by Merry Farmer
Rhiannon and the others from their team had sought out their spots on the hillside for a rest. Only Danny had continued down to the wreck itself where he was busy unloading his backpack. The sight of him deep in concentration, confident of his purpose, cut through the frustration Carrie’s argument had created.
Stacey’s team still worked around the wreck and the treasure chests. The entire clearing was strewn with neat rows of supplies. Grace could see a stack of folded tents and their poles in one row, several folded blue tarps at the head of a line of tools, and the spools of rope and wire alongside a row of the smaller boxes.
At the other side of the clearing two of the men who had stayed behind were making piles of standard supplies from ES5 itself, including some of the cushioned seats and the netting that had kept the lockers and crates in place. Grace took a deep breath and forced herself to focus.
“Hey.” Stacey glanced up from her work and nodded to Grace. “I heard you were back.”
Grace nodded. She switched directions and walked to the nearly empty treasure chest that had held spools of rope. “We walked into a…situation.”
Stacey nodded and straightened, reaching back to pull her ponytail out of its elastic. She smoothed her hair back into a new one.
“Yeah, well we got a situation here.” She didn’t give Grace time to feel dread. “Come here.”
Stacey led her away from the treasure chests and their bounty, around the edge of the rut left by the crash to a fire pit that had been constructed at the base of the hill on the path down to the river.
“I found something in one of the chests that I didn’t want anyone else to see.” She crouched to sort through a pile of her belongings that lay on one of the blankets from ES5. Pushing back the corner of a blanket she revealed a wooden box about two feet long, a foot wide, but only four or so inches deep. She straightened and handed the box to Grace.
“Here.”
Grace blinked as she accepted the box. It wasn’t particularly heavy. The wood was a rich rose-brown, simple. The front of the box was locked with a disproportionately large silver padlock. The same kind of padlock that had been on each of the treasure chests.
“I don’t understand.” Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat.
Stacey shifted her weight and drew a folded square of paper from her back pocket. “This was taped to the top.”
Grace propped the box in one arm and took the note from Stacey. She flipped it open with one hand.
Give this to Grace.
Her heart pounded against her ribs. Electric currents of danger raced down her spine.
“Thank you for keeping this secret,” she whispered.
“I don’t know what’s going on here.” Stacey leaned closer to her. “Judging from all the stuff we’re finding in the chests it looks like I lucked out and got on the right emergency ship when the shit hit the fan.”
The implication stuck like lead in Grace’s throat. She shook her head. “It was chance. You know as well as I do that we weren’t supposed to be anywhere close to ES5. When did any of us ever go near the executive sector? That meeting was supposed to be on the third floor. If someone really did intend for me to—”
“They changed the location of our meeting at the last minute.” Stacey tapped the lid of the box. “That’s not chance. They meant for us, for you, to get on ES5.”
“Who is they?”
“I don’t think I’m gonna ask that question.” Stacey shifted her weight to her other hip and crossed her arms. “I’m just gonna be grateful that I am on your team and that I was five feet away from you when the alarm went off.”
She met Grace’s eyes and held them for a moment, pure pragmatism.
“Don’t think too much about it or you’ll give yourself a headache, ’kay?” She chucked Grace on the arm before heading back to the wreck.
Grace was too overwhelmed to move. She stared at the box and the note, at a complete loss. The silver key was still in her pocket.
The Argo had had at least a hundred emergency ships. How could anyone have known which one she would be on? The explosion had happened without warning, too fast to sort people into any specific vessel. The only thing they could do was run for the closest one.
She glanced up, searching the forest for some kind of clue as to how this box had ended up in her hands. The fluttering leaves in the trees, the clouds skittering past in the sky, the birds singing from unseen perches, none of them had an answer. All they told her was that she was here now.
She drew in a shuddering breath and turned to walk back up the hill toward her bear skin. Danny was watching her from the side of the wreck where he had laid out the plant samples he had collected during the day on a table that had been removed from the hull. He narrowed his eyes in question and nodded to the box. She shook her head with the barest of shrugs and glanced to the top of the hill where she was heading. He left his work and started on a path that would intercept hers.
Sean and Carrie were still deep in conversation as she neared their fire pit. They stopped suddenly when they saw her coming.
Carrie jumped up from her spot at Sean’s side. “What’s that?”
She reacted so quickly that Grace had no doubt she and Sean had been talking about her.
“I don’t know,” Grace told her the truth. She glanced over her shoulder to Danny as he joined them. “Stacey gave it to me. It was in the treasure chest.”
Carrie raised her eyebrows and held out her hands. Grace gratefully transferred the box to her, hiding the note in her palm and slipping it into her pocket as soon as her friend was focused on the box. Danny noticed her movement and gave her a brief curious look. She shook her head.
“What is it?” Sean stood and came to look over Carrie’s shoulder.
“It’s a box with a lock on it,” Carrie told him.
“Do you have the key?”
“No,” Grace lied.
“You should try the one in your pocket,” Danny called her out.
