So much death. Wyck has organized the clean-up of the armory blast and repair of the portion of the barracks damaged by the explosion. It’s proceeding slowly. The crater where the armory used to be is a gaping wound—no, an open grave. Literally. I don’t know how many IPF soldiers were in the armory when Chrysto detonated his bombs, but what remains of them must be in that hole. Only a handful of proctors, natural borns, survived Idris’s prisoner executions, and they fall under Fiere’s command, taking care of the infants and helping supervise labor in the dome.
A sense of unease pervades the compound. I try to sort out the elements that contribute to it. Everyone’s wary of Idris now—his grief and hair-trigger temper make a volatile combination. The executions shocked many of us. I know it’ll be a long time before the sight of seventeen bodies sprawled in a line in the courtyard ceases to haunt me. The rest of us are grieving, too, for Alexander and our other friends killed in the fighting. A couple of Defiers have slipped away, apparently unable to stand up under the strain. Idris calls them deserters. The unseasonable heat and mugginess are taking their toll, also, as is the sense of impending disaster. No one believes General Bledsoe and the government troops are gone for good. The not knowing what comes next is hard. If Idris has a plan, he doesn’t share it with me. Every now and then I think about telling him he’s my brother, but I don’t.
All the next week, Dr. Ronan and I work feverishly in the lab, with Jereth assisting now more than documenting. He picks it up so quickly I suspect he’s spent time in a lab before and am grateful for it. We have to replicate my results with the locusts as quickly as possible; we don’t know how long we have before there’ll be another attack. The Prags might decide to sacrifice the dome to demonstrate their dominance and then I’d have no place to work. They’ve already severed the compound’s limited computer network connection so I have no way to collaborate with Dr. Allaway in Australia or other scientists working on this problem. My days are made up of microscopes and slides, of locust dissection and virus cultivation. It’s exacting work, and I fall into bed each night exhausted, barely able to exchange a few sentences with Wyck or Fiere over dinner. They each look as strung out as I feel. I lie in bed at night, one hand on my Little House on the Prairie under my pillow, and think about Saben.
On the eighth day after the attack, I’m in the lab when a muted ringing cuts through the hum of the lab equipment and an annoying drip from one of the sinks. I’m taking a five-minute break, gratefully sipping a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice—we are benefiting in some ways from controlling the dome—and the sound makes me look around. Dr. Ronan’s on the far side of the lab and Jereth is in the larger refrigeration unit; neither of them hear it. Curious, I cross to Dr. Ronan’s desk and stare at the phone. It rings again. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I’ve used a phone, all of them in Atlanta. The landlines and fiber optic cables are so damaged and destroyed after many decades where repairs weren’t possible, that almost no one even bothers trying to connect by phone. Still, a lot of government offices and other places have them. I pick up the handset. “Hello?”
A woman’s voice, muffled, says, “Everly Jax?”
Cautiously, I say, “Who is this?”
She reads off a set of geocoordinates, and adds, “Twenty-two hundred hours. Tonight.” Before I can respond or ask a question, she breaks the connection.
I hang up, my hand shaking. Someone knows I’m here. That’s my first thought. The voice called me by name. That’s bad. With a death sentence hanging over me, I’m only safe if the government can’t find me. My heart’s racing. Logic asserts itself. If it were the government, they wouldn’t call the Kube lab and set up a rendezvous, would they? Unless . . . could it be a trick? Is General Bledsoe trying to lure Defiers out of the compound one at a time to capture them? Ludicrous. Still, it’s someone who knows my true identity and knows I’m likely to be in the lab at Kube 9, and has phone access. There are only a handful of people on the planet, and most of them are here—
My mother! Emilia Alden, Minister for Science and Food Production. The voice didn’t sound like hers, but it was disguised. She knows I am alive and could have figured out I am here. I am sure she heard about Alexander’s gruesome death—the images were surely broadcast at an Assembly to discourage citizens who might be inclined to support the Defiance—and she knew I was planning to join up with him when I left Atlanta. I don’t know why she wants to meet with me, but it must be important.
