“There’s nothing here,” Fiere says in a voice compounded of frustration and disgust. She marches back to me, hands on her hips. “This is a wild goose chase. Whoever gave Wyck that address was messing with him.”
“There’s got to be something here,” I say. There’s got to be. If not, I have no idea what we’ll do next, how we’ll prevent genocide. The wind picks up, whisking a dust devil out of the dirt. It whirls a few feet and subsides. The air smells like rain. I glance at the darkening sky, now dense with bruised clouds. We’re going to get wet. From the distance, the sound of loudspeakers indicates the announcement is being broadcast to Assemblies around the city. The words reverberate and fade, indistinguishable. “We’re missing something.” My gaze falls on little Ella’s grave again and it clicks. How could I not have spotted it immediately?
“The address is dates.”
“What?” Fiere frowns, her slim, dark brows winging up.
“Four-one-four-three—that’s April first, two thousand forty-three. Or, I suppose it could be nineteen forty-three or even eighteen forty-three, as old as some of these graves are. That’s got to be it.” I talk faster, excited by the discovery. “If we find the tombstone with that date, there will be . . . something to lead us to the High Command.” I’m not sure if what I feel is conviction or desperation, but the idea makes some sense and we don’t have a better one.
“April First. April Fool’s Day,” Fiere says. “If you’re right, someone has a sense of humor. Let’s get searching.”
We split up the cemetery and each taken a section, trying to do it in an orderly way so we don’t miss anything. Filled with a new sense of hope and urgency, I comb my area, scanning the dates on every tombstone, mausoleum, and marker I pass. For perhaps the first time in my life, I’m grateful that the locusts have been through, denuding the cemetery of grass, which might otherwise have overgrown the grave markers. And, even though I feel conspicuous in the daylight, vulnerable, we stand a chance of finding what we’re looking for, which we wouldn’t if it were night. For the first half hour, I hear the broadcast in spurts, when the wind blows the sound our way, but then it stops. The Assembly must be over. A handful of people pass by on the street—I can hear them even when the wall hides them from view—but the cemetery remains deserted except for me and Fiere. Even the old woman has left.
At the tail end of the second hour, I’m discouraged and my stomach’s rumbling. I’m searching my last row, graves laid out within spitting distance of the wall and the street beyond, and I haven’t found the April Fool’s grave yet. I haven’t seen Fiere in a while and I’m craning my neck to spot her when I stumble against a rusty storm grate set an inch above ground level. I recover my balance without hitting the ground, but the effort rips into my calf and I grit my teeth to keep from yelping.
I pause a moment, leaning on a nearby granite plinth topped with a masterfully carved weeping angel, her wings folded around her marble body. I’m taken by its beauty and run a finger along the tear streaking her cold cheek. She is unbroken, a rarity in this ravaged cemetery. The name on the marker she weeps over is Victorina Loránd. I knit my brows. Something about that name is familiar . . . Then my gaze falls to the inscription. “Victorina, eternal ray of sunshine. Wife, mother, angel.” And the dates: “Born April 1, 1985 Died April 3, 2050.” April one and April three. Four-one, four-three. Could it be? Wild hope rises in me.
“Fiere!”
She comes running, beamer drawn. “What’s—?” She slows and lowers the beamer when she sees I’m alone and unhurt. “Damn it, Everly, the way you screeched I thought for sure a platoon of IPFers was dragging you away. Are you trying to alert every soldier in the Capitol that we’re ransacking a graveyard trying to find the Defiance High Command?” Her voice is low and urgent.
“Sorry,” I say automatically, brushing my hair off my face. I point to the gravestone.
It takes her only a brief second. “Could be,” she nods. “So how—?”
“Let’s figure it out.” With questing fingers, we poke, prod and twist every inch of the angel to no avail. We tread on the grave, hoping for a pressure plate that will open a doorway. We examine the gravestone and angel for secret messages or codes, but spy nothing. Our hope slowly drains away.
“This is pointless,” I finally say, straightening. “I was wrong. This isn’t it.”
