Without asking why or looking at me, he pulls open a drawer to display a collection of scalpels, tweezers, scissors and punches suitable for dissection. He continues to type as I roll up my jumpsuit sleeve, swab my forearm with alcohol I locate in a cabinet near one of the sinks—someone has reorganized since I was last in here—and make a quick incision with the scalpel. Youch! I swallow hard, feeling a little woozy, and blot the line of blood that appears before awkwardly use the tweezers to dislodge the data button. It hurts and I swallow hard. Dr. Ronan doesn’t even glance at me. I finally get a grip on the small button and yank it out. More blood wells and I swab the area with alcohol and secure it with a butterfly bandage from the first aid kit. It probably needs a stitch or two, but there are limits to the surgery I’m willing to perform on myself.
Cleaning the data button, I pass it to Dr. Ronan. Without comment, he loads it into the computer and begins to scan the data that comes up. I’m leaning forward on my stool, watching the display with him. He minimizes the display when he’s finished reading and says, “We’ll have to acquire some locusts, attract them to the dome. Damn, never thought I’d say that.”
Most of the lab’s research focuses on creating locust-resistant food varieties, or improving crop yields, so we had only ever had a few dead locusts on hand for dissection and study. It won’t be hard to get some; planting a few of the dome’s crops outside should summon a swarm within days. Before we set that trap, however, we need to construct cages to hold them in. I am half-way through explaining what kind of cages I want to build when the Kube’s PA system summons me to a meeting with Idris and his commanders. I don’t have a communicator on my Kube jumpsuit—it didn’t fit with the disguise.
Dr. Ronan lowers his shaggy brows when I hop off the stool to respond. “Where are you going, Jax? There’s work to be done. This lack of focus is unlike you.”
“I’ll be back tomorrow, first thing,” I say. “Right now, well, I don’t have the luxury of just being a scientist at the moment.”
“Focus is not a luxury, it’s a necessity in science. Did I succeed in teaching you nothing?” He throws up his hands.
Feeling like I did when I served here and he chastised me for some oversight, I slink out of the lab, but then pick up my pace. I snag an ACV scooter and glide toward the IPF barracks where Idris has established his headquarters in the commandant’s office. As an AC, I never had reason to go to the barracks, and I’m curious. The building is newer than the Kube, built after the office complex was repurposed by the government for raising repossessed children taken from parents with no procreation license, or who were found unfit in other ways. Tube-shaped, it’s fashioned from specially treated concrete, with metal alloy ribs. It connects to the main Kube building via an above-ground tunnel made of the same sand-colored concrete. A hole in the building, rubble, and the smell of dust and explosive indicate that Wyck and his troops faced opposition when taking the armory, which I knew from our planning sessions is an underground facility behind the barracks.
The two guards on sentry duty at the door recognize me, and I enter into a meager foyer carpeted with a rug that was once red but has faded to a pinkish-maroon. A hall leads out of the entryway from the back and offices line both sides. The whole place reeks of men: some indefinable potpourri of sweat, booted feet, weapons and testosterone. There are no women in the IPF; wombs are too valuable to risk in combat ops. Voices in the corner office draw me toward the meeting.
I enter to find Idris seated atop the desk, swinging one booted foot. His dark hair is matted with sweat, a cut scores his brow, and he’s scowling. The scowl is nothing unusual; it’s his default expression. Rhedyn, red curls tumbling over her shoulders, sits in a comfortable-looking chair, munching an apple she must have taken from the dome. Wyck and Fiere stand against the interior wall, shoulders propped against it, arms crossed over their chests. I study Wyck’s face and see grief beneath the dirt and exhaustion. Fiere massages her shoulder and I guess the old injury is paining her. She gives me a half-wink when I come in.
“Hello, Everly.”
The voice, well-modulated and with the hint of a drawl, comes from a spot out of sight behind the door. I smile as I greet Alexander. Even seated, his height is apparent. He has a willowy build, silver streaks in his brown hair and beard, and sunken cheeks. His illness throws his aquiline nose, high cheekbones, and deep-set eyes into greater relief. He rises and hugs me, unaware or uncaring of Idris’s impatience. Soon, I think, drawing back. Soon I will tell him that he’s my father. I’m almost certain that he’ll be glad.