My brows furrows as I try to think of a way to make the rendezvous. Idris has the compound on total lock-down, there are frequent and vigilant Defiance patrols of the perimeter, and the land outside has been re-mined, this time with proximity explosives. At least, that’s what Idris told us when he warned us not to leave the compound. Who knows what other security measures are in place? I’m not naive enough anymore to think that Idris has told us everything. He’s become even more secretive since Alexander died. It’s going to be hard, and I don’t have much time to come up with a plan . . .
“Jax!”
Dr. Ronan’s testiness makes me think he’s addressed me more than once.
“What, sir?” I respond automatically, dragging my mind back to the lab. Dr. Ronan’s glaring at me from under beetled brows, and Jereth is watching us from across the room.
“Pay attention, Jax. The lab is no place to let your mind wander. I asked if you had collated the results from yesterday’s gene splicing?”
“Right here.” I activate the computer’s display and point out my findings to Dr. Ronan.
Jereth wanders over and peers over Dr. Ronan’s shoulder. “Why choose that gene for the virus to zero in on?” he asks, pointing to my diagram.
“Because it’s unique to locusts,” I explain, my heart rate returning to normal as I focus on my work. “We don’t want to run the risk of the virus infecting and killing off other insects with the gene mutation, and disrupting the food chain even more, so we design the virus to only infect an organism with this particular gene. Think of this as precision targeting.”
“Like we’re snipers sighting in on an identified target, rather than the terrorists who killed everyone in the stadium with that chemical weapon during the Superbowl in—when was it? 2019 or so?”
“Exactly,” I say.
Jereth’s cheeks go pink at my praise.
“Military metaphors applied to science are by their very nature imprecise and misleading,” Dr. Ronan grumbles, “but you appear to have caught the gist of it, young Jereth. Now, do you think you might finish the task I set you an hour ago?”
We all return to work. The greater part of my mind, however, is trying to plan a way to make the ten o’clock rendezvous tonight. By the time I leave the lab, a little earlier than usual, I have a potential plan, but it involves Wyck. I’d rather not get him mixed-up in this, but needs must. I seek him out before dinner and find him drawing up sentry duty schedules in his barracks room. Fortuitous. He’s on his bed, his back propped against the wall, his knees bent, and his stocking feet resting on the coverlet. He’s using his thighs as a desk for the calendar. His brown hair is longer than when we arrived here, curling atop his ears and across his brow. He frowns when I enter, but then recognizes me and smiles, his hazel eyes lighting up.
“Hey, Ev.”
“Hiding out?” I gesture to the room.
He shrugs one shoulder. “It’s intense upstairs. Idris was always serious, but he had a sense of humor, some balance. Now . . .” He shrugs again. “I can get more done down here. What about you?”
I kick off my boots and join him on the bed, facing him with my back wedged against the short metal footboard. “We’re making progress. Idris hasn’t been in the lab since—” I don’t need to finish the sentence.
“Lucky you.”
“I’m getting a little cabin fever, though,” I say, letting my feet overlap his in a companionable way. “Any chance I could pull some sentry duty? It would do me good to get outside t
hese walls, zip around in an ACV for a shift.” I feel bad misleading him. “I’ll even take a midshift.” The midshift is the least popular shift because it runs from ten at night to six in the morning. I’ll be late for the rendezvous, but it can’t be helped.
Tilting his head back, Wyck looks down his nose at me, suspicious. “What are you up to, Ev? Sentry duty bores you stiff.”
I force myself to meet his eyes. “Nothing. I just need out of here.”
“You always did. I remember the way you used to escape to the beach, even when you ended up with more demerits than me for doing it.”
“No way. You were always the demerit king. Remember the time you took apart that beamer to see how it works, and put it back together wrong? I thought that soldier was going to kill you, as soon as his hands healed. You got like two thousand demerits for that, didn’t you?” I nudge his calf with my foot. He nudges back and just like that we’re having a kicking fight. It ends with me pushed off the bed, dragging half the covers with me. I lie on my back, my feet tangled in the sheets, laughing. Wyck laughs down at me. It feels good.