The first cold drop of rain plops onto my forehead and slides down my nose. The skies open up as if unsealed and thirty seconds later we’re drenched, hair plastered to our skulls, clothes clinging heavily to our bodies. Lightning flashes and immediate thunder shakes the ground. I’m looking around for shelter, even though I know there’s not so much as a garden shed in this cemetery, and am making for a mausoleum with an overhang that might keep the rain from beating on us, when Fiere grabs my arm.
“Down there.” She points to the storm grate.
“Are you crazy? In this? We’d drown.”
“No.” She shakes her head, her hair flinging water droplets that are quickly consumed by the deluge. “That’s it. Like Aunt Lorraine’s house.” She has to shout for me to hear her over the pounding raindrops trying to shatter the granite tombstones.
A labyrinth of tunnels, some of which used old sewer pipelines, had been Bulrush’s route in and out of the house Alexander’s aunt had left him. It isn’t much of a leap to think there might be other tunnels around the city. In fact, it makes so much sense I feel stupid for not thinking of it earlier. At any rate, we have nothing to lose. We slog the few steps through thickening mud to the sewer grate. We work our fingers under the lid and heave. It comes up easily. Almost as if oiled recently. I shoot Fiere a look that says she was right.
Without hesitating, she grabs the rim of the opening and drops down. A splash signals that she’s landed. “Water’s only ankle deep,” she calls up. “Come on.”
I follow her lead and swing myself into the opening. I hang, and then drop, landing in a slight crouch with cold water surging around my lower calves. I think briefly of infection and shrug the thought away. The dim light bleeding through the grate illuminates a sectioned metal pipe, liberally smeared with rust and algae, large enough to let us stand upright with a foot’s clearance above us. It’s quieter down here, with the earth above us muffling the rain. “Which way?” I ask.
Fiere indicates the tunnel that yawns behind me. “That will take us under the road.”
Side by side, we slosh our way forward. The farther we travel from the grate, the darker it gets. We link arms to keep from being separated. Fiere holds her beamer at her right side. When we’ve gone what I judge to be two hundred yards, the water gurgles differently. A few feet later, we come to a dark opening for a secondary pipe. It must slope down because the water mostly drains that way and we’re soon squelching on the slime at the bottom of the pipe, moving more surely without the water tugging at us. In another few steps, the metal around us gives way to rock and dirt buttressed every few feet with wood beams. It looks just like the tunnel Wyck and the others were building near the Bulrush headquarters. A sense of déjà vu disorients me, but then I remember we’re well north of the former brothel we called home for a few months.
I figure we must be beyond the first row of houses across the street from the cemetery by now. “Where do you think—” I start to ask Fiere, when a bzzt cuts me off. Before I can even think what it might be, a grid of red light beams materializes in front of us.
“Go back!” Fiere says, and whips around, but an identical grid appears two feet behind us, leaving us boxed into a four foot square space. Trapped.
Chapter Sixteen
“Electrified?” I whisper.
For an answer, she stoops and retrieves a pebble from the ground. She flicks it at the grid. It crackles and glows white for a second. The pebble shatters. “That answer your question?”
“We must have triggered it somehow,” I say, looking around. I don’t know why I bother. We could have stepped on a pressure plate or crossed
a beam; it doesn’t matter because we’re well and truly trapped.
“We’ll have company any minute, if we’re lucky,” Fiere says, holding her beamer muzzle down.
“Lucky?”
“They might have a remote means of terminating intruders—gas, asphyxiation. Or they might let intruders stand here until they get tired and bump against the electric mesh.”
“If that were the case, we’d be dead already,” I say with more confidence than I feel.
“Let’s hope you’re right. If someone comes, repeat that password phrase loudly and non-stop and hope they’re not inclined to shoot on sight.”
On the words, a ladder slithers down the wall from a concealed slot ten yards forward of our electric prison. A figure slides down, followed by two more. All three are clad from head to toe in midnight blue, including balaclavas drawn down over their faces. The masks mash their features, making them look vaguely alien. All three carry beamers and have knives and side arms tucked into their belts. They form a rough triangle, beamers leveled at us, and walk toward us. Fiere sets our beamer on the floor, careful not to bump the grid, and raises her hands. I do the same.
