The Seeds Trilogy Complete Collection: The Sowing, The Reaping, The Harvest (including The Prelude)

by K. Makansi

  “’Course we’re worried about that,” Bear says. “But ain’t nothing we can do but tell everyone to be hush-hush and go right on about our work.”

  “What happens if you’re discovered?” Saara asks.

  It’s Bear’s turn to shrug. He looks at Zeke and Miah, neither of whom has an answer. Finally, he says, “I’d best not be caught, I guess. All I know is I can’t stop what I’m doing. Not now. There’s no turning back. We’ve just got to hope everyone will see the truth, and support us rather than fight against us.”

  From the very first day I met him, Bear was taking on responsibilities beyond what should have been asked of him.

  The smoke trails lazily up the chimney and a log crumbles in the fire. The chilly night air blowing in from broken windows smells like promise. But with every promise made, there is the chance of a promise broken.

  Finally Saara says, “What do you hear about this bug that’s been going around?”

  By the third day after we’d all arrived at my grandfather’s, we got word that a full-fledged health crisis was taking place on the outskirts of the Sector and was quickly spreading into the city. The medevac trucks Vale and I saw zooming around Okaria were no coincidence, and it became clear that Meera was called into work the morning of the vigil because dozens of people were falling ill.

  Saara went into the city a few days ago and caught the tail end of one of the OAC’s broadcasts, in which Corine announced that the OAC was looking into the illness, trying to find a cause and a cure.

  “They’re claiming they don’t know what it is,” Saara had said upon her return. “I don’t believe it for an instant.”

  “What’s the vector?” Soren asked.

  “They’re not sure yet, but they don’t think it’s contagious.”

  “What do you think?” Vale asked Saara. “You’re the nurse.”

  “It’s too soon to tell. But I don’t think it’s natural.”

  “You think the Sector is spreading it?”

  Saara didn’t respond.

  Now, Bear shifts uncomfortably in his seat, frowning. “Rhinehouse doesn’t know what to make of it,” he says. “First folks start complaining about dizziness and nausea, followed by seizures caused by swelling of the brain. Many of the patients end up in a coma.” He shakes his head.

  “But that’s not the worst part,” Zeke says. “Before they lapse into a coma, patients exhibit extreme paranoia, what some doctors are calling sudden-onset schizophrenia. Only a few people have died so far, though, and all deaths have been before the coma stage. One woman told her husband that people were spying on her, chasing her. She ran out of the house and disappeared. Watchmen fished her out of the river the next day. Drowned.”

  “Any statement from the chancellor?” Vale says.

  “Nothing official,” Eli pipes up. “Except that they’re dedicating all their resources to identifying the source of the outbreak and trying to identify preventative measures, ways to contain it before it spreads throughout the Sector. Zoe, back at headquarters, has been monitoring their broadcasts. We’ll know when they put out a statement.”

  “Epidemics grow, spread, kill hundreds, if not thousands of people,” Vale says. “They eventually mutate, die out, or someone finds a cure. Fifty years later, the same thing happens. It happened all the time in the Old World. The Black Death. Influenza. Polio. Small pox. Dengue. AIDS. Ebola. And many of those were just in the last two centuries before the Religious Wars, which, naturally, caused many of the viruses that had previously been contained to come surging back.”

  I smile inwardly, knowing that Vale was that kid in class always paying attention. Soaking everything in, even arcane information on ancient diseases.

  “I’m afraid if somethin’ don’t happen soon, it’s gonna make all our work for naught.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “With the hospitals fillin’ up,” Bear says, his eyes shadowed with worry, “lots of people what was on our side started thinkin’ the OAC has all the answers again. ’Fore I got here tonight, I had someone I trusted accusin’ me of poisoning him, sayin’ I was out to get him. I’m afraid it’ll take us back to the days before Linnea put out that broadcast, before Remy showed everyone what happened at Round Barn. And …” He goes quiet and shifts his eyes over to me, where he just barely meets my gaze. “… Luis has it.”

  I jerk upright, leaning forward. “What?”

