Idris’s voice cuts through our grief. “Sharpe, you and your squad take the prisoners to the brig below the barracks. See that the wounded get medical treatment.”
Wyck responds to the tone of command, and rises to his feet. “Yes, sir,” he says automatically. He shakes his head once, sharply, and I can almost see his vision clear. He’s still grief-stricken, but he’s got something to distract him. I’m actually grateful to Idris.
The nursing proctor says, “I’ll go with you. I’m the only one at the Kube with a medical degree, although I’ve been training a couple of ACs.” Blood stains the knees of her jumpsuit.
“Fiere,” Idris continues. “Make arrangements for the staff and ACs in the cafeteria to receive food, water, and hyfac access. For the time being, we’ll keep them there until we know what we’re dealing with.”
“I hate kids—” she starts, only to have Idris frown and snap, “Do it.”
She cocks a thin, dark brow at him, putting him on notice that she doesn’t like his tone, but descends the stairs with the remnants of her squad following her. It’s just me and Idris and Halla now. I look down at her body. Someone has draped a cloth over her face. What will happen to her?
“What will—?” I ask Idris.
Uncertainty flickers across his face, and I wonder if he’s given any thought to this aspect of the operation, to dealing with dead bodies. Most other engagements he’s orchestrated have used guerrilla tactics, where his force strikes a target and returns to base. This time, we’re an occupying force, and it’s just struck me that there are lots of logistical difficulties associated with that that I never considered. Are the proctors and ACs our prisoners?
“We’ll bury her,” he says after a moment. “The rest”—he gestures toward the dead IPFers and our fallen comrades—”cremation. This place must have an incinerator.”
“I have to find Little Loudon,” I say. Halla’s baby. I promised her I’d look after him, and I’ve never even seen him. I head for the stairwell blocked by the soldier’s body, planning to search him out in the nursery, glad that he’s too young to understand about death, that I won’t have to tell him about his mother’s death. My stomach swoops at the thought of raising a baby.
Idris’s voice stops me. “I need you to take charge of the lab.”
“Later.”
Without waiting to see how he responds, I step over the body and jog upstairs to the nursery wing. A Defier stands guard just inside the stairwell door when I reach the third floor. When I explain what I want, he shakes his head. “Everyone’s downstairs in the cafeteria,” he says. “This area’s sealed off. All the floors above the first floor are off-limits for now.”
With an exasperated sigh, I turn and trot back down the stairs, emerging at ground level, and make my way toward the cafeteria. Passing a hygiene facility on the way, I pause. Halla’s blood cakes my hands. Suddenly, I need to wash it off. I push through the hyfac door and go straight for the sink. Warm water gushes over my hands when I hold them under the faucet, and runs red as it trickles into the basin. I scrub them together, scraping dried blood from under my short fingernails, and gradually, gradually the water runs clear. I blot ineffectually at the stains on my jumpsuit, and splash water on my face for good measure. With my hairline damp and my eyelashes dripping, I peer at my pale, somber face in the mirror, momentarily startled by the red hair. I’d liked the dark hair I’d had as Derrika Ealy better; the red is too bright. I wonder if I’ll ever get to revert to my natural blond color. Not as long as I’m a wanted murderer, I know.
Leaving the hyfac, I cross the corridor to the cafeteria. Fiere has guards stationed at the doors and they unlock them to let me in. The cafeteria looks like I remember it. White tables are arranged in rows like furrows spreading out from the wall hiding the kitchen, enough to seat roughly 100 ACs and twenty proctors and staff. The IPF has its own eating facilities. A podium stands in front of the wall. It’s where a proctor stands to read each meal’s citizenship lesson or other “improving” address. Floor to ceiling windows in the east wall provide natural light and a glimpse of the dome. The room smells faintly of boiled broccoli.
A baby’s wails greet me. Other than that, Fiere has done a good job of establishing order—no surprise. The toddlers are corralled closest to the attached kitchen, with two ACs who are near my age to ride herd on them. I know them both. The mid-level ACs—five to eleven or thereabouts—are seated quietly at tables, also supervised by older ACs, one I know slightly and another I don’t. The only proctor in sight is old Proctor Theophania who must be in her seventies, but who still rules the nursery wing; at least, she did while I was here. I wonder where Supervising Proctor Dillingham and the rest of the proctor cadre are, and suspect that they’ve been confined with the soldiers in the brig.