Grace bristled as she met his eyes. If this was her punishment for putting herself in danger it was uncalled for.
“You have a key in your pocket?” Carrie raised her brows.
“It’s not mine.” Grace closed her fist over the key, crumpling the note.
“All right.” Sean nodded, crossing his arms. “Whoever’s it is, let’s give it a try.”
Grace shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Why not?” Carrie’s shoulders dropped.
Grace let go of the key and the note and took the box back from Carrie. The whole situation terrified her. “We’ve got other things to worry about now.”
“I think you should open it, Grace.” Danny dragged his eyes slowly away from Carrie to meet hers.
If he was punishing her, then two could play at that game.
“Not now.” She refused to be cowed. “We have bigger problems.”
A beat of silence passed.
“What problems?” Carrie broke it.
“We have to deal with what happened out there.” Grace switched to business, taking the box to her bear skin and hiding it in its folds.
“Apparently logic and reason were casualties in the crash and we’re on our own until they recover.” She stood and faced the other three, aching with defeat. “So what are the thirty-eight of us from ES5 going to do in the meantime?”
There was a pause.
“Well I’m not living with Kutrosky, no matter what you say about one colony.” Carrie crossed her arms.
“What, you think we should join forces with Kinn then?” Sean chided her.
“No, that’s not—”
“We can’t choose sides,” Grace ended the argument before it could start. “God help me for saying it, since it’s the worst case scenario, but whatever we do, we can’t choose sides. That sends a message of antagonism, which only prolongs the conflict. We have to stay neutral, and for now it looks like that means going it alone.” She hated the idea as much as she ha
ted the unanswered questions surrounding them.
“So what are we going to do then?” Carrie asked.
Another long pause.
“We’re going to set up a more permanent camp,” Sean answered as if he’d come to the conclusion hours ago.
Grace nodded and moved to sit on the ground next to the fire pit. It was what she wanted, after all. “What do you have in mind?”
Danny sat by her side with a distracted scowl, staring into the ashes of the fire pit. Sean and Carrie took seats so that the four of them formed a circle.
“We can’t stay here.” Sean laid out his plan. “Kinn knows where we are.”
“So?”
“I don’t want anyone to be able to find us that easily.”
“Sean….” Grace started to protest but gave up, rubbing her forehead and then her eyes. Let him take over, she told herself. Danny was right. She couldn’t keep on thinking that everything was her responsibility.
She drew in a breath. “What if they need to contact us? What if somebody needs help?”
“We’ll leave guards near this place to catch them if they’re coming and run a message to us so we can intercept them,” Sean explained.
Carrie nodded in agreement. Grace was too exhausted to come up with an effective argument against the subterfuge. Danny didn’t seem interested in arguing either. He stared at Sean with a mix of calculation and curiosity.
“In the meantime,” Sean went on, reluctantly meeting Danny’s eyes, “we’ll set up those tents somewhere else in the woods, further downriver. Maybe Beth and her team have found a better location.”
“Gil’s not going to be happy.” Grace grasped at straws to change his mind. “He’s already setting up experiments over in the valley.”
“He can keep them there.” Sean shrugged. “We don’t have to move that far away, just enough so that if anyone comes here they won’t find us before we have fair warning.”
“You’re acting like we’re being threatened with an imminent attack.”
“With Kutrosky less than a day away and Kinn lurking on the other side of the river, anything could happen. As soon as either of them find out about the supplies we have, there could be raids, abductions, you name it. We have something they all need.”
Grace had to wrestle down the bubble of rage that welled up in her.
“I hope you told him what I think of this tribal nonsense.” She raised an eyebrow at Carrie.
“He agrees with me.” Carrie sat a little straighter.
The fire of indignation in her friend’s eyes made Grace laugh with exhausted irony. She was done with fighting.
“Fine.” She sighed and instantly felt the sting of guilt for giving in. “But I still think you’re all being paranoid. Kinn knows what we have to do and Brian Kutrosky isn’t a threat anymore.”
She had been lounging on the standard-issue sofa in Danny’s quarters, feet propped up on the coffee table, flipping through the pages of one of Danny’s real books. The room had been silent but for the ever-present purr of the engines and staccato tapping as Danny had worked on the computer at his desk. Most of the dense chapters of the book on genetic theory were going right over her head. She hadn’t cared. It was a rare pleasure to hold a real book, but she had had work to do.
“I give up.”
With a sigh she closed the book, breathing in its papery scent, and leaned forward to return it to the coffee table. She picked up her handheld and went back to work.
“Genetic theory not exciting enough for you?” Danny said, still focused on his computer screen.
“Oh, absolutely.” She lowered her handheld with a wry smile. “Gregor Mendel is a god and Francis Crick was a rock star.”
“Crick had a lot of good ideas.” Danny chuckled. “His critics just took them the wrong way.”
“Designer babies?” She arched an eyebrow. “Making perfect people is so twenty-first century.”