A tap on the door precedes Chrysto’s entry. “Wyck, I—oh.” He stops on the threshold when he sees me on the floor. With one hand, he brushes a forelock of burnished gold hair off his forehead. “Everly.”
He’s always been a bit awkward around me, jealous, I think, of my prior relationship with Wyck. Not that Wyck and I had a “relationship” in the sense that Chrysto and Wyck do (even though I longed for it at one time), but we’ve known each other forever and I think Chrysto feels threatened by that. I scramble up. “Too bad you weren’t here five minutes ago, Chrysto,” I say, giving him a big smile. “Wyck just threw me out of the bed.”
Chrysto manages a small smile. “Not many men would do that, Everly.”
My brows scrunch my forehead; I’m surprised by the offhand compliment.
“They would if they knew her like I do,” Wyck says, unrepentant. He swings the pillow at my head, but misses. I catch it on the backswing and tug hard. Chrysto grabs one corner and together we haul Wyck onto the floor. Chrysto and I high five.
“I see how it is,” Wyck grumbles with mock affront. He stands and tosses the sheets and coverlet back on the bed. “You’re teaming up on me. I can’t trust anyone.”
Conscious of the deceit I am practicing to get out of the compound tonight, I say a flustered goodbye, and leave him and Chrysto alone. I don’t for a moment begrudge them their relationship or their support for each other. I wish I had someone to vent to, to comfort me, to hold me tight when things get ugly. I wish Saben was here. Wishing won’t make it so, though. I decide to skip dinner in favor of a nap since I’ll be up all night.
Chapter Six
The night air is soft, but still muggy, a damp blanket draped over me. My patrol ACV is an enclosed single-seater, but the humidity oozes into the cockpit despite the door’s seal. The vehicle runs roughly, the air cushion half cutting out at random intervals, so I’m constantly having to brace myself against the lurch and hoping it doesn’t quit for good. I suspect the regular sentries stuck me with the defective machine on purpose, each of them claiming better-maintained ACVs the minute our pre-shift briefing broke up. I’ve been given a route to patrol, radio codes, and a map of the mine placements. It’s clipped to the dashboard. I feel guilty about deserting my post immediately, but I rationalize that the statistical chance of a Prag re-attack during the window I’m away is negligible.
Not wanting to put the meeting site’s geocoords into the ACV’s navigation system, I’ve brought along a handheld Navigizmo from the lab. It dates from the early 2020s, and its precision is compromised by the gaps in the satellite coverage, but it should be good enough for my purposes. It tells me the meet’s not far—just two point eight miles from the Kube. I’m headed south of the Kube, into what’s left of Jacksonville, along a road so degraded it’s hardly worthy of the name. The remains of a shopping mall rise on my right, surrounded by two acres of cracked and rutted asphalt. The walls are crumbled, the roof mostly caved in. By the moonlight, I can barely make out a canted sign that reads “Sears” in faded letters. I think I catch a flicker of fire through a gap in the mall’s walls, and wonder if outlaws are living there. I see no one, but I speed up. I’m jumpy as I approach the site with all running lights extinguished. Half a mile from my destination, I glide into a thicket of kudzu and pine skeletons and conceal the ACV.
Holding the Navigizmo, I strike out on foot. Kudzu rustles as I pass and several times I stand still to listen. A distant howl makes me worry about dog packs, but the sound seems to be moving away. It’s ten past ten by the time I get within a hundred feet of my destination. I stop. I pull the beamer from the holster slung across my back and cradle it in my arms. The structure ahead that appears to be the meeting location stands at a crossroads. Tall metal supports hold up an oval shaped sign with no trace of its former words. There’s a smallish building, remarkably free of kudzu, and two free-standing shapes about my height swathed in the invasive vine. As I edge closer, I catch a whiff of petroleum and realize this was a gas station.