  Bear looks tired, and I realize what a toll this must be taking on him. “We knew he had it when he hid from Rose. He’d had a bad fever, was burning up, and when she tried to help him, he locked himself in a bathroom and wouldn’t come out, said Rose was tryin’ to kill him. He went downhill fast. Rhinehouse is looking after him, has him in quarantine, but Rose is out of her mind with worry.” Bear turns to Vale. “Your Demeter’s in touch with Rhinehouse now, you know, and she tracked down Luis’s dietary profile. He’s been off his MealPaks since Round Barn, but Rhinehouse wanted to study his complete files. Looking for clues, maybe, as to why this illness seems to affect some, but not others. I think he’s even replicating some of the formulas and trying to feed him through his arm. I don’t understand it all, but I know it’s not good.”

  “Has any of it been working?” Saara asks, leaning forward.

  Bear shakes his head. Saara is silent, but her pursed lips tell us she still has more to say.

  “Spit it out,” Eli says finally, locking eyes with her. She sighs.

  “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”

  “You’re sitting with the best of ’em,” Eli retorts. “Tell us your worst fears, and we’ll see if they can hold a candle to our own.”

  “You’re only crazy if your theories aren’t true,” Osprey adds.

  Saara glances at Zeke and Miah. She’d already spent time with the two men, telling them about Rachel Sayyid’s last days, how she mumbled their names, talked about them before she’d been too weak to speak. She told us all how she watched as Rachel and the others died of a virus that was supposed to have been cured decades ago, a cover-up to disguise the true nature of the experiments the OAC was performing.

  “I think it would be awfully convenient for the OAC to engineer some virus or parasite that causes serious symptoms but doesn’t kill, and then disseminate it through MealPaks or through the water system. Tell everyone it’s an act of bioterrorism from those renegades outside the Sector. Then a few weeks later, after panic sets in, voila! Suddenly the OAC’s brilliant scientists have a cure. A pill or a tonic or a vaccine to save the day, something that allows Corine to ride to the rescue and put everyone’s growing fears to rest once and for all. She’d be the savior in the face of the Resistance’s terror. The OAC would once again be seen as the answer to the Sector’s prayers.”

  Vale sucks in a breath and runs his hands over his face. His voice is hard when he speaks. “We’ve forced her hand.”

  “How? What do you mean?” Bear asks.

  “They may not know exactly what you’re doing, but they know something’s up. Our movement has pushed the OAC’s back against the wall. So Corine takes the offensive. She engineers this outbreak so she can claim it proves the Resistance and its ideas about re-cultivating Old World seeds is dangerous. Old World seeds breed Old World disease. It would be the perfect way for her to discredit everything the Resistance stands for in one fell swoop. And to hell with any real repercussions. People sick and suffering? So what? Drowning themselves? Small price to pay.”

  “Exactly,” Saara says. “They want everyone afraid. Four years ago, they kept it all hush-hush. Rachel and the other patients were top secret. But now, they want everyone afraid, because they want everyone to think that the OAC has the only solution. They want everyone crying for their MealPaks, their drugs, their Dieticians.”

  “And it would make perfect sense for her to introduce it in the outermost towns and Farms,” Osprey adds. “Easier to blame the Resistance that way.”

  “Exactly,” Saara whispers.
/>   Later, in bed, Vale holds my hand against his chest.

  “There’s something I never told you.” I can hear his breathing, loud in the darkness. “When I was being held at the chancellor’s, Moriana came to visit me.” My eyes go wide, but I stay silent. “She wanted to ask me what happened, why Miah and I left.”

  “What did you say?” I ask.

  “I told her the truth. She wasn’t happy about it. But she defended Corine to the end.” I remember meeting Moriana in Reunion Park a few weeks ago, being surprised by how happy she was. Wondering how someone who had just been tortured and interrogated by the Sector could have been so unconcerned. “She wasn’t on the line with us that night, Remy. Corine never tortured her. They copied her vocal patterns and made it sound like she was afraid, in danger. But that never happened.”

  “I knew it,” I breathe. Vale rolls over so he’s facing me and props himself up on his elbow.