Acknowledging Fiere who is across the room, sketching on a table while her lieutenant listens and nods, I cross to where the toddlers are napping, sacked out on blankets on the floor. There are only three of them, and none looks like it shares any of Halla’s genes—one is blondish, one has Asian features, and one is too old, at least two. The latter has his thumb in his mouth, sucking sporadically. The ACs rise when I approach, standing so their shoulders touch—for moral support, I suppose. Emlin, a mousy-haired girl who lived down the hall from me, cradles a crying infant swaddled in a blanket, trying to hush it.
I raise my voice to be heard over the baby’s sharp wails. “Emlin, do you know—”
She takes a half-step back. “How do you know my name?”
Damn. I’ve got to be more careful. I can’t afford to have anyone know I’m Everly Jax. Yes, the Defiance controls the Kube now, but if someone escapes or manages to communicate with the Prags, I don’t need to be the focus of a manhunt. Womanhunt? “Uh, he told me,” I say, gesturing vaguely to the other group.
“Oh,” she says doubtfully. She puts the baby over her shoulder and pats its back.
Before she can give it too much thought, I ask, “Halla Westin’s baby—where is he?”
She stares at me blankly, and then exchanges a look with the other girl. I recognize her, too. Shalina, no, Shaliqua. They must both be fifteen now. “Halla doesn’t have a baby,” Emlin finally says in a timid voice, as if she’s afraid she’ll be punished if she gives the wrong answer.
“What?” My voice and frown make them shrink away. “I’m not going to hurt you—no one’s going to hurt you,” I say impatiently. “Just tell me about Halla and her baby.”
Emlin blinks rapidly and Shaliqua uses both hands to hook her hair behind her ears. Before they work up the nerve to answer, a guttural voice speaks from behind me.
“If you vant to talk about Halla, talk to me,” Proctor Theophania says. “Don’t pick on these children.” Her w’s sound like v’s.
“I’m not picking on—” I start, but she’s not listening. She is walking away, headed for a table with empty chairs. I follow. I never had much to do with Proctor Theophania, but Halla, who worked for her in the nursery had told me many stories about her. Well, I’m not going to let her intimidate me; the Defiance is in charge here, after all.
I pull out the chair across from Proctor Theophania and sit.
“I am Proctor Theophania,” she says. “The ACs call me Proctor Theo.” She looks me over shrewdly, and I’m half-nervous that she recognizes me. She hasn’t changed since I left. Still squat in the unflattering white jumpsuit, with olive skin etched with seventy years’ worth of wrinkles, and a Roman nose that seems to have grown in my absence. Her hair was once a glossy black, I’m sure, but it’s mostly white now with a few charcoal streaks, pulled back into a low bun. She still smells like baby powder.
I don’t introduce myself. “Do you know—”
“Did you kill Halla Westin?” Vestin.
I rear back as if slapped. “No! Of course not.”
“But she is dead.”
I nod. “Yes.”
Her eyes, dark as raisins set in deep sockets, study me. “Why are y
ou asking about her baby?”
I can’t go into it, our friendship, Halla’s dying request, not without giving myself away. “Do you know where he is?”
Proctor Theo works her tongue around her upper teeth, bulging her faintly mustached lip out, like she’s trying to pry loose a bit of lodged food. “No,” she says finally. “When Halla returned some weeks ago, she did not have a baby with her. She was pregnant when she left the Kube, though,” she adds. “She tried to hide it, but I knew. She left with two other ACs, a boy and a girl.” Her gaze meets mine, revealing nothing. Her inscrutability is beginning to bug me. I know now why Halla used to say she could read minds.
“Do you know why Halla came back?”
“Not really, no. She talked to me some when she first arrived. She was tired, ill. Grieving, I think.” The old woman blinks and runs a dry tongue over her thin lips. “Her husband had thrown her out, or been arrested—I never understood the details. At any rate, she found herself alone, apparently friendless, and made her way back here. Sanctuary.” She pronounced the word with satisfaction, apparently pleased to view the Kube in that light.
