My eyelids snap open at the thought. I’m working on a bio weapon, after all, a viral vector and gene mutation that will eradicate the locusts. Someone could be engineering something equally lethal. I remember Fiere mentioning that Wyck was working on countermeasures for the microdrones. I assumed it was something mechanical, but could it be biological? Did I walk in on Wyck? Was he the one who knocked me aside and fled? I snort a laugh at the idea of Wyck in the lab. As an AC he ducked every bio-chem class except the required basic one, and talked me into doing his assignments in that. No way was it Wyck. I give it up and stand. Maybe my brain will work better after breakfast.
In the weeks that follow, Fiere uses Kube records to track down the biological parents of many of the younger ACs and manages to reunite them. Other kids she fosts out to people in the Jacksonville community, despite Idris’s mutterings about giving up our leverage. Fiere stands firm and tells him that we are not the kind of people who hold kids hostage.
“We cannot become the people we are fighting against,” she tells him at one evening staff meeting. I know she believes that, but I know she also hates being in charge of the younger ACs, and I repress a smile. Too many heads nod for Idris to insist on retaining children to use as a human shield in the event of another IPF attack. Most of the teenage ACs have opted to pledge allegiance to the Defiance and remain, working in the dome.
As part of his plan to win the hearts and minds of the people, Idris is distributing more dome produce to the people of Jacksonville. They are grateful, despite the long lines to claim their shares on Mondays and Thursdays, and a surprising number of them join the Defiance, old and young, men and women. Idris assigns Chrysto the task of processing them and arranging transport to one of the four Defiance training camps. I’m a bit in awe of the scope of the Defiance. On the periphery of a single Defiance cell’s operations, I didn’t have a feel for how complicated the organization had become. When I ask, Fiere tells me that there are 102 cells operating around Amerada, with more than 150,000 recruits. That’s a staggering number when the total Amerada population hovers between only three and four million. I’m stunned, and for the first time I begin to think that the Defiance might really have what it takes to overthrow the Prags. Watching Idris in action, I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Good, I tell myself; after all, I’m with the Defiance now.
Wyck remains aloof and it saddens me. I don’t know how to make it up to him, although I try by taking him some of the dome’s best experimental produce to sample, and by stopping by his room now and then to chat. He doesn’t bar his door against me, but his eyes are shuttered and his body canted slightly back when we talk, and I know he’s erected barriers between us. I resolve not to give up. Wyck means too much to me. I’ve loved him half my life, since soon after he arrived at the Kube as an angry, rebellious, scared seven-year-old, confused and damaged by his IPF father’s beatings. I’m not letting him put an end to our friendship. I’m not.
The expected IPF attack against the Kube never materializes, to the confusion of all of us. Fiere postulates that the IPF troops are committed to Defiance attacks in other parts of Amerada and stretched too thin to mount an offense against the Kube. Regardless, five weeks into our occupation, Idris gathers us together and tells us that we’ve been tasked to support a Defiance offensive. We’re sitting, standing and slouching in his office in a specially called staff meeting.
“Rhedyn and her squad will remain here to provide security,” he says, directing a hard look at Rhedyn when she starts to protest. “Jax, you’ll carry on as normal.”
I nod, having expected nothing else.
“Wyck, Chrysto, Fiere—we leave first thing in the morning. Tell your squads to pack enough gear and provisions for a week or ten days.”
“Where are we going?” Fiere asks.
“You’ll know when we get there,” Idris says in a voice that discourages further questions.
It doesn’t work on Fiere. “Bullshit,” she says. “You can trust everyone in here.” She looks around at the five of us. “What’s the objective?”
“I don’t know for sure,” Idris says, looking disgruntled that he’s not in on the plan, and embarrassed at having to admit it. “From what I’ve gathered, it’s either an IPF base or another dome. Atlanta area, at any rate. I’ve got the coordinates south-southeast of the capital where we rendezvous with other Defiance cells.”
Fiere nods and her black bangs slip over her eyes. She shakes them back. “It’s about time.”