“Nice of you to join us, Jax,” Idris says.
I straighten and give him a level look, making no attempt to explain myself. He knows where I’ve been and why. When I don’t respond, he fixes his eyes on Rhedyn and barks, “Report.”
She’s no more disconcerted by his surliness than I am, and she gives him a concise round-up of her squad’s operations and the ease with which they took over the dome. “I’ve worked out a process and schedule for my troops to guard the ACs when they’re working in the dome,” she says, passing Idris a sheet of paper. “What I want to know is, is the lab my responsibility, too, since it’s located in the dome?” She shoots me a glance from her long green eyes, although the question is for Idris.
“You’re responsible for physical security, Everly for everything else,” he says. “First thing you need to do is update the access files to limit access to the lab. We don’t need someone else exploiting the same weakness we did. Everly can give you a list of people who should be allowed in.”
She nods, and Idris turns to Fiere. She gives him a similar report and adds that keeping the ACs cooped up in the cafeteria is not a viable long-term solution. “We need to look at moving them into one of the dormitory wings, keeping them all isolated there,” she says. “We also need to look at the manpower it’s going to take to guard them going to and from the dome. Most of them are docile, scared, but one or two of the older ACs strike me as trouble.”
“They so much as look at you cross-eyed, send them over here,” Idris says. “They can ride it out in the brig with the soldiers.”
“We should send the infants and younger children away,” Fiere says, taking a step away from the wall. Dark hair shaped like a question mark clings to her forehead. “Transport them to another dome, or fost them out into the community. They can’t serve in the dome or the kitchens; they’ll only be a drain on us.”
Idris ponders the idea for mere seconds before shaking his head. “We don’t have time or manpower to shuttle the kids around the countryside. Besides, their presence might make the government think twice about their tactics when they try to re-take the dome. And make no mistake, they will try.” His gaze sweeps all of us. “I’d say we have a week to ten days, tops, before they work out a plan, move troops into position, and counter-attack. We need to fortify the perimeter, booby trap approaches to the Kube, cut the train tracks, and make it clear to the Prags the lengths we’re prepared to go to.”
“What lengths are those?” Alexander asks, no hint of censure in his voice, but with a line between his brows. Mere months ago, Alexander had led Bulrush, the underground railroad for spiriting women and children out of Amerada’s eastern cantons to the outposts. Idris and Fiere had been his deputies. Now, his increasing weakness relegates him to a secondary role in tactical operations, but I sense that he still holds moral authority.
Idris considers our father for a moment and his leg stills. “We have plenty of hostages,” he says. “The soldiers,” he adds quickly, as Rhedyn gasps and I take a step forward. “I’m not planning to execute children,” he says testily. “I’m not a monster, or a moron. We start shooting kids and every able-bodied man in Jacksonville will be at the gates, armed with whatever comes to hand. No, we need to win hearts and minds as much as we need supplies and tactical victories. More. The soldiers, however, are combatants. And they’re geneborn. No one’s going to mourn them but their own.”
I am fascinated and appalled by Idris’s cold calculations. I wonder if he’d willingly execute infants if it were strategically beneficial. I hope the opportunity never arises. I’m also disturbed by his hatred for geneborns. Yes, they’re in the power positions now, and they make and carry out a lot of the Prags’ repressive policies, but they didn’t ask to be born from manipulated genes, any more than I or any other natural born asked to be born the way we were. There are still some nats at high levels in the government, to include my mother and Minister Fonner. A discussion for another time. Without being asked, I give him my report on the lab and explain the plan for attracting locusts.
“This will be the ultimate public relations coup,” Idris says, eyes burning. “The Defiance will come up with a solution to the locust problem, not the Prags. A nat scientist—a girl—will succeed where none of the Prags’ geneborns could. We’ll record it and show the video to the whole country.”
“How?” Wyck asks, speaking for the first time. “We don’t have a broadcast capability.”
