have been like one of those air coaster rides back in Okaria’s posh entertainment district. Up and down, up and down. First, the relief of arriving at Normandy safely, only to discover that something happened at Waterloo and we have no idea if Firestone, Jahnu, Kenzie, and Vale are alive. Then, as overjoyed as I was to see my father’s face, to see Rhinehouse and the Director, that excitement was quickly doused by Philip’s very public announcement that we were being targeted as terrorists and that Vale was the victim of his best friend’s manipulations.
Eli’s green eyes are lidded with sleep. “What’ya do to whats-his-name, the guy who’s supposed to be on comm duty tonight?”
“I told him I’d spot him for a while. He’s in the rec room taking a nap.”
“Ah, sleep. That’s what you should be doing. You know avoiding sleep is not going to solve anything.”
“A sleeping drought isn’t going to solve anything, either, Eli,” I say, knowing where he’s going with this. Hodges has offered me sleeping draughts every night and except for the first night, I’ve refused. The after-effects of the drowsiness last long past daybreak, and I don’t want anything clouding my mind, not when I need to think clearly, not when my friends are in danger. “And why aren’t you sleeping?”
Eli sighs, his head cocked to the side, considering. He, of everyone, understands my reluctance to drug myself to sleep, but he’s also been the most motherly and protective, next to my father, that is, since the battle at Thermopylae. “If you’re not going to sleep, at least let’s get out of the comm room. It’s miserable in here.”
I may not want to admit it, but he has a point. The airwaves are empty. Wherever our teammates are and whatever they’re doing, we have no choice but to wait for their word. Being in here simply increases my anxiety.
I can’t help myself from trying one last ping at Waterloo. When nothing happens, as expected, I push my chair back and look up at Eli.
“What do you say we pinch a few of those coffee beans Adrienne brought out from her secret stash for the Director?”
Eli’s face erupts in a mischievous grin. This is the Eli I know and love. When he’s not worrying too much about me, his slightly crazy fuck-it-all attitude puts some light back into my heart. I smile at him as he pulls me up from my chair.
“Stealing from the Director? Why Remy, I thought you’d never ask.”
To our disappointment, raiding Adrienne’s kitchen stores wasn’t even difficult. So we sit in the mess hall sipping coffee and telling each other stories until almost six in the morning, when Zoe emerges from the hallway, hair mussed from sleep.
“Is that coffee I smell?”
“Sure is,” Eli says. “Want some?”
“Gods, yes.” She fishes a ceramic cup out of the giant pile of drying dishes from yesterday’s meal and pours herself a cup from the press. Sitting down, almost completely still, staring with unfocused eyes at the table, and sipping occasionally with measured movements, she looks not unlike a zombie.
“Why are you up so early?” I ask.
She cocks an eyebrow at me, looking slightly more alert now.
“You two are sitting here with a lukewarm pot of coffee on hand. Shouldn’t I be asking you that question?”
I laugh. “I don’t really sleep much these days.”
She shrugs. “Most of us don’t. I just do my not-sleeping towards the beginning of the night, and can’t seem to drag myself out of bed in the morning. But since we reopened satellite connection lines yesterday, I’ve been tasked with seeing what info has come in. I’ve got to see if we’ve had any contact from the other bases before our morning briefing. Director’s orders. So,” she heaves a sigh, “I’m up before everyone else, today.”
At some point during the battle at Thermopylae, the Director gave the order for all Resistance bases to kill our satellite links. If she’s ready to re-open the lines, it means she thinks the immediate danger has passed.”
“You think there’s a chance we might hear from Waterloo?” I ask.
She looks up over the rim of her cup and shakes her head.“ If we haven’t heard anything from them on the radio, we probably won’t via satellite. If their radio communications are down, I’m sure everything else is, too.”
I glance at Eli. I may be sick of waiting for news, but waiting is all we can do.
Two hours later, we’re all gathered in the largest meeting room, which is barely big enough for all of us. I’m sandwiched between Bear and my father, leaning against the wall because there aren’t enough chairs.
“With a cloner or a Sector-quality 3D printer,” the Director is saying, “we could manufacture hundreds of thousands of these seeds, and disseminate them to the populations of the Farms and the factory towns. We can subvert the OAC’s control over the Sector before they ever realize it.”
“How many plant species are listed in the database?” Adrienne asks.