  “What do you mean? How did you know?”

  “I ran into her in Reunion Park. She was too happy, out playing netball with friends. She acted like nothing was wrong. How could she have been so carefree if she’d just been through such an ordeal? I knew there was some part of the story I was missing. After you got shot on that building, I—”

  “What?” In the darkness I can just make out the wrinkles on his forehead. “I didn’t get shot.”

  Now it’s my turn to sit up, locking eyes with him.

  “Yes, you did. I saw it. A Bolt hit you in the chest, and you fell off the ledge, right into the nets of those rescue drones.”

  “I—no, that’s not possible. I stepped off that ledge. I did it deliberately, to give you time to escape.”

  “Someone gave the order to shoot you, Vale. Whether it was Aulion or Philip or Corine, someone gave the go-ahead.”

  “Maybe,” he says slowly. “My parents never told me. They let me believe—” He pauses for a long breath. “But it wouldn’t have changed anything.”

  I take all this in, realizing what it means. Vale stepped off that ledge. He meant to fall. He was prepared to die for me.

  I rub my eyes and peer into the distance. After waking early, I’d rolled away from the warmth of Vale’s sleeping form, slipped from under the covers, and headed out to the dock to practice my breathing, watching the dawn break in violent streaks of purple and blood orange. The air is cool and moist, a morning fog hovering above the water like a silvery veil, and I watch as a heron takes flight, winging its way across the water and lifting gracefully into the air.

  “Coffee,” a gruff voice calls. I turn to see Miah behind me, eyes bleary from wine and lack of sleep.

  “Be there in a sec,” I call back. Miah turns to lumber back to the house. I finish my morning stretches and clamber to my feet.

  Inside, the house is coming to life. Osprey appears first, her hair pointing every direction in lawless rebellion. Miah pours her a cup of rich chicory coffee and she tips it up and downs the whole thing.

  “Don’t you even want some almond milk or something in that? It’s thick as sludge.”

  “Why are you talking to me before I’ve had my second cup?” She holds her mug out. “Pour, minion.”

  “Yes, master.” Miah bows and pours as the slightest hint of a smile curls at the edges of Osprey’s mouth.

  Eli shuffles into the room, steps over Bear, and hugs me absently as he grabs a chipped mug from those Miah has set out. “Remind me again why we’re all here,” he growls. “And why we drank—” he stares at the empty bottles lined up on the far counter—”seven bottles of wine last night. You’d think we were drinking to celebrate something—or to forget. Which is it?”

  “A little of both,” I venture. “Celebrate that we’re all together. Forget why we’re all together.”

  “Ah, yes, Little Bird.” He rubs my shorn head. “My very wise, nearly bald little bird.”

  Vale and Soren make their way into the room at the same time, like life-sized toy soldiers in formation, one dark, one fair, followed by Saara, who limps along behind them.

  “I don’t know how I managed it, but I got another blister yesterday,” she says by way of good morning.

  “I’m going to put in a call to the Director,” Eli grouses. “I’m already in a bad mood, so I might as well get that task out of the way so the day can only get better.”

  “Should we wake Bear?” I ask.

  “Have a little compassion for the poor boy,” Eli says. “We’ll wake him if the Director has some earth-shattering news. Besides, he’ll have to get moving soon enough.”

  Vale and I follow Eli into my grandfather’s study where Eli and Miah set up a makeshift comm center. With a lot of cursing and moaning, Eli gets situated and is just about to put in the call when the receiver lights up and a voice comes blaring through.

  “Montana Four, are you there? Montana Four, come in.”

  Eli’s face contorts into a frown and he twists one of the dials as if he’s got a personal vendetta against it. “For fuck’s sake, Zoe,” Eli says. “Why the hell are you so loud?”

  “Good morning, Eli. Glad to hear you’re your usual bright, sunny self. The Director and Rhinehouse are both here. Everyone’s here, in fact, so watch your language. Corine is making an announcement in ten minutes. Get your team together and we’ll patch you in so you can listen to the feed live.”