As if remembering something, Idris turns to Rhedyn who stands with her back propped against the door jamb, arms crossed over her chest, and a scowl on her face indicating she’s not happy to be cut out of the action. “Rhedyn, have someone—Jereth—sort out someplace we can keep prisoners. It’s possible we’ll be returning with some and we need to have a plan in place.”
“Prisoners?” Wyck frowns. “We just offloaded the ACs—why would we want to take on prisoners? We’ll have to feed them, guard them—”
“Orders from above,” Idris says, mouth tightening.
I’m not sure if it’s from irritation with Wyck or at the idea of having to house and guard an unknown number of prisoners. I remember what happened to the last batch and hope Idris’s “orders from above” include a prohibition against shooting them all in cold blood.
“Maybe we can fost them out like we did the ACs,” Fiere suggests. “Although I don’t think many families will be as eager to take in a surly soldier as a cute three-year-old. Personally, I’d have the soldier any day.” The atmosphere lightens when everyone laughs, even Idris.
I catch up with Wyck when the meeting breaks up. “Stay safe,” I say.
He gives me a real smile, the first I’ve had from him in weeks, and a peck on the cheek. He’s happy to be off to fight, I can tell.
“Yeah, that’s the plan. Keep things humming along here. I expect to hear the locusts have been defeated by the time we get back.”
“I hope you’re not gone that long.”
He laughs and strides ahead of me to catch up with Chrysto.
“I’ll miss you,” I whisper to his back.
He turns around and winks at me, and I’m suddenly happier than I’ve been in weeks.
Chapter Nine
I don’t hear the Defiers leave the next morning, but when I wake I know immediately that they’re gone. A brittle carapace of silence encases the Kube and my footsteps break it; they sound abnormally loud and I try to walk more quietly before deciding that’s stupid and clomping along as usual. I breakfast with a handful of Rhedyn’s off-duty squad members and hurry to the lab. It’s the same as always, and the sameness draws a smile. I greet Dr. Ronan who is hunched over a microscope.
“It’s about time you got here, Jax.”
Even his irascibility is comforting. I give him a sunny “Good morning, Dr. Ronan,” and he spares me a look from under bushy brows. “You’re sounding chipper this morning.”
“Well, if the instars are all still healthy, then today’s the day.” The day we release the first batch of genetically modified, golden locusts, assuming the batch of young locusts we’ve been raising is still healthy. A glance into their cage shows me they are.
“Let’s get it done, then,” Dr. Ronan says, imperfectly concealing his excitement with gruffness.
“We have to wait for Jereth—” I start to say, when Jereth bursts through the door, imager in hand, hair all over the place.
“We’re still doing it today, right?” he says, voice squeaky with excitement. “The locusts, I mean? Letting them go?”
I can’t help but smile at his hyper enthusiasm. “Yes. Thanks for coming.”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” he says, playing with a dial on the imager. “Not for anything. This is one of the biggest things to happen in Amerada since, well, since there was an Amerada. You’re a heroine,” he tells me.
I cringe away from the word, knowing I’m anything but.
“And you
, too,” he tells Dr. Ronan, not noticing my reaction. “A hero, I mean, not a heroine.”
“Nonsense,” Dr. Ronan harrumphs and draws his brows into a single bushy line. “Are we going to stand around all day jibber-jabbering, or are we going to get on with it?”
“On with it,” I say decisively. We roll the mesh cage containing the altered locusts out the lab’s front door since the one leading directly outdoors is still nonfunctional. We have to push it through the dome and then through the Kube. By the time we arrive at the closest exit, we’ve drawn a crowd, a parade of ACs who were working in the dome, a handful of off-duty Defiers, and even a couple of the kitchen workers. Word has gotten around. People know what we’re doing.
Above the courtyard on the Kube’s north side, the sky is painfully blue, unblurred by humidity. To our left, a gaping crater, still filled with debris, bears testament to the armory and the men who died there. Being outside stirs the locusts, and they hop onto the mesh en masse, twanging the metal and chirring. I can’t look at them without seeing Keegan and Alexander’s death throes, and I clear my throat.