“Leave that to me,” Idris says, making me wonder what he’s got up his sleeve. “Jax’s work has top priority, second only to holding the Kube and dome.” He holds the gaze of each of the individuals in the room, making sure they get the message, then dismisses us.
As we pass through the door together, Fiere mutters, “I didn’t join up with the Defiance to be a babysitter. Did I mention I hate kids?”
“Once or twice.” I grin.
“Oh, you think it’s funny, do you?” She bumps against me so I lurch to the right. “Come on down to the training room and I’ll make you laugh.”
“You’re on,” I say, suddenly knowing that a training bout with Fiere is exactly what I need, despite my weariness. She will undoubtedly whip my butt, but the exertion will drive away my worries.
Chapter Four
An hour later, having changed into a loose tunic and leggings, and lost eight out of ten bouts with Fiere (I count losing as ending up on the mat, with the breath smacked out of me, or pinned down by her knee on my spine and my arm twisted between my shoulder blades), I sit with my back against the training room wall. I’m sweaty and bruised and much more relaxed than when we came down here.
“The IPF has it good,” Fiere observes, indicating the room we’re in which has weight training equipment in addition to mats and other fitness gear.
“It’s their job to be fit,” I say.
“Yeah, well, their rooms aren’t bad, either, not nearly as nasty as the accommodations on the Belle. They don’t smell like rotting fish and toxic chemicals, for one thing.”
I have to admit that the IPF quarters are nice. They are on the second floor of the barracks building. The officers had tiny rooms to themselves, which have now been allotted to Idris, Alexander, Wyck, Rhedyn, Fiere and me. The military officers, of course, along with their men, are now confined in the brig. I have a sink in my quarters, but share a hyfac down the hall with the other women. As Fiere pointed out, it was a big step up from the four-to-a-room, sleeping on hammocks arrangement on the Chattanooga Belle. They are not, however, nearly as nice as the billet I had occupied in Atlanta, when the government thought I was a bio-chem researcher and employed me at the Ministry of Science and Food Production. My mind drifts to sharing dinners with my upstairs neighbor Marizat and I wonder what she’s doing now.
“Missing Atlanta?” Fiere asks with the perceptivity that never fails to startle me.
“Not Atlanta, per se, but some of the people.”
“Saben?” She names him with a knowing smile.
I ache for Saben, and worry for him, and wish desperately we could be together, or at least communicate regularly. But he’s an IPF officer and for us to be in contact would put him in grave danger. I’ve managed to get him a few messages since I left Atlanta, and I’ve gotten one from him, mostly delivered via Defiance agents who operate in and around the capital city. I keep his note on me at all times, and have read it so often the paper is worn thin: “Beloved, stay strong. We will be together. You are always in my thoughts and in my heart. I love you.” It was signed with a tiny drawing of an albatross. We couldn’t risk using our names.
“Among others,” I say neutrally, shy of admitting how much Saben means to me. “Have you ever been in love?” I ask Fiere, the question popping into my head and out of my mouth simultaneously.
She flicks me a startled look and then rests her chin on her drawn-up knees. Her gaze drifts to the middle distance. “Love’s not worth it,” she says, ducking the question.
“Not worth what?”
For a moment, I think she’s going to stand and leave, but then she says, “Not worth the worry, the heartache, the inevitable disappointment. Love is a distraction from what’s really important.”
“Which is?”
She turns her head so her cheeks presses against her knee and she can see me. Dark circles under her eyes make them look bigger, and her cheekbones sharper. “Honing one’s abilities and using them to make Amerada a better place for everyone.”
“Love makes the world a better place.”
At that, she snorts and stands. “Grow up, Jax.” She shakes her head in disappointment. “Too many atrocities are committed in the name of ‘love’ for me to buy that. The Crusades for love of Christ, Jihads for love of Allah, spouses killing each other because their love expresses itself in jealous rage, parents killing children because they ‘love’ them too much to let them suffer through life. Men impregnating women and abandoning them, betraying them to the government so they’re locked up in RESCOs to be surrogacy slaves.”