The Director turns to Eli, who answers quickly. “We’re not sure of the final count, but approximately ten thousand species in three hundred different genuses.”
“With th
at many uncorrupted seed varieties at our hands,” the Director continues, “we have the opportunity to wrest control of the population away from the OAC and put it back in the hands of the citizens themselves.”
“A revolutionary dream,” my father, at my side, says quietly.
“It wasn’t so revolutionary once, Gabriel, as you well know. These were the ideals the Sector was founded on. A free and intelligent people, bolstered by the organic and sustainable ecosystems we created on the Farms and enhanced by the foods developed by the Dieticians. A world in which every citizen had access to healthy food tailored to their specific dietary needs. We envisioned a world where food was plentiful and nutritious. Where food-borne pathogens were a thing of the past and no child would ever go to bed hungry. And it wasn’t so long ago that the Sector turned from that vision to create a different kind of world.” She looks at Rhinehouse. “James and I were at the table together when that decision was made.”
I watch her carefully, realizing that this is the most open I’ve ever seen the Director, the most frank. She’s got something humming in her blood today, I think.
She’s hopeful.
“At the time, I was one of the only ones to speak out against what the OAC wanted. How much easier would it be, the argument went, to grow our society, to efficiently allocate our scarce resources, and to provide for the safety of our people if we decided what they ate, when they ate it, and what it was made of? How much easier would it be to engineer a healthy society if we could control who was fertile and who was not? How much easier would it be if the people who worked in our factory towns were designed to excel at their jobs while also ensuring they could not—and did not want—to step beyond their assigned tasks? How much happier would we all be if the bucolic way of life so many yearned for from the past was maintained like a page in a picture book?”
“Kanaan, Leon, myself, and Cillian were the only ones on a board of fifteen to vote against the changes,” Rhinehouse says. A hush spreads over the room. I glance at Soren, whose eyes are fixed on the floor. His mother, Cara, was on the OAC’s Board of Directors briefly, before she transferred to the College of the Deans. I wonder if she was at the table then, if she voted in favor of taking the freedom of self-determination from Okarian citizens?
“Many of you know this already,” the Director continues. She’s finally stopped pacing and is watching us, gauging our reactions, her iron eyes gripping us all in the thrall of her story. “But for those who don’t, it’s best you know now. Two months after the vote, I threw myself into the Lawrence River. I left a suicide note and most of my life’s work behind. I took only my personal journals and research notes, loaded onto a waterproof plasma. With a wetsuit and an oxygen converter under my street clothes, I was able to swim far enough downstream to escape the main patrol routes of the drones and swim to safety. For a while, I lived in the Wilds, trying to decide if Okaria was worth fighting for.” She looks off into the middle distance, as if remembering. “So much fighting. The Famine Years were behind us. Okaria was thriving….” She stops again and then looks up.
“It was only when James deciphered the clues I’d left in my note and came looking for me that we decided we had to try, at least, to fight back. James would stay in the Sector to see who else felt as we did, who else believed in a return to the original principles the Sector was founded on. I would establish a home base in a deserted city, and if he could, he would send people my way. We met once every three months at the same spot on the coast of Lake Okaria, and for years that was our only form of communication. But our little group grew, and we grew bolder. When the Alexanders turned up at our door with only one daughter in tow—” my father’s hand suddenly clenches around mine, so tightly I think he might break my fingers “—we knew we had the potential to make real change.”
“And now we have what we need to make it happen,” my father says, his sonorous voice ringing through the room.
“Yes,” the Director says. “With the LOTUS database, we can try. We can try to return the dream to the people of the Okarian Sector.”
“So what’s the plan?” Zoe asks, leaning forward eagerly with her elbows on her knees.
The Director stares at her for a moment, her eyes wide and thoughtful.
“Our goal has never been civil war. We’ve taken the time to grow our movement by word of mouth, and we’ll move forward in much the same manner.”
I find myself speaking up. After all that she just said, she wants business-as-usual? “That’s not enough,” I say. “We don’t have time for that. We all know what they’re capable of. After their public announcement blaming Vale’s capture on Miah, we know they’re going on the offensive. They’re going public. While we’re taking our sweet time ‘growing our movement’, they’ll be hard at work making damn sure no one can or will join our cause.”
The Director looks at me, a note of surprise on her features, but she doesn’t go on the defensive.
“We can’t risk full-out war,” my father says carefully. “We have to take it slowly.”