He laughed. She studied his profile, illuminated by the flickering light of the computer screen. Carrie thought he was creepy. She didn’t see it. He was smart, handsome in his own way, and as loyal a friend as she’d ever known. He was full of ideas, both new and quaint.
She sighed and tried to focus on the report displayed on her handheld. She made it halfway through the same sentence she’d read twice already.
“What are you doing?” She lowered her handheld.
“Hacking into the central computer.” Danny turned to her and winked.
Okay, maybe sometimes he did look a little creepy.
“Who do you think you are, Brian Kutrosky?” She laughed at her own joke.
He didn’t.
“No.” He turned back to his monitor, mouth twisted in a wicked grin. “Unlike Kutrosky, I’m smart enough not to pose as a technician and far, far too clever to get caught.”
“Right.” She shook her head.
Work wasn’t going to happen. She tossed her handheld on the sofa beside her.
“Do you really think he acted alone?”
“No, I do not,” Danny answered, absorbed in his computer screen.
Grace relaxed into the sofa’s cushion, leaning her head back and staring up at the ceiling. The vent above her hummed. A tiny clot of dust danced in the stream of air.
“I’m glad they detected the virus before we got to Terra. Can you imagine the logistical nightmare we would have had to deal with, I’m sorry, I would have had to deal with, if he had succeeded in uploading it to the central computer there?”
“There’s more than one way to bring down a colony.”
“I guess so. But I don’t think he was trying to take it down….”
“Just cripple it?” he finished her thought.
She shrugged. “If the breakaways can live without technology I don’t see why everyone else couldn’t do the same.”
“Grace,” he sent her a look of mock censure, “The Terra Project officially denies the existence of any breakaways.”
She laughed at his thick sarcasm. “Thank you, Dr. Thorne, I’ll remember that. Don’t tell the Consistory on me.”
“I would…if they existed.”
They shared a smile. He went back to work.
“I don’t understand why they couldn’t just let them go and be done with it,” she continued with her thoughts. “There are nearly ten thousand people living at Base One now. And we’re going to build Second City. What does it matter if a couple dozen people ditch the Project?”
His grin faltered, though his eyes still glittered with mischief. “You can’t complete a puzzle if you’re missing some of the pieces. In order for the future population to achieve its full planned potential, every participant must pass on their genes. You were all selected for those genes in the first place.”
“Nice try, Dr. Thorne, but we’re people, not sets of genes.”
He raised one eyebrow at her. “Believe me, I know.” His crooked mouth pulled into a grin so cryptic it sent a jolt of mystery tickling down through her body to her toes.
As soon as he noted her reaction, his grin softened into one of the clever, lop-sided smiles that reminded her why he was her best friend…and why some people steered clear of him in the hallways. She always did love an enigma.
He returned to his computer, keys clicking, monitor flashing.
“No, seriously, Danny. What are you doing?”
She sat up straight and pushed away from the sofa. Her skirt swirled around her legs as she walked across the room, carpet prickly under her bare feet.
“Hacking into the central computer,” he answered a second time.
She blew out a scoffing breath as she reached his desk, resting one hand on the back of his chair.
“Come on. You’re a scientist. You don’t need to hack. Don’t you have access to everything?”
“Not everything.”
Several windows were open on the computer screen. Long chains of numbers flashed by as he raced through menus and dialog boxes. She recognized the code at the
top of the largest box on his screen.
“Oh my God, you’re serious.”
He sorted through what looked like personnel files, skimming through the fast-scrolling information, absorbing it all as his eyes flickered across the page. She considered herself a fast reader, but Danny had a gift. He’d even beat Gil in a speed-reading contest a few months ago when none of them had anything better to do.
“There you are,” he sang at his screen, voice eerie with victory.
“Secondary Protocol?” She blinked and tried to keep up with the swell of information on the screens. “Why would anyone be interested in that fluff?”
“Mmm.” His attention focused on plowing through file titles, fingers flying across his keyboard. “Just something Sean mentioned to me a couple months back.”
“You’re not talking about that silly computer match-making program?” She leaned forward, giddy with the danger of what he was doing.
“Yes, I am talking about the silly computer match-making program.”
“Why would you care? It’s not like you’ll be in there. You’re not a part of The Terra Project.”
“Call it idle curiosity then.”
“You? Idle?”
His shoulders tightened and his focus narrowed on the screen as information zipped by at a faster pace, lists of names in columns.
“Wait, you didn’t write the Secondary Protocol, did you? All that genetic engineering? That’s what you do, isn’t it?”
“If I wrote it why would I need to hack it?”
“Touché.”
The screen burst suddenly into a cascade of personnel files complete with pictures and full records. Danny tore through them with brutal concentration.
“Ooh! Look. Me. Who does it match me up with?”
He laughed vaguely, flying through the information faster than she could read it.
“Well?”
Words and numbers scrolled through the other open windows on the screen. He had at least eight open. His eyes cut back and forth between them all, searching with dizzying speed.