We say, “Now is the winter of our discontent” in unison and one after another as the figures approach. One of them, at least six-foot-four and broad shouldered, is clearly male. One is also tall, perhaps six feet, but has feminine curves. The third is more androgynous. They stop, close enough to touch if I wanted to electrocute myself to do so, and regard us silently.
“I know the code phrase isn’t current,” I say when they don’t speak, “but you have to believe we’re with the Defiance. We’ve come from Kube 9. We have something of critical importance to relay to the High Command.” I hold my hands at shoulder height, away from my body, and try to look as unthreatening as possible.
“We need to see the High Commander,” Fiere says, sounding much more composed than I do. Her voice is unruffled, her words practically an order. For a fleeting second I envy her cool self-possession.
Finally, the androgynous Defier speaks, his or her voice still giving no clue as to gender because it is tinny, obviously altered by some device. “Jax only.”
The sound of my name startles me. How do they know—? I peer harder at the three of them, trying to see if I recognize anyone. In their dark blue jumpsuits, they are strangers. Fiere’s gaze rakes the ceiling, and she draws my attention to a point of light that must be an imager, tucked into a crevice near the ceiling. Ah. I feel chagrined, realizing I should have been more alert to our environment.
The tallest Defier presses a remote on his belt and the front grid disappears. His beamer is firmly pointed at Fiere, but she makes no move. “Hurry back,” she tells me. “I’ll be waiting.” With the appearance, at least, of nonchalance, she puts her back against the wall and slides down in to a cross-legged sitting position.
The female Defier makes a humph sound that might have been a laugh at Fiere’s insouciance, and gestures me forward with her weapon. I step toward them and the electric grid springs to life again behind me. Two of them pat me down thoroughly, looking for weapons. “I’ll be back,” I tell Fiere, suddenly nervous about being separated.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Fiere says.
Her tone is flip but her eyes are serious. It all rests with me.
“I don’t suppose you could bring food and water after you drop Jax off?” she calls as the four of us head for the ladder. “And maybe a book if you’re going to be a while.”
The female Defier actually looks back and gives her a tiny nod. I move forward and follow the androgynous one up the ladder, with the tall man right behind me. My hands shake a little, but I clutch the rungs tightly and haul myself upward, mentally rehearsing what I’m going to say, and hoping I’ll be alive long enough to say it.
The Defier in front of me levers herself off the ladder and stands looking down at me, weapon ready to fire if I make her nervous. I clamber up and find that we’re in a bright, closet-sized room with an imager mounted in a corner too high to reach, small nozzles arrayed above head height on all four walls, and a grid of beams that says the polyglass walls are electrified. I suspect the nozzles would dispense gas which might put intruders to sleep—temporarily or permanently. The Defiance High Command takes its security seriously.
“Put these on.”
The man hands me a pair of goggles that fit tightly over my eyes and secure at the back of my head. The strap tugs at my hair. I’m not sure what they’re for. A muffled conversation takes place between the androgynous Defier and someone outside and the lights dim, the beams go off, and a door clicks open. I blink.
Prodded by one of my captors, I step through the door, wishing one of them had gone first so I’d know I wasn’t going to be obliterated. Nothing happens. I take a deep breath and another three steps, overwhelmed by what I see around me. I know from how far Fiere and I came through the tunnel, that I’m likely standing in a house a street or two back from the road paralleling the cemetery, but it doesn’t look like a house anymore. The place is built of violet polyglass, giving the interior a twilight feel which I’ll bet it has round the clock. I’ll also bet that the polyglass has a reflective coating on the outside so that neighbors and passersby can’t see in. Instead of walls that separate kitchen from living room from bedroom, there’s one big space, longer than it is wide, with an opening above to another level.