  Eli turns and glares at us, and Vale and I both get the picture. We head back down the hall to rouse everyone and get them into the comm center before the speech starts.

  “Eli, is everyone assembled?” This time it’s the Director’s voice, not Zoe’s.

  “All present and accounted for.”

  “Vale?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m here.”

  “Your father hasn’t introduced Corine as he usually does, and Jon Spironov has announced that Corine will be appearing alone. Can you shed any light on this development? Do you have any idea why he won’t be with her?”

  “No.” He shakes his head. “I’m just as surprised as you are. As I told you, at Windy Pines my father had expressed—”

  “Hold that thought. The broadcast is starting.”

  “Citizens of Okaria,” Corine begins. I take Vale’s hand in mine and squeeze. “The Okarian Sector is facing a challenge unlike any we have faced before. As most of you know, many of our fellow citizens have recently fallen ill. Hospital admissions have spiked precipitously in the last five days alone. Fortunately, working around the clock with doctors and medics throughout the Sector, scientists at the Sector Research Institute and in my own OAC laboratory have been able to identify the cause of the illness. Dubbed River 1, because the first outbreak was seen in River and the surrounding area, we can now say definitively that the symptoms are caused by a parasite not seen since before the Famine Years.

  “This parasite did not turn up in the Sector on its own. It did not evolve in nature. We have identified key genetic discrepancies that indicate it has been genetically altered and manipulated. We believe it has been introduced into our food and water by forces seeking to destabilize our citizenry. By combing through historical data on disease research, we have identified markers in the parasite’s DNA and have traced those markers to research done by Dr. James Rhinehouse, a brilliant man who was once one of our finest scientists, but who is now a member of the terrorist organization known as the Resistance.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Soren is the first one to say it, but he’s not the only one. Vale shrinks into himself, like he used to whenever we’d discover some new atrocity his parents were responsible for, but I draw him to me, not letting him pull away.

  “I am speaking to you today,” Corine continues, “to assure you that we will find Dr. Rhinehouse and hold him and his comrades accountable for this horrific act of terrorism. I also want to tell you personally that we are very close to developing a way to kill the parasite. We’re not there yet, but with Dr. Rhinehouse’s own research at our fingertips, we are able to work faster than we dared ho
pe. Soon we will put this terrible chapter in our history behind us and your loved ones will be back home with you, happier and healthier than ever before. We are working as hard as we can and will keep you informed by issuing daily updates until this crisis is resolved. For now, remember the citizens of the Okarian Sector have made it through tough times before, and together we will make it through again. Thank you.”

  17 - VALE

  Spring 91, SA 106, 19h25

  Gregorian Calendar: June 18

  She leaves OAC Headquarters at 7:30 on the dot every work night. Even when we were younger, Moriana was always methodical and deliberate in her habits. If she has extra work to do, she’s up early in the morning instead of staying up late at night. She always follows the same path to and from work, and—at least before Miah and I left—she rarely deviated from the same restaurants or clubs that we’d been going to for years. She was a creature of habit, and I knew she’d leave the OAC campus via the main entrance and then veer south toward the nearest PODS station, taking our familiar shortcut along the way. This is why, at exactly 7:28, Eli checks his watch and nods at me.

  “Go time.”

  I amble toward the arching covered walkway that divides OAC headquarters with its multi-story greenhouse. I pick a spot and lean nonchalantly against the elegant twisting carbon frame, modeled after the DNA molecule’s double helix, that girds the exterior of the main building and remember how not too long ago I’d snuck into the complex to break into my mother’s lab. I’d been looking for answers then. Just like now. Why are there so many secrets? This time, at least, I’m not breaking in, I’m not carrying a grappling hook, and I have no intention of getting stuck in a dumbwaiter.

  After listening to my mother’s broadcast about the River 1 parasite, the Director gave us an order: get Moriana Nair. As my mother’s protégé, the Director figures—and we all agree—that Moriana must know where the parasite came from since it sure as hell didn’t come from Rhinehouse. Considering Moriana’s history with Miah and me, the Director believes Moriana can be persuaded to share her knowledge, maybe even join our cause. I hope she’s right.