I wonder what happened with Halla and Loudon. Had he found out that she warned me to leave Atlanta? Had the IPF found out and decided to punish them, and she escaped while he didn’t? There is no way to know.
“She was thin, exhausted, and covered with mosquito bites. Normally, when ACs leave the Kube, we don’t see them again. They’re just . . . gone. They spend years with us, all their young lives in some cases, and then the government summons them for their service and it’s like we cease to exist, that the effort we put into training them, teaching them, bandaging bloody knees, comforting them, feeding them, praying for them—it’s like it never happened. I’m glad Halla thought of us when she needed somewhere to go.” While she talks, Proctor Theo’s hands lie quietly folded in her lap. Sun-mottled skin sags across the bones.
Her heavy eyelids blink. “She worked with the little ones again, as when she lived here. She was always good with little children. She did not say anything about her baby and I did not ask. If I had to guess, I would say she did the right thing and handed the child over to the government so that a properly selected family could raise it. But it sounds like you know otherwise . . .?”
I am not getting drawn into a discussion that would incriminate any number of people. “Was she happy here?” I ask.
Proctor Theo thinks for a moment, pursing her lips. “I would not say so, no,” she finally says. “She was fretful, restless. I caught her crying once while she rocked Cedric to sleep. Colic. Some people do not have much capacity for happiness,” she observes. “Halla may have been one of them, may she rest in peace.”
I scrape my chair back and rise, grief weighing me down. “Thank you,” I manage before making my way quickly to the door. Fiere signals me, but I keep going, pretending I haven’t seen. I need a moment alone. Instinctively, I make my way to the nearest stairwell and begin to climb. I count each step because it helps keep me from thinking. When I reach the fourth floor, I find it unguarded, but locked. Child’s play. I still have the picklock gadget Wyck made me—it seems so long ago—and I use it to disrupt the maglock long enough to open the door and slip onto the fourth floor where I used to live. I reach the door of my former room and hesitate. It’s closed. Probably, some other AC lives here now.
I push it open. Empty. Not just “no one here” empty, but “no one lives in here” empty. The narrow twin bed is stripped, bare mattress lumpy and stained. No toiletries or found treasures sit on the one shelf, no jumpsuits hang from the row of hooks. A thin layer of dust coats the surfaces. I sniff, thinking it might smell familiar, but inhale only the sting of chemical cleaning agents. I sneeze. Crossing to the bed, I sit on the edge, letting my shoulders slump. Tears gather and I let them roll down my cheeks, not trying to stop them.
I’m not sure why I’m crying. This is the third time I’ve grieved for Halla. I cried for her in prison, when they told me she was dead. Then, I cried again when I found out she was alive and had betrayed us all. Surely, that should be my quota of tears for Halla. It apparently doesn’t work that way because the tears continue to fall. My sinuses get clogged and I sniff hard, rubbing the back of my hand under my nose. I think about searching out Wyck, so we can remember Halla together, but he’s at the barracks, sorting out the prisoners. When he gets a moment to himself, he’ll probably seek out Chrysto, a young demolitions expert Idris recruited while I was in Atlanta. He and Wyck have grown close recently. I wish Saben were here.
Enough. I have responsibilities. I lurch off the soft mattress, dry my tears with my sleeve, and walk out of the room without looking back. The door closes behind me with a soft click and I find myself jogging down the hall, then running, plunging down the stairs at a reckless pace. I bang against the walls and grab the rail once to stop myself mid-fall. I arrive at the bottom winded and panting, but somehow calmer. It’s time to check out the lab.
Idris told me to take charge of the lab. Fat chance. Dr. Ronan has ruled his lab fiefdom like a medieval lord since long before I arrived at the Kube as an infant, expecting and receiving total obedience. I’m under no illusions: the Defiance may have captured the Kube and the dome, but short of killing Dr. Ronan—which is not an option, not while I’m alive—no one will rule in the lab except him. I’m okay with that.