A prickle of awareness, or drying sweat, tightens the skin between my shoulder blades. It’s the longest speech I’ve ever heard from Fiere, and I know she’s talking about herself at the end. I wonder who the man was who betrayed her. I bet he’s dead, that he didn’t last two weeks after Alexander freed her from the RESCO. “I’m sorry,” I murmur, not knowing how else to express my sympathy.
“Sorry and love are for losers. Duty and strength—that’s what you need to focus on.”
Without waiting for me to answer, she turns on her heel and leaves the gym. I’m half-tempted to go after her, to argue the case for me and Saben, to tell her there’s more to life than duty, but it would be a waste of breath. Proctor Theo’s words pop into my head, and I wonder if Fiere is one of those people with little capacity for happiness. Not necessarily, I decide. She actively refuses happiness. Any seedling of happiness invading her emotions can expect a quick swipe with a scythe. Vowing never to be like that, I take my bruised body to the hyfac, hoping there is plenty of hot water.
When I’m clean, with my shampooed hair damping my jumpsuit’s shoulders, I have one more task to complete before I can sleep. Dragging with exhaustion, I make my way to the nursery wing, passing half a dozen Defiers on guard duty, and find Proctor Theo. When she hears what I want, she walks me silently down the hall to what was Halla’s room, then disappears on slippered feet. Halla’s room is little more than a cubby, attached to the infant nursery. It was probably a supply closet at one time. I don’t know why she slept here, rather than in one of the larger rooms upstairs, where we lived when we were here. Maybe she didn’t feel she fit in with the other ACs, the relatively carefree adolescents and teens with whom she had little in common anymore. Or maybe she just wanted to be closer to the babies that reminded her of Little Loudon. Either way, it makes me sad for her. I remind myself that she chose her path, but that doesn’t burn away the melancholy.
The single bed is pushed up against two walls, with only an eight-inch alley at the end and two feet on one side. It is neatly made. The room is bare of personal effects, of any sense of personality. It smells faintly of cinnamon, a scent that evokes memories of Halla. I will not cry. I blink rapidly. A single spare jumpsuit hangs on a hook. I see what I’m after immediately: Halla’s Bible. There are no tables, so it’s tucked half under the thin pillow. I extract it, and run a hand down the pebbled leather cover.
The Bible belonged to Halla’s grandmother, and she treasured it the way I treasure the Little House book I thought came from my parents. Not wanting to linger in this Halla-less space that feels thin, two-dimensional, I clutch the Bible to my breast and leave. A baby’s snufflings follow me out to the main hall where I take a deep breath and head for the kitchen.
There are only two possible places Halla’s body could be, and I know she hasn’t been taken to the lab. As I walk into the kitchen, a biolume fixture sheds a dim light over the stainless steel and tile surfaces, investing them with a softness they lack in broad daylight. The room is empty at nine o’clock, the kitchen staff locked up somewhere for the night, I presume, after putting together a cold meal for the ACs at dinner time. Surely, Idris isn’t letting them commute to their homes in Jacksonville. The idea of so many prisoners, of disrupting the lives of innocent bystanders like the Kube’s staff members and, really, the ACs themselves, makes me squirm. The IPF contingent and the proctors are government employees and thus fair game, but everyone else . . .
My destination is the walk-in cold storage unit at the back of the kitchen. Its stainless steel doors glow coldly blue as I approach. I’m startled by a breath of chill air even before I reach for the door, and it warns me the door is ajar. Someone’s been careless. Pulling the door open, I step into the refrigerator, lit only by the reflected glow from the biolume fixture over the counters outside. I get an impression of bulky containers on slatted metal shelving on either side, and of a long, raised surface, a table or gurney, angled toward the back. I make out a dark shape lying on it, surrounded by shadows. Halla. The wooden slats that form the floor bow slightly under my weight. They’re slicked by the trodden-in scraps of years of produce and other foods. Even as my foot lands, I register movement ahead of me, the shadows changing shape. I tighten my grip on the Bible and crouch slightly.
“Everly.”
Alexander’s voice warms me, and I relax. Of course he’s come to say goodbye to Halla.
Regeneration (The Incubation Trilogy Book 3) Page 4