“You should say something,” Jereth says from behind his imager.
“Uh, I’m not much of one for speeches,” I say. I’m a scientist. I just want to get on with it and get back to work. Jereth motions for me to speak, and reluctantly I say, “I release these genetically modified locusts in the name of Amerada. This is the beginning of the end for locusts in our country and around the world.” Totally lame.
There’s a spattering of applause and my face warms. Feeling more than a little silly, I motion people back inside—chances are at least half of these locusts are carnivorous—and step inside myself, holding the simple string attached to the cage door. Not very high tech. Wyck would have come up with something more twink. I jerk on the string and the door hinges down. I get the feeling we’re all holding our breaths. For a moment, nothing happens, but then one locust hops onto the wire rim edging the door. His yellow-gold body is a sturdy line, legs crisp triangles peaking on either side. He hesitates, and then flies. Two more hop forward; they, too, take to the air. Then, they all make a break for it and in moments the locusts are a surging golden mass, flying toward the sun. I lose sight of them in the glare.
A heavy hand falls on my shoulder. “Well done, Jax, well done.” Dr. Ronan looks down at me with rare approval, and I smile, swelling with pride and happiness. We’ve done it.
The small crowd disperses, ACs and Defiers gaggling back to their regular duties. Quicker than I would have thought possible, it’s a normal day again, the momentous act of releasing the locusts that will destroy their own and save our country blending into the need to peel potatoes for lunch and adjust the spray nozzle on a fertilizer drone. It makes me wonder if the mundane has always trumped the momentous, if the accretion of daily tasks carried out over millennia bears more weight in this world than one-off events of gigantic magnitude—the invention of the computer or decoding the human genome, dropping a nuclear bomb on Japan in World War 1 or 2 (I never could keep them straight), eradicating the locusts. I wish Alexander were here—he would have thoughts about all of it and be happy to discuss it with me. Missing him holds me rigid, but then my muscles relax, fiber by fiber it feels like, and I can move again. I head for the lab and get back to work.
Wyck and Fiere and the others are back sooner than I expect. An alarm sounds mid-morning on the third day after they left, followed by an announcement that they are inbound. I intend to keep working, but my curiosity and worry drag me out of the lab to the Kube’s front entrance where the Defiers who stayed behind have gathered to welcome the warriors. Something about the way we’re grouped, and the Kube’s high, arching atrium, reminds me of an illustration of a Viking homecoming Proctor Dashto once showed us when we were discussing an old, old text called Beowulf. All they need is a couple of longboats.
I shake the fanciful image out of my head and join in the cheering as Idris steps into view, followed by Fiere, then a gaggle of Defiers I don’t know by name, then Chrysto. They’re all dusty, hair plastered to their heads with sweat, uniforms singed, bloodied, and torn in places. One Defier has her arm in a sling, and another limps when he steps, supported by two others on either side of him. A third has gauze taped over his eyes and is being led by an older comrade. It’s clear they were engaged in hard fighting, but equally clear they were triumphant. Their eyes glitter, they call out greetings in voices pitched too loud. They reek of triumph.
Where’s Wyck? He has to be okay. My stomach is clenching when he enters, a gash down the side of his face held together by sloppy stitches. Despite that, he’s grinning, and he waves when he spots me. Before I can make my way to him, Idris claims our attention, stepping into a sunbeam piercing the atrium. It makes a natural spotlight. His black hair is loose, straggling to his shoulders, and he raises a clenched fist.
“Defiers!” he bellows, turning in a slow 360.
Everyone cheers, including me.
“We have struck a mighty blow to the Prags. In a coordinated attack with dozens of other Defiance cells, we have captured Base Falcon and Atlanta Dome 2.”