More Defiers in midnight blue jumpsuits and goggles like mine are bent over consoles, or making notes on a huge map of Amerada projected at the front of the room. I can’t clearly make out the Defiers’ facial features and realize the goggles are facial scramblers. I’ve heard of them—Wyck had tried to explain the technology to me once, something to do with light wavelengths—but never worn a pair. The High Command puts such an emphasis on secrecy that I wonder if any of these people even know who they are working side by side with. A shiver runs through me; if I recognize someone I’m dead. A slightly smaller map of Atlanta covers the wall to my left. Twenty or thirty smaller screens positioned around the walls show moving images, and it takes me only a split second to recognize the cemetery, the tunnel where Fiere is now doing pushups in her cage, the Capitol entrance, and other Atlanta-area sites. I wonder if they’re piggybacking on government imagers, or if they’ve installed their own. Either way, I’m impressed. The whole set-up is totally twink.
For the briefest of moments, dazzled by the technology around me, I forget my mission, but come back to reality as soon as a voice says, “Tell him she’s here.” I turn at a touch on my shoulder. The tall Defier, unmasked but unrecognizable, his hair first appearing blond, then medium brown, his face blurred like a photograph whose pixels are shifted randomly a smidge off center, points me toward an elevator which appears to be the only way up to the next level. “He’s waiting for you.”
No point in asking who. I get into the elevator and it rises automatically, controlled by someone on the upper level, I suspect. The elevator doors open behind me into a sparsely furnished room with a motley collection of chairs around a table the sole occupant is using as a desk. Clearly, the Defiance’s resources are being used in the operations center downstairs, and not in the High Commander’s office-cum-conference room. I stand uncertainly near the elevator, until the man looks up and gestures, “Come, come. No need to hover over there. I don’t bite. Have a seat, Everly Jax.”
Even through the voice distorter, I hear something familiar, a cadence rather than a tone. I throw my shoulders back and march forward. We are on the same side. I am not going to be intimidated by the High Commander. He stands as I come near and puts his hands on my shoulders, studying my face. It’s disconcerting looking into a face blurred by the facial disruption field. I can’t tell if his nose is long or crooked, if his eyes are blue or brown, if his jaw is narrow or heavy. I think I catch a glimpse of very white teeth. Somehow, one can read expressions through the distortion field. I know he sees me clearly because he’s not wearing goggles.
> “Sit, sit,” he says, “and tell me how you found us and why you’ve come.”
He sits at the head of the table and I sit to his right. I don’t know how long I have so I launch into the spiel I’ve prepared on our journey here, telling him briefly about my locust research and how it’s been corrupted to target the geneborns. I tell him about sending Dr. Ronan to Minister Alden so he can harness the government’s abilities. He listens intently, and frowns as I finish with, “I saw the prisoners who had been infected with rabies. It’s real. If we can’t do something to stop it, all the geneborns will be wiped out.”
“You say this experimentation took place at the Kube where Commander Idris Ford is in charge?” he asks. “He has always been a very capable commander.” His voice is neutral, but I sense doubt.
“Yes. I know.” I fidget with my tunic sleeve which has come unrolled and drapes over my hand. “But he changed after Alexander died. He’s focused on revenge. He’s not thinking about the consequences for Amerada. He only wants to destroy the geneborns.”
“That would be catastrophic,” the High Commander says. “Even if it paved the way for a Defiance victory, the damage to Amerada would be incalculable. The nation might never recover.”
I slump in relief that he immediately sees the truth.
“Tell me,” he says in a voice that suggests he’s testing me, “what should I do?”
“Capture Idris and his deputies. Make them tell you where the bombs are using any means at your disposal.” I’m embarrassed by my reluctance to spell it out. How can I suggest that the High Commander inflict harm on Idris and the others if I’m not even willing to say the word? “Torture them, if necessary. Defuse the bombs before they detonate. Deploy as many Defiers as possible to locate the bombs in case Idris won’t give up the information. Coordinate with the Ministry for Science and Food Production and help get geneborns processed once the Ministry has developed a protocol for excising the DNA marker for gold eyes. Stop any combat actions that would get in the way of people—geneborns—reaching vaccination centers.” I tilt my chin up, sure he’s going to resist the last suggestion.
Regeneration (The Incubation Trilogy Book 3) Page 17