I stand outside the lab door, breathing deeply of the sweet lushness of the dome’s growing things. The dome is deserted except for the drones buzzing about and the Defiance guards Rhedyn has posted at intervals. Idris can’t corral the ACs in the cafeteria forever; he’s going to have to let them resume their tasks in the dome if he wants to optimize food production. A problem for tomorrow. I forgot what it was like to be surrounded by plants. I forgot how soothing it can be to bask in the presence of plants. Not that I have time for basking. I enter the lab.
Once again, the familiarity of the lab, the orderliness and predictability, settle on me and calm me. I actually smile. My fingers go to the spot on my forearm where I secreted the data button and I probe for it. Still safe. The button contains the files from my research on exterminating the locusts. Keegan Usher managed to destroy all other evidence of the research, including the genetically manipulated locusts themselves, before he died. I can almost feel the heat from the fire that claimed him and the locusts. I shiver. I’m anxious to recreate the experiment and launch the first batch of altered locusts, the ones who will infect the wild locusts with the virus that carries the genetic mutation I’ve introduced that will eventually spell the end of the locusts. It’s why I’m here, with the Defiance, at the Kube. I knew I needed a lab in which to replicate my research, and when Idris mentioned attacking the Kube, I saw my way forward.
Now, I have to convince my irascible former mentor to work with me.
Something rustles behind me and I turn. Dr. Ronan. He’s supposed to be locked up with the other Kube denizens, but somehow I’m not surprised he’s here. He knows every inch of the Kube and its dome, and has never been above ignoring rules he doesn’t think pertain to him. He manufactures the illegal intoxicant Wexl, but no one’s ever figured out where. He studies me from narrowed blue eyes, apparently unsurprised by my presence. He’s on the wrong side of eighty, but he’s still spry and dyes his collar-grazing hair a caramel blond color. The small vanity has always seemed incongruous to me. He saved my life in Atlanta by warning me, at the risk of his own life and career, I suspect, that Keegan had discovered my true identity. I don’t say anything now, standing still beneath his piercing gaze, a smile crooking my mouth. I can’t help it; I’m happy to see him.
“Where the hell have you been, Jax?” he grumbles, as if I’m late returning from a specimen collection trip or from lunch. He glares at me from under bushy white brows, wiry hairs stabbing in every direction. The glare lacks heat, though, and I think the twitch at the corner of his mouth is from suppressing a smile. “Where the hell have you been, Jax?” or something very lik
e it, was his standard greeting when I served with him, and it broadens my smile to a grin. I should be worried that he sees through my red hair and violet eyes to Everly Jax, but I know he won’t betray me. Not because I’m special to him (although part of me likes to think I am, at least as a scientist), but because he couldn’t care less about the Prags’ rules or what goes on outside the lab.
“I’m back,” I say.
“I see that,” he says with an irritated air. “I’m not senile. Do I have to pry it out of you, or are you going to tell me what you’re doing here?”
So I do. He brews tea, using leaves from the dome’s only tea tree, and boiling the water in a beaker. We sit on stools at a high counter, and I give him chapter and verse on my locust experiment, about finding a vector virus that transmits the mutated locust gene to the target locusts, about the need to infect as many locusts as possible so they can spread the virus and the attached gene code to the wider locust population. I tell him about my collaboration with Dr. Allaway in Australia, and about Keegan’s destruction of all the locusts, the fire that ravaged the entire lab. “Thank you for warning me,” I say finally. “You saved my life.”
Typically, he ignores my gratitude. “It disrupts their ability to breed successfully, you say?” he asks.
“They can breed, but the gene mutates the ovipositor, so the female locust can’t dig a hole for the eggs or deposit them.”
Dr. Ronan chews on his upper lip while he thinks. “Brilliant,” he proclaims finally.
His praise warms me. He’s stingy with his accolades.
“A shame that your work went up in flames. I knew there was more to the fire at the Ministry of Science and Food Production than was reported at the Assembly in January.” He sounds satisfied that his intuition has been proved correct. “We should get started.” He activates a computer display so we can both see it, and begins to scour abstracts from similar trials.
“We don’t have to start from scratch. Where are you keeping the dissection kits these days?”
Regeneration (The Incubation Trilogy Book 3) Page 3