The cheers grow louder, becoming a roar, and images flash into my mind against the backdrop of noise. Base Falcon was where Loudon was stationed, and was the site of Halla’s capture when she tried to contact him. With Saben and Alexander, I watched it unfold from a hill overlooking the military compound. And the dome . . . I went there with Minister Alden. It feels surreal to hear that battles were fought in those places, that the IPF has been beaten back. Saben! He was garrisoned in Atlanta, but it was possible his unit had been called out to help defend Base Falcon. I miss everything Idris is saying about the strategic importance of the victories as I worry about Saben.
“Bring in the prisoners.”
Idris’s words bring me back. Armed Defiers march a string of IPF-uniformed prisoners into the atrium. Their arms are bound behind their backs. I count nine men. They are different heights, different builds, some blond, some dark, some nervous, some defiant, but they have one thing in common: they all have the gold eyes that mark them as geneborn. The room falls silent.
“These are the agents of the government,” Idris says, walking around the prisoners who are standing at parade rest, trying to ignore him, trying to be brave, I can tell.
“Kill them!” a voice calls out. “Shoot the bastards.”
I stand on tiptoe, trying to see who it was, but I can’t tell.
Idris raises a hand and there is silence again. “We are not barbarians,” he says. “We are not Prags who let locusts feast on their prisoners’ flesh.”
I dropped my eyes, remembering the firing squad that shot all the geneborns in the Kube after Alexander’s death. On Idris’s command. Neither side has a monopoly on barbarism, I can’t help thinking.
“No. We will treat our prisoners humanely, and we will document it, and show Amerada that the Defiance is not made up of outlaws and criminals like the government suggests in its Assembly propaganda. We will demonstrate that we are true patriots, committed to a better life for all Ameradans, fit to lead Amerada into the next millennium.”
My brother is getting better at speeches, more polished, almost as effective as a Prag minister. I contemplate telling him so just to watch him explode.
Amidst ragged cheering, he nods at Jereth. “Take them away. The prisoners are your responsibility.”
I watch as Jereth, puffing out his thin chest with pride in his appointment as chief gaoler, Wyck and two other Defiers prod the prisoners into motion and march them toward the elevators. I guess they’re being housed in the basements. As the elevator doors slide shut, Wyck gives a jaunty salute, eliciting a few laughs. Idris frowns. Either he doesn’t like not being the center of attention, or he is annoyed that Wyck isn’t taking his task seriously enough.
“Back to your duties,” he says. He turns and starts away, holding himself stiffly upright in a way that makes me think he’s injured. As everyone begins
to file out, he adds, “Staff meeting at eighteen hundred hours. Wounded—report to the infirmary for care.” His gaze falls on me. “Jax, help out in the infirmary. Trilma, you, too.”
I slide my jaw from side to side with irritation, but give a curt nod. Being a bio-chemist does not make me a doctor; however, if I can help, I want to. I learned long ago that in the Defiance, job titles are loose guidelines, at best. Everyone has to contribute where they can. I join up with Trilma, a tall, skinny blonde from the Delta Canton—where Halla was from—and summon the elevator.
“I did not sign on with the Defiance to play nurse,” Trilma mutters. Blotchy freckles stand out against her pale skin. The beamer slung over her shoulder looks too heavy for her thin frame, but she doesn’t seem to notice it.
“Me, neither,” I say. I hold out a hand and we shake. “Everly Jax.”
“I’ve heard of you.”
I don’t ask her what she’s heard. We stand silent, side by side facing forward, as the elevator rises two levels. We get out and I lead the way to the infirmary where five or six Defiers are waiting for care, and the nursing proctor is looking overwhelmed. She’s in her fifties, I suspect, and gray hair frizzes around a round, moderately lined face. “I’m not trained for this,” she says, gesturing to the chaos.
“Do your best,” I say. “Trilma and I will help. Tell us what to do.”
On the words, Jereth walks up, his hand gripping the arm of an IPF prisoner with his wrists bound behind his back. The prisoner’s face is ash gray and sweat beads his forehead and the space above his lip. “Says his stomach hurts,” Jereth informs us, patting his own belly.
Regeneration (The Incubation Trilogy Book 3) Page 11