I’m eager to see my mother, but cautious, too. This could be a trap. I don’t think my mother would set me up, but I’m not one hundred percent sure of that. At bottom, my mother is a pragmatist in both the personal and political senses, and if she thought Amerada stood to gain from her betraying me, I have no doubt she’d do it. The beamer’s weight is comforting. It feels slick and I realize my palms are sweating. I wipe them one at a time down my thighs.
As I’m creeping toward the building, placing each foot carefully to avoid making noise, a twig snaps behind me.
I swing around in a crouch, pointing the beamer. A silhouette detaches itself from the kudzu shadow of the gas pump. It’s taller than Emilia Alden, broader. Before I can fire, a man’s voice says, “Everly.”
Shock and longing pour through me at the sound of his voice. My grip on the beamer goes slack and it slides from my hands with a clatter. I don’t care. Saben. It’s been more than three months since I’ve seen him, talked to him, held him. I say his name on a sob. “Saben.”
And then I’m in his arms. I don’t know who moved—me or him, or both of us—but his strong arms close around me and I throw my arms around his back, squeezing like I’ll never let go. He feels the same. He smells the same. His fingers tangle in my hair and he pulls my head back so he can kiss me. As our lips meet, a golden flame heats my blood, licking along every nerve ending. I can’t get enough of him, his hard body pressed against me, his tongue twining with mine, the taste of him. Our kiss deepens and conscious thought ceases. We pull apart after long minutes and a breath of cool sanity returns.
“Saben, what are you doing here? I thought—”
The moonlight shows the whites of his eyes and the glint of his teeth. I know he’s smiling, every inch of him filled with the same helium-like happiness that makes me feel like I’m floating.
“Who were you expecting?”
“My mother.” I feel slightly silly now; of course Minister Emilia Alden wasn’t going to be sneaking around after dark in the piney woods of the Florida Canton for a clandestine meeting. “It was a woman’s voice on the phone.”
“My sister. From a phone no one will connect to her or me.”
“Your sister knows about me?” I’m not sure if the thought warms me, that he loves me enough to tell his family, or alarms me. The fewer people who know where I am, the better my chances of not being recaptured and executed.
“I trust her. She loves me and she knows that if anything happened to you, I’d die. Let’s go inside,” he says, gesturing to the building. “I checked it out. Except for a few cockroaches, it’s empty. I deployed sensors, too, so we’ll know if someone’s coming.”
“How long do you have?”
“Less than an hour.”
I retrieve the beamer, and he takes my hand and pulls me toward the mini Qwikee Mart, as the faded letters over the entrance proclaim.
The door is a rough plank that groans when we roll it aside. Saben rolls it closed behind us and the darkness is total. It’s so black I know the store’s windows have been boarded up. Skritching sounds make me twitch, but I force myself to stand still. The smell of hot dogs and mold pervades the air. Saben activates a biolume pod and the light forms a pool around Saben and me, the corner of a counter, and a listing set of metal shelves.
I see Saben clearly for the first time and swallow hard. His blond hair is shorter than I remember, cropped close to his head. His dear face is the same, though, and his geneborn gold eyes have the same amber flecks. They seem to glow in the faint light, warm and welcoming and full of love. Placing my palms against his cheeks, I stand on tiptoe to kiss him again. “I’ve missed you so much,” I whisper against his lips.
“Being apart from you is like having an arm cut off,” he says. His mouth slants against mine and his powerful arms lift me until I wrap my legs around his waist. I’m awash with heat and passion, pulling his head toward me so our teeth click together. Without breaking our kiss, he backs up until I’m seated on the old counter. It sags slightly, making me gasp and clutch Saben’s shoulders. It holds. We laugh and our eyes meet, and the passion grabs hold of us. I know where this is heading, and I’m ready. Determined, even. We’ve been apart so long and I know that every time we say goodbye it could be the last time we ever see each other. Saben’s an IPF officer—people shoot at him. I’m a convicted murderer and rebel—the government encourages people to shoot at me. One of these days, our luck may run out.
Regeneration (The Incubation Trilogy Book 3) Page 8