“I agree with Remy,” Soren says from across the room. “We don’t have time. We need to act now.”
“We’ll take action,” the Director says, “though it may not be as immediate as you want. We need to regroup. We’ve heard from the other bases, and we know who made it to safety and who didn’t. We have enough manpower to defend our existing bases and increase security, and to continue to train raid teams for important strikes. Elijah’s team will train to complete the mission to steal a 3D printer from one of the Sector’s seed banks. Of course, we have to work on the logistics, but once we obtain the means to replicate the seeds in the LOTUS database, we’ll begin production and distribution.”
“How do we do that?” someone asks. I turn to the voice—it’s a face I don’t recognize.
“The way I see it, we’ll have to work with Dara Oban and others to infiltrate and subvert the Dieticians’ processes. We’ll substitute our own unmodified, untainted food for MealPaks. We’ll hijack the Sector’s distribution lines and use them for our own.”
“You’re talking about a process that could take years,” Soren complains loudly.
“Growing our own food will take months, and doing it in sufficient quantities will take years,” I add. That’s not good enough. “They could have hunted us all into oblivion by then.”
My father quickly turns to me and squeezes my hand again as though to soothe my pain.
“It’s for the best, Remy. It’s slower this way, but we don’t want anyone else dying. Not after the carnage we saw at Thermopylae. Not ever.”
I nod and bite back the stream of oncoming objections to that point. I want Corine Orleán dead. I want Philip Orleán dead. I want Falke Aulion dead. I want everyone who’s ever killed someone else unjustly to experience that pain for themselves.
“Eli, I want you to prepare a team to search for Firestone’s group. We’ll give them another two days before we go after them. James, Soren, you’re responsible for digging into the LOTUS database. Use all the manpower here at Normandy to help you. Adrienne, Zoe, I want you two preparing a secure information dump that details what we’ve got in LOTUS and how we intend to proceed. I’ll work with you two personally on that, and we’ll send it out to every Resistance base and outpost. Bear, Miah, I want you….”
As the Director goes on, giving orders to what seems like everyone in the room except me, I start to zone out. People are getting up, milling about, forming teams and getting ready to start their tasks for the rest of the day. I pull out my plasma, trying to keep it hidden from the Director, but it doesn’t seem she’s noticed me in the slightest. With my illustration program, I start sketching, almost thoughtlessly. The sounds in the room dull to a dim chatter as everyone starts drifting off, pairing up, talking about their various projects, and at my fingertips, a pair of eyes materializes, and then cropped straight hair, a strong jaw and a high-collared jacket to frame the portrait. After outlining the image in black pen
, I pull up my color palette. The first color I select is a pale green-blue color, like sea foam.
“Remy,” Bear whispers in my ear, “is that Vale?”
7 - VALE
Winter 35, Sector Annum 106, 18h30
Gregorian Calendar: January 24
I pull my too-thin jacket more tightly around me, wishing for anything that I had the furs the wayfarer does, or the apparent immunity to the cold she feels. The temperature’s been plummeting, and at this point it’s well below zero. Heavy wet snow with flakes big as thumb prints cling to every surface. Winter is always like this—one day you don’t need a jacket and the next your breath forms frozen stalactites with every exhale. It’s slow going, moving against the wind, trudging through the snow, but the wayfarer seems to have tapped into a boundless energy source, and she plows down the path, clears it for the rest of us. Snow’s piling around our ankles, Kenzie and Jahnu are wrapped around each other for warmth, and the wayfarer finally takes pity on Firestone and tosses him one of her thermals. “Only a few more kilometers!” she shouts above the banshee wind. “It’s not far now!”
“A few more kilometers might as well be a goddamned marathon,” Kenzie shouts back savagely.
When it becomes clear Firestone might pass out if we don’t at least stop for a brief rest and a drink, we huddle beneath the boughs of a large pine and pass around our waterskins. Mine, tied to the outside of my pack, has frozen solid. It’s late, past midnight, and the going has been slow for the past few hours. Tension in our little group has skyrocketed, and if we don’t find Normandy tonight, we might not make it at all. The creeping prospect of freezing to death after all I’ve been through is slowly dawning on me. This isn’t how I’d have chosen to go out.
“You sure you haven’t heard about any raids?” I ask the wayfarer. She’s checking Firestone’s shoulder and dressing his burn. “On Normandy, I mean. What if it’s been destroyed like Waterloo? What happens then?”
